Thanksgiving

"That was horrible.  If you want to end war and stuff you got
to sing loud.  I've been singing this song now for twenty five
minutes. I could sing it for another twenty five minutes.  I'm
not proud... or tired.

So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with
four part harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.

All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
(Excepting Alice)
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant"

I have no idea why, but hearing this song on Thanksgiving
always makes me cry like a freakin' baby.  Seriously, I don't
know what comes over me.  I wish I had the kind of family that
sat down and listened to it all together, because there are
families that do that.  My family, on the other hand, went to
a restaurant for Thanksgiving, which I consider to be the
gravest possible Thanksgiving sin.  So I was forced to hear my
Alice's Restaurant in the car on the way to the restaurant. 
Then I got lucky and heard it twice on the way home.  Then
I got home and made the mistake of turning on NPR, and now
I'm seriously depressed.

I was all aggravated that I had to go to Worcester to spend
Thanksgiving with my family.  This is the first year since
college that I have been home for Thanksgiving, and I would
have much preferred to spend the holiday working at the
restaurant as I've done in past years.  I would bust my ass
all day from 11am to 11pm or later, never stopping for more
than thirty seconds to stuff a roll in my mouth, gulp down
some gingerale and bitters (Thanksgiving Eve what what) or
smoke half a cigarette in a single drag.

At the end of the marathon we were all sweaty, filthy, and
so beyond tired that our arms and legs felt more tingly than
achy when they finally stopped moving.  We had mint jelly in
our hair, gravy in our shoes, and pecan pie encrusted our
shirt cuffs.  But at the end of it all, after we all served
our last seated parties, the chefs started to dole out the
little styrofoam boxes - turkey, ham, or lamb with creamed
peas and onions, mashed potatoes, squash, and all the rest. 
They always ran out of ham before the restaurant closed, but
the chefs always managed to pull one out of some mystery
location for me. 

We were like people who had been stranded in the desert
getting our first taste of water in a year.  We all ate
standing up in the kitchen, styrofoam boxes spread out on
every available surface, bread board, salad bar, ice chest,
cardboard box.  We barely talked, but looked at each other
as if sharing the happiest secret - it was almost over.
Even though we inhaled our food in a matter of minutes,
having to go back to check on tables or give checks or
whatever, that was the closest thing to a family Thanksgiving
I ever felt. 

Earlier in the day we had fought with each other tooth and
nail for forks, and screamed that someone had taken the
wrong drinks or bumped into someone.  Some of us cracked
under all the pressure, some of us broke down because of evil
customers, some of us cried because we got boiling water
dumped on us.  In fact, one waiter organized a trifecta bet
every holiday, in which people picked the three waitstaff
most likely to break down first.  At the end of it all,
though, we were all on the same team and knew that none of
us would make it through the day without everyone else.

I missed those little styrofoam box Thanksgiving dinners
this year, and the people I used to stand around eating
them with.

the poetry of DH Rumsfeld

I am blatantly stealing this from The Slate, but it's too good to just have off to the side as a link - everyone needs to see this!

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

get your patchouli stink out of my store!

There are certain songs that always conjure memories of my most horrible experiences at school and work. It seems like every time I get myself into one of these situations where I procrastinate to the point where I have to stay awake for 72 hours at a time staring at a computer screen, I inadvertently adopt some anthem and listen to it over and over because it somehow soothes or motivates me.

Right now I'm in precisely such a situation, trying to whip my crap-ass thesis proposal into shape and "send it by Thursday". It's officially 2am, so now I'm just aiming for 6am Friday morning. And I'm miserable. And no one can fix this except for ME. And yet "ME" is writing a blog right now instead of doing the proposal. And "ME" keeps listening to "Hallelujah" and feeling sorry for MEself. "ME" is a dumbass, or perhaps, as some have suggested, a masochist. But not in the sexy way. And by sexy I mean "relating to sex", not as in appealing or whatever. God knows there's nothing less appealing than unwashed overtired dehydrated me who seeeeeeriously needs to get going on that freakin proposal.

So anyways, this is a list of my Top 5 "time of incredible school-related stress" songs EVER. There are way more than five songs I could write about - I have an incredibly long history as a crappy, stressed, procrastinating-to-the-point-of-absurdity student. As sad as it is to leave out some really good ones, my boyfriend John Cusack taught me that five is a magical number.

5. Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen, but I hate to admit the Rufus Wainwright version is kinda better).
This is my song of the moment, the Thesis Proposal song. When I listen to it I kind of insert "thesis proposal" where nouns such as "she" and "love" are supposed to go. Example: "Maybe there's a THESIS PROPOSAL (God) above/ And all I ever learned from THESIS PROPOSAL (love)/Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you". Yeahhhhhhh...

4. Only Living Boy in New York (Simon & Garfunkel)
"Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile". Even though most days I have a laundry list of things to do that would not include "smile" in the first fifty or so, hearing Paul Simon say it somehow makes me believe it. Happiness on a stick, except it's not "on a stick", but rather "in a song". Or something. This song was especially dear to my heart about eleven months ago during my first finals week of grad school.

"Half of the time we're gone but we don't know where" was especially inspiring, in that funny way that really depressing things can be inspiring, as I tried to figure out how to use Excel the night before my Research Methods final was due. Needless to say, we were supposed to be using it all semester, but I somehow slipped through the cracks and managed to do everything by hand until we got to multiple regressions. My economist friends Alexis and Bill Jenkins III got many a 3am T-Stat-related phone call that week.

Hearing that song also makes me think of eating this totally nasty Chunky Soup that was the only food item in the house at the time of that particular schoolwork spree. It was so horrifically gravy-like, my arteries probably aren't fully recovered yet.

3. Wooden Ships (Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young)
"There's just one thing I got to know, can you tell me please, who won? Say, can I have some of your purple berries? Yes, I've been eating them for six or seven weeks now, haven't got sick once." I literally wrote a five-page section of a term paper about this song. It was during my year of school in Chile, when I wrote all of my papers with a pen and paper (well, pencil first of course. and graph paper - that was the thing down there.)

I was sitting at the dining room table of my Chilean family's house in the middle of the night, trying to write a paper; the assignment was "What is Psychedelia"? Yes, I took a class in which the final paper was about Psychedelia - it was called History of the Underground, and it was quite possibly the best college course I've ever experienced. Anyhow, I started writing about this song and other stuff I was listening to at the time, Talking Heads and King Crimson, etc.

I ended up making the argument that "true psychedelia" was what happened after Psychedelia, i.e. some kind of post-modern absurdist surrealist rejection of what had come to be considered the "movement" (and a rejection that denied its own existence, to boot). I threw in the craziest lyrics I could come up with (thank you Peter Gabriel and Brian Eno) and upon re-reading it in the morning though to myself "whoa, this is the craziest and possibly most questionable paper I've ever written" but I didn't really have a plan B. Amazingly, the professor fucking LOVED it. I kid you not, he gave me the paper back with a perfect score and said it was the best paper written for that class. He also threw in "gringo or otherwise" which really warmed my little heart since he was a major gringo-hater (as all good Chilean revolutionaries are).

2. Trouble (Ray LaMontagne)
"Feels like every time I get back on my feet she come around and knock me down again". In this case, "she" was the personification of my collective final papers from this past spring semester. There was the draft thesis proposal that got rejected and I had to rewrite (long story, see my MySpace blog if you really want to know), the infamous Honduras Incident (too painful to go into), and my first foray into writing about green cleaning, a paper which took every fiber of my being to complete.

I kept hearing this song on the radio and bought the CD, listening to it repeatedly one night while I was up late editing the Honduras disaster, feeling like the world was about to end. Miraculously, the world did end, kind of. That was when the whole flood thing happened, giving us a two-day extension on our final papers. When that week was all over, after much stressing and crying and adderall-borrowing, I left for a roadtrip to DC with Amanda, which is an apocalyptic tale all its own (again, see MySpace blog if you really want to know). I subjected her to endless Ray LaMontagne for the duration of the 12 hour trip. I know what you're thinking, and no, it definitely should not take that long to get to DC from Massachusetts. But it did, and after returning from that trip, "Trouble" became a much more cathartic and happy song that gives me all kinds of sappy "you can overcome any obstacle" thoughts. I didn't mean to end this one on such a lame note, but I just can't be fascinating and edgy all the time - just ask anyone who knows me in person...


1. Naive Melody (Talking Heads - who deserve, and will soon have - their own category)
"I'm just an animal looking for a home, share the same space for a minute or two. And you love me till my heart stops, love me till i'm dead". In addition to being quite possibly the sweetest love song ever, this song went along with my undergraduate thesis, quite possibly the hugest disaster of my life (so far). While I'm confident that I'll soon look back on that time longingly (while I try to do my master's thesis), at the time it was quite an ordeal. A 100-page document, en espanol, which I wrote in record-shattering time (three weeks, tops) and with a record-shattering lack of actual research to back up anything I wrote.

That thing was ridiculous - I clearly remember the day a week before the due date when my adviser Gustavo called me into his office, sat me down, and said gravely "Tu tesis esta en crisis. Tu tesis ES una crisis." Yeah, there was crying and stressing and adderall-borrowing then too, but on a much larger scale. I even went to the Wesleyan library during Spring Weekend in order to avoid the potential distractions posed by my friends having "fun", something with which I was unfamiliar for almost all of May 2003.

Anyhow, I would always play Naive Melody during my many many many all-nighters. I was always alone in MCEC, feeling very isolated and depressed and hopeless, especially when the sun started to rise as if to mock my night of non-productivity. I would go outside and smoke a cigarette and consider how it was a new day, the air felt different and people were starting to emerge from various corners, I would only be alone with my thesis for another hour or so.

The line "Home - is where I want to be, but I guess I'm already there" made me so sad - I always imagined that I might really be sleeping and dreaming, and I might wake up and magically be in my bed at my parents' house, where I would be safe and secure and happy and not have a thesis to write. But like the song says, I was already there - college and MCEC and the sunrise and my unfinished thesis were "home", and I had to accept that painful reality. Much like the previous song and its story, I did eventually finish, and then the song took on a much happier meaning as far as school is concerned, and also resumed its position as one of the most understatedly beautiful love songs I've ever heard.


So that said, I need to get on back to the proposal... I hope my procrastination is indicative of some kind of serious, but treatable, mental illness - because if not, it means I'm just an unambitious dumbass. I'll let you know when I figure it out.

no blogging allowed

Good thing I didn't actually sign up for the NaBloPoMo thing in time, because I am not allowed to blog today! My thesis proposal is due at midnight... Everyone on my committee will be asleep by then, so if I'm not going to get it sent out anytime soon, I technically have until they wake up...

more democracy in/action

Excerpt from D.E. Campbell's Why We Vote:

"On September 26, 1989, Traci Hodgson cast her ballot in Boston’s City Council election. It was the only vote cast in her precinct. For a number of reasons, the political science literature predicts that Traci should have been like the other 275 registrants in her precinct and not turned out to vote. She was only twenty-one, she had lived in Boston for less than two months, and she admitted that she was “not very familiar with the candidates running.” So why did she vote? When asked she replied, “I just think it’s important to vote. If you have the right, you ought to exercise it—whether you are going to make a difference or not” (Mooney 1989).

This book is about why Traci voted, and why she voted alone.

MADISON AND TOCQUEVILLE: A TALE OF TWO MOTIVATIONS

Our starting point in answering this question is not what did motivate Traci, but rather what did not. Clearly she did not vote to protect or advance her interests, as she admitted that she did not know enough about the candidates to select them on the basis of who best represented her. To someone with only a cursory familiarity with the study of American politics this may seem difficult to explain, as politics is typically described as a forum for the “clash of interests.” Equating politics with conflict underpins much of the political science literature and is an assumption shared by scholars working within many theoretical frameworks. I recall an introductory political science course in which a professor defined politics as the “scarcity of consensus.” In 1960, E. E. Schattschneider wrote simply, “At the root of all politics is the universal language of conflict” (2). Forty years later, Morris Fiorina and Paul Peterson note matter-offactly in their introductory textbook on American politics that “politics is fundamentally about conflict” (1998, xvi). For all the ink spilled by contemporary political scientists, however, no one has ever expressed this way of understanding politics better than James Madison in Federalist 10. Madison writes compellingly of how “the latent causes of faction are thus sown in the nature of man,” and that “the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts” (1961, 79).

It does not seem, however, that Traci had her passions kindled as Madison describes. Instead, by her own account she was motivated by the glowing embers of obligation. She felt that she ought to vote, that it was her duty.

In invoking a sense of duty as a motivation to vote, Traci highlights a second, if more subtle, theme in both contemporary and classic writings on political engagement. If, in Federalist 10, Madison has written the quintessential statement on political participation as “protecting one’s interests,” then perhaps Tocqueville has written an equally quintessential description of political participation as driven by “fulfilling one’s duty.” In Democracy in America, Tocqueville observes that American political institutions lead citizens to see that “it is the duty as well as the interest of men to be useful to their fellows. . . . What had been calculation becomes instinct. By dint of working for the good of his fellow citizens, he in the end acquires a habit and taste for serving them” (1988, 512–13).

These two opposing views of politics are not merely the abstract statements of theoreticians, the political science rendition of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. They also inform the writings and doings of political practitioners, with some of America’s founders as notable examples. Of course, Madison was one of the founders and, as noted, in his words we find a cogent description of how politics is inevitably defined by conflict. However, George Washington’s vision was of a republic free from strife among its citizens, in which citizens were involved in public affairs out of duty (Schudson 1998). Ironically, given their disagreements on so many other matters, Thomas Jefferson’s vision for the new republic mirrored Washington’s. Jefferson idealized a nation of small Tocquevillian communities, mentioning his ideal in almost every speech he gave (Morone 1990).

The ongoing debate between civic republican and liberal political philosophers over the nature of political life at the time of America’s founding underscores the two competing visions of democracy’s nature. In summarizing this extensive literature, James Morone writes,

[T]he dominant interpretation of liberal America focuses on the pursuit of self-interest. . . . In the republican view, the colonial and Revolutionary ideal lay, not in the pursuit of private matters, but in the shared public life of civic duty, in the subordination of individual interests to the res publica. Citizens were defined and fulfilled by participation in political community. (1990, 16, emphasis added)

The distinction between engagement driven by interests versus duty need not be seen as either/or. The very fact that evidence can be mustered to support both interpretations of the founders’ ideals suggests that neither one dominated to the exclusion of the other. Nor should we assume that the essential difference between engagement spurred by a threat to one’s interests and engagement motivated by a sense of civic obligation has faded over time. Indeed, the distinction between interest-driven and duty-driven engagement is at the core of this book, which is about contemporary patterns of public engagement in the United States."

read more...

So anyways, what I take from this is that there is a good, albeit never-discussed outside of this book, reason behind those ubiquitous and lame excuses of "I'm not voting because I don't like any of the candidates... "I don't know enough about the issues/candidates to choose..." "My vote doesn't really matter anyways..." "The whole political system is so fucked up I'm not voting just to protest it..."

The way I see it, not voting because you don't approve of the system is basically admitting defeat to the hegemonic two-party system. People in power have created and perpetuated this crazy dichotomy, which exists in such an intense form in very few countries (including the U.S.) So we don't have much choice if we want to vote for someone who is likely to win, but we do have a choice and we can't get scared off by the language of "conflict". Although which choice we make is crucial to each of us and our quests to further our personal interests, exercising the right to make the choice is crucial to our collective interest.

No, the world is not really separable into black and white, good and evil, Democrat and Republican - so it may seem unsatisfactory to have only those two choices before you. But by not voting to "protest" that, you are doing exactly what they want you to do. When less people vote, power remains concentrated in the hands of those who already have it. Although one vote may not matter much statistically, there's NO OTHER WAY to make changes. Unless, of course, the non-voters of the world are willing to put together a coalition, lobby and petition, run for office themselves, and go out into the streets to make their point. I am not saying non-voters are all kept away from the polls by laziness (although some might be) but rather that this frustrating political situation makes apathy a more reasonable choice for some people. However, those people shouldn't blame their apathy on the system, because they are the only ones who can change it.

As far as "not knowing enough" about the candidates or policies or ballot questions, I really can't come up with a polite way of saying that there's no excuse... Listen to NPR while you're in the shower or commuting. Watch the news in between commercials. Shop online for a candidate you agree with instead of shopping for a pink Teflon-coated frying pan. Read the newspaper, cnn.com, or The Nation instead of reading this blog. Fuck it, for all I care you can even watch a little Fox News - just don't listen too hard - while you're at the gym (why do they always have Fox News on in gyms?)

The point is, it does not require superhuman effort to be reasonably informed. In addition to learning about the candidates in your local elections, you will inadvertently learn about other stuff too. The latter will likely get you so fired up that you'll find it impossible to resist voting ever again. Even if it doesn't and you find my entire argument pointless, the frying pan will still be there.

election day

I didn't write this, which is all the more reason to read it:

Congressman John Lewis (GA-05), Chief Deputy Democratic Whip, delivers the Democratic Radio Address. In his address, Congressman Lewis celebrates the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and reflects on his own personal struggles and the struggles of everyday Americans in the 1960's to secure the right to vote for people of color. The Voting Rights Act is regarded as the seminal legislative accomplishment protecting the rights of voters of all backgrounds. It was signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson on August 6, 1965.

"Good morning. I'm Congressman John Lewis of Georgia.

Just 40 years ago in many parts of the American South, it was almost impossible for people of color to register to vote. Poll taxes, literacy tests, and grandfather clauses - as well as violence - were used to deny us this fundamental right.

People stood day-after-day in unmovable lines waiting on the courthouse steps trying to register to vote. And when they reached the front of the line, if they could not answer outrageous questions like, 'How many bubbles are in a bar of soap?' they were turned away. Doctors, lawyers, college professors, business owners, teachers, farmers, housewives were all told they could not read or write well enough to pass the test.

During the 1960's, the struggle to secure this most basic right involved the efforts of many brave Americans across the country. The cost was high: church burnings, bombings, shootings, and beatings.

It required the ultimate sacrifice of ordinary Americans: James Chaney, Andy Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, who simply sought to register voters, Jimmie Lee Jackson, whose death precipitated the famous march from Selma to Montgomery. These names are forever etched in our nation's history; they died for the cause of freedom.

On March 7, 1965, I marched with 600 men and women to draw attention to Jimmie Lee Jackson's death. We left Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma and walked two-by-two down the sidewalk - not in the middle of the street - and when we reached the crest of the Edmund Pettus Bridge we saw a sea of blue Alabama state troopers.

We kept on marching on that bridge crossing the Alabama River. And Hosea Williams, who was leading the march with me, turned to me and asked, 'John, can you swim?' I said, 'No, Hosea, I can't swim. We're not going back. We're not going to jump. We're going forward.' And we continued to march within steps of the troopers.

We were beaten, tear gassed, and trampled by horses on that bridge. We paid a price, but that's what it took to bring voting rights for people of color in America. The events of 'Bloody Sunday,' as it came to be known, aroused the conscience of the nation. Under President Lyndon Johnson's strong leadership, the nation responded and Congress passed the Voting Rights Act. President Johnson signed it into law 40 years ago today.

The Voting Rights Act provided extensive protections by prohibiting any voting practice that would abridge the right to vote on the basis of race. It effectively abolished poll taxes and literacy tests and provided for criminal and civil sanctions against persons interfering with the right to vote.

Our nation's history is one of expanding rights. In 1975, the Voting Rights Act was amended to require bilingual ballots and voting assistance in areas with significant language minority citizens. English-only ballots had the effect of serving as literacy tests for Latinos and Native Americans who were non-English speaking voters. In 1982, the Voting Rights Act was amended to protect the rights of voters with disabilities.

Thanks to the Voting Rights Act, today there are 81 Members of Congress of African American, Latino, Asian, and Native American descent, and thousands of minorities in elected offices around the country.

Our democracy depends on protecting the right of every American citizen to vote in every election. We must honor the legacy of all who died in the struggle for civil rights. We must renew our commitment to remove obstacles to the right to vote. Democrats are committed to protecting the right to vote, and will work to reauthorize and strengthen the sections of the Voting Rights Act that are set to expire.

We cannot forget that people sacrificed and died for the right to vote. They didn't die in Vietnam or Iraq. They didn't die in South America or Eastern Europe. They didn't die in Africa or Southeast Asia, they died right here in the United States, trying to exercise their Constitutional right to vote.

The moral value of our society is defined by the veracity with which we defend the dignity of humankind. We need to continue to address these needs if we want to build an interracial democracy where all Americans are treated with dignity and respect, what I like to call the Beloved Community.

I'm Congressman John Lewis. Thank you for listening."

i heart illustrated nihilism

Swallow your poison, for you need it badly.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

As you may have noticed, I'm no Che, but I do have my own little idiosyncratic mission. Today's topic is the antibacterial frenzy - thanks to Brian for bringing this one back to my mind's front burner where it belongs. As an introduction take a look at the article he sent me, from the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times, which aspiring revolutionaries should not overlook on moral grounds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/fashion/05germ.html?em&ex=1162875600&en=b77c5ca96dea5ea0&ei=5087%0A

So these people are crazy, that's a given. But there are several larger problems I see with this trend (bullet points again - you LOVE it!):

• Society suffers when we keep finding more and "better" ways to distance ourselves from others. Spatial separation between people translates easily into emotional distance and a loss of feelings of community.
• This effect is enhanced, in my mind, by the reason for imposing the distance: germs. Germs have been around forever, and yes - modern medicine has saved a lot of lives by finding new ways to kill germs. However, the threat of germs is used and abused by companies that make cleaning and personal care products in order make us afraid. Fear has a long history in marketing strategies: we buy things we never knew we needed, hoping they will protect us from scary elements we never knew existed. Just like we bought this war.
• Furthermore, the more little doses of antibiotics we take, the less our immune system is able to battle serious diseases. When you are prescribed antibiotics or a similar drug in pill form, the doctor tells you to make sure you finish the bottle as directed, even if you're feeling better after a day or two. Why? If you take less than the whole dose, most of the bacteria may have been killed, but the strongest germs, those that were not killed by the drug, survive (in small enough numbers that you no longer feel sick). When you stop taking the medicine the remaining germs have the opportunity to multiply and make you sick all over again. This is called developing antibiotic resistance. One of the major contributors to this problem is that doctors tend to over-prescribe antibiotics, even when they suspect the symptoms may be due to a virus, not a bacterial infection. They aren't the only ones to blame, of course, people misuse antibiotics all the time...they are in the milk...we wash our hands with them...

• Getting back to antibacterials/disinfectants/sanitizers in the more concrete sense - they're just not good for you! Now that milk-providing cows are being pumped full of antibiotics (among other chemicals, a discussion for another day) we have built-in levels of the chemicals in our bodies. Then we slather on antibacterial hand gel, shower with antibacterial body wash, use products treated with Microban, and even spray sanitizers directly into the air in closed indoor spaces! For anyone who hasn't read Silent Spring (do yourself a favor and read it) I will make a huge oversimplification: germs are living organisms, and chemicals that kill them do so by attacking their central nervous systems. When these chemicals (biocides) are applied repeatedly to our bodies, they build up over time (especially when they are encapsulated in petroleum-based lotions). When we spray them into the air, we inhale the tiny killers into our lungs. When we wash them off, they go down the drain and into the groundwater, building up in our water supplies. I could go on all day, but you get the picture. These articles are a good introduction to some of the best reasons to QUIT BEING OBSESSED WITH ANTIBACTERIALS!!! NOW!!! Love, Anne.
  

http://www.grinningplanet.com/2005/10-04/triclosan-article.htm

http://jac.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/49/1/11

Enough righteous indignation for the moment, unfortunately I have to get back to my real work now...

I have a fever, and the only thing that can cure it is MORE COWBELL.

So now I have a blog. "Why?", you ask? As a way of practicing for the Great Thesis Proposal Defense, let me boil it down to a few key Bullet Points:

• Amanda and other blog people tell me that this is National Blog Posting Month, in which all people are required to blog, and I'm the kind of person that follows the rules.
  
• Because everyone else is doing it, and I'm the kind of person that would jump off a bridge if everyone else was doing it.
  
• I ought to be doing something else, like schoolwork, and I'm the kind of person that will do anything to avoid work, even at great personal risk.
• I sometimes tend to suck at keeping in touch with people. Maybe those people can read my blog and pretend they are talking to me.
• Save trees.
• Proselytize.
  
• I have been going through innumerable crises of conscience within the past few weeks, mainly due to my thesis (henceforth, my "Albatross"). Someone wise pointed out that writing about it could be therapeutic. It's worth a shot, especially considering I am "between health insurance plans" right now and have no money to buy drugs in the informal economy.
  

lazy sunday

I'm committed to laziness today. It's all grey and humid outside, not the kind of weather that would be conducive to my original plan of riding my bike to the grocery store... I have 35,955 miles on my car and it's only under warranty until 36,000, but the jerkwads at Ira can't look at it until Wednesday. So not only is my car a bastion of all that is evil in the world, it can't even take me to Stop & Shop to buy some frickin organic pears.

So since I can't drive, and in preparation for the long car-less days ahead (during which the aforementioned jerkwads stare blankly at my car and try to think of things they can fix that aren't covered by the warranty,) I practiced my mass transit skillz today. It took me four and a half hours to get from Canton to Lowell, but I only spent $1.25.

After a much needed water + Tylenol + large iced coffee + supreme omelet (oh GOD yes) breakfast to assuage my hangover, Amanda dropped me off at the commuter rail in Canton. I had to get the T from Back Bay to North Station, and was literally a minute late for the commuter rail to Lowell. So I walked around the area for an hour, watched some people, listened to some tunes, and tried not to consider myself too much of a martyr for not driving myself last night, despite the fact that if I had, I would have been home by 2am last night and wouldn't have had to waste the whole day today. But is a day spent supporting public transportation really a wasted day? I'm telling myself it's not. So when I arrived at the Gallagher, which is conveniently located NOT DOWNTOWN, I watched as the one bus I needed pulled away, not to return for an hour. The public transportation sitation in Lowell is absolutely ridiculous - think of all the people who have to completely RELY on that crap to get around! I weighed my options: walk home or walk to my car and drive home. Having planned to accomplish tons of work today, I broke down and called Kate for a ride to my car, defeating the whole purpose of trying not to be car-dependent...

When we got to my car, I showed Kate the battery acid all over my car's inner workings (or whatever all that stuff under the hood is called.) She was duly apalled, and even suggested that I green clean it off with one of the many gallons of distilled vinegar I keep in my backseat. But I'm not a chemist, so I just drove home and hoped for the best :)

So when I got home I was all, "I just need to ride my bike everywhere I need to go, starting with the store." But then I sat down on my bed and all my aspirations melted away into a pool of extreme laziness. I know I'll have to go to the store at some point, because I don't have any milk for my iced coffee, and that's a problem. I think if I had an iced coffee holder on my bike I'd be a lot more psyched to take it places; maybe I'll invent one in my spare time. But for now I'm just superglued to the couch, plotting and planning how to make people do what I want without coming off like some crazy zealot. On a less insidious level, I'm also plotting something delicious for dinner. Macaroni and cheese? A healthy salad? No, macaroni and cheese. Don't fret, cheese, you'll always be my true love.

Speaking of being a zealot, may I remind you all to go see the Al Gore movie? NOW? I saw it for the second time last night, and although I missed the first hour, I'm even more convinced that WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE if we don't do something soon. Can somebody lend me $35,000? I need a hybrid. I'll share it if you make the car payments - I'll even throw in gas money!

i heart summer

I was sitting out on the porch today watching a little league game and I finally realized that in the past week, all of a sudden, I've been able to do all the fun stuff I missed out on during school (i.e. relaxing, lazing about, being a sloth, puttering, sitting around, etc.) I went to the state forest and took pictures of caterpillars, played my poor neglected guitar, cooked delicious food, took a nap in the middle of the day, went on a road trip, knitted, and completely ignored my desk, which is obscured by an ever-growing pile of papers that I will never look at again. It would be fun to have a symbolic bonfire with them like we used to do in college, but I feel too guilty about that kind of thing now, so I'll probably just recycle them... Either way I don't have to read them, and that is why summer is f-ing super.

it's all over

Thank GOD. School has officially stopped torturing me for the year. I know I've said it a million times, but WHAT posessed me to go back to school? I sucked at school before, I suck at school now. I will continue to suck at school until I finally convince myself that perhaps school is not my life's calling. So far, however, waitressing is the only thing I've found that I don't suck at, and I refuse to accept that waitressing is my life's calling. I have way too much in green cleaning at this point to end it all before I change the world (i.e. before I convince at least 12 million people to drop their Windex.)

So I've been told that Bullet Points "really get the point across." This is convenient because I don't have the energy to get creative and write "paragraphs" right now. I haven't blogged much since the last disaster (thesis proposal rejection,) so here's what has happened since I last blogged, in Bullet Points:

-I rewrite my proposal and never hear whether it's OK or not
-I worry, but I have bigger fish to fry
-My love for baking soda gets increasingly obsessive
-Some jerkwad in my group decides to plagiarize her section of my final project
-I have an ethical dilemma
-I have a nervous breakdown
-My professors take pity on me, one gives me an extension
-Mother Nature takes pity on me and sends a flood
-I feel bad for all the people who lost their cars and houses in the flood, but I'm secretly psyched because school is closed on the day my finals are due
-I still somehow manage to get all behind and don't sleep for a week
-I am cracked out to the extreme
-I pull a few more all-nighters, try my best to deal with the jerkwad's section
-I give up on the project
-I take that bitch to Staples, bind it, and get it out of my life
-I have another nervous breakdown, pull another all-nighter, and pour every fiber of my being into writing about green cleaning
-I email that bitch to the professor and drive to Boston for Alexis' graduation
-I miss the graduation itself but am just in time for a delicious Bloody Mary
-I proceed to the RESD party and drink some more, make pleasant conversation with the plagiarist, who I admit is actually a nice person
-There are balloon animals
-I go to Kelly's baby shower, give her some pesticide-free organic cotton baby clothes
-Amanda and I drive to Braintree to get a thing so we can play our Ipods in the car
-The Ipod thing attacks us viciously
-We make our way towards the sweet sunny South
-There is a rainstorm
-There is traffic
-There is a hailstorm
-There is a plague of locusts and I see the seven horsemen of the Apocalypse riding beside us on 95
-We stop at an unsavory location in New Jersey which is both a bar AND a package store, buy some wine, anticipating that we will REALLY need a drink when we get to DC
-We get to DC, drive past our hotel, and proceed to get lost in DC for an hour while trying to call the hotel
-No one picks up the phone at the hotel
-We finally get there at 4:30 in the morning, the little birdies are tweeting
-The desk clerk is "auditing the system" so we can't check in
-We do not even think about opening the wine... We sleep
-We go to some Smithsonians, see some cool insects and the Hope Diamond
-I have my picture taken with the Swedish Chef, my favorite Muppet
-We eat a ridiculous amount of food
-We smoke cigarettes at the bar
-We eat more food
-We suffer food comas and can't seem to motivate ourselves to go back out
-We watch some show about this crazy person who wants a room in her house to look like Hilary Duff's sewing room
-Hilary Duff is a stupid human being
-I get to my green cleaning seminar an hour early
-I eat some danish, scope out the scene at the Holiday Inn
-There are no hot building service contractors in the house
-A guy from Norwood tells an extremely tall tale about the flood, I keep my mouth shut
-I "network" with the guy from Norwood, who makes cleaning products that come in a self-contained biobased film
-I forgive him for being a liar because he's so green
-The seminar would be better if I could keep my eyes open
-We get back on the road, I pray
-We get lost in the ghettoes of Maryland for a while
-We play Twenty Questions, coming up with some killers, including: Army, Lighter Fluid, Jack o' Lantern, Johnny Appleseed, and Picture Frame
-We play Trivia towards the end of New Jersey, but years of pot-smoking seem to have destroyed my memory
-We play Categories through Connecticut and Rhode Island
-I get home and sleep like I've never slept before
-I go to work for about an hour, come home, and sleep some more
-I wake up to an email from the jerkwad plagiarist saying she got an A on the project

So that's my story. It's been a crazy few weeks, and I wish I could express more eloquently how ridiculously happy I am that it's all over. Suffice it to say this is going to be the goddamned best summer of my entire life. Even if I wake up tomorrow and I have no feet, I will be happy. If you'll excuse me, I have to whip up a baking soda paste for the dishes.

a piss-poor day on the farm

This blog entry is really only of interest to true Anne Devotees. It's not going to be creative, it's not going to be funny, so if you're just being Anne-curious, look elsewhere because you're about to be bored out of your skull. Unless, of course, you have a passion for epic tales of woe that have nothing to do with love or human relationships, but rather focus on qualitative research methods. If that does describe you, you're weird.

Thesis proposal
Torn to little tiny shreds
One more albatross


For those of you who haven't already heard the three-hour psychotic tirade behind that haiku: today I was supposed to defend my reserach design proposal for my thesis... It didn't go quite as well as I had anticipated. I seriously thought my design was bulletproof and impervious to criticism, yet like I insinuated, it was torn apart. My professor found holes in my research question big enough to walk through. And of course the rest of the design, having been based on that central question, was totally invalidated. Phrases like "totally not feasible," "you're not an epidemiologist," "this is not a RESD thesis," and "you just can't really do this" were tossed around the room like so many spiny wiffle balls. It was not a good scene. I didn't know whether I wanted to cry or throw up or just scream "BUT WE DISCUSSED THIS!!! BUT I'VE BEEN WORKING WITH THE SAME RESEARCH QUESTION ALL SEMESTER AND ONLY NOW YOU'RE TELLING ME EXACTLY HOW BAD IT IS?"

Jesus Christ on a bike. I just couldn't help feeling like it was somehow personal. I feel like I got punched in the stomach repeatedly for an hour... I just f-ing HATE actually putting effort into things and having them suck. It just goes to show that my traditional formula of not putting any effort into schoolwork is actually the most effective.

I also f-ing hate the fact that I drank 3 cups of coffee at like midnight because I got a new coffeemaker and I just haaaad to try it out. This combination of seething anger, the resulting adrenaline, and being physically wired is just not helping me get to sleep. I have more pointless phone interviews to conduct tomorrow. Perhaps I should tell my interviewee, "Hey, its really nice of you to agree to talk to me, but unfortunately my research design is so lame that it's really useless for me to ask you any questions. Yeah, my whole thesis topic has ebola. Apparently. Thanks for your time!"

Why did I come to grad school? What in the good green earth was I thinking? I sucked at school before; I had no logical reason to believe that three years of waitressing would have given me that unstoppable impetus to learn that I had been lacking when I was in college...

I heard this amazingly beautiful John Lennon song today that I had never heard before, "Working Class Hero." According to John, "a working class hero is something to be." Please indulge my crisis of self/purpose in life and consider how this leads me to two possibilities:
1. I should go to New England Tractor Trailer School, get a real job, and get over myself.
-OR-
2. I am doing this for all the wrong reasons. I read a study or something that argues that people who go into social work, non-profits, social justice work, etc., do so out of a subconscious need to be taken care of themselves. That is, anyone who does something nice for someone else (but NOT as a means to an end - rather because they think they are just being nice and "caretaker-y") is actually hoping that someone will take care of them in return. I don't really know what to do with that theory, I just thought it was interesting to consider that maybe I don't actually want to help people - in which case I REALLY ought to just go to NETTS...

By way of ending
I know I'm totally nuts
It's something to be

a haiku for roo-roo

After all this time I just realized that was a haiku! Well here's one right back at you, outlining in a simple zen-like form why I haven't blogged lately:

Data collection
Satan invented grad school
I'll sleep when I'm dead

Paper-writing hell
Power Point Purgatory
Alliteration

I got a little carried away on that last one. Those were the days, though, writing haikus about thrust and fuselage in engineering class. Oh Joe Palladino, you made drag coeffiecients sound so HOT...

Back to my research design. This is officially Dark Night of My Soul Number One of the semester.