3/23/2008

The end?

I'm thinking of shutting down the blog. As I'm sure the one or two people who actually read it are aware, it's not like I write very much these days. I've been feeling rather unfocused lately, and I don't think I have anything to write about. (Not that that stopped me before - cue rimshot.)

I've been focusing on school and only school since I came back to Omaha and that's a pretty boring topic, believe me. I haven't seen any new movies for a while. I've been reading, I suppose, but I've never really written much about the books I read. What there is to say about our Fuck-Up-in-Chief and his miserable quagmire in Iraq is being said more often and more eloquently on other blogs. Same goes for the inane, endless election season.

(Quick aside. Hillary needs to realize she's done. People need to tell her. The media need to tell her. There is absolutely no way she can overtake Obama in either the popular vote or the pledged delegates. It's mathematically impossible. So she needs to pack it in. And the media really need to stop focusing on Obama's pastor and find something, you know, important to discuss, like John McCain's apparent senility, not to mention his willingness to allow hundreds, maybe thousands, more American soldiers to die in the wasteland we created in the Middle East. John McCain is not some great, mythic war hero. His entire campaign is based on the fact that he didn't die in a North Vietnamese POW camp. John McCain is a sad old man who is completely out of touch with the reality of modern warfare, to say nothing of his utter disregard for who is actually fighting whom, and why, in the Middle East. He is a sham. He is a befuddled, war-mongering fool who doesn't understand war. He doesn't understand economics. He doesn't know the difference between a Sunni and a Shi'ite, for crying out loud. He wouldn't vote against water boarding, which is, hello, torture! He is a wrinkled, geriatric Muppet for the Right-wing fear-mongering NeoCons, nothing more, and it's time the media realized it.)

Huh ... maybe I do have something to write about, after all. Ah, but it'll get old after a while. The truth is, when it comes to politics, religion, race, you're either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall. There's no changing people's minds, especially not in today's environment. People seek out opinions that are similar to their own and ignore and denigrate anyone who disagrees with them. That's the landscape the Right-wing talking heads have sown. And until we all start thinking for ourselves and talking to one another as adults (see "The Speech"), that's the way it's going to remain.

I'm gonna sign off now, before I start railing against the absurdity of religion. Today is Easter, after all. Enjoy your faerie tales, folks. Some of us live in the really real world.

3/19/2008

Five Years Later



Thanks a lot, you douchebag.

3/17/2008

Luck o' the Irish

Hope everyone has a fun (and safe) day while pretending to be Irish. I tell ya, we don't have enough holidays for which the main purpose is to get plastered. As my literary journalism instructor (name o' "Reilly," so he knows what he's talkin' about) said last week, "Real Irish take St. Patrick's Day off. This day is for amateurs."

Last night was the fantasy baseball draft for the league I'm helping my brother-in-law with. It was a decent draft, I think. We did well with what was available on the board. The major enjoyment that came from the draft, however, was the knowledge that the baseball season is a mere two weeks ago. Less than two weeks, if you could the series between the Red Sox and A's in Japan starting on the 25th.

March Madness is beginning, too. Every year for the past however many years (at least 10), I've put together a bracket and guessed my way through the rounds. Some years I did all right, like the year I had more than half the teams in the quarterfinals before ending up with three of the four Final Four teams. Other years have been not quite as kind. Regardless, I don't think I'll be putting together a bracket this year. I don't think I care enough. It's college basketball, something I pay very little attention to until this time of year, the conference championships and Selection Sunday. So, yeah, meh.

HBO aired the first two episodes of its John Adams mini-series, but I was at the draft. I'm sure they'll be reaired throughout the week. I hope it was good, given the talent involved and the amount of money surely spent. I've already read one blog post from a guy who said he's not going to watch the rest of the episodes because he just couldn't buy Paul Giamatti as Adams, that Giamatti didn't bring the right persona to the character, the right amount of gravitas. I hope he's wrong, but we shall see.

Nothing else going on here. I finished watching Babylon 5, finished reading The Long Goodbye and started The Golden Compass. (I still want to know why the American publisher insisted on changing the title of the book, given that the object in questions isn't even a compass. Same reason they changed the title of the first Harry Potter book from Philosopher's Stone to Sorcerer's Stone, I imagine: because they think Americans aren't all that bright ... Sadly, they're probably right.)

3/15/2008

Beware the Ides, whatever that means

Spring break is next week. It should serve as a nice, quiet respite before the last month and a half of classes kicks in. Like I said before, I think I'm doing fairly well in all my classes thus far. And after this semester, I'll just have two summer classes to go and I'll be all done. Of course, I won't believe it 'til I see it. I've learned over the years not to count my chickens before they've hatched.

I had been planning on going to Chicago over break, to visit some friends, but that kind of fell through. I'm slightly broke and with gas prices where they are, it's really tough to justify the drive right now. I just had some work done on the car this week, too, which further depleted my already meager funds, so, yeah, I'll just have to try to make it out there later in the year. Between semesters, maybe.

As it stands, since I'm going to be around the house during break, I'll probably just get a little work done for classes, in between finishing up watching Babylon 5, and various other TV shows and movies. I've got a lot of reading I want to get done, so I should probably get started. My "to read" pile keeps growing and growing. I've got to finish Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and then I'm going to start Philip Pullman's Golden Compass, the first in the His Dark Materials trilogy. Never saw the movie. Don't wanna see the movie. Not until I've read the book, at least. So, yeah, I think I'll get to work on all that.

Today is the birthday of someone who used to be a really good friend, someone I haven't spoken with in a few years, not since I fled CA and came back to Omaha. I acted pretty badly toward her before I left. I feel like I used her, and I know I did. Use her, that is. I think I knew it at the time, too, but I couldn't stop myself. I wasn't in the best place, mentally and emotionally, back then, and for a short while after I came home, which is no excuse and I don't offer it up as one. A reason, maybe, but not an excuse. It's something that's been grating on me ever since I started putting myself back together, as well it should have. For a while, anyway. I thought about trying to get in touch with her when I went back to San Francisco a couple weeks ago, but that's all I did, think about it. I don't know if she still has the same phone number or email address, and I'm not sure what I'd have said anyway. "I'm sorry," I guess. I'm not sure what else there would have been to say. Except today, when I'd say, "Happy Birthday."

3/11/2008

Konichiwa

It's been kinda busy here since I got home from San Francisco, so my apologies for the lack of posts. I was sick for the week after I got home and I lost a couple days of classes and schoolwork. Been trying to play catch up in the last couple weeks leading up to next week's spring break. My midterms were yesterday and today. I think I did all right. Maybe not wonderful, but I'm sure I got solid B's on both exams and I can live with that.

A couple weeks ago, one of my professors asked me if I'd care to participate in a luncheon for visiting Japanese journalists. The journalists have been traveling across the country as part of this East-West exchange program, stopping in Washington and New York before making their way here, and then they're on to Phoenix tomorrow before heading back to Japan. Anyway, the lunch was this afternoon, and it was fun and interesting, though the journalists were a bit pressed for time, having other places to be right after lunch. There were more journalists than I was expecting, too. I had been hoping for more one-on-one discussions, but it was this big group of maybe fifteen journalists. In addition to myself, there was another journalism major in attendence, as well as a couple members of the UNO Democrats.

The main reason the journalists are visiting America is to learn about our electoral system and to report on the current election. As I said to Kota, the journalist I was sitting next to, our election system is pretty awful and badly in need of repair. I mean, how do you explain the concept of "superdelegates" to someone without sounding like an insane person? "Well, after the citizens cast their votes, there's this relatively small group of elected officials who can decide to ignore their constituents and just nominate whomever they wish." I mean, it's asinine when you really think about it.

Anyway, I got a couple cards and email addresses from some of the journalists. A couple spoke English pretty well, most spoke it at least a little, and we had time for a little conversation after the lunch, while everyone was packing up their gear to head off to wherever they were going next; a farm in Gretna, I think. Lucky them.

Not much else has been going on here. Just school. I'm looking forward to next week. I have a lot of reading I want to catch up on before heading into the home stretch of the semester.

3/05/2008

Because I'm that bored

My authentic japanese name is 緑川 Midorikawa (green river) 一真 Kazuma (one reality).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.