Sorry it's been a while since I've put something up. I've been busy!

Very busy. Between the working and the flying home and Radcliffe dying retiring and the long search for a house, a search which ended Monday in the same location that it had almost ended in a bloody month sooner, before I first balked on not seeing the place and then decided that being about a half hour closer to all my friends (one friend in particular) was worth the extra $X a month in rent. It still might have been worth it. Given I'm only here for four months, and in January (hopefully), Sara and I will have our own place (or maybe split our own place with a friend), it still might be worth it in the future. But given it didn't happen, I'm now in my own room, in Rockville, MD.

It's...

It's not a bad roo, don't get me wrong. It's a bit warm now, and it was too cold earlier, and it's hard to read what the kitchen stove is telling me about the knobs, and... well, it's basic. It's great, really. I just need to get settled. And maybe a dresser or shelves or something.

The problem... Well, there's a couple things. For starters, Radcliffe is inoporable, leaving about twenty five hundred songs inacessible. At the same time, I've lost the cord for my shuffle, so even the (ten hours of) podcasts on my new laptop (currently nameless) are... tethered. And the temp agency is still letting me know about work next week and...

I don't know. I'm just sort of rootless at the moment. What have I accomplished today? Not too much. Certainly not the things I'd intended to do. And yesterday was kind of similar, although at least then I got to see Sara.

On the bright side, my alarm is set reasonably early in the morning tomorrow, and I've got a text file full of things I need to do. Tomorrow is a better day. Let's hope I can seize it.

I need to write more. Because writing this was decidedly unsatisfactory.

Yes, I know I'm not very good at keeping this thing updated. Life is pretty busy, but enjoyable here, though, so I don't really have the time. And the internet sucks.

Which is a problem. Because I'm looking for housing, and it's really hard to do it if you need to reload the page every few minutes.

Still, I've seen a few prospects. Some rooms that aren't... well, I'm not really sure what my price range is, because my job plans at the moment are "Temp, and look for jobs". But I'm saving a good amount of money here, and I think I'll be able to earn enough to pay, say, $800 in rent without starving.

The problem is, of course, that I don't know how to phrase a request for the relatively few rooms I've found which are less than a thousand dollars a month. "Hi. I'm quiet and don't smoke or drink, and I can probably make rent and maybe give you bread, but I'm not sure I can commit to a year-long lease." That's what I've got so far. And it's true, and honest, and as compelling as a novel about termites. And I'm not seeing that many rooms that I know I can afford.

I ought to look for a roommate, I guess. But everyone I know has already figured out their housing situation.

Argh. I'm just stressed, and worried about it all. Because I do not want to go live at home in the fall. Because I love my family. But I need a job which will lead to other jobs. I need to be with my friends. I need to stay in the same MTA as the girl I love.

And to do these things, I need a roof over my head. And an Internet which will let me find one..

Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me would make me feel better. If it would just bloody download...
Seriously. Much better connection in Beijing.

Today, the weather is beautiful.

This was a bit surprising, I must say; the past week and a half, the weather has been utterly wretched: cold and wet and cloudy, and the Employee Dining Room flooded. Yesterday, I was persisting in jokes at work about how buisness was bound to pick up once the weather improved.

In July.

But then, at about six in the morning, Sara nudged me to wakefullness* and pointed to the window. Through the crack in the window frame, we could see a miraculous stripe of blue. The sun had risen without a shroud. Montana's fabled Big Sky was no longer a mess of clouds.

It was the most beautiful day I could remember

*Strictly speaking, I probably was already awake, or at least easily roused. Sara's not the kind to wake a person whose sleep is needed.

Two Sundays ago was graduation. And it was... well, a ceremony. And I got a little case for business cards I don't have and a folder that they're going to turn into a diploma eventually and a renewed, swiftly buried belief that the four year stretch I'd just ended were by no means the equal of my potential, that graduating in four years with only one sub-B grade was nothing compared to the all-As, With Honors In Literature tour d'force that it could have been.

But I'm not talking about that.

Anyway, it was nice. My whole family was there: Basil came down from Drew, Calvin from University of Vermont, Mom came down with Zoe, and Dad and Connie. And it was good to see everyone, good to see some small level of reconciliation between my mom and stepmom.

And then, it was over; everyone packed into cars and vanished (annoyingly, leaving me still holding onto the program and pseudodiploma, both of which I'd want but would prefer to have elsewhere), Sara and I went to buy hiking boots and then to Guapos with our friend Rachel, and then we went back into the room and started throwing the last thousand things into duffel bags and rolling bags and trash bags.

At some point, it became all-too-clear that I was going to have to put off finishing Wizard and Glass for a few months. This is the second time I've had this problem.

We ended up passing out at midnight, then waking up at quarter-to-five, hauling all our stuff down and out into a Washington rainstorm, and getting onto a Super Shuttle which got us to BWI long before the Canada Air terminal was even open.

The rest of the trip over wasn't really anything that intersting: the flight from Baltimore to Toronto was on this little fifty-four seater where even carryon luggage got checked, and we had a little trouble making sure our bags were following us to Calgary. But otherwise, we were fine. Even the minor confusion about whether we were actually getting picked up in Calgary was resolved in a couple phone calls in the Toronto Airport.

So, it wasn't all that long before (at long last) we found ourselves in Calgary, headed towards the bagage. An oldish man from Arkasas held a St. Mary sign, and we headed towards him. His name was Bob; he was our ride.

We weren't the best of charges, I'm afraid. Our only defense is that we were exhausted after the flight and the lacking of sleep. And so we watched the scenery, which was...

I'm a writer. I should be able to do this. But it's hard to really capture just how far you could see, the way that tiny black lines on the horison turned into wind power stations hundredws of feet tall. The way that you could see the windbreaks that occasionally cropped up and think that they were not only agriculturally immportant, but psychologically necessary, to establish something besides the road and the house and the places where the tiling of the soil produced slightly different hues of crop. The way you could see a rainstorm ten, twenty, fifty miles away.

And then, as the miles wore on, and on: the mountains came into view.

Montana. Whoever named it was not exactly the most subtle of people; I can imagine him naming the Sahara "Sand". I don't have too much time, but lte me just say that I'm looking at a mountain and I'm increasingly aware that we don't really make them like this back East. We've got some pretty nice hills, I guess. But what we've got here? The real McCoy.

St. Mary itself is pretty nice. There's a good mix of people here. I haven't gotten close to any of them yet, but its coming along; Sara keeps talking about trying to get some sort of RPG together, which would be awesome. But even if that doesn't work, I think I'll be fine socially. I may just need to drink a bit more is all.

And the work... Well, it was kinda boring for the first couple weeks. Mostly opening boxes and taking inventory and such, which isn't bad, but isn't really the thing I take joy in. But on Monday, I finally got to work at the Curly Bear, the cafe that I was hired to work at.

And I remembered how much I love customers.

No sarcasm: I really am enjoying it: asking people where they came from, making sure that I have orders right (Medium rare, no cheese), smiling at the kids. The tipping is kind of short, and there's been more than a few slow hours (an amount that'll go down as the season picks up) which are boring as hell, but otherwise, I'm enjoying work.

Will I go stir crazy? Maybe. But I'm cautiously optimistic.

I'll say more in later posts; I will make them, I promise. But right now, I've got a beautiful girl sitting a few feet away, reading Cold Mountain. And she doesn't know it, but she needs to be kissed.

Things Sara is apparently being paid to do: keep me off kilter, confuse me, "pretend to be my girlfriend"

They're getting their moneys worth. The question then becomes why I buy dinner for her if I'm already funding it.

Does it mean anything when, in a card she'd given you congratulating you for graduating, the professor who gave your literature thesis a C tells you that you might enjoy studying psychology?

One day until graduating. One night more of packing. Monday, I will be not with the crazi

It's been May Day all day today?!?

The one day I don't look at a calendar...

A year ago, I was going to graduate American University with University Honors in Literature.

Six months ago, I was going to graduate American University with University Honors in Literature.

Heck, three months ago, I was going to graduate American University with University Honors in Literature.

Today? Today I gave Professor Noble my thesis. Thirty five pages of thesis. Ignoring a couple incomplete works of fiction, it's the longest thing I've ever put my name on.

And it's terrible.

Don't argue, I know it is. The argument behind it lacks complexity, the amount of interaction with criticism is entirely insufficient, and when I tried to deal in the paper with a question Professor Loesberg asked me on Lit Day, I got through two pages before I realized that what I was saying had remarkably little to do with Kant, the actual point of the thesis. If Professor Noble hadn't told me last week that I had a weak-but-passing thesis, I'd be worried that I wouldn't graduate, that I'd have to fix the thesis over the summer or the fall, or redo the entire ordeal next spring—and at a sizable financial cost in any event.

That's not true, actually: I am still half-convinced that despite what I remember Noble saying, I'm still not passing, that the ultimately minor fixes I made between the rough draft and final reflect negatively on a paper which needed at least ten pages more actual, substantive argument.

The problem is this: I'm burned out. It isn't that I don't care about the paper: despite any appearances to the contrary, I know the paper is weak, and I tried to get it right. But I couldn't: I read Dickens criticism and Kant criticism, I tried to find the more complex argument that I know is out there. But my brain refuses to work on a thesis which half the brain is sick to the death of. The spirit was willing; the mind, however, has been plumb tuckered out for the past week.

A big part of it was the fact that I changed my thesis back in January. And that's part of it, don't get me wrong; but it feels like an excuse. And I have a beautiful girlfriend and a great social life, things which are fantastic but take time themselves. But I can't blame my thesis on those, either: I'm hardly the only person to have them, and it's not like they take up so much time that I couldn't have gotten it work done as well. I don't even have a job; why wouldn't

I should be smarter than this. I should be better than this.

I'm in the Honor's program. I'm smart. I earned my credits. I just needed fifty pages to get honor's credit for the thesis, to get University Honors in Literature. And I had thirty-five pages. Seven-tenth of what I'd needed. Fifteen more pages would have been a lot of writing. It would have required..., well, actually having a point to the bloody thesis.

And then I point out that I did what was required of me. The best I could do. I got through, earned my BA in four years with a good GPA. Nothing outstanding, but I don't have to be outstanding. Plenty of people take longer, and do worse. Getting through should be enough. Being average should be enough.

It's all true. I know it is

But I don't believe it. And I'm not sure I'd want to, even if I could.

I turned it in, apologizing to Professor Noble, and Professor Leonard (who wouldn't have much to do with my paper if it wasn't supposed to be an Honor's thesis, but I was just apologizing anyway), and then went down the stairs of Battelle. The building I'd been avoiding for the past month, because I couldn't deal with all the professors I owed things to. It was over. My eyes had a trace of tears, my stomach was churning, my shoes were soaked with rain. But, for better or worse, I was done.

I'll feel better with a nice long sleep, and a good run on the eliptical.
And maybe a novel in the sun, or a

The thing about presenting a paper at Lit Day is that you make it all look easy.

Over the past few months, every student has gone from some degree of scratch, reading texts and critics and commentary and philosophy and history, and slowly building up an intellectual construct in their head that is The Paper. And all that gets lost in the mess under the bed when you finally start talking about what the construct looks like.

This means two things. First, everyone else is a towering genius, presenting an incredibly fleshed out work of staggering genius. "Jesse Custer is a Promethain figure!" "Banned books are censored for the very reasons students should read them!" "Metafiction is Awesome!" Fine. Ben's argument was a lot more interesting than that.

Second: you don't feel brilliant. You sit there with the notes you dashed out last night about Kantian themes in Dickens and feel like a sham. Because hey, any idiot can point out that Estella and Pip are both seen as the means to an end by Havisham and Magwitch, which directly causes them to lack a sense of agency, a sense of agency Pip only regains by having his own status as an end acknowledge by Herbert Pocket and Wemmick.

That's obvious.

The mess under the bed does not exist for everyone but you. Everything has become second nature in your work, while everything other people have done is as foreign as Zanzibar. It's a weird sort of dichotomy where you can look at your thoughts and say "Yeah, I guess that's all right. But look at what that guy said! I wish I could think things like that."

And at the same time? He's thinking the same thing about you.

Also: after, there was a Lit Day Barbecue at Anna Finn's house.

And I've come to the conclusion that... well, there may be something energizing about hanging out with other people of your major. Something which, for Lit Majors, doesn't really happen prior to senior year, since everyone loves a lit class. But Senior Year, all the lit majors take two classes. Two classes which invite, nay, require, out-of-class festivities. And something seems to happen at them.

It might just be that I don't go to enough parties (something I'll readily admit); especially parties with people I know reasonably well; especially parties that don't have Super Smash Brothers Brawl. But at the lit social gatherings I've been to...

Well, there's a common language among lit majors. We know books. We've read too much criticism. We don't have job prospects. We have mixed feelings about MFA programs. We're snobs about books we don't like, but have more "guilty pleasures" than we can keep track of. There are constants which invite discussion. And so discussion ensues. Some of it what one would expect. Others... well, more specific.

Instance: I had a conversation about The Name of the Rose, and about how Umberto Eco apparently meant the first hundred pages as a test to find out what readers had the endurance to get to the really good parts, and whether that was a valid choice for a writer.

I don't know if it's just me. Does this happen to history majors? If I were the fly on the wall at a party for SIS seniors, would I hear scintillating comments about the breakdown of Westphalian sovereignty? Or is it just that I've been to too few parties, and that people have been having enlightening conversations all around me that I'd just fail to hear?

I don't know. But I'm out of here in a few short weeks. Once I'm gone, I'm going to need to find out.

Because somehow, against all the odds, I find myself leaving college the one thing I'd never thought I'd become: a people person.

Also a sangria person, apparently. That is some nice drunkenness.

The Discovery Channel is made of joy.
This commercial is The Discovery Channel concentrated.
■ This commercial is joy concentrate:

I don't know. It's in part because, hey, Mythbusters. But also because... Well, The World is Just Awesome.

Never forget. Never.

Hat tip dimethirwen

Having done two ten-minute talks about my thesis today—once at Lit Day, where all Lit Capstones are presented, and one at the 2008 Honors Capstone Conference, where Honors students present their work—plus a slightly longer one at the CAS Student Research Conference in Katzen a few weeks ago, I've come to the conclusion that I'd really be much better off if I could just go with the ten minute presentation, which is apparently pretty good, rather than the forty-odd page paper, which is... currently less than stellar.

But... well, it's never that easy, is it?

Fortunately, I've got... well, some time. Not buckets of it, perhaps, but...

As I may have mentioned before, I'm a bit of an NPR Most Emailed Stories junkie. So: I was listening to a story about video game music, specifically with regards to the hit orchestral tour, Video Games Live.

And now I want a copy of Carmina Burana. Because they played a clip of it, before they played a clip of Myst III that it inspired. And... damn.

I also kind of want to play the games they talked about. But that's neither here nor there.

I'm writing this, in part, because I can't concentrate on the reading packet by my left elbow. And because... well, I keep meaning to write this. I keep meaning to write a bunch of things, stories and papers and essays, and I just can't summon the time for the ones that I want or the concentration for the ones that academia needs.

Well, I can't get the concentration right now. And so I'm making the time.

A month until graduation. A month; Sunday the Eleventh, to be exact. 2:PM. It's startling and terrifying, in part because of all the stuff I need to do in order to assure it goes off without a hitch, and in part because... well, what happens next?

The more less more scary part first. In part because I'll know how it works out sooner.

My Thesis. It... I honestly don't know if it'll be where it needs to be when it needs to be there. As it stands... well, it's long and I think detailed but it need more secondary criticism and more Kant throughout the whole thing and I'm almost sick to death of the whole thing. The upshot is that there is almost no way that it won't be long enough to be the Honor's length of 50 pages.

The downshot is that it's going to need a lot of not only writing, but reading—reading critics—in order to get a grade that lets me actually graduate.

And then there's the other stuff, two papers I need to write and one that I'll need to revise and a story that needs revision for the creative writing course. It's not going to be a pleasant couple weeks, I'm thinking

So, I think it's understandable that I've spent a pitifully small amount of time on the next step.

I mean, I applied for positions at a handful of publishing houses. I didn't hear back from any of them. But hey, I'm not entirely surprised; the "Work" portion of my resume is troubling.

Which is just one more reason for me to be so thankful for Sara.

A couple summers ago, you see, Sara worked retail at Yellowstone. And, according to her, it was a great time. So, she started looking into going west this summer as well. And, seeing that I hadn't figured out what I was doing next month, why didn't I try to join her in Montana?

Why didn't I?

A few months doing minimum wage labor full time, exploring the wilderness with the woman you love, and trying to find some more long-term source of income when you actually have the mental energy to do it? It makes perfect sense.

I'm still apprehensive. But then, I'm always apprehensive; here, the apprehension is mostly because it's not a career right out of college, an expectation which plenty of graduates don't fulfill. And because it's a new experience; despite my own wishes to the contrary, I'm not good at new experiences.

On the other hand, I have always wanted to... well, to see a part of the US west of Ohio.

So, in a month, if all goes well, I graduate. And then, again if all goes well, I should be headed to Glacier National Park. And I'll be there until late August.

And after that?

I don't know. After I graduate, nothing looks certain. There's nothing to do but feel your way out, one stepping stone at a time. And I'm trusting that there will always be another rock to jump to.

And if I miss? If despite my best efforts, I stumble in the leap I should be stretching for right now?

I've only been able to find one, uncomforting answer to give myself:
"Don't."

You can do it, buddy! We're gonna make it!
Hold tight, Fred.

So, like many well-adjusted young men, I have an entirely healthy and proper enthusiasm, love, and affection for the opus of Disney's designated hiter, Pixar.

They've put out a new trailer, a real one, for their latest work, WALL-E. And, I'm slightly shocked to report...

It's adorable. Seriously: I was intrigued by the fact that it was going to be dialogue-lite, and wasn't sure what to expect beyond brilliance, but the trailer makes the titular robot to be the cutest thing in movies since Lilo (and God knows I can't get enough of Lilo), even before we get into the idea of adorable robot couples . And there's a real sense of sweep to this trailer, beyond the mere existance of Earth-That-Was.

So, yay.

Now... I wish I could really say back to homework...

Mage is wow.

The story is this: having not played a role-playing game since Fall of 2006, and really really wanting to (plus, of course, super-double-special not having time to run one), I was looking foreward to actually being in an RPG this semester. And when, at the first big AU Gamers meeting of the semester, RPGs were discussed and John (who doesn't actually go here, but is a friend of a former AU Student) asked if anyone wanted to be in a campaign of Mage: The Ascension, I was all over that.

Mostly because I was really jonesing for a game, but also in part because I'd heard promising things about the game Mage itself, I was all over this. There was another thing which made it extra-interesting though: a method John used (in part) for starting the plot. It's elegantly simple: make a three-by-three grid. Three good things that could happen to your character; three bad things. And three things... well, interesting things. Good, bad... who could say? He said he'd try to incorporate one idea per category per character into the game.

The reason I like this, beyond the obvious fact that now there is a small but distinct chance that Alex Trent (my character) will get to torch the office building of an evil organization (or, alternatively, find himself in Oz), is that it establishes the game as being about characters, rather than mere events (something that has not really been true in any D&D game I've played). Which seems to make sense for Mage, a game that seems heavily imbued in individual characters actions.

So, the game began in February. Ben, Sara, and I had no flipping clue how Mage went. John, Arthur, and dj_tristan (Dave) were old hands. Which seems an advantage to us all, actually, because when people are throwing around jokes about Paradox and Nephandi and whatnot, it's best to just absorb all the data you can. And there is a lot of data.

Mage, simply put, posits the idea that the world exists as it does because the mass of men expect it to, and that certain "Awakened" beings, capable of believing something different, can ignore this: witches and shaman and ritualists and mad scientists and (somehow) cyberpunks, all trying to make sense of the world and counteract a Technocracy which had made "reason" the default, magic sparse, and the "Traditions" deeply in hiding. This world, incidentally, is the World of Darkness, which also has werewolves and vampires and whatnot also running about. Complicated, complicated, complicated. But really compelling.

Also: the magic is free-form. You have points in nine different spheres of magic (Time and Matter and Correspondence and Entropy), and then you just try to combine the magic to see what happens. Light a candle without a match? That's Forces 2! Wake up someone who was knocked unconscious? That may be Mind 2, although nobody ever managed it.

Anyway. There's five characters: Jane (aka Serendipity), a Verbena (aka Wiccan); Raven, a Euthantos (sort of a death cult that believes in death coming to those whose Time Has Come), Triste, a Hollow (they figure out how magic works as they go along, and are apparently kinda emo about it), Dante, who is both a Hermetic (big, ornate, rituals) and a Chorister (prayers to angels); and Me. Alex Trent, the intern to a PI and (after some consideration... A Dreamspeaker. A shaman.

(If I ever play a second Mage campaign, incidentally, I'd try for less of a disconnect between their view of the world pre-Awakening and post. I mean, I like Trent as I end up liking all characters, but he really wasn't the kind of guy who'd expect to find himself conversing with a Coyote).

Anyway. The game began pretty slowly: Trent got asked by the Private Investigator he worked for (Phillip Spade) to help him get a body from a motorcycle accident back to his house. (It seemed reasonable at the time). Then he went to breakfast, where (it turned out) Ben's character had just Awakened by giving his philandering boyfriend permanent impotence, then fainting. Then, that night, he saw a bunch of women (including Sara's character) heading towards Spade's house; he frightened them off, only to get LSD (well, actually just pepper, but it seemed like LSD) thrown in his eyes, allowing him to see the Spirit version of the world. And then he found out that his boss was a Buddhist religious fanatic who occasionally killed people and who had just pulled Dave's character, killed in a motorcycle accident, out of her own grave.

Busy day.

Needless to say, Trent spent the next (very confusing) day trying to convince himself that the previous day didn't happen. Without much success. By the end of that day/session, he resigned himself to his fate, with a promise from Spade that he'd find some sort of spirit guide. This was all in the second session, which was enjoyable and allowed almost all the characters to sorta-meet each other, but at the same time didn't really get Trent where I wanted him to be. So for the third session, which picked up some days later, I simply declared him to be a bit more chill.

Which was fortunate. Because he spent all of the third session dealing with Drums-All-Day, a somewhat out-there Native American spirit-talker who ended up guiding him into the spirit realms after destroy all his cigarettes. Which was a trip and

(Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, far more interesting things were going on. Triste, Ben's character, was questioned too closely by a man in a grey suit who (Spade had semi-fortunately warned him) was clearly part of the Technocracy. Freaked, Triste ran back to Spade's house, where he was hidden in the basement for a day. The next day, a cop searched the place, and Triste stabbed him, locked him in the basement, then ran; Jane (who was there at the time, having followed a lay-line back to Spade's house), then watched as his partner, hearing the cop trying to get out, started beating on a Spade who wouldn't let him investigate . And, to make the whole mess complete, Jane panicked and—screaming "Make it stop" in her mind—gave the cop a mild heart-attack.

(I know, this is all really confusing. Again, it made sense at the time. And I haven't had enough sleep for good prose; maybe I'll fix it?)

Then we had today. Where, while Trent was exploring the Spirit realm and learning their custom and tongue, a council of war was being held between Spade, Sir Percival (a Hermetic who was training Arthur's character, Dante. Who has barely been mentioned before here because Trent hadn't seen him set his dorm-room on fire, get kidnapped, and spend hours reading thick Hermetic textbooks), and the non-Alden PCs over what to do with the two cops locked in the basement and the fact that the Technocracy now knew where Spade (a threat because he was Awakened) lived. The first step of their plan was to re-cap the Node there; Nodes are naturally ocurring sources of Magic, and the cap that was supposed to keep it hidden wasn't working very well any more.

Trent, who had gotten a call on his cell-phone-that-turned-into-a-spider-I'm-not-making-this-up-I-swear, arrived at the house just in time to watch it go up in flames. Percival, who had taken the node-recaping on himself, had botched a crucial role, causing himself to almost explode with the extra magic.

All the PC's escaped the blast. And, quasi-working together, they all were able to get the two unconscious mentors/NPCs out before the building collapsed in a wall of flame. Trent'll escaped with relatively minor burns, that the hospital would take care of in a couple days.

Then he had to run off from the paramedics, after getting information about a suspicious-seeming one from Coyote in exchange for monkeying around with a fire hose. This is a funny game as well. (And, because of

And I don't know how you get the skills to run this kind of thing. Because I don't think it's from D&D. All the campaigns I've been in (all four of them) have seemed so... linear. It's an entirely different experience; John didn't even know that the house was going to be destroyed until he rolled the dice, and I wouldn't have faulted him for pretending they hadn't happened. But he took it, and he rolled with it, and said nothing more besides that now he can reuse all the stuff he'd planned for this week, next time.

Mage is awesome, man. But only when done right.

And Trent still hasn't said two words to Dante. Which amuses me.

Remember a couple weeks back, when Barack Obama publicly thanked Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam and an occasional racist, for his endorsement? Remember how, when the press called him on it, Obama refused to do more than say he obviously didn't agree with all of Farrakhan's views?

No?

The reason you don't remember it is because it didn't happen. Obama has, in fact, rejected and denounced Farrakhan's racist statements. Obama didn't welcome the endorsement of a noted racist.

I must be thinking of John McCain.

A couple weeks ago, McCain publicly accepted the endorsement of televangelist (and professional crazy man) John Hagee. And when I say crazy, I mean it. This is a man who believes , in Jerusalem Countdown, that the Holocaust was God's plan to bring the Jews back to Israel (an important step in ending the world), and that "It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews... that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day." Who claimed that the Koran contains a mandate telling Muslims to kill Jews and Christians. Who thinks that Katrina was a judgement of New Orleans.

McCain, again, has "distanced" himself from Hagee: While Hagee "supports what I stand for and believe in," McCain insists that this "does not mean that I endorse everything that he stands for and believes in". But what is that? Skimming Hagee's Wikipedia page (perhaps not the best source of information), there is nothing especially positive which catches the eye. Hagee is willing to attack Iran. Hagee hates homos, hates heresy, hates Harry, hates ; doubtless, Hagee hates homo habilis as well. Hagee expects and longs for the end of the world.

Well, you get the idea.

The thing which really infuriates me about this, though, is not just that McCain—who, truth be told, there is a part of me that wants to like—it's not that he is trying to have Hagee's endorsement without having all the connotations that come with it. It's not that the media gave more flack to Obama for not a strong enough rejection than McCain for an acceptance. It's not even that, for all it's many failings, the Nation of Islam has more potential to improve inner cities than ten John Hagees, and one should be able to endorse that without endorsing the occasional bigotry of the NOI's leadership, while Hagee has nothing to speak for himself besides being more openly racist than most of the Christian right.

The thing that infuriates me is that the parts of Hagee's theology which make him stand out from the pack are entirely batshit. And a sizable part of the electoraate believes them. In 2002, Time ran a cover story on the Left Behind books, including a poll where 59% believed the Book of Revelations would come true, and a quarter which thought that September 11th was predicted in the Bible. (Nobody, apparently, was asked to point it out). These beliefs are crazy.

And if you make friends with just enough crazy (not enough for normal people to catch on, just enough crazy to let the crazies know you're on their side) sometimes you can crazy your way to power.

I've like John McCain, from time to time. But if he's going to give bad people the aura of respectability, then to hell with him.

Also: if he has sex with prostitutes, call it that. The only people who is "involved in a prostitution ring" are the ones who run it.

So, at a stupid-late hour, I realize that I'd forgotten to finish a close reading for my African American Lit class. With a groan, I got to work, putting on iTunes and playing Automatic for the People. Because, you know. I hadn't heard it a while.

The poem in question was "Full Moon", by Robert Hayden. The close reading looks at how the poem seems ambivalent about the way a materialist view of the Moon has replaced the mythic view of a lunar goddess. Good stuff, and soon Bed...

Suddenly, I stopped. Huh. I thought to myself. I'm listening to "Man on the Moon."

I've been listening to "Man on the Moon" for four minutes, and I only just now made a connection.

Yes. Soon Bed indeed.

Next week's Spring Break is going to be so much worse than it should be if I don't really get my act together...

There is, at this point in my mind, no beating The Order of the Stick at its own game. No way, no how. This is a remarkable strip in part because of how slowly it's remarkable qualities sneak up upon you. Reading the first hundred or so strips, you can see the characters gain complexity, watch Rich Berlew slowly master his craft and refine his bare-bones style. But there is almost nothing to suggest that he'd achieve he sort of emotional resonance achieved in, say, "Innocent Man" (for my money, one of the stand-out strips. Which is sort of an odd concept; it's not as though I talk about stand-out chapters in books, much less pages). Similarly (though less importantly) the plot has grown

But that's not what I'm here to talk about.

What I'm going to talk about is Erfworld. A little more than a year ago, it popped up on the navagation bar, below Order of the Stick, immediately gaining readers in the same way that the shows between Friends and Will and Grace did. And...

Well, at first, it wasn't much to look at. Admittedly, part of the problem was the same as the problem that said shows would have: whatever you think of Friends, it had enough fans that to go from. less than gold will seem like lead. And, Erfworld didn't do itself any immediate favors: it was more graphic-novel style than webcomic style—pages were not self-contained, there was no promise of a punchine to be found. We got that it took place in a turn-based strategy game pretty quickly, but the rules were unclear. And, for that matter, so was a lot about the setting. We'd learn drabbles about it, but one of Vonnegut's rules applied here: clearing up these sorts of questions is useful, but less interesting than actual character or plot development. And, there was the simple fact that starting in media res is a difficult trick in any case, much less at two pages a week. Erfworld wasn't bad at the start, exactly. It just... was.

But slowly, things have been turning around. The exposition has been greatly improved, for one thing; Parson (the requisite Trapped In Another World character) occasionally has a "Klog" of notes about Erfworld. And, obviously, as the plot advances we find out that there's more to the supporting characters than we'd expected.

Which brings us to today's strip. Tenth panel. Bogroll, who has been the ultimate doormat since Day One, is asked by Parson (the main character, probably the only person to be sympathetic to him the entire story thus far) what he wanted in life. Bogroll considers:

"To save your life, my Lord."

It's simple, and obvious, yet somehow moving. Bogroll is a soldier, after all: to save the more important units is his sole purpose. But we know that there's more to it than that. He doesn't want to save the Warlord. He wants to save Parson.

And Parson, a man whose life two days ago had no meaning whatsoever, has no idea how to take it.

It may not always have seemed it, but Erfworld is going places. Not to the heights of the OotS, though. It has its own mountain to climb. Which is something that Rob Balder should be proud of.

Now, to run across campus to class. Yay, lateness!

On Thursday last, I slowly working my way through The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Yes, it's exactly as dense and complicated as it sounds. Truth in Advertising; what a concept.

It's sort of what my thesis is looking like it will be, sort of, if you squint just right: a look at redemption in Great Expectations, Les Miserables, and The Count of Monte Cristo through the lens of Kantian morality. It still isn't where it should be by now; there's a text, a theme, and even a lens, but I still don't have a fucking question to answer. That's what I need. A... well, a thing to say.

Anyway: Thursday. I'm in the Davenport, reading Kant, and thinking. You have to think, honestly; with Kant, half the time is spent rereading sentences and trying to process them.

And then, suddenly, I have it! There is an idea in my head oh my god oh my god and as fast as I can I flip open Radcliffe power him up and start wri...

It's gone. If there ever was something—not necessarily a thesis, but a thread that I could follow—it's vanished like . I wrote a bit, trying to recapture it, but all I got was less than a page about divine command theory, the sort of thought which I could have without literally spending all of Thursday reading Kant.

Rome was built brick by brick, I suppose. The problem at the moment is first figuring out what to do with this clay. And, to be honest, a lot of the time these days, I don't know how, or even if this building is ever going to get built..

Those are the scariest times of all.

And that's aside from six other things I ought to be doing. My work ethic, such as it is, is in the toilet so far this semester.

Sorry about the delay. Damned writer's strike.
Not that that has anything to do with the price of tea in China, but...
Well, actually, the strike might affect the price of coffee in Los Angeles.
OK, digression over.

There used to be a time when being up at one in the morning was normal. Somehow, though, I've swung the other way.

It's now 1:15 1:42. I should be almost wide away; instead, I'm falling asleep as I sit here, trying to write a couple pages about... I don't even remember any more

I just can't focus is the thing. I need to, God knows: even if I didn't want this semester to be brilliant academically—even if I would consent to stoop to a whimpering end to academia rather than the bang I'd sought (and I choose never to stoop), and give up the "with Honors" which I deserve to earn—even then, I still have to write a fucking twenty five page Lit paper. And that's not enough. I am an Honors Student! I must rise above the pack! I expect fifty pages; I insist on them!

The problem is that I'm already four months behind.

The project which I'd written a prospectus for over the fall semester (Sword for Hire, a novel which blends the thematic concerns of the Western with the motifs of the Fantasy—that is, Firefly with swords) has been scrapped. Basically because the two projects were a bad match for each other (the resulting hybrid doubtlessly too literary to be what I wanted to write, and not literary enough to be what the Lit department had expected to read), and because I generally have more faith in my expository skills than my storytelling ones when we hit crunch time, and because, on some level, it's easier to give them academia. So now I'm writing about redemption in Les Miserables, Monte Christo, and Great Expectations. Or planning to, anyway.

What I'm really doing is ignoring the whole thing. Because there are fifty thousand insects buzzing in my mind and a Presidential candidate a thousand yards away and God, does that mountain look daunting from the base camp.

And then there are the little flashes of other things I could write about. Look; it's Buffy! Hey; there's a loss-of-innocence theme in "The Imported Bridegroom"; I wonder what other stories have this kind of idea. This writing prompt reminds me of Abraham and Issac (the "Highway Sixty-One Revisted" part of the Bible); how about I rewrite a bunch of Bible stories to show the basic amorality and cruelty of the Judeo-Christian God?

But I've already scrapped one plan. Already written a broadish outline for a three-part battleplan (fifteen pages on each book seems doable, when you're not doing it yet). Already got a mentor who's pointed out that since the novels are on the line between Romanticism and Realism, I should look at the redemptions in part as social commentary. The ideas I can't keep look shiny; but the quantum states are always limitless until you finally figure out where the electron is. That can't keep you from finally collapsing the sodding wave function.

So, there we have it: the die is cast. Time to start moving the pieces.

The internet is for JSTOR.