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presidential debate Thursday September 30
really, i see why bush is cutting education. he wants every child to be left behind, so they're uneducated enough to not see through all of the logical fallacies he just put out at that debate. though, if kerry wants popular appeal, he needs to stop using words like 'coalesce'. it makes him sound pretentious, and a reformer needs to be a person of the people.
bush just keeps going on his mixed messages bit attacking kerry... he still has yet to talk about the good things he's done. it's not your fault, dubya. you were just gullible enough and flexible enough to believe cheney and the boys about iraq. not your fault. you might have done better if that hadn't happened. when we went into afghanistan, actually, you were doing pretty well.
bad idea, good idea
tomorrow i'm going to bloomington to see todd, and to see hairbanger's ball with todd, sarah, and sarah's roommates (eppie deserves an entire post by herself, certainly). yesterday i was thinking about how i was going to get to bloomington. there's the bus, which is apparently $10, there are friends, but none of them are interested, and then i thought it'd be really neat to bicycle there.
good idea? or bad idea? i can't tell. but it's about 50 miles on 150, so i'll be leaving tomorrow around 11am on my way to todd's house. always an adventure, long bike trips.
maybe i have a penchant for them specifically.
identity Sunday September 26
i've been struggling with national identity.
there is no point where this story "started", it's been brewing in my head for many years, i think. various collected experiences from college have prompted me to ask, "what does it mean to be american, what does it mean to be me in a nationalistic construct?"
before i address those questions, i will explain a few stories from recently to help you understand my line of thinking. for my final research paper in japanese class, i've chosen the topic of japanese identity, but specifically, how we can define the boundaries of that nation's identity by examining the people who "stand on the edge" -- namely, people like cara. conveniently, i have to interview one native japanese speaker. admittedly, this is partially why i chose the topic.
yet, my interest in this topic began in my earlier EALC coursework: in a post-world war ii japan, the country was beat up both physically and psychologically: identity is something that usually people tend to be proud of. japanese scholars and authors in the 1970s developed a "theory of uniqueness" as it is often called, the 日本人論 -- which literally translates as "theory of japanese people".
the working ideology was that there was something special and unique about japanese people in context of the entire world -- solely because they were japanese. an identity based on blanket exclusion, certainly, but scholars since that time have basically abandoned this idea; reasoning that it was more or less psychological propoganda to bolster a developing, but beat-up, nation. it also was seen as very conservative to some, given that it embodied some of the same rhetoric employed by the fascists in the 1930s.
so that's the background i'm coming from. it is part of a larger construct that i am still developing; i'm sure it leaves holes for criticism, but this topic is something i've been thinking about, not researching. i may research it in the future, so i encourage your criticisms and comments.
i was at a party friday night with mostly asians and latinos. at one point, discussion turned towards heritage: cara's half bit came up, and her friend is half columbian-half mexican. but grew up in the united states. the conversation was rather fascinating, listening to these people talk about pulling certain aspects of their cultures and combining them with american culture to produce an unusual output.
this is why we have asian-american, mexican-american, and so on. these are unique mixes in culture. but i'm not talking about culture so much. i want to discuss identity. how do these people identify themselves?
later, at this same party, there were some caucasian individuals acting like idiots, and i actually contributed to the conversation: "that is not my culture," i commented, observing these grown men jumping in puddles created by the melted ice chilling the keg, splashing most of the folks on the balcony.
indeed, i have trouble with our national identity. i am white male born in twentieth century america. my heritage has been long ago diluted and forgotten, and i come from a small town in northern illinois. yet, i don't fit in with most people. i don't do the same things as most people.
yet, i cannot defy being american: i grew up here. but, as i observe other cultures and often appreciate how they do things, does that not continue to shape my identity? most other cultures are far older than ours, it seems that cultures need time to grow and shape themselves -- not just following history's ever-changing course -- but something deeper than that. and i look at other national entities and see a far richer cultural identity.
what makes these cultures 'rich'? solidarity.
compared to what i've seen, america is different because its identity (if there is one) is supremely ideological. i don't have to be from anywhere to be american. i can be from any country or from any background and still get by. certainly, it's easier for us white folk to get by -- racism and favoritism run rampant still -- but i am hopeful after living in new york this summer that it is getting better.
yet, in american culture today, sensitivity to other races and cultures is very important. we certainly can't just step all over outside ways of doing things -- precisely what caucasian man has been good at for so long. i think that the mixed kids have an upperhand in america -- their heritage and difficulties growing up and straddling two or three cultures gives them almost a "street cred" that us white folk cannot afford. simply, they've got more perspective.
it almost seems that because american culture, being ideological, lacks total solidarity, then embodies the idea of non-conformity and difference as its major mode of identity. certainly, individualism has never been an undervalued component in our society.
this week Thursday September 23
it's been a really healthy week. charlotte was once telling me that she was in a class where the instructor asked, "who has their goals written down?" a handful of the class raised their hands. "who has them with them right now?" the instructor continued. charlotte was one of three.
there are a good many things i want to accomplish at a young age. everything, absolutely everything, is moderation: try to accomplish too much, you won't get anything done and you won't have a good time doing it, either.
not too much, ah?
but, i haven't been prioritizing the things that i truly hold to be, well, important. even though i am a social creature, most of the things i really need to focus on i have to do by myself. this is what makes them difficult: i would, short-term, much rather hang out with friends than study kanji. but long-term, which one is more important to me?
pintsize is awesome Sunday September 19
if you haven't been reading questionable content, today's the day to start. this one has pintsize saying in free-association, "it is hard to get a lady to evaluate to true."
i'm sure that only todd, myself, and other programming-types thinks that's funny. but it is, i tell you. it is. nerd humor goes a long way.
(update)
another link you should follow is this one. a lot of the time we bloggers don't have anything to say. i love you jen.
chinese buffet Saturday September 18
my dad turned to me in the car yesterday and started a new thread of conversation:
"oh, did you hear tony's going to have some competition now; there's a new chinese buffet place opening up in the hilander shopping centre."
"bah," i responded. the china palace is, and will always continue to be, my favorite american-chinese restaurant. i have pride. i worked there for three years. they're like family. and they make a killer mapo tofu.
i should have seen what was really going on. today i went over to dad's house for breakfast, but then i began all of my computer work and reading, and i spent the better part of the day there. as such, i was there when my dad asked:
"do you want to go out to dinner with us?"
what he had done in the car was plant the seed, such that when this question came about it wouldn't shock me so much. he was preparing me, and i knew where he wanted to go. but i wanted to make him say it. i wanted him to admit his treason to me.
and when i asked, he said that they were "going to try the chinese buffet again".
infidels!
they convinced me that i could not nay-say until i had at least tried it, so i got in the car and rode over with sharon and dad to try out the, ahem, 21st century china buffet.
now, i have a veritable cornucopia of experience with chinese food, and i have always noted that the chinese buffets are usually, well, bad. and they always have names like "new china buffet" or "chinatown buffet" or "new century buffet" or "21st century new china buffet". even in new york. and now that i can read some characters, it's amazing how much you see 「新紀何か」. those same characters over and over. new century this, new century that.
what struck me about the place was not how well it adhere to the guidelines though -- chinese buffet is a formula like any other concept restaurant -- but how poor the dishes were.
they were. all. meat. and seafood. shrimps. with an 's'. you can't say 'shrimp' at a place like this, no, no, and they got them there crab legs, all yous can eat.
my dad and sharon realllly like it. but allll i wanted was vegetables. good vegetables. all i could get was msg-soaked, garlicy brocolli that came with the beef and brocolli. and string beans. so those are the two things i ate, along with a lot of white rice.
my sensitivities have changed. my tastes now lie in subtler flavors than salt, sugar and garlic; while i still love them dearly on occasion, i'll take my spicy thai curry or even a spinach salad anytime over this fried excuse for digestable material.
of course, this message isn't intended to condescend on anyone who likes chinese buffet. occasionally, i like it too. but i knew before going in i wasn't in the mood for crap, and well, even as far as chinese buffets go, you know roscoe's is going to be worse.
oh, and as a total side note, the place was full of fat people. not like, my-dad-is-overweight fat. we're talking, please-don't-eat-me-when-they-run-out-of-chicken-sticks fat. couples. and they had babies with 'em. i didn't see if the babies were fat yet or not.
spammers strike again Friday September 17
despite my terms of use link above, some spammer decided to post 716 comments on this site advertising an online poker outfit.
i've tracked this person's ISP down and have reported them. let's hope it works out.
phil collins Friday September 10
i poke a lot of fun at pop music. however, true to being a music snob, you have to have certain crutches that link you to everyone else. the interesting thing about claiming to be indie is that all of your crutches are just labeled as 'kitschy', and thus it becomes cool to like them. it's a manner of self-enabling, and currently phil collins is taking me home.
rock on. it makes me think of drinking cherry coke in the summer of 1986. i'm not even kidding. i was a pretty happy kid. my dad used to let me sit on his lap while he mowed the lawn with the riding mower. songs like this played on our kitchen radio.
is that kitschy enough?
one nutty weekend Wednesday September 8
listening to: gil scott-heron - the revolution will not be televised
on friday night, i made curry for the first time since being back. not only that, but it was also the first meal i've cooked in my new kitchen. i finished clearing out the dining room, and the table has placemats on it. yes, you could say it's finally becoming my home.
i only had two takers for free curry, cara and my roommate billie. billie left, and in a discussion that was more like babble than anything, i told cara that i feel that she's had a positive influence on me. if left to my own devices, sometimes i can get all worked up and just need to chill out. like otto in a frenzy. cara's chill, and thus as a result of knowing her, i've absorbed a certain amount of that, well, for lack of a better term, chill-ness. i was babbling that night, but that is true. sometimes i need to chill.
i would say "this led to a discussion", but it was really just me talking and cara listening. this is precisely what i've been trying not to do recently, but there are certain people that i am close enough to that i can do it when i need to. i was in a room all day by myself working on the new wpgu website prior to making dinner, and thus i really, really just wanted to chatter on for a bit and then leave the house.
so i went on about a quality that i have that is difficult to nail down as positive or negative, it just is: i find it relatively easy to mold myself to whatever person or people i am around. certainly, i have strong opinions, but there are times where the situation doesn't call for me to say anything. or, i recognize that it's just easier to not express myself. it would not be worth the trouble.
sometimes this very positive: i can meet new people relatively easily, and i have a vast array of experiences that enable me to talk about most subjects that are of interest to the person i am speaking with. people feel comfortable when they can talk about things they know, and thus i can make new faces feel comfortable aroud me.
there is one flipside point: as soon as i have created a conversational mark, i have stowed away who i really am to make the social situation simpler, and as a result, those relationships can only run so deep before they simply run aground. that is, naturally, unless the person ends up having a very compatible personality. the effect of all of this is that i am said to be someone that it is easy to get to know, but difficult to get close to. it takes me a while to warm up and really let you in.
unless i'm in one of those weird meet-the-total-stranger moods, which overtakes people like naomi and i every now and then. these occurances should be noted as exceptions. it is difficult to lay down "how it is" in life, because "it" always has plenty of facets and angles and perspectives and people involved. thus, we'll just say that the general case is what i've discussed formerly and that this case is a noted exception.
as an aside, there are a lot of "it"s in that last paragraph; it is interesting to note that the "it" at the beginning of this clause has no meaning: it is simply there serving as a grammatical crutch of the english language. however, the "it" i just used after the colon does have an antecedant. do you know what it is?
enough linguistics. back to business. we're talking about my facade construction and its negative facets.
before i begin this story, though, i should say that, of course, i always try to have a good head on my shoulders, and i rarely find myself swayed to act in a negative manner merely to get on well with someone else. however, i do have some vices that are not healthy, and thus these people are not necessarily "peer pressuring" me as much as they are enablers. college is full of enablers, because it's full of people who want to reciprocally be enabled. okay, the parental disclaimer issued, let's go.
yesterday was the first home football game of the season. which means one thing: planetgate (now: pgu pregame). planetgate has peppered my fall saturdays for four years now, filling my late mornings and early afternoons with large helpings of brats, chips, this awesome potato salad, and either beer or clear soda, depending on my mood. yesterday started out as a clear soda day, but quickly became a beer day. which is fine, because i usually run myself on a pretty tight schedule -- even if i'm going to enjoy a beer, i can't indulge too much because i'll slack in some other department.
now herein lies the problem with planetgate: the tailgate ended at 5:00p.m. i was tired from the heat and a bit tipsy, so i could have easily taken a nap. but taking that kind of nap is bad news, because you'll wake up at 10:00p.m. utterly disoriented. the only thing left to do after that kind of nap is to go out again. i don't quite understand why. i'm someone who's had many a late afternoon nap. of course, those naps were not usually due to beer: eating too much dorm food was a sure-fire way to induce a so-called "food coma". regardless of the impetus, though, the result is the same. you wake up with a feeling like you need to do something to not be an indolent sloth, and thus you get up, take a shower, and try to find something to do with friends. but usually you've slept too late to make plans with people, and you end up alone, bored, and annoyed that you "missed" the night.
armed with all of that knowledge, i was determined not to sleep yesterday after eating dinner. but when you're already feeling drunk at seven in the evening, there's really not much hope for doing anything other than, well, drinking more. that is, outside of sleeping.
and i knew that i had absolutely nothing to do that night.
lawton from wpgu was having a party, so planet paul and i hung out all night. he's a guy i could see myself being friends with. he's really nice, a real good guy, and i don't have that many male friends. i'm not saying i'm explicitly recruiting male friends, but i don't have nate nor todd around, now do i?
while i don't care to go into detail of what happened as the night went on, i can offer a couple visuals: (1) me riding my bicycle from primetime pizza home with my cell phone in one hand talking to marian (via laurel), and a pizza box in the other hand, and no hand on the handlebars. i've ridden without hands many times, but usually my hands are available if necessary. realizing the inherent danger, i put the phone away. tell you man, cell phones, they'll kill you. (2) paul going to the bathroom at lawton's apartment, only to come back to find out that everyone, literally, everyone except for 5 people, left while he was peeing. including all of the attractive females. his face was priceless.
i came home at the reasonable hour of 3a.m., and i promptly set both my cell phone alarm and my desktop alarm for 7:30a.m.
who. was. i. kidding.
i had consumed a couple of glasses of water before going to bed, but the longevity of the day had exacted quite a dehydration on my body. not just alcohol, but exercise (the bike) and heat. i should have had far more water before i went to bed. i woke up feeling, well, as well all know how it goes, hungover.
and there was no way i was climbing in the car to drive 3 hours to saint louis. a long, hot shower, a 30-minute nap, and a lot of liquid later, i climbed on my bike once again and set out for the radio station, where the car was parked. all along the way i knew that the delay was going to throw off my attempts to make that train at 2:10p.m. for bloomington. i left at about 9:35a.m., so add three and you get arrival in stl at 12:35p.m. sufficient, right? not quite.
first, i had to stop at my friend sarah's new house, because i needed to use the internet to look up the train schedule (i wasn't sure if it was 2:00 or 2:10, and in this case, it did end up making all of the difference). she's living with her fiance; they both did research at duke this summer. man, i want to find someone who's as interested in academics as i am. sarah's so happy, and i'm so happy for her. you can see it on her face. i think she lost weight, too, but that would make sense. not onlny was it summer, but she was in north carolina.
then i had to go to schnuck's to buy flowers. yes, i had to buy flowers. one of the most annoying things to me, and i hate myself sometimes because i've certainly done it, is the i-said-i-was-going-to- do-something-for-you- but-never-really-had-the- inclination-to-actually-do-it disease. i was on the phone with sarah (not saint louis sarah, bloomington sarah) thursday night. on my desk sat two things, flowers and a bowl of noodles. jokingly, i told her i would give her something for driving me from bloomington to champaign; i asked her which she would prefer: ramen or flowers.
should i be surprised that she didn't say ramen? personally, i don't think it gets any better than when someone hands me a preprocessed brick of starch with a msg-caked powder packet. thus, i had to buy flowers. because i said i would. and after boarding the train, there would be no opporunity until after sarah had picked me up. taaa-cky. luckily for me, schnuck's are all laid out the same, so i quickly snagged the best lilies i could find for a fiver and ran out to park michael's car where it belonged.
my next destination was the metrolink station at the loop to pick up a lightrail train to the amtrak station. it's like the boston t, except that it's newer. the t, however, does go to more places around boston than the saint louis metrolink. pardon the digression, i'm infatuated with mass transit systems, particularly those that incorporate rails. my first dream job at age 4 was to be a train engineer. ask my mom, it's no joke. when i was 3 i got a train set for christmas, but while it was still wrapped up michael told me that they had gotten me a huge container of socks and underwear. i cried until i opened it. michael has always been good at fooling people with gifts -- let us not forget the year he hollowed out a baking soda box, filled it with snickers, perfectly refilled it, and wrapped it. nate never opened it because he thought that it was baking soda; michael had to tell him the gig. back to the saint louis story.
michael's parking spot is approximately 5 blocks from the metrolink, and i had never been there before. thus, i was a little confused, and right as i figured it out, the train departed the station before i could run to the platform. they were running every 15 minutes. this was at 1:34p.m. my train to bloomington was at 2:10p.m. but i had flowers in hand, and i wasn't giving up. i caught the 1:49 and sat down to call amtrak to inquire about whether or not the train was on time. knowing amtrak, maybe it wouldn't have been a big deal?
but no, she assured me, the train was acceptably on-time. and they were planning an on-time departure. i deluded myself temporarily by believing that that is what the national representative would say, and that she was just telling me that because she didn't have real information. the station phone number just kept ringing when i tried it.
so i stood up and stood near the doors. people who are rushing to be on time for something are funny: they do the littlest things to make the entire process go "faster". and everything that is slow frustrates them. most people hate this. i actually kind of like it. in fact, that feeling has been the inspiration for this post so far. if i had taken the extra five minutes so i could have gotten the earlier train to the amtrak station (mind you, i am still used to new york city where mass transit runs on the schedule of "it comes often") and relieved the whole stress right there.
but stress can be fun, because it becomes like a game for me. how close can i cut it and still make it? i do this with airplanes too. hence why i've missed three in the past year. but two were because of a woman, so i don't think that counts. women always make you late. er, you make yourself late because of them. another aside. i'm making an effort to stop calling girls girls. most of the women i know now are just that. certainly, "guy" and "girl" are acceptable, comfortable terms for the two sexes when referring to one another, but "girl" definitely has more of a younger air than "guy" does. a 30-year-old guy is just that, hey, a guy; a 30-year-old girl is a person who never really earned the title of "woman". the other reason i make this distinction is such that when i meet a girl, and not a woman, i can make that distinction clear simply by my word choice.
this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, just a general trend. so if i use "girl" next week, it doesn't particularly mean that she's immature. but now you can watch out for it, at least.
i really enjoy the positive stress of trying to "get there" in time. not so much "get it done" in time; i've never liked that stress. "get there" requires creativity: unique routes through city streets if driving, knowledge of where shortcuts can be made, where they cannot, and of course, the biggest one: knowing just how long you can wait before actually leaving and still make it.
i started talking to the conductor on the metrolink to pass the time. i was trying to extract information on how long the stations took from her, i felt that if i could just get her stamp of approval, then i'd be fine. if she believed i was going to make it, i was going to make it. at 1:56p.m. i was still two stops away, so she and i were covering all of the steps necessary for me to take after i exited the metrolink platform. turn left, run, be careful down the hill, and there you are. she was really cool, and we talked about how she wanted to move to san francisco. i'm admittedly in love with most anyone i've met from saint louis. they are, without a doubt, some of the coolest people. ever. you didn't hear me say this, but, uh, i think saint louis is cooler than chicago in a lot of ways. except that they don't have the cubs. if the cubs were in the loo, i'd just up and move there right now.
i told her san diego is nice, and that she should avoid l.a. at all costs, and that miloney found a real cheap place on the other side of the bay in san fran. apparently it's cheaper over there. these are the little tidbits of information i hear and regurgitate to make social situations go easier. maybe that's good, though, because i could tell she liked talking to me, and thus i got her stamp of approval. she thought i was going to make it.
at 2:00p.m. the train arrived at the civic station, which is two blocks from the amtrak station. i sprinted the best that i was able with my flowers in my left hand and my man-purse over my shoulder, the majority of its weight being supported by my right hand. i'm glad that leslie informed me that the amtrak station is "in the ghetto", because, otherwise, i would have questioned what i was running toward. and there wasn't anyone around to laugh at how ridiculous i must have looked.
i saw a train and a large group of passengers with luggage. waiting. sweet. i ran inside, bought a ticket, and when i came out, they were boarding passengers. i checked the time when i sat down: 2:10p.m. the train rolled out at 2:15p.m. plenty of time. i guess i had a couple of minutes to shop for some fresh produce at schnuck's. mmm, fruit would have been good. ah, next time.
isn't it beautiful though? now i'm in a great mood because i made my train. imagine if i had given myself ample time: it'd be a day in the life. anything can be fun, you just have to make it that way. i'd like to believe i'm an enabler. a fun-enabler. we should make that a new word. funabler.
funabler (fun'eigh·blur) (n.) - (1) one who enables others to have fun with the mundane events that make up daily life.
