Two weeks

Two weeks from now, I'll be done with my BA. What a fucking scary thought.

But then I will sleep.

And sleep is good.

Fuck You And Your H2

With 185 pages of people giving the finger to Hummers!

Saturday's Random Fact

No British MP can die in the Houses of Parliament. There is a rule that the death certificate of any MP who has died at Westminster Palace must have the place of death as St Thomas' Hospital (across the River Thames).

Those crazy Brits.

Yttrium..wtf?

It's an actual element, oddly enough...See Wikipedia

Y...Yttrium You scored 47 Mass, 26 Electronegativity, 71 Metal, and 0 Radioactivity!

Yttrium? Yttrium??? You're messing with me, right? That's not a real element. Really? If you say so. Okay... how about: You are really a solitary creature, and you're somewhat set in your ways. You work, consciously or subconsciously, towards the betterment of society, but I guess you do this by befriending it's strangest elements. You're kind of a spaceman/woman, but in the end you're allright. You should try to be with the benign weirdos of the world because, by goodness, no one else will. Oh, it says here that you are abundant on the moon. Interpret as you will.

My test tracked 4 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender : You scored higher than 90% on Mass You scored higher than 36% on Electroneg You scored higher than 86% on Metal You scored higher than 0% on Radioactivity

Link: The Which Chemical Element Am I Test written by effataigus on Ok Cupid

Your Inner European is French!

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's Your Inner European?

Schweet

http://www.royalweddingcam.com

Absolutely, horrifically disgusting

From Think Progress.

I'm glad that the American Chemistry Council can pay the Environmental Protection Agency to perform experiments for them on low-income, minority kids. I guess they're essentially like lab rats anyway. The punch line (as if there needs to be something more) is that the programme was called the Children's Environmental Exposure Research Study or CHEERS.

It’s good to know that some senators are doing their research on President Bush’s nominees. Senator Boxer was the star of yesterday’s confirmation hearing for Stephen Johnson, Bush’s nominee to lead the EPA. She dug up information on a little-known program being sponsored by the EPA and the American Chemistry Council in Duval County, Florida.

The program targets low-income African-American families and asks parents to videotape their children crawling around a pesticide-infested environment (their homes). Scientists watch the tapes and regularly test the babies for pesticide exposure. In return, the families can keep the video camera and are paid $970 over two years.

Today's random fact from Wikipedia

A passage from Augustine's de Doctrina Christiana has been seen as a fore-runner of the free software movement, as it expressed the philosophy that knowledge, unlike physical possessions, must be freely shared: 'For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.'

A softer world.

The guy who writes this and the associated comic is a friend of a friend (of a friend? I forget how many friends). I've never met him, but he is a genius. Incidentally, I'm posting this because it kind of fits how I'm feeling right now. Still rather 'blah'.

The concept of this is that he writes cover letters to companies, pretending to be applying for jobs. I don't know if he actually sends these things off or if he just writes them and posts them here. In any event, I'll let this one speak for itself (and for me, for that matter):

To: Nintendo
Re: Game Design

Dear Nintendo,

I am writing to apply for the position of game designer with your company. We have a chance here to help children experience games that are more true to life than any game before them. Computer graphics have improved and improved and improved, and some day soon we're going to have to ask ourselves where we can go next in our search for realism.

We need virtual pet games where you clean and feed and love your furry little friend and that car still comes out of nowhere so smoothly, a god of aerodynamics and passenger safety. Where you hear your father's quiet joke that night, when he thinks you are asleep.

We need a new Mario game, where you rescue the princess in the first ten minutes, and for the rest of the game you try and push down that sick feeling in your stomach that she's "damaged goods", a concept detailed again and again in the profoundly sex negative instruction booklet, and when Luigi makes a crack about her and Bowser, you break his nose and immediately regret it. When Peach asks you, in the quiet of her mushroom castle bedroom "do you still love me?" you pretend to be asleep. You press the A button rhythmically, to control your breath, keep it even.

We need an airport simulator, where the planes carry your whole family from A to B, job to job, and dad still drinks in the shower and your older sister still has casual sex that she confides might bring back a feeling she's certain she didn't imagine. Where the plane touches down and you all lean forward in your seats because of inertia, and again and again someone says "I hate to fly".

Yours,

Joey Comeau

For your enjoyment

Random silliness. Click the link.

Odd

FoxTrot and Get Fuzzy used the same exact joke today. Lame.

Fucking insects

Turns out that the horrid itchy dry skin I've had for a month is scabies. Why won't the insects leave me alone?!

I really hope that this is my cosmic quota of annoying bugs. Two within a year! Honestly! That's quite enough, thank you. My guess is that the exboyfriend must have picked up the little wonders in South America while he was there over the holidays--buggy sheets, one would assume. Ack.

What sucks about this is that, although I am currently covered in pesticide (because the thought of that isn't bad enough) is that the rash can stay up to two weeks more! Ugh. I've had just about enough itching, thank you very much.

And now you're all really itchy. But, don't worry, unless you've had sustained skin-to-skin contact with me, you're fine.

Because I'm such an efficient procrastinator...

I just took the OkCupid! Politics Test. (click the link) Turns out I'm a socialist. I am both a social and economic liberal and I exhibit a very well-developed sense of Right and Wrong and believe in economic fairness.

Duh.

I should really just write this paper so that I can write the next one. And then the one after that. And then the one after that.

Because after I do that, I'll have two take home finals and a real final...and then I'll be DONE WITH UNIVERSITY (not) FOREVER!

It's odd, actually, how this semester has no sense of finality to it for me. I'm just sort of plugging along. I'll be happy when it's over--and as I keep saying, I'm very much looking forward to the time off. But I have no sense of 'This is it. Off into the real world with you. Kiss your beloved academe good bye!'

I guess that's because I know I shall return...just like the Jedi...mwahahaha! (I guess a Jedi wouldn't really laugh maniacally like that.)

On a side note, after going to Easter Mass yesterday, I came home and took one of those 'What religion best suits you' tests (http://beliefnet.com/story/76/story_7665_1.html) and of the 27 religions that it compares you against, Roman Catholic was at the very bottom. I've taken a few of these tests before and it's always been at the bottom. Apparently I'd make a better Mormon or Orthodox Jew than I would a Catholic. Go figure. Usually my top religion comes up as Unitarian Universalist. This time, though, that was number two. My top was actually Neo-Pagan. Go figure again. I blame my hippy roommates. ;-) The top five were rounded out by Mahayana Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism and Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestantism.

Just in case you were curious.

Okay. The Book of the Courtier. Masculinity. The Renaissance. GO TEAM!

Michigan preparing to let doctors refuse to treat gays

Maybe it's a good thing I didn't get into Michigan.... I can't believe this. I also read an article this morning about a growing trend of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions that they feel are against their personal beliefs--i.e., no, you can't have this birth control pill because I believe that contraception is a sin. I don't care if you have a note from your doctor.

Doctors or other health care providers could not be disciplined or sued if they refuse to treat gay patients under legislation passed Wednesday by the Michigan House.

The bill allows health care workers to refuse service to anyone on moral, ethical or religious grounds.

The Republican dominated House passed the measure as dozens of Catholics looked on from the gallery. The Michigan Catholic Conference, which pushed for the bills, hosted a legislative day for Catholics on Wednesday at the state Capitol.

The bills now go the Senate, which also is controlled by Republicans.

The Conscientious Objector Policy Act would allow health care providers to assert their objection within 24 hours of when they receive notice of a patient or procedure with which they don't agree. However, it would prohibit emergency treatment to be refused.

Three other three bills that could affect LGBT health care were also passed by the House Wednesday which would exempt a health insurer or health facility from providing or covering a health care procedure that violated ethical, moral or religious principles reflected in their bylaws or mission statement.

Opponents of the bills said they're worried they would allow providers to refuse service for any reason. For example, they said an emergency medical technicians could refuse to answer a call from the residence of gay couple because they don't approve of homosexuality.

Rep. Chris Kolb (D-Ann Arbor) the first openly gay legislator in Michigan, pointed out that while the legislation prohibits racial discrimination by health care providers, it doesn't ban discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation.

'Are you telling me that a health care provider can deny me medical treatment because of my sexual orientation? I hope not,' he said.

'I think it's a terrible slippery slope upon which we embark,' said Rep. Jack Minore (D-Flint) before voting against the bill.

Paul A. Long, vice president for public policy for the Michigan Catholic Conference, said the bills promote the constitutional right to religious freedom.

'Individual and institutional health care providers can and should maintain their mission and their services without compromising faith-based teaching,' he said in a written statement.

SO excited for 19th May!

So I'm going to be a total 16 year old boy here for a moment.

I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE STAR WARS EPISODE THREE!! I JUST WATCHED THE TRAILER AND IT LOOKS SOOOOOOOO GOOD! OH MY GOD! IT'S GOING TO BE SO MUCH FUN TO WATCH!

Ahem.

I'm finished now.

(But I'm going to go watch the trailer a second time.)

The Culture of Strife

In what ought to be immortal words of Jon Stewart to the mainstream media in the US: 'Stop hurting America.'

This man really ought to be canonised. Which isn't to say that I want him to die. Because I don't. But after he has enjoyed what I hope will be a very long life, he ought to be canonised.

Some semblance of sanity...

...seems to remain in that crazy birth-nation of mine. I'm happy that poor Terri Schiavo is going to be allowed to die. Of course, it would be oh so much more humane if they'd euthanise her. But euthanasia is, of course, bad.

I really wish they'd make a big deal about 'the culture of life' and 'erring on the side of life' when they go to execute a criminal. Or that they'd seriously take this whole culture of life thing absolutely seriously and promote life for every US citizen...by providing them all with universal health care, thereby ensuring that they can enjoy the best culture of life possible.

dumb

4 degrees does not sandal wearing weather make.

Thoughts from the road II

'I hope you have enjoyed your stay in Germany, Mister…Bradshaw. And that you'll return again soon.'
'It's not very likely.'
'You did not find our country beautiful?'
'Yes. I found it beautiful.'
'A good journey, sir.'
'There was a cabaret, and there was a master of ceremonies, and there was a city called Berlin in a country called Germany. It was the end of the world. I was dancing with Sally Bowles. And we were both fast asleep.'

Every time I leave the States, I think of these lines from the end of Cabaret. It becomes more strange every time I return. This time, what I noticed most of all were all of the magnetic yellow ribbons on cars. Either yellow or red, white and blue. Most of them said, 'Support our troops.' Some of them said, 'God bless America,'

I've never been really comfortable with such ostentatious patriotism. It troubles me greatly the assumption necessary to assume, as Ben Folds so eloquently puts it in his song 'All U Can Eat', 'Well, God made us number one because he loves us the best.' Of course, the next line in the song is, 'Maybe he should go bless someone else for a while and give us a rest.'

There were four people walking through little downtown Bellows Falls, Vermont, today, holding signs protesting against the war in Iraq. They were all clearly of retirement age. '2 Years + 2 Many Lives = 4 What?' (Today being the two year anniversary of the start of the war.)

It occurred to me that perhaps the reason that Americans are so willing to present a belligerent face to the world perhaps has ntohing to do with an overwhelming superiority of strength. In general, it seems that wars don't worry the American public. Vietnam is perhaps an exception, but it was many, many years before Vietnam became a strongly divisive issue that the majority of Americans were against. The reason that Americans have no problem with wars is because they are never fought at home. Yes, we had that War for Independence and that Civil War (oh, and let's not forget the War of 1812, when the Canadians burnt the White House). In general, though, wars are fought elsewhere--besides the fact that those three wars are so far in the past as to be part of myth more than anything, at least for the average person.

Europe, on the other hand, has had more than its share of wars fought in its own backyard. Indeed, for most of the twentieth century, Europe either was a battleground or a potential battleground. When you fight two horrendously destructive wars within a generation of each other, and then spend the rest of the century poised rather uncomofortably between two enemies who are staring down the barrels of their nukes at each other, well, I suspect that you don't enter into war lightly.

For Americans, though, war has always happened somewhere else. It's never really come home. September 11 was supposedly the day that war came home. But it wasn't really. Since then the American public has been further dumbed-down into a suspicious and jumpy collectivity. For a nation built by immigrants, there is such suspicion of foreigners now that bodes rather ill for the future--not that there isn't plenty of other to bode ill for the future of the nation.

Shortly after the election, I bought a Canadian flag to sew onto my knapsack. Mostly because I was so deeply ashamed by and saddened for my country. This week was the first time that I've been back since the election. I never perceived Bostonians as an unfriendly bunch. Granted, being on the subway with my enormous luggage and knapsack probably was a bit annoying. Damn thing was heavy, crammed with books and not very easy to manoeuvre. Such glares I got.

Yet I can't help but wonder if it had anything to do with that Maple Leaf proudly sewn to my knapsack.

I'm on the bus home, somewhere between St-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Montréal. It will be wonderful to be back. Yet the end is so close. Montréal has been a wonderful home for the past four and a half years. It will be hard to leave, especially to return to the Empire to the South. But life seems to be leading me straight into the heart of the storm.

My friend who I'll be living with in Portland this summer told me that she wept the night of the election. I remember being to shocked to do much of anything.

Spring is coming, though. The snow is melting. Soon, things will begin to blossom. Life always renews itself.

I think I'm finally ready to admit that I can no longer call myself staunchly anti-American. While I very much disagree with the current government and the current state of the nation, I have come to realise that the United States of America was founded on great promises. I love Canada very deeply and, who knows, I may some day return to stay. But I was born American for a reason. I can't just run away from that. I have to do what I can to turn the country around.

The iceberg is clearly there and large ships are not easy to turn quickly. But, as Harvey Milk once said, 'without hope, life is not worth living.'

Maine - Vacationland

Couldn't they come up with a better nickname for themselves?

In any event, as of today, I am planning my summer towards spending it in Portland. Woo! (and that's not a sarcastic woo, that's an actually excited woo).

My friend who is living there now will be leaving in September to go live in the Bahamas for a bit (bitch!) but I guess I'll see what I'm feeling at the end of the summer. Maybe I'll stay. Maybe I'll go. The possibilities are endless. Or something.

I'm tired and have to go walk my dad's dog before I go to bed.

Blah.

How interesting...

My mother last night was talking to my stepfather, telling him about a friend of the family whose daughter (my age) is pregnant. She's not married...and the father is black. There was clear uncomfortableness and criticism implied, thought not directly stated.

I just walked into my little brother's room. He's a sports fanatic, very much in basketball. So he has posters and figurines of basketball players all around his room. All of his heroes are black.

The moral of the story: it's okay to idolise them, just don't love them. Maybe. Perhaps I'm missing something...

Thoughts from the road

Whenever I travel through Vermont, the historian in me comes out. there's still so much open land, visible even from the highway (even if a lot of it is farmland now) that I can only imagine what explorers/colonists must have felt. Coming from a Europe that placed so much importance on land-ownership and where, consequently, land was a precious, precious commodity they must have been having muliple orgasms at the crest of every hill seeing more and more and more open land, theirs for the taking, seemingly. Those 'savages' didn't really matter, right? They weren't improving the land after all, and if you don't improve the land it's pretty clear that you shouldn't be allowed to won the land. (cf. Locke) Besides, the Europeans were 'clearly' more superior and better at doing things, especially with the land. In any event, the Europeans had guns and the Native Americans didn't. It's hard to defend your way of life when looking down a musket barrel. Of course, they got guns eventually, but we'd given them smallpox by that point, and other fun diseases. It somehow doesn't seem to have been a very fair match. I wonder what the world would be like if things had gone the other way round. If the Americans had 'discovered' the Europeans. Just a thought.

--

Clearly, this is a bit of a disjointed post, since I'm just typing thoughts as they come to me. A glimpse into the way my mind works? Scary, isn't it?

In any event, I'm thinking I might spend my summer in Maine. In Portland. (Have I mentioned this yet?) I have a friend living there who can probably help get me set up and, with any luck, help me get a job. I figure I'll wait tables. Why not? I'm guessing that a place like Portland has more than enough summer tourists to let me fairly easily make enough money to live off of. I don't expect to be rolling in riches, of course, but if I have enough to pay the bills and my student loan, I'm happy with that. It would be absolutely brilliant if I could make enough to pay off my Royal Bank Visa--I really need to phone them and figure out how that works. I want to cancel it but obviously indeed still to pay it off. I can't imagine that they'd have too much of a problem sending my bills to the States. They tried to talk me into transferring my chequing account to their US service when I go back already so it seems to me that I should be able to work something out. Even if it's a matter of... oh, what do you care? How horribly mundane is this?

I suppose I'll go read for a bit.

But before I do, actually, here's the theme song for the trip, I think. I've been listening to it a lot, anyway. The music itself is very right and I think that the lyrics fit fairly well, too. If not directly to the funeral, just in general for my life right now. Which isn't to say that I'm feeling defeated, but I do maybe have a little bit of a sense of being lost, not entirely sure where my life is headed right now ('There's no indication / Of what we were meant to be / Sucking up to strangers / Throwing wishes at the sea'). It's a bit uncomofrtable, but I'm okay with it. I mean, I'm going out to face the big bad world all by myself again. But for real this time. I'm sure I'll do quite okay. I just have to finish up the semester and figure out what to do next.

'It Can't Come Quickly Enough' by the Scissor Sisters

Sailling through the tunnels
In the morning by yourself
There's a very special feeling
True sensation all is well
If you stand and reach your arms out wide
Close your eyes and try to fly
It's an underground illusion
Tricking you from side to side

We knew all the answers
And we shouted them like anthems
Anxious and suspicious
That God knew how much we cheated

It can't come quickly enough
And now you've spent your life
Waiting for this moment
And when you finally saw it come
It passed you by and left you so defeated

Skyscrapers rise between us
Keeping me from finding you
If the concrete architecture
Dissapeared there'd be so few
Of us left to navigate and
Defend ourselves from the tide
It's an underground illusion
Tricking you from side to side

There's no indication of
What we were meant to be
Sucking up to strangers
Throwing wishes to the sea

It can't come quickly enough
And now you've spent your life
Waiting for this moment
And when you finally saw it come
It passed you by and
Left you so defeated

--

Just after the Manchester, NH tolls...new construction. Cookie cutter houses built right up against the highway. No doubt absolutely dependent ont he SUV's that their owners drive for access to anything. (Actually, the first thing I noticed after the tolls was a hovering sign for an unwholly trinity of box stores: Target, Kohl's and BJ's.)

I simply cannot comprehend why anyone would choose to live in these houses far larger than anyone needs and that look virtually identical to their neighbours', and that sit on these tiny little lots. And then, if you want a slice of 99¢ pizza at two in the morning, what do you do? To be fair, a lot of apartments in Montreal look exactly the same--as do a lot of apartments in other cities. And yet there's something that is so gut-wrenching to me about suburbia. It's not the same as living the country. I would never want to live there personally, but I don't mind visiting--I'm definitely a city boy.

I think my biggest problem with suburbia is the faux-community. This sense that people seem to have about the suburbs that by living in these subdivisions will allow them to get to know their neighbours in a way not possible in the city or in the country. In the country, your neighbours are probably too far away--but socially you'd be more likely to meet them in town anyway, out of necessity. In the city, there's such a hectic pace of life, sometimes, and you're much more like to be filling up your social schedule with other contacts from work/school/etc than your immediate neighbours necessarily since it's quite easy to create and maintain social contacts across a large city. Suburbia, though, is between the two. Theoretically, you ought to get to know your neighbours quite well. They're right there after all. You still have to go 'into town' as it were out of necessity for food and such, but suburban super markets are too large to realistically expect to run into people you know or to make friends for that matter. At the same time, because suburbs are so car-centred, it's also quite easy to make and to preserve social contacts across distances. Thus, you still don't know your neighbours as you might not in a city, but you're also less likely, I think, to ever run into them. You don't share a staircase or a driveway, even. Only when you find out that their fence is on your property line or your dog starts digging up their garden to you ever get to know 'those people next door.'

--

Another random thing: when I collect called home from White River Junction, Vermont, I had the option of automated assistance in English, Spanish...and Japanese. How odd.

--

SO...MANY...SINGLE OCCUPENT SUV'S! GAH! AND THE DRIVERS ON THEIR CELL PHONES NOLESS!

1914-2005

My Papa passed away this morning. Almost 90 and a half years is, I think, I pretty good run. Since it was expected, I'm not really that distraught yet. Of course, if we consult our Kübler-Ross, I'm only in the first stage of grief, denial. Maybe. I don't think so. I deny that I am in denial. I haven't fully grieved yet, of course, but more than anything I'm angry with my family for being so dumb and for my mother refusing to speak to the rest of her family and refusing to go the funeral. As if this week wasn't stressful enough, it's going to be all the more fun, I think, next week. I shall do my best to remain above the fray. And hopefully I'll be able to get some work done while I'm away. Always the school work. It's a distraction, I guess.

It's too bad I don't have a scanner. Otherwise I'd post a photo of me (as a baby) with my Papa.

The post-grad reading list begins..

...in no particular order...

Re-read Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm, maybe The Road to Wigan Pier)

Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the Rest of the World - Will Hutton
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World - J. R. McNeill
A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle-Class Home in Victorian England - John Tosh
Manliness and Masculinities in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Essays on Gender, Family and Empire - John Tosh
Gender Trouble - Judith Butler
Undoing Gender - Judith Butler
The History of Sexuality (Vols I-III) - Michel Foucault
The Epistemology of the Closet - Eve Kosofosky Sedgwick
A New England? Peace and War, 1886-1918 - G. R. Searle

Another song

I've been posting a lot of song lyrics recently. Deal with it. My life tends to have a soundtrack, especially when I'm feeling a bit down/stressed out.

I woke up with this song in my head this morning. Literally. I woke up a little bit before my alarm and it was the first thing I thought of as I leaned over to pet Sudra who decided to sleep on my bed with me last night. She does seem finally to be getting better. We're still force feeding her because of the ulcer on her tongue since she's not eating herself, but she's getting better. She had some tuna juice yesterday, so that's a step in the right direction. In any event, the song... it sums up a lot of things I've been thinking about over the past week, grad school and otherwise. I knew from when I applied that I might not get in to any of the schools, and I said I was okay with it. I'm disappointed to be sure, but I'm still okay with it. Time off will definitely be a good thing. I've been in school going on nineteen years. It'll be a good chance to clear my head, to try something completely different, and to catch up on reading that I want to do. And make some filthy lucre! Not really probably. Heh. In any event there are a lot of books that I want to catch up on reading. And I really want to learn Spanish. Among other things. Going back to the States will be a big change. It won't necessarily be better than Montréal, but it's where my life feels headed at this point, and I have to take it as it comes.

'Promised Land' by Bruce Springsteen

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I�m just killing time
Working all day in my daddy�'s garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon little girl I'�m gonna take charge

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy no I�'m a man
And I believe in a promised land

I�'ve done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this old town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy no I�'m a man
And I believe in a promised land

There'�s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I�'m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain'�t got the faith to stand it�s ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and broken-hearted

The dogs on main street howl 'cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain'�t a boy no I�'m a man
And I believe in a promised land
And I believe in a promised land
And I believe in a promised land

'We regret to inform you...'

that Anthony will not be attending grad school in September.

To make matters more stressful, my great-grandfather is not expected to live through the weekend. Woo.

Rejection number 3

...from Michigan.

At this point, hell needs to freeze over for me to go to grad school because I think it's so very unlikely I'll get into Columbia.

I'm open to ideas about what to do with myself for the next year or two.

The End of my California Dreaming

Well, I got my rejection letter from Berkeley today.

At least they spent the 60¢ to actually send me a real letter and not a cheap-o email.

Overheard in the Architecture Café

'Books that are rectangles piss me off.'

Perfect

This Alanis Morissette song was one of my teenage theme songs. I haven't listened to it in ages. It just came up on random. It some how feels right at the moment.

Sometimes is never quite enough
If you’re flawless, then you’ll win my love
Don’t forget to win first place
Don’t forget to keep that smile on your face

Be a good boy
Try a little harder
You’ve got to measure up
And make me prouder

How long before you screw it up
How many times do I have to tell you to hurry up
With everything I do for you
The least you can do is keep quiet

Be a good girl
You’ve gotta try a little harder
That simply wasn’t good enough
To make us proud

I’ll live through you
I’ll make you what I never was
If you’re the best, then maybe so am i
Compared to him compared to her
I’m doing this for your own damn good
You’ll make up for what I blew
What’s the problem... why are you crying?

Be a good boy
Push a little farther now
That wasn’t fast enough
To make us happy
We’ll love you just the way you are if you’re perfect

Extra points for subtlety

On the phone today, my mother says to me, 'I wanted to let you know that Papa is dying,' in an off-hand kind of way, as if it were sandwiched in between items on a grocery list. Cheese, bread, dying great-grandfather, milk, beans.

She then went on to let me know that I wasn't going to be expected to come home for the funeral since they weren't going to go because of an on-going quarrel with the rest of the family.

In my last years of high school my mother stopped working so she could take care of my great-grandparents. It was a wonderful thing to do--except that it very quickly gave her a reason to begin to construct her martyrdom. All the sacrifice that she made and all the hard work she took on. She's absolutely right: she did sacrifice and she did take on a lot of hard work. But she did it voluntarily, which, as far as I'm concerned, gives her no right to complain about it. The roots of the fight with the rest of the family stem from this. The rest of the family wanted to find an assisted living home for my great-grandparents and eventually a nursing home, once they needed it. Certainly not ideal--I think that nursing homes are vile and essentially are garbage dumps for old people. I'll have no problem consigning my mother to one for various reasons, but I'll do everything I can to keep my father out of one. (On a side note, I saw Il n'y a plus rien, a play by Robert Gravel on Thursday night--it dealt with nursing homes. It was comedically depressing.)

Back to the story.

My mother, however, didn't want to put them into assisted living and offered to build an addition onto our house--to be paid for by the sale of my great-grandparents' home--so that they could still be on their own but also be close by if they needed help. The old house was just too big with too many stairs. My great-uncle in particular thought that this wasn't such a good idea, because it seemed that my mother would be benefiting from it in the long run: double the size of the house but don't pay for it. I'm rather inclined to agree.

Of course, I don't know the full story. She claims that they didn't want to help at all. Point finale. Maybe. I don't know. In any event, we now have an in-law addition on our house which was only ever half-inhabited since my great-grandmother had to go into a nursing home before it was finished--Alzheimer's. A horrible, horrible disease. I pray I never get it. Some days when I've gone to visit her when I'm home she's fine and knows just who I am--although is usually a bit fuzzy beyond that. Other times, she has no idea who I am. But she's always as friendly and caring as she's always been. At least some things don't change.

On top of all this, my mother has decided that she wants to move to Florida. She's sick of the winter and the snow. She complains that her $30,000 pool is useless for half the year. That's too bad, I guess. I'll be $22,000 in debt when I finish school next month. I realise that I have two little brothers who will need to go to university at some point in the future, too. And obviously that pool that we used to have, which seemed to work just fine for me was just not good enough for them. And she just had to have that Eddie Bauer edition Ford Expedition. SUV's are the New American Dream. She feels safer in it, she tells me. She doesn't support Bush and doesn't support the war in Iraq. I've not asked her how she feels about Social Security. But she supports SUV's which, as far as I'm concerned, is the same as supporting Bush and the war. But SUV's are just symptomatic of a much larger problem in American society and this post isn't about that, so I'll stop here on that topic.

When she said that I didn't have to come home, I told her of course I would. She pointed out that we would have a private wake for about an hour, so as to avoid the rest of the family to whom she doesn't speak. She said that she'd have a mass said for him at Church--mind you, she never goes herself, but you have to do these things. But we won't go to the funeral.

I didn't correct her because it's not worth arguing about before the fact.

They won't go to the funeral. But I will.

I have no quarrel with the rest of my family, no matter how crazy she claims they are. I've not even lived in the country for the past five years, so I can't be implicated in any way. I have a right to go to my great-grandfather's funeral and if it means starting World War III, as she seems to imply, then so be it.

As for them moving to Florida, well, it'll give me less of a reason to have to go visit them. Everyone else I care about will still be in Massachusetts, family-wise. It's kind of funny, considering that when I was a year old my father and mother moved to Florida and my mother hated it--it eventually led to their divorce, although there were certainly a number of other problems in that relationship. Now she wants to move back. Apparently my 13-year old brother is also sick of the snow (because he never goes out and plays in it...because he's too busy sitting in front of the TV playing video games and eating pork rinds or something horrible like that--I'm not making this up. He really does eat pork rinds) and my 8-year old brother is looking forward to getting a dog (apparently you can't have those in Massachusetts--and don't get me started on the family track record with dogs).

Look out FLA USA.

Remembering the 80s (1980-1989)

Party at my place. Next month. Once I'm done with school stuff. This will be the theme. Sort of a long over due Irish funeral for that decade we all love so dearly.

At it will beat the pants off Jupiter Room's 80s night guaranteed.

Family values, anyone?

I just read this BBC News article about a Mexican pop singer who has relaunched her career after spending time in jail on rape and kidnapping charges.

BBC always have related internet links. For this story, they direct you to Gloria Trevi's unofficial website, http://www.trevi.com, which brings you to a page on a different site all together with a picture of Gloria Trevi with the caption 'El Angel Censurado', flanked with banners for Bush/Cheney '04 and another saying 'Viva Bush!' with a link to the Bush campaign's Hispanic voters page. There's also a message saying that trevi.com is coming soon.

I was puzzled by all of this, so I kind of stared at it for about a minute. After that, though, you automatically get redirected to the GOP's official website!

How very, very odd.

House keeping

I've removed the tag-board as it was little used and often caused stupid delays in site loading. I'll get around to updating my daily reads and connecting the blogosphere sometime soon-ish. Maybe.

Oooooooooh!

New York Public Library Digital Gallery

My Free Will Astrology horoscope this week

'The average river requires a million years to move a grain of sand one hundred miles,' says science writer James Trefil. The work you've been doing on yourself these past two years, Cancerian, must sometimes have seemed as maddeningly gradual. The good news is that you are now in the last few months of this slow-motion, long-term project. If you can sustain your focus, you'll finish up around your birthday, having created such a strong inner sense of sanctuary that you will forever after be able to feel at home in the world no matter where you are.

I like the sound of this.

Okay. Focus. School work. Focus. Go team!

Oh...my...god...

...literally.

I may go hide in a corner now so I never have to go back to that country.

Kitty health update

Tiggy is much better. She still on her meds--and she really hates the eye cream that we have to put in her eyes for the conjunctivitus. But she knows that she gets yummy food after that.

Sudra is slowly getting better. She still a bit under the weather and she's only eating once a day, but she hissed at me yesterday when I picked her up to give her her meds, so she's getting back to her old regal bitchy self.

As for me, I've been slowly sliding into more and more sickness. Blah. Because I have time to be sick right now.

Yay!

Sudra is eating again! :)

She's still sick, but she went to the vet today and got some meds. And I finally got her to eat something. Mmm...tuna fish.

Of course, now there are specks of tuna in my bed. Ew.

Fuch Bush! Ugh!

(I just noticed my typo in the title: I think I'll leave it)

From the Guardian

The Bush administration was accused yesterday of trying to roll back efforts to improve the status of the world's women by demanding that the UN publicly renounce abortion rights.

merica's demand overshadowed the opening yesterday of a conference intended to mark the 10th anniversary of the Beijing conference on the status of women, an event seen as a landmark in efforts to promote global cooperation on women's equality.

The US stand was also widely seen as further evidence of the sweeping policy change in Washington under the Bush presidency. The last four years have seen a steady erosion of government support for international population projects, due to the administration's opposition to abortion.

The UN's commission on the status of women had drafted a brief declaration reaffirming support for the Beijing declaration, and calling for further effort to implement its recommendations.

Organisers had hoped that informal discussions last week would reach a consensus on the draft, leaving the next fortnight clear for government officials and women's activists to hold more substantive talks on advancing economic equality and political participation, and fighting violence against women.

But those hopes were crushed in a closed-door session late last week when Washington demanded the declaration reaffirm its support for the declarations made in Beijing 10 years ago only if "they do not include the right to abortion", says a copy of the US text obtained by the Guardian.

Why are feminists so afraid of masculinity?

My discourse on sex and gender, it turns out, is a discourse on power, identity, lineage, paternal right, and patriarchal might. Needless to say, as it moves from procreation without a genitor and without sex, to sex without identity, and from there to sex without procreation, it is also a discourse on anxiety and decay, on faddish medical interventions and on gender-biased philosophical cover-ups, on the disorder that manufactured and fantasized sexual parts create, on the panic that fear of castration and metamorphosis engenders, and on the regulatory regimes of sexuality that are put in place to keep behaviors on track. Thus it is thoroughly and always a discourse on women.

from Valeria Finucci, The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity and Castration in the Italian Renaissance, 35-6.

Why can't a book on masculinity simply be a book on masculinity? I'm okay with the fact that masculinity obviously will have implications on feminimity (and vice-versa for that matter, especially when feminimity is being constructed by men). But if you're going to write a book on masculinity, why not let masculinity speak for itself? Men are just as entitled to their own history as women are. Neither can be understood in isolation from each other.

One of my big problems, though, with feminist history--at least that I've read--is that it tends to focus too much on 'rescuing' women's history from the evil patriarchy of the past in order to assert that women do, indeed, have their own history that is just as valid as the general historical story. No academic worth his or her salt at this point denies this. Women had a specific historical experience that was defined by their gender. Yes. But so did men. Yes, men were the dominant sex, but that doesn't mean that they weren't restricted and forced into little socially-constructed costumes, just like women were. Men too, in a lot of ways, were just as much victims of socially-constructed expectations. No doubt it sucked being a woman in the past. It's difficult to make the argument that it sucked equally as much to be a man since clearly it didn't, but that doesn't mean that it was always a walk in the park.

I guess I'm just frustrated because I don't see how her discourse is 'thoroughly and always' on women. I simply do not see that as logically following from what she outlines in this paragraph, or any of what she outlines in rest of her introductory chapter. Why does a book about the social and literary construction of masculinity in the Italian Renaissance have to be, at its base, according to this, a book about women?

Gutter ball mind

*snicker*

Emblems of agressive masculinity, gladiators were thought to be overpowerlingly sexually potent and attractive to women.... Stripped of the social and cultural paraphernalia that give identity and status to most men, the gladiator is naked, defined only by his weapon. He is all sword.

This from an article on the legal position of public performers and prostitutes in ancient Rome.

House guests. Grr.

We have two house guests at the moment. I thought they were coming for the weekend.

They've been here all week. They're the kind of people that just leave things where they land. Oh, I'll take my jacket off as I come in the door. This spot of floor in everyone's way looks as good a place to leave it as any. Along with my snowy boots.

They're playing music right now out in the living room. It sounds pretty good...what I can hear through my own headphones since I didn't want to wake up the rest of the house with my own music while studying. Which is more than I ought to be able to hear.

Grr.

In other news, both cats are sick now. And I think I'm getting sick too. Blah.

Part of me wants to laugh, part of me wants to do something else

This is actually from an article written at the end of January. I'm a wee bit behind in reading things other than school. Sorry.

The article is an overview of the US economy's current state and potential crises that it might face in the coming year. It ends with the below two paragraphs.

Part of me wants to laugh because part of me thinks it would be funny to see the US lose its economic hegemony. It's bound to happen sooner or later, at least at the rate that things are going. I remember my high school history teacher saying how no one wanted to talk about the problems of idebtedness to other nations, that if things kept going the way they were (in the late '90s) that eventually the US would essentially be owned by other countries. Well, it's pretty much happened. If China, Japan or Europe decided to pull its backing of US debt, the country would be in serious trouble.

As for the level of debt, I knew that it was at unprecedented levels, but what I didn't know was that it's coupled with a zero-level of savings amongst consumers. In other words, the average person in the US is in debt up to his ears, and has virtually no money in the bank.

Now, I'm not economist, but that can't be a good thing.

Meanwhile, we have Bush telling everyone just to keep spending. Remember how after 9/11--I think it was in his speech to the joint-session of Congress--he told everyone to go out and spend? Essentially pretend that nothing had happened. Initially it was maybe a good thing: keep the economy going. We've just been hit with something that potentially could have ground the economy to a halt, so let's try to keep consumer confedence high. Fair enough.

But then he went and started two wars and started cutting taxes.

So the government kept spending, just like it was telling the rest of the population, but the government was getting less money. So the government has to go further and further into debt, just like the rest of the population.

I know I'm not the only one who thinks that this is obviously a bad idea.

Anyway, these concluding paragraphs are from the section on oil. I think that they speak for themselves. And it's interesting, given an article that I read not too long ago (although I forget where) that suggested that in the next decade or two, there was a good chance that the world would see the rise of India, Brazil and China as global powers. China is the obvious one, of course, but don't forget how many people live in India or how much Brazil's economy has been booming.

The drive for resources is occurring in a world where alliances are shifting among major oil-producing and consuming nations. A kind of post-Cold War global lineup against perceived American hegemony seems to be in the earliest stages of formation, possibly including Brazil, China, India, Iran, Russia and Venezuela. Russian President Putin's riposte to an American strategy of building up its military presence in some of the former SSRs of the old Soviet Union has been to ally the Russian and Iranian oil industries, organize large-scale joint war games with the Chinese military, and work towards the goal of opening up the shortest, cheapest, and potentially most lucrative new oil route of all, southwards out of the Caspian Sea area to Iran. In the meantime, the European Union is now negotiating to drop its ban on arms shipments to China (much to the publicly expressed chagrin of the Pentagon). Russia has also offered a stake in its recently nationalized Yukos, (a leading, pro-Western Russian oil company forced into bankruptcy by the Putin government) to China.

In a one-superpower world, this is pretty brazen behavior by all concerned, but it is symptomatic of a growing perception of the United States as a declining, overstretched giant, albeit one with the capacity to strike out lethally if wounded. American military and economic dominance may still be the central fact of world affairs, but the limits of this primacy are becoming ever more evident -- something reflected in the dollar's precipitous descent on foreign exchange markets. It all makes for a very challenging backdrop to the rest of 2005. Keep an eye out. Perhaps this will indeed be the year when longstanding problems for the United States finally do boil over, but don't expect Washington to accept the dispersal of its economic and military power lightly.

Fucking ridiculous

Tom Ridge, former Secretary of Homeland Security, who incited a duct tape and plastic sheeting panic in 2003 joined the board of directors of Home Depot today.

Home Depot, as America's favourite DIY destination, are a large distributor of...duct tape and plastic sheeting. Maybe it's just a coincidence. But it's still fucking ridiculous.

One down, three to go

Well, Princeton has rejected me.

I didn't really want to go to New Jersey anyway.

I'm really not at all that broken up about this. Of the four schools that I applied to, I'm not entirely sure why I applied to Princeton and Columbia in the end.

Come on Michigan and Berkeley!

Our cultural landscape

A few years ago, DJ Taylor wrote an article for the Guardian about his experience as a judge for the Brooker Prize. At the end of the article, he said that 'we inhabit a cultural landscape based, more or less, on the glorification of stupidity.'

I had more to say about this, but I kept getting distracted as I wrote so I'll just submit the quote for consideration.

Gay marriage and abortion.

I was raised Catholic. Despite the fact that I no longer practice, I still manage to have some respect for the institution. It's not the religion for me, but whatever works for you. I don't agree with the Church on a number of points--it really angered me, for example, when they came out against the distribution of condoms as a way to control HIV-infections in Africa. Yes, we know that you're against contraception but people are only going to suffer more in the long run, especially since it's clear that they're going to have sex anyway, condom or not.

Pope John Paul II released his fifth book a few days ago. In it he attacks both gay marriage and abortion. Gay marriage, he suggests, may perhaps be 'part of a new ideology of evil' and he compares abortion, indirectly, to the Holocaust. To give him his due, he says that abortion is the 'legal extermination of human beings who have been conceived but not yet born.'

I no longer feel that I can have sympathy for this man. As far as Popes go, so far as I can tell, he hasn't been that bad. The scary thing is that he's been a fairly liberal Pope, again, as far as these things go--which isn't to say that the Catholic Church is a very liberal institution in general.

*sigh*

I love her, but...

...I really wish the kitten would stop sneezing on me, my book, my notes and my computer. I wish even more that she wasn't sick. :(

Bush Determined to Find Warehouse Where Ark of the Covenant is Stored

WASHINGTON, DC—In a surprise press conference Monday, President Bush said he will not rest until the warehouse where the Ark of the Covenant, the vessel holding the original Ten Commandments, is located. "Nazis stole the Ark in 1936, but it was recovered by a single patriot, who braved gunfire, rolling boulders, and venomous snakes," Bush said, addressing the White House press corps. "Sadly, due to bureaucratic rigmarole, this powerful, historic relic was misplaced in a warehouse. Mark my words: We will find that warehouse." Bush added that, after they are strengthened by the power of the Ark, U.S. forces will seek out and destroy the sinister Temple of Doom.

*snicker* I love the Onion.

Scientific study proves...

...that my couch is the couch of death-naps. I don't even have to lie down on it, just sit on it and I fall asleep. I guess thaty're not really death-naps, since I always wake up. But it does mean death to whatver I'm tryint to study at the moment.

Vive la France!

For all the stupid shit that Americans give France, I'm always happy when they give it back, and so much more intelligently.

From Le Monde via AmericaBlog.

Les relations ambiguës de Bush avec les journalistes

George W. Bush n'a pas une grande passion pour les journaux et les journalistes. Il se vante de ne lire que les titres et il ne perd pas son temps en conférences de presse. Il est l'un des présidents qui en ont donné le moins, même si depuis sa réélection il multiplie les entretiens.

Lors d'une conférence le 26 janvier, un journaliste s'est fait remarquer en demandant au président comment il pouvait travailler avec des démocrates qui "étaient déconnectés de la réalité".

La question n'a pas effrayé M. Bush, mais des bloggeurs de gauche ont disséqué le curriculum vitae de l'auteur, Jeff Gannon, qui a été contraint de démissionner du site Internet qui l'employait : TalonNews.com. Ce site est l'émanation d'un groupe Gopusa, dont la "mission" est de "répandre le message conservateur dans toute l'Amérique".

Media matters for America et d'autres blogs ont montré que ses articles étaient de la copie de rapports du Parti républicain, que Jeff Gannon n'était pas son vrai nom et qu'il avait été lié à des sites pornographiques.

[...]

Mais la tension et l'incompréhension entre les journalistes et le gouvernement Bush restent vives. Un journaliste du Washington Post avait été chargé de la délicate mission de relater la série de bals organisés pour l'investiture du président, le 20 janvier. Au cœur de l'action, il téléphone au journal pour dicter ses premières impressions, quand une femme se jette sur lui pour lui arracher son portable.

Le malheureux avait commis une faute : il était sorti de l'espace réservé aux journalistes. Au-delà de cette limite, ceux-ci devaient être escortés, "du buffet à la salle de danse et même aux toilettes". Il raconte qu'une personne avec laquelle il parlait s'est figée quand elle a vu qu'il était "accompagné". On ne sait pas si Jeff Gannon, qui a fait de la publicité pour un site d'escort boys, était au bal "accompagné".

Um.

Apparently the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) is anti-war and pro-gay marriage. Well, that works for me. Except that this is according to an ad being run by USA Next, the people who brought you the Swift Boat Veterans.

You can click the link to see the ad. It's just bizarre beyond description.

My favourite song of the moment

The Art Teacher by Rufus Wainwright (it's just him singing with a very simple piano melody)

There I was in uniform
Looking at the art teacher
I was just a girl then
Never have I loved since then

He was not that much older than I was
He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum
He asked us what our favorite work of art was,
But never could I tell it was him
Oh, I wish I could tell him --
Oh, I wish I could have told him

I looked at the Rubens and Rembrandts
I liked the John Singer Sargents
He told me he liked Turner
Never have I turned since then
No, never have I turned to any other man

All this having been said,
I married an executive company head
All this having been done, a Turner - I own one
Here I am in this uniformish, pant-suit sort of thing,
Thinking of the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
No, never have I loved any other man

Um. Yeah.

So, I came across a conservative Café Press store today. Most of it was horribly offensive and all, but not necessarily anything worse than the sort of thing that that you'd find at a liberal Café Press store. However, there was one that really really really bothered me. I thought about sending it to my roommate, but I think it might give her an anyeurism. So I'm posting it here instead. (My roommate studies plant biology and is a vegan, just for context. Hell, it just about gave me an anyeurism.)



PS Remember that 22 April is Earth Day.

Ah, Rufus

Guardian interview with our dear Rufus Wainwright. He comes across as very self-aware, perhaps to the point of delusions of grandeur. Yet, I'm listening to him right now and, well, they can't be very big delusions.

A thought on Gannongate

Has no one else made the connection between Jeff GANNON and the well-known, all-around evil guy GANON from the Legend of Zelda video games?!

As a *ahem* well-resepcted *cough, cough* media outlet in the US proudly proclaims: We report. You decide.

= ?

Quote of the day

'The campaign came, and in American public life, I mean – whether it be foreign policy, or domestic policy, often, you kind of shut down when the campaign comes.' George W. Bush, interview with ITAR-TASS, 18/02/05

As Think Progress asks, 'So...who was running the country?'

(Also, for the record, ITAR-TASS is a Russian news agency.)

In other news...

I think my favourite part of the morning is how Sudra will jump onto my bed when my alarm goes off and sit by my head. I usually hit the snooze button a few times and if I hold up the blankets, she will often crawl under the blankets with me. Eventually, though, after my alarm goes off a few more times, she'll just sit by my head. She knows that I'll feed her when I get up. If I snooze too long, sometimes she'll start poking me. Once, she very gently placed a claw on my left eyelid. That got the message across.

What I really like, though, are the mornings that she's sitting next to my head and, when my alarm goes off, she launches herself over my head and off the bed.

I miss seeing this on the news every year. Thank you, BBC...

...for reminding me of the horrible consumerism of the Filene's Basement Bridal Event.

I hope the link works, it should bring you to a RealVideo clip of the craziness: thousands of women running into Filene's Basement in Boston and grabbing handfulls of designer wedding dresses before anyone else can get to them: size matters not. They're all marked down to super cheap and a lot of them are from top designers. You just have to pray that you can grab as many as you can and that you'll find one that fits you. Consumerism at its, um, best?

The origin of the word 'enthusiasm'

Just thought I'd share this, from Wikipedia:

Enthusiasm (from Gr. enthousiasmos possession by a god) originally means inspiration by a divine afflatus or by the presence of a god.

Best BBC headline....EVER!

'Sex hungry roaches lured to death'

NY Times Op-ed on Gannon

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

'Iran, Syra "form common front"'

Just what I've always wanted. A nuclear war. Really, you guys shouldn't have.

Gay prostitutes in the White House

No, really!

This is probably a bit out of the blue for all of you, but this is a story that has been developing over the past couple of weeks in the blogosphere. The mainstream press is starting to sit up and take notice of it. The basic outline is that it came to light that one of the reporters in the White House press corps who always seemed to be asking really easy questions--and helping the Press Secretary or the President get out of sticky situations--might not have been who he said he was. Questions started being asked when it was noticed that his news articles were almost word-for-word copies of internal Republican documents. With a minimal amount of investigation, it turned out that Jeff Gannon was not in fact who he said he was. But in fact someone else. That he had been allowed to use a fake name--something that no one else is allowed to do--to gain access to the White House on a seemingly daily basis.

Oh, and the cherry on top is that there is mounting evidence that he is/was a male escort.

So in the end, why does this matter? Why does it matter that Jeff Gannon may have been a gay hooker named James Guckert with a $20,000 defaulted court judgment against him? So he somehow got a job lobbing softball questions to the White House. Big deal. If he was already a prostitute, why not be one in the White House briefing room as well?

This is the Conservative Republican Bush White House we're talking about. It's looking increasingly like they made a decision to allow a hooker to ask the President of the United States questions. They made a decision to give a man with an alias and no journalistic experience access to the West Wing of the White House on a 'daily basis.' They reportedly made a decision to give him - one of only six - access to documents, or information in those documents, that exposed a clandestine CIA operative. Say what you will about Monika Lewinsky - a tasteless episode, 'inappropriate,' whatever. Monika wasn't a gay prostitute running around the West Wing. What kind of leadership would let prostitutes roam the halls of the West Wing? What kind of war-time leadership can't find the same information that took bloggers only days to find?

None of this is by accident.

Someone had to make a decision to let all this happen. Who? Someone committed a crime in exposing Valerie Plame and now it appears a gay hooker may be right in the middle of all of it? Who?

Ultimately, it is the hypocrisy that is such a challenge to grasp in this story. This is the same White House that ran for office on a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. While they are surrounded by gay hookers? While they use a gay hooker to write articles for their gay hating political base? While they use a gay hooker to destroy a political enemy? Not to mention the hypocrisy of a 'reporter' who chooses to publish article after article defending the ant-gay religious-right point of view on gay civil rights issue.

Who in the White House is at the center of all of this? Who allowed this to go on in the People's House? Who committed the crime of exposing Valerie Plame? Jeff Gannon has the answers to these questions, and boy we know he loves to talk.

ps The link is not exactly work-safe as it contains images of Jeffy in the buff (even if his not-so-little soldier has been cut out). You may, however, certainly enjoy them in the privacy of your own home.

It's good to know that Janet Reno is keeping busy these days...

...at the Grammy's! (wtf?)



ps Note the lovely halo effect. 'Nearer my god to thee... (certainly nearer than Alberto Gonzales).'

Damn that history...

Each day, the United States must borrow billions of dollars from abroad to finance its enormous budget and trade deficits. Without a steady stream of huge loans, the country would face rising interest rates, higher inflation, a dropping dollar and slower economic growth. The lenders want to see less of a gap between what the government collects in taxes and what it spends, because a lower budget deficit always eases a trade deficit. A lower trade deficit also implies a stronger dollar. And a stronger dollar would reassure foreign investors that dollar-based assets remain their best choice.

I've been reading a fair bit of nineteenth-century Latin American history over the weekend, getting ready for a midterm tomorrow. This quote might well have been taken from one of the articles that I've read. A government reliant on foreign investment and foreign loans simply to function day-to-day. The only difference, perhaps, is that the current United States government doesn't face a well-armed populace headed by strongmen waiting for the central government to misstep to pull of a coup in their favour.

Ambassador Cellucci: Canada's tsunami response too slow

To US Ambassador, and former Massachusetts governor, Paul Cellucci, with all due respect, Sir:

Fuck you.

Bill Would Place Homeland Security Above All Law

The provision in the REAL ID Act would expand this waiver beyond environmental law to include all laws. It would thus place the D[epartment of] H[omeland] S[ecurity] Secretary above all federal laws, environmental or otherwise...

Well, democracy was nice while it lasted.

Um. Yeah.

Bad procrastination

You know it's bad when I start clicking around the White House website to procrastinate. Oddly enough, I've discovered that the Office of National AIDS Policy seems not to exist anymore: http://www.whitehouse.gov/onap/

Personality quiz

Wackiness: 46/100
Rationality: 44/100
Constructiveness: 76/100
Leadership: 52/100

You are a SECF--Sober Emotional Constructive Follower. This makes you a Hippie.

You are passionate about your causes and steadfast in your commitments. Once you've made up your mind, no one can convince you otherwise. Your politics are left-leaning, and your lifestyle choices decidedly temperate and chaste.

You do tremendous work when focused, but usually you operate somewhat distracted. You blow hot and cold, and while you normally endeavor on the side of goodness and truth, you have a massive mean streak which is not to be taken lightly. You don't get mad, you get even.

Please don't get even with this web site.

Of the 91978 people who have taken this quiz since tracking began (8/17/2004), 10.4 % are this type.

I didn't need a quiz to tell me this. Check out the link.

And in other news...

My mother just phoned to ask if I planned to watch the Super Bowl tonight. Apparently she hasn't been paying attention for the last decade.

Also, my little brother has begun to use the term 'washroom' instead of 'bathroom'. Score one for the subversive Canadian brainwashing.

Anyone from Boston remember that annoying commercial with the 'Faaaaantastic!' guy selling furniture or cars?

In Omaha on Friday, a divorced single mother named Mary Mornin tells the president, 'I have one child, Robbie, who is mentally challenged, and I have two daughters.'


'Fantastic,' the president exclaims, and he tells her she has 'the hardest job in America, being a single mom.'


Later, the 57-year old Mornin tells Bush that she works three jobs, which the president deems 'uniquely American' and 'fantastic.' He asks her if she gets any sleep.

Aside from the obvious here, I want to know why there isn't more being written about the fact that all of Bush's public appearances are now carefully scripted and ticketed. Only supporters can get tickets. 42 people in Fargo, ND, were blacklisted and refused tickets to Bush's appearance there last week. Coincidentally, they were all members of Democracy for America, the spin-off organisation from Howard Dean's presidential bid.

I (heart) American democracy.

Huzzah

Tens of thousands of gay and lesbian couples who live in New York City are one step closer to walking down the aisle—with a marriage license in their hands.

Today, a New York trial judge handed down an unprecedented ruling that says the state must grant gay and lesbian couples the right to marriage. The court's decision, stemming from a case filed by Lambda Legal, a national LGBT civil rights organization, on behalf of five plaintiff couples, says that the state's constitution guarantees gay men and lesbians the same basic freedoms available to straight couples.

There will be an appeal, of course, but if the higher court stays the decision, then same-sex marriage will be legal in the Empire State.

Slowly but surely...

What will we tell the children?

And Laura, for that matter?

I think we need to start a letter-writing campaign against this kind of sordid behaviour in public. I mean, innocent children could see this and be scarred for life!

This is amazing

Gmail.

I seem to have FIFTY Gmail invitations now. So, um, if you or anyone you love/hate want a gmail account, by all means let me know.

Oh, look, it's working...

Over a third of American high school students believe that the First Amendment goes 'too far' in protecting freedom of speech, press, worship and assembly. Only half believed that newspapers should be allowed to publish stories that were not approved by the government. 83% of students believed that people should not be allowed to express unpopular views. Half believed that the government had the right to censor the internet. Two-thirds believed that it was illegal to burn the flag.

I'm going to go find a corner to cry in now.

What the fuck?

It seems that everyone I went to high school with now listens to country music.

I was ostracised because I listened to country music in high school (there were other reasons, too, but that's beside the point).

It's amazing what you can find out via friendster.

Gawd

We always knew that Americans had no fashion sense, but for chrissake! Doesn't this man have handlers?

(click the link)

Prospectus

*begin dorkiness* I just printed a paper prospectus that I had to write up for today. And, damn, it just looks so professional. As if I were a professor handing out a syllabus or something. *end dorkiness*

Please, continue with your lives. I just felt the need to share that moment of dorkiness.

Start shopping.

You have until 2 June 2005 to buy my graduation gift. It's a Thursday.

Hum-drum

That's about all that's going on right now. Nothing too exciting. School is the usual. Work is the usual and getting worse always.

But the boy comes back tomorrow--finally--after five weeks away. We all know what that means: I get to cook for him again...among other things. (Comments from the peanut gallery are welcome on that one.)

Bush approval at 44%

Can a president make radical, expensive, and unpopular reforms in domestic and foreign policy while sporting the lowest approval numbers of any incumbent president since the advent of polling?

Apparently this 44% is up one point from yesterday.

American Democracy at its finest

Since Bush is all about exporting freedom and liberty now, I wonder if this is the kind he wants to export:



More links to pics here: http://tbogg.blogspot.com/2005/01/i-guess-it-depends-on-which-side-of.html

One down, 1460 to go.

On the first day of Bush's second term, an attack was launched against SpongeBob's presence in a video remake of the Sister Sledge classic 'We Are Family'. The video, which also features characters from Sesame Street and the Muppet Show and Bob the Builder, was put together to promote ideals of unity and co-operation. Focus on the Family, however, is claiming that SpongBob is gay (apparently he regularly holds hands with his friend Patrick) and thus his presence makes the video a 'vehicle for pro-gay propaganda.'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4190699.stm

Also in the news yesterday, the president of the Florida Senate has characterised the Florida Marlins baseball team as 'terrorists'. Apparently the Marlins have been threatening to move to Las Vegas unless they get money for a new stadium to be built in Florida. 'I thought that we already appropriated money to help them move to Vegas,' Tom Lee, President of the Florida Senate said. 'I was very disappointed that they publicly announced the negotiations and discussions with Las Vegas, and I don't negotiate with terrorists.'

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1970948

The US very quietly--amidst the pomp and circumstance, it's easy to miss a little thing like this--said that it would begin immediately pulling its troops from tsunami relief, handing over their responsibilities to civilian organisations. No word, though, on whether any US civilian organisations will be sent to help the area.

http://www.keralanext.com/news/indexread.asp?id=97036

John Kerry was booed when he stepped on to the dais to attend the inauguration.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24863-2005Jan20.html?nav=rss_politics

Colin figured he should take a little souvenir with him:



And, finally, Jenna (I think that's Jenna), shows off the dental work to the world:



(photos from La Repubblica)

Coronation Day

Outgoing Deputy Secretary of State, Richard Armitage, in an interview with The Australian discussed his regrets about Bush's first term. He had three, the first two that Iraq and the general Middle East situation is not better. His third, and largest, was connected with 9-11.

The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot.

My question is if this will get any play in the US media. My guess is, um...no. Ah well.

(Although my favourite out-going statement from Bush's first term cabinet was the Secretary of Health and Human Services--whose name escapes me at the moment, Tommy Thompson?--said that he was surprised that the terrorists hadn't tried to attack our food and water supplies, since it would be so easy to do.)

The Coronation is coming up soon. Bush will be sworn in before noon, when his first term is set to expire. I hope that the protests go smoothly. I imagine, given the crowd control measures that I've been reading about, there won't be many people throwing things at the limos this year. Alas. I hope that the turn your back on Bush protests go well. Simple, yet effective.

Wouldn't it be great if Bush pulled a William Henry Harrison? By insisting to deliver a horridly long speech in the cold and bad weather and then dying of pneumonia a month later? Of course, then Uncle Dick would be President, and Condoleeza would be VP. At least we'd get a woman VP. And a black woman at that. It's something, right?

Anyway. I digress.

As I said last night, he may be having a big party, but he's still not my president.

The Guardian: 'World fears new Bush era'

The headline says it all. Click through and read the article.

What kind of professor...

...would discourage a student from taking on more challenging work, to better help him to gain knowledge?

The book assigned for my post-colonial Latin American history class sucks. A lot. It reads like almost like a high school text book. It just has far fewer pictures. It could probably easily be turned into a high school text book with a bunch of pictures, maps, graphs and end-of-chapter questions. Needless to say, I wasn't exactly impressed with it. So I went to see my Latin American history prof from last semester to see if he could recommend a better one. He loaned me one that is much better. I figured, though, just for the sake of maybe trying to get to know this semester's prof--who strikes me as less than great, especially compared to last semester's prof--that I would ask him how important he felt it was to read the book that he had assigned as opposed to a different one. I told him that I found the one that he assigned rather simplistic and a bit too concise. He didn't really like the idea of my not reading it though. He suggested that I could supplement it if I wanted to, but that I shouldn't really not read it at all.

Now, if I were a professor I wouldn't have assigned such a horrid book to begin with, at least not for a 300-level class. I would expect rather more from my students. Secondly, if a student came to me to ask if he could read a larger, more challenging and more advanced book I would probably make an effort to accommodate him. Sure, he might miss out on some of the themes that I was planning to mirror in lectures from the assigned book, but I'd probably encourage him to strike out on his own, so long as it was clear that he was a serious student. I got none of that from this prof.

I still plan to read the better book. But I'm just frustrated.

Um. I don't...I don't get it...

This is what the department of Homeland Security gets paid to do? Apparently making sure that some nice-sounding woman who owns a toy store in Oregon doesn't sell a 'Magic Cube' that potentially infringes on the expired patent of 'Rubik's Cube' is much more important than, oh, I don't know, ensuring the security of the 'homeland'.

Click the link.

Head --> Desk. Repeat as necessary.

So, not only is Bush's claim that social security in imminent danger of going bankrupt complete bunk (this we knew already), but the union that represents the large majority of social security administration employees is opposed to his plan of bringing in private accounts. BUT, the social security administration is being forced to use its own money to issue statements in favour of Bush's plan. Despite the fact that they don't believe it will work.

WHY DO WE LIVE IN BIZARRO WORLD!?

CNN on 'Eraq'

I'm glad that CNN feels it okay to run light-hearted commercials about what's going on in Iraq. Click the link and choose the commercial in the middle called 'Eraq' with Christiane Amanpour, in which she tires to explain to someone that she's telling the news to that it's pronounced 'E-raq' not 'I-raq', just like 'E-ran' not 'I-ran'.

Admittedly, it's a cute commercial, and most Americans DO mispronounce it, including the Shrub himself.

But that's not really the point, is it?

Mississippi libraries ban 'Daily Show' book

GULFPORT, Mississippi (AP) -- Library officials in two southern Mississippi counties have banned Jon Stewart's best-selling 'America (The Book)' over the satirical textbook's nude depictions of the nine U.S. Supreme Court justices.

'I've been a librarian for 40 years and this is the only book I've objected to so strongly that I wouldn't allow it to circulate,' said Robert Willits, director of the Jackson-George Regional Library System of eight libraries in Jackson and George counties.

'We're not an adult bookstore. Our entire collection is open to the entire public,' Willits said. 'If they had published the book without that one picture, that one page, we'd have the book.'

Wal-Mart has declined to stock the book because of the page, which features the faces of the nine Supreme Court justices superimposed over naked bodies.

The facing page has cutouts of the justices' robes, complete with a caption asking readers to 'restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her respective robe.'

The book by Stewart and the writers of 'The Daily Show,' the Comedy Central fake-news program he hosts, was released in September. It has spent 15 weeks on The New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction, and was named Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly, the industry trade magazine.

Former English teacher Tara Skelton of Ocean Springs said the libraries shouldn't decide what is in poor taste.

'It just really seemed kind of silly to me,' she said. 'I don't think the Supreme Court justices have filed any defamation of character or libel suits. It's humor.'

God bless America. I mean, if there are people who ban Harry Potter, I shouldn't be surprised by this.

Blah

There are six of us at work today. Six. Slight over-kill. I plan to sit in the office all day and do little. This is the first Saturday in over two years that I've worked. And I'm not happy about it.

A morning thought.

Why do sardines have such a bad rep?

Another game.

cnn
Originally uploaded by unspeakable_grooviness.

...but maybe I'm just being cynical. The first image, below, was taken from the same CNN front page just now.

Game time.

Colin Powell touring Aceh Province in Indonesia.

Can we play 'What's wrong with this picture?' in the comments, please?

One of the reasons I hate my job.

Apparently, at work, we are all three years old.

An email sent out today:

Hello,

The schedule for the second week of the rush is out.

Please check your schedule and bring to my attention asap any necessary changes.

Please clock in and out on time, meaning the exact time scheduled not an hour before or an hour later ( because you could not come on time or because you had other things to do) than the time scheduled.

I keep repeating the same thing over and over and every time I try to word it differently maybe the message will be clear to you guys.

If you are not on the schedule on a particular day, you cannot work that day.

Please check that you clocked in and out. It is your responsibility every time you work you check your hours.

If you are accurate in the clocking in and out you will avoid a lot of headaches for yourself.

If you want more hours please check with me or check the schedule I see many swaps available.

I will mention it again, if you cannot fin someone to swap with you are responsible for your shift.

In the near future I will bb sending out a memo with new rules re the shifts and working at the bookstore.

Guardian: 'US plans permanent Guantanamo jails'

The United States is preparing to hold terrorism suspects indefinitely without trial, replacing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp with permanent prisons in the Cuban enclave and elsewhere, it was reported yesterday.

The new prisons are intended for captives the Pentagon and the CIA suspect of terrorist links but do not wish to set free or put on trial for lack of hard evidence.

The plans have emerged at a time when the US is under increasing scrutiny for the interrogation methods used on the roughly 550 'enemy combatants' at the Guantanamo Bay base, who do not have the same rights as traditional prisoners of war.

A leaked Red Cross report described the techniques used as 'tantamount to torture'.

Over the weekend the New York Times quoted a former interrogator as saying one in six detainees were subject to harsh techniques including sleep deprivation, exposure to constant loud music or adver tising jingles, and being shackled for long periods to a low chair.

No comment...but if anyone knows any isolated islands for sale cheap I might be interested.

Thoughts on the new year

2005.

It's a nice round number. We always seem to have an affinity for the round numbers. Five years (four if you want to be technical) into the new millennium, I'm happy that humanity hasn't managed to destroy itself yet. Not that we haven't tried. I watched Les Invasions Barbares yesterday. There's a conversation between Rémy, who is dying, and a nun who works in the hospital. He blows apart the notion that the 20th century was perhaps the bloodiest century on record, even if 135 million were killed in wars, gulags, camps, etc:

In the 16th century, the Spanish and the Portuguese managed, without gas chambers or bombs, to slaughter 150 million Indians in Latin America. With axes! That's a lot of work, Sister. Even if they had Church support, it was an achievement. So much so that the Dutch, English, French and later Americans followed their lead and butchered another 50 million in North America. 200 million dead in all! The greatest massacre in history took place right here, all around us. And not the tiniest holocaust museum. The history of mankind is a history of horrors!

And yet it continues.

There's a comic that I read called 'The Joy of Tech' which is usually technology-based. Sometimes, the cartoonist, though, will use space aliens to poke fun at things. Ah, the ability of outside observers to pin-point the problem exactly and to be able to say just what needs to be said. This week, the first space alien says, 'So, explain this to me again?' And the second, 'They spend most of their time fighting and creating disasters, yet when there's a natural disaster, they help each other.' The caption to the comic reads, 'So are we halfway evolved or halfway extinct?'

Those of you who read on a regular basis know that I was a bit bipolar in 2004--between despair and hope for humanity. I think I'm just about in the middle at the moment. The earthquake/tsunami has both given me hope that the world might come together around the common need of fellow humans, while at the same time I've been utterly disgusted by the US's response--the nation that paints itself as leading the world as a shining beacon of hope and freedom had to be cajoled into giving more than a miserly contribution to helping to save the lives of survivors. Bush never called off his vacation in Texas. He spent most of the week clearing brush and riding his bike and spending time with his family. How nice. Meanwhile, the German Chancellor cut his holiday short and returned to Berlin and President Clinton gave an interview to the BBC in which he gave the first real American response to the disaster.

Personally, 2005 will be a big year for me. I'll know in a few months if I'll be heading to grad school in September. If not, who know where I'll be a year from now? I certainly don't. But, I've decided to take it as it comes. The hopes, dreams and aspirations are all there. I know that wherever I end up, I'll make the best of it. We shall see when we see. Que sera sera.

Every year I resolve to floss more. I've resolved that again this year. Maybe I'll actually do it this year. In fact, I've made it a point to put floss on my desk, right next to my computer, in the hopes that this will remind me to do it. My other resolution is one that I know I will keep: become a better cook. Today is the first time since I started making bread a few months ago that I did it all more or less by eye--and accurately. I used just enough flour and didn't have to add any more for the amount of water I had. The sweet sense of simple accomplishment.

As I was listening to music while eating breakfast this morning (while making the bread, in fact), I was inspired to another resolution based on a Mary Chapin Carpenter song called 'The Long Way Home'. It's a song about seemingly successful people getting where they thought they wanted to go and then realising that there was something missing in their lives. The last verse, though, offers an alternative:

Accidents and inspiration lead you to your destination
Or you could be the one who takes the long way home
Roll down your window, turn off your phone
See your life as a gift from the great unknown
And your task is to receive it
Tell your kid a story, hold your lover tight
Make a joyful noise, swim naked at night
Read a poem a day, call in well sometimes and
Laugh when they believe it

Funny now how it all goes by so fast
One day I'm looking over my shoulder at the past
Now everybody's got to go, got to be, got to get somewhere
Baby don't forget about
You really shouldn't forget about
Baby don't forget what got you there

I was voted 'Most Likely to Succeed' by my high school class, along with the girl who was our valedictorian. I've always felt very strange about that. What kind of success are we talking about here? Fabulous wealth and celebrity? Okay. None of us would mind that. But what about more simple success? What about just being happy where we are in the world? The past years in Montréal have been the first time that I've been able to say that I was truly happy with where I was in the world.

My one personal wish for 2005 is that I'll be able to say the same a year from now, wherever I might be as 2006 begins.