I keep meaning to write a post, but I get distracted before I reach the point where writing crosses the line from niggling desire and on to full-fledged, purposive need. Plus, I’ve been very busy. I’ve attempted to fill the newly formed hole in my schedule (due to no longer having to read or care about election coverage) with a loamy blend of Civilization IV, a slightly heavier workload and the occasional hour or so dedicated to Infinite Jest. I bought Civilization IV last Christmas as my present to myself, and I’ve picked it up again lately. I finally beat it on the third difficulty level (and this was no mean feat–I had several failed attempts, trying different tactics before I ultimately settled on a winnable one) while playing as the Americans (whose leader I christened Obama, because, well, I am a huge nerd). I have a new game playing as the French on whatever the fifth highest level is. I expect to be lose horribly.

Otherwise, school is going well enough. I have reaffirmed my complete disdain for undergraduate advisers, who are at best clueless as to your actual abilities and at worst (I imagine) actively trying to sabotage every schedule I carefully form.  Russian History is warming up a bit, as the Riurikii pass into history and the Romanovs take on the mantle of the Third Rome. I’m interested in the book I have to read for this section, about Peter the Great. A quick perusal revealed that the first chapter was subtitled “A Tsar is Born,” which I find to be a delightfully bad pun. I’m really disappointed I can’t take another Political Science class this semester. 101, for all it’s quaintness, has given me a taste of what the field is actually about and piqued my interest. There is a part of me that feels a little off-put by the idea that, say, Obama’s victory had been predicted with frightening exactitude, based on some model or another, back in July. I have my English major’s desire for the narrative, still, it seems.

Leila and I are well, thanks for asking. Her mother is angry at her, but I have hope that Leila can go, once more, unto that breach and fix what ought not need fixing.

I’ve been thinking more about my future. Internships and studying aboard and all that. I’m going to look into them. Maybe not now…probably second semester. I need to do something this summer, instead of squandering it like so much of the last one. Three of my friends are trying their best to convince me to go to Denver, Colorado with them and work and share an apartment and all of that. I’m not really all that interested in it, honestly, but I can’t seem to find the heart to tell them that I don’t really want to. Denver just isn’t a city that I really find very romantic or interesting, for all the hyperbolic praise my friend Nathan slathers upon it. I think it’s more likely that I will stay at school over the summer and do a work-study at the library or possibly some sort of internship. I’m not sure, though…I’m trying to play things slightly less safe (risk is not something I handle well), and I can’t decide if Denver doesn’t appeal to me because of fear or because of honest disinterest.

I have more to say, but I think I’ll end it there for tonight.

<3

Ah well.  Let’s nudge it a little closer to the abyss, just for fun.

Here is the Skinny, Or Else What Is Up:

I am currently obsessed with Civilization IV. I do not say that lightly. I honestly cannot remember the last time I did anything that brought me into that mindless drone phase, where time slips by without notice, and when I realize that it is beginning to get too late to still be doing this, I check the time and decide to keep playing another 15 minutes and then another 15 minutes after that…I’m not very good yet. I’m getting better. I’m playing the Kubilai Khan right now for the technical reason that he is Aggressive/Culture which is the style I’ve settled on for now and for the non-technical reason that I think the Mongols are pretty badass, especially after taking both East Asian History and Early Russian History. There’s something about a relatively tiny group of steppe nomads carving out an immense empire that gives me personal-like hope about my own what you would call life situation.

Politics. Man, fucking politics. If all goes well, Obama will be elected on Tuesday. I’m throwing my vote into the rubbish heap where they keep Democratic votes in this state, and I’m gonna smile as I do it. Adding one more drop of dew to Obama’s popular vote is a slim sort of victory, but damnit I am doing my part. And if he doesn’t win, I will be depressed for a month or more, I think. I’ve followed this election for too long, put too much of my life into the abyss of keeping up with it despite being unable to even volunteer properly for the guy…I yelled at my dad today, over the phone, because of this election. I hung up on him and regretted it and called him back and collapsed into some fragile empty thing. I love my dad. He was my best friend for years and years…and I disagree, disagree with him vehemently, loudly, angrily with his politics, and I can’t find a way to balance that with the guy I’ve loved and respected for years and have now drifted away from…I’ve been an unrepentant dick to a former axquaintance of mine (through facebook) for about six months because he won’t stop the “Obama is a Muslim/Terrorist/Communist” memes. I can’t take any of this anymore, God, please, just let it be over, and let it be over in a way that makes me want to dance and yell things.
My friend Nathan and I are going to watch election coverage for hours and eat pizza and drink soda and agonize over electoral vote. He goes to Doane College now, which is about 40 minutes away. We went to High School together. He’s thinking about transferring to UNL next semester and assuming he follows through with it…I don’t know how to feel about it. It will change my life, and I can’t say whether it or be good or bad or neither. I will have someone who is already my friend at this school, and so my failure to make friends will be mitigated somewhat.  I’d just like to add, Jesus Fucking Christ is there anyone who goes to college anywhere who is cool and does not drink for reasons that do not involve Jesus? I’m so tired of this. I am not exactly Mr. Good ‘n Wholesome, but my parents didn’t drink and it makes me very uncomfortable to be around drinking, drunkenness and “parties.” I’m not going to make judgments of people based on that alone (I’ve made at least one friend (I think) this semester who drinks), but it obviously makes the prospect of doing anything outside of an academic setting somewhat problematic.

Oh, and I have these two independent study courses that are sucking my will to live. I’ve been studying for the East Asian History Midterm for at least two hours for about a week now…I have two tests this week, both on Thursday, and Tuesday is going to be eaten by the Election. Taking that fucking Midterm next Saturday. I wil swallow whatever I get on it. Whatever. I’m tired of it.

Also, Infinite Jest is awesome, and it makes me want to be a writer. Maybe when the election dies and I’ve burned out on Civ 4, then I will do it. Just keep telling yourself that, me.

[sic]

It was the moon-cub’s job to pick the fist-melons, which were a pale green-yellow. The old man would say ‘Simeon, it is time for you to pick the melons.’ He would say these words through his wooly beard every day—every day that the moon-cub could remember. The moon-cub had lived for many days in the ramshackle hut, in the dry dust valley, under the unblinking eye above. Simeon would grab the basket, woven from strips of the maize plants, and he would carry the basket as his brown feet walked through the earth of the valley. The moon-cub would walk among shadow-filled rocks and stately cacti and hunt for the melons, the melons which grew in the valley, grew on the ends of the thin, knotted vines.

Simeon, the moon-cub, would spot the first melon as the eye licked hot waves across his shoulders, and his eyes would glint with familiar desire. He would seize the melon, and he would sink his fingers through the crusty rind, revealing the watery meat inside. The first melon would be devoured with gleeful greed, the sour juice rolling down his throat, smearing into his cheeks. It had always been so.

Today the old man did not tell the moon-cub to pick the melons. Today the old man was dying. Instead the old man said, ‘Simeon, you must leave the valley. You must go to the city of Samarkand—in the east—and find my brothers. They will protect you.’

“

It is two in the morning, and I cannot sleep because I have caffeine and restlessness and solipsism in his blood. This is me trying to write, trying to make a story. My sole inspiration for writing is the occasional lonely, disconnected fugue which will strike on the off days, on the days where I am staring out into the world through the keyholes in my skin. It will settle on me, and my brain will slip away, cell by conscious cell, like grains of sand through an hourglass, and they, the cells, will settled in the place between my shoulders, and words which mean nothing and say nothing but are a mood, to me, a state of being which compels me to take notice, and I write to distill it, to capture it and preserve it. And so a few meager paragraphs are distilled, decanted, bottled, and I will struggle to maintain the mood and falter and quit and days later try again and write more and realize that the new writing is not the good, bottled, pleasing stuff that made me want to write in the first place. And so (what is this in Latin, I would like to know, et something or other), another project is given up in disgust.

And yes, I know, this probably does not even constitute good writing to anyone but myself. These short paragraphs that are quaint and unimpressive and mostly drivel, but damnit it is the drivel that some part of me is compelled to commit to perpetuity.

See also:

this post.

I’m going to regret putting this up in the morning, it’s so…8th grade angst, you know. It’s been a bad week. For the both of us. I would much rather be curled up in bed with the girl that I love with all of my soft heart right now, but as that option has been denied to me for reasons that are my fault and reasons which are not quite my fault, I give you this post.

I’m a terrible blogger.

Handsome candidate talks to elderly farmer about pipesmoking subsidies.

His name is Scott Kleeb (pronounced Kleb, something that is really annoying  to explain to the hordes of people who don’t recognize his name). He was voted handsomest dude at Yale a few years back, then he transferred to Colorado University to get his masters in, like, History of Agriculture or something. Finding out shortly thereafter that, shockingly, there isn’t much of a demand for that sort of thing, he spent some time in Nebraska working as a farmhand. In 2006, he ran for Representative in the 3rd District (pretty much all of the state except for Lincoln and Omaha) against this guy:

Adrian Smith, loyal Bushie, congratulates himself for succeeding despite the handicaps of being both stupid and sheeplike.

Anyway, he lost because he’s Democrat, but I kinda liked the guy. Now he’s running against Mike Johanns, who was a former Nebraska Governor before he became former Secretary of Agriculture for the Bush Administration. I’m done with the pictures now, promise. Now, Kleeb is still likely to lose and lose quite handily, but the Obama campaign doesn’t have an office in Lincoln (don’t blame them) and driving to Omaha seemed profoundly stupid. Therefore, I decided to give my time to Kleeb.

After a bit of feet dragging on my part, I finally got around to walking down the office last Saturday because it seemed slightly more fun than sitting around my dorm room bored as hell. Anyway, I got there, talked to the guy in charge(he can’t be older than 25), got a brief initiation into the art of canvassing, and headed out into the strangely muggy mid-afternoon to knock doors. The first person I talked to was some old lady living alone in a rundown apartment and I was so nervous I didn’t realize I was talking to the right person and ended up apologizing profusely and leaving before I looked at my “swing voters in this neighborhood list” and realized I had been looking at the wrong name. I got somewhat better as I moved onward (I swear!), but as the time dragged on, a profound revelation that hit me: canvassing is a terrible, terrible job. Especially when you’re sweating like a pig and no one really wants to talk you and you get those people who get up from watching television to answer the door and tell you that they’re too busy to talk right now, sorry.  Well, at least no one got really mad at me or anything. I can say that I want to strangle whoever kept putting 70+ Republicans on the list was supposed to be likely voters…ugh, that’s the worst. You have to yell/repeat yourself at least three times, and then they either are too doddering to understand and just refuse to answer anything or they get this sort of offended, huffy air about them because you’re there for the Democrat and tell you they don’t want to talk to you.

The other annoying thing about volunteering for Kleeb (at least on the canvassing side) is that you’re initially given a map along with your list of names/addresses–unfortunately, this map consistently corresponds to the addresses listed in the manner that darts thrown by a drunk correspond to a dartboard. This is particularly frustrating when you’re not really familiar with the layout of the deeply residential neighborhoods within Lincoln. The first day of canvassing had me wandering somewhat aimlessly trying to sort exactly how the list, map and reality would intersect and then being forced to interact with irritatable housewives whenever one of those intersections dared occur.

I’ve gone canvassing three times now, each for about 2 hours each, and I’ve gotten maybe one person to vote Kleeb. I’ve talked to maybe 6 undecideds who seemed somewhat receptive. And all of those, for some reason, were yesterday. So that was a little bit of a pickmeup, but it happened to occur just as I had enough hours to where I’m not obligated to do it anymore. I haven’t completely ruled it out yet, but it’s hard not to feel like you’re wasting your time…Nebraska doesn’t elect Democrats very often, and when they do they’re old guys with curmudgeonly faces (see Ben Nelson) who barely qualify as Democrats at all. Ian the Second-in-Command says their internal polls have them down by 9 (although I don’t know how recent that poll is), but I sadly don’t see that as being a surmountable deficit in support. Maybe I’m just too pessimistic, but come on, really, this state is one the last strongholds of McCain-Palin support. I can’t blame Kleeb for trying, but I have a hard time feeling like his efforts wouldn’t be better spent carpetbagging elsewhere.

Okay, so that’s enough of that. I needed to write down some recollections about the whole experience so I don’t forget everything before I feel compelled to write the paper about it.

QOTW: What the hell is up with John McCain’s tongue?!

I’ll start off with last night’s debate: at the risk of sounding cliche, I think it was the best of the three debates so far — or, at least, the most entertaining to watch. Both candidates did indeed have their shit together to an acceptable degree, although the mudslinging from McCain’s end started to reach a ridiculous degree as false and/or exaggerated accusations about Joe the Plumber’s taxes, associations with Ayers and ACORN, and Obama’s healthcare plan all began to pile on top of one another. I’ve been spending more time than I should over at Twitter’s election portal¹ attempting to get a sense of the vox populi, and one of the first post-debate tweets was from a Republican, asserting that McCain had won because Obama was on the defensive the entire time.

And I was like…what? If the way to win a debate is to constantly attack your opponent, forcing him to clean up any falsehoods people might believe in wake of what’s been said, then Obama went about the entire affair pretty badly. Much of the time, it felt as though McCain was pointing out why Obama is wrong without further progressing into why he himself is right. While I didn’t agree with everything Obama said last night (there are certain problems money can’t solve [*cough* education], and I’m still not feeling the balanced budget), he made a better impression than McCain and certainly had his shit together — and 2/3 of independent voters seem to be agreeing with me.

One of the more interesting questions last night dealt with why the candidate’s vice president was better than the other guy’s, and I think a lot of us can agree that if there ever was a vice presidential candidate who does not have their shit together, it’s Sarah Palin. McCain claimed that he picked her because she’s a reformer (maverick! ohemgee), but dear god…are we all really expected to buy that line of bullshit?

No, Palin was obviously picked energize a campaign descending into senility, and to excite the pants of conservative pundits everywhere. No, really — where Obama alienates middle America (otherwise known as “white voters”) with his eliteness and big words and ties to terrorists, Palin is able to seduce them with her hockey mom shtick coupled with leavin’ the g’s off her verbs. So what if she can’t string a coherent sentence together, name a Supreme Court case she disagrees with, or come up with a news source she regularly consults? That’s just the liberal media doin’ their gotcha journalism, and it brings her closer to Earth than Obama or Biden will ever be.

…And that’s what’s most disturbing of all. The fact that people are fine with, and even more willing to, vote for a candidate they feel a more personal connection with rather than the one who’s more fit to run the country. It’s a concern that Seth and I have puzzled over many times: why would you want the average Joe running the country? Surely one would want somebody who understood their everyday problems, that’s understandable, but this “elitist” crap that Palin is the pure antithesis of is just ridiculous. I like my politicians to be able to string a coherent sentence together, thank you very much, and I would be really damn worried if somebody with my paltry knowledge of the world were being appointed for any political position.

The McCain campaign’s selection of Palin is, all in all, a brutal illustration of politicians attempting to court the “common people” — and why, sometimes, I don’t blame the stodgy white men of the Enlightenment for advocating benevolent dictatorship over democracy. Democracy is great when you can have faith in your fellow man making an intelligent, informed decision — not necessarily the one you agree with, since you can hope the majority will cover your ass if you happen to make the wrong choice — but modern politics is all a popularity contest (gasp), and it’s…disturbing, yeah. I’m just not comfortable with these people having the right to cast a vote this November, and it troubles me that they exist at all. On the other hand, they’re but a minority of voters, and their hateful words will have no significant effect on who is elected this November…or so I can hope.

¹ Ooh! Ooh! Feel free to follow me on Twitter! I’m very boring, but I’m already stalking those of you who turned up on my email search…

So here I am, home for fall break, flipping through a hard copy of the paper, when I happened to chance upon a certain letter to the editor that…made me blink twice and furrow my brow. It was pretty short, but the reason it caught my eye in the first place was because it mentioned an “18-year-old” commenting on the candidates’ styles of speech — oho, I had done that relatively recently in a public arena! The rest of her letter was a mild rant against both liberals and the lack of attention that people were paying to *actual issues*, implying that if certain people spent less time complaining about candidates who say “doggone it!” during debates and listened to the substance (ahahaha…what?) of what they were saying instead, maybe their opinion would…have more ground. Or be more in line with hers. Because, you know, of COURSE I’m voting for the most silver-tongued candidate, regardless of whether I support their policies — hey, what policies?! — or not.

And that pissed me off enough to bring me here — not to write a backlash, but to point out something I thought was obvious ages ago: Political debates are not about the issues.

I mean…come on. Wasn’t this demonstrated with the first televised debate in 1960, where people came to two different conclusions depending on whether they saw it on TV or heard it on the radio? And honestly — if there are only two months or less until the election and you don’t know where each candidate (for chrissake, there are only TWO here in America) stands on “the issues,” then please, do us all a favor and get informed ASAP — or, alternatively, don’t vote. There are too many resources out there not to be informed in at least the very basics, yet there are still people who believe that Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim terrorist.

So, in essence, I agree with your basic premise, Ms. Let’s-Get-Back-to-the-Issues. What I disagree with is your assumption that commenting on a candidate’s composure, language, attitude, or whatever else means that I’m not aware of the issues. These debates, in my opinion, are not held for the purpose of clearly informing the American public of each party’s stance on the issues — the American public should have figured those out long ago. These debates are held to show whether or not each candidate has his or her shit together, and to give them the chance to present their best face to a voting public that bases its opinions just as much on fleeting visceral impressions as they do on so-called issues.

I have been called upon to steam frozen crab legs for lunch, but bewarned, this isn’t the end. I welcome any and all arguments, agreements, and/or devil’s advocates. Part II coming soon!

The funniest thing to me is that when I really consider that, it becomes obvious that Infinite Jest itself is ultimately entertainment, nonstuff, that distracts and attempts to fill you and addicts you–you get to the end of the book, and this is a general warning about it, and there is no ending. It doesn’t satisfy you. You spent months reading the tome as it eats away at time that could be spent elsewhere, and the damn thing doesn’t even give you the satisfaction of resolution. On the other hand, maybe it should have taught me to strive harder to fight the addictions in my life that I dismiss as ultimately harmless–soda pop and television and the internet and fucking empty, endless entertainment. I’d been a week without soda pop today, and I broke that because I had a test in Russian History and I wanted to wake up and cram and drink caffeine and sugar so I could concentrate. I didn’t even feel tired or in need of it, really. I just decided I wanted it.

Early on in Infinite Jest, there is a man who cannot resist occasional binges on marijuana, and it makes him feel guilty and ruins his life but he keeps doing it time after time. And I’m thinking, what about all those people, myself included, who do things like watch whole seasons of television shows in one sitting, as if in a haze, and wake up the next morning and wonder where the time went. I mean, I do the same thing in one form or another–chide myself to quit doing things, even substantless things like having my self esteem crash after doing badly on a paper, and I make promises to myself, and maybe it works for a while, but I always sink right back into it. Hell, there is a part of me that is addicted to feeling loved.

Aren’t we all addicted to something? Aren’t so many of us wasting our lives on self-destructing, self-wasting trifles?

And then, the other part of me says that I’m addicted to kiddy stuff, to things that harm little and occasionally enrich and enlighten me. Or at least make life more bearable. Aren’t the addictions the fun part of life? Why shouldn’t I be allowed to have fun?

Then again, when I’m 50 with soda pop diabetes and a soft, gormless mind from the intellectual corrosion and coddling of entertainment, I will probably disagree.

It’s currently 3:30pm and I am sitting in my computer science class feeling rather unengaged while the computer says, “Tick, tock, tick, tock, BOOM” for a demonstration of conditionals in Python. Introduction to Computing is by far the least interesting of my classes; the slowness and simplicity of the course is maddening, but it’s required for computer science majors, and I’m trying to keep my options open. Besides, I like computers. I just don’t like learning things I already know.

I smell feet. The seats in Park 349 are attached to a table with a hinge, and have a tendency to swing outwards, pulling away from the table. There are tiers, or whatever — the lecture hall (miniscule as it is) is sloped — so people hang their feet over the edge of the tier to keep from separating from the flat surface in front of them. Some people are wearing flip-flops (early October has brought wind and a slight chill, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping anyone), and others are probably slipping their shoes off.

Now we’re playing with significant whitespace in Python…amusing. I’d like to have an opinion on that for the sake of debating it. You know who needs to have an opinion? Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, tonight at 9pm EST. The McCain campaign mystifies me, and I don’t know how to view Palin with anything other than dropped-jaw disbelief. Is it so difficult to name a newspaper? Hell, even some media conglomerate? Fox News? She’s practically a parody of herself.

They’re not kidding when they say that Bryn Mawr is a bubble.* On the one hand, it’s an academic enclave that will protect you from the strife and interference of the outside world in your quest to intellectual zen; on the other, what use is academia when it isn’t applied to real-life issues and used, hopefully, to make some sort of dent in the world? Strangely, I feel as though I’m learning the most from my multivariable calculus class, which has no direct application to life and its problems…

But I like college — I love it, even. I love the friends I’ve made and the freedom I have, and although not everything is perfect (a bitchy hallmate here, a late for work there, tiny-ass showers that make it impossible to shave, and this class), I’ve never been happier anywhere else in my life.

It’s 4:00 and class is supposed to end. You’re all wonderful. And I’m still learning.

* In Russian, you simply exclude the word “they” when you aren’t referring to a specific group of people. I’m jealous. And I think I’d like to use footnotes more, even if it’s a crude and [formerly] unconscious emulation in tribute to DFW.