First, three days ago, police started prepping for riots in cities heavily populated by African-Americans.

Now, a woman in Pittsburgh has been allegedly robbed and beaten by an African-American man–who she alleges was provoked to anger by her John McCain bumper sticker.

I really don't like the direction this is going. It's far too easy to visualize riot police forming barricades around voting centers. I don't have the option of voting early in my town, but if you do, I'd recommend it–especially if you're in Pittsburgh.

EDIT: The woman in Pittsburgh has confessed to making the story up.

Dear Myself,

Do you remember way back when you were getting ready to propose? There was a point at which you had a twinge of concern regarding the coinciding obligations of planning the wedding and getting your final batch of coursework done. Remember that?

Yeah. About that. Not your best move ever.

Love,
Si

One thing that I love about my school is the student-organized Secret DJ program. Once or twice a semester, a collection is taken of people's names and mailbox numbers. Each person receives someone else's information, and is asked to make a mix CD for that person. The one that I received this time around, over and above being labeled "For Si, Whom I Love from Afar," had a delightful blend of favorites (Nickel Creek, Toto, Traveling Wilburys, Iron and Wine, etc.) and new sounds (Martin Sexton, Jonathan Richman, and The Ark, to name a few). I'm pleased with how well the system has been working out, and it tempts me to try and organize a similar event across the interwebs. It's probably something that should wait until I build up a regular reader base again, but I'd be really intrigued by what could come out of it. What would the Accordion Guy send to the Anglobaptist? What would RageBoy send to Dooce, or vice versa (either way, that one bends my mind)? Most importantly, what parts of the recipient's blog would be used in judging what would go on their mix? I'll let this idea float for a while, and if people want to jump on this, let me know and I'll try to make it happen.

Tunes: "This Piece of Poetry is Meant to Do Harm," The Ark.

I've noticed recently just how frequently we talk about various conditions of health in wholly inaccurate terms. When someone says they have "a cold," they refer not to a particular disease of infection but to an assortment of various (often generic) symptoms that could be caused by any particular bacterial or viral strain or infection. I reflect on this now because I feel sickly (which, despite appearances, is an adjective, not an adverb). I'm using this word in a quite similar situation to my previous example: as a catch-all term to incorporate my stiff jaw, indigestion, exhaustion, and sinus pressure into a single affliction about which I can then conveniently complain. This series of irritations comes ironically close on the heels of a post-presidential-debate discussion I had last night about various forms of health care–which, both candidates might be surprised to hear, is not the same thing as health insurance. In fact, the two are extremely strange bedfellows: insurance companies thrive by receiving payments to not provide healthcare (or, more specifically, the funding for healthcare). If I ran an insurance company, I'd be thrilled by either candidate: If McCain wins, I could compete by cutting the meager services I actually offered and thus decreasing overhead; if Obama wins, then a number of people would be bound by law to purchase my services or the services of a competitor. Either way, it's a boon for the industry. As a citizen who's not feeling well, however, I cringe in the knowledge that no matter the outcome of the current political race, I still won't be able to afford many healthcare services that would be greatly beneficial to my quality of life, such as preventative care. The worst part, though, is knowing that if I can't afford healthcare, there are many, many more who can't even afford the pieces that I receive. So I'm tucked in with a glass of water and a bottle of vitamins, praying that something will be done to keep people from ailing and dying from common diseases with simple–yet prohibitively expensive–treatments.

It's been over a year since I've written here. I apologize to then-regular readers and those who linked to me for disappearing from the series of tubes, and I'm glad to be back. There are three aspects of my life that I want to touch on as context for where I'm writing from these days:

1. Academia
I've been cracking the books for my Plan of Concentration (senior thesis project, for those unfamiliar with Marlboro College). I realized this term that I needed a grounding in theoretical literary criticism to really make my point, and as such I'm reading Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction, Lentricchia's After the New Criticism, and a collection of essays titled Contemporary Literary Theory. It's all a bit of a mess to dive right into; I'm only just getting a sense of what Frye and Poulet and Derrida were on about. It would be wonderful to have the time and leisure to read through their primary works, but that's just not an option right now. I should have enough of the background to make my case over the next couple of weeks, though.

2. Work
I left my longtime work-study job in the computer lab (where the primary job description was to wait for the printer to run out of toner, then change the toner cartridge and repeat step 1) for a position tutoring in the academic support services office. I've been planning for a while now to go into editing when I graduate, and this job has done everything to encourage that path. I find fulfillment in the faces that come in and out of my office, asking questions about style manuals, comma splices, and paragraph structure. The joy of seeing someone come in a second time and learning that they took something away from their last visit, that I was able to help them work through their problem, is a feeling that I look forward to experiencing in a professional environment.

3. Home
For the first time in my life, and thankfully from here on out, I'm consistently living in the same place as my wonderful fiancée Laura. She graduated this past Spring and moved out to VT to be near me. I get to spend most of my days with her, as opposed to the two or three days per two or three months that we could arrange over school breaks. She's a good influence on me academically, and I can't express just how drastically my day-to-day life has improved on account of her.

3.5 Home (the rest of it)
The previous section ended up being much more about Laura than I had planned or expected, but it makes sense in retrospect. My home life outside of my time with Laura is, depending on which aspect you're looking at, either in a state of extreme flux or just plain boring. I still spend time with my friends at school, but not nearly as much as I used to on account of the workload we all have, and as far as my family goes, I have trouble keeping track of who's where when doing what and for how long. Either way, it's hard for me to extrapolate in great detail on either one; I don't have the background for one and the other means more to me if it's not noteworthy and merely an accepted part of my everyday life.

This blog began, in its original form as a way for me to keep in touch with family and friends when I was abroad in Sri Lanka. It shifted to become a place where I shared with a broader audience my thoughts, musings, and verbal art. With all the changes I've been through over the past several years, it's not hard for me to see how I had trouble drawing a line between what was and wasn't alright to expose. At this stage, I can see a place for this sort of expression in my life: a virtual location where I can talk about issues personal and global, without sharing more than I'm comfortable sharing.

And on that note, I have to go write a paper taking New Criticism to task for discounting extra-textual context. I'll be back. Soon.