I give in!

I now have a feed on Facebook as well as here. It feels…surprisingly painless.

This person has a vote, too.

You may remember this person as the one who once asked me where Central America was. I’m not sure how politics came up in this situation, but I overheard her conversation with someone else today:

“If we don’t pick the right President, we’re dead…..you know Obama, when he swore to run for President, he swore on the muslim book, not the Bible…”

(I assume she doesn’t know the name for the ‘Muslim book’, the Koran.)

I interjected that that was an urban legend, and that he actually was sworn into the Senate on a Bible (I didn’t add that I think the fact that a lot of Americans would let a candidate’s religious affiliation affect their vote anyway is lunacy). She continued on, however:

“You know, he says that terrorists are the same as Americans…”

I gave up.

So, to repeat a point I’ve made so many times here: people are fucking terrifying. I can accept not voting for a candidate on ideological or philosophical grounds because, hey, not everyone is going to agree on the best way to do things. But I really shudder to think how many people have this kind of misinformation about Obama and other candidates and are going to vote (just like you or I) based on that.

We’ve got a long way to go.

Why be a sports fan?

This is the best possible explanation I’ve seen for being a sports fan, which I have taken from Bill Simmons’ latest article about the Seattle Sonics. It’s a quote from Roger Angell, a writer for the New Yorker:

“It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially               exploitive as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring deeply and passionately, really caring — which is a capacity or an emotion that has almost gone out of our lives. And so it seems possible that we have come to a time when it no longer matters so much what the caring is about, how frail or foolish is the object of that concern, as long as the feeling itself can be saved. Naivete — the infantile and ignoble joy that sends a grown man or woman to dancing and shouting with joy in the middle of the night over the haphazardous flight of a distant ball — seems a small price to pay for such a gift.”

There you go. Feel free to refer to this next time I act like a nut while I’m watching one of my teams on TV.

Questions

Why do people that spend an hour on the elliptical machines at the gym wait for an elevator rather than going down three flights of stairs?

Why don’t they make yoga mats big enough for me?

Why are some NES games still more enjoyable and challenging than games that come out now?

Why do I have to have a full-time, real world job in three months?

Damn. The future got here in a hurry.

What’s a Seawolf?

Of the inquires I’ve gotten at work, today’s question about what exactly a Seawolf (our school mascot) is has to be one of my favorites. After being asked if it was a real animal, I wanted to say “Sadly, there’s no such thing as a blue half-wolf half-fish abomination.”

What is it exactly? Nobody knows. I don’t know the origin of the name either. But, at least it’s not a Bearcat.

SB Alert

I’m writing this from the Administration Building, where I’m holed up as we’ve been informed that our building is on lockdown. Evidently, there’s an armed man running around campus somewhere. The story has been picked up by Newsday and a few people here at the office (including myself) have received periodic updates with nothing of note in them other than “remain alert and follow the directions of emergency personnel.”

The Newsday report of the situation.

Given the events happening recently on college campuses, any time you hear about someone running around with a gun at your school you want the University to take every step to alert its students. I received a text message at about 2:15 about the situation. I have no news of anything beyond what’s in the Newsday article, although one of my coworkers received a phone call from one of the students that saw the man with a gun and called University Police.

Administration (where I am) and a number of other buildings are on lockdown. I plan on remaining here until the situation’s resolved; if anything comes up, I’ll be sure to update this post. Right now the story remains rather vague.

Stay safe, everyone.

Edit: Although our building is on “lockdown” (depending on who you ask) the police haven’t actually secured the premises. It’ll be interesting to see what was rumor and what was fact when this gets sorted out.

Edit: All clear as of 3:55. I’ll be curious to see what if anything comes out of this, I’ll post a reaction later. Th clarify, our building was never actually on lockdown as we had been informed, although we locked down the area where I work. The campus itself was never on lockdown. I’m now going to venture onto campus as I have class in a couple of hours, of course while staying alert for any signs of trouble.

Check out some of the horrifying posts about this on the Newsday forum. Good lord.

A realization.

I’m tired of school. The wall has officially been hit. I’m glad this is my last semester because I just don’t feel like dealing with the pressure of grades and writing papers and all that anymore. During January I was working every day and largely self-sufficient and I loved it. I think that’s when I realized that I just want to get to work and have all the time and money to do whatever I want when I’m done with it, without any tests or papers or research hanging over my head.

The weekend parties and the hanging out and all that are great, but I think I can still do all that without needing to be in school. I’m only 22 and I’m not settling down for a while. I can work and still have plenty of fun without needing to be a full-blown “responsible adult.” If it wasn’t for that stuff I’d really be in trouble, because my weekdays are nothing but monotonous routines right now.

It’s not even like I’ve had much work to do (I’m still waiting on a couple of books), I’m just tired of working by day and giving up my nights to classes that dictate how I should spend my time when I’m not in them. In retrospect deciding not to apply to law school was a good decision. I needed to get this degree to open up my opportunities and it is ideal that it was only a year; otherwise, who knows what I’d do, because I don’t want to do this anymore.

I’m not really the academic I’d like to fancy myself as.

The “brightest minds in the country” strike again!

It’s too bad that weekends have to end and we have to report back to the drudgery of school and work on Mondays, but so it goes. My Monday has been busy and it has also brought me perhaps the most bizarre interaction I’ve had at this job yet. You guessed it – somebody wasn’t happy about going to class on Presidents’ Day!

The students rationale for her chagrin was that ”we’re not a private University”, after she confirmed with me that yes, this is in fact a state school. The first time she called I explained that the University was free to have its own schedule and wasn’t held to anything by SUNY, and that our department has absolutely nothing to do with the academic calendar. Good answer, right? She seemed content if annoyed with that response and hung up, no doubt to get ready for the challenge of the 100-level class that she would have to attend because those are a total bitch!

Unfortunately, this answer wasn’t good enough for her, so she called again an hour later demanding to speak to a superior as to why we had classes today. I informed her that many other colleges also had class on Presidents’ Day. She gave a confused response and proceeded to hang up, never to bother me again (one can hope).

So let’s review: this person took the effort to find the number for the our office which, shockingly, has nothing to do with the academic calendar, and to validate all the fucking time she wasted finding this golden nugget of information, she called twice to complain about the human rights violation that is having to go to school on Presidents’ Day. 

I don’t like it either, but c’mon – do something productive with your time other than your faux-crusade against the   campus bureaucracy and its schedule-making policies. All the bitching and moaning and pissed-off phone calls to the wrong departments won’t do a damn thing. I had to go to work and class today too. Deal.

Two other people called with the same question: “Is there class on Presidents’ Day?” The “brightest minds in the country” that our buses brag about can’t be bothered to google this.

Also, on an unrelated note, Charles Barkley is awesome.

Political commentary not deep enough for LEC.

Wonderfully, I managed to avoid yesterday and everything that goes along with it for the most part. How did I do it? By going to two classes, taking a nap for most of the afternoon, playing Zelda 2 for the NES, and then gorging myself on pizza and wings for dinner. Screw you, Hallmark.

Not only that, I spoke up twice in class! In my program I pretty much shuffle in and out of  my classes pretty quietly, but if I’m motivated enough I’ll blurt something out now and then and wow everyone with my brilliance (yeah). As many of you know by now I am an Obama supporter, but I think both of these points were just common sense and I was feeling the motivation.

The first time, a 40-ish year old woman implied that Hillary Clinton was disliked in large part because she was a woman, a rather startling generalization given that it ignores the possibility she might be a shitty candidate (what?) and the fact she’s running against a black man, not exactly the historically privledged majority in the United States. Hillary’s current lead with superdelegates can be attributed to far better initial support from the party establishment than Obama had. If her gender was going to be such a big issue, why aren’t we talking about Joe Biden or Chris Dodd right now? Obama’s simply running a better campaign. The whole thing reminded me of Gloria Steinem’s confusing rant in the Times:

“What worries me is that some women, perhaps especially younger ones, hope to deny or escape the sexual caste system; thus Iowa women over 50 and 60, who disproportionately supported Senator Clinton, proved once again that women are the one group that grows more radical with age. “

There you have it. Older women are doing all women a service by voting for Hillary because she is also a woman. I am sure that in no way is this a gross oversimplification of the issues or the candidates! Quick, somebody tell Michael Dukakis to run again! The extremist Greek within me demands it!

The second time, during our night class, the teacher asked us if Obama really “said” anything about his position on the issues, even though he is an excellent orator. This is not the first time I’ve heard Obama get flack for the positive rhetorical content of his speeches. I would argue that any candidate who made his or her speech into a thorough, lucid lecture on his or her policy proposals probably wouldn’t do all that well, because trust me, that stuff is boring to listen to. What he says after primaries tends to be specifically intended to rouse emotion in his potential supporters, not completely enlighten the guy that tunes in to CNN twice a week and can’t be bothered to learn more about the candidates himself.

Like I said: common sense, people. I think we can all agree on that.

Finally, a paper for the Hamptons!

There were a couple of choices as to how I could spend my Friday night. They were:

A) Listen to Billy Idol’s “Dancing With Myself” on repeat for 4-6 hours and dance around my room until I collapsed face-first on the floor in exhaustion, or
B) Write a vitriol-saturated rant about a semi-local newspaper.

I chose B. In retrospect, I probably should have chosen to read a book or something. Judge for yourselves.

The paper in question is Dan’s Paper, which boasts having the “Largest Weekly Circulation in the Hamptons plus Special Manhattan Delivery (sic).” Immediately it’s evident that this is one of those bullshit “lifestyle” papers that rich people read to make their lives seem less meaningless while they piss away their money. As such, I was actually pleasantly surprised that there were no articles inside advocating the depopulation of Long Island west of the forks so as to create the world’s largest equestrian field. Rather, it was noted on the cover that this week’s issue included a very special section on romancing in the Hamptons for Valentine’s Day! The excitement at the reader’s fingertips is palpable!

The first word I would use to describe this paper is: unnecessary. As somebody who doesn’t live in the Hamptons and doesn’t ever plan to, I can safely say I didn’t give a shit about any of it, and here’s what got me about this paper in the first place – it was available at the Stony Brook Administration Building! In huge stacks! I know the higher-ups in the University are loaded, but…why? Do they just throw out the unread 50 copies of this crap every week?

The paper’s target audience tends to be the well to do, but a closer look at the articles leads one to believe they’re really intended for the well-to-do who also have the attention span of third graders. The closest thing resembling any kind of political commentary was (I shit you not) an article by a gentleman named Dan Rattiner (THE Dan in Dan’s Papers) about how he could spot various physical characteristics of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on his hi-definition television. Riveting! Dan also wrote a commentary on the Giants Super Bowl run vaguely on the level of what somebody who had just watched SportsCenter on Monday morning could do if they were asked to write a 500 word essay about it and had no prior knowledge of any professional sports ever. Another article has Dan quipping “Do they still study geography in grammar school? Or have they just thrown up their hands and given up on all this?” Hard hitting educational commentary from a man who confessed that he was interested in how closely Obama shaved his neck.

Romancing the Hamptons included a whole bunch of boring articles on how chocolate is delicious and other such inanities. “I love chocolate because it is delicious, satisfying and it makes me feel good. I eat it every day.” This sounds like a sentence I wrote about my favorite things when I was six years old. For extra fun, make it a mad lib!

“I love _____ because it is ______, ______ and ______. I eat it every day!”

On the same page where a restaurant was advertising $50 bottles of wine (I’d rather get drunk for cheap, thanks) there was a heartwarming entrepreneurial story of a man who created a dating website just for Hamptonites. Someone special could just be a click away…provided you’re in their income bracket! Another article touted various foods as aphrodisiacs. Not much worse than what you’d find in Newsday’s Part 2, I guess, but fuck it anyway.

Hilariously, the page opposite the chocolate article was advertising a $16,000 necklace and asks “Will you be his valentine?” For $16,000, I’d better fucking hope so. If that fails, you can just try opening a suitcase full of hundred dollar bills for the girl, I guess. This is the part of this post where I get on my soapbox about how I fucking hate jewelry ads of all types and say that I honestly don’t understand the fascination people have with shiny rocks and bits of metal. Kay Jewelers can get bent too and for your information, I’m never buying a diamond. Ever. De Beers is pretty much one of the most evil companies on Earth. Rant over.

Actually, rant not over – $16,000 can pay for three semesters of education at Stony Brook. And this paper, advertising this overpriced arrangement of rocks, was available in the school’s Administration Building. I don’t doubt there are people on campus that have the means to spend $16,000 on useless aesthetic bullshit like a necklace (after all, there’s an idiot with a Hummer on campus) but seriously, I can’t get over the fact there were like 100 copies of this publication delivered to the University. Who the hell could seriously read this thing?

The feature article in the paper was about James Lipton. I don’t really have anything against James Lipton so I’ll leave him alone, although I remember the Will Ferrell Lipton impersonation more than Lipton himself. Whatever, I say.

The letters to the editor touched on the biggest threat to relations between rich people in America and rich people in Europe: tipping habits. Did you know service charges are often included in Europe and it’s not necessary to leave a tip at most restaurants? Who says this is a shitty excuse to cut down some trees?! Get me a plane ticket to Milan, because I will teach those Europeans that I am cultured and totally know my shit when it comes to tipping in places other than TGI Friday’s. We just need to teach those silly foreigners that you need to tip when you come here, and we’ll be set (assuming they don’t take all of our restaurant jobs first, and therefore don’t require tips from their fellow foreigner customers – a harrowing possibility).

Finally, let me add that I don’t know who the fuck Dan Rattiner is or why he’s the one that publishes this verbal atrocity for Long Island’s elite, but I don’t care to find out. “Dan’s Papers” is a stupid name for a publication but I guess “Rich Asshole Weekly” was taken. Anyway, if I had a paper to my name I think that it’d actually have something to do with me. It’d be cover-to-cover melt your face off ass-kicking. All of the articles would either be about me (in the third person, of course) or everything that I think is awesome, and I’d probably write all the articles in my free time in between my massage sessions on my private yacht. The circulation would be, like, one person, but if I had the money to start my own publication in the first place, you can bet your ass I’d print out a million copies of that shit and airdrop it on the Hamptons out of spite. Tell me, would you rather read this:

…or this:

I think I know your answer. Nobody can resist a free poster!