New in the .journal: .org.8: Take me back to the place that never was. These are the most coherent thoughts I can come up with to describe the past year. I would own up to it if my writing was dissheveled because I just wanted to go back to my Wii here, but I really do have a lot of things I'm trying to get done at this moment, and it's been hard enough for me to think coherent thoughts about the past year without having so much other stuff on my mind. At least I got this one done before the last day of the month for a change.
Labels: journal, siteupdate
Yes, a Wii (system code 1071 6479 4037 0105). I couldn't help myself, what can I say? I also picked up Wii Fit (which I'd had the chance to play recently) and Super Smash Bros. Brawl (friend code 1075 4346 0459). I'll try to keep posting here every once in a while, honest. I have to post more of those product links to convince you to buy stuff off of my Amazon.com affiliate account this shopping season. Anyway, it's Jon Stewart's birthday, and here it is, your moment of zen, in the form of the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What’s a profession you believe to be overpaid?
Professional athletes. I don't mean the trainers and associated staff; I just mean the ones who get tens of millions of dollars every year to go out on the field or the court or the rink or the diamond and still find things to whine about.
2. Who’s a musician you believe to be overrated?
Seriously, I want to go back to playing my Wii; don't make me spend thirty minutes here listing all of them. Let's just go with Axl Rose here because he's back in the press and I really, really never liked him.
3. What in your life could stand to be overhauled?
My room, because I've just been getting so many books and other things that there's not much room for me any longer. (No jokes about my weight, darn it.)
4. What’s something interesting you recently overheard?
I overhear interesting things from my students all the time, but you wouldn't understand them if you didn't live in this part of the country, and I'm sure many of them could lead to libel suits, so I'm taking a pass on this one.
5. Who is the most overextended person you know?
Me. I've got so many things going on right now it's not funny; getting that Wii might have been the best thing to do to keep me sane here. On that note, see you.
Labels: fridayfive, videogames
I suppose it's hard for me to think of this upcoming weekend as a "holiday" because I only teach Mondays and Wednesdays, and MCCC has class today. In a lot of ways this may be a busier weekend than usual for me because tomorrow I get to cook my very first vegetarian turkey for myself (I'd looked for them locally in past years but they always sold out before I could get one), and then Friday I'm actually going to do some Black Friday shopping against my better judgment. Mom is going up to Michigan to visit with relatives, but of course they don't like me showing up to those things, and I don't particularly feel like going anyway. As usual, Thanksgiving will also involve lots of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and waffle consumption, but I'll be toning it down this year because I gained a lot of weight during my two illnesses, and I just started back on my diet this past Sunday and I don't want to screw things up so soon.
While I was sick, I made a point of going to Kroger on the first of this month so I could grab some of the leftover Halloween candy on deep discount. Apparently I wasn't alone in this desire, because by the time I got to Kroger that afternoon, there was no Halloween candy left to buy; they were even out of candy corn, for crying out loud. (I love how candy corn is becoming to this generation what Christmas fruitcakes were to generations past, with all the tales of how no one ever really eats it and it just keeps getting passed down from generation to generation.) What bothered me more than the lack of cheap candy, though, was the fact that Kroger had already put up two whole aisles of Christmas displays. I understand that the retail Christmas season keeps coming earlier and earlier, but it feels like Kroger decided to skip Thanksgiving entirely and go straight to Christmas. I would imagine that Kroger normally makes a lot of money with Thanksgiving dinners and their accoutrements every year, so this hardly seems like a wise strategy to me. Then again, it's not like I have intimate knowledge of their sales figures.
Needless to say, this being the first holiday season without Dad is starting to get to me. It's been hard to come up with things to write about for my annual "year in review" .journal entry here because I don't really know how to describe something like this. Certainly there are a lot of bad emotions I'm feeling right now, and I can write about those, but I think that more than anything I'm just feeling a real absence right now. I don't mean just the physical absence of Dad; there's also an emotional absence to the season that I can't put into better words than that. The only thing I can think to compare it to is when your favourite player leaves, or retires from, your favourite sports team, and you try to watch the team's games after that but it just doesn't feel the same. I don't really feel like that's an apt analogy, though, because sports are just sports, and family is something infinitely more important. I don't know if the absence is necessarily painful, but it certainly isn't a good feeling, and I can tell that from now through the end of the calendar year it's only going to get worse.
That's Icelandic for "Happy birthday." Yep, Björk is 43 today, and since I forgot to do this in my posts about the election, why don't we do this right now because it's still ticking me off. First, the election music CNN has been using since November of 2000 (pay attention about fifteen seconds in):
Now, for the "Overture" that Björk wrote for Dancer in the Dark which was released several months earlier (about eleven seconds in):
Same melody, same key, same instrument even. This is why CNN leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Now for the friday5.org Friday Five:
1. How’s your health?
It's certainly not as good as it should be. I collapsed on my diet for a long time after Dad's death, then got back on track in late summer only to be hit with two illnesses back-to-back starting last month. I'm cleaning up the junk in the house now, and will be trying to get back onto my diet Sunday. I may also do something next week to help me on this process, something that may wind up being really stupid.
2. How was your day?
I really haven't had much of a day so far; I've just had breakfast and lunch and gotten my free copy of Radiohead's Hail to the Thief I got from that Pepsi Stuff promotion. With some remaining points I picked up an MP3 of the Ben Watt Lazy Dog mix of "Changes" by Sandy Rivera featuring Haze, which I'm listening to as I type this up now.
3. How’s the weather?
Right now it's sunny but way too cold outside; I think we're going to have more flurries here in a little while. I definitely hate this weather.
4. How do you expect to get anywhere in life with an attitude like that?
Okay, this is getting too personal. Believe it or not, there are some people out there who don't take advantage of me, and I've already gotten my foot well in the door in terms of my eventual full-time career. As far as my love life goes ... I'm working on that, okay?
5. How many people made you smile today?
None, but then again I don't smile that much anyway.
Labels: fridayfive
At the risk of sounding like even more of a dork than I usually do, I think that this past week I've been experiencing election withdrawl. The fact that we had so many Senate races take so long to get resolved kind of helped a bit, but there was a certain fascination I had with looking at poll numbers and electoral projections and trying to figure out how the big races would be resolved. Now, with Saxby Chambliss likely to retain his Senate seat in Georgia (I just don't see Jim Martin getting the turnout he needs to overtake Chambliss, especially without Barack Obama on the ticket this time around), the only real question mark is Minnesota, which is at least providing some interesting numbers to crunch. I also have to admit that in spite of the fact that we're not exactly on the same page politically, I have a bit of a personal shine to Al Franken and I'd kind of like to see him in the Senate, if only because it would make Bill O'Reilly head explode. I'm still watching that race, but I'm only now really able to put the election behind me.
That being said, as much as I like Barack Obama on a personal level and I want him to succeed, so far his transition is doing nothing to earn my confidence. I'm not sure if I fully buy in to all the Team of Rivals talk when it comes to Obama -- so far he's got fewer Republican appointees named than either Clinton or Bush 43 had in their first cabinets -- and the appointment of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State is particularly troubling. As others have pointed out already, it's pretty much the worst position for her to take in terms of an Obama cabinet (if she had to be in the cabinet, Health and Human Services would have been a much better fit), and I fear that she's basically getting the post so she can position herself to succeed Obama in 2016. I realize we're still early in the process here, but so far the only good appointment I think Obama has made is Rahm Emmanuel for his chief of staff, and that's only because Emmanuel has the right temperament for an Obama administration, not because of his politics.
To cut to the quick, even if Obama has a number of "rivals" in his cabinet, so far they've all been rivals to his right. I understand the strategy of running to the middle of the political spectrum, but ever since Obama gained the Democratic nomination, progressives have had plenty to worry about, from his vote to give criminal immunity to the telecoms for whatever role they played in spying on us for the current administration, to his backing off on previous promises regarding Iraq troop withdrawls and offshore oil drilling. Now it appears that Obama's definiton of "rivals" is one-sided, and there's no hope of a Dennis Kucinich or a Carol Moseley-Braun being appointed to his cabinet. I'm not saying that Obama can't get a lot accomplished with the team he's choosing, but all the promise and hope that some progressives had in Obama seems to be fading fast.
Labels: politics
P.J. O'Rourke turns 61 today. That's about all I've got, so let's just get to the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. When did you last use the edge of a coin (or a knife blade) as a screwdriver?
I don't know that I've ever used a coin for that purpose, and I've certainly never used a knife blade for that purpose because I hate knives. I think that the last time I needed to go MacGyver, I wound up using the edge of a putty knife that was laying around. That worked about as well as you'd imagine.
2. When did you last use a wire coat-hanger to break into a car?
Never. Whenever I've locked my keys in my car I had Dad come by with a spare. Now I just have to hope that AAA will do a better job than they've done for me with other things recently.
3. When did you last use food or drink as medication?
Too much lately, given I got socked by back-to-back colds and I'm still getting headaches from the last vestiges of that second bug. There's nothing like orange soda to soothe a sore throat.
4. When did you last use your cellular telephone as a flashlight?
Never, but then again I have excellent night vision.
5. When did you last use a paper clip for any purpose other than to clip paper?
Given that I keep my cell phone in the same pocket I keep my tissues in, I have to use the tip of a paper clip to clean out the gunk that collects in the AC adapter hole every once in a while.
Labels: fridayfive
As if I didn't feel old enough, today marks eight years to the day that seanshannon.org was launched. I know, launching my Website on Remeberance Day probably wasn't the wisest thing to do, but at the time I had other things on my mind. There will be a .journal entry at some point, but given how badly the past thirty-six hours have gone for me, I'm not in a mood to write it right now. (One bit of good news in all of this, though: Next semester I get to teach Introduction to Creative Writing at long last.) Needless to say, doing my usual year-in-review will be difficult for me, what with Dad's death and all. I'd say more, but I want to leave the reflection for the entry. Right now I'd just like to get back to putting my ducks back in order.
Labels: personal
On Tuesday I cast my vote for Ralph Nader quite quickly; there was no line at all at my polling place when I got there. Then again, every time I've gone there in the past I've had women who were old enough to be my grandmothers running the show; this year the poll workers couldn't have been older than twenty. I'm guessing that they were Obama supporters who volunteered to make sure that things ran smoothly there. Anyway, obviously there was no worry about Nader "spoiling" Ohio this year (although Missouri may be another matter entirely, and ironically may cost me a perfect score on my election projection last week). I was feeling really good about that vote, up until Nader used the words "Uncle Tom" in reference to Barack Obama. Not that I don't agree with the worry that Obama will put corporate interests above the interests of the American people -- that was the primary reason I couldn't vote for Obama -- but you just don't use those kinds of words, no matter what kind of an analogy you're trying to make. I'm beginning to wonder if I should have voted for Cynthia McKinney instead.
In between my two illnesses last month I had an opportunity to do some research about the Green Party and the turmoil it's been through since the 2000 election. I think I had formed some incorrect assumptions about McKinney earlier, although there is still something about her that rubs me the wrong way. In a way, I might have expected Nader's idiotic comments, given how much more I know now about his relative clumsiness and lack of concern when it comes to social issues. I'm also worried that voting for Nader isn't helping to develop a third party as much as voting for McKinney would have, but that's the same kind of tactical decision that makes many liberals and progressives vote Democratic in spite of Democrats not representing their beliefs as well as other candidates, and if I disagree with other people engaging in that kind of voting strategy then I shouldn't employ it myself. Still, after reading about the struggles of the Green Party in 2004, and being aware of some of the struggles in 2008, it makes it hard for me to want to get involved with the party directly, because it seems like I'd just be entering the middle of some huge infighting that I don't want to be involved in.
Needless to say, when the election was called for Obama I did a fair bit of crying. Since then I've been watching videos of people's reactions to the call on YouTube, and for a while there they were causing me to cry as well. At first I thought this was simply because I was sad that Dad didn't quite live long enough to see an African-American elected president, but after some thought I believe there's something else at work here. I've always been interested in fighting for equality -- in high school the only club I was involved in all four years was the African-American Club -- and during my college years I did a lot of work for GLBT rights. I don't think I expected that we would elect an African-American president in my lifetime, and now that we have, I guess it fills me with hope that even now, in the wake of Proposition 8's passage in California and a Republican party that appears to think that the reason they lost so much ground this year was that they weren't being nasty enough, there is more reason to believe that we can change more minds and enact more laws to ensure the fair treatment of GLBT people.
I'm not even sure that the election has sunk in for me yet. I made sure to watch Obama's press conference Friday afternoon, and even after watching that, and reading all of these news stories about his plans these past few days, there is still a small disconnect there. Even though I was certain he was going to win the election long ago, there is still some awe and disbelief at the thought that this man is going to be my president in a little over two months. I don't think that he is going to transform the nation in quite the way that his strongest believers think he will, and no president will stop this coming year from being a hard one in terms of our economy and employment, but there's little doubt in my mind that he's going to be a lot better than Dubya was. It's also gratifying to see the reaction from other countries to our election; I don't think I've seen that many non-Americans waving out country's flag since the aftermath of the 09.11 attacks.
Of course, all of this does bring up one interesting point. In 2012 I'll be thirty-six years old, and thus finally constitutionally eligible to run for president. Who wants to start my exploratory committee?
Labels: greenparty, personal, politics
For now, it was on this day in 1967 that President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional funding for this post was provided by a grant from the Chubb Foundation and the support of Viewers Like You. Thank you. Okay, now for the friday5.org Friday Five.
1. What usually marks the middle of your day?
My days are so irregular there's no real marked "middle" to them. The middle of my teaching days starts with the first of my two sections of Composition I.
2. From whom (or to whom) was your most recent middle-of-the-night phone call?
Hardly anyone calls me as it is, and even if someone tried to call me in the middle of the night I wouldn't know because my phone's turned off when I sleep. I guess I've gotten a wrong number or two in the middle of the night through the years.
3. On what social, political, economic, or moral issue are you in the middle of the road?
Nothing? Seriously, I'm very far to the left on most issues, at least by United States terms. In global terms I guess I'd be a centrist on the economy, because I believe in neither pure socialism nor pure laissez-faire capitalism.
4. How likely are you to give someone your middle finger?
That's something I've gotten out of the habit of doing, although I did it a lot when I was younger.
5. When were you last caught in the middle of a disagreement that really had nothing to do with you?
My in-class discussions generate these kinds of disagreements all the time. I can't remember the last one specifically, but it would have had to have been about the election given the way Wednesday's classes went.
Labels: fridayfive
I'm already on the record with my students with this, so I figure I might as well embarrass myself in front of the world.
I was on the fence with Indiana and Missouri, but I think that Obama's grandmother dying will give him enough of a "sympathy vote" to get those two.
Possible McCain flips: Missouri and Indiana
McCain dark horses: North Carolina and Florida
Possible Obama flips: Montana and North Dakota
Obama dark horses: Georgia and Arizona
Given that Obama will get 73 guaranteed electoral votes at 2300 Eastern when Washington, Oregon, and California all close their polls, I think that will be the moment when most news networks declare him the winner. In my model it's theoretically possible for Obama to win before then, but I think enough states will be too close to call before then. He'll definitely be at 200 before 2300 Eastern, though. (Given how likely an Obama victory is at this point, I think the networks will call states much more quickly than they did in 2004.)
Yes, I'm still voting for Ralph Nader, thanks for asking.
Labels: politics