The Washington Post is, as one might expect, chronicling the Democratic presidential campaigns. I found this cute:

Dean's elves retaliated in kind, writing a Dickensian exchange that occurs between Gephardt after winning the 1988 Iowa caucus, and the Gephardt of today. In this fictional visit from the ghost of campaigns future, the younger Gephardt is incredulous that his future self has not done better.

"So honestly, in 16 years we're still a congressman?" 1988 Gephardt asks.

"You lost the House? We had it for 40 years!"

"I'm a perennial loser? This has to be some sort of nightmare. Come on, slap me, I'll wake up in the West Wing."

The younger Gephardt continues: "You really stood up to the Republicans, though, right?"

Replies the future Gephardt: "Does going to war count?"

Chuck and his wife Tiffany saw Inventing the Abbotts on their first date way back when.

Eel and I didn't have a first date, per se, though the first movie we saw together was Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The fact that I put on a movie about a transsexual rock star for our first movie was a testament to how confident I was about our budding relationship.

The first movie I saw with Anna was, of all things, First Kid. It was a comedy starring Sinbad as a secret service agent looking after the President's son. Bill Clinton made a cameo as the former president asking if President Davenport had seen the saxophone he accidentally left behind in the White House. That we saw that for our first date and that there was actually a second date was a sign that we were in for a long haul.

Other odd first date movies included Mulholland Drive (that was complete with a lesbian lovemaking scene), and 40 Days and 40 Nights (an erotic comedy about sex and lack thereof).

Andrea Harris is retiring from the blog world. Andrea has always been one of those bloggers that I needed to read more than I did. I didn't overlook her because she's not a good blogger (quite the contrary), but because I find myself gravitating towards those that comment my blog, I know personally, or show up on my referral logs (note: if you're a blogger that reads this blog, a good way to get me to read yours is to either comment on mine or use your own page to get to mine). Anyhow, Andrea was a real pro (for this inherently amateur enterprise, anyhow) and consistently one of the best out there. In fact, if I had to list ten blogs that I wish mine were more like, she'd likely be on that list (as would similarly retired Page from LastPage).

Like Kevin, I've considered hanging it up myself on a few occasions and, like Kevin, the feeling passes. Most hiatuses start off with me thinking "maybe I should be pursuing other things..." but when I stop, I have waaaay too many "I should blog on this!" thoughts (I have about three of those for every post I actually write). When I hung up RAW1.0 over on Blogspot time was the biggest issue. At other points it's just been the hassle of arguments I don't want to be in.

I'm not much of a book reader like Kevin is, but I notice my book writing has declined since I've started blogging. There's an interesting trade-off, both reading and writing short snippits compared to larger works. The payoffs are vastly different and it's hard to say which is preferable.

When reading blogs, you get a much wider variety of information (or commentary) and there's a sense of accomplishment in that. For me there is, anyhow. The same goes for writing. If I find something interesting to write about I don't need to find a way to work it into a novel or turn it in to a short story. Novels and short stories are fulfilling things for me to write, but they're also a lot of work and there are a lot of ideas that that are good enough to carry a blog post but not enough to carry a short story or a detour in a novel.

In that sense, blogging has actually helped my novel writing. I noticed that when I go back and edit Something So Perfect or Slaughter Book I, there are some scenes that didn't entirely fit that I can rewrite into something more appropriate. I don't need to put a peculiar experience that happened to me or someone I know. I don't feel as much the need to "represent" certain experiences, which leaves me more room to represent the experiences of the characters in question.

The other, and perhaps bigger tradeoff, is immediate feedback. If I post something people can put their thoughts right there and I can look at it in a new way or my subjective experience is widened by those that choose to leave a comment. While writing novels give me a great sense of fulfillment, few have actually read them (my own fault, in part, as I still owe Callie a copy of At Heaven's Door) and even those that do give me their more general thoughts instead of one of (what I perhaps arrogantly consider) the many thoughtful ideas and issues the novel brings forth.

On the other hand, blogging can feel from a writer's perspective (and I can imagine a reader's too) like "all icing and no cake." When I look back on my accomplishments, my novels rate pretty high and (at least right now) the blog doesn't so much. The coverage here is a mile wide and an inch deep. The ideas are never explored as fully as I would like and the longer I explore something, the less response it seems to generate. In that way I'm a poor fit for blogging since I tend to be a probative thinker and blogging tends itself to more cursory coverage.

Then again, that's one of the reasons that I started blogging to begin with. I want to get certain thoughts out of my head and I want to start writing more and writing less carefully so that I can get more experience actually producing instead of simply creating in my mind.

So RAWbservations isn't going anywhere any time soon. There will be some ebb and flow as I hopefully get back to writing more ambitious projects in the future. But for now it's fun, I enjoy doing it, and I enjoy hearing people's thoughts up against my own.

California Bears 52, Virginia Tech Hokies 49
Washington St. Cougars 28, Texas Longhorns 20



With those two losses I'm all but thrown out of the football pool. Unfortunately, in both cases I changed my prediction before the game, but it doesn't count.

Other than the underdogs winning, what does this games have in common? Mainly that the overdog didn't want to be there. That's why I changed my predictions.

Virginia Tech was, at one point, a national contender. They handily defeated the Miami Hurricanes and had only a single loss to the upset-proned upstarts West Virginia (who themselves had almost beaten Miami). They would probably be the odd men out even if they had gone the rest of the season undefeated, but they didn't and lost their last few games and dropped out from even being ranked. For a team hoping for national contention, the Insight Bowl was a bit of a letdown and they voiced their displeasure.

Texas lost national contention when they lost early to Arkansas and then had their annual beating at the Red River Shootout against Oklahoma, but they were poised for a BCS game until Oklahoma lost against Kansas State, filling the Big 12's BCS slots and sending them for another trip to San Diego for the Holiday Bowl. They've been to San Diego so many times Mack Brown's frequent flier punchcard is about to land him a free pass. The players griped and the result, as with Virginia Tech, was a loss.

Football is probably the most psychological of the major sports. Unlike baseball which is largely a series of individual performances and basketball where there is often plenty of time and points left to score when a team gets on a roll, in football there are so many variables and so many contributors to the game the team becomes a lot more than the sum of its parts. The spirit of the team therefore matters all the more. As Texas and Virginia Tech proved - and Oklahoma before them - if a team doesn't want to win it rarely will.

I was rooting for Virginia Tech and Texas both for a variety of reasons. My father and brother are UT grads and Eel's father went to Virginia Tech (and besides that, Hokies is such a cool team name). So in both cases I got a sinking feeling when I read what the players had to say.

I'm not that disappointed that Texas and VTech lost. It's football and on any given Saturday that type of thing happens. To be sure, neither California nor Washington State were rollovers. WSU only had one more loss than UT and California was on a roll at the end of the season, but if UT and VT were both as good as they thought they were (ie "better" than the bowls they were sent to), the least they could do is come out playing.

The failure in large part resides with the coach. In this case Mack Brown and whateverthehokiescoachnameis. I don't know what Mack Brown was saying to his team - or what Bob Stoops was saying prior to Kansas State - but it's a coach's job to keep the troops rallied and he clearly did not do that. I will have more (positive and negative) to say about Brown later, but it's rather hard to root for a team (be it UT or VT) that complains about a midling bowl when UH alums everywhere were breaking out the champaign for one of the minors.

"Mistakes are like horses. We could ride them different if we tried," -written on the wall of the bathroom at the Cheatham Street Warehouse in San Marcos.

Reckless Kelly was one of the first Texas alt-country bands I became familiar with. The late band Blind Luck opened for them at the late live music venue The Fabulous Satellite Lounge and I enjoyed their music. Unfortunately, so does half of Houston and I've not been inclined to go see all that many of their live music shows because of the large crowds that they attract. That said, I've enjoyed their CDs and their unique mixture of Americana and country with their inventive lyrics and distinct lead singer, Willy Braun.

I finally got around to buying their new CD, Under the Table & Above the Sun, about a month ago with a handful of others (Roger Creager's "Long Way to Mexico," both of Thrift Store Cowboys' CD's, Alejandro Escoveda's "Man Under the Influence," and Max Stallings's "One of the Ways"). Dr. Whited has been chroncling some of the changes in the band over the last year or two and a change in sound, so I wasn't sure what, if anything, to expect from it.

However, I can joyfully report that it has floated to the top of my recent CD purchases and may well be the best new CD I bought this year.

I wasn't quite this impressed with it the first time I played it through. There seemed to be some good ones, but a lot of filler. Besides that, their sound has changed quite a bit. It took me a few listens to realize how different the sound was independent of the different lyrics.

RK's specialty has been broken-up-and-pissed-off songs. In fact, when I've been broken-up-and-pissed-off in the past, RK has been the first place that I've turned. There isn't so much of that in "Under the Table & Above the Sun" and it's been replaced by something a little more complicated. A little more, I think, grown up.

Two songs that jumped into mind after listening to the CD were Paul Young's classic "What Becomes of the Broken Hearted?" and Roger Creager's "Fun All Wrong." There's a certain feeling of killing time, avoidance, and uncertainty. Though the UtT&AtS track "Set Me Free" and "You Don't Want Me Around" were not my favorite tracks off the CD, they sum up the CD pretty nicely. It is, in a way, coming to terms with a loss and wanting to move forward without a clear idea of what moving forward actually means.

Maybe I enjoyed this CD so much because I could relate. Part of it, though, is that I can sum up the CD. Too many CDs are released these days that are just a collection of disparate tracks. There's not a feeling that the CD actually captures a particular time or story. I'm not suggesting that CDs should be a collection of redundant songs or that it should be chronological songs telling a story (UtT&AtS is neither), but rather when I look at a CD the CD should give me something to reflect on independent of the individual songs. That's what this CD does in such a way that I have not experienced since Great Divide's "Remain."

That's not to say that the individual tracks are not worth listening to. In fact, tracks 3-6 are the best four-punch I have heard from a CD in a long, long time. I can (and have) listened to these four songs in repetition over and over again. Desolation Angels (#3) really sets the pace for the entire CD in my view. It's roadworthy music worthy of Bleu Edmondson or Cross Canadian Ragweed (all princes of roadworthy music) with a uniquely weighted feel. Everybody (#4) is probably the most radio-friendly song on the record, but there is a hypnotic quality. The sincerity in Braun's voice and the band's sound carries otherwise lackluster lyrics into being a song I've had stuck in my head for hours a time without getting tired of it. I Saw It Coming (#5) is a giant metaphor for gambling and the relationship process that is executed admirably. Vancouver (#6) is probably the best song on the CD and one of the best songs I've heard in a while. It's one one of those rare songs that memorably carries itself without a refrain.

The CD is not without its faults, however, and it's not for everyone. Die-hard Reckless Kelly fans may miss the old sound more than they appreciate the new. My review may be as glowing as it is because I wasn't quite as attached as others have been to the traditional RK. The new CD is considerably less raw and more polished. Considering RK's grumbly and intrinsically raw sound, a lot has been lost and changed in the translation. If I approached this purely as a Reckless Kelly CD (or, for that matter, if I hadn't already been warned that it'd be different), I might have been disappointed.

The biggest fault of the CD ties in with its mildly more radio-friendly sound: the repetition of lyrics. Otherwise really good songs like Willamina (#7) are diminished by the repetition of the refrain four times going. It makes the songs more memorable but, at least for me, it makes them a lot less enjoyable. That said, for a more radio-friendly sound, I don't often actually hear stuff this good on the radio itself.

For every food and drink product out there, there are ten imitators. Sometimes the difference in taste is negligable. Malt-o-meal cereal is almost indistinguishable from Kelogg's, for instance. One area where this isn't generally the case is the soft drink world. Coke flopped in its immitation of Mountain Dew with Surge. H-E-B's and Sam's have their own soft drink lines though they pale in comparison with the real thing.

However, I must credit Kroger's Big-K line for doing an admirable job of delivering a pretty decent drink for a good price. Their Mountain Dew rip off (Citrus Drop - Pop the Drop, man!!) is tons better than Surge ever was and is in someways as good as the genuine MD article. It has a spikier, more sugary taste. Big-K Cola itself (Coke rip-off) doesn't compare quite as favorably, but still blows Sam's and HEB out of the water. Their punch drinks are as good, if not better, than Welch's. Their diet lemonade is also really good.

Unfortunately I don't think they have Kroger's in Idaho, so I'm gonna get my fill of Citrus Drop and the rest while I can!

... and it didn't even require his house burning down to get him there! It only required a colleague being slammed by a car. My father's sister married in to a firefighting family. My Uncle Bruce is a lobbyist for the firefighters pension fund and my cousins Craig and Todd are firefighters. One of Craig's fellow firefighters was injured recently, but apparently he's doing better now.

When you talk as much as Rush Limbaugh does, you're bound to contradict yourself eventually. That said, I found this to be pretty funny.

I am not a proponent of the so-called "Right to Privacy" and since I haven't been illegally using painkillers, my opposition still stands. Until such a time as I am caught illegally using substances, then I reserve the right to change my opinion to pull my ass out of the frying pan.

Just so we're clear...

Once upon a time, there was a Goddess named Sarah. Sarah Goddess was this fourteen year old girl that I was obsessed with for 570 days. I'll tell the story of her later, but right now I'm going to tell the story of the girl that looked like a Goddess.

Looking at pictures of Sarah and Joy respectively, I'm not sure where the notion that they looked alike entered my mind. But somehow, this girl in my lunch period reminded me of Sarah Goddess. I didn't know her name, so I called her The Sarah Lookalike. There was this boy that I played baseball with and went to school with in junior high named Bryan. Bryan was a nice enough fellow, but his mind was sometimes a dime shy of a cola due to some disorder. This effect his speech and gave it a slurring sound. So when he said her name (which was "Julie") the Sarah Look-a-like had a name: Joy.

Joy had the same lunch period as Jay and myself one semester. Because of her resemblence (in my mind) of the Goddess, she and this other girl I named Brittany because she fit the description given of a girl I knew online of the same name caught my eye. I am a skilled people-watcher. When I am looking at someone, I generally do so as inconspicuously as possible and I can honestly say that either they don't notice that I'm looking at them or they're looking for me to be looking at them. The biggest thing I was was sit at the end of the table so if I looked forward, she'd be in my peripheral sight.

Jay and I would come up with the worst pick-up lines ever and she provided ample entertainment as she talked to her friends. As time progressed, Jay started having a minor little thing for this girl for reasons other than that she looked like a Goddess. I looked her up in the old Seabrook yearbook and discovered that Joy and I appeared to have a mutual acquaintance: Ashley, the youngest daughter of a family mine takes a trip with to Pensacola year in and year out. They both went to Seabrook, were in the same grade, and played on the tennis team.

The next church youthgroup meeting I asked Ashley about the girl. She was not remarkably helpful. They knew each other but only in passing and she didn't know if Joy was seeing anyone. "Oh well," I thought.

The next day at school while I was waiting outside my chemistry to talk to Jay (who was headed for physics) Ashley walked by and said, "Julie says she wants you to stop stalking her."

"WHAT?!"

I chased Ashley down and got a full explanation. Apparently Joy had seen me looking at her on a couple of occasions. Let me emphasize that I neither looked at her intensely or even flirtingly. Never for more than a couple seconds at a time and I look at all kinds of people for a couple seconds at a time. Even ones that don't look like Goddesses. Joy was obviously paranoid, I reasoned. And stuck up as most girls, even if I had been looking at her flirtingly, would take it as something of a compliment. I'd expect that kind of self-importance from a Clear Lake Intermediate girl, but I expected better from a Seabrook one.

Shortly afterwards the semester ended and I was transferred out of that lunch. Periodically we'd be taking a test and I would be in that lunch again, sitting at the same table with Jay (and now Oz) on one side and Joy on the other. If Joy thought I was stalking, I would show her what stalking was.

Every day I was going to have that lunch, I dressed in all black. I lowered my head and looked her square in the eye. Poor Jay was an innocent bystanderI imitated her movements as if I were reporting to Jay (who was smitten, lest we forget) her every action. Funnest. Lunches. Ever!

Any chance that Jay had of talking to Joy (which were slim anyway thanks to Oz) were dashed. A sad casualty of war.

Back in our high school days, Jay and I had two friends. Well, we had more than two friends, but there are two friends in particular that I find myself thinking about from time to time: Chip and Oz.

Jay and I had known Chip since elementary school. Chip was a heavy, boisterous fellow. Did I mention he was heavy? That's important. I'm not sure how Jay and I became friends with him individually or together, but it was not a developement he and I were altogether pleased with. Chip was heavy. Chip was obnoxious. Chip was deeply, deeply unpopular.

Chip was always a nice enough guy, but he was sometimes a little too booksmart for his own good. He was a know-it-all who acted smarter than everyone else. Of course, he was smarter than most high school students, but he didn't know how to convey that without coming across as extremely arrogant. That, combined with his weight, combined with overprotective parents and social inexperience put him in a box that he would never really be able to get out of.

Because he didn't have (m)any friends, the fact that Jay and I tolerated him made us among his best. The truth is that (a) we didn't know how to tell him to buzz off and (b) our parents were friends with his parents. Nonetheless, there we were. There were times when the friendship was worthwhile both ways. We all drew comic books at the time and Shadowguy (my character) and the Deatomizer (his character) eventually became part of the same comic book universe and that was pretty cool.

For the most part, though, we wished he would just go away. In high school, we ducked him at lunch and would move around day in and day out until he got the message, which to his credit he did. Nothing we could do would seem to make him stop considering us his friend, though. We could never find it within us to be unadulturatedly cruel to him, so we never really crossed that line. I can only think of one time in art class when we took it a little further than usual and he declared an end to our friendship. He preceeded to sit at the other end of the table with his "new friends," two guys that were bigger jerks to him than we were. He'd loudly talk about at us how nice it was to not be with any false-friends.

Another friend of ours was Oz. I have to take the blame for Oz penetrating our inner circle because he was verily my friend first. Oz's mother and my own were members of the same charity group. He was only eleven days older but was a grade ahead. Unfortunately, I placed above my age level in Bay Area Youth Baseball and so we were on the same team year in and year out, so we became friends. At Seabrook intermediate and later at Clear Lake High, that friendship unfortunately continued and through me Jay became equally weighted by his friendship.

Like Chip, Oz was also unpopular. Oz was not particularly heavy or even necessarily unattractive. There were various handicaps he had, such as his overactive sweat glands. On the other hand mine are overactive too and I was never as unpopular as he was. There was something else about him. It's hard to pinpoint exactly except to say that he was a complete assmuch. Oz was extraordinarily racist, arrogant, and self-centered. When his father got fired, he used that to bilk me out of $30.

At the time Jay liked this girl named Simone. We tried to recruit her to sit with us in the mornings before class started and succeeded for a while until she refused to sit with us any longer. Why? Oz. She couldn't take him anymore and to be honest, we couldn't blame her. Jay and I primarily got by with our very high toleration for the obnoxious. There was this other girl named Joy that used to sit down the way from Jay and I at lunch. Jay had a thing for her. When I got transferred out of that lunch period he had the perfect opportunity to be annexed into their lunch group if not for Oz transferring in. He longer had the rationale ("I'm eating alone") to go over there and even so, he couldn't go over there with Oz because he would embarass the living daylights out of him. For that reason and another, he never took his chance with her.

Oz and Chip both had that effect. There are a number of friends we could have made were it not for the friends that we already had. In the past I've always clumped Oz and Chip together in their mind as friends who cost us friends.

The other day Dad and I went to my old elementary school for the Cub Scouts' pancake breakfast. I ran in to Chip's mother, there. She was always an extraordinarily nice woman. She asked how I was doing and I told her about what I was up to. I asked how Chip was doing. He apparently decided to go into IT work instead of be a vet. He graduated from Texas A&M about a year and a half ago and has been unable to find work. He's back living with the folks, but he met a girl online and they're going to be getting married.

I found myself overjoyed that Chip had met someone (he never dated anyone in high school). I was really sorry about his job situation and tried to figure out if there was anything I could do to help. When I got back to Gattaca, I put in his name for a referral. We get paid $1500 for everyone we refer, but since I won't be there anymore after the four month waiting period I wouldn't see a dime of that. But I felt that if anyone would fit in with the Gattaca environment, Chip would. To give you an idea of how well Chip deals with authority, one time he was over at my house and asked if he could use the bathroom. I very sarcastically said no. Half an hour he asked, "I'm sure you have a good reason, but why can't I use the bathroom?"

It's funny how similarly I thought of Chip and Oz back in the day because when I look back now I see that they couldn't have been more different. Chip was the victim of a weight problem and poor socialization skills. Oz, on the other hand, had the tools to be accepted but was just a jackass. I was happy that Chip was doing well and sorry that he wasn't. With Oz, the pettiest parts of me would be happiest to find out that he's still reviled wherever he is and whatever he's doing.

When I think of what I might have done differently in my life, I would have told Oz to buzz off. It turned out, Mom hated his mom just as much as I hated him. It's a more complicated matter with Chip, but I would like to think I'd have found some way to deal with the situation that wouldn't have involved me constantly puncturing his ego while not allowing his unpopularity to pull me down and his annoyingness to annoy me.

I feel bad that I was as nice to Oz as I was and that I was as mean to Chip as I was.

Unlike apartments, houses are not always cleaned before you move in. Sometimes you're left with remnants of people that lived their before. Take our bedroom doors, for instance. Jaquin's door has pink glittery letters that says "Jessica's room."

Me? My door has a sticker with a ninja on it.

When I grow up, I want my bedroom door to have a sticker of a ninja on it.

It's sooooo cool.

"There always seemed to be more important things to our relationship than whether or not we were actually getting along," -RAW, speaking to Audrey of their time timultuous time together.

In January of 2000 I had accidentally wiped out my mp3 collection and was needing something to listen to at the dorms. I found this web site called IUMA that had a ton of free (and legal) downloads. I scoured the web page and listened to one artist after another. The artists and recordings ranged from very amateur to near professional. Unfortunately, there was only one or two downloadables for each artist, but it was a place to start.

A couple months later we were celebrating Brian's birthday. Brian's sister had heard this great band called Crash Worship that happened to be playing at the Fitzgerald's. We suffered through a horrible opening act and by the time Crash Worship took the stage, we were already pretty tired. Their music was less than impressive to most of us and we opted instead to go downstairs where this funk band was playing. I'm not much of a funk person, but it was a great time and we got pictures of Brian that will forever provide blackmail material.

On our way out, Jay pointed to a poster and commented, "Hey, it's that Phil Pritchett guy."

Phil Pritchett was one of the many artists that I downloaded from IUMA. The one track he had available, Colorado on Trial, was good enough to make the handful of songs that I sent his way. When I thought about it, it made a lot of sense that he'd be playing in Texas because the song mentioned, in passing, that Texas was his home state. We took note of the day and Brian, Jay and I decided that we'd check out the show. With any luck, we'd have as good a time as we had with that funk band. I wasn't a live music junkie at the time, but little did I know that I was about to become one.

We picked up some more songs from mp3.com and felt that we had ourselves a winner for a night out. The first show was good if not great. Unfortunately, other than the handful of CDs that I'd bought I was pretty unfamiliar with his music. I took the plunge and bought his then-latest CD, Suburban Legends. I listened to it over and over and over again. It was more than just a good CD, it was the first unique CD I'd heard in ages. It was completely unlike anything on the radio. Not to say that it was uber-alternative (it wasn't) and didn't have its poppy moments (it did), but it was just a CD full of well-written music that hadn't been glossed over or distorted or crystallized or whatever it is that makes a typical Top 40 CD sound like it does.

Poor Adam - my roommate at the time - had to endure that CD playing 24/7. Brian, Jay, and myself went to see him again a couple months later when he played. I bought his two other CDs and the new release he'd just released (Heritage Way). The three of us would go to Phil show after Phil show whenever he played at Fitzgerald's. Eventually we started meeting in other towns and catching shows there. Jay had been my best friend since the sixth grade and a really good friend since the first grade. Brian was a more recent friend largely of circumstance (he was a member of No-Lyfe and lived right by Anna). Brian and Jay had become friends while competing for a girl. But through the Phil shows, our individual friendships became a collective friendship.

Several months after that, we attended a show in Austin. It was a different show in a number of respects. It went on for about two-and-a-half hours and at the end of it, he announced that it would be his last show in Austin. He was moving to Tennessee to try to write some sense into Nashville. His last show in Texas was in Houston on the downstairs stage of Fitzgerald's.

It was a sad day in a number of respects. Jay, Brian, and I would continue to hang out doing No-Lyfe related stuff along with Adam and just hanging out in general. Instant messaging kept us close even after Brian moved from Pasadena to Austin and later San Marcos. Any time Phil made it back to Texas (which was every few months) we'd make a point to see his solo accoustic shows. He eventually came back for good and formed a new band, dedicating himself to rock. His new booking agent oddly has Phil mostly singing at country venues such as the Firehouse and Cheatham Street Warehouse.

A week or so back, I got a call from Jay that said that Phil was doing a show at Fitz. Since it was around the holidays we could all go. In a way it was like nothing has changed except that the three of us are closer now than we were then. Phil now has a three-person band instead of a four with a rock sound (though he still does a mean "Whiskey River").

After the show we went to the Jaliscience. They've taken down the Selena and James Dean posters that made the place unique, but the burritos are still huge and still $4.50. In a couple months, I'm moving to Idaho. In about six months, Brian is moving to Japan. Jay's plans are more in the air right now, but he will end up in Florida or California soon enough. Times like these are running out.

Phil is a great musician and I would have gone and had a great time along. With everyone there, it goes beyond enjoyment to a series of moments, and a night, I will not forget for a long, long time.

Cold: 50 degree weather. (Hey, I was raised in Houston. To us, 50 degrees is cold)

Colder: 50 degree weather with wind and rain (Like now, for instance)

Coldest: Driving for an hour and a half in 50 degree weather with cold winds and rain pouring through your open window. (Still no AC in the car, no defog, have to keep it open so I can see)

Kevin's most recent digs at Kenny Chesney reminds me of something. I was watching something on CMT about county musicians fashion accesories (sad, but true). They talked about Chesney's shell necklace that he apparently always wears. They went on to talk about Chesney more generally and suggesting that he's on his way to becoming a beach music icon in the same vein as Jimmy Buffet.

My family annually takes a trip to Pensacola, Florida. Lovely beaches, lovely town. There are a lot of great restaurants there and most of them have a live act in the waiting area throughout most of the evening. They are invariably cover artists with Hawaiian shifts that play Brown-Eyed Girl every other song and a bunch of other laid-back oldie beach music. They play a lot of Jimmy Buffet. A lot.

Heaven help us all if my family keeps the tradition alive and I drag my future wife and kids out to Pensacola to hear one Kenny Chesney cover artist after another.

[shudder]

I wish I was writing a post that said "Great work, Cougars!" or even "Good try, maybe next time!"

Unfortunately, the news of the game isn't UH's triple-overtime 54-48 loss but instead the ensuing riot that occured on the field afterwards. It's put me in a rather bad mood.

For those of you out of the loop, a fight broke out after Hawaii managed to stop the Cougars from scoring and won the game. No indication as to how it got started but it spread like an Oregon wildfire until the police (among others) broke it up. The notable clip (that will be shown over and over and over again) will be Houston's Damien West charging into a group of Warriors armed with a helmet.

This is the first altercation that the Cougars have had in my recollection. We've also had no embarassments such as players arrested for breaking and entering or assault. Ordinarily this type of thing wouldn't be a problem, but for us it could be.

Unlike the University of Hawaii and TCU, we don't have a hometown bowl (the Houston Bowl has no affiliations with the C*USA) that will always take us in. We also have attendance problems and don't travel well. It comes with being the non-traditional institution that UH (wonderfully) is.

This game was going to be our coming out party where we show off our outstanding high-powered offense and mesmirizing gameplay.

I'm happy to have attended the University of Houston and believe it to be a great school. But it has an image problem and a number of setbacks that keep us from being recognized as the major institution that it is. From an athletics standpoint, we have an non-traditional student body that keeps our attendance and school spirit low.

Instead we're going to be remembered for West and the helmet he was carrying.

Unlike Houston, this is not Hawaii's first altercation. In fact, there was a remarkably similar one with the University of Cincinnati , headless helmet and all.

Did I mention that the helmet West was holding appears to be a Hawaii one? I suspect he was ungraciously returning a helmet that was rather ungraciously given to him.

But Houston is the team that lost (as was Cincinnati) and by default people are going to assume that Houston started it.

For my part, I really don't know. Hawaii's reaction to winning was, in the words of an otherwise staid ESPN recap, "hysterical." On the other hand, it seems unlikely that a Hawaiian player thought to himself "now that we beat them on the field let's tarnish our victory by getting into a fight!"

Then again, there were a number of scuffles during the game. Even before the altercation, I was surprised that few or no flags were thrown on this score. But that wasn't much of a surprise because I was less than impressed with the officiating overall (as were the announcers). Anyhow, scuffles during a game have been known to be settled after a game (in fact, a Hawaii player said that he wanted a rematch against a player he fought in the Cincy brawl).

In all honesty the coverage seems to be pretty even-handed. The announcers said "Hawaii can't seem to be good winners and Houston can't seem to be good losers" which is pretty fair for a couple of announcers that have been covering Hawaii a lot more than Houston. That might change (either way) once the tapes are reviewed more closely, but I'm happy that no one outside the fan forums are rushing to judgment (particularly since the rush would be unfavorable to us).

Houston coach Art Briles appears to be sticking by his team (Cincinnati's coach did not) but says that disciplinary action may be taken. I figure Hawaii's Jones will stick by his as well. It's really a shame because Hawaii has a lot of Houston ties (Jones used to coach with the Oilers and Gamblers and a lot of Warriors are Houstonians) and Jones and Briles were very complimentary to one another all week long.

No matter how you cut it, though, this was a bad affair for both programs. Houston is going to have to work that much harder to be invited to bowl games in the future and Hawaii has another mark against their already lackluster disciplinary record.

At the same time, I can't help but wonder about the shock and dismay at a bunch of people that hit each other for four straight hours hitting each other after the game. Not to say that this sort of thing is okay or should be tolerated, but the more I think about it the more I can't believe it doesn't happen a heck of a lot more often.

[Image stolen from Greg Wythe]

Hope y'all have a good one!

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[via Lex]

Over at LewRockwell.com of all places, an interesting perspective linking the BCS with Satan. He does make some good points on the virtues of bowl games:

I, for one, like the idea of bowl games. National championship-winning coach Gene Stallings made one point: With playoffs leading to a championship game, we have one winner and the rest are losers. With 25 bowl games, we have 25 winners. My own favorite point is that with bowl games, we get to see what the coaches are really capable of. Injuries and player talent mean less, and brains mean more, when teams have a month to prepare. Further, it should be noted that the team that wins the championship isn’t always the best team, particularly when there is only one championship game played. The NBA and MLB have seven-game championship series. In a single game, a chance play, bad officiating, or a couple of star players having good or bad days (or the flu) can be the winning factor. With a month to prepare, these factors – and random nonsense in general – mean less than the quality of the overall program. Finally, the real reason we don’t have the playoff system is that the bowl sponsors and managers contribute a lot of money to the NCAA, and the NCAA isn’t ready to rule against them.

Another demographic factor to consider is the widening gender gap. Much was made of the Soccer Moms and their support for President Clinton in the 90's. Then Bush won without the women's vote in 2000 and people realized that women drifting to the Democratic Party has been met by men drifting to the Republican Party and the Soccer Moms were met with the NASCAR Dads.

An interesting spin on this which I've heard before is how much education makes a difference. In general, Democrats are an odd combination of the most and least educated Americans. Republicans generally cover the middle ground with folks that have enough education for a comfortable career but view formal education as a means to an end and therefore are disinclined to go for what they view as unnecessary higher degrees.

However, increasingly educated women are flocking to the Democratic Party and educated men are shifting to the GOP:

As education increases, the gender gap grows.

An analysis of more than 40,000 interviews for the USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll from January through November this year shows the trend. Among those with a high school diploma or less, men were inclined by a single percentage point, 45% to 44%, to vote Democratic. Women leaned toward the Democrats by 11 percentage points, 50% to 39%. That's a partisan gap between the sexes of 10 percentage points.

For those who had taken some college courses but not graduated, that gender gap grew to 15 percentage points. Among those with a college degree, it rose to 20. And for voters who had taken postgraduate courses, it reached 28 percentage points - almost triple the gender difference among the least-educated voters.

The entire article is worth a read.

It's interesting how these things play out. My father is an old-style FDR Democrat (economically liberal but socially conservative) and Mom generally votes for Republicans on the basis that they're "our crooks" instead of "their crooks." So it's actually the opposite phenomenon there. While most of the women in my past lean pretty far to the left, the only affair that lasted longer than a year was with Anna, who was largely apolitical but leaned slightly to the right.

I think some differences are often a good thing. I notice that most of the leads in my stories come from different political backgrounds than their romantic partners and I don't think it's a coincidence. Of course, if people differ too much (or are too vocal about minor disagreements) it can be quite problematic. People often have different political views because they interpret current events so differently as to live in entirely different worlds. That has certainly been the case for me in the past.

Since Eel and I are apparently both Democrats, I suppose we will thankfully avoid this issue altogether.

Back in my CSPAN junkie days (you know, when I actually had CSPAN), I remember a black lady addressing folks at a pro-life convention saying, to the rallying crowd, "We'll keep having our babies, they'll keep aborting theirs, and eventually we'll outnumber them!"

This all ties in to the argument that demographics ultimately favor Republicans due to procreation rates among conservatives and liberals. If you think about it, there's something to the argument. Republicans tend to be more family-oriented, religious people have more kids, and religious people are more often than not Republicans.

The Democratic counterargument is based largely on immigration and that polls of twenty-somethings demonstrate a slight leftward tilt. That too makes sense when you think about people who became interested in politics during the Clinton-Gingrich years (not hard to tell who resonated better among young people) and have finally gotten out from under their parents rule and thus are not receptive to the government telling them what to do.

So taking immigration out of the equation, the question is whether or not children born from conservative homes will themselves grow up to be conservative. It's a question only time will be able to answer, ultimately.

And so it is with the subject of abortion. The Catholic Exchange is celebrating a poll released in November that states 72% of teenagers believe abortion is morally wrong. Will the same people still believe that as they get into their twenties and probably have sexual encounters with people that they wouldn't want a child with? Studies suggest that kids are more likely than not to take on the beliefs of their parents, though it's not absolute and there are definite culture shifts where large numbers reject the attitudes of their parents (the 60's are a prime example).

So is this a culture shift?

It very well might be. Contraception, abortion, and altered attitude towards unmarried adults and childless couples are some of the accomplishments of liberals over the last century or so and they've changed a lot of minds. The results may not change anyone's mind, but are likely to change the numbers.

It's often said that the people that most ought to have children rarely do because of their careers and interest and that those that really don't need to procreate breed like rabbits. For those of a conservative mindset, that's true insofar as those less likely to be able to financially support children (and would thus require government aid) have them while the well-to-do are doing other things. For those from a liberal perspective, those that are more likely to procreate are more likely to vote the other way. This is especially true as the Catholic vote is slipping away from the Democrats as a reliable voting bloc.

It's possible that there will be no shift at all. Entertainment media, which helps form the opinions of a lot of people, is very strongly pro-choice. Also, from a purely self-interested standpoint, it's advantageous for young people to be pro-choice because for women it means they can dispose of the unwanted unborn and for men it means that women are more likely to want to have sex more often since they won't have to worry about becoming parents.

On the other hand, many of those people will eventually settle down and have families. At that point they will they hold on to the teachings they were raised with or the ones they formed before they were ready to settle down? I'd guess it would more likely be the former, but it could well be the latter.

One never really knows.

... about Texas Tech's football coach Mike Leach:

Fact is, Leach is Mormon, never played football, has a law degree, has MANY weird nuances, and isn't Texan . . . so of course the local good 'ol boy system is gonna throw a fit when Leach drank.

[From Coogfans]

I had two points riding on Kansas to beat NC State and lost. I picked Boise State over TCU and won, but I didn't wager enough to keep me up top. I desperately need New Mexico to win tomorrow or I might be out of the running entirely. So far the plurality has been right every game and I seem to be the lone lobo pulling for the Lobos. Dirk and Marty have a lot riding on Oregon State so a victory there would bring me up considerably.

Dirk 94 (0)
Rodney 91 (0)
Kyle 79 (0)
Marty 73 (0)
Ronald 70 (0)
RAW 62 (2)
Bilbo 61 (0)
Willie 61 (0)
Fred 53 (53)
Stu 49 (4)
Carl 28 (60)
Maggie 27 (68)
Robbie 26 (22)
Terra 26 (64)
Roland 24 (33)
Annie 24 (38)
Craig 12 (45)
Kiefer 7 (21)

The number in parenthesis is over how much they've wagered total thus far and lost. The lower the better.

If I had more money, one of the things I would love to spend some cashola on would be satellite radio. I rarely listen to the radio anymore for a variety of reasons, mostly pertaining to what's on it. Or more accurately, what was on it two years ago when I stopped listening to it. A lot of people complain about the radio hit machine and how it all sounds the same and yada yada yada, but I find it interesting how few people are willing to put their money where their mouth is.

For my part, I still tour the Texas country music scene as well as some non-country acts that I run across (Blue October being the biggest) and I have a subscription to eMusic that I'll be terminating soon since they've changed their services into something I don't want anymore. I thought about subscribing to mp3.com's service. Yes, I know it's free, but some of their premium services were cool for my 14 day free trial period. Then they went under. I would still knock around IUMA, but their "radio" program cuts in an out somethin' awful.

So that leaves satellite radio. Of course, right now I don't even have a radio in my car, much less a high-falutin' sort. But someday I will have it. If they're still in business.

Just like we are the only nation to have lost the "U" in a lot of words, we also seem to be the only one that stubbornly refuses to give in to the metric system. In many ways it doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I like that we are still the only major holdout (that I know of). I like Canada and have friends that are Canadians, but it brings to light one of the differences between our outlook and theirs. Their government says "We're all going to start doing things this way" and they say "Okay, if it's for the best." They try that in the US and we're like "Why? The current system works!"

A friend of mine over fifty talks about how when she was a kid, she was told that in ten years no one would be using standard measurements anymore. If you want to know what happened to that push, Jenlars has some info.

Via Owen I found this speech by Howard Dean. Owen takes note of Dean distancing himself from the only Democratic President to win two consecutive terms since FDR, but I found the paragraphs preceeding it to be much more interesting:

Republicans claim to be helping average Americans with their tax cuts.

But let's look at the facts. The average wage earner did get a few hundred dollars back. But the refund didn't come for free.

President Bush never told you about the "Bush Tax". He never mentioned that over the next six years the typical American family will take on $52,000 more in its share of the national debt. That's a part of the "Bush Tax". But there's a lot more.

Take a look at your property taxes. They probably went up. In New Hampshire, property taxes went up an average of $270 per family last year. That's part of the "Bush Tax". Or look at your state budget. Is it in crisis? In most states, it is. That's part of the "Bush Tax", too.

Getting fewer services and paying more for things like state college tuitions or special education that's the consequence of the "Bush Tax".

The "Bush Tax" is huge many times greater than most people's refunds. And it'll be here for a long time to come. Just add the "Bush Tax" to all the other things the President never told us.

Whichever Dean speechwriter wrote that passage deserves a raise! The national debt is one of Bush's chief liabilities. Don't get me wrong, I believe Dean will make the situation worse and not better by adding more irreversable entitlements that his proposed tax hikesreversals won't compensate for, but the phrase "Bush Tax" should be repeated early and often if he wants to make headway on Bush and the economy (without praying for turmoil).

Early Sunday morning, I got off work and Hummer and I passed things off to the next shift, which consisted of only my roommate Danforth. Mr. Smith showed up unexpectedly at around 11. After watching Danforth fail to look sufficiently busy for about fifteen minutes, he confronted him. After threatening to write Danforth up, Dan instead told Mr. Smith that he was turning in his two-week notice and was immediately shown the door.

When Mr. Smith arrived on Monday morning, he asked if he could talk to me so I followed him in to his office.

"Did your roommate tell you that he quit?" he asked.

"No, sir," I lied. "I haven't talked to him."

"Well, he did yesterday. It was something he was apparently already planning to do. Were you aware of that?"

"No, sir," I lied.

"It's probably just as well. Danforth never fit in our corporate environment," he explained.

"How so?" I disingenuously asked.

"You know that attitude is important here, don't you?" he asked.

"Of course, it says so in section two, paragraphs six through nine and section four, by-line eighteen," I told him, making the numbers up out of thin air..

"Wow, you really know the employee handbook by heart," he complimented.

"Holy shit, you mean that's actually right?" I asked.

"Excuse me?" he asked.

"Nothing. Continue. I look forward to hearing what you have to say next," I lied.

"Well, attitude is an important thing here at Gattaca Unlimited. We pride ourselves on our proud history and proud environment. We think keeping a postive mental attitude is a very important thing. Studies have shown that an upbeat workforce is a happy workforce. It's for this reason that we force all of our employees to be happy all of the time," he explained.

"I've noticed that. It's a very effective policy," I lied.

"Yes, well unfortunately Danforth is what we call a 'rotten apple.' He is one of those people that finds something negative to say about everything. The truth is that even if he hadn't been planning to quit we probably would have had to let him go. Some of our hidden microphones have overheard him saying negative things about the company!"

"Intolerable!" I replied, somehow managing to keep a straight face.

"I'm glad that you see things that way. We want our employees to have a positive view of our work environment. Do you have a positive view of your work environment?" he asked.

"Absolutely," I lied.

"I'm very glad to hear that. It truly bothers us when people don't buy in to our program here. Some people you just can't please, you know? You give them a good job for good money and all they do is come up with cheap nicknames," Mr. Smith explained. "We try to make people happy here. We force it down everyone's throats as best we can. But some people are just using us for the paycheck. They come, they harp, and then they leave us all alone, and they say mean things about us... mean things..." he explained as tears started falling down his eyes.

"Are you okay, sir?" I asked, pretending to care.

"I've been hurt before," he explained.

"I'm sorry, I had no idea," I lied.

"Anyway, whenever someone quits, if they have a spouse or really good friend they often quit as well. Do you intend to quit?" he asked.

"No, sir," I lied.

"Excellent. It's also sometimes our policy to let people go if they are too close to a former employee. Would you describe your relationship with your roommate as 'close'?" he asked.

"No, sir," I lied.

"Good, then I look forward to you spending a long and productive time here," he said.

"Me, too," I lied.

Their constant struggle continues as The Sandman and RAW fight The Battle Of The Graveyard Shift. To bring you up to date, The Sandman has taken advantage of RAW's third shift schedule to wreak havoc on our unsuspecting hero. The Sandman attacks at 4AM every morning, while RAW is bound by his enormously boring and uneventful job. RAW fights back with a notebook and paper where he can write down various ideas which can only spur his mind to be active.

The Sandman has gained the upper hand though by alluding RAW during the day. RAW tires as he chases the Sandman and his Z minions around all day, leaving him exhausted and vulnerable during the nightly sleepiness attacks.

But now RAW has a new weapon! A blindfold. By night it takes the shape of a sock, but during the day, when RAW spawns his plan to snatch the Sandman when he is at his friskiest, it is a mask that blocks out the light that has blinded RAW and allowed the Sandman to escape again and again.

So... without further ado, the battle continues...

w.bloggar is a great program for writing posts offline. It lets you do just about anything you could ask of it and it helped me port over a lot of old RAWbservations and NLJ posts over.

One thing it's not so good at is letting you know if you're closing a document without saving it.

I was talking to Anna the other day. We talked about a number of things including her family. Since her mother worked for Concord and I'd heard that Concord had been hemmorhaging, I asked how her job situation was (fine). I asked how her boyfriend's work was going (fine). I asked how her father was doing (fine, she's not a particularly descriptive person). I asked how her brother was doing and then followed up with a question about a girl that he dated.

Anna's brother Warren was a character. He was a jock and a partyer that never did particularly good in school. Given his charisma, I thought he'd make a great car salesman. Shortly before Anna and I broke up, he met a girl named Kara. Kara seemed to be the first person that he was serious about and it was after her that he stopped failing all his JuCo classes and started turning his college career around. She went off to Texas A&M and he followed her by going to nearby Blynn. His streak has apparently continued and he's now a student at the University of Houston on the cusp of getting a degree. That seemed unfathomable three years ago. Kara must deserve a lot of credit for that. A lot of people (including myself) say that you can't "change" a roguish boyfriend, but she apparently did.

Anna was always a great student. She made the "Who's Who In Texas High Schools" for a couple straight semesters based entirely on her academics. She won a scholarship to UH and joined the honors college. We started dating her first semester there. She never really made it in college. She ended up on academic probation after a couple of semesters and eventually transferred to UHD and then right after we broke up, she dropped out entirely.

It appears as though Warren is going to graduate from college and she's not. If Kara deserves a lot of credit for keeping Warren focused, what does that say about my credit (or more accurately blame) for Anna's college career? Did I change her?

The good news is that I'm still ahead. The bad news is that I got ten points riding on Boise State and if North Carolina State beats Kansas, Rodney's going to blow me out of the water!

RAW 52
Stu 49
Rodney 49
Marty 43
Dirk 43
Ronald 34
Kyle 34
Bilbo 33
Carl 28
Fred 27
Maggie 27
Terra 26
Roland 24
Annie 24
Willie 23
Craig 12
Kiefer 6
Robbie 2

Construction in progress.

A long time ago, my brother David was taken to the emergency room for one reason or another. While they were waiting, there was a very obviously drunk man who'd cut himself swaggering about. David turned to Mom and asked, "How come that man is acting so silly?"

Mom turned to David and replied, "He's had a little too much medicine."

---

This evening, I was watching the New York Jets game on television. During dead time, they were interviewing former New York Jet quarterback Joe Namath. Namath's voice was slow and, well, swaggering. I thought I might be imagining it until Dad asked, "Is he drunk?"

The more we watched and listened to his slow, slurring voice, the more convinced we became. Dad commented, "If I were them I'd switch away from this interview as quickly as possible."

They switched back to the studio pretty quickly and the broadcaster commented, "Joe is just a happy guy, isn't he?"

Update: I must admit that I wasn't watching the Namath interview too closely. I should have been. Apparently he told the interviewer that he wanted to kiss her. So Joe isn't just happy, he's amorous...

Update II: Here's a (low-grade) video and here's an audio. He says it twice, apparently. The second time very apparently. I must have been talking to Dad about how drunk he was the second time. He couldn't have said it any louder.

No-Lyfe Productions needs some hokey action movie lines. Ones that are instantly memorable (at least to those who have seen the movie only once). Some examples are "I'll be back," (Terminator), "Yippee Kayay Motherfucker" (Die Hard), and whatnot.

Anyone have any suggestions?

There is what I hope is a serious discussion on zero tolerance policies starting up on my post below. I've been thinking about it since my post and I have a few cents to add.

Mike comments that zero tolerance policies "can't help guarantee safety." That's very true as nothing can actually guarantee safety. But can zero tolerance policies make schools safer?

I think it's quite possible that they could. Especially when the alternative is discipline-by-parental-consent, which is to say no discipline at all. As my post mentioned, these policies did not sprout from thin air. They came from overly lenient policies that allowed little thugs and hudlums to run free. Principles, teachers, and parents (of the offenders) would consistently look at a situation and say "Little Thug has the potential to be a good guy. Punishing him may only make it worse."

It's this kind of attitude that seriously diminished my public school experience and particularly in my junior high years it was very prevalent. There seemed to be the reluctance to actually punish anyone for anything. Discipline unsurprisingly continued to decline and this lead to the zero tolerance movement.

I'd argue that there does have to be some sort of standard and deviation from that standard ought to be rare. Particularly when it comes to tangible things, such as the actual possession of the gun.

The problem with policies as they exist today is that they are far too broad in scope. A zero tolerance policy for the actual possession of an actual gun, for instance, would be a positive thing. A zero tolerance policy for the actual possession of an actually illegal-to-everyone drug would also be a positive thing.

The problem seems to occur most when it's something intangible, such as sexual harassment or threats, or things that is frequently useful (say, for instance, a prescription drug or a butter knife).

There's still the matter of some kid hawking ridalin to his classmates, but to clamp down on that leads precisely towards the sorts of things that we read about on a constant basis. Except that parents worry about these things and it's easier to pass more rules than to actually get involved.

The crux of it all is that I don't believe that these policies are actually intended to make the schools safer. The same people that just a few years ago let everyone off for everything are the same ones implementing these policies. The motivation for this seems to be part CYA and part appearences. The CYA explanation is pretty straight-forward: Parents couldn't bail their kids out if there was a policy that wouldn't let them. Take the discretion away from the administrators and you take the responsibility away as well.

I was reminded of the "appearences" angle when I was reading a column in the Outlook section of the Chronicle and the mayor of Sugar Land was talking about some gruesome murder or something that happened down there and the steps he's taking to make Sugar Land feel a safer place. He says that it's just as important that Sugar Landians "feel" safe than be safe. That's poppycock, yet it's effective. I suspect that the reason zero tolerance policies persist despite story after story of ridiculous punishments is that for all its faults, it makes parents feel their kids are safer. After all, with zero tolerance on a big sign with a strike through contraband in the O's says loud and clear that they're tough, tough, tough on discipline.

I suppose if you're a parent whose primary concern is sleeping well at night (instead of, you know, making sensible rules), that's sufficient.

Item #2 is, or was, my Aunt Elizabeth's house. [Read More!]

The inanity of the Houston Chronicle continues in this staff-ed about Texas A&M. The Chronicle's editorial staff has a talent about being wrong even when they fail to take a stand.

It starts by taking Texas A&M to task for its low enrollment rates. It then says that they're trying other things but ponders why it didn't try other things earlier. Oh, it also calls for a swift resolution.

Along the way it sings the praises of UT and Rice, both of which are instituting affirmative action plans. Then it points out that Texas A&M accepts minorities in greater numbers than minorities accept invitations. How will affirmative action help this, exactly? Should they let in a lot of unqualified minorities to make the qualified ones feel more welcome? Should they institute an affirmative action policy just to tell the ones that could get in without it "Hey, we want you to think you're only here because you're a minority and we want minorities"? If it's saying anything, that appears to be it... and that's the best argument against affirmative action around.

I've longed believed that schools needed to get tougher on discipline in high school (and particularly junior high).

This is not what I meant.

I got out of school before the Zero Tolerance policies got as bad as they are now. Stories like this were really just starting to creep out instead of being as common as they are today. There were instances back in the day, though. The brother of a friend of mine was sent off to the alternative school for having a baseball bat. It was in the trunk of his car (while looking for drugs they did not find), next to a ball, glove, and little league sports uniform.

Maybe I'm just a victim of Pauline Kael Syndrome, but I don't know anyone who really supports these inane policies.

Of course, what's the alternative? The reason these idiotic rules got instituted in the first place was because it seemed unfathomable to any parent that they might - just might! - be raising a little turd that needs to get in some trouble. I can't count the number of times parents have gotten their kids out of enormous trouble that they deserved to be in. Zero tolerance was the overreaction to misbehavior tolerance that came before it.

I really don't know what the solution is, but I do know that it doesn't involve expelling kids for taking a little pain reliever for monthly cramps.

Noted science fiction author Orson Scott Card, a self-proclaimed Democrat, has stirred the pot with his recent article in the Wall Street Journal in which he has a number of negative things to say about Democrats. The response from the left has not been particularly surprising and would be the same from the right if the shoe were on the other foot.

In a rhetorical trick, Card uses his affiliation with the Democratic Party to give his attacks on it more credibility. This has led to Jesse Taylor and Roy Edroso to proclaim that they are now Republicans so that their repeated attacks against Republicans ought to carry more weight.

Cute.

What I find more interesting about the subject of Card's latent party affiliation is the broader question of what someone with mixed views does when the issue or issues with which they are at odds with their party suddenly become more imperitive and what they do when they don't care for the leader, or leaders, of their party. Card provides a classic example of this.

Another example is Lex Alexander, whom I have a private joke about: "How do you know Lex is a Republican?" "Because he always says so right before he rips in to Republicans."

I don't view being a Republican or a conservatism as a loyalty test. In the case of the former, one can become more or less strongly Republican based on how often they vote the party line, but whether one is a Republican at all boils down to a few questions: Are you registered a Republican? Do you vote Republican? Do you agree with Republicans more often than Democrats to a significant degree?

My answer for both questions is yes. I was actually registered as a Republican before I became one so that I could vote in the 1998 Republican primaries. I generally vote Republican, though there are certain Republicans I can't bring myself to vote for (the House Majority Leader comes to mind) and other Democrats that I support for executive offices despite my ideological disagreements with them (such as John Sharp).

So does my vote for John Sharp prevent me from being a "true" Republican? Does Adrianne's support of Bill White prevent her from being such? Does Lex's hostility towards the current administration prevent him? Perhaps so, but that' defines political parties as a club as opposed to an ideological movement. Being a political party, of course, it is necessarily the former to a degree. However, political parties do not exist solely in a vacuum and are largey the conglomeration of various similarly minded people. Without this ideological core, a party cannot survive.

That makes it dangerous to take Lex, Adrianne, or myself and throw us out into the political wilderness because we don't embrace George W. Bush, Orlando Sanchez, or David Dewhurst (respectively). Political parties are built on emphasizing the common ground. This is especially true for those that meet the third criterion:

That said, it brings a poignant problem when someone feels so passionate about something or someone that their party affiliation is largely shadowed by it. If Lex didn't say that he was a Republican (or Card say that he was a Democrat), you'd never know it by reading their work. It would be easy to dismiss Lex and Card as party members "in name only" and to tell the former to just go join the Democrats and the latter to join the Republicans, but that's oversimplifying the issues.

Lex doesn't like Bush. He was also skeptical of the Second Gulf War and remains skeptical of Bush's domestic policy as it relates to civil liberties. So does that make him a Democrat? Even if he believes in lower taxes, less regulation, and personal freedom? What is someone in his position supposed to do?

Some of the more partisan Republicans might call him a Democrat or an independent. They might argue that he left the party. He, on the other hand, might turn around and argue that the party has left him.

Parties don't stay the same over the years. In 1998, it was the Democrats that took us to war and the Republicans that wanted us to stay home. In 1995, it was the Republicans dragging President Clinton towards a balanced budget with cuts he didn't want to make. Today it's the Republicans that are the hawks and the Democrats that crow on and on about the budget deficits. In the 90's the Republicans wanted to make immigration an issue and today they are courting the Hispanic vote.

Not only to the issues change, but more oftenly the emphasis does. Few Republicans agree with the GOP on every issue and few Dems agree with their party 100% of the time. So what happens when the one subject where you're on the outs with your party suddenly becomes very important. In my case, I am an advocate of legal marriage for gays. On this basis in a vacuum, Howard Dean is a very attractive presidential candidate. He's right on the issue and Bush is wrong. In 2000, Gore had a lot of better ideas in the area of space and technology than Bush.

Right now there are more important things. There is a war in Iraq and a domestic spending spree that Dean would want to take us on. I can't imagine myself voting for Dean in 2004. That said, under different circumstances and under a president that I felt as negatively towards as Lex does Bush, I might have a different view.

So based on a hypothetical match-up in a fictional world, does one's party affiliation cease? It would be hard to spearhead a Republicans for Dean movement because once you are pulling for someone like Dean, you're arguably not a Republican anymore at all. The same, to a degree, goes for Card and Bush.

Edroso and Taylor roll their eyes and state that one cannot be a Democrat and support Bush on the War on Terror and a handful of other issues. Yet Card is in favor of blanket gun confiscation. He's economically quite liberal from what I understand. In short, he wouldn't have a home in the Republican Party either. So could Card then just describe himself as an independent? Perhaps so, but I for one am tired of self-proclaimed moderates and independents who just happen to lean to one side or the other 75-90% of the time.

So what happens when the 10-25% encompasses all the issues of the day?

The University of Houston's records department used to be a nightmare. Simple things like getting a transcript or adding or dropping classes could be a nightmare. I had to get a transcript yesterday for Gattaca and I have to say that they've really cleaned things up. They're apparently finally moving from phone-in class sign-ups to the Internet. If their site can do half as much as it says it can, I'm impressed.

"Can money pay for half the days I lived awake but half asleep." - Primitive Radio Gods

The sleep deficit is approximatly 10 hours, or two nights of sleep. I've barely been hanging on to four hours of sleep a day. The only time I get tired is around 4am when I'm right in the middle of my shift at work. My second wind comes at 7:30 and I have to force myself to sleep at 9 or 10.

At one the sun shines through the window in my room and right on to my bed.

Waaaaaaaaaah!!!!

Sorry for the dearth of posts, but I haven't been entirely lucid these past couple of days. I was looking forward to getting some sleep this weekend, but I realized that I only get one day off and the only bed I have to sleep in where the sun doesn't come in at two has a skylight right over the bed.

Waaaaaaaaaah!!!

Have I ever mentioned that I get cranky when I miss sleep cumulatively?

Record Industry May Not Subpoena Providers

From the looks of it it was a good ruling. I doubt it'll have a long-term impact favorable to downloaders. Congress will probably get together and pass another law that specifically charges ISP providers liability to cooperate with the illegal behavior of its clients. In the meantime, though, I'll just consider it a victory that the judges stood up and took notice of what a law (any law!) actually said, instead of what they think it ought to have said.

Your political views are Moderate.
Your political party is most likely Independent or possibly Democrat.

I think Owen's right, this test needs to be recalibrated somewhat.

Since my last post got the attention of at least three old ACME people, I thought that I would provide a service for other former users. If you know the current wherebouts of anyone not on this list, please let me know and I'll add them immediately.

Andromina (current) - Graduated from University of Houston and is now teaching young little critters their ABCs. She is married to Papa Zito and they are expecting their first child soon.
Angel (2003) - Moved to Tennessee and training to be a hairdresser.
Aries (current) - Still living in Houston. He is an events promoter for parties, shows, and clubs.
Artemis (2001) - Went to Texas A&M where she was having "the time of [her] life"
Bugs [See Angel]
Bugsy (2002) - Still living in Houston doing computer technical support.
Chat Queen (current) - Graduated from the University of Texas in three years with very high marks. She's presently pursuing a Master's Degree in communications at Auburn University in Alabama.
Con (current) - Working as a locksmith in Austin.
Confederate Rebel [See Con]
Coyote (2003) - Working as an A/V expert for a small marketing company in the Clear Lake area. Married Molly, who is a youth pastor. No children.
Dark One (2001) - Died on April 21, 2000.
Dick Veritas (2001) - Went to Rice where he was studying philosophy. He's a big Crash Warship (Worship?) fan.
Granicus (current) - Graduated from the University of Houston with a degree in MIS. Presently living in Houston and engaged to be married some time next year.
Gypsy (current) - Went to Stephen F. Austin with Kildare where they ended up breaking things off. She transferred to the University of Houston Downtown where she recently graduated. She's working for an energy company and plans to leave Texas soon with her boyfriend.
Hourglass (current) - Went to New England for a while but is presently living in San Marcos with intentions to return to Houston soon. He is aiming to become a cabana boy in South America in the near future.
Horde (current) - Working in the IT field in Houston.
Kavey (current) - Married in 1998 and divorced in 2000. Presently living with Pink Velvet and working as a solo technician for an architecture firm.
Kildare (2002) - Went to Stephen F. Austin with Gypsy where they ended up breaking things off. He's now serving in the military.
Linus (current) - Graduated from Case Western Reserve University with a degree in geology. He returned to Houston briefly but is now living with his girlfriend in Wyoming doing something geology-related.
Nemesis [See Aries]
Outsider (current) - Beleaguered student at Baylor University. He is presently the drummer of a band called The Drinks.
Papa Zito (current) - Taking classes at the University of Houston Downtown and working in the IT field. He married Andromina and they are expecting their first child soon.
Pariah (current) - Working in the IT field in Houston. He and Pink Velvet broke up in 2001, though he's currently involved with a medical resident in the northwest, where he plans to move early next year.
Pepsi (2003) - Student at the University of Texas. Lived with Chat Queen and Rebel Cool for a while. Current wherebouts unknown.
Phoenix [See Papa Zito]
Pink Velvet (current) - Crosses the country selling software systems to veterinary clinics. She attended the University of Houston briefly before taking jobs as an animal trainer and eventually landing her present position. She and Pariah broke up in 2001. She's presently living with Kavey in a committed relationship.
Rebel Cool (2002) - Student at the University of Texas. Lived with Pepsi and Chat Queen for a while. Current wherebouts unknown.
Sagitaur (2001) - Currently a student in Phoenix, Arizona with plans to move back when he graduates. He is in a committed relationship with Tili.
Scarlet (2003) - Went to the University of Texas. Presently living in the Houston area and in a committed relationship.
Spam (current) - Student at Texas State University studying computer science. Due to graduate next May and plans to go to Japan some time afterwards.
Taco (current) - Graduated from Clearview High School and is looking for IT work in the Houston area.
Tili (2001) - Went to school in Phoenix for a while before returning to Texas. She's in a committed relationship with Sagitaur.
Toonces (current) - Graduated from Texas A&M University. She works for a large petroleum company originally in Lafayette but now on the outskirts of Houston.
Wylie (2001) - Student at the University of Houston and in a committed relationship.

In College Football News, Matthew Zemek delivers the best argument against the BCS that I have run across to date. Except for the occasional Turkey Day trip to Austin or College Station, I didn't really follow college football before the BCS was implemented, but Zemek's argument for the old system over the new resonated with me.

Here's also an ESPN article on, among other things, Larry Coker's defense of the current system and of bowls in general:

I don't really want to see a 16-team playoff,'' Coker said. "If you have 117 teams, you have 116 losers. When I was with Jimmy (Johnson) at Oklahoma State, we were a good football team. We weren't a great football team. We lost to Nebraska, we lost to Oklahoma and lost late to Missouri. We're going to be in no national championship playoff at all, but we got invited to the Bluebonnet Bowl. It's not even a bowl anymore.

"We go and there's 55,000 people, crowded, packed and we win the game. It's like we won a national championship. Our fans were elated, Jimmy's a great coach and now gets this opportunity at the University of Miami. Assistant coaches get rehired. But if you have one winner, then there are a lot of losers out there. From a coaching standpoint, I like to see a lot of coaches have an opportunity to win and their programs have an opportunity to win.''

I still have a post coming up on college football playoffs and so forth, but Zemek's argument in favor of split national championships when appropriate is actually a conclusion that I was already starting to come to. Part of my appreciation for college football eminates from its chaotic nature. It's one of the reasons that I am not in favor of a structured playoff system. The more structured it becomes, the less winners there are and the more it becomes like a junior league NFL (and if I want to watch the NFL, I'll watch the NFL).

I suppose I'm an unusual fan that way. Or maybe it's because my favored team (UH) would not likely be included in a playoff system but gets to go to Hawaii this year.

An interesting line from the ESPN article:

[OU coach Bob] Stoops said the teams that play for the national title should at least have won a conference championship.

[Links from Coogfans]

Adrianne has a good post on swastikas that I'd been meaning to comment on.

When we were in high school, Jay created a character named Smooth Steel. His logo was two perpendicular squared S's... a swastika, basically. The character wasn't a Nazi or snything, it was just a good logo with two S's.

Our friend Chip objected vigorously to the costume. We pointed out that the swastika as we know it predates Germany and the Nazi party. Chip originally denied this and when confronted with evidence, argued that it didn't matter. We internally redrew his origins to have an Native American past so that we could incorporate the logo.

In retrospect, Chip was probably right in that there are some things you can't dress around and the swastika, a symbol of one of the most hated regimes in world history, is probably one of them.

Which brings to light the question of those that, unlike Jay and I, actually have a claim to the symbol. Should they avoid using it because of the negative imagery it evokes?

It's hard for this white boy from Texas to say much either way, but I am generally in favor of removing offensive imagery even if the offensiveness of it is a misinterpretation. Sports logos involving Native Americans come to mind except that the actual rank-and-file don't seem to object to them very much. Another example would be the Confederate flag, which I would support removing from state flags and look down on those that put one on their bumper.

What is your opinion on the relevence of dreams? Do you believe that they are significant or do you think it's all a bunch of blather?

I've been having some weird dreams lately that, if relevent, are somewhat disturbing. I can think of at least once instance where a very powerful dream forced me to confront something that I'd been trying to avoid. Other than that, I can't think of any offhand that have proven super-relevent.

Does anyone know a good place in Houston that has a very wide selection of candy? I'm looking for a difficult-to-find Reese's product and haven't the faintest idea where to look.

Most everyone is familiar with the practice of padding a resume. A large number of people do it, and though I never have I have been tempted to on more than one occasion (particularly since I have an unverifiable padding available to me).

When I go to Idaho, I fear that I will have the opposite problem: My resume will be too good.

For the kinds of jobs I'm seeking, anyway. While unemployed, I applied for a number of jobs that I was very overqualified for and I think that was one of the reasons none of them called me back. The jobs I'm going to be pursuing up there will probably be a little lower on the rung than even my current one and I'm afraid that my college degree will make them fear that I'm going to quit as soon as I find a better job. It's actually untrue as I'm a loyal employer to a fault. While at Nova and UFC I turned down better job offers believing (erroneously) that my loyalty would be rewarded.

So the question is whether or not it's ethical to leave (positive) things out of my resume such as my college degree so that certain employers (gas stations if I get desperate enough) won't be off-put by it.

Your thoughts?

Cox Cable apparently wants to add ESPN to its premium services. ESPN is, of course, owned by ABC. The last time ABC got into an argument with a cable company, they won big time. My folks had been loyal (if disgruntled) cable customers until that flap and they've been on satellite ever since.

If Cox thinks that screwing around with football fans is going to bring them more money, I think they're pretty sorely mistaken. I'm willing to bet that a substantial portion of cable subscribers subscribe only for sports, which satellite does a superior job of delivering anyhow with a lot more options. The difference will become more stark when satellite gets around to games on demand, which I hear is in the works.

Memphis 27, North Texas 17

I'm off to an early lead!

RAW 25
Stu 21
Rodney 21
Bilbo 16
Marty 15
Dirk 16
Craig 12
Kyle 9
Willie 9
Ronald 7

Annie 0
Carl 0
Fred 0
Kiefer 0
Maggie 0
Robbie 0
Roland 0
Terra 0

Thursday I'm riding on Miami of Ohio.

Note: When and if I start falling behind, I'll probably stop posting updates on this...

A deacon in Memphis named D P Dwiggins is formulating a ranking system for college football.

It's split in to two categories called a Power Rank, which is for placing bets (though Dwiggins would probably want me to tell you that as an ardent Baptist it's for informational purposes and not for actual gambling) and the other is something called Merit Ranking, which is analogous to the BCS.

The former ranks OU on top (LSU #3 and USC #6), though the latter puts LSU on top (USC #2 and OU #3).

It has a few other anomolies. Houston is ranked #91 and the 10 point underdog of Miami in the Power Rankings (it also says Louisiana Tech would outdo Houston by two touchdowns or so), but is ranked #50 to Hawaii's #74.

It's got some flaws, but unlike the New York Times' ranking system, it doesn't put Rice above Houston.

Not only is being a woman expensive , but it's also painful.

So very glad to be male...

A few years ago, a friend of mine met a girl from Florida. They got along extraordinarily well and for weeks afterwards, my friend teetered on what exactly to do about it.

My advice couldn't have been more simple: Do absolutely nothing!!

My rationale was pretty forthright: He lived in Texas, she lived in Florida. They were both still in college and neither one of them is mobile. Once he graduates then, and only then, should he even think about it. Until then, it was self-defeating to put too much thought into what might happen a year down the line and getting hopes up would be throwing the dice on a fool's wager.

I have a tendency to overstate things when it comes to relationships, but since my first long distance relationship I've come out pretty heavily against them. When you're young and immobile you should focus on the local. When you're older and have the ability to move, you either fish or cut bait. Maybe that was a sign of my over rigidity of the time where I tried to make everything into a black-or-white decision. When it comes to relationships, life rarely throws a fastball. There's always a curve.

A little over three years later, I met a girl that was en-route to Idaho. We laid there for an eternity trying to think of what we were going to do. There wasn't much of a question to it, really. My belief was put to the test and I found myself feeling the exact things I figured I would: Fish or cut bait.

When she left for Shreveport to get her things together for Idaho, I started looking up everything I could about the city of Caster and the state of Idaho. I looked up the job situation, calculated how much it would cost to live there, drew up contingencies for my contingencies, and emailed my findings and thoughts to Eel.

Being who we are, we placed our crazy idea within parameters. One of those parameters was delaying my move up there for six months or so while I took care of things down here and saved up some money. That is, of course, where I am now.

Eel is undoubtedly the biggest curveball I've had thrown at me in this relatively short life. If I'd been asked three years ago, I probably would have said that I should move up immediately. I would have considered this a half-way measure. A flinch. A sign of uncertainty and if there is anything I abhor, it's uncertainty. Yet it is certain and maybe that's why I'm handling the long distance relationship I swore I'd never again be in as well as I have. I know I love her and that I will be with her. The rest is just biding time. I hate biding time only a little less than uncertainty, but it's enough less to keep me going.

There are three things I've been wanting to do before I leave Texas. First there is the annual Whitlock trip to Pensacola, Florida. Second, Christmas and Thanksgiving with the family. Third, my brother's wedding in October. Last, one last No-Lyfe show at an anime convention.

Eel and I have seen each other twice since New Braunfels. Neither were without a hitch.

Her first weekend off happened to be on the last weekend of our trip to Pensacola. Of all the weekends. Eel wonderfully flew in to Pensacola and endured a ten-hour trip back with my family. She met my family and they got along better than either of us could have hoped for. We walked along the beach in Pensacola and went swimming. In between the crashing waves, I told her for the first time that I loved her.

The kick-off of her first week off work came on the weekend of my brother's wedding. She flew in to Houston and I picked her up on the way to Austin. We got back in to Houston when it was over and got a couple of days together before we went to Lafayette so she could have time with her folks. I met them and, once again, things went better than either of us could have hoped for.

A few days before Thanksgiving, Eel noticed that she was going to have a couple days off and considered flying down. Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time for her to do that. We briefly considered my going up there, but once again that conflicted with one of the few things I was insistent on doing while I was down here: Thanksgiving with the family.

Christmas is less than a week away. I was planning which days I might be able to get off and realized that I'd have a four day block in there. Maybe I could go up there? No, it ran right smack against Christmas and that, too, conflicted with one of the few things I was insistent on doing while I'm down here: Christmas with the family.

She's coming down again in January. Unfortunately, I'm going to be working. Except for one weekend of her visit! Which weekend? The same weekend as Ushicon, our last No-Lyfe jaunt.

Long distance relationships are never easy. That's one of the reasons I am generally not an advocate of them. Yet here I am. Every time we seem to find some time to get together it runs headlong in to something else. There have been times that I've considered dropping everything and just heading to Caster. Then common sense prevails and I'm reminded that are things I have to take care of down here before I go.

I'm tempted to whine and complain. Maybe that's what I'm doing. It's hard to say.

But at the same time, this is the happiest I've been in a long time. Maybe she and I don't get to talk every day, but she takes every opportunity she has to talk to me as often as possible. Given that she works between 80 an 90 hours a week and is exausted the other 50, that's nothing short of astounding. I talk to her more than I ever talked to Audrey and almost as much as I talked to Anna in our prime.

The most interesting - and to me the most amazing - thing of it is the few times we do meet it's like we were never apart. Sometimes that's the hardest part about the distance: the pressure during the limited time together. Quality time and all that. Yet I am immensely comfortable around her and she with me. Being with her feels so natural that it's like she's always been there. It's been a little over six months since she and I began this endeavor. Yet it feels like it was just yesterday that I fell in love with her and it feels like we've been together for all of my life.

Maybe time will make a fool of me. It's done it to me before. Maybe we're just in a honeymoon that will fall apart when reality crashes in. Yet the distance between is us reality at its toughest and it has yet to make a dent. We never really got a honeymoon. It was reality's first blow against us in the form of a moving van and eighteen hundred miles.

When we were originally planning this, I commented to her that our biggest liability was caution. It was that we'd want to be too certain before we went forward and we'd let our circumstances get the better of us and allow time and distance to make our decisions for us. The biggest mistake we could make would be to flinch. To look down.

The question that I've gotten most often about all of this is why I'm waiting six months (three or so now) to move up there and why she and I aren't moving in together when I do. Audrey opines that it's a sign that this is flinching. Maybe it is. Yet when I look at the situation the easiest thing for us to do would be for me to move up, move in, and for us to live out the lives that we imagine we'll have together. On a couple of occasions I've thought about just throwing caution to the wind and driving up there.

But that's not the plan. That's what I would need to do if I felt that we couldn't make it otherwise - that we needed to be together physically so much that we'd falter emotionally if we didn't do it. That would be flinching; that would be looking down; and as I said, we can make it through this if we just don't look down.

I was so tired last night that the night before pales in comparison. I took No-Doze and 356, drank caffienated drinks and it did nothing for me...

until 7:45 or so when I was about to get off.

Now, of course, I'm in no mood to go to sleep.

Again.

How did my transition to the night shift go last night? Was I tired.

Well let's see. I banged my head against the corner twice (out of exhaustion, not frustration). I banged up my kneecap when I slammed it against a computer. I almost collapsed, but the bang of the knee woke me up. I bit my lip to stay awake. I sang 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall. I cleaned. Voluntarily.

So how tired am I now?

I can't sleep. Go figure...

D-Day!
Wish him luck...

Polly: I'm thinking about getting my hair cut and highlighted
RAW: Cut how short?
Polly: Shoulder
Polly: With red highlights
RAW: Hmmm... well, coloring hair is better than coloring nails...
Polly: I have natural nails now
Polly: Trying to get them strpong
Polly: and its not so much coloring as highlights...
RAW: Yay for natural nails!
RAW: That makes me very happy!!!
Polly: hahahah
Polly: I'm glad to make you happy
Polly: I live for that
RAW: As well you should. [ego trip] As EVERYONE SHOULD
RAW: [/ego trip]
Polly: hahaha
Polly: SIXTY DOLLARS FOR A HAIRCUT AND HIGHLIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THATS INSANE
RAW: That's about what I would have expected. Maybe as cheap as $40
Polly: my god
RAW: Being a girl doesn't come cheap, from what I hear...

After suspensefully winning the District Championship, the Clear Lake Falcons got clobbered the next week in the first round of playoffs.

Well, I feel less bad about it, not. North Shore, the team that whupped us, has whupped people all the way to the state championship, scoring over opponents 700-something to 200-something over the season.

Congratulations to the North Shore Mustangs!

... because I had no shoes. But then I met a man who had no feet.

Several months back my car was broken in to in an unlit parking lot of a bar. They took my CD player and, in the process, disabled my air condition. I still haven't been able to replace either of them. I kept my anger in check, but I was nonetheless pretty upset about it.

Last night, someone broke into many of the overnight trucks parked at the truckstop. Instead of just stealing a CD player, they stole a man's truck and cargo.

I'd never seen a muscular, 300-pound man cry before.

Gattaca hired a new guy this week. I thought it was great cause then I'll no longer be "the new guy." My dorky picture won't be the only one under a picture entitled "Say hello to the NEW GUY!!" in all the break rooms. So I meet Julio on his first day and he says, "Hey wait, aren't you the new guy?!"

The first time I ever heard of Gattaca was when I ran across their website when I was working for Nova. They had good jobs listed, but something about their website creeped me out. Six months later or so I saw their name again in the Houston Press. Apparently they were being brought in front of the EEOC for age discrimination. The third time I heard their name was a friend (who was fifty) who felt like she was denied a job there because of her physical disability (her hip was wiped out by cancer). As I look around the place, I can't help but feel that the instigator of the lawsuit and my friend were right. They hire young and they hire physically abled.

While logging in to the company's internet access I noticed something interesting: the handle is OCDguy. So not only do they discriminate against the old and disabled, but also women. Come to think of it, there aren't any women in the OCD...

I'm moving to night shift now. It'll be good for a number of reasons. I will get to do my Christmas shopping during the day for one thing. I also won't have to deal with Mr. Smith as much (though I haven't actually had to deal with him all that much thus far, in all honesty). The biggest bonus will be for my bank account. I'm spending $10 a day at that darnable cafeteria. Great food at a good price, $10 a day is $10 a day!

Unfortunately, I'll still be there in the morning for their breakfasts. They're insanely good breakfasts. Their biscuits are quite seriously among the best I've ever had. If they put cheese on their biscuit sandwiches, they could make a lot of money selling it outside Gattaca. I barely even notice the fact that there isn't cheese on there, which is amazing for me. Their breakfast tacos are also good. Both only $1.00. Makes you want to order a whole lot.

Actually, one reason I order a whole lot is that it means more bathroom trips. This gives me something to do while on-shift.

The errors that occur in the processes are called DUMPS. When we get one, we have to report it to the software department and then we FLUSH the DUMPS. Who says this place doesn't have a sense of humor?

Every day I keep track of how much time I have left before I can go home. I cut it down into 15-minute increments. I started off drawing 34 slanted lines and then I'd X them out when I completed a shift. This was taking up too much space in my notepad, so I started drawing circles and dividing them into fourths, coloring them in as each fifteen minutes passes. This not only gives me something to do while on-shift, but keeps me sane because I realize that I'm actually making progress. Since my job doesn't actually consist of doing anything, I take progress wherever I can find it. That and I know how much time I have left to go, which also keeps me sane.

I've been working with my roommate Danforth this week. He just got moved to first shift. He's actually going to be leaving Gattaca soon (GU has singlehandedly convinced him to go back to college). As we were working, I asked him "How many days do you have left?"

"13.2375 days," he said.

Because Danforth and I have been working the same shift, and because we brought in a new guy, we now have five people instead of three doing the work of half a person.

Bruce used to work in OCD. He actually trained me for a few days, but in the middle of my training he was switched to the RSS department. He became a symbol of achievement and that if you stick with OCD long enough, you can actually move out of the department and so some other work. He and I talked on Friday and I asked him what his new job consisted of.

"Well, I check the connections with our clients. If a connection drops, I try to reconnect. That takes about five minutes and I just sit there and watch."

"Then what?"

"Well, if it doesn't work, I try to reconnect again."

"Then what?"

"Well, if it doesn't work the second time, I fill out a report and make sure the next one is connection."

"So you don't get to actually repair a broken connection?"

"No, I'm three promotions away from getting to do that."

Now that I'm not The New Guy anymore, that means I don't get to do the checklists. That gives me an extra fifteen minutes an hour with which to do nothing.

When Julio The New Guy was going through his checklists, I walked up to Stu (who was training him) and asked "Have you broken his spirit yet?"

"No, I'm feeling a little blue today. I don't want to break his spirit on a day where I feel blue. I wouldn't enjoy it."

Julio looked back at us and laughed. He must have throught we were joking.

By all standards, Gattaca is a conservative company. No smoking, no talking, no having fun. Except drinking. One a month there are company birthday parties where they have an open bar! I would have gone except that it said that everyone will also get to "meet the new employees" which I decided I really, really didn't want to do.

I am just about the only person at Gattaca that actually wears an undershirt with my dress shirt. No one else seems to. It's bizarre.

I no longer have to wear dress shirts and ties. My company shirts came in a week earlier than they were supposed to. This is a good thing for a number of reasons. First of all, I don't really like buttoning the top botton of my shirts. My neck is too big. Secondly, I am a little more conspicuous at the truck stop than I'd like to be when I go there right after work. Thirdly, I wouldn't mind wearing a shirt and tie so much if everyone else was wearing them, but they all have the company shirts, which makes me feel like a fraternity pledge. Fourthly, it also makes me feel like I'm wearing a big sign that says "Hey! Look at me! I'm either new or I have such a big stick up my butt that I like wearing a shirt and tie when I don't have to!" Lastly, it makes me feel like a poseur. Professionals wear shirts and ties. You can say a great many things about my job, but calling it "professional" is a bit laughable.

I've been looking forward to getting the company shirts for a while now, but I never looked at them very closely. The UFC logo is at once simple and ubiquitous so I'd be able to wear it when I leave Gattaca. It has a pocket, which is useful for the notepad I take my little notes on. But they're on different sides of the polo shirt! That's screwed up! It's like the NY logo on both sides of a Yankees uniform! It's unnatural!! The pocket and the logo go on the same side, darnit!

I found out that they only recently started requiring a technical background for my job. They are one of the beneficieries of Houston's piss-poor IT job market. They got enough applicants that they could start demanding three years experience to look at a bunch of blinking lights all day long.

The fact that it has only recently been considered a "technical position" would explain why the head of the OCD does not know the difference between a hub, a router, and a domain.

Gattaca has a newsletter. UFC had a newsletter to so I don't consider it particularly (forgive the pun) newsworthy. But the newsletter itself has to be seen to be believed. It's like a particularly bad high school yearbook: "This is Bob and Jane at the company party. Employees like going to the company party because it fosters unity and allows Gattaca employees from different departments to get to know one another." Or maybe that was just my high school yearbook?

Sometimes working at Gattaca feels like being in grade school. Particularly when I read the memos. Mr. Smith figures that he needs to write a memo or something so he writes it in the clearest language possible. It's a bit like The Worlds Dullest Blog, except it's the World's Dullest Memos:

"It has come to my attention that some people are leaving paperwork on their desk. If you leave paper on the desk, it means that other people can't work there. But if you remove things from your desk, that gives them places to put things. That allows them to work more efficiently."

"Somebody left the drawer open yesterday. It is GU policy to clothes drawers because that allows more space for people to walk. If the drawer is open, someone might get a booboo on their knew. But if you close it, then they will miss the drawer entirely and walk by it completely unharmed."

Sometimes working at Gattaca feels like being in grade school. We'd usually finish class early and spend the last ten minutes achingly looking at the clock, second-by-second until it reached 3:15. Same sort of thing here except that we're waiting for 4:15. Second. By. Second.

The hard to read part:
"Northgate Country Club understands and can help you overcome your anguish. LSU and USC fans, as well as justice-seeking college football fans, are invited to one complimentary round of golf at our beautiful country club, at the time of your choice. Simply call our pro shop and set up your tee time.

You will be in the company of people that truly feel your pain.

Note: No tee times available for BCS advocates"

There's not much I can say about Hussein's capture that hasn't already been said. Even the BBC will have a hard time trying to sell this as a set-back for the Coalition, though no doubt they'll try. The only downside I can think of is that "the enemy of the enemy is our friend" and without the second enemy, the first enemy will cease being considered a friend. That said, the insurgents have demonstrated that they are not friends to Iraq so I don't expect that to happen.

The worst that I can see happening is that it will have no effect, which is a lot more likely than the immediate collapse of resistence some will blame Bush for not achieving. It's pretty apparent that Hussein hasn't been in control of the resistence and therefore we haven't hit the Baaths the same way we'd be hitting al Qaeda if we nabbed Osama bin Laden.

That said, symbolism is an important thing in the Middle East and we just outed the Bogey Man. Without Hussein, the resistence doesn't have a figurehead leader anymore. Most importantly, they don't have the person that wreaked havoc on their nation for so long to worry about coming back in to power. The rewards reaped from this will have less to do with the resistence and more to do with resistence to the resistence. Hopefully this will make everyman Iraqis more cooperative, which will in turn make our job a lot easier.

On a couple of other notes:

I'm glad we were able to bring him in alive. I may take that back in a few months during a circus international trial or something, but the nature of the capture has given critics of the American policy little to complain about, which is always a good thing.

Every time they show Saddam being deloused, my hair itches.

Congratulations to Howard Dean. Dean has been making a lot of political hay over our failure to capture Hussein and he was put in an awkward (albeit not undeserved) spot when we finally did. Instead of saying "I suppose that's a good thing" (which is what he said when Hussein was originally ousted) he has congratulated everyone from the troops to the President he's trying to unseat.

John Kerry, on the other hand, has demonstrated what a weak politician he is. What Kerry said about Hussein (that he's not the only one we're fighting out there) is true enough, but on a day where Americans are celebrating coast-to-coast, no one likes a wet blanket. When the President of France and Chancellor of Germany seem to respond more favorably than a presidential candidate does to an American military victory, there's something wrong. Even for a presidential candidate, John Kerry has been extraordinarily spineless (the anti-war candidate who voted for the war) and this is just another indication of that. While the American people put up (and reward) a certain amount of... ehmm... ideological flexibility, I think he's just demonstrated over and over again why the former presumptive nominee is getting clobbered by the former governor of a state with the population of Fort Worth.

One of the reasons I elected not to move to Idaho immediately was so that I could spend a last Thanksgiving and Christmas with my family before I go.

The tree has been erected and the stockings hung.

My brother's is missing as it has been since he left Texas for Virginia a few years ago (he just moved back). Yet I find it a little depressing.

I don't think it's because his stocking is there, but because I know that next year mine probably won't be.

I noticed something at work today. There are a number of twenty-somehting married people. Instead of a wedding band, I've noticed that a few of them have actual rings with designs. One of them has little diamonds around it and the other looks like one of those stringy belts.

Is this a trend?

I hope not. I like a wedding band to be a wedding band. If anything, I'd scale down women's wedding rings. I've always had a preference for more subtle pieces than those overflowing with diamonds.

Or maybe I'm just a cheapskate?

The rules are pretty simple: Of the 28 bowl games, start from most certain to least and pick the winner (no point spread). So, without further ado, here are my picks in order

Tennessee over Clemson
Miami (OH) over Louisville
West Virginia over Maryland
Memphis over North Texas
Georgia over Purdue
Kansas State over Ohio State
Southern Miss over Utah
Georgia Tech over Tulsa
Texas Tech over Navy
Oklahoma over LSU
Texas over Washington State
Mississippi over Oklahoma State
Bowling Green over Northwestern
Virginia Tech over California
Boston College over Colorado State
Pittsburgh over Virginia
New Mexico over Oregon State
Minnesota over Oregon
Boise State over TCU
Michigan over USC
Miami over Florida State
Auburn over Wisconsin
Houston over Hawaii
Michigan State over Nebraska
Arkansas over Missouri
Iowa over Florida -
Kansas over North Carolina State
Fresno State over UCLA

I couldn't agree with Owen more.

Bush's signing of this law probably ranked as the second biggest ideological betrayal of the Bush Administration, next to the steel tariffs. Now that the latter has been undone and the promises that this would be struck down have not materialized, it's #1.

Adrianne has a post about Abercrombie and Finch that I've been meaning to write on for a while.

Most on the right and left would agree that a colorblind society would be ideal. Liberals often cringe at the word "colorblind" and conservatives are skeptical of programs and studies that seek to monitor "racial progress," but while there are differences in views of where we are, we seem to agree on where we'd like to be.

The question is "what do we do in the meantime?"

Documentation has recently surfaced that reveals A&F has a policy of hiring people that look a particular way. That's not unusual, of course. If a guy wants to get a job at an Apple computer store, he gells his hair spikey, gets emo glasses, and grows just a little stubble and perhaps a goatee. For my part, I shaved my beard to get employed by a company that "frowns down" upon such things.

The problem is that race is a factor in A&F's policies and that, of course, runs contrary to anti-descrimination laws.

For about eight weeks I worked at McDonald's. It is the most racist employer I have had to date. No matter how well-spoken you were (we're talking about Clear Lake students who had a pretty good command of the language), if you were black you were usually on the grill. If you were white, you were usually a cashier. As the two managers were black and Hispanic, they obviously didn't think the minorities were less capable than whites. It was something else: the customers.

Rightly or wrongly, the determination had been made that the predominantly conservative white and asian residents of Clear Lake would prefer be served by a nice looking white boy or girl than a minority. In one of the few exceptions where Curtis (black) worked cashier with me, my line always seemed longer than his. Maybe it was a coincidence or maybe the managers were on to something.

This strikes me as a variation of what A&F did. They wanted people that their customers would be more comfortable with. Adrianne is fine with that, but perhaps because of my disturbing experiences, I can't say that I am. This becomes self-fulfilling. Preppy clothes are percieved to go to white people so the stereotype is reinforced by A&F hiring white salespeople. Ghetto clothes are percieved to go to black people so the stereotype would also be enforced if different styled store behaved differently.

Suburban whites need exposure to well-spoken minority individuals. If someone is well-spoken and cleanly dressed, then they should be hired regardless of their race.

I'd love to be able to leave it to the free market and say that companies should be left to hire whoever they want (and if they want to hire only whites then so be it), but I just cannot buy in to it. As long as stores and restaurants cater to the racism (latent or apparent) of their clientelle, nothing changes.

My views on affirmative action are very conflicted. I find myself softly in favor of it but then am happy when Texas A&M announces that it won't use race as a factor. I believe it to be inherently unconstitutional (at least in public schools), but I do believe that diversity makes a school stronger.

However, on the subject of hiring, I am unwilling to leave it completely at the discretion of the employers. Too many of them are more at ease with whites than minorities and that will affect their hiring practices. They'll always find reasons to confirm their prejudices (it's what our customers want or our workplace will function more smoothly). I am not comfortable with the idea of quotas, but I have no qualms whatsoever with coming down hard on those that clearly demonstrate a preference for hiring whites. Even when it's financially in their best interest, they're playing to the lowest common denominator.

I've decided to change a few aliases around here, so bear with me. I'm moving away from non-name names and using initials. No one could pronounce the name Elciem [L-shem] and Ellie is too easily confused with Eel, so she will now be referred to as Audrey. JD, who has long deserved an actual name, will now be referred to as Danforth (or Dan).

I was explaining this to a colleague at lunch today and thought it interesting enough to post about. My roommate Danforth, my former roommate (and frequent commenter) Adam, and I have an interesting and shared job history.

I got a job with a company called Nova in 1999. I was strongly recommended by Anna's mother, who held a reasonably high-ranked position there. It started off dealing with Y2K issues and eventually ended up with me handling the nightly backups and processes. It was a great job for a college student and the first step in my career. Nova was primarily a computer reselling company until one day it sold its computer and sales divisions to a company from New England by the name of Concord.

Everything was thrown into chaos as a good chunk of my coworkers (including Mrs. McLoed) left. Concord offered me a job for more money, though I was informed by my supervisor Rusty that the Concord job was temporary and that I should stick with Nova, so I did. Concord still needed someone to do my job, so I recommended my then-roommate Adam, who was hired and trained with me for a couple weeks at the Nova building.

I was laid off several months later. It wasn't that much of a surprise as for the last six months I worked there, I didn't know what the company actually did anymore and I was only the latest in a long string of layoffs. Adam, meanwhile, continued to work at Concord until he graduated and it became apparent that promises of a higher position were going to remain unfulfilled in the midst of layoffs there as well. Adam continued to work at Concrod until he was able to land a better paying job... at Gattaca.

Danforth was really needed a job and Adam helped him score the overnight position at Concord. Adam's tenure at Gattaca was very, very short when he landed a non-insufferable job... at Nova.

The layoffs at Concord continued until earlier this year Danforth was finally bit and terminated. Danforth had a lot of difficulty finding work and, as most unemployed tech people in Houston do at some point, caught the attention of a software company... named Gattaca.

So Adam works for my former employer, and Danforth's former employer is also Adam's former employer, and Danforth and I now work at the place that Adam used to.

Liberal Professor Michael Berube shares a struggle he had with a conservative student in one of his classes. He ponders what he could have done to weigh limited class time against a student's right to speak out.

The University of Houston is not a particularly ideological university. There were some awfully liberal professors in the English and culture departments, but my political science professors were pretty evenly split (one conservative, one Calhounista, one moderate liberal, and a dispassionate analyst). In my Elections 2000 class with dispassionate analyst Professor Dick Murray, a class vote at the beginning class split us straight into thirds on Bush, Gore, and undecided.

My uberliberal Human Situation professor was good about letting the sole conservative in the class (I was left-of-center at the time) speak up and everyone was pretty respectful. The only similar situation I recall was in an adolescent psychology course that I took.

Adolescent psychology was predominantly filled with female (I was one of about four boys in the class of sixty) and liberal education and psych majors. I was right-of-center at the time as was my then-girlfriend (Anna), a handful of other silent students, and the professor.

There wasn't any one offender - there were about ten. They all felt that the textbook did not go to great enough lengths to explain the reasons for bad behavior in kids. When the professor suggested that upbringing might have something to do with it or that perhaps something should be done about unruly kids, fifteen hands would immediately go up and the debate would ensue. I call it a debate, but it was the same ten or fifteen people going on and on. The professor would respond to the first couple and then give them the floor for about ten or fifteen minutes.

A couple times she left the room, got coffee, and came back to see if they were done yet. They rarely were, but she wrestled control back and continued on with the lesson plan.

I'm not sure what the point to this story is, if there is one, other than that Berube went out of his way to be fair to the student and the student, like most loudmouths in class, probably failed to appreciate it.

Not everyone is going to agree with what we have to say. While we all want to add out two cents in when we think someone has said something wrong-headed, unless the class is devoted to debate (like an Elections 2000 class, for instance) for heaven's sake sit down, shut up, and take your darn notes.

[Link via Duffwire]

By SoS I mean College Football Strength of Schedule rating. There's a discussion brewing between Daniel, Kevin, and myself about how one goes about ranking teams and the difficulties involved with that. The current system just takes win-loss records which, as Daniel points out, is not necessarily indicative of much.

I asked Daniel how he'd handle it and he responded:

When it comes to rankings, I like the way CFBNews does it: it's subjective, but they line up all the teams in their heads, and imagine who would win a game on a neutral field.

Do I think Miami of OH would defeat Miami of FL in a game on a neutral field? No. Therefore, they ought to be ranked lower. Do I think TCU would defeat FL? No. Therefore, FL,a team with 4 losses, should be ranked ahead of TCU, a team with one loss.

As for SOS, I agree that it should be taken into account, simply not the way the majority of computer polls in the BCS does it.

Fair enough, but it gave me another (implausible and undesirable idea).

ESPN has been bending over backwards in some sort of backroom arrangement with EA Sports, the maker of the best college football video game in the history of mankind: EA Sports NCAA Football 2004. Instead of showing footage of a player they're talking about, they'll show clips of the player from the game. When OU was still invincible, they held a playoff game between USC and LSU and declared USC the winner that should take on OU by virtue of a 31-21 cybervictory.

So why not take it a step further? Make strength of schedule determinant on who wins in a simulated football game? EA Sports is probably going to know the ins and outs of Rice versus Rutgers better than the average coach or reporter! Think of how much EA would pay for the privilege! More corporate tie-ins and sponsorship! Woohoo... or something.

Yeah, it's a dumb idea, but it really is a problem without a clear solution unless each team plays 117 games.

I have a post coming up on the subject, but it won't include EA Sports NCAA Football 2004, for which I'm sure you are all grateful.

I don't listen much to the radio and that's a good thing. Not because the radio plays crap, which maybe it does, but because the radio is about to start playing more and more Christmas music.

I hate Christmas music.

Not all of it, but almost. I don't understand the draw. Yes, Frosty the snowman is a snowman who talks. That's supposed to fill me with Christmas cheer? I'm really happy for Rudolph and all that, but it's hard to get too sentimental about a venison with an olfactory problem.

And all those songs about snow. I'm from Houston, Texas. What exactly is snow? I've heard the legends, but I think it's just a northern conspiracy to make southerners jealous. To the extent that snow might exist, all you're doing is reminding me that I haven't seen it since I was eight years old.

This is supposed to make me feel better?!

None of this is to say that I don't like Christmas. I like Christmas, the symbolism, the giving and getting of gifts. I especially like the time spent with my family, both local and extended. As such, two of the only three good Christmas songs I've heard is Better Than Ezra's "Merry Christmas Eve" [pop-ups] and Robert Earl Keen's "Merry Christmas From the Family."

One of the things we do at Gattaca to pass the time is an office football pool. I'm ordinarily not a gambler, but I didn't want to be left out of the action so I put down $5. Since I follow college football more than professional, I never expected to see my money again.

It's a good thing, too.

I got six of last weekend's fourteen games right. I'd be less embarassed if I was betting on point spreads, but I wasn't. I'm just that pathetic. I could have done better by flipping a coin.

I think that might be next week's strategy.

On the upshot, there is a bowl-game pool for college football where I expect to do a lot better. I still won't win, but it's not about winning at this stage, it's about doing better than a coin toss.

One of the joys of being a Texas music fans is to watch the stars before everyone else knows about them. Seeing Pat Green and Cross Canadian Ragweed get signed is both a vindication of my tastes and a just darned exciting thing. While Carter Pagel hasn't been signed (and doesn't appear on the cusp of being signed), he has quite a bit of untapped star power. He has the looks, the charisma, and the voice to do very well for himself.

The first couple of times that I saw Carter play, he was opening for Phil Pritchett. In that sense, he was the second band that I started following. Carter used to be the lead singer of Blind Luck, a rising country rock band that won numerous Austin Chronicle awards.

I wasn't too impressed with Blind Luck when I first saw them, though as time past the band became better and better. With the help of stellar lead guitarist Joseph Deeb, they were really coming in to their own musically and regularly opening for Honeybrowne and Reckless Kelly.

His musical history is an interesting one. He started off with a definite country sound and moved more and more towards an alt-rock one. He traded in his cowboy boots for sneakers. Though my mind will always group him with Pritchett, his lyrics are much more straight-to-the-point. He does mostly love songs, but a good balance of happy, sad, and in between.

When I first talked to Carter, I commented that in the six months I'd been following him, he hadn't changed his set list. I knew it by heart. He was very apologetic and said, "I didn't realize that people actually came to more than one of my shows."

At an accoustic show, Jay and I were sitting up front and he asked us periodically if we had any requests. One was denied (it was a band song that he hadn't mastered solo) and instead he said he'd play another song off Blind Luck's latest CD. It was not one of my favorites and I kinda looked at Jay and shrugged. Before he started singing it, he said "Well, he doesn't like it but I hope y'all will!"

I'd forgotten that I was less than five feet away from him. Since then, it's actually become one of my favorite Blind Luck songs.

Unfortunately, a rift formed between Pagel and Deeb and when the band was sounding its best, they went their seperate ways. Pagel and drummer Jason Stolly formed Box Socials. Carter wanted to get away from country music (one of the reasons behind Blind Luck's demise) and their new sound was a lot more altish as they took a page from Wilco. Deeb's guitar playing was missed, but I managed to catch a few shows and liked the four or so songs that they had recorded.

The Box Socials never caught on like Blind Luck was poised to and they ended up going their seperate ways when Stolly joined Phil Pritchett's new band. Carter's been singing occasional solo gigs since.

He doesn't have nearly the following that Blind Luck did, but he's releasing more and more new stuff and I can't wait for his next CD. Keep an eye on this boy as he has the looks and the charisma to really go places.

I saw him on Saturday and he was again taking my requests as I was probably the only person there familiar with his old stuff. He'd unfortunately forgotten most of the Blind Luck stuff, so I wasn't surprised that he whiffed when I threw him a curveball.

"Do you remember that song you played once at that accoustic show? It wasn't on any of your CDs," I explained. I gave him some lyrics.

"Aww, man, that was a good song, but I can't remember any of it. What was it called again?"

"It was called 'I Forget'."

Even the drunk guy at the bar caught the irony.

One of the delights of my new job and home is that I am located close to where I used to work. That in and of itself isn't so good, but it also means I'm located close to the truckstop where I used to eat lunch all the time. I've been going by there nightly.

It's an interesting place with more interesting people. I've little or nothing in common with them, but a group that's more fun to watch and talk to you'll never find.

Jason Boland's second album is entitled Truckstop Diaries. I never much cared for the title track until I started hanging out at this place, but now it's among my favorite.

I've posted once or twice on a couple of things that have happened there, but I'm going to be doing more in the near future as I've been hanging out around there a lot.

The other day when I was driving up to Austin, I had my portable MP3 playing a CD that had songs from Robert Earl Keen, Dub Miller, and Houston Marchman. Great road music! The CD has roughly 60 Keen, 40 Marchman, and 20 Dub songs (3:2:1) and I played it random. It was strange how it seemed to keep playing Marchman songs over and over again while largely looking over Keen.

So on the third hour of the trip, I took a page from my How-to-avoid-being-bored-at-Gattaca playbook and started counting things. In this case, I counted how many songs it was playing of each artist to see who was being overrepresented and who was being underrepresented.

Suddenly it started playing Keen all the time. By the time I got to the fifteenth song, it was 9 Keen, 3 Dub, and 3 Marchman. I kept counting and when I finally got there it seemed to have evened out. 15 Keen songs, 9 Marchman, and 6 Dub... 3:2:1 5:3:2.

This player seems a bit more consistent than my last one.

Update: Okay, my math skills need work. I'll bet my folks are proud of the tens of thousands they spent getting me edumacated.

Keith set up a bunch of colored markers like bowling pins and rolled his pen as if it were a rolling ball.

We watched with fascination.

For about an hour.

We played with rubber bands for another hour or so. Stretch, contract, stretch, contract, stretch...

Danforth made a rubber band ball about an inch and a half in diameter.

Stu dazzled us with the formulas in every cell of his football pool spreadsheet.

I cleaned my designated janitorial space twice.

Every time the air siren indicating a problem went off, we prayed to God and gave him Thanks.

We debated the origins of the phrase "point blank" for a good half an hour.

We watched people go up and down the staircase in the security monitors and wondered what they were talking about.

We thanked the repairmen profusely for taking so long to fix our door, as it gave us something to watch and think about.

Danforth took to stencilling his signiature in on the checklist. Things were a bit less exciting over Thanksgiving when he apparently drew little Turkeys for his signature.

I got a 95% on the Part Retrieval Protocols For Broken ATM Parts, Part 1.

By the end our brains were too numb to realize what a great bowling ball the rubber band would have made for the colored markers.

So let me get this straight:

There is a group of Republicans out there called "South Park Republicans." They don't know that they're South Park Republicans and they may not even like the TV show that is the namesake they don't know they had. They don't generally vote, but if they did it might be Republican. They don't know that there is a movement that is being talked about and that they are a part of said movement. They don't necessarily agree on anything, be it politics or television.

And these people are the salvation of the Republican Party.

Lord help us all...

Here at the RAW Cooking Show, we usually talk about burning food, plates, and other food-related things. Today, we're going to talk about how to set your pants on fire.

First a small physics lesson. It shouldn't be news as anyone that has attended elementary school knows it: Lying puts your pants on fire. Scientists have never discovered why exactly this occurs, but it's an undisputed truth.

So here's what you need to turn your pants on fire:

One (1) RAW

One (1) Blog

Several (n) commercials advertising Green Bean Casserole

One (1) helping of Green Bean Casserole

One (1) really bad taste left in RAW's mouth

And here's how you make it:
Put a RAW in front of the television while some Green Bean Casserole ads are playing on the television. Leave him there just long enough to garner a curiosity about a food he does not suspect he likes. Then place RAW in front of the computer where he will then explain his curiosity as to why anyone would like anything called Green Bean Cassarole.

Then tell him that it actually tastes good. This will start the pants-burning process.

Once the pants are ablaze, you must make sure that the odor catches the RAW's notice. To do this, place him in a company cafeteria that serves generally good food and have him, out of the previously simmered curiosity, give it a try.

The RAW will then smell the burning pants and then you can laugh at him.

Once the laughing commences, the dish has already been served.

There is a time to joke. However, you must always keep in mind the timing and nature of a joke before it is lobbed. Even if it's self-depricating. When joking to defuse a tense situation, it can be especially beneficial but can also backfire in a pretty bad way.

Here are some examples I've witnessed of poorly placed jokes:

Joe has a notorious temper problem. You just never know when he's going to go off on something. Joe realizes that there's a problem and thinks that humor might defuse the situation. Therefore, Joe jokes about being irrationally angry.

Sally has been waiting for Bob to propose for three very long years. She's stuck with him through his divorce, the depression that followed, and his lingering hostility towards marriage because she believes that he will eventually marry her. Bob meanwhile asks how long she'd be willing to hold out and jokes that he may have to test her on that.

Author Lionel Garcia wrote a vigorous defense of Texas A&M in Sunday's Houston Chronicle Outlook section, which is under a lot of scrutiny in recent months for their rejection of affirmative action and a controversial bake sale put on by a conservative group.

I'd link to it, but the Chronicle apparently has a one-day turnaround into the inaccessible archives section for any opinion piece not written by one of its staff.

If anyone can get ahold of the Sunday Chronicle, I suggest reading the experiences of a Hispanic Aggie.

In the meantime, check out the guy's website. I want to read his work some time.

November 7, 2003:
Bleu Edmonson at the Katy Midnight Rodeo
Great Divide at the Firehouse
Phil Pritchett recording for a live CD

November 14, 2003
Randy Rogers at the Sidecar Pub
Mark David Manders at the Firehouse
Great Divide at the Katy Midnight Rodeo
Bleu Edmondson at the Innkeeper
Phil Pritchett at the Jolly Fox

November 21, 2003
Jack Schitt simultaneously playing everywhere all at once!

November 28, 2003
Diddley Squat tours every bar in town!

December 5, 2003
Jack Schitt and Diddley Squat do an accoustic show! All across town!

The more I think about this, the more I need to just get drunk. But I don't have anyone to sing to me while I do it. Sob.

Today I noticed something I hadn't seen in ages. It was a blast from the past. A little terminal into a time of more drama, less pounds, and adolescent angst.

Gattaca runs one of their functions off Procomm Plus.

That program was absolutely central to my life, once upon a time.

I had to turn in my Christmas list yesterday to my folks. It's the most difficult list of the year that doesn't involve which boxes to move where and when. It's not because there are just so many things I want or because I don't want anything, though.

It's a translation problem.

Most of what I want falls in to four categories: Expensive, clothes, technology, or discs. I don't ask much many expensive things because I rarely get them and, more often than not, it's a choice I want to make on my own rather than have something given to me. Clothes are difficult because I usually don't know what I want until I see it. Anna used to get me some of the best gifts because she'd always write it down when we were shopping and I'd say "Ooooh, I'd kill for this!" I rarely go shopping with my folks.

Technology is really dicy because my folks don't know all that much about computers. So when I say that I want a 60GB external HD, their eyes glaze over and they worry that whatever they get might be incompatible with what I have. By "discs" I mean CDs and DVDs, but they're also problematic. Most of the CDs I want are difficult to find unless you go to Lonestarmusic or Cactus records. One of the costs of eschewing the radio.

Usually I settle on: jeans, slacks, and a VCR. I've gotten a VCR for the last three years straight. You cannot have too many VCRs... although I must admit my six might be slightly overdoing it.

I think I did a pretty good job, though this year. Found a couple movies they can get off Amazon (and actually gave them the list early enough for them to order something from there), decided to ask for a couple artists I've heard good things about but have never really heard (Jason Mraz and Maroon 5) hoping to get lucky.

So I think I may avoid the VCR-jeans-slacks triumvirate this year.

I've got a story idea floating around in my mind. Here's your chance to help!

1. Can you give me the names and schools of any head coaches that were busted for gambling on their own team? Extra points if they bet against their team.
2. What's the NCAA policy on this?
3. Who determines the point spread of college football games?

An interesting quiz that my friend Brian pointed me to today. It deals with hypothetical situations involving taboos, gauges where you are, and tries to change your perspective.

Here's what mine said:

Results

Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.42.

Your Moralising Quotient of 0.42 compares to an average Moralising Quotient of 0.28. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are less permissive than average.

Your Interference Factor is: 0.25.

Your Interference Factor of 0.25 compares to an average Interference Factor of 0.17. This means that as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned you are more likely to recommend societal interference in matters of moral wrongdoing, in the form of prevention or punishment, than average.

Your Universalising Factor is: 1.00.

Your Universalising Factor of 1.00 compares to an average Universalising Factor of 0.40. This means you are more likely than average to see moral wrongdoing in universal terms - that is, without regard to prevailing cultural norms and social conventions (at least as far as the events depicted in the scenarios featured in this activity are concerned).

Are you thinking straight about morality?

Although you do not evaluate the actions depicted in these scenarios to be across the board wrong, it is not entirely clear why you think that anything in them is morally problematic. You don't think an action can be morally wrong if it is entirely private and no one, not even the person doing the act, is harmed by it. Yet the actions described in these scenarios are private like this and it was specified as clearly as possible that they didn't involve harm. Maybe, despite these stipulations, you just can't believe no harm would have resulted. The trouble is that you were asked to judge the scenarios as described, not as you think they would have turned out in the real world. And given how they were described, it isn't clear what form such harms could take...

Take the quiz and afterwards it'll give you interesting insights.

I found them interesting, anyway.

Kansas State 35, Oklahoma 7

Several years ago at UNLV, Jerry Tarkanian had assembled the best basketball team in the country. During the tournament, there wasn't much doubt as to who would win it all and consequently being the underdog rooter that I was, I rooted against them every game (my folks rooted against them because of their distaste for Tarkanian).

When Duke knocked them out of the playoffs, my brother was upset. I asked him why and he said something to the effect of "Because that's the best team in college basketball and now it'll never be on the record."

I feel much that way about the Oklahoma Sooners. They were the best team in college football yesterday and today they're the best team in college football that had a really, really bad day.

I was pulling for Oklahoma to win tonight for a number of reasons: it would put UT in a BCS game, I root for Big 12 South teams over the North ones, my lady friend is an alma mater... and they're the best team in college football and now it may never be on the record.

All appearances indicate that OU will play for the national title and I'd still put them as the favorites to win. That said, it won't be the same now. It'll be a contested championship. There'll be a one-loss team (LSU probably) that feels they deserved the shot that OU got and the crispness of an undefeated national champion is no longer there.

That's not to argue that the OU title would be illegitimate. That's absurd because most national titles come with controversy. But I was thinking, and hoping, that this would be one of the many exceptions and that this team would place itself as one of the best in recent memory if not history.

It's not just that they were undefeated, but that they dominated every game they played (with the early-season exception of Alabama). Neither LSU or USC has demonstrated the mastery of the field that the Sooners have in the season as a whole (with the exception of today).

On the other hand, just a little bit ago I said that one of the things I love about college football is how much every week matters. Even weeks where the best team in college football get their butts handed to them.

I am going to San Marcos to see Phil Pritchett tonight. I got an email saying that Carter Pagel was playing at a bar in Austin beforehand. Figured maybe I'd swing by there.

Their website has a large and unhelpful images, no low-res graphic for dial-in surfers, no map, a hidden address, and no spreadsheet schedule.

To further kick you in the groin, the site tells you that you can see a map on Mapquest, but provides no link and no address to put in to Mapquest unless you go to a different site that has only the address on it (instead of, say, putting the address on the main page).

Thanks for nothing, guys.

Update: Okay, so I went to the bar and have a better idea of why their web site is not so good. I forget how small the average bar in Austin is. That said, if they went a little lighter on the graphics and heavier on the information, I'd be a lot less whiny about it.

Those of you that read me regularly know that this has been a regular issue for me.

I arrived at the GIS (Gattaca Indoctrination Seminar) about five minutes ahead of schedule. If Mr. Smith had been around, I'm sure he wouldn't have approved because that's five more minutes I could have been looking busy doing diddly squat under his watch.

There were a handful of people there. I was the only American there over the age of twenty-five that had actually once held a job that didn't involve burgers or retail. There were some older folks there, but they were all foreigners: two Mexicans, a Latin American, and three French people.

The following is an account based off notes I was taking during the seminar. Please note that I may have been hallucinating at various points.

9:10 AM
Gabriel: Greetings new Gattaca employees! My name is Gabriel and I will be your instructor today! The man to my left is Samuel, he is our resident employment law officer who will help guide the class to be both informative and exciting!
Samuel: Please note that we cannot make any guarantee of excitement as the word "excitement" is a subjective term. Therefore if you find yourself tearing out your eyes in search of something entertaining, we cannot be held liable for failing to meet your definition of "excitement" and, as you are not yet covered by our health plan, we are not responsible for the medical bills pertaining to the reconstruction of your optical units.
Gabriel: I'd like to start our lecture with everyone introducing themselves! We'll start in the back. Tell us who you are, some of your educational history, your work history, and what brought you to Gattaca.
Josh: My name is Josh Jones. I'm in the programing department. I went to Springdale college where I studied every computer language except Fortran, which for some reason is the language I'm being forced to learn because this is an odd, odd company.
Gabriel: Thank you Josh, but we prefer the term "eccentric." Next.
James: My name is James Johnson. I went to Oklahoma University. Go Sooners! 12-0 baby!! I used to spin records at a local techno music venue, but now I'm spinning Fortran code. Fucking Fortran!!
Gabriel: Thank you James, but we prefer the term "fornicating," Next.
Jose: Soy Jose Santiago. Soy de Juanojuato, México. Estoy en el departamento de la traducción. Mi inglés no es muy bueno, pero nadie aquí parece cuidar.
Gabriel: Great! Next!
Juan: My name is Juan Guitierez. I am originally from the outskirts of Honduras. I have an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley. I came to Gattaca because I was informed that if I could not find work, I would have to go back to Mexico at the family farm where I spent most of my time picking up donkey dung. I was originally very excited to be working for an American company as a translator, but after working here, I am weighing the pros and cons of donkey dung again.
Gabriel: Welcome to our country, Juan! I'm sure that you'll find a lot of Mexican restaurants around here!
Julio: Mi nombre es Julio Martinez. Vengo de Cozumel, México. Fui al colegio en esperar de México a encontrar el trabajo en los Estados Unidos. Logré encontrarlo, aunque, si usted podría llamar esto "el trabajo."
John: My name is John James. I graduated from Texas A&M University. We're unfortunately not 12-0 this season, but we call it a "rebuilding year" to keep ourselves sane. It mostly works. Mostly...
James: Sooners rule!!!
Gabriel: I appreciate your tribute to punctuality, James. We at Gattaca Unlimited place a high premium on being on time. Next.
Jean: Mon nom est Jean DuBois. Je travaillais heureusement en france quand ma société a été achetée par vous les cochons dégoûtants et si maintenant je suis dit que je dois faire quoi que vous me dites à.
Gabriel: Hey! I bet you like good cheese, don't you Jean? All Frenchmen like good cheese!
Jean: De quel l'enfer vous parlez?
Gabriel: Great! I'll have some cheese shipped to your office. Just be sure not to eat it in the office. We at Gattaca Unlimited frown down upon doing anything in the office except working and doing nothing while looking like you're working. Next.
Simone: Mon nom est Simone DePew. Je suis venu ici pour la raison pareille que Jean a fait. C'est toujours ce chaud dans Houston?
Gabriel: Yes, this is Houston! I'm glad you're learning American geography? Do you like cheese? I'll just bet you like cheese! Next.
RAW: My name is Rayford. I have a degree from the University of Houston and work in the OCD department. I took a job here because I've clearly lost my mind.
Gabriel: Don't do drugs, Rayford. A mind is a terrible thing to waste!

9:45 AM
Gabriel: One of the many things we frown down upon around here is being shy! We want you to all be family!
Samuel: Please note that this talking policy does not apply during normal business hours or while you are on Gattaca premises except insofar as your talking is business related in intent and execution. Discussing personal matters or unnecessary phrases like "Hello" is grounds for immediate termination.
Gabriel: So is anyone here shy? Come up. Speak up now!
Samuel: Please note that speaking up in this class when asked to does qualify as business-related and is considered a business inquiry. Failure to speak up is grounds for immediate termination.
Josh: I'm shy.
Gabriel: And how you do deal with being shy, Josh?
Josh: Well, I get nervous when I'm in social circumstances, so I take valium to calm me down.
Gabriel: We at Gattaca like valium!
Samuel: Please note that whatever appreciation we have for valium, medication for mental illness is not covered by our health insurance policy and therefore like anti-depressents, you buy valium either on your own dime.
Gabriel: Well, that's mostly true. We put it in the water, too. A calm employee is a productive employee, right Samuel?
Samuel: Terms and conditions apply.

10:05 AM
Gabriel: If there's one thing we at Gattaca pride ourselves on, it's a dynamic working environment! Has anyone here ever held a boring job?
[hands go up]
Samuel: Please note that stating or implying any employment for Gattaca Unlimited, its clients, or its clients' clients is grounds for immediate termination.
[hands go down]

11:35 AM
Gabriel: We at Gattaca have been accused of being conservative employers. Take a look around you. See all the Mexicans and French people? Would a conservative employer hire Mexicans and French people? We think not.

11:45 AM
Gabriel: So that is how the policy of monitoring every step you take became a necessary goal for total assimilatio- I mean, for total productivity! Since developing these mechanisms to monitor phone usage, personnel movement, and breathing patterns, we've been able to turn around and sell these mechanisms to other entities. Business has really picked up recently. If you look behind me you will see a picture of John Ashcroft, our biggest client!

12:05 PM
Gabriel: Other companies worry about complacency in the workplace. Our philosophy here at Gattaca is that complacency is a product of happiness and longevity of employment, so we go the extra mile and take proactive steps to assure that our company will never be complacent. Some might argue that there is a problem with a multinational company that has a turnover rate below four months, but the way we see it that breeds a constant set of new employees who give us their all. Studies have shown that people work hardest in their first four months of employment, so we make sure that you never get to month five. To avoid what we call "the Happiness Trap" we also make sure you are miserable every day that you work here. Remember, Misery is the enemy of complacency!

12:15 PM
Gabriel: It's lunch time!

12:30 PM
Gabriel: John, why didn't you buy anything?
John: I'm trying to save up to buy a new car.
Gabriel: We at Gattaca Unlimited frown down upon people that don't buy food from our cafeteria. Gattaca spends $150,000 a year subsidizing this restaurant to keep you from leaving the premises and discovering that there's another world out there. The least you could do Buy In (tm) to the program, Think Outside the Box (tm), or "bun" as the case might be. Hahahahahahahahaha I KILL ME!
John: But sir, you're eating a hamburger.
Gabriel: Shut up and buy something.

1:05 PM
Gabriel: For the second half of the seminar, we're going to have guest speakers who will tell you about the company. As if he needed an introduction, it's our Associate Vice President of Software Implementation, Bill Baxter! Take the floor, Bill.
Bill: Well, they used to not require associate vice presidents to speak in front of the group, but you know those little suggestion cards you fill out? Well, unfortunately the company listens to them as closely as they do your private telephone calls and takes them just as seriously. Some idiots said that they should get a vice president up here to tell them more about the company. So here I am.
Gabriel: And we're so glad you could make it!!!!
Bill: Go to Hell, Gabe. People, I am a busy person that has better things to do than talk to a bunch of pimply-faced kids that are going to quit within four months before benefits kick in as per our business plan. I could tell you all about the scandals we've been facing in recent years and our ongoing fight with the EEOC, but that might interest you and if I am interesting they will make me come back. So let me tell you a little about myself. I was born in Sparta, South Carolina. I was seven pounds and three ounces. My mother tells me that I was a disagreeable child. This one time, when I was four...

2:25 PM
Jane: The key to working at Gattaca is to avoid the boredom trap. We purposefully overemploy so that people don't have enough to do. Now, you can either sit around and be bored, or you can find something to alleviate your boredom.
Gabriel: And does anyone have any ideas how to avoid boredom?
[hands go up]
Samuel: Please not that suggesting that finding work elsewhere would alleviate boredom is grounds for immediate termination.
[hands go down]

2:40 PM
Jane: So does anyone have any questions?
Josh: So you said you met your husband here?
Jane: Yes.
Josh: How long have you been married.
Jane: Eleven years.
Josh: How did you meet?
Jane: Here
Josh: No, I mean, how did he ask you out? When did you decide to start dating?
Jane: Why are you asking all these personal questions?
Josh: The longer you're here, the less we have to hear Gabriel talk.
Jane: Understood. We met blah blah blah....

2:55 PM
Juan: I never said that I hated donkey dung. You are taking my words out of context!
Gabriel: Juan, we don't allow you to talk on the cell phone during business hours or on the premesis.
Juan: Oh, okay, hold on. Sorry Father, I must go. Pray for me.

3:20 PM
Gabriel: We also have a residential therapist. He's great to when you feel isolated and alone. So isolated... so alone... so very... very... alone... [crawls into the fetal position and sucks his thumb in the corner].
Samuel: I'd like to take this moment to point out that Gattaca's health insurance policy does not cover mental illnesses, whether they are job-related or not. We do, however, cover physical health problems. So if you so much as cut your finger filing the endless amounts of paper work that we give you, you will be covered. If you go insane as we slowly tear away at your soul, however, you are not covered.
Gabriel: So very... very... isolated.
Samuel: It was a calculated business decision. We determined that it would be too expensive.

3:50 PM
Gabriel: I'm so happy that you're taking all these notes, Rayford!
RAW: You bet, sir!

4:10 PM
Gabriel: I'd like to go around the room and talk about what you like most about working for Gattaca. We'll start with you, Josh.
Josh: Well, it's helped me relate to my father.
Gabriel: Oh really? How is that?
Josh: Well, since I've been working here they keep me locked in a room for eight hours a day. I can't have any personal effects on my desk, can't take breaks, and can't talk to anyone else. Instead, I'm expected to program in Fortran. Fuc-
Gabriel: Josh!
Josh: Sorry... fornicating Fortran!
Gabriel: That's better. So how does this help you relate to your father?
Josh: Well my father was a POW during the Vietnam War and...
Gabriel: No need to go on. I understand.
John: We all understand...

4:50 PM
Gabriel: And the answer is... Rayford?
RAW: Sir, it's the fifteenth time you've called on me. Why do you keep asking me these questions?
Gabriel: You speak English.
RAW: Dammit!
Gabriel: The answer, Rayford?
RAW: Je vais dire quelque chose en français maintenant.
Gabriel: I didn't know you speak French...
RAW: Me neither. I mean... Me ni... can you please call on someone else now?
Gabriel: Okay, okay... Jean?
Jean: Je ne peux pas croire que je suis forcé à endurer cette folie. C'est la folie, je vous dis. Folie.
Gabriel: Yeah... okay... correct answer.

5:15 PM
Juan: It's okay, Father. I can talk now. Listen, it would do me great honor to change the waste pans at the farm. If you would have me, I shall fly down tonight!

When I heard about the X-Men movie, I wondered how they were going to handle Wolverine's hair. It's certainly distinct and not easily reproduced without looking awfully hokey. The movie did a good job with it, remaining true to the comic book version without looking goofy. Whatsisname made a good Wolverine too and carried the otherwise lackluster first film.

That kind of shaggy-meets-aerodynamic hairdoo worked for Logan. Kinda weird to see it on the Father of Texas, though, isn't it?

Speaking of Sugarmama (look a few posts down), she also takes a look at a couple of TV commercials.

If there's one thing I did an inordinate amount of time doing at the folks' house, it was watching television. So for once, I know of which she speaks.

The thing I notice most about the postal service commercials is how that song keeps getting stuck stuck stuck in my head.

Ima gonna wrap myself in paper
Ima gonna dab myself with glue
Stick some stamps on top of my head
Ima gonna mail myself to you

Ima gonna tie me up in red string
Ima gonna tie blue ribbons too
Ima gonna climb up in my mailbox
Ima gonna mail myself to you

It never stops!!!!

Argh.

My main complaint with the domino Miller Lite commercial she refers to is that its so darn long.

I do take issue with a seperate Miller Lite commercial. That one with the special effects with the flipping rotation of appearences where this guy ponders where his individuality ends because he wears a plain shirt, plain pants, has a plain haircut, and so on.

It's a neat effect, but wasted on an ad that has an odd and materialistic interpretation of individuality. Yeah, so the guy combs his hair forward and starts wearing a too-big sweater. In the words of Todd Snider, "How pensive. How totally alternative."

I only see fifteen people that look like that a day.

I also find it ironic that an ad that champions being your own man totally rips off Office Space in its conclusion.

Getting over someone is a multi-step process, except that the steps aren't clearly marked and you only start moving upward when you stop looking at them. Things with Ellie ended just over two years ago. When I said that I was over her two days after it happened, I was lying. When I got the email from her and realized that I hadn't thought of her in months, I could finally say it with some certainty.

The notion of "getting over" someone is a strange one, as Kevin alludes to in the observations of an earlier post. Is "getting over" someone no longer wanting to be with them? If so, then I wasn't lying two years ago because I was more interested in ripping her head off then I was in being romantically involved with her again. Is "getting over" someone no longer wishing them harm for the real or percieved slight? If so, then I was "over it" over a year ago. Or is it a matter of finding someone else?

Ellie's letter came as quite a shock to me. I'd given up on any sort of reconciliation. It always bothered me because the list of estranged ex-loves is a short one for me. I like to keep open communication because they help me stay connected to the past and even in some of the most worthless attempts at relationships, there are lessons to be learned and fond memories (however outnumbered they are by the bad ones). However, the last thing I wanted was to fight with Ellie over events from two years ago, so I just let it go.

I once said that closure is an inside job (I also once said it didn't exist, but we'll ignore that for the moment). To a degree that's true. If I hadn't found a sort of peace with it on my own, talking with her about it would have done nothing for me (apology or no). It was unfortunate that the peace I found in regards to Ellie was a negative one, but without it I would have been hampered months later when I first met Eel.

There were always two competing versions of what happened with Ellie. In the first one I never meant anything to her. She used me, manipulated me, and threw me out. The second interpretation paints her as someone that was confused and in a lot of pain. As long as Ellie disclaimed any wrong-doing, it was rather difficult to defent the second, more preferable, interpretation. As long as that had the be the assumption I was under, it says things about me that I would not like to be true.

Since the relationship is two years gone, how I reflect on it has been her only remaining relevency in my life. Since the logical assumption was the worst, it was something I'd have preferred not to think about. Unfortunately, that has meant avoiding reflection on a pivotal twelve month period in my life; it meant formerly favorite songs of mine that I didn't want to hear again; it meant failing to learn the lessons that might rectify the turmoil.

Every time I tried to recall what positive experiences I might have gleamed from it all, questions would pop up. I'd sort through the questions only to find more questions. My peace was less with Ellie or what happened with her and more with the ignorance of not knowing. There simply wasn't enough data.

I considered saying on multiple occasions in my posts that I "needed" to see Ellie. It may have even slipped out once. The truth is that I didn't need it. I wanted it. I wanted to be at peace not with not knowing, but with the knowledge that either I wasn't a fool for pursuing it or that I have grown beyond the fool that did foolishly pursue it. Or, if the answer was somewhere in between, I wanted to know that, too.

With the lines of communication finally open, I had that opportunity.

There were a number of questions, of course. I wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing this for the wrong reasons or more importantly doing this in some way that could put my current relationship in peril. I talked to Eel about it and she was very supportive. In perhaps a less dramatic manner than my First-Second-Third post below, I asked myself if I was doing this to hurt her and end up "on top."

Truth be told, I probably would have hurt her more by not replying at all and I recognized that. Additionally, trying to one-up her or spark her interest would have been dishonest and the point of this whole exercise was to find out the truth.

So we met at La Madaleine's and talked about a lot of things. She knew that there was some girl in Idaho that I intended to move up there to be with but assumed that I'd changed my mind, so I cleared that up. She talked a lot about her current relationship with Ed. We eventually got to talking about us, in which she mostly reiterated what she'd said in the letter. I asked some questions and she answered them. She asked me a few and I did as well.

We actually spent more time talking about ourselves individually than the collective us. She talked about how much things have changed between then and now and the lessons she's learned. It took a lot of courage to admit that she was as wrong as she was so many times. Not just about me, but about other things as well. Mostly I see in her someone that desperately wants to do right, but seems to keep losing her way and falling short.

And I could relate to every word of it. It reminded me of the great deal that she and I have in common - much of it we wish we didn't. The biggest things I saw were the reasons I fell in love with her in the first place. I could see that I wasn't desperate, on the rebound, or manipulated. I wasn't blind or stupid. I just fell in love with the wrong person at the wrong time.

So did she.

It's difficult to explain why a past relationship that was barely even that can make such a difference. In the greater scheme of things, it probably doesn't. Except that I can now look back at 2001 as something other than the Year of the Big Mistake. I forgave her almost a year ago for hurting me, but now I can finally forgive myself for having loved her.

I used to live with a guy named Hutch. Adam, Hutch, Ali, and I were suitemates at the University of Houston and, for a while, we had all the beds in one room and hung out in the other. Hutch single-handedly got me in to WWF wrestling for a time. I even participated in his N64 wrestling league for a while with a quirky cast of funny wrestlers. About when Hutch's college drive (and money) ran out, Adam and I were on the cusp of graduating, so we were all looking for a place to live.

Adam and his friend decided to room together and moved out to west Houston. Danforth and Hutch were very good friends at the time and were contemplating a similar move. Somehow, I convinced my folks to let me get an apartment and the three of us moved in to a different apartment in the same complex as Adam.

Hutch, Tigger, Mike, and Danforth liked to roleplay and since two of the four lived at our place, they frequently would roleplay late into the night. There's nothing quite like waking up to Hutch's booming voice saying
"NO WAY! You only have a dexterity of twelve! What are you THINKING?!?!"

After a little under a year of rooming together, Hutch and Danforth got into a nasty argument concerning the movie Mighty Ducks 3 and by the end of it they were no longer on speaking terms. Hutch, who was planning to move out anyway, ended up leaving Houston altogether in the dead of night. Danforth and I couldn't afford rent the 3-bedroom apartment so we ended up moving to a 2-bedroom apartment (that after four rent increases became more expensive than the 3-bedroom one we couldn't afford). Hutch ended up moving to north Texas and now lives in Austin. He was finally able to pay me back the rent he owed me and we've been on really good terms ever since. I last saw him at Ushicon and look forward to seeing him again at the next one.

As faithful readers know, I now live with Tigger, Danforth, and another guy named Jaquin. I haven't know Jaquin very long but have heard his life story about six times (it's a neat story!) and we get along pretty well. He'd an avid anime fan, computer nerd, and roleplayer so he fits in with this group considerably better than I do (I am way behind on my anime and haven't roleplayed since high school).

They haven't roleplayed yet, but they have the dining room set up expressly for that purpose. He seems to have replaced Hutch in their roundtable roleplaying game (I don't know if Jaquin entered the picture before or after Hutch left it). While playing some fighting game on the PS2 earlier, out of nowhere Jaquin yelled out "You brought out the mace?! No way! You CAN'T win with the mace!!!"

Well, maybe not out of nowhere. I figure that Tigger did indeed bring out the mace, just as someone tried something foolheartedly with a dexterity of twelve a couple years ago.

I need to thank my roommates and friends for keeping my life so interesting.

Sugarmama has a couple of posts regarding Mr. Sugarmama's propensity for keepsakes:

He hasn't thrown away a single photo of all of these women, and while his life is his and I don't own him, I just don't want to know. He seems to be a bit proud that he has dated so many women, but I'm a fan of quality over quantity. He seems to want to remember that he has the ability to take attractive women out because he is a handsome fellow himself. On the other hand, my goal for dating in the past has not been "show off my trophy companion". I have dated the gamut, from handsome to the Joe Jackson-style "Is she really going out with him" type of guy.

My policy is this: Good-looking or not, when the boyfriend's gone, the photos find their way to the garbage can. If he's still a friend of mine, I can keep the photos.

Seeing photos of Mr. S's former flings makes me ill. Fine. He dated a million women before he knew me. But why does he have to keep a reminder of all of them? Why in the hell would I want to know?

She cought some grief from commenters for everything ranging from being controlling to jealous. Her follow-up post clarified some points and let's be honest here: her reaction is natural. No one likes constant reminders that others have been where they are and that he or she might end up in the same place.

I'm always been a little opposite in this regard. I generally ask all kinds of questions about a potential mate's exes. Anna thought it was weird, Audrey was only too happy to talk about it (which foreshadowed bad things, incidentally), and Eel has told me that she'll answer any question I might ask, but since I plan on spending a lifetime with her I'm not in much of a hurry.

I'm also, like Mr. S, a packrat. I have my infamous I-Box. It's a little purple box that's been filled with pictures, letters, a newspaper clipping*, and a birthday card. It's even got pictures of my exes with their exes. I also try to save every email, chatlog, and letter I get. I ended up deleting most of Ora because it was so painful (when I deleted it, at age 17), lost much of the Anna years, but have most of the Audrey months and so far all of Eel's correspondences.

It's my history. It's what got me to where I am today. Anna never understood that and it caused problems in our relationship. Thankfully Eel understands it (and me) a lot more. It's no threat to her and she is comfortable with that. I'm very thankful for that.

I rarely actually look at my collections, but I love having them. In my history, one person has lead to another, and another, and another. If it hadn't been for Ora, I probably never would have gotten together with Anna. Without Anna, Audrey never would have happened. If things with Audrey had been different (for good or ill) it's quite possible that all the dominos that fell to make Eel and I a couple would not have fallen.

The past is what has shaped me. It's what has made me what I am. One of the reason I remain in contact with so many people from the past is that it seems I'm always learning something from them. I'm learning about who I was and what happened to make me who I am.

For me, this is all very easy to understand. I can imagine it being somewhat disconcerting to a partner, though. It's understandable to try to measure yourself up against someone's past. Truthfully, it's often a sign of trouble when someone holds on too dearly to their past. Like I mentioned above, it's a problem that Audrey had, in a completely opposite way, a problem that I had.

It can be difficult to balance looking back with an interest to remember and learn and looking back for a different reason. For Audrey, it was wanting to re-live the past. For myself, it was an effort to escape it by any and all means. I became so insistent on never repeating my mistakes that I found creative and innovative new mistakes to make. There comes a time to let go of the past.

One of the reasons that I'm looking forward to Idaho is that I will be doing just that. I will be starting a new life with the mistakes of Houston being left in Houston.

But I think I'm going to hold on to the I-Box.

* - Alas, the newspaper clipping is gone. I'll explain it later.

Kevin has been covering the whole UH bowl flap better than I have, but I'll comment on it soon enough. In the meantime:



Aloha Coogs!

So far I'm really liking the house. I wasn't sure how well I'd get along with everyone living here (except Danforth, whom I've roomed with for approaching three years) but it's been a dream.

The heating here isn't good, but other than feeling well under the weather yesterday I've gotten by.

But the best part was a couple nights ago. When I got home from work, Tigger offered me some of his pizza. I was talking to Jaquin later on in the evening asking whose cokes I'd been mooching off in the fridge.

"They're ours," he replied. "All of ours."

I don't know what my living arrangements are going to be in Idaho. I'm not moving in with Eel so it's up in the air. It might be a basement apartment like she has or, to save money, I've considered seeing if I could hook up with some university students.

Roommates are a funny thing with me. I'm generally a loner who spends most of my time in my room. I don't look to roommates for a social circle and in the three years Danforth and I lived together, it was rare that we actually did all that much. Danforth is the perfect roommate for me in the sense that he's similar. We'd spend late nights talking (too late some nights), but our doors were always closed because of the high premium we give privacy.

On the other hand, we generally shared food to the extent that we could. There wasn't clearly marked "mine" and "his." That's the great part about roommates when everything is working the way I'd like it to. I like sharing my stuff. If I buy a case of coke and half of it is drank by my roommate or his friends, then I feel all the better that others are enjoying my stuff. JD ruined one of my anime tapes via repeated watching, but I'm glad it went to a good cause.

I plan to contribute to the coke fund next time I go shopping. It's just nice to know that no one is keeping score.

Gas money: $2.05
Two bowls of pasta salad: $9.98+tax
Two Drinks: $3.48+tax
Getting back eleven months of my life: Priceless.

I wrote the letter last night, she called today, we saw each other this evening.

I'd like to thank those of you who took the time to comment below. Even (especially) those of you that were against it. Details to come tomorrow, but I believe she and I both got what we wanted from the evening.

Good news: The hourly process that used to take half an hour now only takes ten minutes or so.

Bad news: Now I've got twenty more minutes an hour to sit there and look busy.

In one of my more exciting moments on the job, I watched something called the SIN table acculmulate records. Never has the unloading of 50,000 sins been so boring.

I finally answered the phone. Naturally I gave them the wrong name. Sigh.

Why in the world would a company have reclining chairs if slouching is the epitome of unprofessionalism? If we're not supposed to lay back, how bout giving us a chair we can lean against?

There are those Motivator posters everywhere. If I had an ounce of courrage, when I leave, I'd replace them with the Demotivator posters.

The Pavlov Response: The Program at Gattaca has a Submit key, which sends whatever it is that you've typed. Except that it's not the enter key. It was the F12 key yesterday, but now it's the backspace key. So instead of correcting my mistake when I hit Backspace, I send whatever flawed item I wanted to correct. Now, when I make a mistake typing on my computer at home, I freak out every time I hit the Backspace key.

Tomorrow I am going to the Indoctrination Seminar New Employee Orientation. I got an email informing me of this from my boss. It was titled NEO. My boss's new name is Mr. Smith.

Other classes they offer include: Building Self-Esteem, Positive Thinking, Taking Criticism Effectively, Positive Thinking, Positive Thinking When Taking A Lot of Criticism While Salvaging Your Self-Esteem. Okay, I confess that I made the last couple up.

The table has suddenly gotten more crowded. My newly departed self has taken the third seat of the table, and I relegated to the fourth. Myself at ages 16, 20, 24, and now. The me's I've been and the me I am now. They didn't have to ask what was going on. They knew.

Second: You're looking at doing what, now?
Me: I'm thinking of seeing Ellie again.
Third: Seeing whom?
Me: Ellie.
Second: Elciem. Not Ellie, Elciem.
Me: Whatever.
Third: Not whatever. You haven't called her Ellie since things ended. That alone makes me worry.
Me: Why?
Second: Quite obviously because Ellie denotes affection. Third is worried that you might feel affectionate towards her.
Third: Basically.
Me: Fine. I'm thinking of seeing Elciem again.
Second: Why?
Me: She emailed me out of the blue. She finally apologized for everything she needed to. She wants to make amends.
First: She will never make amends.
Third: Agreed.
Second: She can't. What's done is done. There's no undoing it and since you don't seek romance with her you have nothing to get from her.
Me: Except that I do.
Third: Revenge?
Me: I'd be lying if the thought didn't cross my mind...
Third: Now we're talking...
Second: Indeed. You demonstrate to her how happy you are now without her in your life and you will end up on top.
First: On top of what?
Third: We'd end up even more on top if we could muster up the feelings she had and we left her cold.
First: On top of what?
Second: That strikes me as a dangerous proposition, Third. It would require opening up to a degree. It's fairly obvious that she wouldn't garner any feelings for us as long as we're cold and distant.
First: Nor should she. What would be the point of getting to know her again if we were going to end up just keeping her locked out?
Second: Revenge.
Third: I'm not convinced that we can't end up on top by acting aloof.
First: On top of what?
Second: It's not worked so far, Third. We've tried that angle and it doesn't work. She assumes that we're still mad at her and as long as she senses that hostility she wouldn't open up to begin with.
Third: But now we have a trump card: Eel...
Me: Excuse me! Eel isn't a trump card...
Second: I know, I know, you love her but she can be useful.
First: I'm with Fourth. We don't need to play one against the other... especially when there's no competition here. Fourth loves Eel, Fourth doesn't love Ellie.
Third: Elciem!
Second: Granted. So we shouldn't try to engage Elciem's emotions. We really shouldn't try to engage her at all. I say we just thank her for the kind words, tell her how wonderfully things are going with Eel, and then, with infuriating condescension, wish her such happiness some day.
Third: But we're so close!
First: Close to what?
Third: Ending up on top!
First: On top of what?!
Second: Just... on top. We will have won. We're happy, she's not. We're complete, she's woefully incomplete. We're in first place, she's in last.
Me: You guys are missing the point.
First: I'd say. We can win by simply not talking to her again. Ever. If we do that, she will know that she's unforgiven...
Me: But she is forgiven.
Third: Oh, you stay out of this.
Me: I forgave her last year. I'm not mad anymore. I don't want to "get even." No one is on top because no one is keeping score.
Third: Do you honestly believe that she has no angle in this? After two years of nothing, she just apologized because it was the right thing to do?
Me: I'd like to think so...
Third: But do you believe it?
Me: I don't know.
Second: If you don't know, why risk it?
Me: Because I'm not risking anything. I have nothing to lose here.
First: Eel, contentment, Eel, happiness
Second: Emotional solitude, independence, Eel...
Third: Progress, employment, Eel, money, time, energy...
Me: Eel is supportive of whatever decision I make. As for the rest... I don't have any emotional investment in Ellie.
Third: Elciem.
Me: That's why I have nothing to lose. There's nothing she can tell me that could bring me down.
Second: Then why do it?
Me: Closure, I guess.
Second: Closure is a myth.
Me: I agree, but I disagree. The point is there is a lot about eleven months in my life that I do not know. My life was revolving around a person that I didn't know as well as I thought I knew...
Third: I did know her. I knew her better than she knew herself. Surely you remember that.
Me: I do. But there is a lot I didn't know about how she felt.
Second: She felt however it was it was convenient to feel. It's that simple. Look at her behavior and tell me where that hypothesis is wrong.
First: It doesn't matter how she felt, it matters how you felt and you felt miserable. Why would you want to return to the misery the Ellie years have come to represent.
Third: Elciem! And it wasn't that miserable. It was confused.
Me: He's right, it was confusion. I don't want to return to the confusion, I want to solve the riddle...
Third: Two years too late!
Second: It's not a riddle to be solved. However she felt never really mattered because if she loved you, she scarcely demonstrated it. It's actions that matter.
Me: While I agree with you to an extent, I think there's a degree to which I told that to myself because I was afraid of confronting the cognitive dissonance between her words and her actions. It was easy to just believe the latter. It meant that I could be as mad at her as I wanted.
First: As mad as you needed to me.
Third: And yet still not mad enough.
Me: I don't want to be angry! That's why I stopped talking to her over the past couple of years. I was afraid it would bring back that anger. But I've been beating around that bush for too long now. I'm not hurt anymore and I'm not I'm not afraid of my anger. I know that I'm not going to get any hard-and-fast answers out of this, but I can at least learn more and perhaps my thoughts can become more accurate.
Third: But if you're not mad anymore or hurt, then why does it matter so much to you?
Me: Because it's eleven months of my life I'm never going to get back. I might as well remove the dark cloud and see what exactly it was.
Third: And wasn't!
Me: And wasn't.
First: I'm still against. The only power you have with Ellie is to walk away.
Third: Elciem.
Second: I'm against, too. You seem to want something from this... and wanting something from Elciem is undesirable no matter how much you rationalize it.
Third: Elcie- oh, that's what you said. I'm against it, of course. You've just now got your life on track. Every time you've let her back in before, it's bitten you in the ass. She's the same sad person now that she was then. No matter how good intentions, just look back at the debris that has been left in her wake.
Second: So it's three-to-one.
Me: Yeah, but mine is the only vote that counts.

And they left me at the table. Just me, a computer, and an email connection.

You are Gambit!

You are a fierce fighter and a good friend to have.
Your preference for solitude and your
attractiveness make you very intriguing to
those you meet. Unfortunately, close
relationships are few and far between for you
because you often have trouble opening up to
others.


Which X-Men character are you most like?
brought to you by Quizilla

The Curious Sofa - You are quite sensual and love a
good romp in every sense of the word! People
are drawn to you and always want you to sit in
their laps!


Which Edward Gorey Book Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

I pity the person whose lap I sit on.

via Owen

I just read something interesting on the Cougfans site. Apparently, one of Reba's kids in the TV show Reba goes to UH and her son-in-law even played for the Cougars once.

One thing that I think most people missed about the movie Any Given Sunday is that the star quarterback went to the University of Houston briefly. It was mentioned in passing with about five other colleges.

Hmmm, I also recall Foxx's character saying that UH's coach was a redneck.

Oh well, any publicity is good publicity!

One of my areas of interest in recent months has been the naming of universities. It's an odd interest, but I find such things fascinating as universities evolve. I've learned quite a bit. Most universities have gone through a similar set of names:

John Smith Teachers School (most universities started out as teachers' college).
John Smith Normal College (The words "Normal College" were about as prevalent as "State University" is today)
John Smith State University
University of State at Smithville

Others have had different paths, but with rare exception (UT changed once, adding the "at Austin" and TAMU was once A&M College of Texas). Some of the name changes have been for the better (I don't think any university misses being referred to as a Normal School or Normal College), and many have been for the worse, in my view. Regardless, I find the subject itself fascinating - particularly the politics involve.

I was in Lafayette recently meeting Eel's family and got into a conversation with her father, a University of Louisiana at Lafayette professor. ULL (or ULaLa as it is sometimes glibly referred to as) was known as Southwestern Louisiana not long ago and I got some insight into much of the politics involved in university naming in Louisiana as well as in Texas. It's apparently serious business and very political.

ULL desperately wants to be the University of Louisiana. They've got the Louisiana.edu domain and, in fact, it was the University of Louisiana for about four days until LSU stepped in. Louisiana State University, the state's only top-tier institution, was apparently worried that people might get confused if there were both a Louisiana and an LSU.

Somehow Michigan and MSU, Oklahoma and OSU, Florida and FSU, and a dozen or two other states have managed to avoid this fate, but LSU is so confused as to Louisiana's intelligence that they worry. Or something. In any case, they got there way and ULL is hog-tied with the extra L.

Not that ULL has ceased its quest. A trip to Lafayette or the campus itself will demonstrate quite clearly how unwelcome the "Lafayette" is. They're actually quite clever about it with big giant UL's and a tiny, tiny "Lafayette" underneath. Even the green freeway signs, not generally known for creative layouts, have the "Lafayette" in small lettering. The professors have also apparently been instructed to refer to it a certain way to keep it from sounding like a junior university.

Texas's own southwestern designated university has also undergone a name change for similar reasons. Southwest Texas State is now Texas State University at San Marcos. They were gambling, in a way, that the "at San Marcos" would be dropped when people refer to it and, unlike ULL, they've largely succeeded.

Now that Southwest Texas State has dropped its regional designation, there aren't anymore Regional Texas State Universities. East Texas State is now Texas A&M at Commerce, West Texas State is now West Texas A&M, and North Texas State is now the University of North Texas. The Junior A&Ms and University of Louisiana ats bring to light the other trend in university names: University franchises.

Texas A&I is now Texas A&M-Kingsville, the University of Corpus Christi became Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, Texas Western is the University of Texas at El Paso, and Northeastern Louisiana is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe (Southeastern Louisiana wanted to change its name, but LSU objected again on their exceptionally low opinion of their state's population).

In many ways, these name changes make a lot of sense. According to Professor Lafayette, a regional designation makes it harder to a university to be taken seriously by perspective students and grant issuers, among others. Being a latch-on to a bigger university also grants instant brand recognition. Whether it's College Station or Commerce, the degree says Texas A&M across the top either way.

But I wonder, to a degree, what's being sacrificed and what's really being gained. In the case of Southwest Texas State, maybe it made more sense because it's not actually in southwest Texas. They also got the coveted Texas State moniker once sought by Texas Tech and Texas Southern... for now. There's really not a whole lot to stop Tarleton State and Angelo State from doing the same thing if they get big enough. Texas State could become the same franchise name that Cal State presently is.

There are enough University of Texas ats and Texas A&M ats that the fact that the "at Kingsville" is not likely to be overlooked. If I was born and raised in East Texas, a name like East Texas State would represent me more than a state university name hundreds of miles away with a city itself fifty miles away tacked on to it. I would much rather go to Texas Western University than University of Texas at El Paso. I'd rather go to a school with a distinct identity (Texas A&I) than one whose claim to fame is by connection to some other university in some other place (Texas A&M at Kingsville).

I wish the University of Louisiana at Lafayette the best of luck, but even if they got the University of Louisiana moniker, it wouldn't make them any close in stature to Louisiana State any more than Ohio University is to Ohio State. I visited ULL while I was there and really liked the campus (especially the swamp!), but LSU it ain't.

I wish that more universities in Texas, Louisiana, and across the country would spend more time focusing on what they are (regional university, urban university, technical school, etc.) instead of what they are not.

Since I recieved the letter about two weeks ago, I've thought about it quite a bit. It meant a lot to me, as I've mentioned before, because it contained the apology that I'd been waiting two years for. With that, I could have finally been contented never to talk to her again, not out of embitterment but out of equilibrium.

But that was only part of her letter. The other part of the letter was asking if I would be interested in seeing her again. Not romantically but as a friend. Since before romance caught our minds, the prospects for friendship were truly great. Once we crossed that line, however, it was impossible to just step right back to where we were.

Except, of course, that I'm leaving Texas in three months and any friendship we were to build up would necessarily be temporary. On top of that, the kind of friend that she would be (someone to talk to but not someone to hang out with a whole lot) is not a position that I have open at the moment and certainly won't once I move away.

But then there's this thing. The thing that has gnawed on each of us respectively since the collapse. It was a horrid, horrid collapse. I don't think that it could have ended any other way, but it is nonetheless a sour point in both of our lives. So what's the thing? Closure.

It's ironic because a year ago my mantra was that closure was nothing but a myth. It was a rationalization for agrieved parties to further torment themselves by stalking their exes. The results are almost uniformly bad and it tends to make a difficult situation much worse. I've come around on my view a little bit. I believe in it, but I believe that closure comes from within. All those questions you want to ask? You don't want to ask because you don't want to know the answers.

Ironically, when you need closure the most is when you're the least likely to get it. Right after the collapse you're too impassioned to truly talk to the other person (though you doubt this, it remains true). You're mind is too hurt and too angry to deal with in internally. So if you're not careful, you end up like Lisa, oscillating between telling your ex that he meant nothing to you one moment and the next accusing them of ruining your life.

Which brings me back to Elciem. If there ever was a time for closure, this is it. I'm in a happy relationship and her hurt doesn't hurt me anymore. I am no longer afraid of even the most harsh answers. I'm not afraid to hear that she never loved me or that she thought I was obsessive. I don't expect to hear these things, but I think I feared them before. It's why in the various times we've met since the collapse, we've talked about a lot of things, but never about us. There was always the cloud hanging over us that made the friendship she sought impossible.

Furthermore, I'd like closure. Not in its typical sense, but rather to get some sort of equilibrium over what all happened between us. I'm not angry anymore, but it's almost like a borderline headache. I fear that if I jolt too much, the headache will come on. My head doesn't hurt, but my fear that it will impedes my movement. This is my chance to look back at my time with Elciem as being a stupid, wrong-headed mistake, but as a stupid, wrong-headed mistake that was what it was. No more spinning to find the best parts of it (or the worst parts of it); no more trying to analyze it. Just to be able to look back at it, to consider it equally with all of my other experiences (wrongheaded or otherwise), without fear of a migraine.

At the same time, there's something in her letter that does put me on edge. It's something in the tone and the timing. I can't get into specifics on it, but her protestations of not looking for a relationship are uncertain. I'm not looking for a relationship (obviously), but I can't say for certain that she isn't, and that could be disaster. There are a hundred cynical interpretations for the letter and they're all very convenient for her. I can get her out of an unhappy relationship (the same circumstance we were in when we met, incidentally) or I can provide some of the emotion that she's missing from the relationship that she's in.

Perhaps it's the last remaining sour grapes, but I fear that she wants something - and that it's something that I would not provide to her (Eel or no Eel). It's impossible to say where she's coming from and I could see very easily why taking everything at face value could give me the equilibrium that I desire, but a part of me can't escape the feeling that by inviting her back into my life at this time of it, like at every previous time where I did, that I'm walking straight in to a trap.

Update: Just a point of clarification. The notion that it was "wrong-headed" or that she never cared for me are the worst-case possibilities that I have either been afraid to consider (at times) or have considered the gosh-darn truth in order to help me get over it (at other times). The truth is more complicated and that is what it would be nice to look at objectively.