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No one wants to hear what you dreamt about, unless you dreamt about them...

Which is funny because I spent like 10 minutes last night trying to tell Heather about my dreams over the past week or so. I will spare you the details because you weren't involved, but it seems as though my sleeping brain has been tapping into the files of "people who I once knew and spent a lot of time with and I guess was friends with but maybe was never close enough to keep in touch with." There's a lot there I was unaware of. Anyway, my dreams have taken me to malls, farms, and downtown DC, and I've been thinking about them all week. As with most dreams, when you try to share them, it comes out stupid. So, that's what I've got... retrospection. 

Which is fitting because yesterday was my birthday (!) and we went to see Built to Spill perform "Perfect from Now On" in its entirety. I'd like to say it was "so 1997," like the Breeders show we went to which was rife with flannel, combat boots and baggy t-shirts (NOT from American Apparel), but the BTS show was full of 20 year old dudes who were like, totally rocking out. Oh well, it was still great. Only we had to run out before it was over to catch the last trains home. Lame. I'm going to be stalking the All Songs Considered website until the show comes out. Actually, I don't know if they'll have it or not.

Here's a video I took at the show on my phone. I think it might be a candidate for the worst video that exists on the internet. But, I wanted to see how it would work out. Not well, I think, is the verdict, but what can you expect when you have a phone designed for a 13 year old.

But I Don't Wanna Get Over You

Sarah Palin is like every unrequited crush I've every had, like everyone that ever bullied me in middle school and high school. I know the best thing to do is to ignore her and to take things objectively, at face value, and move on. She's not worth my time, right? She's not worth moping around over or obsessing over; the time spent trying to find ways to retaliate against her evil actions. She's not worth the energy it takes to long to go back in time to when things were different; before I was ever introduced to her. She's not worth feeling disappointed about.

Sigh. But, I am obsessed with her – just like everyone else.

I've taken a fair amount of math and statistics classes and read the news regularly and recently learned a bit about prediction markets, but I still don't really actually understand how pre-election polling works. My obsession with Palin's positive addition to McCain's campaign is in part due to the fact that the media is doing its best to expose how absurd she is (ok, well, the liberal media I tend to pay attention to), at the same time they're writing headlines about how white women who were devastated about Hillary are brightening at the thought of Palin in the White House. I'm sorry – WHAT? Can anyone explain this fucking logic to me? How is this the cornerstone of every political news piece lately and, more importantly, how is it true? It's got me so angry and I can't stop thinking about it.

Mud-slinging. It sucks. Amanda sent this along today and it gave me some inspiration and hope about real things that are going on that have nothing to do with Tina Fey (omg! love her), or with pigs. It's the American Association of University Women's congressional voting record for 2007-8. She nicely summarized it in an email:

In case any of y'all are interested, AAUW recently released our congressional voting record showing how our reps and senators voted on AAUW issues (such as pay equity, higher education, min. wage increase, etc.) It's here if you want to check it out: http://www.aauw.org/advocacy/issue_advocacy/voter_ed/upload/votingRecord110.pdf

Obama was only present for 70% but voted 100% support while there. McCain was only present for ONE vote, for Pay Equity, and he voted against it. Yeah! Umm, women should still only make 70 cents to the dollar that men make. Put em' in their place! What a fucking douche!

Let's stick to the facts – Palin's not qualified to be involved in the level of politics she's trying to get involved in. That's it. She doesn't deserve me. I don't care that she wears skirts or won a beauty pageant or thinks she can see Russia. I care that she's inexperienced and hates women, the environment, people, and probably kittens and puppies too.

I'm very tempted to do some ill-advised internet searching to find some articles that respectfully support my argument that giving Palin too much air time gives her more political respect that she has earned for herself at this point in her career – Slate's podcast this week discussed just that, and I've come across it in a few other places as well. However, those of you that know me know that life is super hectic right now; I've put a moratorium on “doing extra things” and, really, I shouldn't be blogging at all. But. Can't. Stop. Thinking. About. Palin. Grrrrr.... so, I thought I'd share.

So, do your research, talk about the facts, sling a little mud if you have to, but remember... wallowing isn't healthy. Go outdoors, talk to your friends, exercise, eat healthy, don't drink too much, avoid sad music, and try to stay positive. Remember that she's only doing this because she's jealous of you, because she likes you but can't communicate it properly. She didn't mean to hurt you, maybe, she just needs to focus on herself right now. You'll feel better soon. Someone else will come along, someone that's better for you. There are other fish in the sea:

My cat is smarter than Sarah Palin/we're going to MEXICO!!!

Look how cute she is! She loves sleeping in bags. Anyway, now onto some serious content. Jake has kindly donated his latest political thoughts to CD (which is what I just now nicknamed my blog). I guess perhaps since election season is in full swing all over the country, but especially here in the DC area, I should have periodical political updates. Ok, here's one. From Jake. He was pissed.

At the Republican National Convention the other night, speaker after speaker mocked Barack Obama's past as a community organizer, turning the job into a punch line.

“Community organizer... What?” Rudy Giuliani asked incredulously to laughter and cheers. 

John McCain's new VP pick Sarah Palin took some digs at community organization itself, suggesting it lacked “actual responsibilities. “ The barb went over so well she’s started using it on the stump.

I don't get the joke.

In his early twenties, Barack Obama ran an organization in Chicago's impoverished South Side called Developing Community Projects. It was a church-based outfit that helped poor people get job training and prepared low-income kids for college.

How is this funny? In the mid-nineties I was an adult literacy tutor, and I worked for a nice guy named Dave who was a pudgy, middle-aged...community organizer.

There are small, community-based organizations doing valuable—even essential—work all over this country. Republicans used to say they were the party of local control and local solutions. What is a “faith-based initiative” if not an organization of people working toward the common good? Why are the Republicans mocking someone for running one of these organizations?

They imply that Obama is using his past as a community organizer to pad his resume. I don’t see it that way. He worked with DCP just after he graduated from college. After that he had a career as a law professor, a state legislator for the 13th district of Chicago, and a United States senator. His background as a grassroots organizer is instructive only insofar as it shows us what he cared about as a young man.

The attack on community organizers, however, is instructive in another way. It demonstrates the Republican insecurity about their ticket and their need to distract from it. Since John McCain is a career politician with a history of corruption reaching back to the Keating Five Scandal, his campaign has decided to trumpet their new VP pick as an agent of “change.” And while Sarah Palin has already demonstrated raw political skill, her much vaunted “executive experience” boils down to two things: her twenty months as governor of Alaska, a fine state which has fewer people than—just to pick one place at random—the 13th district of Chicago, and her two terms as mayor of a town which had, at the time, about the same number of folks as Walnut Ridge, Arkansas.

Maybe none of that matters, but next time you hear someone insulting “community organizers” put it in some historical context. In the early 1980s, Barack Obama was running an inner city program designed to help people stay off welfare. John McCain, at the time, was setting himself up for a rebuke from Congress for his part in the Savings and Loans scandals involving Charles Keating. And Sarah Palin's big accomplishment of the early eighties? Winning first runner-up in the Miss Alaska  contest.

Ok, so that's what I have to say about that, and by "I", I mean, "Jake, and I agree." Moving on... we bought our tickets to Mexico last night! YES! We're not going till January, but whatevs, having tickets is a big commitment and I'm totally stoked. We got 4 tickets, we clicked on the "purchase" button ceremoniously simultaneously and it was amazing. How? Oh, well, since you asked... we set up a sweet, fully early-90s, Zack Morris phone-style, conference call. Yeah, like the kind you had with your friends in junior high until 8:30 pm when phone time was over. Except this was with modern technology - cell phones and the internet. See below:

I called Adrian on my phone (the blue one), and Heather called Gin on her phone. We put them next to each other on speaker phone and did a lot of laughing and yelling. They're sort of spooning, phoning? Anyway, you can see our guidebook and airline ticket research. It was an official conference call and one that way, I might add, more productive than many I had as a consultant. 

Anyone been to Mexico City and cool 1-3 day long trips outside it? Input welcome. We're interested in beaches, weird sculptures, art, hiking, eating, drinking, and seeing things.

Yeah, I predicted David over Goliath

Today's brief/in-between-doing-homework-and-working blog entry is brought to you by me, sort of via John who copied and pasted an article called Christians learn the art of dating into our gchat a few minutes ago. Yes, I was just as captivated as you are now. The whole thing is worth reading, but, of course I will summarize my favorite part - Christian pick up lines - for you below...

1. Now I know why Solomon had 700 wives. He never met you.

2. Is this pew taken?

3. I just don't feel called to celibacy.

4. You float my ark.

5. I didn't believe in predestination until tonight.

6. My parents are home, wanna come over?

7. Is that a thinline, duo-tone, compact, ESV travel bible in your pocket?

8. Let me sell you an indulgence - it's a sin to look as good as you.

9. How many times do I have to walk around you before you fall for me?

10. I like to arrange the substantial Christian section of my bookshelf into alphabetical order. Coffee?

11. The name is Will. God's Will. 

And, what ended up happening was that I closed the original gchat to log into my blogging account so I (seriously) googled "christian pick up lines" in order to find the article again and came up with a million gems of information. I had one of those moments like I have when I see a really great cat video on YouTube and think, "ooohhhh, this is why the internet was invented."

Here's some of my favorite ones, from The Catholic-Pages: 

1. Nice bible.

2. God told me to come talk to you.

3. Oh you are cold, Ecclesiastes 4:11 (this will make Jake laugh out loud, the rest of us will have to google it).

4. Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?

5. You don't have an accountability partner? Me neither.

6. Is it a sin that you stole my heart?

7. Have you ever tried praying at a drive in movie before?

8. (for the ladies) Excuse me, I believe one of your ribs belongs to me.

9. My friend told me to come and meet you, he said that you are a really nice person. I think you know him. Jesus, yeah, that's his name.

10. You know, they say you have never really dated, until you have dated a christian

11. Yeah, I predicted David over Goliath

12. What? Friends listen to Amazing Grace in the dark.

And, finally, some more juicy selections from Real Christian Singles: 

1. Nice bracelet. What would Jesus date? I mean, "do"?

2. Want to practice speaking in tongues with me?

3. I don't see it, but some people think I look like Sampson

4. What's your name and number so I can add you to my "prayer" list?

5. Hey baby, you wanna take the church van for a spin?

6. God broke the mold when He made your sweet face.

7. (check a person's shirt tag) "just as I thought... made in heaven."

8. Excuse me but can I drinkith from your cupith?

9. If Eve was tempted by an apple then you must be my fruit.

People, I am copying this word for word. 

If anyone successfully uses one of these, please email me your story at: coseismicdislocation at gmail dot com and I will put it on the internet. Please. 

I'm not even sure what to blog about right now

I was thinking about some of these things:

1. the RNC, Sarah Palin, assholes

2. taking the bus for hours and hours like I've been doing this week

3. all the people that have tried to hand me Jesus-related literature on and around campus in the last two days

4. library school - thus far

5. getting re-addicted to coffee in a major way

And, possibly some other things. Like, for instance, I feel as though I did not accurately blog about my trip to the west coast. Is there such a thing as accurate blogging? Does it include text, videos, links and images? Some? All? None? Will this post pass the blog test if it doesn't have a picture? I've been inundated with questions like, "what is information?" this week and I knew I would be but its still new and weird and interesting and exciting (and, ok, sometimes a bit boring...).

Anyway, here's why I'm not going to write extended blog posts about the aforementioned five items....

1. Well, you can probably just read the news, read any news and they'll tell you about the Sarah Palin, et al. Duh, of course I hate her, but also.... I hate the scrutiny she's being put under. I hate it in the same theoretical-though-not-content-based way that I hated the scrutiny that Hillary Clinton was put under. I don't care if she's hot, or a mom, or her kids are preggers (though, I love that the right wing will flip out over that shit), I care about her politics. And, well, they - to be blunt - kinda suck. Unless you hate the environment. But, you can read about it. I don't have the time, patience, or brain space to intelligently summarize all the crap she's done tonight. Please people, let's focus on politics and not gender.

2. OMG! My commute... ok, ok, ok... I've ridden a LOT of public transportation in my life, for years and years and years (starting with the school bus in 1984), and I'm fairly good at adapting to it and reading schedules and getting to and fro in a timely fashion. I guess I'm just not used to millions of bus transfers. Which I'm doing now. It's annoying me and it's annoying me that it annoys me because tons of people do it everyday and work it into their lives and, frankly, I should just shut up. But, it's f-ing hot outside right now and I have textbooks to carry and I can't ever decide what to wear. Yeah, serious, real world problems - I got 'em.

3. Ok, so only 2 people have tried to hand me Jesus literature on campus today. I was nicer to them than I wanted to be. Just kidding.... I'm updating it to 3 people. I just got a nice, shiny flyer for a group called "The Gathering" that is meeting at 9pm tonight in the Stamp Baltimore Room. It's 8:58 and clearly I will not be attending. I didn't make that up for the sake of this blog post, either. If I had a scanner, I'd scan in the flyer and send it to you.

4. Library school will probably seep into my posts over the next few months (two years?). The first couple of classes I had were boring... they were sort of like going to environmental graduate school where I had to stop thinking in equations and start thinking more qualitatively and read and write stuff. Except there I at least had a content-based connection trickling down from undergrad... here, I have nothing. And, I don't know what information is, or what knowledge is, or the difference between the two, and I want to do math problems and not try to figure it out. Ok, I'm lashing out... I'll stop. I just came from what I think will be a really interesting course in reference. Using stuff to find stuff. I'll let you know how it goes.

5. Yeah, I work at a coffee shop now, have another part time job and am in school full time and need lots of time to get to and from each of these places via the buses. I'm totally hooked. I'm moving in high speed/anxiety mode all the time now (or, since Tuesday). 

See? None of those things were things I was ready to blog about in detail. But, I do want to keep blogging. I feel better just focusing on this and letting words and thoughts flow out instead of in. 

I learned about the Telegraph's Weird News today from someone I have all three of my classes with. We read some articles together in between classes and it was great. For instance, I read about an elephant who became addicted to heroin which is sad, very sad, but he got clean! After months of methadone injections. See? Who needs the damn conventions? And, also about some trans women living together as lesbians. Kind of like Lisa, the lesbian man on the L Word who was also Brian Krakow in MSCL which was a completely amazing TV moment for me. But, these people are real. And, also they have great taste in sweaters.  

So, that's that. Now, its 9:12 and I missed The Gathering meeting and I'm ready to go home and need to go find Heather...

Neglect/the First Week of School

I know, I know... I started a blog so I could learn about blogging before I started school. I am about to start school and I don't know much more about blogging than I did when I started this thing. Sigh. I hope that will change, but for now, I've been very busy with life. The non-internet variety I suppose.

I made another huge list, as I tend to do. I have been feeling busy-to-the-point-of-overwhelmed with the re-entry from the west coast/getting ready for school. Plus, I became totally addicted to coffee once again. I had the worst headache yesterday and couldn't figure out why until I drank coffee and felt immediately better. What does that mean?

I'm not ready for school. It starts on Wednesday and I have homework in books that I haven't gotten yet. That is basically how the past week has been going. I think last week at this time, Sarah and I were lunching in the Pearl in Portland. It sounds sorta fancy, and maybe it was, but right afterwards we went to a dive bar and met some characters. Sarah also kicked my ass at Ms. Pacman.

Now I'm sitting in my room, I haven't left the house and its a holiday because I am working. Ok, well, I'm blogging instead of working right now, but you know what I mean.

Portland and Olympia were really great. I spent two lovely weeks feeling right at home among friends and geography. I think I have come to determine that my life's interests and things of importance are split between the coasts - very little overlap. Big things and little things like going swimming in Puget Sound on the Evergreen campus.

And then going to UMD during a football game and being swarmed with drunk 18 year old dudes wearing red t-shirts. Are these really both my colleges? This is kind of what both the trip there and back were/are like for me. I did all the things that I love to do in the northwest and all the things you're supposed to do - drink coffee, microbrews, go to house shows, see friends' bands play, see mountains, swim, hike, and, well, hang out. But, it seemed like a lot more, in a non-internet/blog-y way. So, if you want to know what I was up to aside from hiking and getting swarmed by wasps, check out trip photos here and here.

So, check back soon.  I hope to be less scattered, more caught up, more excited about the East coast and less homesick for the West one. I'll maybe have some school updates, stories of the C2 Metro Bus, frat boys, football fans, library students, and being back in school in general.