LJ, I will miss thee. Sorta. Maybe for a few months. It's a fresh year, with a fresh job, and a soon to be fresh apartment. So it's time for a fresh blogging start.

http://tinyincrements.wordpress.com/

I woke up feeling like shit on Friday, so I made a quick stop to CVS to load up on supplies before work. I ended up with zinc losenges, Nyquil, Dayquil, and some throat/mouth wash shit that really is as horrible as it sounds. It is here that yet another divide between my Plano friends and Lawrence friends has become evident. I swear some of these people are afraid of self medicating. In Lawrence, nobody would really think twice if I sat around drinking Nyquil and DayQuil straight out of the bottle (in appropriate quantities) or mixing in some homeopathic tea with my other meds (hey, Eastern medicine works). Hell, I could be ripping off a bong and then down a whole bottle of Nyquil and people would just laugh and watch what happened. I had at least a half dozen coworkers and friends comment on whether I was overduing it with the meds. Wusses.

All in all, I think I'm beating this cold. The combination of drugs and herbal rememdies seems to be keeping it at a low level, and I actually felt good enough to go to softball practice today. Oh yeah, I play softball now. My company team rules. Actually, we suck. Apparently the last company team only won one game, and it was by forfeit. If they actually finish a game without losing by the slaughter rule, they consider it a job well done. So needless to say, I enjoy it quite a bit. First of all, I'm one of the few people to actually ever play team sports, so my knowledge of baseball and how to cover different infield positions puts me near the top of the team. The fact that I don't throw like a girl/software programmer also scores me points. So after spending most of my little league days in left field, I might actually get to play in the infield. Hooray for lowered expecations! The only downside is that my knee, which had been feeling fine since my ligament shredding snowboarding incident, apaprently doesn't like the strain of softball. So I spent most of my day hobbling around because of a bum knee instead of a cold. But hey, I had some anti-inflamatories left from the snowboarding accident, so I threw a few of those into my drug coctail for the day. At this point, I might as well.

Waking up to John Waters' on NPR sharing anti-Valentine's Day songs: Priceless

http://dallas.citysearch.com/profile/9568628/mesquite_tx/bong_s_cleaning_tailors.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070205/ap_on_fe_st/rubber_sidewalks

Recycled tires turned into sidewalks, it would be neat to see a small test case like Lawrence or KU do that.

Best. Fucking. Quote. Ever.

"Critics are concerned that the restaurants' (Hooters') scantily clad servers don't fit the image the city seeks to project in its Big Beaver commercial district."

Because anybody who puts Hooters and big beavers together in a sentence and slips into an AP Wire story is my fucking hero.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070201/ap_on_re_us/another_hooters

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/30/washington/30rules.html?hp&ex=1170219600&en=9f1468dd91984d81&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Serious, George Bush scares me sometimes. It's not that I think he's evil or something, but that he's just insipidly dumb and doesn't understand the problems with the Executive Branch controlling the other branches of government. He honestly believes the Executive to be the most powerful branch in government. I'm not so sure he could answer simple questions about the notion of seperation of powers if you asked him right now. Actually, I'd like to see that. I just need one White House press reporter to ask him point blank to explain the concept during a press conference. A hundred bucks says he'd stammer through it and get it mostly wrong. It would be one YouTube in less than 5 minutes.

I really hope Ted Kennedy has some Scotch tomorrow and gets up and nails Bush to the cross for this shit. If you haven't seen his speech during the minimum wage debate, you're missing some good Kennedy action: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/01/26/ted-kennedy-lashes-out-against-the-gops-opposition-to-increasing-the-minimum-wage/

So as part of my nebulous New Year's Resolution to stop being so lazy, I decided to revive a tradition of the rich white patriarchy: Sunday reading! I did this because 1) I normally sit around on Sundays and 2) My pile of un-read books is very large. I was planning on finishing Cross-X today, but isntead, I got detoured by reading an article by the KC Star's sports columnist Jason Whitlock. He essentially blasted modern black culture (Jason's black, fyi) for failing to push forward on civil rights issues. He went on a tangent about W.E.B. DuBois's notion that the most educated top 10% of Black America shall be the leaders to push forward into the future, complaining that modern Black culutre allows the most ignorant 5% to be the standard bearers, telling kids its cool to go to prison and drop out of school. He then goes on to blast Flava Flav for going from fighting the power to playing a minstrel on VH1. Iteresting read here: http://thebiglead.com/?p=1038

Back on track, I decided to rummage through my KU book collection and dug out my copy of The Souls of Black Folk. Since it's only about 150 pages, I sat down and read it from cover to cover over a few hours (much like I did the night before the midterm). I recall now, that Western Civ was actually a turning point in my academic career. At that time, I had dropped out of the Engineering Department and didn't have a major. That was the semester I knocked out a lock of GenEd requirements, including Western Civ. It was probably one of my best semesters in college. My Philosophy class tied into Wester Civ. My English class about stage plays tied into my film class. The notion of a liberal arts education forming a well rounded basis for thought really clicked for me. It's also when I joined DF and eventually switched to Poli Sci, so it was a pretty good semester all around. I also distinctly remember that reading some of the material for my Western Civ class made me feel "college smart" for the first time. I remember going to Java Break with a couple people from my discussion group and talking through the ideas in the book before the test so that we could not just recite the words of the author, but rather explain the ideas. I remember feeling smart back then, especially when the friend of a friend who worked the night shift there would come by and chip in (good ole' grad students). Reading DuBois today really brought back some of those memories. I found a few passages that I had highlighted back then, which was odd sicne I was not a fan of the highlighter. Who knows, maybe it was the person before me who resold the book. This one stuck out, so I feel like posting it:

"The function of the university is not simply to teach bread-winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization."

I'm quite happy with my Sunday reading. I hereby resolve to try to keep doing it. Once I'm done with Cross-X, I think I'll dig in to 1776 or Guns, Germs, and Steel. Now I just need a dive coffee shop.

Did you ever have one of those situations occur where you say something and everybody around you just assumes you're being sarcastic, but you're really not? That was the end of my evening. My friend had a birthday party, which I was looking forward to because it meant seeing a group of people I don't often get to see and possibly meeting some new people, which I get precious little of right now. I enjoyed the party, even if it just reinforced my bitterness about everybody around me being in a serious relationship, engaged, or married. So once the party started to peeter out and I was out of beer, I did my handshakes and hugs and left. When I said goodbye the to birthday girl, she asked me why I was leaving. The first though to make it to my lips was "You're out of single women." Everybody got a good chuckle, but it wasn't me trying to be smarmy. That was my real logical reason. While I still enjoyed everybody's company, I now officially the odd man out of the numerous couplings, so I decided it was time to go. This only helped to reinforce a conversation earlier in the night when my love life came up and I had to admit that I don't even have so much as a crush right now. The well is that freaking dry. 95% of the women I know are in relationships, and the other 5% are off limits for one reason or another. I'm almost considering going back to school in the fall for the express purpose of meeting women. Then I remember the associated cost and kibosh that idea.

Dorky: Tivoing the State of the Union so you can come home from work, put your bike on your indoor trainer, and pedal along with the State of the Union

It's no drinking game, but I had fun. Also...



Bad angel... good angel... damnit, stop leaning to the right.