Valamity!

Yesterday was my last day of classes, and I think it’s time to indulge in the old cliche of, “Damn, that went faster than I expected!” I have one-eighth of college almost officially out of the way, sans the three finals I hope to finish before Wednesday next week. Grades don’t come up in polite and proper conversation at Bryn Mawr, and this is further facilitated by the fact that I have no idea where mine are anyway — I know what I got on individual papers and tests, but I have a hard time gauging how much of an effect slipped homeworks and class participation will have on me. Enough to kick my sense of self-worth down significantly, I bet. The first page that comes up on Bryn Mawr’s website when searching for “grades” contains a caveat stating that “[f]irst year students especially may be discouraged by their grades,” which interpret as, “your mom will probably be shocked and irritated by your dismal performance.”

…A lower-that-I-would-like homework grade isn’t going to kick my ass that much, right? I understand the whole “grades don’t matter, it’s what you got out of it” attitude, and I know I’ve gotten something out of my classes, but in the past I was always able to view it in the context of not displeasing certain superiors who are now contributing a significant portion of their income to my higher education. My fears are likely irrational, I know. During Parent’s Weekend, I observed parents who were publicly hounding their daughter’s dean to know exactly where she stood: one even had the audacity to demand whether the dean knew “the difference between 95 and 100.” Um, see, what the hell? As if that difference is going to be shown in her final grade.

But back to more interesting things! This semester, I think I had a very forgiving schedule; on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, my day was done by noon, and I only worked one early breakfast shift (and weekend brunches). Next semester, the earliest I get out of class is 2:30, and I’m taking on four early breakfast shifts, plus another job if I can find one, plus participating in the VITA (Volunteer Tax Income…Assistance?) program once a week. It’s going to be harder, but I want to really feel like I’m doing something other than sitting around on the computer all the time. College is my first opportunity to get out, and given the multitude of ways I can step outside of my comfort zone…well, this is my start. Challenges are good, and this isn’t that much of one. Start small, go big.

And majorless me is contemplating Russian for the future. Bryn Mawr has an amazing Russian program, but it will take five years to take advantage of/achieve the full benefits of it, and…let’s just say that when you meet someone you like a lot when you’re this young, it’s difficult to make decisions without factoring that in. This blog, over the next few years, will probably serve more and more as a chronicle attesting to this fact (as well as a voyeuristic trudge for anybody waiting for us to break up). There have been stranger relationship stories, but this one is still unfolding, and I have a feeling it’s only going to get odder as our lives grow more complicated. You don’t consider how open-ended the future is, and how you may not be able to force your paths to cross, when you’re young and in love. But good god, are we allowed to dream?

In a couple days, Seth and I are going to hit the 2.5 year mark. In a couple weeks, he’s going to be sleeping on my living room couch. More bizarre things have happened…

Everyone else is doing it, and it looks like fun. I’m such a conformist, oh dear. For those not in the know, queue up your music, hit the shuffle, write down lyrics from the first 25, wait to see if there are any guesses. Anyway:

1. Hey Jude, don’t make it bad

2. We should think about, what we got right now

3. I don’t care, I don’t care, leave their corpses in my underwear

4. Sing muse(?) with the passion of the pistol

5. Hold tight, he lives inside of you

6. I saw fire, when I looked in my lover’s eyes

7. All alone, on the floor, next to your twin bed box spring

8. My mama wants to know where I’m spendin’ all my dough

9. Are you angry? Are you searching for your better life to live?

10. Someone told me long ago, there’s a calm before the storm

11.  It’s been eight long years, since you’ve seen the woman who labored

12.  Ain’t had no fun, all the time, jackin’ around

13.  I got a job, makin’ money from the man

14. I think I’m gonna be sad, I think it’s today

15. Look at the photographs on your wall, the faces that you keep

16. It was acceptable in the 80s, it was acceptable at the time

17. When there’s nowhere else to run, is there room for one more sun?

18. I see the bad moon risin’, I see trouble on the way

19. All this talk of blood and iron, is the cause of all my thinking

20. I don’t want but a little reaction, don’t be hanging around my friend

21. Yeah, they raised that horse to be a jumper, he was owned by a Midwest biblethumper

22. I went down to the gas station, for no particular reason

23. This is the best and greatest song in the world

24. What’s the time? It’s time to get ill!

25. I had seven faces, thought I knew which one to wear

I did a lot of skipping around, making allowances for repeats, songs that I thought no one would know, and the occasional song with unintelligible lyrics (I have more than a few like that).

I am currently posting because I am happy the domain is back up after going kaputz for a few harrowing minutes/hours, and it’s as proper a time as any to demonstrate gratitude for uptime I tend to take for granted (despite having, you know, paid for that guarantee and all). The point is, it makes me sad when Valams is down even if I haven’t used it in ages, and it also makes me sad to realize that I’ve been so out of the blogging loop lately. Also, I’m not in the right mindset for writing an abstract for my final “Race for Cyberspace” paper, but I am in the right mood for some lighthearted rambling to a vague and inchoate audience of screens and feedcrawlers. So here I return, kind of.

Our topic today, just for the hell of it, is Google. One of my roommates and I have been unabashedly using Google Chrome as our primary browser since its release, and had an iGoogle-fest just the other day to commemorate iGoogle…not sucking…as much as it used to? I don’t know when exactly they did the makeover (it was within the past couple months, that’s all I recall), but the side tabs + maxmizable widgets = win. My home tab shows my Gmail, Calendar, To-Do List, Reader, Weather, and Docs laid out nicely in little boxes made of virtual ticky-tacky, and I’d like to think that all this pseudo-organization has led to a measurable boost in my productivity. Whether or not this is the case remains to be seen, but the fact still remains that Google Calendar is damn awesome: I can see my schedule interwoven with Seth’s, so I don’t have to pretend that Spanish takes up all the time he isn’t at his computer anymore.

In my head, I was somehow going to segue into my thoughts on Google’s data mining as related to consumer privacy, and talk about how I’m a data whore so even if Google gets to see my stats I don’t mind because they’re sharing all these numbers with me and it makes me hot in my nerdiest of nerdpants, but then I decided that it was still too academic for me to discuss without making a “blah, college seminar!” face in the direction of Professor Nguyen, whose full name I will not disclose here because I would rather not have his colleagues or future employers stumbling across this post. I had Web History on for a few months, turned it off when I saw all the dirty things that had accumulated within, but recently turned it back on for searches because I missed being able to amass such large piles of crap. Chrome makes history easily searchable, which makes the first bullet point Web History pointless (ha ha), and I have to admit — even if I’m not participating in crude acts of sexual and other, more general sorts of deviance online, it is still really damn weird to have the URL of every site I visit, from now until eternity, stored on an external server for…what reason? The data mining of what links are clicked after a search makes sense, but simply storing what a person does online…there’s an argument for it, but I don’t feel like being devil’s advocate at the moment.

On the other hand, I am perfectly happy to have last.fm store each and every song that comes out of my laptop, and I’d be even more thrilled to have it pick up every song that plays on my iPod* and in my mind. Like I said…data whore. But there are certain kinds of data that I’d rather store for my own sake, and not share with the Internet conglomerates who do the mining for me.

Something I wanted to mention before, but didn’t because I got caught up in a privacy mini-rant that inevitably devolved into a sexual metaphor (is there some variation of Godwin’s Law for that?): where the HELL is the Google Chrome API? Supposedly, it was going to be released soon after the browser itself, but it’s been a couple months and I’d really like my StumbleUpon/Adblock back. Google…leaves things in beta for much longer than acceptable. After four years, they need to stop making excuses for the chance that there are bugs, and admit that the damn thing is released to the public, fo’ realz.

If I could write 750 words here, writing a 150-250 word abstract on a yet-to-be-determined topic should be a walk in the park, right?

* I am aware that there is a plugin for this, but it necessitates iTunes and I am not into memory hogs — foobar2k, anybody?

Hello all.

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.

…That I think history is going to take a turn for the better.

<3

Hello. Valams rapidly making the descent from “sort of lj-y” to “super super lj-y.”

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.

I’ve been thinking about taking a political science class for awhile now, and luckily for me, I finally got around to putting one in my schedule this semester. It’s a nice enough class, and I think I might take an International Relations or Comparative Politics course next semester. Anyway, the big project for my political science class is to volunteer for a political campaign, organization, whatever for at least four hours and write about it. Pretty easy to do in an election year. I’ve been volunteering for  this guy:

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.

Seth and I aren’t very big fans of the lolcat phenomenon, but some of the pictures from the debate are absolutely priceless. And hey, sometimes we need to be lighthearted about these things. Click for the original image from Yahoo (because you know we couldn’t make this up).

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

So, coming hot and fresh off the heels of the last debate, I bring you the latter half of a two-part series featuring Leila Vader and her haughty condescension towards the US public! Would that I could give middle America a hard stare while curling my fingers and force it to metaphorically choke on things that matter, but to no avail. Maybe it’d be a good idea if I stopped casting myself in parallel to one of the greatest fictional supervillains of the 20th century.

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…