There are many things for which I give thanks this year. The Macy's Parade getting RickRolled by Rick Astley himself, live in New York, is not one of them. Although I do expect a good response to this event from XKCD.

It's not actually raining here–more like partly cloudy and a temperature that won't make up its mind–but this post's title is pertinent because Laura and I are going to go see Dar Williams live in concert tomorrow.

Chalk one more up on the "Si is compensating for never having been to Lilith Fair" list.

I am well-pleased.

I'm putting most of my time and effort into work these days. I have a system, and it's keeping me on track, but it means that I end up having little time for other things. Other things require energy, which I'm rationing right now for obvious reasons (plus I'm coming down with something, which means that the stock is low already). But in reflecting on my current situation, I started thinking about other things I would like to put energy into, time and money permitting. I'm going to list some here, in the hopes that public documentation, pressure, and opportunity bring some of them to pass:

1. Foreign Languages. I want to learn ASL and Spanish, out of a sense of responsibility. It only seems right to be able to communicate. In an ideal world where I had the leisure, I would Gaelic and Sinhalese as well just for the kicks.

2. Exercise. I know that it's good for me, both physically and psychologically. The problem is that I'm a lazy bum with no motivation and no discipline.

3. EMS. I want to finish up an EMT course, take the time to volunteer with an ambulance service, and spend enough ride time to determine how much of a part of my life it'll end up being.

4. Cooking. I want to take a couple of weeks and just cook, cook, cook until I feel confident about the whole affair. I know I can do it, I just need to practice enough to really be sure of myself in the process.

5. Music. I need to get back into singing, I want to pick up another instrument of two (maybe finally learn guitar, or keyboard, or just mesh the two and learn to play the keytar), and I want to have an established public outlet for said music. In practical terms, this likely means either or both of a church choir and a cover band.

Hold me to these, O people of the interwebs. Just give me some slack until I finish my papers, OK?

I'm back in the local ambulance company's classroom to round out my medical training: Vermont teaches EMT programs in modules, and it's generally expected that First Responders will take at least the first two modules, which certify you to administer an AED and pressurized oxygen (oxygen is a prescription medicine. Who knew?). It's a strange thing, conceptually, to work through the question of why the hell I'm doing this. Do I have a hero complex? To an extent, I'm sure that's a factor. There's an element of gut instinct telling me to do it. My therapist would also point out long-standing issues regarding my childhood and a subsequent propensity to view situations as crises and proceed to resolve them. I'm not sure if this is something that will continue to develop in my life, or if it's just something to do while I'm in this place and this time. But I'm definitely prepping myself now for wherever this particular call leads.

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.

Once again, I find myself (yes, Debra, I find myself) in the position of not feeling comfortable saying what I want to say here. It's a tough situation: on the one hand, I feel like blogging is good for me and a useful exercise; on the other, I can write paragraphs and paragraphs in this little box labeled "Article Body" and it doesn't do much good if I can't bring myself to hit the gray button that says "Post."

I just don't know what to do with this.

Aaaaand I'm back. I said I'd keep posting, but that kind of got interrupted as my laptop has up until just now been in the shop for a display repair. Let's see if we can get this back on track, shall we?

Why is it that radio stations will censor the words "giving head" when Lou Reed sings "Walk on the Wild Side," neither of which are inherently inappropriate for all audiences in and of themselves, but not the word "faggot" in the Dire Strait's Money for Nothing?

Someone's got their priorities out of whack.

During my recent illness, I resorted to watching the YouTube/CNN Democratic Debates in an attempt to alleviate my boredom. The format, I thought, worked rather well. While I've heard complaints that the presidential race is being dragged down into entertainment instead of good old-fashioned civic duty, I figure that since civic duty doesn't seem to be working, entertainment is an alright place to start. Some of the candidates surprised me. Obama, whose progress I have eyed with general approval, let me down by playing politics too much. He changed questions around so that he cound answer the ones he wanted to answer and spent too much time saying "I'm the best one" instead of "here's how I would respond." His rhetoric regarding a change in politics rings hollow after such behavior. Meanwhile, Richardson pleased me by plainly answering a couple of questions and being fairly straightforward on the whole, and Kucinich, while excitable, proved himself firmly dedicated to making sure that the military mess we're in stops–whether he's elected or not. Unfortunately, both of those two appear to be lacking in "electability" (how I loathe that word), especially put up next to the competition. We'll see how the rest of the campaign trail finishes out, I guess.

JJ Abrams, the mind behind notoriously devious TV plotlines as Alias and Lost, is working on a monster movie. However, the film is not being marketed in a traditional way. With a subtle flair, the as-of-yet nameless film has a poster featuring a decapitated Statue of Liberty, a teaser trailer that does an excellent job of raising questions instead of answering them, and three online places for people to attempt to dig up clues: 1-18-10.com has a collection of photographs time-stamped from the point at which the monster attacks, some of which have notes handwritten on the back; Slusho is a made-up slushie-style drink that has seen appearance in Alias and apparently has something to do with the film as well, although I have a lot of trouble trying to dig anything useful out of the bizarre website; and it appears that the protagonists of the film have their own Myspace accounts. The few things that JJ Abrams has said about the movie only add to the suspense. The monster was inspired by Godzilla, but is not a sequel or remake of any other work. It is not a parasite not an oversized anime-style robot. There are just enough hints for me to drive myself mad wondering about the end result–which, at the end of the day, means that the ad campaign has worked extremely well.

I've been pretty nastily sick for a while, and although I'm more or less on the mend now, I got to thinking in my illness that I should get off of my ass and pick this up again.

The first order of business: Harry Potter (no spoilers ahead, don't worry). Wow, that was an incredible book to read. I really want to go back now and reread the earlier books to get a sense of perspective regarding Harry's development over the years. He came a long way from that wide-eyed, somewhat oblivious boy. JKR did a great job with the entire series, I think, and they're books that I'll be proud to have on my shelves for years to come.

Second: Most of you who read this read my dad's blog, so you likely already know that my parents have left to move back to Jersey for a year. The positive upshot to this for me is that I have the house to myself for the rest of the summer (give or take a week). Being here alone (plus having full reign over the stereo) is intensely relaxing.

Third: Next year at school I will be living in a suite that includes a private kitchen. Given the general quality of the food served in the cafeteria,* I have no good reason to keep avoiding my long-standing goal of learning how to cook. This being the case, I am now officially soliciting vegetarian recipes that I can use as stepping stones on my quest. Your participation is greatly appreciated.

*I do not wish to cast any aspersions on the kitchen staff at my college. They are wonderful, hardworking, talented chefs and I fully understand that the meals that leave me dissatisfied are the best that they can do when faced with severely limited supplies, time, staff, and budget.

I'm going to try to hold myself to a one-post-a-day minimum, so if I miss a day, you have my express permission and encouragement to heckle me about it.

I'm back in Evanston.

I've got a job lined up to start in a couple weeks (the commmute is worse than before, but the pay and hours are better).

I've got so much time, yet I feel like I lack the energy to actually do anything with it (even with projects I should be working on right in front of my face).

Blah.

I've started cleaning house for the move back to Evanston. It's bittersweet, seeing things of varying sentimental value divvied into piles of storage, shipping, and donations.

One of these years, I'm going to go for a full year without having to pack all my crap and move it.

Really.

After opening night of the second dance performance I've been in in two weeks, I received this comment:

"Si, if zombies ever invade and you get bitten, I'm shooting you first. 'Cause you're creepy."

I'm taking this as a compliment.

I know that it's way too early, but yesterday I had a flash of inspiration regarding what I could do for the independent portion of my Plan. It's moderately implausible, but if I could pull it off... The closest comparison I can think of off the top of my head is some bizarre collaboration between Saul Williams, Laurie Anderson, Alfonso Cuarón, and Martha Graham. And maybe Blue Man Group thrown in for good measure.

I am excited. My roommates say I'm crazy. I take this as a good sign.

The thunder rumbled like a feral beast asserting its dominance. Softly, a whispered response came from the clouds, growing louder as the rains swept across the mountainside. The time of cleansing had come.

I'm back again... We'll see how long it lasts this time.

I couldn't find a specific news link about the Julie Amero case neutral enough for me to feel comfortable posting, but do look around and see what's going on.

I feel disgusted at such a flagrant display of skewed "moral" priorities taking the place of law and justice. I admit that I only know as much about the case as I have been able to glean from various news sources, but what I've seen leads me to perceive the situation as a blatant example of bad judgment. If we give Amero the benefit of the doubt, then she may well have to spend 40 years (essentially the rest of her life) in prison on account of pop-up windows in Internet Explorer. If we assume that she is guilty and showed these sites to her class on purpose, then she may well have to spend 40 years in prison (a sentence four times as long as the state minimum for a rape conviction) for inappropriately showing 13-year-olds pictures of naked people, a sight which the majority of them have most likely seen anyway.

The case of Julie Amero brings up again for me a major problem with the country in which I live. Americans as a whole see sex and nudity to be far more shameful and wrong than violence. The logic of that perception escapes me completely. The rallying cry "We must protect the children" rings false to me when protection involves censoring naked bodies instead of mutilated bodies. The concern, as I understand it, is to keep children from emulating what they see. Why, then, is a naked body worse to see than crowds of people getting bludgeoned and shot and eviscerated? If I were to raise a child, I would infinitely prefer that my child strip down and get naked than start whaling on or kill someone else.

It's late and I'm out of steam. Maybe I'll follow up on this in the morning.

Is this what it really means to be an adult?

The Christmas season has been wonderful, but quite exhausting. I've been running around for the past week and a half going to various family events and church and out of town and back into town and only just now do I have a chance to sit back and breathe, having just driven Laura back up to St. Olaf. There's actually snow up here, and a bite to the air that provides a calming reminder that winter does, in fact, exist and should occur during this general period of time.

For Christmas, Laura gave me this collection of poetry by Jill Scott, which I'd asked for to help with the tutorial I'm trying to set up for next fall (an analysis of 20th century song lyrics as poetry). I have since fallen in love with Scott's words, and the book along with some holiday stress prompted me to start writing poetry again–– for which I am very, very grateful. Not only am I happy to be writing again, but the material I'm producing feels much more satisfactory than earlier work.

Drove down to Laura's this morning on empty streets listening to excerpts from the Relient K Christmas album. Life is good, it finally feels like Christmas.

Much love and happy holidays to you all.

So I'm home. I'm not really sure what to say... this place and the place I just came from seem like two entirely different realities. I cringe at the reference, but it's kind of like the film Passion of the Mind when Demi Moore can't figure out which dream or reality is, well, real. If that reference makes no sense to you, don't worry; it's a terrible movie that you shouldn't bother seeing. But the point is, I'm still trying to define my own reality and where my life will go.

Cryptic, eh? I don't get it either.

All my assignments for the term are finished. I need to turn them in, attend another day and a half of classes, and finish one exam this weekend, and then that's it. I can do this.

Three performances, one CGI web page, a quiz, a presentation, and a paper to do this weekend. After Sunday things should be bearable again.

The wireless connection in my dorm is spotty at best, so I wanted to plug in my own router to boost the signal. However, the school network needs to configure all the routers on the network so that the DHCP settings all play nice. I brought my router down to the admin, who promptly told me that the built-in firmware wouldn't allow the necessary settings. He then offered to hack it so that we could configure it however we wanted.

h4x0r3d. The happy way.

I am sooooooo euphoric right now.

My a cappella group, The Desperate Measures *pause for groan here*, had their debut concert tonight to a wildly enthusiastic full house. I am extremely proud of everyone and thrilled that it all went so well.

Yay me!!!

Once again, I amaze myself with my ability to get tons of stuff done except for the thing i need to get done.

I have a final paper due this coming Monday for Elements of Style. I have a very rough draft of that paper that needs quite a bit of revision. I have tons to do over the weekend, and not much free time to work.

So, instead of revising my paper during my five-hour work shift, I compiled the set list and starting tones for my a cappella group's debut concert tomorrow night, finalized plans for New Year's Eve with Laura, sent in a status report to my boss, and started toying with programming in CGI.

The final still needs work. Now I just need something ELSE I can procrastinate on so I can get the final done while I'm avoiding the other thing.