This = human contact

I’m sick: rattly chest + snot head. And I am in the death throes of finishing a final paper that was due TUESDAY. I probably seem like someone who hands in papers late, I certainly cut it close, but I never do that. As soon as I turn it in, I graduate. Done forever. Why am I stalling? Maybe it’s a little of this:

[courtesy of Seelander]

The only people I’ve spoken to in the last 36 hours are the pizza delivery guy and my sister Meghan. Is it sad that blogging feels like talking? Because I have some pent up sharing to do.

1. I drank two liters of Diet Coke in under two hours and I have yet to pee. I think that equals two big gulps and also the definition of dehydration.

2. Have you seen the new nickels? I have no idea when they began circulating, but it startled me when I first saw one in a handful of change. He’s looking right at you. And if you put two next to each other like this it’s like he just turned his head. Creepy!

3. This video. The choreography is goofy, and I do not get the robot arm thing, but it kind of makes you want to strap on a leotard and heels. Right?

4. Second annual Ebay Secret Santa is underway. So far I haven’t won any excess muppets, but it’s not going well. My palms are sweaty. I hope you’re excited for the big blog reveal on xmas day.

Good ideas, poor execution

1. Using playdough to clean the cracks in my keyboard.

2. Eating a spoonful of ground coffee so I can still run on an empty stomach but without falling asleep.

Meta soapbox

It’s a big day but I’m in a murderous mood again. Probably my best way out would be for Darcy to fix me an expensive cocktail. But that’s not possible. Instead I’m going to push this post on you that I started last night…

[from Boing Boing]

Happy election day. Wake me on Wednesday. Or maybe a week from Wednesday, when people run out of ways to be sanctimonious on Facebook. Do the comments on these posted articles, which I’ve ridiculously taken the time to capture, edit, and upload for you, make you clench your fists, just a little? They make me want to slam my forehead on a metal desk.

Yes, I’m voting for Obama. I’m excited about it. I hear he has a good shot.

And I have a real stake in his victory, having predicted it in a post I wrote 01-01-20008 which will publish on 1-01-2009. But oh! the self congratulation.

In other contexts, smugness is a huge motivating factor for me. I revel in outdoing everyone else – but I say save it for something you’ve earned, like doing 50 pushups. Not in expressing the ways you know what’s best for other people.

If some unwashed person on the street asks me for change and I give it to him, I don’t care how he spends that dollar. I don’t care if he buys a pack of cigarettes. I don’t care if he finds the saddest stripclub and tucks it into some graying thong.

I know it’s a human impulse to try to make sense of the world from your own seat in it. To put like-things in piles and try to maintain a perspective that puts you in a safe dry place. I understand the urge to pretend like you know shit about the economy.

To pretend like you know what partial birth abortion actually means and how it fits into someone’s actual life. To imagine that you should have a say in how people have sex or make families. To distill something complicated into something less complicated.

I just think it’s important to try to catch yourself at it, to scan for holes in your theories, for shaky datasets, for new information, for glazed-over eyes in your audience. Because no one is obligated to listen or to care about the world from your seat in it.

How do Rush and my own father walk around with their punative, sometimes hateful worldview and not die of toxic shock? And is there a moment when that guy at the party who is overreaching, making bold claims about climate change, catches his reflection in the wine glass he’s waving around and thinks, “man I’m a douchebag”?

Maybe the ends are noble, but I agree with this guy. How you say it matters.

I know I’m kind of waving my wine glass around right now and mixing metaphors. I know I have elitist tendencies. Just try offering me ranch dressing. But, while I care about pro-choice and gay marriage and real science and religious freedom, I also don’t care. I just want to make sure we all have choices. I’m suspicious of elisions and neat tight conclusions that make the world smaller, that reign in otherness. I want to keep the definition of what is American broad, with a big blinking cursor after it.

I love Obama because of his rhetoric. He’s willing to acknowledge gray areas and at least allude to complexity.

Sometimes I read Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish. His melodrama often irks me, but I did appreciate when he quoted this thread way back in March, which I will now take further out of context. Regarding Obama:

“If he is elected president, he will disappoint many of his supporters, and surprise many of his detractors.”

I hope he wins. And then I hope he disappoints/surprises you.

Bye Bye Brave Banano

I dropped my iPod in the toilet. The hand dryer could not revive him. I cradled him in my fist as he took his last shuddery breaths. I don’t know how much longer I can take this silence. It’s been a few hours.

Anyone want to sell me an old one?

My heart, it swells

Interesting article comparing Obama to JFK and McCain to Goldwater re: foreign policy.

We need a leader who recognizes “that the United States is neither omnipotent or omniscient, that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94 percent of mankind, that we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.” A president who understands that “equating negotiations with appeasement and substituting rigidity for firmness” is “the pathway to war.”