posted 2008/01/31 at 20:37
Is the United States Chess Federation in trouble? (New York Times blogs)
Getting back into playing chess is one of those things that always seems to be high on my to-do list that just never gets done. All I've managed to do over these past few years is knock off a few tutorials and practice games on Xbox Chessmaster (yay no absurd security locks), and play the odd game online. I really don't like playing on television or computer screens because it just doesn't inspire the same kind of deep thinking that I can do playing on an actual chess set, but I haven't really had anyone to play chess with in real life since high school. For that matter, my physical chess set kind of poofed after the fire and wasn't in the boxes of stuff we got back from the fire people, and I haven't bothered to replace it. (Actually, I take that back: I picked up a two-dollar chess set at Kroger a few years back, but a huge corner of the board was torn off of it when I got it, even though the package the set came in was sealed tight.) Perhaps it's because of how I've been socialized to handle in-person stuff versus Internet stuff, but playing chess over the Internet just isn't something that works out too well for me.
This article kind of makes me think about how the Internet has changed the various aspects of gaming. I had a youth membership to the USCF when I was in high school, although I never played a USCF-rated game. (I didn't want to travel to the big tournaments with the rest of my chess team because I didn't want to spend any more time with them than was absolutely necessary. My love of chess only extended so far even back then.) At that time, playing in school leagues and playing in USCF tournaments was kind of a big thing because it was the only real way to get rated and to be able to position yourself against other people and have an idea of where you stood. Pretty much every online chess service I've tried has had its own ranking system, though, and that takes away a large part of the allure of the USCF and what they offer. I imagine that similar games must also be experiencing identical growing pains. I don't follow chess closely enough to understand all the other politics that may or may not be going on at the USCF, but I can't help thinking about how the Internet may be changing the face of even the most classic of games that don't absolutely require physical presence and performance.
As the networking capabilities and pure computational power of the Internet increase, games of the mind are likely to become more and more altered. Chess is one of those games where I confess to being something of a luddite; I don't want to play speed chess and bullet chess all the time on a screen that doesn't give me a real sense of dimension. I kind of miss sitting in a school library somewhere, spending two to three hours on a game, enjoying the silence in which I could contemplate my next moves. With the way modern life is evolving, silence is becoming a scarcer and scarcer luxury, and contemplation seems to be almost an anachronism. For all that computing and the Internet make so many things easier for us -- I would never give them up -- I hope that they don't spell an end to the old chess clubs and tournaments.
posted 2008/01/29 at 20:41
I have begun undertaking the calculus required to figure out just how much money I need to be making on a monthly basis to live on my own. I've had an idea of the vague numbers for quite some time -- I first made these calculations back in 2000, back when I was thinking about doing full-time Web design work -- but now I'm figuring out every last penny of how much breakfast costs, how much lunch costs, how much my gum and tissues cost, all of that. I actually quite enjoy this kind of activity; although I make my living off of teaching English and writing, I was always much more into math when I was younger, and even though I've forgotten how to do derivatives and all that high-level calculus stuff, I'm still pretty solid on my basic math. It's interesting to see how even the tiniest changes I make in my normal daily routine translate to more or less money per month, and it makes me think even more about what I really need to be living on my own.
There is one kind of disconcerting bit of knowledge I picked up yesterday, though. For the sake of figuring these numbers out, I topped my tank and then very deliberately avoided going anyplace else but MCCC and home, with the exception of one Kroger that's pretty much right off of that work-to-home drive. I managed to get six trips done before my gas gauge hit the red spot, so I filled my tank all the way back up before heading to work today. Even with a thirty-cent-per-gallon discount at Kroger's gas pumps, it still took over sixty bucks to get my tank topped again. Each trip to and from campus costs me over ten bucks, and when I'm making that trip four times a week, that money adds up very quickly.
This brings up a couple of issues. First of all, I definitely need a more fuel-efficient car, and I've always felt that I should have better transportation before I start shopping for an apartment or a condo. Most of my students are younger than what I drive to work every day, for crying out loud. Secondly, this also forces me to think about just where it is I decide to live. Moving just halfway closer to MCCC would save me close to $100 a month, and that's nothing to sneeze at. I can't live all of my life just between work and home (and let's not forget that, as much as I enjoy working at MCCC, I might not get an opportunity to work full-time there for quite some time, and may find full-time work elsewhere in the meantime), so I'll have to think about places to live in close proximity to places like Kroger and Meijer. This is not light work to figure out, and I'll probably have to keep plugging away at it for the next few weeks.
Labels: personal
posted 2008/01/27 at 21:53
As much as I still haven't gotten used to my sister and brother-in-law moving to their own apartment at the start of the year -- the quietness makes every little sound in this house seem that much louder -- I can't help but enjoy having my own bathroom now. Even though our office is up on the second floor along with my bedroom, my parents prefer to use the bathroom off of their bedroom on the first floor (in what used to be my old bedroom back before the fire). The only other time I've had a bathroom all to myself was back at the hotel while we waited for the house to be rebuilt, and since that was an unpleasant living situation all around I don't really count that. It's nice to know that I'll never have to wait to use the bathroom again while I'm here, although for some reason when my sister and brother-in-law visit they still insist on using my bathroom for themselves.
This kind of ties in to some thoughts I've been having about just how much space I need to live in comfortably. As I've said before, I'm probably going to have to get an extra bedroom in whatever place I end up living after I move out just to house all of my stuff, and as if I needed a reminder of that, I've just run out of bookshelf space again and need to go buy a new bookshelf later this week. Even though I'm still a bit away from being able to afford my own place, I've started looking through apartment listings and such, and it seems like I can't find a place that has the right amount of space for me. There's no way I could live in a studio apartment just because I have so much stuff, but all of the one-bedroom apartments I've seen so far have been kind of on the big side for my needs. Similarly, I've been looking at condominium listings (I'd still prefer to own my own place just because my father has been so insistent on that throughout my life), and there too I can only find places that are far too big for what I feel I could live comfortably in.
As much as I hate to say it, this whole thing is kind of making me think about the senselessness of living alone. As much as I value my privacy, I don't think that living by myself would be healthy for me. I think that if I didn't have someone to come home to every night -- note that I'm not saying a partner here, merely someone whether a friend or roommate or what have you -- my mental and emotional health wouldn't be quite so good. I know I've said before that I planned on remaining single for life, but to be honest I've had thoughts to the contrary in recent months, thoughts that started before I started mulling over this whole thing about moving out and living on my own. Now this seems to be driving me even more to start asking around and seeing if any of the people I've been thinking about here might possibly reciprocate my feelings towards them. (The answers will be no, I know, but I can dream, can't I?)
Labels: personal
posted 2008/01/25 at 21:25
Although I'll still think of George Kell and Al Kaline's WDIV broadcasts when I think of the Tigers of my youth, there is no question that Ernie Harwell will always be the voice of the Tigers. Although he "retired" several years ago, he still pops in to do colour commentary on the odd game for Fox Sports Net Detroit, and famously gave advice to current play-by-play commentator Mario Impemba on how to call a no-hitter just a couple of weeks before Justin Verlander threw his no-no last season. Happy birthday, Ernie, and may your voice continue to grace Tigers broadcasts for many years to come. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What was the last important thing you were late for?
I always show up to things a half-hour before I'm supposed to. That being said, I was late to one of my first comp classes at MCCC last semester because I tried taking an alternate route and wound up stopped by two trains in succession.
2. What was the last important thing you were late with?
Again with my first MCCC class last year, I returned one of their papers very very late because I had some family stuff come up that drove me to too much distraction.
3. What (or who!) is the most frequent cause of your lateness?
Bad luck. Given how punctual I strive to be, there's really no room for procrastination on my part.
4. Which of your close friends or relatives can you expect almost always to be inconveniently late?
My sister. I really don't want to say anything more than that.
5. What’s most likely to cause you to stay up too late before bed?
If I said it, every response I'd get to this entry would have "TMI" somewhere in it. Figure it out.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2008/01/24 at 19:49
Democrat Kucinich quits White House race (AP via Yahoo! News)
I had heard that one Democrat was mounting a challenge to Kucinich's House seat a while back. Now there's four, and as much as I wanted Kucinich to repeat his performance from 2004 (staying in the race until it was mathematically impossible for him to win the nomination), I can't blame him for pulling out like this. The mainstream media silencing him at every turn (pulling him from debates being only the latest example of this) was making it impossible for him to gain any real momentum, and it wasn't like he had much of a chance of winning the nomination from the onset anyway. Yes, I wanted him to stay in as long as possible, but the man has to put food on his table, and I can't fault him for focusing his energies on retaining his House seat in this climate. Still, the fact that all of these challengers would suddenly pop up strikes me as dirty politics, and I'm fairly convinced that someone in the Democratic Party is likely behind this.
As if this isn't bad enough, Kucinich saying that he won't endorse another candidate, when he'd previously given a tacit endorsement to Obama by telling his Iowa caucusers to pick Obama as a second choice, is rather chilling. The only reason I can see for Kucinich to do this is that he believes, as so many others do at this point, that Clinton is going to win the nomination for the Democrats. I still can't say that I believe Obama to be the true progressive that so many say he is -- I think that's the same kind of wishful thinking that made Howard "balanced budget hawk and lifetime A ranking from the NRA" Dean the so-called big name progressive of 2004 -- but I'd rather have him as the Democratic candidate by a long shot. I know the old saying goes "better the devil you know than the devil you don't know," but in the case of the Clintons I'd just rather they disappear entirely from the face of American politics.
I suppose now is as good a time as any to mention that a couple of weeks ago, knowing full well that Kucinich stood next to no chance of winning the Democratic nomination, I signed the Draft Nader petition to try to get Nader into the Green Party primaries. It's looking more and more like the Green nomination is Cynthia McKinney's to lose if Nader doesn't enter, and even though I'd vote for McKinney in a heartbeat if the next best alternative out there is Clinton, I still have a lingering distrust for McKinney, and I don't think she's the person who the Green Party should be putting out there as the face of its principles. This whole campaign just seems to be headed straight down the crapper, and it's making it all the more painful for me to realize that this is the last presidential campaign I'll be too young to run in. Do I have to fix everything around here?
Labels: greenparty, kucinich, politics
posted 2008/01/22 at 20:56
When I first made Yggdrasil Mark I, I bought an IBM mouse that worked like a charm for a while. Eventually, though, the wheel became stuck, so I wound up buying a Microsoft mouse as a replacement that didn't work so well. Not only does the pointer like to jump around the screen a lot, but about once every one hundred boots or so it just doesn't respond at all and I have to reboot in order to get the mouse pointer to work. About a week or so ago I actually had the mouse fail to work on two consecutive boots, but a third boot got it to work all right. However, once I started loading my applications up, I found that my Google sidebar had lost all its information; my blogroll and photos were defaulting to things I'd viewed on the Web recently but didn't add (and my old directories disappeared), and my to-do list just vaporized. I can't be certain that the mouse problems and the Google problems are related to one another, but I was starting my reboots before Google Desktop had a chance to load. I'll just blame Microsoft for this, since it's easier and, let's face it, likely true.
Speaking of Google stuff, I'm only now beginning to use Google Calendar on a regular basis. Back when I was going to school my schedule was kind of straightforward, and I never really had much need for a scheduler of any kind because, well, I had no social life. I still don't have a social life (or at least much of one), but as I start teaching more and more, and start branching out into other professional things, I'm starting to see the value in scheduling software. If nothing else, by putting in the days of upcoming events that I probably won't go to but would give some consideration to, I'm at least giving myself a reminder that there is other stuff out there for me to do in case I change my mind about going to stuff. (Given all the tasks I've already piled upon myself, though, I don't know where I'd find the time for most of these events.)
On a related note, I think it's only now that I'm starting to see the value of browser tabs. I hadn't heard about Meebo until Ariel blogged about it recently, and now I'm finally beginning to get a picture of what so many of you out there must be doing. I'm guessing that for a lot of you, you keep one browser tab for surfing, then keep your Webmail account always active in another tab, your messaging client in another, and your scheduler in another. I'm still using Outlook for e-mail and Trillian for messaging, so I have to keep switching between windows, which isn't as elegant. I'm not sure if I could ever switch entirely to Web applications, but I'm probably going to use browser tabs a lot more in the future here to see if they help me keep things in order.
Labels: internet
posted 2008/01/20 at 20:51
I can't say that I've come to any solid conclusions about the choice I face over whether or not to get another degree that I've been writing about for quite some time now. The only progress I've really made, if you can call it that, is that I've decided not to apply to any schools for this coming autumn. I still feel like I'm trying to get my legs under me, particularly as I face a number of new challenges this term (my first term teaching more than one class, my first time teaching an online class, and so on). It feels like right now the best thing I can do is to give myself time to adjust to this new load and determine whether or not I like it before I decide if I'm going to make any big decisions on my life. Thus far I definitely like having so many students to teach, although keeping my two in-person classes straight requires a bit of mental juggling I haven't had to do before. (I'm teaching the same class, at the same time, in the same classroom, but on different days of the week.) Apart from the long commute to Monroe and back, which really isn't much of an issue except for the high price of gas, I don't really have any complaints so far.
Over the past couple of weeks, though, I've been thinking more and more about what my ultimate goals are if I decide to go get another degree. As much as it pains me to say this, I'm wondering how much my own ego is playing a role in all of this. I mean, most of the teachers at my private school made no secret of how they thought I'd either be dead or in prison by now, and I'd be lying if I said all those rejections to MFA schools I got back in 2004 didn't still hurt me. Yes, I love writing (although it took me a while to reclaim that love after said rejections), and getting my MFA would enable me to really hone my writing skills and be able to teach creative writing to others, to say nothing of being able to apply for tenure-track positions at four-year colleges and universities. There is definitely a part of me, though, that I've come to realize just wants to get this degree -- and maybe even more degrees after that -- to prove some people wrong. I should forget all about those people because it isn't healthy to hold on to this kind of resentment, but I can't. I'm just going now based on my conscious feelings of wanting to soothe my own ego; subconsciously the problem is like many times worse than I'm aware of.
Although I don't always show it, I am a smart person, and I've already proven myself capable of doing a tremendous number of things. As much as I try to deal with rejection and unconstructive criticism in a healthy way, there is still a part of me that hurts when I receive it or remember it. As much as I try to be humble and recognize my own place in the world, whenever I feel wronged or slighted, there is still a part of me that wants to strike back, to prove people wrong, even when I know that doing so will ultimately not do anyone any good, let alone myself. I know that I will never totally rid myself of those things, and so my decision about whether or not to go for my MFA (or, for that matter, a Ph.D in rhetoric/composition) will ultimately be based, at least in some small part, on those things. Right now, though, it feels like those things are playing a larger part in my decision-making process than they should, so it's probably for the best that I take a while longer to think things through and see if things at MCCC continue to pan out as well as they have so far.
posted 2008/01/18 at 19:01
... because Wikipedia can't seem to make up its own mind, but anyway, it was a decade ago today or yesterday that Matt Drudge posted on that Website of his that Newsweek was sitting on a story about then-President Clinton having an affair with one of his interns, Monica Lewinsky. Remember what we as a country went through in the following couple of years, and compare that to what congressional Democrats have done so far to hold the current administration accountable for what they did to get us into that mess in Iraq. Insert joke about cigars and Nancy Pelosi here. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
... actually, I'm going to take a week off here. I don't know if I'm just in a bad mood right now, but the excessively punny nature of this week's five is just turning me off and no matter how hard I try I can't bring myself to answer it. Instead, I'll just link you to another meme I did on my LiveJournal earlier this week: http://seanshannon.livejournal.com/203579.html.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2008/01/16 at 20:53
Even though Spyder left the house along with my sister and brother-in-law at the start of the month, we still haven't moved Skooter into the house full-time. We're letting her into the house for longer and longer periods, but the house still isn't ready for her, in part because my sister and brother-in-law still haven't taken Spyder's old litterbox to their apartment. (They also haven't bothered removing one of their old 27" television sets that's currently an eyesore in the hallway outside of my room.) I'm still worried about Skooter being such a persistent leg-rubber and always getting underfoot, especially given how old my parents are now, but for now Mom has taken to walking around with tins full of pennies in her socks, so whenever she walks she makes a sound that Skooter can't stand. I was hoping that Skooter would get less hyper around the house the more we let her in, but so far that hasn't really been happening.
I don't want to lose hope about being able to move Skooter into the house, though. It's disorienting for me to be sitting here typing this right now, knowing that there isn't the chance of one of my four-legged friends walking in to rub against my legs. Skooter came to the house shortly after Rowan had her last great romp, not returning to the house for a few weeks, and I don't think that's a coincidence. I think Rowan intended for Skooter to be her replacement, and now Rowan's been gone for over eighteen months and Skooter's still not in the house. She didn't get along with Spyder at all, and now we're having even more problems getting her into the house full-time, and I can't help but feel like we keep letting down Rowan. More to the point, we don't really have a cat "keeping watch" over us now, and that doesn't feel good.
As if all of that weren't enough, we already have another cat auditioning for that role. About a week after Spyder left, we started seeing this orange tabby outside, and she's become kind of a regular fixture. Spyder was never an outdoor cat, so there couldn't be any connection there, but there is a coincidence here I can't help but think about. Our family's first cat -- at least the first one I know of (I still remember her from my youth) -- was an orange tabby named Crissy, and she's the only not-all-black cat we've ever had. Crissy left the house one day and never returned, and I can't help but wonder if this orange tabby might be one of Crissy's great-great-great-great-grandsons. We're not going to let this new orange tabby into the house -- Skooter alone is enough for us -- but as the weather gets colder over this coming weekend it's going to be harder for me to see the orange tabby out there.
Labels: personal
posted 2008/01/14 at 21:11
Judge grants Kucinich entry to NV debate (AP via Yahoo! News)
If you were watching Countdown tonight, then Keith Olbermann did, in fact, inform you of this decision, as well as the fact that NBC was going to appeal it. However, in the resulting discussion Olbermann had with Chuck Todd, Kucinich's presence at the debate was never mentioned again. Todd even went so far as to ludicrously claim that tomorrow's MSNBC debate would be the first debate where the "Big Three" of Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama would be "seated down" and talking about the issues, when the most recent debate on ABC -- the one from which Kucinich and Mike Gravel were excluded -- featured the Big Three and a fourth candidate who wasn't polling as well, in this case Bill Richardson, sitting and discussing the issues. MSNBC wouldn't even change their graphic advertising the debate during Countdown, either by adding Kucinich's photo to those of the Big Three or by simply scrapping the photos altogether.
Given how much big corporations, big media, and conservatives have tried to dumb down our political and social discourse over the past thirty years, given how they have tried to make everyone lower their expectations about the behaviour of anyone else but themselves, it is all too ironic that, when faced with a court order to actually make their debate fully informative and to let people know that there are still more than three Democrats actively campaigning for their party's presidential nomination, NBC would act like a petulant child. MSNBC not only continued to ignore Kucinich's campaign by failing to make any mention of him on tonight's Countdown except for the parenthetical about the court order, it not only continued to abandon its role as a journalistic organization by arbitrarily deciding which of the candidates deserve to be mentioned on its broadcast, but it went so far, even after the court order, to still talk about and promote its upcoming debate as if Kucinich weren't even there. The closest analogy there is to this situation is to a group of bratty kids, who decide that the best way to not have to deal with the "brain" of the neighbourhood is simply to ignore him or her, treating that child as if he or she were visible and didn't exist.
That there has been no great national dialogue, either in this presidential campaign cycle or the previous one, over the media's role in determining which presidential candidates do or do not get airtime to have their voices heard, is a sad testament to just how thirty years of rule by misanthropic Republicans and Democrats have affected this country. Perhaps Dennis Kucinich doesn't have Mitt Romney's Reaganesque hair or Barack Obama's boyish grin or Hillary Clinton's breasts, but his campaign is trying to provide an alternative for Democratic voters who are tired of a party that has sold its soul for the past sixteen years, abandoning all the social justice issues it stood for in a misguided effort to retain its own power and relevance at any cost. Kucinich not only provides that voice to Democrats and like-minded independents, but polls in which voters are asked to judge candidates based on issues, not names or money, have shown time and time again that, if this primary were to be decided on the issues themselves, Kucinich would not only be a front-runner but he would stand a damn good shot at being the eventual candidate. With money comes power, though, and just as the financial machines of the Clintons and Obamas and Romneys allow them to down out the Kuciniches and Gravels and Pauls, NBC and its team of highly-paid lawyers look set to silence Kucinich from tomorrow's debate, all for the ratings the "first debate between the Big Three" might provide.
That's what this is all really about, is ratings. Keith Olbermann has often said that television news got it all wrong a long time ago, back before even his youth, when it was decided that television news would be commercial, that the companies of this nation would so easily be able to exert control over the newscasts with the threat of pulling advertising and cutting the newscasts from the funds they needed to survive. On this point I could not be in fuller agreement with Olbermann, but perhaps now Olbermann needs to reexamine his own adherence to this statement. For years now Olbermann has profited quite handsomely as being the alleged voice of the left in the mainstream media, as the one who would not only stand up to the wrongs perpetrated by Republicans in all branches of office, but who would stay true to his principles no matter what. If Olbermann truly believes that the influence of corporate interests in television news is one of the great ills of our society, then he needs to look at NBC's actions in trying to silence the one candidate who most embodies the positions Olbermann posits in his "Special Comments," and at his own role in that silencing. Until then, all of Olbermann's talk about the evils of corporate media will ring distinctly hollow.
Labels: kucinich, politics, television
posted 2008/01/13 at 19:31
Last month when I was so sick, I really didn't pay attention to politics as much as I normally would, since I didn't feel up to taxing my mind so much. On the plus side, this did get me to stop reading the Huffington Post, which I had basically just come to "accept" as a site to keep me marginally informed on certain issues but I'd always openly loathed for caving in to the political centre time and again. Doubtless I'm missing all number of anti-Ralph Nader blog entries right now as everyone there at once bemoans the Democrats potentially nominating Hillary Clinton for President while simultaneously warning readers that a vote for the Green Party is a vote for the Republican candidate. I've since tried to make due with other Websites to get the pulse of the American left (as well as those who continue to falsely claim to be liberals), but apart from the Green Party's own Website, I'm not having much luck.
Countdown with Keith Olbermann is another of those outlets that I think is portrayed as being far more left-leaning than it really is, but I continue to catch it on a regular basis. Not only does it help keep me informed on certain aspects of the political scene, but I've been a fan of Keith's from his days with Dan Patrick on ESPN, and I like his wit. That being said, I was somewhat shocked late last week when Olbermann announced that this Tuesday's Democratic presidential debate on MSNBC would be the first debate that was between just Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel are both still in the race, of course, and a quick trip to Kucinich's Website reveals that both had been invited earlier, but that NBC News, specifically Chuck Todd, recinded that invitation last week, presumably for the sake of being able to market this upcoming debate as the first between the "Big Three" Democratic candidates.
My anger at Kucinich (and to a lesser extent Gravel) being excluded from yet another debate should go without saying. However, after Olbermann has campaigned so hard against keeping our troops in harm's way in Iraq, after not only ripping the current administration's Iraq policies but also lambasting the Democrats for caving in to last year's Iraq funding bill -- going so far as to compare Harry Reid's explanation for his vote to Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" proclamation -- the question begs to be asked of just where Olbermann's voice is now, now that his own network is excluding from their debate the only two Democrats who are promising to pull our troops out of Iraq in their first term of presidency. For all of Olbermann's legendary personality clashes with his places of employment, he has always prided himself on showing backbone, and not just because he was born with an extra lumbar vertebra; in one famous instance he wrote a one-thousand word memo to his employers to complain about the poor treatment of lower-paid workers at that network. If Olbermann does not now take his own network to task for excluding the two demonstrably consistent anti-war candidates from their debate for the sake of marketing, then my viewing of Countdown may well go the same way as my reading of the Huffington Post.
Labels: kucinich, politics, television
posted 2008/01/11 at 15:50
Former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was born. He was Prime Minister for most of the time I regularly caught those two great Canadian political satire shows, Royal Canadian Air Farce and This Hour Has 22 Minutes, and his willingness to appear on the latter show multiple times just reinforced in my mind how much better Canadian politics are than ours. Contrast that to Nancy Pelosi's admonition to first-year Representatives not to appear on The Colbert Report's "Better Know a District" segment. Sigh. Anyway, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. Under what conditions can you have the perfect nap?
I don't nap unless I'm massively sleep-deprived, and even then my naps tend to be by accident. For sleep, I need comfortable sheets, not too much noise outside of the usual stuff that comes from the highway adjacent to our backyard, and a sleep mask.
2. Under what conditions can you let most of your guard down?
Only when I'm in the company of a very close friend, and even then only when I don't have too much on my mind. I used to be better at this, but after the betrayals of a few friends I've tended to be incredibly guarded at all hours.
3. Under what conditions can you do your best writing?
I used to write best in the wee small hours of the morning, but now I'm finding that I write best as early in the day as possible, usually before any working out I do that day. I have to hand-write poetry, but I prefer to work on fiction at my computer here (where I could use a more comfortable chair).
4. Under what conditions would you give away everything you own?
I wouldn't; I'm too materialistic, and I attach too much sentiment to physical things. (Examples: the comforter on my bed right now is the last present I got from my maternal grandmother, and the Björk t-shirt I'm wearing presently was one that I bought at the first, and so far only, concert of hers I've been to.)
5. Under what conditions would you kiss a stranger?
I wouldn't; I give close friends pecks on the cheek, but otherwise I'm far more of a hugger. (Don't even ask about the last time I made out with someone.)
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2008/01/10 at 20:00
Only with the way the Red Wings have been playing this past decade could their record-setting first-half performance cause the league to barely bat an eye. Of course, the way these things seem to have gone in that time, they'll probably get a good first-round scare and possibly be eliminated, and knowing my luck it'll probably be the Blue Jackets who knock them out. Still, for all that the Red Wings kind of became the New York Yankees of hockey in the mid-90s by outspending nearly every other team to ludicrous degrees, three years into the salary cap system they're even more dominant than ever. Even with so many of the old Russian players gone or retired, and with a head coach who was never around during that time period, that old puck-possession system continues to reap dividends with the Red Wings' goal differential and shot differential both at absurd levels. After the Wings' dominance of the past decade, though, hardly anyone notices.
I was glad to see Chris Osgood get another All-Star nod, although the goalie situation for the Wings is kind of worrying me. As much as I hated the Red Wings waiving Osgood back in the day and signing Hasek, at the time I couldn't deny that Hasek was a better goalie than Osgood. I don't think that's the case these days, though, as evidenced by Osgood's stellar win-loss record and goals against. When it comes time for the playoffs, I'm not that sure just how the Red Wings will play things; "Hasek is still the number one goalie" seems to be the mantra of the Wings these days, but Osgood is just plain performing better, and Hasek's body isn't allowing him to start that many games. I don't think Hasek should sit for the playoffs, but I don't think Osgood should, either. Alternating the two feels like the best thing to do, but I can't recall any Stanley Cup champion in recent memory deliberately alternating goaltenders in the playoffs.
The real Red Wings story that's getting buried right now, though, is that Darren McCarty just started his first minor league game last night in a rehab stint. I don't know if there's a place for McCarty on the Red Wings' roster right now given how everyone seems to be clicking on all cylinders, but him returning to the Red Wings would really help fill up all those empty seats in the Joe. Aaron Downey's been half-playing an enforcer roll with the Red Wings so far this season, which I think is playing a big part in the Wings' success, but McCarty at his peak could earn his spot on the roster by both his play with the puck and his ability to knock some teeth out. I still think the Red Wings' publicity problems of the past few years had a lot to do with McCarty's departure -- of all the modern Wings players, his grit and toughness best embodied the spirit of Detroit -- and if he's healthy enough to play at the NHL level again, bringing him back might just get the Joe selling out again.
posted 2008/01/07 at 21:08
I think I can say with certainty that this is the first time I've ever made a post on the .org in January with my window open. At the very least it's the first time I've done so when it's so late at night. We hit about 65 in Toledo today, and even now we're still at around 61. By point of comparison, the average low we reach in the middle of summer is 60. Normally we don't open the house up until it gets closer to 70, but it being the dead of winter and all, our bodies are kind of inured to the cold, and so 60 kind of feels like 70 now. The temperatures will drop here -- we're only supposed to hit the mid 50s tomorrow, and then snow is in the forecast after that -- but for now it's kind of a trip to have my window open late on a January night. It was even freakier earlier in the day, when the sun was out and I could see all the bare trees in our backyard. I'm not complaining in the slightest here, but at the same time things didn't exactly feel quite right today.
This gets me to thinking about going out and taking photographs sometime soon for the .org. It's been nearly a year since I've done so, and I still haven't done a photo shoot at Wildwood in several years now, hard as that is for me to believe. The thing is that I want to get a wider variety of exercise in this year -- not just dance games with the odd day of yoga here and there, and walking in Wildwood is definitely something I'd like to do more. The problem is that whenever I take photos at Wildwood I don't really feel like I'm exercising, because I'm walking slower and making frequent stops just to set up, and take, the best photos I can. This doesn't even touch on how my shoes always get a lot of sand stuck to them when I walk at Wildwood, and how no matter how hard I try, the sand never seems to want to dislodge itself except inside my dance game pads. The obvious solution would be to get a pair of shoes exclusively for those long walks, but I'm not sure I'm ready to make that kind of investment right now.
We're actually going to have thunderstorms, or at least thundershowers, in here in a little while, which is another one of those things that just jars you by how out-of-place it is in January. The chance of thunder extends into tomorrow, when unfortunately I won't have too much time to enjoy the weather because I have to go to a workshop up at campus for the adjunct instructors. My online class starts this Friday, and a week from today my on-campus classes start back up. I'm feeling pretty nervous about trying to teach multiple classes in a semester for the first time, but I'm hoping that I can get adjusted to it in short order. This is work I love, after all, it's only a matter of being able to juggle more of it.
Labels: weather
posted 2008/01/06 at 20:17
Okay, it's not so quiet at this particular moment because I have a Red Wings game on my television and my sister and brother-in-law just showed up for their first visit in three days, but still, it's almost eerie, and perhaps a bit cliché, just how quiet this house has gotten since the kids moved out. Perhaps I notice it more than my parents because my bedroom is next to theirs, but still, even after they've been living in their apartment for nearly a week, during the day it gets uncomfortable walking around the house. Perhaps even more than the silence, what bothers me is just how empty things feel around here. If it were just a matter of their old bedroom being empty it would be one thing, but between their stuff being out of our loft (I can access my full-size music keyboard for the first time in nearly two years now), and out of the pantry and kitchen, this house seems too big for the three of us. Granted, I need more space in my bedroom (I'm loathe to move too much out to other rooms for fear of a break-in), but for the three of us there's more space here than we know what to do with.
Last night I started looking through local apartment listings online. I'm not making enough money right now to get even the cheapest of apartments (and this month will be tough because I basically miss a bi-weekly pay period coming up here due to the way work handles adjunct pay), and ultimately I'd prefer to be able to save up enough money to put a down payment on a house rather than get an apartment. I'm rethinking that philosophy, though, as it's something my father drove into my head all my life ("you're just throwing away money when you rent an apartment since you don't own anything in the end"), but if this house seems too big with my parents living here, I can't imagine how I'd feel with a whole house to myself. Yes, I'm a packrat, but I don't have that much stuff. It's going to be a matter of weighing the financial security of having my own house versus the independence of living on my own, and it's something I'm going to have to think about for a very long time.
One bit of business that remains to be done here is to move Skooter into the house; my sister and brother-in-law took Spyder to the apartment with them, and this house isn't the same without at least one cat wandering around here. Whereas Spyder was a more docile cat, though, Skooter is rambunctious, and has a very annoying tendency to get underfoot at the worst times. This isn't such a big deal for me, but both of my parents are over 60 and not all that mobile. The last thing we need right now is for one of them to trip and fall and break something, and so I'm giving serious consideration to putting a collar with a bell on it around Skooter's neck. I hate having to collar a cat for any reason, but just as we had to put a flea collar around Skooter's neck over the summer when she got infested because it was ultimately necessary for her health, collaring and belling Skooter may be necessary for the sake of my parents' well-being. I'm not going to like doing it, but it's something that I think ultimately has to be done.
Labels: personal
posted 2008/01/05 at 19:10
Kucinich files complaint on ABC debate (AP via Yahoo! News)
I wish I could say that this comes as a surprise to me. A little over four years ago, though, before any primaries had taken place for the 2004 nomination campaign, ABC announced that it would be withdrawing its reporters from the campaigns of Kucinich, Carol Moseley-Braun, and Rev. Al Sharpton. No one believed it was a coincidence that ABC happened to choose the three progressive candidates then, and I doubt anyone believes now that ABC is choosing to remove the two most left-wing candidates (Kucinich and Mike Gravel, whose exclusion from this debate isn't garnering as much coverage as it should) from tonight's debate because of some set of standards that we're mysteriously just hearing about now. I haven't seen any recent polls from New Hampshire, but I remember that just before I got sick Kucinich had actually moved into a tie with Richardson for fourth place in New Hampshire. Perhaps that has changed since then, but the fact that ABC is only inviting the candidates whose campaigns ABC contributes to, for lack of a better word, stinks.
I know that Kucinich sent a bulletin out via his MySpace to have his supporters gather outside the soon-to-start debate in protest, which reminds me of 2004 again. When the Federal Election Commission decided to make the 2004 debates the usual two-party affair, both the Green and Libertarian candidates protested outside the debates, and both were arrested, which I thought showed great courage on both their parts. If only the mainstream media paid attention to the importance of this matter, instead of beating the ignorant "Nader spoiled 2000" drum they've been reskinning over and over again these past four years. I can only hope that this year the Olbermanns of the mainstream media shines more than a laser pointer on the third-party campaigns this year, as I think this year, more than ever, the American voting public is going to want something more than the same-old same-old from the Big Two candidates.
Fox News excluding Ron Paul from their upcoming debate may be as egregious as ABC's actions, too. I make no secret of my disdain of Paul, particularly among so-called "liberals" who should have the sense to realize that Paul's bedrock principles are directly opposed to true liberalism, but I won't deny that the man has a very strong, very vocal following, and his strong showing in Iowa should give him an automatic in for all the remaining debates. Given that Paul's social libertarianism goes against the social conservatism blathered every night by Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity, though, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that Fox News would try to silence Paul by any means possible. As much press as fiscal conservatives' attempts to silence Mike Huckabee are getting now, I think the Religious Right's antagonism against Paul is a far more important story for our democracy. As much as ABC's anti-Kucinich/Gravel tactics stink, at the very least ABC can point to Kucinich and Gravel's poll numbers as a way to weasel out of serious debate of the role of the press in presidential campaigns. Fox News has no such way to weasel out of a similar debate regarding Paul, which just goes to underscore all the more how Fox News is not a real press outfit.
posted 2008/01/04 at 18:44
This enables me to once again bemoan how chronically underappreciated Max Headroom continues to be to this day. In all seriousness, if there was ever one television series that proved itself to be more and more precient with each passing year, I'd like to know what it was. Okay, so maybe we all got hooked to our computer monitors instead of our television screens, but how many people are using the same screen for both now? Matt, you are missed as Max Headroom, and I can only hope that the upcoming silver anniversary will draw new attention to one of the great television shows of my youth. On that note, let's play the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. In 2007, who most made you laugh?
I really don't laugh that much, but if this can be redefined to mean who brought the most humour to my life, I'd say it was a tossup between Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and Keith Olbermann. (It kind of figures that theirs are the only three non-sports shows I make a point of catching on a regular basis.)
2. In 2007, who most inspired you?
Given how stressed a lot of my students were, what with Michigan's economy continuing to go into the gutter, I'll give them the nod here.
3. In 2007, who taught you the most?
I'll go with my students again here. I can only hope that they learned as much from me as I learned from them.
4. In 2007, who encouraged you the most?
I'm not really sure how to quantify this, but my intuition says that any careful examination would yield Mom as the answer, so I'll go with her.
5. What did you do in 2007 that will have the most positive effect on your 2008?
Apart from that last month when I got so darn sick, I managed to stick to my diet for the whole year, and when I wasn't swamped with other things I got a lot of exercise in. I hope to continue that trend into the new year.
Labels: fridayfive
posted 2008/01/03 at 20:09
As much as I've written in the past about how the media puts way too much focus on the Iowa caucuses, sure enough I've pretty much braced myself to watch MSNBC from right now until whenever I go to bed. (I'm getting too old to try to outlast the coverage, especially since the results will likely be nebulous into daybreak.) I guess I just like to fixate on the mechanics of things like this. I don't watch college football, and I'm fairly uninterested in the NFL (at least until the Bengals get their act together again), but I absolutely love watching the NFL Draft in the spring even when I hardly know what is going on. I've always compared the NFL Draft to a giant 32-person game of chess, and I guess that I'm getting a similar vibe right now off of the Iowa caucuses. This is about as close to the machinations of Big Two politics as I care to get -- I dislike all the spinning and such intensely -- but watching them unfold is strangely intriguing. At least I know a lot more about the candidates here than I do about the players in the football drafts.
Keith Olbermann's been talking a lot these past couple of nights about Dennis Kucinich asking his Iowa caucus-goers to go for Barack Obama as a second choice, just as Kucinich asked them to go for John Edwards in 2004. I remember when that happened in 2004, though, and there are a couple of important things that Olbermann hasn't mentioned about 2004. First of all, in 2004 Kucinich was campaigning a lot more in Iowa than he did in this campaign; I don't think Kucinich is even in Iowa right now. I think his campaign is putting much more emphasis on New Hampshire, which is kind of logical given that the "15% threshold" rule in Iowa really works against the second-tier candidates. Secondly, Kucinich's agreement with Edwards was reciprocal, and really helped both candidates out a lot; Kucinich placed way better in Iowa than anyone thought he would, and Kucinich's support may have helped Edwards leap above Howard Dean to second place. I haven't heard of a reciprocal agreement between Kucinich and Obama this year, but then again I doubt there will be any precincts where Obama will drop below threshold. I kind of wonder if Kucinich may be angling for the vice-presidential nomination, since he's closer to Obama ideologically than the other candidates.
This brings up an interesting point, because one of the things I need to do over the next couple of weeks is to research the current crop of candidates for the Green Party nomination. From a glance, though, it looks like Cynthia McKinney may be the frontrunner at this point, and, well, I don't get a good vibe off of her. Between some of the things she did while a member of Congress and her strange switch to the Green Party just before announcing her candidacy, I just don't feel like she's the person the Greens should be nominating. I've still got an uneasy feeling about Obama as well, but if I were forced to choose between Obama/Kucinich and McKinney/someone else, I think I would vote for Obama. I'm hoping that this doesn't happen, though, and that someone I feel easier about voting for captures the Green Party nomination. Where's Ralph Nader when you need him?
Labels: greenparty, kucinich, politics
posted 2008/01/01 at 19:33
Last night was the first time I can ever remember being under a winter storm warning during the changeover from year to year. In the end we only got some snow out of it, which melted before a new front dumped a few more inches on us this evening, but for a while there I was pondering what might happen if we were to lose power as midnight approached. I soon realized that the best way we'd have to monitor the switch to 2008 would be to use the clock and built-in light on my cell phone. Hardly the most elaborate of ceremonies, but then again if we lost power at midnight in the dead of winter, I'm guessing that marking the changing of years would be one of our least pressing problems. What really freaked me out, though, was that a few hours before midnight, as the storm approached, a lot of our neighbours decided to light off their fireworks then and there so as to avoid the snow later. At first I thought we might be having a thundersnow what with the sound and the sky lighting up like it was, but then I finally realized what was going on. There were still a fair number of fireworks going off at midnight, though, even with a fair amount of snow falling from the ground.
What was oddest about last night, though, was that my sister and brother-in-law retreated to their new apartment a few hours before midnight. With all of their heavy stuff moved over there, I guess it only made sense for them to start using the apartment as their home base, but perhaps I assumed they'd stay with us for the ball drop and then head back to their place. It has definitely been odd today adjusting to the two of them not being here, and more importantly their stuff not being here. I'm relishing being able to reclaim some space in this house for my own stuff -- the two of them had pretty much commandeered the loft in addition to their own bedroom -- but even with the two of them having come to visit twice today (and pick up a few leftover things), the house has a weird ghost-town quality to it now. I guess it doesn't help that I'm trying to readjust to other things as well today, such as getting back on my diet after finally vanquishing that blasted virus. Today has had kind of a surreal tone to it, and I still don't think that deep down I realize all that has changed in this house in just the past forty-eight hours.
I've only got ten days left here before I teach again, and only now am I really able to use this time as I would have liked to have used it at the start. Between all the cleaning I've been doing out in the loft and a lack of sleep from last night, though, I haven't exactly been in top form today. I don't want to say that I feel like the bug caused me to waste my vacation, but at the same time I definitely feel a need to make up for lost time here. I may have to make an early night of tonight just so I can catch up on my sleep, and hope that I can really make the most of every minute of tomorrow. I never like doing that, but it's all I can do to keep from falling asleep as I type here right now, and my bed is looking awfully inviting, too. Maybe tomorrow will be a better day.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon