The Non-Adventures of Ernest and Vernal Equinox

I haven't written entries here much this month. You've been in and out of rehab each week, trying to cope, I know. You figure "hey, I guess he's given up on this thing, I can finally get clean!" But you'd be wrong to think that - as you know - since I've had to babble once a week to keep you hooked on the smack - er, blog. And that's okay. This is America (At least where I'm writing this.), and planet Earth (Gotta be all-inclusive.), and to not have some sort of unhealthy addiction - that wouldn't merely be unamerican, you could say it's even entirely unearthlinglike. You don't want to be mistaken for one of those space aliens, do you? You know, the ones they always say are abducting people and making Sigmund Freud proud. You don't want to be one of those - word is, all they ever do is get high and look at asses. They're the underachievers of the universe. (Which is something, considering that those Earth-creatures haven't even figured out that simple loophole to exceed light speed in space travel. Always forgetting to carry the two, sheesh.)

Anyway, obviously, it's been nearly another full week since that last one, which flopped pretty epically. Ah well. Since then, the Vernal Equinox has passed, and thus, it now spring. Spring! When a young man's fancy turns to love then it turns out just to be lust and things don't last till summer - leaving room for one of those fanciful "summer romances" where you pretend to love each other for less than 100 days, then realize it was just skin cancer because you didn't stay out of the sun! What a glorious time of the year it is, jumping between irritatingly warm temperatures and more pleasant, cooler days at a brain-scramblingly unpredictable tempo. We've seen some nice rain here and there around here, though we're still dealing with drought conditions and no sign of an end to them before summer hits and everything dries out even more. Meanwhile, the weather's been pretty crazy everywhere else in its own way. If New England and the Midwest aren't getting hit with huge blizzards - blizzards that I admit I'm quite envious of, and look forward to whenever I hopefully get up there next year - they're getting drowned by floods, as the Midwest presently is. It's hard to decide if I envy everyone in Illinois and all dealing with that. It'd be fantastic to see an end to the drought conditions here, but a surplus to the point of water damaging everything is, to put it lightly, less than ideal. Though knowing North Carolinians, as soon as we shake off these drought conditions - however many years that take - we'll celebrate by going right back to overusing our water resources and learn nothing from this whole ordeal. But then, most of us don't seem to be learning anything, anyway.

If you've been curious about the reasoning behind my not pummeling you with random entries here this month - and it's not just a matter of feeling uninspired as to blogging topics lately, though granted, that's a part of it - I thought you should know that it's a matter of my being productive in regards to other matters. I don't exactly want to be one of those aspiring novelists who talks about finishing and publishing a novel forever, after setting up a writing blog online like this, and never goes through with it. And I've been working on this novel for over two years now. It's been growing, evolving with its cast of characters and the events they experience aboard the phantasmal train chugging down the Kettenkrad Line. The book has been nearly complete for a good while now, through my usual non-linear writing style - as I tend to jump back and forth between linear and non-linear writing - it keeps things interesting, and my mental processes fresh. I'd say it's preferable to sit down and go through a story from multiple perspectives, to look at it as something complicated and three-dimensional, and a non-linear approach to writing works well that way, I feel. Then you can go back through it and figure out how to best string everything together in a linear manner so that the reader will actually be able to sit down and read the story and actually understand what they're reading. From discombobulated ideas with subtle connections to an ideally rich narrative through which you connect all the non-linear concepts and plot twists. This approach is probably somewhat eccentric, though. In having read other established and aspiring novelists' conversations about their approaches to writing online, this sort of method doesn't seem to be the status quo. At any rate, I've been working hard every night to finish completed packet after packet of chapters for my test readers, with the goal of finishing the novel 100% by the end of April - a goal that is certainly within reach, at the rate I'm going. As such, that has my full attention over coming up with topics to write about here - I'm probably getting to be a bit overdue for another love/relationship musing post anyway, those seem to do well enough, ironically for someone who's only had bad relationships like myself - and I probably won't be writing quite as frequently here until the book is complete and I've begun the agent-querying process by later spring. That's not to say that I won't at least try to write at least one entry a week here, though. I just need to find more inspiration, more interesting topics that I can babble about until you realize "Hey, this guy's a nutjob with nothing interesting to say." Or at least, that most people conclude that somewhere along the way is what my traffic numbers seem to be telling me - not that it's any good to focus on those as a blogger either. Profiticate your blog for moneys! Hold up Google Ads at gunpoint as though you were knocking over a bank while learning how to please your woman with your own Ronco Ultra Death Ray for payments of $29.99 for just 3,127 months! You can't lose!

These seasons, though, they do indeed change. Time passes, and life, for me, is admittedly pretty monotonous until I get this book published - ideally within the year, hopefully reaching my spring 2009 goal, unrealistic as it probably is, given my additional aspirations with what the novel stands for in its dedication - or I at least make it into a grad school Creative Writing program. But I do hope life is more interesting and eventful for the rest of you, those of you who still remember to drop by this dusty little corner of the internets. Hopefully I'll find more inspiration soon - or at least, I'll find something in the headlines that I feel like blogging about - considering how slow and uninteresting these entries have been as of late, no doubt. (I can't exactly blame anybody for not bothering with that last entry. American culture is confused about sex? Politicians are corrupt and love to have affairs!? I may as well have written an entry about how grass is green, the sky is blue, and how Sonic the Hedgehog is not an accurate representation of real hedgehogs.) In the meantime, I'm going to keep working on finishing this novel up so I can get it on shelves as soon as feasibly and humanly possible - depending on how lucky I get - and in the meantime, enjoying Opoona when it hits stores in the next 24 hours.

It's spring, things are starting to warm up again before the foul beast we call summer shows up again to devour everything. Busy as you may be, make sure to take some time out to enjoy yourself. We can't all work all the time, after all. Take some time to enjoy a walk in the fresh spring air, listen to the birds sing, stop and smell the roses, yadda yadda yadda. I'm turning into a stale platitude here, but you know what I'm getting at.

Waffles?

That's Concentrated Evil You've got in Those Pants of Yours

America loves many things, many things indeed. But there's little America loves more than a good old-fashioned sex scandal. Underneath the puritanical facade this nation loves to hide behind, America's a dirty, dirty place. Of course, we can't look at a natural aspect of humanity to be understood and embraced - What do you mean it isn't a matter of one right way and many wrong ways!? - that'd be downright unamerican, after all! Don't you know the gays and terrorists are in league with the Mexicans trying to take down Taco Bell!?

In 1998, an epic series of sex scandals no one has yet to match - let alone surpass - erupted around president Bill Clinton. Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers, and more came out in alleging sexual misconduct from the president - Monica Lewinsky being the most famous of the lot - and in many cases getting admissions of wrongdoing. The Republicans had a field day. We'd never do something like that, clearly the left-wing is immoral! The ever-sleazy Republican lawyer, Kenneth Starr, was appointed to the Office of Independent Counsel, in which he made a career of trying to take Clinton down, ultimately publishing the Starr Report following the Lewinsky scandal, the findings of which led the House of Representatives to impeach Clinton on the grounds of perjury and obstruction of justice. Despite all this and the media circus around Clinton's promiscuity, the American people largely continued to support him. He'd still been a good president, after all.

In 2001, Democratic representative Gary Condit became caught up in his own scandal, in which an intern working for him - Chandra Levy - vanished after they'd had an affair, eventually turning up dead a year later. (Condit was spared further investigative focus in the wake of the September 11th attacks, despite efforts to avoid discussing the subject and exhibiting suspicious behavior - not unlike he was attempting to cover his tracks. To this day, the case of Levy's death remains unsolved, and one has to wonder if there will ever be any sort of justice.) His political career ended in 2003 following a failed bid for reelection, the public not having forgotten his actions nor his hypocrisy, having claimed to be a "pro-family" politician (As is always a popular,
though relatively meaningless label to apply to one's self.), and then cheating on his wife with a woman younger than his own daughter.

Of course, sex scandals are hardly something faced by Democrats alone. On the contrary, we've seen just as much hypocrisy on the right. I couldn't possibly be gay! Look at me ranting about how much I hate the gays and voting against any legislation giving them rights! Are these the actions of anything but the straightest of individuals!? I submit that they are not! What do you mean I've been caught!? In 2007, Republican senator Larry Craig was caught in a sex sting at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, soliciting gay sex in a men's bathroom. Classy. His response to the arrest? Pretty much what you'd expect - utter denial of homosexuality, and claims that he simply "made a mistake." He went on to resign, then in an act of ultimate respectability, decided to make himself look even sadder by withdrawing his guilty plea and deciding to remain in office, rather than simply quietly remove himself from office after losing voters' confidence and disgracing himself in the public eye. Late in 2007, eight gay men came forward to the local paper, including an escort who'd been central to loudly homophobic evangelical preacher Ted Haggard, famous for his appearance in the creepy documentary Jesus Camp, back in 2006.

In 2004, Jessica Cutler - a D.C. intern - kept an online blog about her life in Washington, notably popular for her writing on her sex life. Apparently there wasn't exactly a shortage of men there willing to pay her for sex. The only individual who came forward as one of her lovers (Or "fuckers," if you want to be more accurate in word choice.) was Robert Steinbuch, who worked in the IRS and had, ironically, taught seminars on ethics. He's been rather lawsuit-happy since Cutler's fifteen minutes of fame, trying to both take her down and silence what reminders he can of the scandal. Even the "blogosphere" has helped create Washington sex scandals.

In 2006, Republican representative Mark Foley was embroiled in his own scandal around emails and instant messages that revealed his interest in pursuing teenage boys. Can you feel the family values? In the process of the scandal's investigation, fellow Republican representative Jim Kolbe was also outed for inappropriate conduct with teenage congressional pages. Embarrassing emails and conversations came out, and how did Foley react? It was rehab time. Apparently that classically retarded male fantasy about alcohol making women prone to homosexual activity is true of Republican politicians as well! And in the end, Foley was outed as having been a closeted gay man for a long time, known for the usual predictable reaction of revolt to the idea. Foley ultimately resigned in disgrace.

In 2004, Democratic New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey came out after a scandal revolving around the unusually close relationship he had with his unqualified homeland security advisor, Golan Cipel, and resigned shortly afterwards. His name has recently popped up in the media again, in light of his comments on the most recent political sex scandal - which I'll be getting to in a bit - in a former aide of McGreevey's alleging having had three-ways with McGreevey and his wife on multiple occasions. As of far, only McGreevey's ex-wife Dina Matos has denied these allegations. Politics! Where up is down, gay is straight, and everyone's sticking their junk everywhere else!

In spring 2007, the D.C. Madam scandal erupted around Deborah Jeane Palfrey's prostitution ring, of which several politicians were revealed to be patrons. This lead to the resignation of Randall L. Tobias, ambassador and Bush's former AIDS czar. (A funny combination of words, no matter how you look at it.) Republican senator David Vitter also confessed to being among Palfrey's customers, but remained in office despite his veritable blacklisting by the party.

At last getting to the most recent of these scandals - the obvious prompt of this entry - just last week, Democratic New York governor Eliot Spitzer's political career was effectively ended by his own prostitution scandal. He made a name for himself as a politician hard on crime, from his career as New York attorney general up through his year as governor. He was progressive, and had a lot of good ideas that he was moving forward with. Then he was caught in one of the very acts he'd condemned - patronizing a high-class prostitute. What started as an IRS investigation of some suspicious transactions ended with his outing as a hypocrite. Disgraced, having worked with human rights groups to bust prostitution rings before, Spitzer resigned from office effective as of this past monday, St. Patrick's Day. The human rights groups he'd worked with and some women's rights groups came away with a feeling of betrayal. While many on Wall Street were pleased with the outcome, being that he wasn't exactly well-liked there - none too surprisingly, given the shadiness of that line of work at times.

The prostitute at the center of this scandal, Ashley Alexandra Dupré, has had a less than glorious fifteen minutes of fame over the course of the scandal's heavy media coverage these past ten days. She's tried to make herself sympathetic, telling a story of past difficulties at home that seems fairly questionable. Despite claiming not to do drugs, it's been alleged that she's done quite a bit of coke. And that she'd even slept with Charlie Sheen. (And that's a pretty low blow for any prostitute.) Naturally, since her personal life exploded all over the internet and media - complete with plenty of provocative pictures - multiple media outlets - Hustler, Penthouse, Vivid - have sought to get her to pose nude for them. Then to throw a little more acid on her face, Joe Francis of Girls Gone Wild (Everybody's favorite outlet for exploited inebriated college girls, headed by Johnny Douchebag himself. Hopefully we can look forward to him spending quite a few more years in jail over those tax evasion charges he's facing yet.) propositioned her, then withdrew his proposition after finding he'd already recorded her on her 18th birthday. (As he does take pride in his company's efforts to prey on girls on their 18th birthdays in particular - there's a big market for almost-pedophilia content, after all. And not a hint of remorse for his scumbaggery in interviews and cover stories. He definitely seems like some sort of sociopath. And he seems to have learned nothing from nearly a year in prison.) I would imagine that's one of the most painful slaps in the face a young woman these days could receive - especially after making the mistake of going anywhere near the Girls Gone Wild people. In and of all that, it's hard not to have at least a modicum of sympathy for Dupré, even if she brought most of this on herself. And even if her music is unintentionally comically terrible. She's not much younger than me, and with the internet, no matter how much time passes, this scandal will never go away for her. She will always be "that whore Spitzer was plowing." (Even if the average guy online probably wouldn't pass on an opportunity to sleep with her either. Given her background here, I'd pass, personally. But then, I've never been into the whole macho sex focus I'm supposed to, as a guy in his early twenties. I'm one of those good conversation and unrequited love doofuses.) The bulk of my sympathies lie with Spitzer's wife and kids. I can only imagine what they're going through right now. As for Spitzer himself, I agreed with a good bit of his political track record, but in displaying the hypocrisy he has here, my sympathy for him is very limited.

Soon after Lt. Gov. David Paterson was sworn in as Spitzer's replacement - setting milestones as New York's first black governor and the nation's first legally blind person to hold office for the longer term now - it came out that he too had had an affair in the past. New Yorkers just can't win.

Ultimately, obviously, "morals" when it comes to sex and marital fidelity are not an issue either party can proudly claim to represent. (As much as the Republicans would like to - but then, they like to tell themselves that they represent a lot of things, at least, when going after the gullible voters.) It's hard to say what it is exactly that leads to this sort of behavior in the individuals elected to represent us. Maybe it's the corrupting force of power, as people in political office - especially higher up - are used to enjoying getting whatever they want, and as history has shown, human nature is that power rarely goes unabused. It could very well be something more innately psychologically rooted as well - it certainly takes a certain something in individuals to stand up before people and tell them that they deserve to represent you, whether as president, governor, or even simply as the representative for their local voting district. In some cases, it could potentially be something else entirely. But however you look at it, after a certain point, a line is crossed where their thoughts simply become: "Me me me! This is awesome, sex for me! I love this job!" (And who amongst us hasn't had that exact thought? Well, aside from myself.) This sort of behavior is observable in politicians, looking all the way back to our founding fathers, and will no doubt continue as long as America exists as a country. Every so often, the media will have something to get really excited about while the people either get outraged or roll their eyes. American political culture can be - and certainly is, more often than not - an ugly thing. And when there's real, serious political issues worth broaching - as there certainly are these days - what better to distract us from these matters than a good old sex scandal? What do you mean politicians have physical needs too!?

Can I interest you ladies in some dungeons and mayhaps even some sort of dragons?

Feels like it's been forever, eh? (Just pretend.) I've been kind of burnt out and uninspired when it comes to blogging this past week after an unusually productive February in that regard. (Not to mention a rather messy GRE day last week.)

Like most nerds, I've been in a state of mourning of sorts as well - a very special tired tabletop gaming kind of mourning. Last week, geeks of the world lost one of the greats, the influential creator of Dungeons & Dragons, Gary Gygax.

Yes, ever since his death, everyone's been beating those failed saving throw jokes into the ground - including myself. But I'm not going to do that here. For this is a serious blog, and I am a serious blogger. (I'm seriously trying to keep a straight face here, if that counts for anything.)

Of course, beyond that he was a king amongst nerds, there's not much else to be said about Gygax (At least, that's my excuse for not focusing on his personal life here.), but that he was a great influence on the "thinking nerd's" favorite genre of game - the role-playing game. (The kind with lots of character statistics and dice when playing a tabletop one - not the kind of "role-playing" when your ex-husband wanted to keep dressing up like a giant baby in the bedroom. What was wrong with that guy?) This genre is often referred to - particularly among computer and video gamers - as an "RPG." (No, not the gun. How are you not getting this?)

Dungeons & Dragons was Gygax's gaming offspring, taking over nerds' lives upon first launching in 1974, and filling parents with dread. Little Johnny's becoming a satanist! Again! This was a common train of thought back in the 1970s, in part due to the fear of Communism the government had verbally beaten into Americans back then, and in part due to the fact that everybody was still doing acid all the time back then. (They hadn't put enough distance between themselves and the '60s yet.) Gygax left the gaming company he'd co-founded, TSR (Tactical Studies Rules) in 1985 during a management shakeup while he was involved in the production of the mid-80s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon. TSR would go on to create all sorts of abortions (And I'll admit it, I actually own this game, VHS and everything.) of the franchise before they were bought out by Wizards of the Coast in 1997 and they opted to update (See: Butcher) Dungeons & Dragons' core rules for the sake of making the game more accessible to new generations of geeks. What do you mean we don't have THAC0 anymore!?

Inspired by tabletop RPGs, in 1980, Richard Garriott brought the genre to PCs with the original Ultima, his long-running series of adventures in the fantasy world of Britannia, starring the Avatar. (A blatant intentional analogue for the player, a trend we would continue to see in RPGs on the PC and video game consoles/portables, which has taken something of a downturn in recent years.)

Ultima, in turn, would lead to Japanese game director Yuji Horii of Enix to create his own take on the genre, working with composer Koichi Sugiyama and artist Akira Toriyama. (Best known for his Dragon Ball comics and animated series, now being hilariously made into a doubtlessly terrible Hollywood film slated for a 2009 release, with a now white protagonist! ... Stephen Chow, what the hell have you agreed to produce?) This series, Dragon Quest, would launch on the MSX and NES in Japan in 1986 - and later in the west in 1989 as Dragon Warrior. The series continues even today, with its 9th installment slated for a release on the Nintendo DS this year, and a first person spin-off, Dragon Quest Swords, having hit the Wii just last month. Of course, the greatest accomplishment made in this series - beyond introducing RPG video games to Japan - was the creation of one of the greatest gaming mascot characters of all time - Slime. Bow before Slime. He will be your friend. (And you will inevitably spend the first few hours of every game in the series killing lots of them.)

Following the many Dragon Quest clones other companies released in Japan in the '80s, Squaresoft, a game developer failing after an over-investment in Nintendo's unsuccessful Famicom Disk System, released what was to be their swan song in 1987 - Final Fantasy. The game was a hit and reversed Square's fortunes, ultimately becoming nearly synonymous with the RPG genre by the early 1990s. They were enjoyed for their imaginative universes, intriguing casts of characters, and battle system that bucked the Dragon Quest trend, displaying the player's party of characters on screen during battle. Polished by translator and localizer Ted Woolsey, Final Fantasy VI on the Super Nintendo proved to be the series' shining gem, with a cast of (Mostly) well-developed three-dimensional characters and storylines that touched on real world issues - such as teen pregnancy and genocide.

Then Square decided they wanted to take the series mainstream during the shift from the Super Nintendo to the Playstation as the dominant console in the late 1990s. This is where everything went to hell. RPGs had been long enjoyed on game machines largely by a minority of geeks who enjoyed the slower-paced, deeper gameplay that required us to think our way through the game and immerse ourselves in a brilliant new world with new adventures to be had. Final Fantasy VII exploded onto the Playstation scene to ridiculous -and in many cases bankrolled - amounts of praise. (The greatest game ever made, my ass.) The game was a smash hit, bringing the genre to its first mainstream success - without truly making the genre mainstream, as every RPG that didn't have Final Fantasy in its title "sucked" by default to the new generation of kids the game introduced to RPG video games. The gameplay was shallow, the story was nearly incoherent, and the translation was abysmal, Ted Woolsey having departed prior to its localization. Rather than telling an interesting story with compelling characters, it was time to appeal to a new generation of gamers - with attitude. The game's design largely focused around trying to be much "darker" than before. (Which largely amounted to a well designed dystopic city where the game began, and the story falling apart shortly after leaving it several hours in, with the rest of the game's massive world a bland, forgettable place, seemingly an afterthought. The story itself was painful cliche to its core, and its characters amongst the worst gaming has seen - setting a depressing trend. From then on, Final Fantasy was all about moody, effeminate young men for its protagonists, who are neither sympathetic nor likable, yet still played up by fans as some sort of ultimate badasses. Every protagonist from then on would be more of the same. The supporting cast? Two female romantic interests - one who receives little development and is summarily killed off in an effort to provoke an emotional response in the player (At which they fail, horribly.), and another who exists to essentially be a pair of giant breasts - a borderline racist stereotype, a couple of talking animals, and a couple of extra optional characters who add nothing to the story whatsoever. The dialogue? Poorly translated teen angst.) In a matter of a couple of years, Final Fantasy went from intelligent, enthralling fantasy to F-grade teen drama. Ever since, any RPG that features a silent protagonist intended to act as an analogue for the player is immediately berated - why not have an angsty pretty boy whine at us for 50 hours instead? And now, what Final Fantasy stands for - at least in its newest numbered releases, the spin-offs capture at least some of the imagination and adventure of the old days - is just depressing. They're overhyped cinematic messes that have largely abandoned their genre roots in lieu of delivering a shallow, style-over-substance experience for today's ADD gaming generation. Truly disheartening for those of us who grew up enjoying the series when it actually held some redeeming value.

I kind of got off topic as usual, but all these games are, ultimately, a part of Gygax's legacy in many regards. He created the RPG that kicked off the genre before we were even playing games on computers, and decades later, many of us still play in our parents' basements and local comic and game stores.

Farewell, Mr. Gygax. You will be missed, and certainly not forgotten.

Yes, this was the entry in which I inevitably outed myself as the ultra-geek that I am. I feel kind of dirty. In my defense, I haven't played any tabletop RPGs in at least a decade now. (Though granted, that's mostly for a lack of opportunity.)

Don't Be GREedy

Take a moment to allow yourself to bask in the warming glow of the greatness that is this entry's title. Are you doing it, basking? No, that's not radiation poisoning you're feeling - that's your new super powers manifesting. (Only standing near my microwave - I mean, blog entry - can bring about such a magnificent transformation.) And these new powers of yours? Lymphoma. Luck of the draw, my friend!

At any rate - as you may well have surmised by now from that glorious choice of titles - like most aspiring graduate students, I am preparing to take the GRE - or Gratuitously Radical Examination - in the next 24 hours. Thought you hated standardized testing in your youth? You can learn to hate it on whole new levels in adulthood! Hrmm, is this individual a decent human being, or is he perhaps functionally retarded? Get that man a Scantron sheet, stat! And ask him some questions on subjects most people never need in their daily lives - tell us what a cosine is, you son of a bitch! Do it or we shoot you! Though I suppose I should consider myself lucky that I get to be subjected to most - if not all - of it over a computer. But really, what gets one's blood pumping more than sitting in a room taking a test for four hours? I couldn't be more excited if a piece of that spy satellite crushed me on the way into the testing center!

Naturally, in anticipating this exhausting experience as much as I am, I felt that I should impart some pre-test preparation advice to any and all fellow soon-to-be test takers, in appropriate standardized testing fashion - by which I mean I'll be using letters instead of numbers to differentiate between each piece of advice. Without them, you'd be lost and entirely unable to tell each one apart. It's okay, I understand, we're all a little like that here on the internet - except for me, I'm not like that at all.

A) Cheating - Yeah, they tend to discourage this on standardized tests. (Hell, all tests, if you want to be all "scientific" and "technical" and "shit.") But this is not a rule - it is a challenge. They may be pointing all manners of cameras and rail guns and people staring at you to guilt/threaten you out of cheating the whole time, but if you can successfully cheat despite that, then you will earn the rank of Grand Master. Grand Master of what, exactly, is still a mystery the likes of which no stoned kids and talking dog have yet been able to unravel. But of what is known, apparently an abacus plays a key role in this process. So, yeah. Good luck with that.

B) Insomnia - So, you have trouble sleeping before exams due to stress, right? Right? (Help me out here!) Right. Sometimes, the best way to deal with that problem is not to bother. Coffee's just going to make you crash midway through, too. So basically, you need to train yourself to enter a zen-like trance in which the difference between consciousness and slumber becomes impossible to discern. In this state of sleep-waking, you will achieve enlightenment and easily ace any and all test you are faced with. However, this method poses some risk of simply falling asleep and failing by default. And about 68% of the time, people get their results back and find out that they somehow managed to change their name to "Ronald McDonald" or "The Grimace" midway through the exam. That's never cool for anybody.

C) Frustration - Tests are inherently stressful, with perhaps your entire future at stake - even if you're already a college graduate, let's no pretend that diplomas themselves are worth that much these days - and as such, it's only natural that you'd become legitimately agitated over the course of the test-taking period. This is why you should apply for a Lobster Permit at the testing center well in advance, as so to be allowed to bring a lobster along with you on the day of the test to scream obscenities at whenever you are uncertain of an answer. If you're wondering about the origins of this practice, you need look no further than to the words of Bologna Prophet Oscar Mayer, who once said, "Fuck you, lobster! I don't need you or your money!" Great words from a great man.

D) Self-confidence - It's easy to take on a defeatist attitude before a major test you have little to no ways to study for, in lacking any kind of specific study guide with answers to commit to memory. In cases like these, sometimes it's for the best to simply look inside yourself and - you know, I can't finish this with a straight face. You're screwed and you know it.

E) Study Fuel - It's always important to eat before facing major undertakings like this as well. Your brain needs energy to function. Without energy, your brain will become as lazy and stupid as the rest of you. You don't want that, do you? Put that remote control down and listen to me when I'm talking to you! Anyway, some might suggest that you eat something with a lot of carbohydrates, maybe some protein - general fuel for the human body. But we both know better than that. Granola? A well-balanced breakfast with Count Chocula? Pah. Order the cheapest, greasiest pizza you can find - eat a couple of them in their entirety if you can - and stay away from bathrooms. Relieving important bodily functions might interfere with your concentration! Nothing will help you concentrate on your exams like cheap, greasy pizza eaten 4-5 hours prior to the test. Antacids will also trip you up. Focus on the pizza - become the pizza, live the pizza. Only then shall you know truth.

You learned a lot about test-taking and study habits, no? Of course you did. And it's all thanks to me. You can thank me with a ten-gun salute. Ideally in the vicinity of an old folks' home. They need to relive good memories too, after all.

When Satire Comes True

These past eight years have been many things. Were people more verbose on average, I'd say that there's nearly as many ways to describe them as there are people. Unfortunately, for many, a more eclectic vocabulary is a secret fantasy at most. One thing you can be sure of, though, is that most people's descriptions of these years would involve a copious amount of foul language. Sometimes there's no other way to fuckin' say it.

Despite how terrible these years have been for most of the country and many parts of the world - in large part due to Walker, Texas President and his corrupt administration up there in D.C. - these years have been, in many regards, comedy goldmines. (Though granted, much of said comedy is relatively depressing when you look past the funny to what we've lost and what we've become. After all, torture isn't torture anymore if we say it's not. Think of it as a carnival dunking booth, except we make sure water gets in your lungs!)

Right around the time of George W. Bush's inauguration in January 2001, The Onion wrote a satirical piece that ended up being disturbingly accurate in its humorous look forward into his presidency.

They were dead-on in regards to virtually everything Bush has gone on to accomplish as president. He undid much of the good that Bill Clinton and his administration had for this country, and outright slashed as much funding as he could from as many domestic programs as possible. (This was epitomized in his proposed 2008 budget, in which he sought to effectively freeze every domestic program he could, while attempting to funnel virtually all of our tax dollars directly from our wallets into his war chest - and through that, the military industrial complex.) Likewise, the national debt and deficit have hit new all-time highs while he's made the main theme of his presidency warfare - deceptive warfare, at that. The September 11th attacks couldn't have occurred at a worse time, with this administration in power.

In domestic programs being slashed as much as possible, health care has become a privilege for the wealthy, as medical fees having continued to be the leading cause of bankruptcy. Insurance companies continue to excel at their jobs - to take your money and pay for as little of your medical care as they can justify, if not avoid paying entirely. It's a gamble, like all insurance, and more often than not, gamblers lose. In 2007, Michael Moore released his latest progressive documentary, Sicko, which focused on our nation's health care crisis and the dire need for meaningful reform. But while many saw the documentary and felt as depressed as you naturally would in learning indepth about this issue, many others - on the right, of course - went with their usual shtick in continuing to attack Moore for raising issues they didn't want addressed to common social consciousness. And of course, Hillary Clinton's proposed major health care overhaul has been written off as the evil socialized medicine so many on the right have come to fear. Health itself is a benefit for those who can afford it, after all. Why should a nation look to take care of its people when they could be focusing on the interests of the wealthy alone instead? Even if the character of a nation is best measured by how it treats its lowest citizens.

They were almost cautiously optimistic in suggesting that Bush would only be involving us in at least one Gulf War level conflict in the first four years of his presidency. (Though they were also optimistic in not outright assuming he was going to get reelected. Way to drop the ball there, America.) Now in his final year, we're well into two Middle Eastern conflicts. First off, we have the Afghanistan conflict, which we prefer not to talk about, since it was easier to drop a lot of bombs, drive the Taliban out, pretend everything was just peachy, then move on to bombing our next target. We don't want to acknowledge the current situation there, let alone how little responsibility we took for our actions after the fact. We whet our appetites for war - and aren't even bothering to go after bin Laden anymore - and went on to our second conflict in Iraq, Bush hellbent on finishing what his father started, against all facts, logic, reason, or humanity. Evidence was manufactured, a disturbingly massive number of lies were told, bombs were dropped, and countless people - innocents and otherwise - lost their lives. Our military's seeing overall fatigue like never before, we're desperately taking anyone we can get to throw over there with a gun, and cases of heinous military violence against incidents and sexual assault against women in the military are on the rise. We've seen stories like this in the news every year since the Iraq war began, with no trend of improvement - it's getting to the point at which if you're a woman in the military, chances are nearly fifty-fifty that someone will rape or otherwise violate you. War does awful things to people - and I'd argue that the psychological conditioning the military puts soldiers through could easily be detrimental in many ways as well, in seeing free thought discouraged as often as it is - and we don't like to look at that part of the picture either. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is only becoming a more daunting issue, and one we aren't seeing addressed well either, with so many of our veterans coming back changed people whose lives simply crumble around them as a result of their experiences. Mental health care is a tremendous issue this administration has ignored. In this, his final year, Bush has continued to push to start a third war in the Middle East with Iran - remember, diplomacy is for pussies - while Republican frontrunner John McCain has pushed to keep us in Iraq for, to paraphrase, "as long as it takes, even if that means another 100 years." We as a nation continue to overglorify and expand our military to a dangerous, frightening degree - we're seeing the backlash of an obsessive militaristic and paranoid culture, and demonstrating to the rest of the world that if there is a truly dangerous, unstable nation on this Earth, it is America. Whoever replaces Bush in the White House, whether Hillary or now more likely Obama, has their work cut out for them and then some, in working to repair the decades' worth of damage the Bush administration has done to this country and the world. With McCain, we wouldn't be seeing that - merely finally recognizing waterboarding as torture doesn't cut it.

Economically, all Bush did was give the richest of the rich tax cuts - increasing the tax burden on the rest of us - and watch as the economy collapsed into a recession. Eventually, the economy "corrected" itself, as those soulless buzzword-spouting TV economists'd probably put it, and we saw a "jobless recovery," as they put it. Of course, to most of us, this is scarcely a recovery at all, as the job market continued to remain terrible as more and more desirable jobs continued to be outsourced to save money - remember, corporate profits and big executive salaries are American values - and the only jobs we'd see created were more minimum wage jobs that didn't allow people much breathing room to go anywhere or accomplish anything in their lives, trapping and crushing them as many jobs do in today's modern world. (And it wasn't until after the Democrats took Congress back in November 2006 that we finally passed our first minimum wage increase in many years, which we were long overdue for. Even now, the new minimum wage could still stand another raise or two to truly reach living wage level again. People aren't worker drones, after all - we need money to survive.) And if you suggest the tax cuts shouldn't be made permanent - trickle down Reaganomics! They've never worked before, but if we pretend they do, it's okay! - you'd be looked at by the staunch Bushies as though you were just caught making out with Osama bin Laden on a street corner in San Francisco while wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt and also happened to be an atheist. With the housing bubble having burst, the average American is in even more frighteningly awful economic shape than in decades, and the dollar continues to fall through the floor. All the while, what little "stimulus" the administration offers doesn't help the people at the bottom who really need it. Their economic policy? When all else fails, give the rich a little more. They just skip the "all else" part.

They were dead-on in regards to Bush's environmental policies as well, passing deceptively named legislation to loosen regulation on emissions and allow companies and factories to pollute more - after all, spending money on cleaning up your production methods and factories and seeking environmentally friendly approaches to things might hurt their bottom line a little. That money is far more important than the health of our planet. And oil drilling was a fairly big issue right out the door - wildlife be damned! There's oil in them thar refuges!

We've seen the mandated separation of church and state eroded even further as Bush pushed his "faith-based initiatives" with American tax dollars that would've been better used in more secular, widely beneficial measures. And he scared pretty much all of us capable of thinking for ourselves when he started claiming that god talks to him. When did we elect David Berkowitz!? And though he has little chance of getting the nomination, we get to enjoy candidates like Mike Huckabee so far on the religious right that he's hellbent on changing the very fabric of American law by striking down the separation of church and state and amending the Constitution "to god's law." Apparently, we're supposed to be some kind of Pat Robertson nation.

In the end, Bush has dealt an undeniable critical blow to American democracy - something which many will never be able to reconcile with, as of his coming in through a stolen, dirty election on day one. And that wasn't even the tip of the iceberg, in the end.

It's fun to look back at this article and laugh, and to laugh at shows like the Daily Show and Colbert Report on a regular basis. But underneath the humor lies a tremendous amount of depressing damage this man and his cronies have inflicted upon America and the world.

In the very least, we haven't seen the Roe v. Wade overturning yet that they predicted, and let's keep our fingers crossed that they won't. Women have taken more than enough suffering from this administration as is, their rights and progress certainly not being something they even considered. And we've seen the anti-abortion crazies empowered to especially visible and vocal levels in these troubling times. If we turn the clock back on our society much further, it may yet simply break.

... Man, this one was kind of a downer.

Let's Informing!

We're almost to the end of February already. Time flies, does it not? (I don't see what having fun has to do with it. Why would anybody say that?)

Suffice to say, I'm busy as ever. The grad school application process is stressful, particularly when looking for Creative Writing MFA programs that haven't passed their admissions deadlines yet. This is what comes of spending the latter half of 2007 focused on finally graduating, rather than hammering away at grad school applications. Nose to the grindstone - soon to look hilarious or disfigured - possibly both. I'm not sure how many schools would offer January admissions either, frankly. But at this rate, I'm going to have to play the realist soon and face the likelihood of not escaping from here until 2009 already. Not a pleasant feeling, considering that my two main goals for 2008 have been to get out of here for grad school and to get my first novel published. At the rate I'm going, not even a quarter of the way into the year, I'm going to likely have to give up on the former already and see what I have a chance at next year - which I hope like hell doesn't mean not starting grad school till August 2009. I feel like a basket case even thinking about staying down here in the south that much longer, trapped as I'm used to feeling. And knowing my luck, I may not be able to accomplish the latter this year either, hellbent as I am on pulling it off, I have to be a realist at the same time. Just thinking about it is disheartening, and deeply depressing, the year already feeling like it could be a complete bust at the rate it's going. I'm certainly not holding my breath that this book'll somehow kill the unrequited part of my whole unrequited love situation anyway. I've never had that kind of luck. But enough of my personal prattling.

My life is lonely and depressing, and I'm just one man - at least, I was the last time I counted. In the grand scheme of things, like most, my existence is insignificant. But out there in the rest of the world? Big News is happening. Being your resident Internet Snarkmeister, it's my job to inform you of what's happened in recent weeks, and happening now - you know, in case you forgot. You do stay on top of the news, don't you?

Infidelity
Just a few days ago now, Fidel Castro stepped down as president of Cuba, ending many decades of rule by one of the few dictators in the world notably deserving of one particular point of praise - he had a legendary beard. Was it forged in the fires of Mt. Doom? Or perhaps bestowed upon him by some lady from some lake? We may never know. He's handed off power to his brother, Raul Castro, to effectively continue his policies and legacy, with all the good and bad they entail for the Cuban people. Though for a few minutes, Americans got their hopes up as Bush said he hoped Castro's retirement would lead to free and fair elections for the Cuban people. (An ironic statement both from Bush, and in Cuba's relatively close proximity to Florida, where Bush historically stole the 2000 election.) Will Raul live up to his brother's epic facial hair? Probably not. Will American foreign policy be given a more open-minded approach so that we may finally end this trade embargo - which failed to cripple the country like we hoped, and has only hurt the people, making us look like real asses again - and work with the Cuban people again? Probably not. Will we even stop trying to paint Cuba as a destitute hellhole when the rest of the world gives them some modicum of national dignity in the least? Probably not. Presto change-o, everything's the same.

Skylab Part II: Gone Hollywood
We all remember when everyone was afraid of being hit by falling chunks of Skylab back in the 1980s, right? Right. Let's pretend I'm not too young to remember that. In fact, let's say I was flattened by a piece of it - a space toilet or something. I need to be able to blame the bad jokes I make in here on something. Anyway, a US spy satellite - because we know that nothing improves foreign relations quite like openly spying on them, the voyeuristic nation we are - recently began a similar descent. And it carried a toxic fuel. (I can smell the Michael Bay movie deal already.) Naturally, we're now prepared for situations like this thanks to modern Hollywood "masterpieces" like Armageddon and Deep Impact, which told us deeply inspirational and valuable tales of going into space to solve all our problems through the use of explosives. Taking the all-important cue, Bush had the Navy shoot down said satellite with a missile. The debris hasn't landed yet, though it's been since confirmed to be a successful hit. But we all know that whenever that missile was fired, someone uttered a bad one-liner. This is something that should fill us all with a deep sense of national shame. Especially seeing as we don't really know whether blowing it up will prevent anyone from being hurt or killed anyway. But if we didn't blow that up, in proper American manner, we'd be looking for something else to blow up instead. (Probably the moon.) Without our explosions, we're nothing. As we are after our explosions. From nothing to nothing. So goes the American journey.

Those Independence Blues
Also just days ago, Kosovo declared independence from Serbia. America has recognized their legitimacy as an independent nation, and is now dealing with the blowback from our support, including the torching of the US embassy in Belgrade. Serbia is opposing this move, while not threatening to use military force - Russia, on the other hand, is willing to use force if that's what it takes. Bosnia has said they would declare their independence as well, if Kosovo managed to pull this off. And this whole situation raises even further questions in regards to Palestine, Tibet, and Quebec. At this point, it's impossible to say what will happen and what would be the best outcome in the end - as world politics, especially in seeking the birth of new nations, are never a simple issue - but it's safe to say that this new imbroglio may be enough to successfully keep the Bush administration from lying their way into war with Iran, as they've been pushing for in the last year, just to leave the next administration with an even more daunting shitstorm on their hands, to put it eloquently as possible when it comes to war.

Strike While the Jokes are Stale!
On February 13th, the Writer's Guild of America finally ended their near three and a half month strike, upon reaching a deal with the companies. It wasn't exactly a 100% successful strike for labor activists to cheer on - writers still aren't getting a scaled cut of the profits on online content, though they will be given a nice sum for having their work used online, at least - but they didn't come away empty-handed either. And in the end, strikes tend to largely be a matter of compromise anyway, so it certainly didn't end in failure. Of course, many shows - like Heroes, Chuck, and Pushing Daisies - won't be back until this fall now. And it's hard to say if the Scrubs series finale will even get aired on NBC now, rather than simply going straight to DVD and syndication later this year. A shame, if that's the case. But now that the studios and companies are back to cracking the whip, it'll be interesting to observe the repercussions of the strike for the remainder of the year.

There's Nothing Funny About This One
So, how 'bout that US military, huh? Everyone serving in the military sure is a great military hero, am I right? In fact, donning that uniform makes you a better person than everybody else by default, and there's nothing unhealthy about the way we obsess over glorifying our crazy militarization in this country. The true heart of the US industry belongs - and should always lie - in the military industrial complex. Make love, not war, you say? What are you, some kinda commie? Yeah, there's no denying that I'm not a part of this national love affair we've been having with the military, soldiers, and warfare. We love to excessively glorify it all when we haven't taken part in a single war where we're strongly identifiable as the "good guys" since World War II, when we certainly committed our fair share of atrocities back then too. Our hands aren't clean. But rather than own up to our own mistakes - maybe even learning from them as so not to repeat them - we like to look back and whitewash our past. We were great heroes! Ignore what we did to Japan, the brutality of the firebombing and the longstanding cultural damage rooted in the nuclear bombs. Ignore Dresden too! We could've won in Vietnam - even though it wasn't our war to get involved in to begin with - if we'd just kept killing farmers and bombing Cambodia! There's nothing we can't solve with enough firepower! Yes, my problems with the military and our culture's happy obsession with it are numerous. But this time, I'm focusing on another simple story. We keep fucking up in Okinawa. For all the discipline we're supposed to be training our soldiers to have (And yes, it was a marine in this case, but it's more fun to refer to all who serve in the military as soldiers - which technically isn't inaccurate - since no amount of discipline keeps some people from getting snippy and self-righteous about which branch they serve in. Of course, this isn't all soldiers. Openly anti-military as I am, I don't think for a second that they're all awful people or anything of the sort - it's as far from black and white a matter as anything else.), we can't seem to stop causing trouble in Okinawa. We've watched our soldiers go to prison before for raping local girls - and in this case, it looks like yet another rape has occurred. I've got nothing but sympathy for the poor girl, her family, and the people of Okinawa in general. Looking back in the news, there's always been one string of troubling incidents after the next happening there over the decades, with some of our guys at the center. (And in this day and age, this shouldn't be overly surprising, considering the disturbingly high rate of incidence of sexual abuse our enlisted women experience these days. You'd think all the discipline of the military could stand to include respecting women by now.) In many regards though, it ultimately raises the question of how much longer the Japanese people are going to put up with this. Our relations with them tend to vary, and decades of incidents like these sure as hell aren't helping.

Not-So-Hip to be Conservative
To conclude on a more humorous note, with both parties narrowing their options, their frontrunners clear, the Republicans are facing particular difficulties in getting even basic support in widespread culture - making it further apparent that after 8 years of Bush, they don't really have a shot in hell in November, short of a rigged election. Previously, John "We'll stay in Iraq another 100 years if we have to!" McCain had been playing John Mellencamp's "Our Country" as his campaign song. Mellencamp, like most of America, is nowhere near on the same page as McCain politically, and had him stop using his song. Meanwhile, Mike "I will amend the Constitution to god's law" Huckabee has faced criticism from the Boston band leader for performing "More Than a Feeling" without permission. Ever the self-righteous ass, Huckabee has gone on to claim that he's helped Boston's record sales. (Which is a questionable statement at best - everyone knows that Huckabee's fundamentalist support base rejects anything even remotely melodic as the work of Beelzebub.) Then going back to McCain, he's not even hip enough to get ABBA on his side. (And he apparently had some trouble with the Rocky soundtrack as well.) In the end, if there's anything to be taken away from this, it's probably that if a musician or group has talent, it'd be a cold day in hell before they'd support the Republican party. ... So, I guess this means we can look forward to future campaigns with a John Ashcroft "Let the Eagle Soar" theme, huh?

Feeling more informed? What do you mean you're worried you have a brain tumor now?

No.

No!

That growth looks benign. I don't care if it has a face and it's punctuating our exchange with amazing wisecracks. This was a good entry, dammit.

Water, Water Nowhere, Still Not a Drop to Drink

Looks like that teeth-rotting lovey-dovey part of February's behind us now. Whew. "Eff that," even, as people too lazy to pronounce entire curse words might say. "Eff that in the em-effin' ey." Those people are weird.

I'll have some longer ramblings for you later this week - just as you've all no doubt been dying for more of - but today? Environment talk and another meme! Put down that baseball bat - you're thrilled, damn it.

I wrote about this last fall, but I figured I'd post an update, just so we can all bask in the glory of what continued climate change is doing to the American southeast. (Unless you're surrounded by water like Florida. I'll get you yet, Florida, you and your awesome manatees.)

To recap, for a long time, we've been caught in this ongoing cycle - every summer we enter drought conditions, and every autumn, we get enough rain to take care of that and leave us in comfortable condition, in regards to our water resources. As of 2007, this is no longer the case. We had a much worse summer than usual, with minimal rain. By the end, we were facing one of the worst droughts in a long time - and certainly the worst we've seen in the 13+ years we've lived here. We saw little rain over the fall, and winter hasn't changed that either. The situation? It is not looking so good.

Last fall, the state began passing restrictions on water use and emphasizing that each and every one of us should begin doing what we can to conserve. In following their instructions, my family and I became much more conscious of our water use, taking shorter showers, making sure to never leave water running, and so forth. We successfully lowered our water bill a decent bit. The majority of North Carolinians? They ignored the governor and continued to use water as though we weren't going through anything out of the ordinary. A-hyuck, if this here faucet-thinger still works, there must not be a prob'lem! Gub'mint's just tryin' to screw with us again! (Because yes, we're all backwater hicks. I'm simply an exception from the north, living in their midst and learning their ways. Sort of like a male Jane Goodall. Except stupid enough to rely on bad southern stereotypes for this routine when redneck jokes have never been funny.)

The wealthy, as mentioned in the past, continue to see watering their precious immaculate green lawns (Covered with lots of all-important pesticides to ensure that everyone knows how superior they are by the quantity of dead squirrels around their property.) as a guaranteed right, rather than the superficial bullshit it is. They haven't helped the water issue at all. And with few taking the situation seriously, we've had to curb our water usage even more.

As you can imagine, this includes some fairly unsavory sacrifices. Like no longer flushing the toilet as often. That's not exactly a pleasant sacrifice to make. We're also going to be placing one-liter plastic bottles in the back compartments of all our toilets to reduce water usage when flushing by close to that one liter, at least, which should help a smidgen. And in using the dishwasher even less, we've switched to using paper plates more often so we can simply toss them, while doing what dishes we need to in the sink. All inconvenient, but ultimately decent ways to reduce water use.

The question, however, still remains - will North Carolinians wake up to what we're dealing with before it's too late? At the rate things are going, we're going to end up in a state of emergency by early-mid summer unless people start conserving water more and we get some real rain in the coming months. Will it take losing our drinking water and the ability to practice regular, proper hygiene for people to open their eyes? I sure as hell hope not. Proper hydration, cleanliness, and clean teeth are not things I'd like to see become rare privileges. And I sure as hell don't see this administration doing much if and when we end up in a state of emergency here. They've sat on their hands and claimed they were helping while doing little when worse has occurred, after all, Hurricane Katrina in particular coming to mind, while the right likes to blindly sit back and say that New Orleans has made a full recovery, when in reality, no matter how you look at it, it hasn't. And at the rate things are going, it'll never be the same city it once was again.

This whole situation makes me hope all the more that I manage to make it into one of the grad schools I'm applying to - for either this August or next January - the sooner I can get up north and into an area where water is more plentiful again, the better.

With that thoroughly rambled about, onward to part two! Hye tagged me with this "Rules of Four" meme, so in the interest of helping you to Get to Know Your Blogger better, in pretending you're actually interested, here's my responses:

4 Jobs I have had:
Technically, I haven't had an actual paying job yet - and yes, I do realize how sad that is when I'm turning 24 in a couple of months. Granted, I am a "Blogger," with these eccentric ramblings of mine, or whatever they're worth, and I do have a minimum of advertising I'm not expecting to ever really make any money on in the end, but still, blogging is something, experience-wise. I also work as a reviewer over at Anime Dream, a geeky Japanese animation news and review site I've been a part of since summer 2002, though I haven't done much work there in a while. We take things at our own pace though, and I've got more stuff coming in the pipeline there yet. I also spent 7 months last year working as a Teaching Assistant at the North Carolina State University Japan Center, pretty much from as soon as I got home from my final semester of courses at Charlotte in May until a couple of weeks before Xmas. It wasn't for pay, but to fulfill some international experience requirements for graduation, and it was a worthwhile experience, meeting a lot of interesting people and getting to assist in low level Japanese language instruction. That's three, anyway. I don't have anything I can really put down as a 4th yet, but if I'm lucky, I'll be a published novelist by the end of 2008, so that should hopefully take care of that.

4 Movies I watched over and over:
There's a number of movies that qualify for this. The most frequent four though are definitely Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Last Life in the Universe. All wonderful movies, all highly recommended.

4 Shows I watch:
I watch a lot of shows, so these are tough picks. Going with two of my favorites in primetime, I'd have to say Pushing Daisies and Chuck. (Though The Office is way up there too.) And going with two of the three shows I watch nearly daily, The Daily Show and Colbert Report. (Though I watch Late Night with Conan O'Brien all the time too. The fake feud the three hosts orchestrated a little while back as an opportunity to kill time on all three of their shows before the strike ended last week was pretty hilarious.)

4 Places I have been:
I haven't been outside of the USA yet, so nowhere foreign, but I've been all over the east coast. I went to New York City on a 6th grade string orchestra trip back in the mid-'90s, and have wanted to return ever since. I was born in Baltimore, Maryland - though we left shortly afterwards - and back in summer 2002, after graduating from high school, I went on a weekend "returning to roots" trip of sorts up there with my father, and really enjoyed that city too. Definitely far more my kind of place than the south. Because I've had a lot of family down there, we used to go to Tampa, Florida every summer when I was a kid, so I've spent a good time in that part of the country. Florida's nice, but way too hot for my tastes. Fun to visit, but I couldn't live there. And that pretty much does it for vacation places, but I did spend the first decade of my life growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and I still consider that to be my hometown, despite having lived in the south longer - this just isn't my place. (And if that doesn't count, I also went to Indianapolis, Indiana for an aunt's wedding when I was pretty young, though I don't remember much about it.)

4 People who email me:
I don't tend to get much in the way of personal email, but I occasionally get pictures and such in the mail from friends, particularly a good friend who's abroad, working in China now, after he was in Japan for a year not too long ago. He always has amusing stuff to share. Then I get messages from Facebook and livejournal on there, just for various notifications of things. And I get email from a few mailing lists I'm on - Robert Wexler's mailing list in working to check the Bush administration's power, Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac daily poetry and history mailing list, and the Human Rights Campaign mailing list, being a member of that as well.

4 Favorite Things to Eat:
This is a tough one. I love lots of different kinds of food, so picking a few favorites isn't easy. To take a stab at it, though, I love nikujaga - it's a wonderful Japanese stew of sorts that's hard to stop eating. I'm also quite fond of good, fresh sashimi - I love sushi in general, but biting into some well-prepared fresh raw tuna or salmon is pretty incredible. I'm also quite fond of Japanese gyoza dumplings (As well as Chinese shumai dumplings.), though I usually only have the frozen kind. And to throw something more western in there, I love cheese ravioli with a good tomato sauce - Italian sausage in it is always a nice plus, too.

4 Places I would rather be:
I haven't traveled enough to easily throw a list like this together. I'd love to see Japan and what I can of Asia in general, though. Same goes for Europe and Canada. And visiting South America - especially Brazil - would no doubt be a fantastic experience. Though at this point, my main geographical focus in my life right now is more in the New England area.

4 Things I look forward to this year:
Hopefully watching the Republicans suffer a crushing defeat in the November election so we can get a serious start on repairing the decades' worth of damage the Bush administration has done to this country and world, for one. I'd also really like to get into a grad school and finally get out of the south. I'm also looking forward to hopefully getting my first novel published, if things actually go well at all after finishing it, though I'm not exactly counting on a response from the woman I'm writing it for this year - not that I'm holding my breath for it to be a positive response I get from her anyway, rejection being what's to be realistically expected. And in and of hoping to get my first book published this year, I'm looking forward to hopefully getting my first paycheck then as well. (And not so much the part where if I do indeed get into grad school, I end up buried up to my neck in debt for the next several years at least.)

Well, that's that. I'm no good at the tagging part of these things, so hey, if you're looking to tell your readers more about yourself, feel free to consider yourself tagged by me and have at it! Hopefully all that random information didn't bore you too much.