No more posting until early next week. There is a multipart post below. It's long, but since I'm going to be out of town, you'll have more time to read it since I won't be updating.

Please note that I am not the author of all of the parts.

[Next]

Today's question of the day is whether or not, if they really tried, the people replacing the rafters across the way could be just a little more loud?

I don't think they could...

You know, if they spent just a little more on books and a little less on shelf space, maybe they'd have the right to complain...

(yes, I'm joking).

I had a conversation yesterday about grammar. The indirect question was to what degree proper English was necessary and demonstrative of intelligence. For a writer-type, I somewhat surprisingly come down on the side of laxivity. As far as I'm concerned, if the idea is coming across, then the rest is just specifics. She, on the other hand, felt otherwise.

The specific object of our disagreement was y'all (plural) and ya'll (singular). I only use the former, though I don't get particularly annoyed when I head the latter. I actually only rarely hear ya'll in the singular and wasn't even aware of its existence until relatively recently.

Of course, there are those in the north that argue that neither is a word, but until they can come up with a contraction for "you all" I figure we're in the clear.

In the case of "ya'll" (or "You will" or, in the sense it's its used "you should" or sometimes just plain "you") it's a regional dialect that she feels gives credence to those that feel that the people from the south are lacking in intelligence.

Maybe so. It's an interested question in regards to language integrity. Perhaps people will never all use perfectly correct grammar and vocabulary as defined by the Oxford dictionary - in fact, I think the world would be a more boring place is everyone did - but there is a case to be made that there ought to at least be a standard with which every dialect is drawn from and dialects that deviate from that ought to be considered abnormal so different spices of the same language remain the same language.

Theo Dalrymple bemoans the dumbing down of English in Britain:

I have noticed the same phenomenon on various wireless stations as well. It is clear that certain announcers have been told to use the short ‘a’, the long ‘a’ having unacceptable connotations of social superiority. Moreover, in railway stations that have no compunction about using as announcers incomprehensible Nigerians and Punjabis for whom English is their seventh language, the announcements giving the good news that the stations are no-smoking areas and that something nasty will happen to those who infringe this regulation is always given in what one might call exaggerated standard pronunciation, just as in Hollywood films the cultivated English voice always stands for unspeakable evil. Thus our population is being subtly indoctrinated with the idea that received pronunciation means prohibition and restriction. The glottal stop means liberty.

It seems to me unlikely, however, that the changes that have come about are the result of any welling up of an insistent or irresistible demand from below. Even the bolshiest Briton is so idle that he will not protest at received pronunciation, however much he might hate it. No: this is yet another sign of that peculiar combination of self-hatred and pusillanimity that characterises what Marxists used to call the ruling class.

It's an interesting hypothesis and one that I don't actually doubt, to a degree.

A long time ago I made the acquaintance from Pasadena. I found out later that he didn't like me very much at first because he felt I was a little stuck up. Why? Because of my word usage. That is to say that that I spoke English above the Pasadena standard (it ought to be noted that my friend's grasp of the language is strong and that is not the issue) and he felt that I was a bit stuck up. Because of my control of the language.

He's not the first and he probably won't be the last. As I've gotten older, my English has actually gotten a little bit worse, in a way, because I've made efforts to start using more simplistic language (in person, at least, you won't see much simplicity on here) in large part to avoid turning off my fellow Texans that don't place a particularly high value on fancy-talk and intellectualism.

The alternate course of action is to declare it "their problem" and keep speaking as I so choose (with precise wording and generally correct structure). On the other hand, language is, to me, about communication. If what I'm saying is colored negatively by the words I choose - even if those words are wholly inoffensive in their intent and, indeed, their actual meaning - then I am failing to communicate. If I exhibit an accent in order to make someone more comfortable talking to me (which I frequently do when meeting someone knew that is obviously of limited education - at the old truckstop for example), then I don't percieve anything particularly wrong with that.

It's the Marxist in me, I guess!

Microsoft has started showing off the Longhorn, which is supposed to be its next big thing. From what I understand it's likely to be a pretty big departure from XP. The file system looks cool enough that I want to see how it works:

At the heart of the next Windows will be a new format for storing data that Microsoft has worked on intermittently for more than a decade. Rather than each software application saving information in a different format, a new standardised file system known as WinFS will create a single, unified system.

That means users will be able to find any information on their own PCs or across their corporate networks with a single search, then collate different types of data, whether in the form of text documents, spread sheets, video or audio recordings, Microsoft executives said.

It looks rather dreadfully proprietary, which I would imagine that MS views as a feature and not a bug. If it works, this could set the Linux movement back a long, long ways. On the other hand, if it's the equivalent of WinME or worse, then it could immediately throw Linux into the ballgame.

Michael Garza poses the question of identity:

How much of you is you? When you hang around people for long periods of time you begin to acquire some of their traits. You may pick up part of their attitude, sense of humor, motivations, accents, grammar, and body language. Sometimes you have situations in which two mutual friends are around you at the same time, and your personality is thrown off a bit.

I often wonder how my life would be different if my parents hadn't moved down to Texas. Would I still be to the right-of-center? Would I still enjoy the cold weather as I do? These are, of course, the smaller questions.

If I'd stayed up there, I would have made different friends. I would have known different people and would have, to an extent, lived a different life. Or maybe I wouldn't have. My experiences certainly feed in to who I am, but the question is to what extent have the warped me rather than contributed to me. There are numerous instances in my past where I've found "lessons learned" to be more obfuscating than direction. Forget what I know, don't feel what I feel, and so on.

It brings to mind the notion that "it is, therefore it ever was going to be" which is my guiding principle which states that I am who I am because of what I have chosen to be. The seemingly chance encounters were destined to happen, in a way.

I don't mean fate. I mean that what comes back around is directly in relation to what goes around. For instance, I think of the first girl to hurt me. I could fixate on the fact that she hurt me (and I did just that for quite a while) or I could point out that I had put myself in a position to be hurt, and if she hadn't done so, someone would have because of who I was.

Unfortunately, this type of thinking lends itself to trying to change oneself and pulling yourself away from your true identity. Of course, the inverse of that is to accept every limitation you have, keep inviting the vampires in, and completely fail to grow and begin viewing maturity as the high crime of authenticity failure.

The subject reminds me of a story I have in mind called The Many Lives of Desmund Usher, which stars Kara Rhodes and Desmund Usher. Rhodes is a CIA agent whose job it is to weave through alternate timelines (closely knit to our own) in order to retrieve a password from Usher, a different CIA agent who was buried with a password in Rhodes's original timeline.

Without getting too much into the details, one of the interesting revelations is in all of these closely knit timelines, Rhodes is exactly the same person. No matter what curveball her life was thrown, she walked the straight-and-narrow. Usher, on the other hand, is someone completely different in every timeline. With each flap of the butterfly's wing, Usher pursues an entirely different path from media magnate to Texas Supreme Court Justice to career criminal. Usher succeeds at whatever he chooses to do while Rhodes can seemingly only do one thing (and does it well). Usher's identity is a big question mark while Rhodes's is as clearly demonstrated to her as humanly possible.

Between these two people, who would you consider yourself more like?

Doc Weevil translates "Shit Happens" into Latin.

The internet is so cool.

Once upon a time, The Joker tried to pull one over on the fish, and people, of Gotham City:

With a diluted form of his toxin, the Joker has mutated the fish stocks of Gotham's waters so that they all carry his ghastly grin. Then, since they bear his visage, he tries bullying the copyright office into granting him royalties off the sale of all fish products—potential millions are his to fund his "happily hedonistic" lifestyle, he exults. So Batman has to protect the threatened bureaucrats, and there unfolds an battle of wits as the one attempts, and the other thwarts, ingenious and unexpected assassination attempts.

Now, he's apparently trying the same thing in Texas!

Researchers at Baylor University have found traces of a pharmaceutical antidepressant in the livers, muscles and brains of bluegills in a Denton County creek, raising concerns about the welfare of the popular sports fish and people who eat them.
The chemical is fluoxetine -- the primary component in Prozac. It likely came from a city of Denton wastewater treatment plant, which discharges into Pecan Creek and flows into Lake Lewisville in North Texas. Traces of the drug that are not absorbed into the body can flow down the toilet and through wastewater treatment plants, which are not designed to filter out pharmaceuticals.

[Found via Warliberal]

watch my brother get married. I'll be leaving tomorrow morning for the interview and then straight to Austin from there for the wedding. There is a pretty big (and non-depressing) post/series coming up, so stay tuned!

Tami and I first became friends in late 2001. Truth be told, I needed friends. That was about the time that Elciem and I needed a new start. We hit it off immediately. She has a flambouyant personality that mixed well with my more subdued (particularly at the time - given my mood) manner. Through her I met a host of other people and found myself in a circle of friends.

There was Dre, Jason, Robbie, Carl and Martin, a friend of Jason's that was on probation at Texas Tech. Martin would often bring his little brother Dave and when he got back in to Tech, we kind of inhereted Dave into our circle, to some of our chagrin.

The group was cool, but Tami was by far my best friend from the group. I helped her wade through her problematic relationship with Robbie and she was good at keeping me upbeat during a period of great confusion in my life. If you'd have asked me then, I'd have told you that Tami was a treasure and not only the best friend a guy could ask for, but one of the best people I'd ever met.

The story really begins on Memorial weekend in 2002 when we were all going to go see "Sum of all Fears", but unfortunately one by one we all had to back out. I was moving into my current complex and had fallen behind on that. Jason's parents dragged him on a vacation and Dre got an opportunity to go to San Padre. I can't remember Robbie's reason offhand, but it wasn't unreasonable.

I'd gone to work early when Tami called me in hysterics. Wanting to make the best of a bad situation, she ended up going out with Dave that night to see the movie. They ended up drinking some liquor in his car in the park. He was pouring and she wasn't paying attention.

Tami has always had a good alcohol tolerance level, so she was surprised when a couple shots of vodka started taking a pretty serious toll. She asked Dave to pull over so she could vomit. He pulled in to the nearest parking lot and got out to help her get out of the car to vomit. When she finished he gave her a soft drink and they sat there for a bit while she cleaned her mouth out. The vomit had taken its toll on her physically, so when he pushed her into the back seat and jumped on top of her, she blacked out.

She woke up in torn clothing on the staircase of her apartment with bruised wrists.

Let me tell you a couple things about Dave. We never really cared much for him and only really brought him in cause of Martin. I'm not sure what Dave's medical condition is, but he kinda jerks around a lot and very often will mutter incomprehensible things under his breath without any context. His mutterances were usually cuss words and often violent in nature.

Let me tell you something about Tami: she made it all up. She physically hurt herself (although not severely) tore her clothing to give herself credibility. I would find out several months later why she did it: She was mad at us for cancelling and wanted us to feel guilty.

It worked because we all felt absolutely terrible for leaving her along with Dave. The phrase "shoulda known better" popped in and out of our minds in self-defeating cycles.

And, of course, there was Dave. She chose her mark very well. Dave did seem like the kind of person who wasn't in control of himself. We didn't like him and the story and his behavior didn't seem too far out of character.

Tami didn't want to go to the police because she "blamed herself", "was asking for it" and a ton of other things that would make us jump to her own defense and tell her what a great person she is.

Perhaps that should have been a tip-off that something was wrong. But the thing about Tami is that she was the type of person that would never lie. She was a tell-it-like-it-is kinda person and yet would never hurt a soul. It was no contest as to who we should believe.

Tension and anger ran so high that a couple of our friends jumped Dave and gave him a very severe beating. I was not a part of that group, but I knew they were going to do it and I didn't try to stop them. It was, in my mind, the least that Dave deserved.

As time passed, her story and recollection of the events starting having holes. With time and distance, we had time to more logically consider her version of the events and some of them were downright weird (she only added the "he gave me coke" part of the story when Jason commented that it was weird that Dave'd stick his mouth all over someone who undoubtedly reaked of vomit smell) and the part about leaving her on her staircase was a bit odd because that didn't sound like Dave.

It's embarassing that it took me as long as it did to start puncturing holes in her story, but I was more-or-less of the mind that women don't lie about that sort of thing - at least not without a serious motive (a broken heart or money) which was never present. Even once I knew for certain that she made it up, I was so uncomfortable in believing that she would do that that I'd have found any way to deny it if I could have.

But I couldn't. Others, strangely, chose to continue to believe despite the mountain of evidence.

The lies continued from there and got worse and worse. Eventually she crossed one too many people and she ended up leaving Houston. Once she got out of Houston, the lies magnified. She had a LiveJournal that I'd read on occasion. It was one thing after another. Her father died (he didn't), she got cancer (she didn't), her family has this dark, abusive history (I saw no sign of it), and one thing after another when she kept winning friends by way of sympathy and pity because life was just so difficult for her.

Via LiveJournal, I watched an entire new batch of people believe all of her lies. She was doing the same things in San Antonio that she did in Houston, only more frequently and with the exception of crying rape, more substantial lies. She eventually got a boyfriend out there who fell for it hook-line-and-sinker.

What's striking to me is not only how grossly immoral it all was, but also how incredibly stupid. Did she really think that her boyfriend wouldn't find out that her father was still alive? That she never had cancer? Did she think she could do the same things to people there that she did here with different results?

But the biggest problem is indeed the moral one. She was inventing situations to garner sympathy, love, and gifts. She found peoples' weak points (such as our protective instincts) and exploited them to make us feel bad for cancelling and give her the status of "ultimate victim."

When I think of the five times in my life that I've been the most angry, she has to be the only one of them that has two slots dedicated to her. Words can't describe how angry I was at the rape - nor my anger that she made it all up cause she was hurt that we had other things to do on Memorial Day.

She was discovered again in San Antonio. From what I understand, she was dumped a couple days before she did it. My opinion of her is such that I wonder if she just did it to teach her ex-boyfriend a lesson.

For those of you that are confused as heck as to my site going wacko (and those of you that aren't), I just updated the template.

Let me know if there are any oddities.

Oh, and I am now a cool kid, cause I offset the time correctly to Texas Time.

I took my meat out of the freezer last night. I figured I would eat as much of it as I could and then toss the rest since I gotta clean out the fridge and have nowhere for it to go.

But I'm not in the mood for it. Wonderful, fatty before-I-started-watching-what-I-eat beef, butter, chicken, tortillas, and cheese... and I'm not in the mood for it!

What's wrong with me?!

Dear Holey Pants & Incomprehensible Formerly Black Shirt,

We've been through a lot together, my friends.

Holey Pants, we've both changed a lot over over the years. I was almost five inches shorter when we first met. I was wearing you when I first met Sarah Goddess and fell for her in New Braunfels. You were there during my timultuous junior high years. You held together.

Of course, over time the wear and tear took its toll on you and eventually that wear deemed you against the dress code. I know, I know, you tried as hard as you could, and I have accomodated you as best I can. Unfortunately, the hole has gotten so big that it exposes the pocket which looks like underwear. And though it pains me to say it, I must be honest with you. You've been replaced. Another pair of pants have worn thin and holes have formed. I now have a new friend to keep my legs not-so-warm-because-of-holes when I'm doing laundry, and your services are just no longer required. You have Sarah Goddess, but those pants have someone else. Time marches on, my friend, and it's time for you to go.

Incomprehensible Formerly Black Shirt, please don't think that this is easy for me. Remember when we first met? You were in the unclaimed clothes bin in the Seabrook Intermediate PE dressing room. I needed a shirt that day and I adopted you. I don't know what you said then, and I don't know what you say now. Something about "Peace NO Piece" and "Peace makes the world go round."

It seems our politics are at odds, but we've been good friends. You've turned gray with age, your letters faded more than they were even faded when we met. The lettering at the bottom, which appears to be a series of colors only emphasizes your colorlessness over the years.

Unfortunately, your collar and sleeves are fraying and you've become stretched so thin that you feel more like an undershirt. Remember Tim's wedding? When I forgot my undershirt? You made such a good one... for a (formerly) black shirt. You caught all the sweat, and the sweat you carried I'm sure has worn you down. You were there for me, and I will never forget you.

Say high to the High Holey Maroon Football Undershirt and Boston Bruins Unintentional Spaghetti Shirt for me, if you would. I'd greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Author of the Block You Cannot Read

Holey Pants 1992-2003, RIP
Incomprehensible Formerly Black Shirt 1990-2003, RIP

Where does one buy cardboard boxes?

David S. Bennahum has an article in Slate about how the Internet might drive phone companies out of business:

For those of you who haven't heard of Skype, the latest white-hot Internet technology and new social phenomenon, here's what you need to know: It's a free piece of software (of course!) that you can download to your PC; suitably armed with speakers and a microphone, you'll then be able to "call" and talk to anyone else in the world who's on Skype. In the less than two months it's been available, 1.6 million people have downloaded the software, setting a world record for this kind of thing. As a crude measure of buzz, after six weeks of life the word "Skype" generates more than 2.8 million pages on Google. As a point of comparison "KaZaA," which is Skype's progenitor (the two Swedes who invented KaZaA invented Skype), appears nearly 4.4 million times.

The most amazing thing to me is not that phone companies are in trouble, it's that they're actually still around (in their traditional capacity, anyway). There were programs and applications to do this sort of thing years ago.

Laid-off take survival jobs to pay the bills

They're people such as Michael Bierman, 36, who earned a six-figure income as a senior product manager at Adobe Systems. He took a buyout package in 2001, believing he'd quickly find another job.

But weeks turned into months. Bierman needed money, so he applied to be an usher for Cirque du Soleil. More than a 100 others showed up for the mass interview.

Bierman was lucky. He got the job. He also has made money dog sitting and doing home repairs.

"I used to work 60 or 70 hours a week in my former life, but I never felt the kind of stress I do now," says Bierman of Santa Clara, Calif.

Two weeks left of unemployment.

Final interview with Gattaca on Friday morning.

Via Michael Duff, a great article in EGM that introduces the youngest generation to the classics.

Tim: Mario dies way too easy. Oh, grab the umbrella. Those are cool. Unfashionable, gay, but cool. Oh, 300 points. That's it? All you get is points? That's lame. Can't you do something with the umbrella?

Tim: They just put totally random stuff here for points. Oh, you've got an umbrella. You've got a purse.

John: Watch out, Tim—fire. It's smarter than you think.

Tim: It's strange that fire moves in this and has eyes. Oh no, the fire's coming. It's going to eat you. Are these barrels alive, too? Everything's alive. And Donkey Kong's mouth is made of pluses. Look: Plus, plus, plus, minus. They're trying to teach you math by brainwashing you.

Brian: How can you die from a fall of a whopping 3 inches?

Kirk: He's only an inch tall. He's a little short fat guy who eats way too much pizza.

EGM: Who's that chick Mario is rescuing up there?

Brian: It's Princess Peach.

Kirk: It's a hooker.

Niko: She looks cut in half.

Tim: Oh wow—she's one of those pole dancers.

CG Hill:

In his effort to avoid implicitly insulting other religions, Carroll explicitly insults one. Those "exclusivist claims" are at the very heart of Christianity; you take them out and you have — what? Certainly nothing recognizable as Christianity. What Moses brought down from Mount Sinai did not read "I am the Lord thy God, one of a panoply of such, all interchangeable."

Well put.

Hehe.

This is from the UT system's legal department. I found it informative.

The rather copious research I had to do on the sizes of the schools was a bit surprising. I figured that there'd be a single source for that information, but not as near as I can tell. I did an interesting slideshow by UTD

An few interesting tidbits:

They're about as competitive as Texas A&M!

UNT is not only bigger than Tech, but it's more academically competitive.

The school is some 75% male. I wonder why.

The University of Houston students have lower scores than University of Texas at Arlington, but have a lower admission rate (meaning that they accept less than apply).

UT and A&M apparently accept more than 50% of those that apply. Wouldn't have thought that. I guess a lot of people aren't bothering to apply anymore?

UH pays its professors better than Tech does and male professors more than A&M.

--

I also talked about the movie Necessary Roughness, which features the Texas State Fighting Armadillos. They also have a fictional rival (Texas University Colts), but from what I recall the rest of the universities were real. One of them was the Kansas Jayhawks and the other was... Southwest Texas State Bobcats (who, incidentally, beat the tar out of the Dillos). So apparently Texas State beat had the tar beat out of it by its future self.

This might seem less profound at a time of day other than two in the morning.

--

Did you know UTPA existed? I didn't know UTPA existed...

--

Universities.com is a very helpful site though their alphabetizing is weird to the max. For instance, UT is not under "U" for University and you can't find it by looking for "Texas"... it's under "The".

Southwest Texas State University is the sixth largest public university in Texas. Stop for a moment and try to figure out what the higher five are.

UT and A&M are pretty obvious as is Texas Tech. The University of Houston is also obvious to me, but I'm biased. So what is the fifth largest university in Texas? If I had to guess, I'd say either North Texas or UTEP.

It's actually Texas Tech and even then only barely. In fact, before I looked up to verify student populations, I jotted down a list of what I thought the biggest public universities in Texas were and then looked them up. The results are in the "Read More" below.

I'm not nearly as big a college football fan as Kevin is, but I'll be honest in admitting that my list of what I thought the biggest universities were was directly related to athletics.

A couple months ago my roommate and I were talking about Texas State and how they dropped the "Southwest" and have their eyes on the prize. They believe they're destined to become #3 (of course, so does UH, Tech, UNT, and just about every other university) and they wanted to drop the Southwest in large part for that reason. Now that they have the most coveted vacant college name in the nation (it's no mystery that Necessary Roughness chose Texas State or that Texas Tech practically had riots trying to get the name) and boast the third most college applications in Texas, they have a shot at it.

Except for one thing: They're lackluster Division II-A football program.

It may sound silly to go to a university just because of its football team (because it is), but football programs buy credibility like nothing else. Without it, you're the University of Texas at Arlington, a school with a population the size of Texas Tech's that no one has heard of (I only know of UTA because of some relatives that went there).

For UTD, that may be perfectly fine because they have a fixed demographic. Honestly, it would probably be okay for UH as well for the same reason. Also, Southwest Texas State could have just decided to stay in league with Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin. In reality, though, no university president ever gets appointed to his position by vowing to keep a university small and regional.

And so it is with the University of South Florida in a not-so-recent NYT article:

he University of South Florida sprawls over nearly 1,500 acres in a once sparsely populated section of Tampa, close to where the city bleeds into unincorporated Hillsborough County. The campus is pancake flat and in desperate need of more trees and shade. Grass comes up in stubborn clumps through sandy soil. I can't say that I was shocked when I learned of a previous use of this parcel of land: a practice bombing range.

In many other ways, though, the University of South Florida is attractive -- and useful. It has produced about 170,000 graduates in its four-decade history. It has a medical school and some well-regarded academic programs. Current enrollment stands at 39,000, and students tend to be grounded and hard-working rather than rich and entitled. (A professor told me that one challenge of his job is teaching morning classes to students who may have worked the late shift at Chili's.) What U.S.F. does not have is any kind of national profile. It has no standing. No buzz. The latest edition of the Princeton Review's ''Best 345 Colleges'' does not rank it low on the list -- it leaves it off entirely.

University officials want U.S.F. in the guidebooks. They want fewer commuters, more out-of-state students, more residence halls and more of a ''traditional'' campus feel, by which they mean a campus with a soul and some spirit. It is a big job, and the burden for getting it done has fallen, largely, to [USF coach] Jim Leavitt.

The article goes on to basically call it a fool's wager. I'll get to the specifics in a bit, but it paints a rather devestating picture of what trying to build a first-tier athletics program (of which football is always the cornerstone) can do to a university financially. It ain't pretty.

But the article's author ignores how important a football program can be for reasons that I outlined above. Size and prominance come with a football program. In the current collegiate environment, if USF wants to expand to get more national merit scholars and whatnot, then it's only going to have limited success without a football team (which USF lacked until 1997) in Division IA playing against the big boys.

As it happens, the University of Houston has a very aggressive program to attract national merit scholars. It also has one of the best Hotel & Restaurant Management programs in the world as well as various other specialties. Perhaps an argument can be made that it ought to be enough to bring people there, but outreach and specialization can only accomplish so much. A very large number of people want to go to a school with a real profile. They want to be able to go across the country and say "I went to State University" and people be immediately familiar with that. There's no better conduit like that than football.

To put a finer point on it, if people see the University of Houston as local or regional university, it's not even going to enter the minds of someone out of that region that they ought to check it out. I live here and it the University of Houston didn't even enter consideration until the 10th hour or so. The two universities it beat out, Texas Tech and Louisiana State University, were considered much sooner because of their profile (which again, is related to sports). If I hadn't already known what I wanted to major in and wanted to stay in the area as much as I did, I probably would have gone to Tech.

Why? Because I'd decided I wanted to go to a big university and Texas Tech seemed like the biggest that I could have gotten in to. I didn't know UH was larger at the time and if they hadn't had an a former SWC athletic program, I'd not have had a clue that they were any bigger than Stephen F. Austin State.

It probably sounds frivolous to choose a university on such a criterion, but when there are so many options available, the ones that are already in your consciousness get a head start and if you don't have a clear idea of what you want to do, stand a real chance of crossing the finishing line before you look anywhere else.

As the UT and A&M become more and more competitive (as UCLA and Berkeley are in California), those looking for a broad university with a lot of options, a great campus life, and school pride are going to look at athletics programs as a touchstone. The more of those people you get, the higher the admittance requirements and the more competitive the school becomes. Nearly every school in Texas wants to be the one those people choose.

Personally, I think it's increasingly going to be Texas Tech and it's going to be because of their athletics program.

Coming tomorrow, part two.

[Read More!]

Slate does an admirable analysis of Susan Estrich, one-time scolding feminist and now defender of Bill Clinton and Arnold Schwarzenegger from their respective muckrakers:

Back in 1987, when Estrich wrote her elegant, tightly argued book Real Rape, she was pretty hard-core. She wrote that not only does "no" mean "no" when it comes to sexual advances, but that "yes" sometimes means "no" as well: "Many feminists would argue that so long as women are powerless relative to men, viewing a 'yes' as a sign of true consent is misguided. For myself, I am quite certain that many women who say 'yes' to men they know, whether on dates or on the job, would say 'no' if they could. I have no doubt that women's silence sometimes is not the product of passion and desire but of pressure and fear." But that was then, and this is now.

As it turns out, Estrich's unlikely support of Schwarzenegger has a precedent: When Clinton had his difficulties with Paula Jones, Juanita Broderick, Kathleen Willey, Monica Lewinksy, et al., Estrich rallied to his defense. She said in Slate and elsewhere that she was sure that he would not have done it. Why? For one thing, "Bill Clinton was my friend." For another thing, "He didn't have to." This type of reasoning would never have made it past the Estrich of Real Rape, the Estrich who passionately supported Anita Hill, the Estrich who coined the phrase "the nuts and sluts defense."

It also talks about the retreat of the feminism movement in general:

The hysteria surrounding sexual crimes had abated. All of a sudden, the idea that the office was full of lurking male sexual predators ready to pounce on delicate, offended career girls was no longer everybody's obsession. People began to wish that the "personal" could be personal again. Writers from David Mamet to Michael Crichton wrote works of art devoted to the excesses and absurdities of the feminist preoccupation with sexual harassment. By the time a towheaded 6-year-old was suspended from school for kissing a little girl on the cheek, most of the country had come to think the women's movement had gone too far; and the movement retreated from the absolutism surrounding issues like sexual harassment and date rape; feminist pundits began to muse on the paradoxes of sexual power.

Comics kept: 2,114 (57%)
Comics tossed: 1,588 (43%)

Hardest comic(s) to get rid of:

The Young Justice serial. Great serial, very tough to watch it go.

Hardware #1

Easiest comic(s) to get rid of:

X-Men Movie Adaptation. Worst. Comic. Ever. (and no, I'm not making any commentary on the actual movie with this summation).

Extreme Justice. How can a comic with Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, and Captain Atom be so awful?

Comics I never considered getting rid of:

The Watchmen

The Question

V for Vendetta

Vigilante

Keith Giffen's Justice League work

Comics I need to go out and buy ASAP:

The rest of Jon Ostrander's Spectre series.

The rest of Green Lantern Mosaic

Green Arrow #100

Comic(s) I'm surprised that I kept:
I kept a lot more Robin and Nightwing than I thought I would.

Comics I Thought I Had:

I could have sworn that I'd kept the Demon serial last time I did some comic house cleaning. It turns out that I didn't. I was actually really looking forward to getting around to reading them.

I'm two comics shy of having the entire Impact run. I really thought that I had them all.

I thought I had more Flash and Punisher than I do.

Comics I didn't realize I had:

During our seperation, Tanya gave me custody of a handsome collection of Ultraverse comics.

I also apparently have the Green Lantern part of the Return of Barry Allen storyline.

I apparently have Johnny Walker's (currently USAgent) entire run as Captain America.

Comic that could have been the greatest ever made but wasn't:

Chain Gang War

Comics that other bloggers need to read:

Owen Courreges needs to read Vigilante. Vig is a lot like Punisher and it explores the issues he talks about on his blogs as they pertain to Mr. Castle (and in Vigilante, Messrs Chase, Winston, and Wells.

Daniel Goldberg and Lex Alexander should read The Question and V for Vendetta.

Frank Martin should read The Spectre.

Michael Morgan needs to read Batman: Seduction of the Gun cause getting pissed off can be fun.

Everyone should read Watchmen.

Everyone who liked Watchmen should read Marshal Law.

Other notes:

When I was younger, I used to keep money behind comics in my room. I didn't have enough to have a bank account so I had to hide it somewhere. Of course, I'd constantly forget which comics I had them behind so I'd have periods of panic ("Why do I only have $80 saved up?!") followed by joyful surprises ("Action Comics #588, I love you for giving me $30!"). I actually didn't find any money this time around and thought that I might. Of course, whoever ends up getting my comics (right now Mr. Morgan if he wants them) might be in for a joyful surprise.

I didn't find any money, but I found a couple of letters from Jessica I'd apparently stashed away. Go figure.

I'm not sure whether I'd rather have found $30 or the letters.

I thought that I'd have more isolated issues than I did. By that I mean issues that I had part 1 but not part 2 or vice-versa. Don't get me wrong, I had a number of them, but I was thinking that I'd be getting rid of 2/3 of my collection in large part due to inflated expectations of how many I'd be getting rid of just because I didn't have the whole story.

Comics that haven't been touched in over a year and a half come with a lot of dust.

I don't buy comic books for the art, but there were a few cases where I did get rid of them because of the art.

Early issues of Catwoman definitely qualify as soft porn. Jim Balent's artwork has the costume so tight that I think he just drew Catwoman nude and then colored it purple. If I were in Playboy's legal department, I'd be checking the poses to see if he ripped off any issues that were out at the time.

Those issues of Catwoman were very popular with guys, if I recall, for a story with a female writer writing a female lead.

Chuck Dixon's stock went up considerably. I kept more of his Batman-related work than anyone else's.

The first comic I ever bought (Batman #481) was written by Doug Moensch, interestingly. I bought it before going on a 3-week trip to Europe. I read it so many times it's now restapled together. Looking over the issue, it's actually somewhat mediocre.

My best friend Jay used to be obsessed with the smoothness of comic book paper. It became an ongoing joke... "The paper! It's so smooooooooth..."

Regardless of the aesthetic qualities of high-grade paper, the difference in how well they've held up over the years as compared to their standard brethren is considerable.

Crossovers are hell to catalog.

I only kept Dark Knight Strikes Again because it was a sequel to the classic Dark Knight Returns. There was no other reason.

I'm actually somewhat surprised on the strident responses to letters of the editors in Flash and Batman in particular. Conservative readers who objected to a gay character in Flash and a virulently anti-gun issue of Batman were outright called stupid and worse.

In one series, it's almost amusing watching them ratchet up a black character's ethnic bonafides by bringing up OJ Simpson.

I spent more time looking through the comics than I probably should have.

I've had a couple days to wrap my hands around it now, but unfortunately the initial impression hasn't changed very much. The reason I asked the question before was that I wasn't (and am not) very comfortable with how I do feel about it.

I'm angry. I'm still mad about what she's done. There are other emotions involved, but all roads seem to come back to that. When I'm sad because I remember when we had a close friendship, I then remember that the person I cared for deeply was a lie and I get even angrier.

I'm also angry because she took the easy way out. Not because she ran away from life but because she ran away from the life that she made for herself. Keith was on hard times when he took his life, but they were largely unintentional and not of his own making. Tami, on the other hand, must have known that they'd figure her out. She must have known that you can only use people, and lie to them, for emotional gratification for only so long before the story starts straining credibility.

I figured her out, albeit very reluctantly. Some of her other friends around here did the same (and others chose not to), which is why she left for San Antonio to begin with. But it doesn't count as a new start when you do the same things that ruined your life in the previous one.

So I'm angry at her exodus and I'm angry that she made such a rotten bed that she couldn't sleep in. I wish this anger were tempered with sympathy, but I can't seem to muster it right now.

She's dead and I'm still angry. I don't like to think about what this says about me.

Sorry if I'm being obsequious. I'm going to explain everything when I'm ready to. I'm just not quite ready yet. Remembering it in detail to type it out will just make me angrier.

I wrote this shortly after our falling out:

It's a bright new day in your dark little world
as you sing the song of a tortured little girl
With all those monsters under your bed
and the voices screaming in the back of your head
But now all your lies are coming at you again
The net has been cast and the walls are closing in
But I knew that you'd escape, you'd get away somehow
and we're never gonna get you now.

I wrote it when she was moving to San Antonio, but it seems almost more applicable now.

Her father called me personally today to invite me to her funeral. Fortunately, I'm going to be out of town.

Regardless, it was a very nice gesture, but I guess he didn't know we were on the permanent outs.

I read this article some time ago and meant to comment on it, but never quite got around to it. There isn't much to say, really, except that I believe that it's the only story where I've ever felt sorry for anyone named Brittany.

Some of you may be familiar with it, but I refer to the University of Alabama at Birmingham football team sex scandal, which involved a fourteen year old prodigy, twenty-six student athletes (allegedly), theft, drugs, and, of course, sex.

According to an e-mail from Hale attached to the complaints, he states, having heard the rumors, that he called Brittany in for a meeting with a UAB police officer. They asked if she was having sex with football players. She said no. The complaints allege the school didn't investigate any further, nor did it notify the Benefields or Alabama's Department of Human Resources of their concerns of drugs and sexual activities, despite a state law requiring they do so in the case of a minor. However, the e-mail reflects that Hale did talk to the Benefields regarding Brittany "hosting guests." The Benefields acknowledge Brittany stopped coming home as much, and that she slept all weekend when she did return. But they say they figured she was just overworked.

An e-mail from Hale, included in the complaints, indicates that he did meet with Blazers special teams coach Larry Crowe, letting the coach know that school administrators had heard rumors about his players and Brittany. According to the e-mail, Hale told Crowe that a girl Brittany's age could not consent to sex. No matter the situation, it was statutory rape. Later that week, the complaints allege, Brown told his team to stay away from Brittany. "If this gets outside of me," he said, "I can no longer help you." He allegedly added that it could mean "jail time."

A Dutch priest has left the church because he is allergic to the wafers used in Holy Communion.

Father Stefan van Dierendonck, 30, from Nijmegen, felt sick every time he took communion, reports De Morgen.

Tests revealed he was allergic to gluten - but the Catholic Church does not allow gluten-free wafers to be used for communion.

When Father Stefan was still studying for priesthood, he says he felt sick each time he took communion.

When he was fist ordained a priest and celebrated three masses a day, it made him so ill he had to spend the rest of the day in bed.

"It only got better when I went in a retreat in another abbey. The diarrhoea stopped and I had no more complaints. Than I realised I was allergic to gluten," he said.

Do you know how much longer it takes to catalog comic books when a certain comic book company doesn't put the year on its covers?

Of all the problems regarding discipline and sexuality of youngsters, I'd have to say this is pretty low on the totem pole.

Or am I woefully naive, here? My experiences at these lock-ins are pretty bland. Of course, mine weren't at the school...

Michael Williams, Joe Katzman, and Donald Sensing all bring up good points about marriage and divorce.

Katzman points out that divorce law is presently stacked against men. Sensing in turn argues that people shouldn't go in to marriage with an eye for the door. Williams says "Divorce happens."

I think Katzman's point isn't quite right. I don't offhand know any men whose reason for not marrying is directly related to divorce law. I do think that there is some reticence on the part of Gen-X and Gen-Y men and women to get married, though, and I believe that divorce plays a role in that.

As divorce becomes increasingly socially acceptable, the draw for marriage to young girls with divorced parents isn't entirely there. Of the women I know that are luke-warm (or worse) about marriage, I'd say 3/4 of which come from homes where divorce occured during their cogniscent youth. It's going to take a heck of a lot more than adjusting marriage law to fix that.

Michael's point is good and could be better made by pointing out that it's not always the man (or always the woman) that chooses the divorce. Even if the man has every intention of sticking with the marriage, how does she know that she will? I mean, how does he know?

If the divorce laws are stacked against men and that is in fact a reason for lower marriage rates, then Sensing's seeming dismissal that such people shouldn't go in to it with such doubts would in fact push marriage rates even further down.

To quote one of Sensing's own sources:

Michael Broder, a Philadelphia psychotherapist and author of The Art of Living Single, decries what he calls the "perfect-person problem," in which women refuse to engage unless they're immediately taken with a man, failing to give a relationship a chance to develop. "Few women can't tell you about someone they turned down, and I'm not talking about some grotesque monster," he says. "But there's the idea that there has to be this great degree of passion to get involved, which isn't always functional. So you have people saying things like, 'If I can't have my soul mate, I'd rather be alone.' And after that, I say, 'Well, you got your second choice.'"

It seems to me that waiting until you meet the person that is unquestionably perfect, you're going to be waiting a long time.

Michael's comments section is awash with good stuff about backwards priorities (being "in love with being in love" and marrying based on passing emotions).

The questions of the day are how these priorities came to be, what priorities they replaced, and what priorities people ought to have (and why).

Lex Alexander:

Boyd is correct to believe that journalists are losing touch with real people. But the reasons that's happening include the facts that journalists, research has found, tend to be younger, better educated, less religiously observant, less likely to have served in the military, less likely to have worked in a non-journalism business, less likely to own their homes and less likely to be married and have children than the people they write for and about -- and because they fail to realize how those differences can add up to create a world view very different from those of their sources/subjects.

From one who knows...

I've spent most of the last five hours pacing outside trying to answer a question.

I've been trying to think of other things to post. I posted the second installment of the Lyrigraph Week, but it doesn't seem right. I've done my usual round of reading blogs, but it's not getting my mind off of it. I've tried to think of a creative way to explain what's going on, but I really can't right now.

A couple years ago I met a girl named Tami. We got along enormously well. We were very close for about a year when I discovered that she wasn't who I thought she was and, in the end she was not only someone that that I didn't care for, but someone that I actively despised - unusual for me.

We last talked about six months ago. She asked me when we might be able to be friends again. I told her "never."

Last night, she took her own life.

I've spent most of the last five hours trying to answer a question: What am I supposed to be feeling right now?

It was our last night together before I left for the anime conference in DFW. In any relationship, there are times when you are perfectly in-sync and others when you are not. Seeing as how we weren't going to be able to see each other for at least another week, we were both disappointed that we had an off night. A couple things I'd said rubbed her the wrong way and her failure to understand what I was trying to say frustrated me.

I'd thought about staying the night to get an early start the next morning, but the longer I was there, the worst things got. She was worried about me driving in the harsh weather, but I didn't see it being much better the next day. "Well then," I said with a smile, "it's probably a good thing that I'm going to Dallas because I'll be getting out of the monsoon."

She was not amused.

There are angels all around us with snakes at their feet
It's been raining now for thirty-nine days
and there's garbage floating down the street

By the end of the evening, I left without so much as a kiss goodbye.

I didn't want to be your downfall, I just couldn't help myself
You wrapped your arms around me and the stars shattered and fell

It was my first Anime conference and as such, probably the most enjoyable. There was a girl there in a Juri costume that caught my attention. She was attractive enough, but that wasn't what grabbed my attention. It felt like I knew her. I wondered if perhaps she'd come from the Houston area like myself. Maybe she went to UH. Strange, though, I felt like I'd known her all my life, though I'd never spoken to her.

Adam, Jay and I were waiting in a long line the second evening when the girl behind us struck up a conversation. Since she was in line alone, I guessed that we were all she had to talk to. Nonetheless, it was a pleasent enough conversation that I'd felt that I made my first friend there in Jessica.

After the Cosplay later on that evening, I was wanting to get away from the gang a bit and hoping to get to talk to someone. I was actually looking for Juri to ask her if I knew her from somewhere when I saw Jessica in the corner of my eye. A guy dressed in a Kuno outfit was hitting on her. I was a bit reluctant to interrupt, but once I did, I'm not sure what came over me. Perhaps it was competition, which sometimes tends to bring out my uglier side, but I was able to dispatch Kuno in doubletime. It was kind of a shame because Kuno struck me as a nice (if a bit socially inept) fellow and he was obviously available while I wasn't, so I was denying her the opportunity to meet someone. It didn't stop me, though.

I was a little reluctant to tell her my age. I was wearing gray hair-dye and figured that she probably thought I was older than I was and I'd figured I was younger than she was. When we finally exchanged ages, we were both a bit flabbergasted. She'd thought I was twenty-eight and was off the mark by seven years. I thought she was twenty-four or so and I was off the mark by a whopping nine years.

She was fifteen.

I hadn't told her about Anna yet and found it somewhat peculiar that she would even be talking to a guy she thought was twice her age.

Not that it mattered, after all, as I was unavailable.

I wish I was innocent
There's blood on my hands
I wish I was innocent
We've gone too far and seen too much
to ever get back to innocence

After having spent the rest of the convention together, we exchanged some contact information and talked substantially afterwards. I hadn't known for certain that she had any romantic designs on me at the convention, but she spilled the guts pretty quickly afterwards.

I wasn't sure what to say. I was a little reluctant to tell her about Anna because I didn't know how I'd come off at the convention. I wasn't intending to flirt (okay, maybe a little during my competition with Kuno), but while I'd never given her the indication that I was interested, I never really know how I come off (and inversely I was quite dim about whether a girl was flirting or not). I told her that a relationship was unworkable due to age and distance.

Both very good reasons.

The more I found out about her, the more I really began to respect her. I was (and am) generally suspicious of girls who claimed that they were "mature for their age" as most girls self-evaluate their maturity inaccurately high. In her case, though, she had grown up a lot. Having spent her early formative years being tossed around between her alcoholic father and mentally-troubled mother, she'd basically raised herself.

The subject of us came up again and I came clean. She oddly respected what she'd falsely considered candor (it was truthful, but rather seriously delayed) and even apologized for misunderstanding me. Shortly thereafter, she got a boyfriend.

The letters and conversations, however, didn't stop. In fact, since I finally came clean about it, I was able to talk to her more honestly than before. I didn't have anything to hide anymore and I could tell her that in a different time and place, she would in fact be exactly what I was looking for. That lead to more and more intimate, though not damning, conversation.

It wasn't until a few months before the next convention that she made a proposition for the next convention. I didn't want to cheat on Anna, but it came at such a unique time and place, I had difficulty throwing it completely out of my mind. Before I had too much time to think about it, I recieved a threatening piece of mail that provided me an easy out of a conversation that I wasn't comfortable in.

She respected my decision and agreed to cease correspondence. Everything was okay again.

There's a preacher on the corner
I just walk away
He's throwing grace all around the place
Am I too far gone to save?

It wasn't much after that when Akon rolled around again. With the whole Jessica situation resolved, I started increasingly looking forward to the trip away from my Houston troubles.

When we saw each other again, she was with friends that didn't know about me and it was hard to act as though she were just a casual acquaintance from the previous year's convention, but I managed to. I was depressed and angry for unrelated reasons, and I was a bit surprised how much her presence at the convention, and my inability to so much as talk to her, bothered me.

It reached the low point at the dance. Being six feet tall, she wasn't hard to spot. I couldn't tell much about the guy that she was with except that he was extremely dopey looking. Dopey looking, and older than me.

I had no right to be jealous. I was the one that cut things off, after all, cause of the mail. No, not really. I wasn't that concerned about the mail. I was concerned about my relationship. The previous convention Anna and I had left on a bad note. That one we had a better run on that, but the relationship that I left was vastly different. It wasn't the letter, but the emotional turmoil that was rapidly infultrating the relationship.

So there I was, watching the only other girl in my life, dancing with some other guy. I had an unhappy relationship at home and a formerly would-be girlfriend dancing with Dopey while I looked on, alone, drinking whiskey. I was on my sixth glass. I hate whiskey.

The next morning, I woke up not with a hangover, but with a mission. I found Jessica before Dopey did and we started talking. When Dopey finally arrived, he was given the could shoulder in double-time and Jess and I had won yet again. We spent the rest of the day together. A few hours before the end of the convention, we were in a room watching crazy Japanese commercials when she put her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her. We kissed.

I think I have good intentions, I never wanted to be this way
I just wanted to be the air you breathe and I watched you suffocate

It was that moment that any semblance of deniability in regards to my relationship with Anna was shattered. The kiss was not only a turning point between Jessica and I, but between Anna and I again: the beginning of the end.

I wish I was innocent
There's blood on my hands
I wish I was innocent
We've gone too far and seen too much
to ever get back to innocence

[Lyrics from Peter Stuart's "Innocence"]

Name: Jessica Youngblood
Alias: Yes
AKA: "Private Mitchell"
Type: ISFP
Born: 1983
Base of Operations: Uknown
Occupation: United States Armed Services
Superpower: Self-directed
Loss Vulnerability: Older and otherwise unavailable men

Jessica comes from about as unfortunate a family background as one can imagine. Her parents divorced at a young age and she ended up splitting time between her alcoholic father and mentally unstable money. As such, she primarily raised herself and so grew up about as quickly as kid can.

We first met on the second day of the Akon convention at the Hyatt hotel in the DFW airport. She wasn't very much an Anime fan, but her friend had brought her along and she would use any excuse she could to get out of the house. I first met her while we were waiting in a rather long line. She struck up the conversation, but I was pretty happy to have someone - anyone - to talk to. The fact that she was a seemingly nice 6' redhead didn't hurt, but since I was in a serious relationship, it didn't help all that much.

She seemed pleasant enough, so when I was looking around for someone else and saw her in the corner of my eye, I decided to go talk to her instead. I ended up having to fend off a would be suitor, which I felt kind of bad about since I wasn't looking for anything but someone to talk to and he was obviously looking for a bit more.

I'd consciously avoided mentioning two things to her. First, I was afraid to bring up my age because I figured that she was older than myself and didn't want to give her the impression that I was this little fanboy hitting on her. I was older than a large number of the people there, but I figured she was twenty-four and girls can get very condescending very quickly when dealing with guys younger than themselves. Eventually she came out and asked and I told her: I'm twenty-one.

When she told me she was fifteen, my mouth dropped to the floor. Of course, once she told me I could start to see what I had missed before. I thought she just had kind of a young-looking face, but it was actually the real deal. It also should have served as a warning sign that she thought I was twenty-eight. I asked her why she, being fifteen, would be talking to a twenty-eight year old without being the least bit creeped out and she said that she's used to old guys hitting on her. I actually made a point to say "You think I'm hitting on you?" to which she replied "of course not."

I don't think either of us knew if the other was being sarcastic, or, for that matter, if we were being sarcastic ourselves. We ended up talking quite a bit and hung out together for the rest of the trip. Before we left, she took my picture and we exchanged contact information.

Over the next several months our correspondences became much more intimate. She was, it turned out, quite interested in me and I used about every excuse I had to get out of the relationship. Two excuses, the age difference and distance, were really quite valid - not all of them were so. The longer I went without telling her about Anna, the more embarassed I felt about not having told her. It was a conscious decision at first, but I had certainly intended to tell her prior to that point except that I hadn't, therefore I couldn't, and so on.

The next year our conversations became increasingly intimate until finally the subject of us came up again. It was less than a month after I'd made the decision that I was going to propose to Anna. The initial euphoria of the intended engagement had worn off and I started feeling an overwhelming sense of dread. In other words, her timing was perfect. We abstractly discussed the possibility of a rendezvous under the cover of flirtation and unseriousness.

Then she told me she was serious.

Before I could even wrap my hands around the situation, I recieved an anonymous letter. There was no signiture, no return address, and most strangely, no postmark. It contained xeroxes of the statutes regarding illegal sexual activity with minors with applicable portions highlighted. Until I'd gotten that letter, I'd actually forgotten the whole age issue.

In any case, I called off everything the next time I talked to Jessica. To be honest, I was relieved. It was increasingly weighing in my conscience and had already been looking for a way out. The sense of dread regarding my impending engagement had also severely intensified and I felt the need to figure things out there without letting a would-be successor in the wings cloud my judgment.

She respected my decision and agreed to cease correspondence. The only request she would not comply with was getting rid of my letters.

For unrelated reasons, the next convention was an unmitigated disaster that ended up costing me seven hundred dollars, severely damaging a close friendship, and leaving the shadow of Houston looming two-hundred and fifty miles over me. I tried to make new friends that trip but had no real success. I eventually tried to salvage the weekend by reconnecting with Jessica just to get to talk to her. I did and it resulted in a kiss that was the beginning of the very long end of my relationship with Anna.

A month afterwards when she asked me to leave Anna. I refused and explained that what happened would not happen again. My mission at that point was to figure out what was wrong with my relationship with Anna and correct it. It was undeniable that there were problems, but I was going to fix them.

I never did. We broke up three months later.

Two years later, Jessica was living in Arkansas with her grandmother as her mom dropped her off for a summer trip and never came back. She hadn't money for college. I was still trying to make the unworkable work with Elciem without any success. There was a point when I considered inviting Jessica to come to Houston. That stone would have killed two birds. It would make what had happened before okay and it would give me an out with Elciem, whom I'd already tried to leave two times before.

She won a scholarship to the University of Arkansas and our sins were left unrectified.

My friend Pierce sent me a hilarious dissection of the following terms-of-usage contract:

“Sellyourmama.com knows that you care about how your personal information is used and shared. We value your privacy and we appreciate the trust you have placed in our company. At Sellyourmama.com we collect only the information necessary to provide you with our unique services, such as your name, email address, and a credit card number. We store this information on a secure server using SDRAWKCAB encryption technology. We do not share this information with any other company, nor do we use it within our own company for the purpose of sending unsolicited advertising e-mail or other solicitations to customers, potential customers, or any other oxygen-breathing bipeds with whom we have or do not have a business-like or retail-type relationship.”

I have an enormously busy week this week. I'm going to try to write regular posts, but in addition to those posts I can get out there, I'm also presenting a series of six Lyrigraphs. Each will be followed by a profile of the particular person the story is about. In my efforts to improve the blog, I am essentially adding profiles for regular cast members so that I don't need to repeat myself explaining who people are.

[Note: In case you can't tell, I did not write this from my point-of-view]

I first met Alex when I worked at the Starlight 16 theater. I was in a relationship with Sergei at the time, so it wasn't love at first site or anything. Still, there was something about him that I was really drawn to and I could feel that he was drawn to me. We really didn't know each other, but he still kept following me out stopping where I stopped so that he could keep talking to me. He wasn't very subtle.

I never really even got the chance to tell him about Sergei. Starlight fired him after a couple of weeks.

From the day we met
You made me forget
All my fears
Knew just what to say
And you kissed away
All my tears

When he lost his job at Starlight, he'd mentioned to our mutual friend Millie that he was interested and Millie, being the loud-mouth that she is, told me. So when things with Sergei collapsed, I naturally thought of him and asked Millie how he was doing.

As expected, Alex called a couple of days later. It was amazing how things between us just kind of folded together. We were coming from a similar place because he'd been hurt recently, too, by a girl named Ora. It was one of the many things that we talked about. We really has so much in common that neither of us had with Sergei or Ora.

A few months into the relationship, it occured to him that we might have been a rebound thing. He was actually worried that he was just the "redundant sequel" after Sergei. He was so happy when I told him that it honestly felt like Sergei was just the warm-up for him.

I knew this time I had finally found
Someone to build my life around
Who'd be a lover and a friend
After all my heart had put me through
I knew that it was safe with you
And what we had would never end

Over the months, and then years, of the relationship, Alex managed to tear down the walls that I'd built up to protect myself from Sergei. He was amazingly patient. He never got mad or jealous, which seemed to be all Sergei ever was. I was also perfect for him and he said so repeatedly. I was unquestionably faithful and I didn't lavish in attention the same way Ora had.

What more could we want?

Wrong again

It hit me like a freight train. He'd never given the slightest indication that there was something wrong. In fact, I thought things were going better than ever. Sure, there were a couple of gripes that I had and maybe I repeated them too often, but couldn't he have said anything before he did?

I've always had a jealous streak. I don't really know why, but I would get nervous any time he mentioned a female friend or Ora. But I'd finally gotten beyond it and when I told him that I wasn't jealous over him anymore because I felt I could trust him completely, he simply said, "I see."

I asked him what he meant by that and he told me.

Everybody swore
They'd seen this before
We'd be fine
And you'd come to see that you still loved me
In good time

I was sure that we could make things work. I was also pretty sure that this was just a mood. It wasn't until we really started talking about it that I began to understand that he'd been thinking about it a lot. A whole lot.

And they said there's nothing you can do
It's something that he's going through
It happens to a lot of men
And I told myself that they were right
That you'd wake up and see the light
And I just had to wait 'til then

We argued about it fiercely. Looking back, I'm not even sure what I was trying to save, but at the time I was certain that he loved me, I loved him, and that if we stayed together, things would just work, dammit. I eventually sent our friends Pierce and Sola to go see him so that he would realize that a mistake he was making.

He talked to Sola first and she came out of it agreeing with him. When she and I started talking about it, we both realized that it had been there all along. He had been growing dispondant. I saw this, but I mistook it for quiet comfort, much as I'd thought his jealousy was out of trust and not because he wouldn't allow himself to love me completely because he was afraid of me leaving as Ora did.

But didn't he realize that I wasn't?

Wrong again

I don't know that it really mattered, though. If he couldn't see that, what hope was there for the relationship, anyway? I looked around the room and he was everywhere. His picture; gifts he'd given me. After talking to Pierce, he called me to let me know he was coming over.

One by one, I started taking the pictures down.

And it seemed to me the pain would last
My chance for happiness had passed
With nothing waitin' 'round the bend
I was sure I'd never find someone
To heal the damage you had done
And my poor heart would never mend

I told Alex that if he ever changed his mind, I wanted to know. He'd said that he'd been keeping his feelings so controls that he couldn't feel freely. I felt if I could just love him enough, it would be enough for both of us or at least for him to find what we once had. He said that he buried his emotions when things with Ora ended and that he needed to find someone that could touch that emotional nerve to bring him back - or he'd need to find someone as emotionally dead as himself.

I told him that at that point, I was every bit as emotionally dead.

Wrong again

We had decided to keep in contact since between Sergei and Alex, I hadn't been single in over five years and he hadn't been single in four. Things didn't really work out that way. He met a girl named Elciem that seemed to be occupying all of his time and energy. He was never really the same person after our relationship ended and it felt like, in a way, the person that I loved no longer existed.

I started hanging out more and more with Pierce. Alex was very sweet about it when I brought up what I thought was happening. he even offered to help find out if Pierce felt the same way that I did. I thanked him for it, but he said that he owed me at least that and a whole lot more. His unique form of alimony, I guess.

Pierce and I moved in together less than six months later and have been living happily ever since.

[lyrics from Martina McBride's "Wrong Again"]

Name: Anna McLoed
Alias: Yes
AKA: "Tanni"
Type: ISFJ / ISTJ
Born: 1978
Base of Operations: Webster, TX
Occupation: Techical Support
Superpower: Trustworthy
Loss Vulnerability: Stubborn
Short Version: Serious relationship from 1996-2000.

Long Version:
We met at the Starlight 16 theater in Pasadena, TX, where we both worked. We were scheduled together for my first couple of shifts there and got along pretty well, as far as I could tell. She's a very quiet person until you get to know her. It was thanks to a short conversation during this short period that I began looking at the University of Houston as a possible choice for college on her recommendation. I took a pretty immediate liking to her and when Starlight fired me for losing fictional money, I talked to Millie, a mutual friend, to try to get her schedule to meet her after work and ask her out. Unfortunately, she had a boyfriend at the time.

A few months later, Millie told me that Anna was asking about me and passed along her phone number. I called her and saw First Kid on our first date. She wore a pink shirt, blue jeans, and tan hiking shoes and we talked outside the theater for about three hours before finally parting ways. We went on a second date and a third. I fell in love with her at about the two month period. It took me about five minutes to sputter out the words because after being hurt by Ora, I'd lost sight of what they meant.

There were a few bumps in the road, but the relationship on the whole was very positive for both of us. For my part, she provided a sense of stability that my life was sorely lacking. She was my first serious relationship and therefore gave me a lot of experience on what makes relationships work. For her part, she'd come off a pretty nasty relationship and I helped her bring down the emotional walls that she built.

In early 2000, I began preparations to propose. I asked for her parents' permission and it was granted. I also started quietly saving up for a wedding ring. There was an initial period of euphoria that started turning sour after about a month. I started withdrawing from my friends as I started getting a nagging feeling that the impending engagement might be a mistake. Though I refused to acknowledge it, a series of events that summer and fall made the relationship impossible.

I had failed to properly deal with the heartbreak of my former love when she entered my life and the problems, which I'd been suppressing, started surfacing sporadically. There was a part of me that was desperately unhappy.

I was still pretty confident that I would get things worked out until August when everything began to unravel. During the preparation process, I'd made certain decisions as to what our relationship would require to become a successful marriage and that lead me to start considering law school. The pressures of law school admissions combined with full-time employment eventually lead to exhaustion that caused a serious car accident that made me rethink my priorities. Suddenly, in addition to the emotional discomfort, I started getting the sense that we were incompatible in other ways.

In the end, however, it was the emotional issues that pulled the relationship asunder. It was only after I began to peel at the ways that we were compatible on a practical level did I realize that there was something missing beyond that. I loved her dearly, but I'd kept certain parts of me bottled up and for some reason, she wasn't able to touch the emotional nerve to bring me back. To this day, I don't know whether it was an inherent emotional incompatibility between us or that she was simply in the wrong position at the wrong time to be able to do so.

In early December of 2000, I finally shared my concerns with her. Within a two week period, she discovered my previous intentions to propose, was informed that much of the stress I'd been experiencing over the previous couple of months was related to our relationship, and was emancipated from the relationship. The relationship ended on December 17, though we decided to wait until the New Year to announce it. Word got out and it lead to the most uncomfortable Christmas Party I've ever spent with her family that year.

Within a month or so, she became involved with Pierce, a mutual friend who was in the middle of a prolonged divorce. Anna and Pierce dated for roughly three-and-a-half years before they parted ways. She is presently single and living in Webster.

I screwed up this weekend. Back on the wagon now, though. Unlike last time, I'm going to let you know when I falter, so in regards to the Quitter's Diary, no news is definitely going to be good news!

I debated whether or not to go see Bleu Edmondson in Wharton, Adam Carroll at the Mucky Duck, or the Coogs. I chose the latter.

There was no reason we couldn't have beaten this team. They played a good game (few penalties, no turnovers), but their offense kept running the same three plays over and over again. Their idea of variation was to send three running backs rightward and then pick which one of them to hand off to. Their defense was an inch deep, all lined up within ten yards of the line of scrimage every play (even the safeties) and if we could have passed them, it would have been an easy touchdown.

Unfortunately, QB Kolb looked like he was stoned throughout most of the game. The offense gave up seven points, set them up with a turnover for seven more, and forced the Memphis team to actually march the ball more than 50 yards for a touchdown only twice (of their six touchdowns and two field goals) due to turnovers (fumbles, interceptions, and 4th down failures). And, of course, there was me. At the game and watching.

So, to all of the UH fans out there, I apologize. It seems that yet again my desire to see a team that I'm rooting for has cost them a game. For this reason (okay, others also), I will refrain from going to watch their game next week against TCU.

On a side note, Monday at 8PM UH coach Art Briles answers questions on a talk radio show. I might have to listen, as I could use a few answers.

The weather around here has gotten cooler. We've even been turning the AC off during a particularly cooler spell. Additionally:

I haven't been cooking as much as I have in the past.

I only keep two of my computers on instead of three.

Half the lights in our apartment are burned out. They haven't fixed them so we've just left them that way so we have less light usage.

Yet, inexplicably, our electricity bill went up $30.

So did we use any more electricity? Though I'm not sure how, it's possible.

Of course, I can't check because our electricity "bill" is handled through the apartment complex and we don't get to see out watt usage.

Of course, it's also possible that our usage didn't go up, but the complex's did. It's an interesting thing that from what I understand, our electricity bill includes our proportion of the parking lot and street lights and in addition to re-painting the dive, they've turned up the lights and footed us with that bill too.

When walking around the Firehouse on Friday night, I found this napkin on the floor. I wonder who wrote it and why:



My guess?

Roger Creager is a Texas country musician who comes from Corpus Christi and the Houston area. His father lives here, I think (or at least is present at a lot of his shows. He often goes on stage to sing "Rancho Grande" with him.) My guess is that it was a message from someone to someone else saying that "Roger Creager is his son" except they misspelled, of all words, "his."

I'ts the only thing I can think of.

During my junior high football career, I had one penalty called against me. It was, for all things, equipment failure. The chinguard on my helmet hadn't been fastened.

Nebraska (18) is slaughtering Texas A&M (~45) at the moment 34-6. Nebraska had an interception, but there were flags on the play. We were talking about what a shame that would be for Nebraska (since the guarded reciever was apparently not the victim) to have an interception brought back on a penalty that had nothing to do with the interception.

Well it turns out that there may have been a connection. Nebraska had 12 men on the field. Not 12 men insofar as one hadn't made it off the field or whatnot, but rather that there was a formation, and then a 12th guy standing there, breaking all the symmetry and perhaps should having some indication that something was amiss.

So A&M gets the ball back plus fifteen yards and find themselves on the 20 yardline or so. A&M gets nowhere and has to kick a fieldgoal. They miss but there's another flag on the play.

Twelve men on the field. Again.

Methinks someone thinks they made first string when they actually did not.

Methinks a coach needs to get up the gumption to tell said muscular athlete that he is not, in fact, on first string as he thinks he is.

Methinks a player who realizes that his spot is being taken up by someone else needs to vacate the field or at least call a time out.

As it was, A&M got the ball back, got 10 yards or so, and had first and goal at the 10 (or so).

Of course, given the crummy game they played, it was no surprise that they had to kick another field goal.

This time they made it, bringing the formerly 34-3 game to 34-6. For shame, for shame.

I've been of the mind that a lot of people have gone rather batty in their objections to the addition of other colors on our greenbacks. While I'm against moving too far away from the distinctive green, I'm also in favor of doing what we have to in order to deter counterfeiters.

Well, last night I got my first New Money in the form of a $20 bill.

Good grief! I didn't even see the new color, though I had to assume it was the addition of yellow. But it wasn't the new color that freaked me out. Rather, it was the distribution of color, which had yellowish in the middle and then a more solid green color on the outside.

To be crude, it looked like someone pissed on a $20 and the green bled to the sides with a nice yellow middle.

I was talking about it with my folks this morning and pulled out another to make an example and... it was completely different. There was a light blue eagle watermark on it and the color distrobution was not nearly as disturbing.

Whew.

But wait a minute... if that's what the new $20 looks like, then what the heck was it that I was I had last night?!

To give you an idea of what I'm up against here:

As near as I can tell, I quit collecting comics in late 2000.

As near as I can tell, I stopped buying comics in early 2002.

So I'm not only sifting through a bunch of comics, I'm sifting through a bunch of comics that I have no idea what happens inside of them.

In case you guys can't tell, Master of None is a daily visit for me. Both the political and observational posts are thought-provoking and interesting. Its proprieter, Michael Williams, has invited his friend Mike Northover to guest-post and he's only added to the already interesting site with gems like this one:

I'm not sure when this whole everyone-is-fake-and-stupid thing actually started, but I feel it's reached epidemic proportions. It's reflex. It's probably universal, and could probably go back to "three amoebas were sitting in a bar, and damnit, the amoeba chick went home with the jerk amoeba, what the heck is wrong with the world". No mention of the jerk amoebas huge pecs and chisled chin, of course. He was probably gay anyway.

I'm reminded of a good friend of mine who's about 22 and has been dating this guy since the begining of time (or 5.5 years ago, whichever is more recent) and is in the process of becoming single again.

Part of me is happy for her because it's a relationship she should have been out of some time ago, but force of will to make it work or fear of the unknown kept her with it. A year or two back I was trying to convince her to get out and she elected not to.

It's strange, though, but now that it's happening I'm having second thoughts in regards to whether or not it's the right thing. The idea of some guy flirting with her, all the self-doubt and wondering on whether or not the dude is interested, the falsity of the first several dates... the thought of it all bothers me more immensely (more than it has for myself, actually, when I've been in the "market").

Ironically, the dating process, which is supposed to be about finding that other person and becoming more complete, stands next to college hazing as one of the most humiliating activities in existence, even when things go well.

While looking for Salon's article on medical residencies, I ran across this interesting one on the sexual tensions that arise in Hospitals:

Any adult knows that sex is, in fact, the best way to relieve frustration, with masturbation a distant second. Furthermore, it serves as an excellent means of taking control of some part of one's life. When everything else around you seems to be falling to pieces, the ability to choose another person and experience intimate physical proximity with that person is a great reminder that you are still able to affect at least some of the daily events in which you are involved. These events were frequent for a tall, square-jawed resident I once knew, who was uniformly lusted after by every young nurse in the hospital and some older ones as well. After his first few distressing weeks on the wards, it became well known that if you caught him at the end of a bad day, especially one in which he had lost a patient, you could coax from him a trip to the call room. In fact, the nurses even began to send spies down to the E.R. on busy afternoons, just to see how he was faring.

It reminds me a bit of a comic book series called Authority originally written by Warren Ellis.

What struck me most about the serial was its realistic portrayal of characters. Marvel afficionados talk about how much more realistic the dispositions of Marvel characters are compared to DC. Truth be told, they have a point if that's what you're looking for. Of course, if that's what you're looking for, then The Authority is (was?) bar-none.

The serial is pretty old and I haven't kept up with it, but one of the scenes that sticks in my mind is when, after a looooooong day, two superheroes are smoking a cigarette on the roof of their headquarters. The handling of that issue and that scene made poignant that a bad day at work for them was a bad day the likes of which the rest of us could only dream of. They use whatever they can to get through the day.

Due to the nature of the genre, it's really something most superhero stories seem to have steered clear of. I'm sure there are some, but I can't recall offhand any superheroes addicted to painkillers, for instance. Green Arrow's former sidekick had a heroin addiction and Hourman was addicted to the pill that gave him superpowers, but that's cu