Today's Writer's Block: Overcommitment

I've intended to publish some three lengthy posts for some time now, each of which, while not an onerous undertaking, has taken a great deal of time to compose. Having committed myself to working some fifty to seventy hours per week for the next month, I have sadly been unable to actually complete any of these works. However, as I prepare for my departure to Budapest at the end of August, I will be writing more often, in an attempt to ready myself for the academics at Central European University.

The posts address:

• the shootings at Virgina Tech;
• policy training for parents of children with disabilities through NYS DOH; and
• thoughts on the Farm Bill, locally produced food, bottled water, desertification, roads, AIDS, and globalization.

More later....

A Quick, Random Thought

The following is a blatant truism, for the writing of which I hope any readers will forgive me.

There are certain people that one meets in life with whom one shares some unknown, indefinable bond. One might colloquially phrase it as two people "clicking" with each other or as "being on the same wavelength," or as some other cliché that suggests this connection that seems hard to pin down. Anyway, it's a nice thing. I'd probably be more introspective about this if it weren't for pressing work. But it will suffice for now to say that it's a wonderful thing when it happens.

Perhaps the beginning of "a beautiful friendship?" Who knows...

"The following film may be missing reels..."

Grindhouse. Well worth $10. See it in a small, grungy, funky theater with small screens, old seats, and bad sound (e.g., Circle Cinema in Brookline, Mass.). Not for the faint of heart (most of Rodriguez's and Tarantino's films aren't).

"The Motel"

Well-executed, independent film about a Chinese family that runs a motel. Worth watching. Depressing, though. (It's an indie film; I'm not sure what I was expecting.)

"Heroes" is Looking Really Good Right Now

As the sixteenth episode of the current season of "24" came to a close, I saw the spectre of Fonzie waterskiing across a lake in his leather jacket and now know, with a sinking feeling in my gut, that a shark is lurking somewhere in those waters.

It seems Joel Surnow and his writers are running out of plots that they can recycle on what, conceptually, is a very innovative series, but which now suffers from a variable quality of writing and acting.

A few plots from season six that are recurrences of plots from previous seasons:

• the invocation of the 25th Amendment, a plot from seasons two and four;
• the amputation of Gredenko's arm with an ax, an occurence reminiscent of both the amputation of Chase's hand by similar means in season three and Jack's removal of Marshall Goren's head with a hacksaw in season two;
• the assasination attempt on Wayne Palmer, reminiscent of the three attempted assasinations of David Palmer in seasons one and two and his assasination in season five;
• Morris's struggle with an addiction to alcohol, redolent of Jack's addiction to heroin in season three;
• Jack's assault on the Russian consulate in Los Angeles, a repetition of the CTU assault on the Chinese consulate in Los Angeles in season five;
• Vice President Daniels's attempts to undermine the legitimacy of Wayne Palmer's presidency, redolent of similar attempts by Vice Presidents Prescott and Gardner to undermine, respectively, the presidencies of Presidents David Palmer and Charles Logan in seasons two and five; and
• the threatened and realized nuclear attacks on Los Angeles, reminiscent of seasons two, four, and five.

The writers of "24" need to get back to basics: focus on writing realistic dialogue for deep characters and create tension through more suspense and less action. More suggestions to come.

Four Days ("Merci, La Poste" Redux)

Four days: that's how long it took for a letter from a wonderful friend to go from being posted in Paris to being delivered to the hamlet of Annandale-on-Hudson. Bravissimi, La Poste and USPS!

Being Blue Hardly Makes You Green

It's often presumed that Bard, deemed by the Princeton Review as an a institution of "Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians," is a radically green campus.^{1, 2} If the administration and students at Bard were truly invested in maintaining a green campus, one would expect them to be a little more conscious of some simple behavior that's detrimental to the environment: turning lights out when they leave a room; investing in printers that have the capacity for automatic duplexing (I just printed out a 32-page article in the library); not littering. Am I expecting too much of the intelligent, liberal population of Bard?

---

¹"Best 361 Colleges." The Princeton Review. 2007.
²Bard is first of the list of "Birkenstock-Wearing, Tree-Hugging, Clove-Smoking Vegetarians." Apparently the students also "Ignore God on a Regular Basis" (#2) and smoke a great deal of pot ("Reefer Madness," again #2).

Merci, La Poste

Alas the French postal system has redeemed itself in my eyes. I sent a letter to Paris a few weeks ago and, after not hearing from the addressee, believed for some time that the French couriers had been stayed by rain or snow or heat or maybe one too many glasses of wine along with a penchant for not being invested in their work. I know the Francophiles will be displeased with that last statement for implying that the French are a bunch of lazy drunks and that's hardly the esteem in which I actually hold the French, but one must wonder about the motivation of workers in a society where citizens are essentially guaranteed a job for life once they're hired. As for being alcoholics, that's made from wholecloth on my part (mea culpa).

Of course, at this point, critical thinkers out there are screaming at their monitors: "What about the U.S. postal service?!? They're not exactly reliable, now, are they?" In short, yes, they are. Very. Complain as people may about the quality of service from the venerable USPS, few can deny that, in comparison to other countries, the postal system in the U.S. is one of the best: it is highly efficient and delivers 93% of first-class mail within its service commitment.¹

---

¹United States Postal Service. "2006 Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations." 63. 2007.

A Brief Complaint

I generally don't complain about being single, but as the rain comes and the days get longer, as the frigid chill of February fades from memory, as I look around and see more and more couples, more of my peers happily involved with someone else, I grow weary of my solitude. I can endure it infinitely, but, o, how trying it can be at times like these.

High-beams

I just returned to campus from a weekend with my folks in Boston and I've a splitting headache: some nut-case on the Taconic was not only driving like an idiot (speeding up and slowing down at random, driving parallel to cars in the slow lane instead of passing them, &c.) but was doing so with his high-beams on. I did manage to get behind the fool, but he'd been behind me for some time and his headlamps had already done their damage. Qué será, será, but still, what a pain.

Do As Your Mother Told You

Wash your hands! Last week brought a Hepatitis A scare to campus. Hep. A, transmitted by hand-stool contact, leads to unpleasant, albeit short-term, symptoms of "jaundice, fatigue, abdomnal pain, loss of appetite, nausea, diarrhea, and fever."¹ The spread of Hep. A is best prevented through thorough handwashing. While a 2005 observational study indicates that the vast majority of Americans in major metropolitan areas, 83%, wash their hands after using a restroom, there still remains 17% who, in not doing so, contribute to the outbreaks of diseases like Hep. A. And if infectious diseases aren't motiviation enough for you, think of how proud of you your mother would be for washing your hands.

---

¹Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Hepatitis A: Fact Sheet," Centers for Disease Control and Preventions, http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/diseases/hepatitis/a/fact.htm (accessed February 18, 2007).

Breaking News: Suicide is Now Entertaining!

I have seen two ads in the past month that have featured suicide as a comic element. The first (to my knowledge) was a spot for GM that ran during Super Bowl XLI, which GM has since pulled. The other, advertising Volkwagen cars, is still airing. Forget about Prozac...you just haven't bought the right car yet. Since when has suicide become a topic treated so lightly?

ACUAH

I've started another blog on Blogger to address my academic interests. A City Upon a Hill will complement my academic work in American Studies and, perhaps, promote discussion about the specific topics listed there as well as the discipline in general.

The Beginning of a Brain Drain

Jay Leno once noted that President Bush believes that Iraq "can have a strong economy...can have a good health care plan, and...can have a free and fair voting." Of particular interest to me here is health care. Indeed, Article 30, Paragraph 1 of the Iraqi constitution states that:

the state guarantees to the individual and the family -- especially children and women -- social and health security

My question: how can we get that over here in the States?

Of course, there are countless social institutions in the U.S. that are far superior than the comparable institutions in Iraq. Education is an excellent example. In an earlier post, I noted that school-age children in Iraq are not attending classes and are instead working to support their families. The situation in higher education is just as dismal. Reporting for NPR, Anne Gerrels filed this story on the sad state of Iraqi universities.

Back in the Saddle

It's official: I have returned to Bard College to finish my studies. Student Accounts has my parents' money, I've "registered" for courses, and even the library caught whiff of my presence and is asking me to return overdue books from my last semester here (more on the scare quotes in a moment).

I'm living on the periphery of the main campus in Gahagan, an old house which was converted into a dorm. The construction from that conversion was either poorly executed in the first place or has been warped and skewed over the years. (I tend to believe the former with the latter as a factor that compounded already existing problems.) The house has three entrances, one in the front which leads to a common kitchen and the three rooms on the ground floor. A side door serves as a private entrance for one of the rooms on the ground floor. The third entrance is located near the back of the house and leads to a stairway to the second floor, which, in my estimation was either an attic or originally part of the ground floor before the house became a dorm. There is low clearance walking up the stairs and in most of the second floor, making it a less than ideal setting for a tall person such as myself. It is impossible to move from the second floor to the ground floor rooms without going outside to the front entrance. Finally, the latch on the door to my room will not shut completely unless it is lifted while closed.

These annoyances aside, it's quite a nice place to live. The other students living on the second floor are quite friendly and welcoming. The rooms are also quite warm, a nice problem to have after suffering from insufficient heat in my previous room.

As for "registration," technically, there is no space in the classes in which I would like to enroll. In order to register today, I would have had to settle for a selection of classes that, while certainly interesting to others, would have been devestatingly boring for me. Thus, I will be registering by adding classes to my course load during the add/drop period. The two professors who I spoke to today seemed eager for me to be in their classes: political science professor Mark Lindeman and I had a brief conversation about the politics of education, the false dichotomy of dividing America into two diametrically opposed ideologies of red/blue and conservative/liberal, and the decline of Hollywood cinema; sociology professor Yuval Elmelech and I discussed his seminar on social problems in America and my interest in education as one such problem to be explored in his class. I intend to take three courses this semester as a way of easing back into the strenuous academics of Bard, which leaves space for one additonal course. Hopefully, for that final course, I will be able to join history professor Myra Armstead in her research seminar on urban history.

There is one final note, a disappointment, which I must register: the food. "Same shit, different day" seems to me an apt description. All the more motivation for taking up cooking this semester.

The Evolution of Technology: Scratch-n-Sniff Develops into Rub-n-Sniff

It seems like a minor distinction, but according to AdAge, the Wall Street Journal is going to start integrating "rub-n-sniff" advertisements into their newspaper. The smell emitted by the new ads will supposedly be more subtle than the offensive perfume ad inserts that pervade fashion magazines.

This all seems a bit silly to me, though. Last I heard, circulation of print papers was down considerably and I can't imagine that readers will flock to the WSJ just because they can smell the ads. Another questions: how much is this going to cost the Journal to implement? Do they really think those costs could possibly be offset by potential increased circulation and ad revenues?

Mala Vista

According to a story today from The Times of London, Microsoft's profits for the last quarter are down 28%. Why? Microsoft couldn't get its act together in to release their new O.S., Vista, when they had planned to. Thus, Microsoft had to offer coupons so that consumers purchasing new machines at the end of last year could upgrade to Vista upon its release. My question: why bother waiting for an upgrade when you could go out and buy a Mac?

Che cosa, Cusamano?

I've been wending my way through the first season of The Sopranos, which is wonderful not only for the stellar performances by the entire cast, but for the complexity of its writing. The Sopranos' writers withhold such a wealth of information as to intentions, motivations, and even the meaning of words that watching each episode requires one's utmost attention. One particularly confusing feature of the last episode I watched, "A Hit is a Hit," was the use of the word "cus," a nickname for a character with the last name of Cusamano. The character alludes to the fact that, in Italian, the word "cus" bears a negative connotation, but does not elaborate on the meaning. The writers deny the audience a chance to understand the full meaning of the word, which I can only hope will be explained in a later episode. Even drawing on the wealth of information now available through the internet, I was unable to find a hint as to the meaning of the phrase.

"Hogwash:" Proof that Cheney Doesn't Know Dick

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed "the blunders and the failures" in Iraq that Blitzer alluded to with characteristic gravitas: "I simply don't accept the premise of your questions. I just think it's hogwash." While Blitzer contended that the war in Iraq has created a "terrible situation," Cheney suggested that the difficulties in Iraq are simply "ongoing problems" that pale in comparison to rule under Saddam Hussein.

While Cheney's assertion may be true, the dire nature of the situation in Iraq cannot be aptly described as a set of "ongoing problems." The ramifications of daily attacks by insurgency forces have expanded far beyond the cost of lives alone. Not only is the Iraqi government falling apart at the seams (Nouri al-Maliki isn't too keen on staying in his position; neither, apparently, are the legislators), but the general populace is suffering, too. According to a report by ABC, children of Iraqi's who have been injured or killed in insurgent attacks are now leaving their schools so that they can support their families by working. Attendance in Iraqi elementary schools has dropped from 75% in 2005 to a mere 30% in 2006. Instead of pursuing an education, children are working either for legitimate businesses or for insurgents eager to indotrinate a new generation of Jihadists.

With a failing government, Iraqi children being raised as soldiers for the insurgence, and a host of economic shortcomings, perhaps Mr. Cheney should choose his words more carefully when describing the Iraqi state.

Stories of Note for the Morning of Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Politico Downgrades Giuliani's Chances
Writing for The Politico, Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith look at the former mayor of New York and his uphill battle for the RNC nomination in 2008, suggesting that Giuliani's failed run for Senate in 2000 along with his highly public lifestyle is detrimental to his current campaign. Of course it doesn't help that earlier this month, Smith, writing for the New York Daily News, obtained a copy of Giuliani's '08 campaign playbook. For his part, Giuliani claims that his campaign will be working full swing in Iowa by mid-February.

Security, Growing Doubts over Stability Hinder Iraqi Legislature
The constant threat of bombings along with a fragile infrastructure have recently left the Iraqi legislature often lacking a quorum of members. Damien Cave of The New York Times examines the threats and doubts that face legislators and the paradoxical attempts to promote attendance.

L.A. Considers a Gangbusting Tax
How bad is the gang violence in Los Angeles? Bad enough to spur the City Council to call for a parcel tax that would raise the $50 million to enact a variety of anti-gang measures. Patrick McGreevy and Steve Hymon of The Los Angeles Times write on the the likelihood of the passage of the tax and the opposition from citizen who have rejected recent tax hikes.


Other Stories

• Analysis of the President's State of the Union speech from The Nation, The New York Times, and The Washington Times.

• The Boston Globe is carrying an AP story today confirming that John Kerry will not make a bid for the presidency in 2008.

• AFP reports that the the President of Israel, Moshe Katsav, will step down in the face of rape charges.