Ten points.

Ten points to anyone who knows the answer.

The catch is, you don't get to know the question.

I can only name one person who ever had any faith in me.

I just thought I'd throw this out there.

There's only been one person that ever had any faith in me.

He passed away a little over three years ago.


I used to carry his handkercheif in my wallet; but then when I got to college, I resigned to keeping it in my drawer, 'cause I didn't want anything to happen to it.

That ended up being a good idea, since I had my wallet stolen two semesters ago.


I find it interesting that tonight, when I stumbled on his handkercheif again, is the night ResLife is trying to kick me out because, "oh, I'm sorry, didn't anyone tell you? You're on the academic suspension list."

I like how that goes. Really.

Forgive me, internet, for I have blogged all over you.

H. L. Mencken once said something both witty and prophetic, if perhaps a little sardonic. He insisted that "As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

Yeah -- you can see where I'm going with this one.

The State of the Union was tonight. Now, I'll admit, I walked into it a few minutes late. That's what I get for taking a late-night class.

Nonetheless, I watched the livefeed on whitehouse.gov.

Am I the only one that sat in front of my computer flailing my hands and forearms and pounding my fists on the desk in complete frustration?


Did the bit about Americans being able to afford Health Insurance sound at all familiar to anyone else? 'Cause, I mean, we have some problems with Medicare and Medicaid, most of which involve a complete inability to fund them properly, so... why not just hand out tax cuts so people can afford private insurance!

Isn't this essentially how he proposed the government "fix" Social Security? Except, instead of life savings for retirement, it's now money for health care. It's the exact same thing.

Please tell me you see it too. Please.


And what's this crap about the No Child Left Behind Act not being a dismal failure? Most schools throughout the country classify as "failing". And that acheivement gap the president insists is closing? It really isn't. Most research says it's actually widening.

But wait! It gets better.

He goes on to list the core principles of No Child Left Behind, and, uh, this was one of them, incidentally:

We must provide timely information and real options – including intensive tutoring and choice for children in consistently underperforming schools – for all parents with children in failing schools so they can make the best decisions for their children.

Does anyone else see the reference to school vouchers? I mean, I dunno, maybe I've just heard the 'He wants to shut down the public school system' line one too many times, but nonetheless.


And could someone please explain this Ethanol thing to me? I mean, okay, yes, I understand that we shouldn't be dependent on the Middle East for oil -- if for no other reason than the fact that it looks bad when we fail at telling them what to do.

The point is, though, from an environmental standpoint anyway, if you have to burn something, you should burn the oil. Ethanol burns hotter and gives off more gases. We'll fuck up the atmosphere a lot faster with ethanol than we ever did with fossil fuels.


And I like the fact that Congress seemed to be seated along party lines, and you could tell. The right side of the room -- or, well, the side of the room on the right side of the screen -- was a lot quicker to give the President a standing ovation.

And then, when the President was shaking hands with the Vice President and the Speaker of the House? Did anyone else notice how he went to put his hand on the Speaker's arm, and she kinda snubbed him, and pulled away?

Now I'm curious as to what what said between them. I mean, that conversation was probably a lot more entertaining than the speech.

It's like jello, but with meat in it. Y'know, like meat-jello.

So, I had another weird dream last night.

This shouldn't surprise anyone.

Anyways, I, for whatever reason, had decided that I was going to make head cheese. I don't know why; I've never actually had head cheese, and the only people I know that have didn't like it.

At any rate, I made it; at which point, a friend of mine walks in, and starts rummaging through my fridge -- something that's pretty natural for him.

And he sees this jello mold.

"You made jello?" He asks, all kinds of excited.
"No, it's-- it's head cheese," I say.

He just stares at me, and now he's got the mold in his hands, and he's looking at it, and he's looking at me, and he's just confused.

So I tried to explain, "Okay, it's, well, it's like jello, but with meat in it. Y'know, like meat-jello."

His eyes lit up.

"Can I have some?"

I shrugged. "Sure. Be my guest."

And apparently, in this dream, my friend really liked head cheese. I guess describing anything as "meat-jello" will get a positive response, though.

Maybe.

Now I have to ask him about that, 'cause now it's going to bother me.

I need to not whine. Or make it sound like I'm not whining, maybe?

So, I like how when other people have epiphanies, they tend to be these deep realizations about life, or philosophy, or the world, or something.

My epiphanies are more along the lines of so that's what that smell is.

Yeah, I-- I know.

That doesn't sound like it should be that big of an issue.


But I have spent the past nineteen years of my life not knowing that that smell that permeated my mom's kitchen was. I found that out this morning. (And by "this morning", I really mean "four o'clock this afternoon, but that's beside the point).

Yeah. We were making breakfast, and we set the heat under the pan too high, and burned the butter, and -- what the fuck, what's that smell? Is that-- that's the butter? It-- oh, that's what burned butter smells like?

It kinda, um, put it into perspective for me.

And then Jess told me on no uncertain terms to just shut up and stir the eggs that were supposed to be in that pan in the first place.

Quote of the Day.

"So that, when we have seen them all and agreed which man is best and which worst, we could consider whether the best man is happiest and the worst most wretched, or whether it is otherwise." -- Glaucon, The Republic of Plato

I like being a terrible person.

So, y'know how much I don't like my class, right? And how I think it's a crock of shit?

I thought it'd be fun to go to class all dolled up in a corset, with a blouse with long flowy sleeves underneath, and a long skirt and heels. I wanted to see if I could get any kind of reaction out of my professor.

She just kind of stared at me.

Y'know, that "corsets were invented by men, y'know" sort of look.


And all through class, we talked about the trials and hardships of some Chinese five-year-old, but I got hungry half-way through... so all I could think of, for like the entire second half of the class, was, "damn, I hope we still have rice in the fridge. I bet we do. I know we didn't eat it. Fuck, I'm hungry. I want to go back to the dorm so I can go make rice."

It was pretty bad.


And, if anyone's wondering, I didn't drink as much coffee this time.

So you should be proud of me.


On an entirely related note: I found somemthing in the New York Times, that I want to expound upon. Of course, my entire comments are, "Seriously, you guys, you need to chill, for reals", but that's kinda beside the point.

It's about how some woman decided that Cheerleaders only cheering for boy's teams violated Title IX -- that's the thing that mandates that any schools and colleges that receive funding from the federal government can't discriminate along the lines of gender.

/* Needless to say, you can construe that either way you want depending on your own personal beliefs or agenda. Most people do. */

At any rate, high school varsity cheerleading in the state of New York has gotten all kinds of fucked up. In order to balance out the number of games they'd have to send the cheerleaders to, they decided not to send them to away games. That means you never get to see the other team's cheerleaders -- it's only you. So girls started dropping out, 'cause, hey, that takes a lot of the fun out of it.

Oh, and the girls who are being cheered for? Most of them don't want to be cheered for.

So now, all of the academics and social scientists and professional board members are sitting around, trying to re-evaluate what Cheerleading really is.

All because this woman decided that girls' sports teams were being treated as 'second-rate', while boys' sports teams got all the attention.

/* She should come to my school old high school. The only reason any one actually went to the football games was to see the kick/dance squad. We were terrible. No one cared about the game; it was a given that we were going to lose. But the Romanettes were kinda hot. And they could, y'know, dance. If you actually wanted to see a sport, you went to a field hockey game. (And if you wanted a fight, you went to a boy's soccer game, but that's inconsequential...) */


There was another article that the Times ran a while ago -- called "What's wrong with Cinderella?" -- about the Disney Princess fad. It was a solid six pages; the general gist of the article was that it may (or may not) be bad for young girls (we're really not sure).

It was written by a feminist, who, having a three year old daughter, was very well aware of this fad and all that went with it. That, then, lead into a discussion about children's toys, and about how the dolls and the toy kitchens were a safe distance away from the Star Wars action figures and the Legos. (And here I never thought of Legos as inherently masculine. You learn something new every day.)

There was a whole bunch more to it, but I kinda forgot.

/* It was a good article, and I'd like to it here, but you need a TimesSelect subscription to read it. Sorry. */

I have had way too much coffee, and I have something to say.

It wasn't even real coffee, either. It was that fake coffee from that vending machine in the math/psych building -- y'know, fifty cents for a paper cup of dark watery caffeine that smells vaguely reminiscent of coffee and chocolate.

That kind of coffee.

So, needless to say, I am wide awake.


In addition to being wide awake, I have something that I want to say; something that I feel is at least vaguely valuable to the rest of humankind -- and I have every intention of sharing it with you.


That said, I will warn you now: If you're a Social Science major, you're probably not going to want to read this. Go ahead and get off the internets and play solitaire for a bit. You won't enjoy this at all.


I will admit that I am not the most objective individual when it comes to the social sciences -- I'm whole-heartedly convinced that (a) they're a load of crap and (b) necromancy is right up there with sociology and anthropology. So, perhaps I am a little, what's the word? I'll go with "prejudiced". Nonetheless, I still don't like them. I have a whole bunch of theories about why they're destroying the country -- some of which don't involve zombies -- but I'll get to those later.


At any rate, I decided, at some point, that I needed to kill off some of my General Foundational Requirements™. I needed something easy, something that wouldn't be too torturous -- something that wouldn't totally suck.

Naturally, my first four choices for GFR's for the winter semester were filled up, so I started wandering around the course catalog. Everyone always talks about how easy American Studies 100 is. There were two things I didn't take into account: (a) they all took it during the regular semester, which is three times as long, and (b) they were all Social Science majors.


So, I sit down on the first day of class, expecting something just short of a history class. Right? Seems natural, wouldn't it?


Well, with the sheer amount of exposition I've given you, no, I guess it wouldn't.

So, I was horribly crushed to find out that I was stuck in wussy-touchy-feely-land and not a real history class.



We've read half of Ben Franklin's autobiography, and then we're about halfway through Malcolm X's autobiography.

Now, Benjamin Franklin talks about being at least somewhat virtuous -- when picking a mistress, you should go for an old woman because the sin is less, and she'll be so grateful -- and being a vegetarian and abstaining from ale and being reasonable and so on and so forth.

Malcolm X's autobiography, so far, has detailed how he destroyed some poor girl's life, spent most of his time high, and became a criminal.


Guess which one's been a national bestseller. Go ahead. Guess.



So, this week was pretty much devoted to why race is a social construct.

/* Yeah, for those of you who haven't heard about this, race (and gender, for that matter) aren't actually real, but were secretly made up by one group of people to... something something I kinda stopped listening around that point. Sorry. */

It got me thinking, about how everyone's always like, "There should be an open dialogue". Well, if you think about it, there can't be an open dialogue, because the Social Scientists have already decided the answers. There can only be an "open dialogue" if the dialogue reinforces their answer. And they get really pissed if you don't come to their conculsion or agree with them.

And if you try to talk or argue, they say the exact same thing, with different words.

And everything is inherently the fault of society. I mean, if you dump your girlfriend for another girl, it's society's fault if your ex-girlfriend takes it really hard. (See Malcolm X's Autobiography, Ch. 4, pg. 72).



So, uh, remind me again how the Social Sciences are supposed to represent "progress"?

Merry Christmas!!

Wha- buh, huh, what?

"But I thought Christmas was, like, two weeks ago, right?"

Nuh-uh.

See, this is an explanation that I'm pretty good at explaining, because I've had to explain it almost every year.

It starts off class. We're all sitting there, and somebody blurts out, "Misses so-and-so, I'm not gonna be here the first day of class, 'cause I'm..." and they start to talk about how they're going to be with family in Virginia or spending the break in Canada or damnit where'd my Doritos go?

At any rate, when they finally finish talking, I put up my hand, and (whether called on or not) cry out "I'm not gonna be here on January Seventh. It's my Christmas."

And the teacher usually either doesn't care or stares at me funny.


So now I will explain exactly how this strange calendrical anomally came about.


First off, for those of you who can't cope with the idea of Christmas not being the 25th of December: don't worry. It still is. Kinda.

See, there's two calendars. Originally, there was only one.


Julius Caesar decided that he was so awesome, he could define time itself! Or maybe he just had a good idea and wanted to see it implemented.

Either way, the Julian calendar was used by the Western world until the 1500's.


Don't fight with me on this. I know someone out there is like "No! We still use his calendar!" But that person is wrong. Keep reading.


In 1581, the Roman Catholic Church realized it had a problem. A problem of Earth-shakingly huge proportions that really doesn't seem like it would be an issue today.

Easter was growing further and further away from Passover.


Now, in the Roman Rite Church, Easter is the third Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox.

Of course, the Church can't just change Church doctrine. That's not what the Church does. And it goes against Church doctrine to change Church doctrine.


So, they came up with the perfect solution: change the calendar.

Essentially, they just pushed the calendar up thirteen days.


They called it the Gregorian calendar, after Pope Gregory XIII, and it took effect in October of 1582.

Incidentally, it also changed the new year back to January 1, from March 25.


Natually, as it was the sixteenth century, the change wasn't immediate -- or even swift -- with many parts of Europe still using the old Julian calendar for at least a hundred or so years afterward.

England and her colonies, for example, didn't officially change over to the new calender until 1752. And Russia didn't bother to change over until 1917, when Russian Orthodoxy was outlawed after the revolution -- and the new government was converting to the more "secular" calendar.


So, yeah.

Merry Christmas.

Quote of the Day

"It's like porn, but classy."