Danger, Will Robinson!

"I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views..." --Barack Obama

...and this is a dangerous thing people. I am not trying to insult anyone's political ideology, I am just asking, "What do you really know about this guy?" He is not established enough to have a track record; therefore, he is not asking you to vote for him on any platform other than change, a nebulous proposition at best. Please realize that not all change is good.

I have many friends who are excited about voting for this guy: none of them are voting for him based on what he's done (how can they--he hasn't really done anything), but rather they intend to cast their votes based on hopes they are projecting onto this "blank screen." Once he is in a position of power, their previously unimpeded ideology--which initially set easily on this seemingly neutral surface--will be displaced, and we will see if the gamble paid off. You heard me correctly: I predicted four years ago that this guy would be president someday. And, again, you heard me correctly: I just called the situation what it is--a gamble.

I read into things. And I sometimes get inordinately strong impressions about people or situations; these sort of impressions are seldom proved to have held no merit. I say all this to warn you that there is something between the lines of everything I have heard this man say, anything I have read that he has written. The "something" is a phantom that I cannot quantify, a specter that I cannot make tangible to you. But I'm fairly certain that this man is not who everyone wants him to be.

required viewing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE-mxVxFXLg&feature=related

sometimes i too feel like a little man in a big suit.

More than anything right now...

...i would like to be with icarus aquanaut, rocking out our cover of "fake plastic trees".... Ian, get off your butt and invent that matter teleportation device we've always talked about. I'm sure that Nirmal has the parts for it.

--the managemnet

i get by with a little help from my friends.

so yesterday i relied on the hospitality of two friends, had a good conversation (over starbucks goodies) with another, had another good conversation via phone with yet another one of my friends (on the drive home), and second good phone conversation with an english-major friend, a political argument with another friend (we like conducting arguments, so that's not a bad thing), read some stuff that chall had written back in the day, and then found the following quote from my brother (concerning a song written by icarus aquanaut):

"If your new song were an icecream sandwich that avril lavigne was eating, then I would beat her down with a sock full of quarters and take it from her...because it's really hot, and an icecream sandwich sounds hella good."

I know some really cool people. My friends are a diverse bunch. It's really great to be alive.

choices.

MA in English or MFA in Creative Writing? Time to stick my neck out and see what happens. Things usually work out better when I don't have a plan decided in advance. (1 Samuel 14:1-14)

christmas eve's eve revisited

i'm listening to icarus aquanaut's first show on cd. the one where i wrecked my car a half hour before the show was supposed to start. i always like to start a good thing with an impressive wreck. it started with a car wreck and ended with john herndon and john deacon cook singing "Yellow Submarine" with us aquanaut folk. and it all took place at the Submarine. we thought it was cute. it was a very nautical event. and one of the best memories of my life. i really miss being an aquanaut.

humble pie.

I'm a man. I know how to admit when I've been wrong. So I'm going to go ahead and man up to a mistake I made earlier. I'm not too proud to admit that I was in the wrong.
...
A few posts back, I stated that "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey is the pretender to the crown--that Boston's "More Than a Feeling" is obviously the best rock song of all time. I was wrong.
How could I be so hasty?
The best rock song of all time is definitely "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.

My apologies to everyone.

--the management

seeing the house through a skeleton lens.

sometimes i wonder how it would feel to borrow someone else's paradigm. each person has a set of protocols that his or her perspective automatically filters through when perceiving any given event; this set is made up of the entire collective of perceptions of all the previous events. i guess the first set of protocols are strictly genetic and real-time circumstantial. i see things the way i do, in part, because i was born in the summer rather than the winter; when i was two or three, i fell while climbing my mom's sewing machine table; when i was nine, my basketball team lost every game, save one; when i was twelve, i took a college entrance exam; when i was fifteen, my dad said he wished he'd had a normal son; and when i was eighteen, i had the good fortune to move to dothan. each event, and reaction to that event, builds the next one. i wonder what it would be like to be able to detatch myself from my way of seeing things, from my tendencies toward interpreting events in my habitual manner.

and so being me is kind of weird at the moment. i wonder, as i survey myself with the mind's eyes that i've developed, what it would feel like to see through a different set of eyes.

i feel like a hollowed out house. walls knocked down, sheetrock stripped off, floors broken out. certainly no furniture. no painted walls. some surfaces sanded down, some freshly refinished. empty but not abandoned. i feel very nondescript. i think i am probably alot less interesting than i used to be, but i think i have more structural integrity now than i did when the house had more personality.

drummed.

I took a pretty big spiritual butt-kicking yesterday. It began the moment I woke up, and didn't end until I was asleep. I didn't take my morning walk, the one where I listen and speak with God. Not like that is a punching-the-clock sort of matter, but when the voices that say, "You're not good enough," begin, it's time to slow down and listen to someone else. Apologies to the people I spoke with via phone yesterday. Sorry I wasn't exactly myself--I was in the middle of a fight.
--the management

i'm so tired that i can't sleep.

yeah. i'm totally off my game today. spent it all on a paper i wrote this morning. and more writing in the afternoon. spent all my words. spent is a good word for it. maybe the title of this post is inappropriate. i think i'll probably be able to sleep after all.