fearlesstemp: (mr. smith and saunders)
I just came across someone on LJ who posted saying that they didn't know whether to support Obama or Clinton on Tuesday, could people please try to convince them? It was too tempting for me to pass up, and so I ended up typing up this long-ass list of why I'm supporting Hillary Clinton, which I'm going to include here under a cut tag, mostly because if I don't and she goes on to lose Super Tuesday, I will totally believe it was my fault for not posting this list. Kind of like how my brother's been wearing the same sweatshirt every Sunday since the Giants started winning.

First things first: I'm a registered, die-hard Democrat who will support whoever wins the nomination. My reasons for supporting Hillary Clinton are kind of light on policy because I feel that she and Obama are pretty close on policy - so close that their differences wouldn't be enough to swing me one way or the other. My loyalty is, first and foremost, to the platform of the Democratic party, which I believe has the best ideas when it comes to creating a more inclusive society that's prepared to face the new challenges of the future. I also believe that the Democratic party is more committed to promoting the welfare of all Americans (not just the wealthy and privileged).

I believe Hillary Clinton is the candidate that will take that platform to the presidency.

Why I'm Voting for Hillary Clinton )
fearlesstemp: (mr. smith and saunders)
.i. interview anxiety

I have an interview tomorrow at the school where I taught last year, for the position I held last year, and I feel like this should be less stressful than most interviews but instead it's much more stressful. I keep trying to type out why that is so, but you can probably figure it out for yourself, and every time I try to write it up I end up with 87 rambling sentences.

.ii. expression theft

Instead, I am going to present you with this question: Is it just me, or is Daniel Craig's default James Bond expression in Casino Royale a modified Blue Steel? In case you are tragically unfamiliar with the film Zoolander, Blue Steel is male model Derek Zoolander's signature look in the movie Zoolander. I feel like I talked about this before in my LJ, but since I (personally) feel that one can never talk too much about the cinematic masterpiece that is Zoolander, I'm presenting it again.

Photographic evidence!



Daniel Craig as James Bond in Casino Royale





Derek Zoolander's Blue Steel






.iii. epistolic hillary

Has everyone seen the recent news story detailing a series of letters Hillary Clinton wrote while an undergraduate at Wellesley? A sample excerpt:

Befitting college students of any era, the letters are also self-absorbed and revelatory, missives from an unformed and vulnerable striver who had, in her own words, “not yet reconciled myself to the fate of not being the star.”

“Sunday was lethargic from the beginning as I wallowed in a morass of general and specific dislike and pity for most people but me especially,” Ms. Rodham reported in a letter postmarked Oct. 3, 1967. . . .

“Can you be a misanthrope and still love or enjoy some individuals?” Ms. Rodham wrote in an April 1967 letter. “How about a compassionate misanthrope?”


I ran a poll a while back in which I had people predict which Democrat was my candidate for '08 (it seems kind of ego-centric to me now that I did that, but whatevs, such is the corrupting power of poll-making), and I think I mentioned in the comments there but not directly in my LJ that my candidate for '08 is Hillary Clinton. I admire her a lot and think she's tremendously capable, but this was the first time I've felt a real rush of affection for her, or at least her-as-she-was. Her persona is now so tightly controlled and managed (to great effect, I think) that it's hard to imagine her ever moping around all day, too depressed to go to class, struggling with her Republican upbringing, etc. I know I'm predisposed to like her, but I still think things like this are interesting, when you're given a bit of a window into the personal history of a figure usually known only from a distance. There aren't a lot of personal details in the letters (not many that I've seen), but I think what's there (in the few excerpts quoted) is more interesting - the evolution of how she thought about herself, her role in the world.

I remember feeling this way when I tried to read the recent John Adams biography and got to the part of his diary excerpts as a young lawyer. In them, he detailed how he hadn't completed his to-do list, and how he should be accomplishing so much more and isn't, and how this made him feel worthless and lame. My words, not his, but the sentiment was pretty close to that. Which reminds me, I have to finish that biography. Or maybe read a romance novel. One or the other.
fearlesstemp: (mr. smith and saunders)
So I'm already all obsessed about the 2008 election (which some of you already know), and while I'm not a political junkie, I'm just obsessed enough to be regularly enraged and/or confused and/or bewildered by the things I read.

I mean, I'll lay my cards on the table right now. But maybe behind a cut tag. Because I know some people don't like to know about other people's political opinions, and I'll try to be courteous.

polotics ahoy! )
fearlesstemp: (friday night lights adorableness)
OMG! I just picked up my voicemail and a friend had left a message there, and in it she said that there was new CNN breaking news! Britney Spears files for divorce!

Naturally, I was all, "OMG, GASP!" and maybe jumping up and down because I love celebrity gossip. And then my friend's message went on to say something like, "And isn't that a sad commentary on America? That on Election Day, THAT is the top news story?"

And then I felt kind of bad for jumping up and down. But not enough to not post this LJ entry. Anyway, hey, I voted! I pushed down all of the appropriate little levers (for the last time, possibly - I think NYS is going to a more high-tech method next year, and I will miss the little levers).

And now for the important PSA: New Friday Night Lights tonight! I strongly suspect the episode will include Matt Saracen being awesome and/or adorable. I will have to tape because some alternate version of myself volunteered to help the Dems on Election Night. Off I go to headquarters! I am secretly hoping they won't need my help! That's the kind of lazy American I am!
fearlesstemp: (mr. smith and saunders)
My first post-election entry was kind of flip -- I forced myself to be -- this isn't as much.

electionage )
fearlesstemp: (mr. smith and saunders)
Signs your hometown roots might go a little too deep: you find yourself chatting up an interesting guy, thinking, "hmm...he seems nice, and he's a Democrat...maybe..." only to realize later, after doing the mental gymnastics required to figure out why you and he are at the same victory celebration, that yes, he is your cousin. Distantly, but still. When in doubt, just say no to cousin lovin'. Words to live by, I think.

We were not celebrating the national results, of course, but the local ones, which put our candidate for City Court Judge on the bench. I shook hands with a bunch of politicians I'd known only by seeing their name in the papers before, and had lots of awkward mingling moments where I stood within spitting distance of people I recognized vaguely but could not place, because I have a horrible memory for faces and after all this time temping in my relatively small area there's a scary amount of people out there I should recognize but really can't.

Speaking of my flakiness: I dragged my ass twenty miles out past my house to meet with R. for our tutoring session, only to realize upon pulling up the library that it was closed. Closed! Super fab tutor that I am, I totally just assumed that the library closed every night at 7PM, as it had last Wednesday (the night of our first meeting), but I was completely wrong. It closes at 5PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which is aggressively annoying because those were the two nights I'd scheduled our regular tutoring sessions to be on.

I tried frantically to call R. and catch him before he got in the car, but no luck. I ended up sitting alone in the dark in my car on the side of the road, positive I was going to be sideswiped by one of the many trucks whizzing by at 50 mph (but should not have been worried – my electric blue station wagon, hidden as it might have been in the shadows on the side of the road, still was a smidge more visible and avoidable than the sprightly deer these drivers are trained to avoid).

Note: Watch my car get nailed next time.

R. was gracious and understanding and willing to reschedule for tonight, and after chatting a bit, we both got in our Ford vehicles and took off in opposite directions, he to the country, me to the city, where I sat in an office and annoyed random people in my hometown via phone in an attempt to get them to the polls.

I was just getting to the O section at a little after eight, less than an hour before the polls closed, when my father poked his head in and told me to come upstairs with him to make calls from the office he was using. I gathered up my list with its careful notes and my half-full bottle of Diet Pepsi, ready to continue the fight from a different vantage point, but when my father led the way into the hallway, he turned right instead of left.

"But the stairs are there," I said, pointing vaguely but still following him.

"Do you think it'd be less obvious if we took the stairs?" he asked.

"Less obvious?" I said, and watched him hit the down arrow on the elevator panel. "Wait, isn't the office –"

And just as he said, "We're bailing," I realized that was what he was doing, and stood there open-mouthed in shock.

Became more open-mouthed with shock when my father announced we were going to his Upstate Independent Filmmakers Meeting (one of my father's many random activities). We arrived just in time for the last film, which was a ten-minute commercial spot for the – and yes, this actually exists, and I would direct you to the website, but it appears to have suffered a catastrophic website failure. I can't tell you how hard it was not to laugh at the stock footage from the 1970s of people paddling across a lake, set to synthesizer music so cheesy I thought it wasn't used for anything but parodies anymore. I felt evil and awful and wrong, but then after the lights came up the guy who made it confessed that he hated the music too.

There followed a lengthy, excruciatingly boring discussion of cameras which I won't go into here because I will not spread my suffering. This is the same reason I won't say more about that thing that's about to happen at 1PM.

vote

Nov. 2nd, 2004 11:38 am
fearlesstemp: (mr. smith and saunders)
Voted! I recommend it as an experience. It's very satisfying to click those levers into place and hear the mechanic CLANK of your vote registering, and know that when you look at the final tally (whenever the final tally is done), you will be able to think, "Well, if not for me, it would have been XX,XXX,XX7 for my guy instead of XX,XXX,XX8! Go me!"

Provided, of course, that the machine doesn't get pushed into the Hudson (as one of them did in my little home city in the 1930s, which led to an era of chaos and fun in which there were two people claiming to be the righteous head of the City Council. Upstate New York: Old School Election Fraud, Shameless and Stylish).

I actually got up early to vote, which is a big deal.

Other events I have happily gotten up early for:

-Christmas,
-NSYNC tickets, and
-I'm blanking on a third.

That is how dedicated I am to Kerry! I got up early! Maybe they could use that as a last-minute campaign slogan, or headline for tomorrow's local newspaper should there not be a clear winner. "KERRY GETS JESS UP EARLY! See A3 for details."

My polling place was pretty quiet and I didn't have a line at all when I went in at 7:45 or so. I love the little old ladies manning the tables on election day. I want to be one of them someday.

One more election note: Last night I was driving home and thought to myself, "You know, self, what's important is that we keep discourse civil. Don't try to browbeat people into thinking the way you would want them to think. What's important is that there's an open, respectful discourse, and that we respect other people's rights to make their own choices, even if they are different from our own. Perhaps especially if they are different from our own."

Cut to: Two hours later, my mom on the phone with my aunt Maureen, a very sensible, smart, non-Republican who is, nonetheless --

Mom: -- voting for Bush.

Self: WHAT?!

Mom: (to me) She is! (into the phone) Maureen! I just don't understand!

Self: GIVE ME THE PHONE!

I got a hold of myself after a minute or two, and didn't yell at my aunt at all, really. But I couldn't help a couple of, "But. But. I just don't UNDERSTAND" comments getting through.

In non-election news: Tonight I have my second tutoring session with R. for Literacy Volunteers. I meant to type up a post about my first session, but last week was too busy. I went all nerdy last night, drawing up a detailed lesson plan and cards and handouts and stuff that I'm sure I'll finish using in the first twelve minutes of the session (as happened last week). I was lucky that R. really liked one of the exercises I'd done and we were able to work on that for the rest of the lesson.

He's a nice guy, early fifties, worked his whole life, clearly smart. And he's a complete non-reader. I'd seen his testing and after I'd talked to him for a few minutes, I thought for sure there'd been a mistake. But there hadn't been. I'm kind of nervous because even though I've done the requisite training, part of me is all adljag!! and afraid I won't be able to help him the way he needs to be helped. Especially considering the fact that his job is on the line.

But no pressure or anything! Geez Louise.

Anyway. I have to go do some work. In closing: Go vote! It does a civic spirit good.
fearlesstemp: (bucky)
Remember how I said that Tim O'Brien book was disturbing in the best way? Or some crap like that? Yeah, scratch that; it was disturbing in the worst way, actually. I couldn't sleep last night because I couldn't stop thinking about the stupid book. And then the cat sat on my head an hour before my alarm was supposed to go off, so I was operating on 3-4 hours of sleep today. Am at the point where it hurts to keep my eyes open, but must keep them open because have Stuff to Do! Stuff! Stuff must get done!

...or maybe I'll just sleep. Or spam my LJ some more.

Movie recommendation: 50 First Dates.

I saw this movie when it came out in the theaters, and it made me cry. Really cry! An Adam Sandler movie! I know! But oh, how it got me. Some of the gags in the movie are funnier than others, and there's some gross stuff that I don't find funny at all, but the really important thing was that even if it was stupid funny at times, it was never mean. There was a real sweetness to the movie that I loved, that came through in the Adam/Drew romance as well as Drew's relationships with her brother and father, and Adam's with his best friend. And it did it without being too corny. Now it should be noted that I have a rather high threshold for corn; still, I feel confident in calling this movie sweet but not saccharine, funny, and with an ending that made me want to clap my hands together like an overexcited four year old. I may have actually done this in the theater. I am that kind of person.

In other news: Kerry picked Edwards for his running mate. I like! Go, Dems, Go!

In yet other news: Nader was on The Daily Show tonight. Watch me flail in impotent rage!

note to mr. nader )

And that is all.
fearlesstemp: (working girl)
The Daily Show last night was awesome. No, wait, let me rephrase: The Daily Show last night was AWESOME. I highly recommend checking out the 7PM rerun tonight, because it features, as its highlight, a truly righteous smackdown of Bush's case for war. Some poor guy came on the show hocking his book entitled The Connection, which focuses on the Osama-Saddam connection (featured so heavily in the Weekly World News – I can't be the only one who followed the Osama/Saddam love story every week while standing in line at the grocery store. I was almost sad when Saddam got captured.), and faced some friendly but determined questioning from Jon Stewart.

Also on the show: Dick Cheney caught in a bald faced lie, and Bill Clinton's truly heinous sneakers. How can you not watch?

Speaking of truly heinous things, my outfit today blows. I was about to run out the door when my mother spotted a huge run in the back of my stockings (as usual!) and so had to run upstairs and frantically throw together another outfit. Said outfit looks terrible, and I hate it. I hate it all the more because this is my first day at my new short-term temp job, and my first days at new temp jobs are different from all other days in two ways:

(1) I show up early or, at the very least, on time; and
(2) I wear a cute outfit.

No cute outfit! So very annoying. Nor did I get here on time, because this office is located in the middle of a huge office park and it took me ten minutes driving around it, complete with two U-Turns, to find the stupid building.

So all in all, not a good first day! The silver lining, though, is my hair, which is looking excellent today. This is the hair I am supposed to have. It is curly but not frizzy, shiny but not weighed down. How did this happen? What did I do to make this happen? It is a mystery!

Also a mystery: How I'm going to finish entering all of this data before five. Must go be a good little worker bee.
fearlesstemp: (working girl)
Al Gore gave a speech yesterday that a lot of you have probably heard or read already, but I have to mention it here because I saw part of it on TV and it gave me chills. It made me stand up and clap alone in my bedroom. AL GORE did this! He was IMPASSIONED! BOLD! He expressed a lot of my rage in a far more eloquent way than I could.

It was awesome. I'm cut/pasting it here. Al, the guy who should be running things now, said:

George W. Bush promised us a foreign policy with humility. Instead, he has brought us humiliation in the eyes of the world. )
fearlesstemp: (bucky)
Am home sick from work, which means I've been ODing on cable TV all day. A few notes:

-Roswell, after the first season? Really crappy! This coming from someone who watched religiously when it first came around, all the way through half or three-quarters of the third season.

-W is for Women: apparently one of Bush's campaign slogans. I am not making this up! They have signs! That people are waving around in a completely earnest, emphatic way! It is so horrifyingly bad and wrong that my head almost exploded, and that is only the slightest exaggeration since I've got so much sinus pressure going on right now.

-Kerry is apparently leading by a small margin in the national polls, even with Nader factoring in (though his lead widens when Nader's taken out of the race). I have all of these rambling strident things to say about Nader, and the only reason I'm not saying them now is because I'm on cold medication and don't trust myself to make sense. I actually just had to delete a three-sentence obnoxious rant that stood in the place this sentence is currently occupying because I felt I would offend people. Maybe later.

-Charlie Rose is strangely alluring. I don't know what it is -- the black backdrop? The lack of commercials? The intelligent discourse? All of the above?

I've spent the last half hour or so fighting the lure of awful cable news. It infuriates me, and yet I can't look away! Am going to go get ginger ale, and must go now or I'll watch Crossfire. And I don't want to watch Crossfire.
fearlesstemp: (cartoony self)
I was going to do that name meme, but I realized that it kind of began and ended with, "If you call me Jess, then you are...just about everyone I know." Except my Uncle Kevin and cousin Emma who call me Jessie, and my father who calls me Honeybunch, and my brother who calls me Sloppy Jr., and my mother who calls me Jessica when she's really mad at me. But other than that? Jess all the way.

Typing that made me realize how important it is to write things down because for a second there, I completely froze up because I remember right after my grandfather died, I used to think of the way he said my name and how it got to me just to think of it, and for a second there right now I couldn't remember it -- if it was a special nickname, or a shortening of my name, or just the way he looked when he said it. This is why I should write things other than my boring-ass job frustrations in this journal! I'm going to look back on this later and just go from entry to entry, all, "Day X. Job is annoying, cat did something wacky and/or annoying, JC is dreamy, vote Democratic. Day Y. Job is annoying, family member did something wacky and/or annoying, JC is dreamy, vote Democratic." I should use this to remember things! But I don't, of course.

For those of you wondering: it wasn't a nickname or anything; it was just the way he looked when he said it, sitting in his favorite chair at the kitchen table next to the window, paper spread out in front of him. "Heya, Jess," he'd say, always with a big smile. Always. He always called my mother Margie and my cousin John Jack, all things my uncle Kevin does now, in almost the same voice, which was unnerving at first but is comforting now.

I continue to have this low-level obsession with the whole Same-Sex Marriage Amendment and Ralph Nader, two things which I know are mostly part of my misdirected anxiety over this year's presidential election. I drove home tonight talking to myself about this, which makes me wonder if I'm a crazy person. I mean, I know most people talk to themselves occasionally (right? right? no? okay then.), but do other people ever spend, like, an entire commute ride talking themselves through issues? I thought passing cars probably thought I was crazy so a couple of times I tried to bop my head around like I was listening to music or something instead of ranting about the Federalist Papers, but that made me feel even more insane and pathetic (something I would have thought difficult to do). But bottom line, I really think everyone should go out there and read Federalist No. 10 because it's AWESOME and totally explains everything you need to know about the Constitution and why we were set up the way we are. I know you're sitting there thinking, "Jess, putting 'Federalist No. 10' and 'awesome' in the same sentence is, quite frankly, really nerdy." To that I say, "You're right!"

Come on! It's titled "The Same Subject Continued" -- doesn't that make you want to jump into the reading right there? Anyway. I like it. It comforts me. I've had a copy of The Federalist Papers by my bed for the past couple of weeks, since I dug it out of the basement after the President's assertion that a Constitutional Amendment was the proper way of addressing the public's concerns about homosexuality. Hello, no! Totally not!

As for Ralph Nader, I don't know how many people out there have seen Jerry Maguire but you know that scene between Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. in the bathroom, where Tom Cruise starts flipping out and kicking the walls? THAT'S how I feel about Ralph Nader and his supporters right now. And I know there are people on my flist who voted for him in the past and who may wish to vote for him in the future, and I'm sure you're lovely people, but much like Tom in Jerry Maguire -- I'm just VERY FRUSTRATED by the Nader thing right now. I mean, it's not like Tom doesn't like Cuba in that scene! He does! He's just very upset and confused! Like me right now, with Naderites.

And that's all I have to say right now. Except! I made one of those little make-your-own-icons! Except the hair is too long and, I fear, kind of looks like a mullet. For the record: I do not have a mullet. I did, back in 1987 or so, but in my defense, I was seven at the time. Mistakes were made. Anyway, I went with the longer hair because I wanted to communicate the curliness of my hair and that seemed the best way, even if my actual hair is quite short at this point.

Bedtime.
fearlesstemp: (jess)
I haven't really let this out in my LJ yet, but I'm a wee bit obsessed with the whole election thing. I was in NYC last week watching something on the TV about New Hampshire, and began talking about it in what I thought was a very rational, intelligent way, only to turn around and find my parents staring at me with vaguely scared expressions. I suddenly realized that I was gritting my teeth so tightly that it hurt, and my hands were up in the air above my shoulders because I had been gesturing very emphatically about Something Very Important, and that I probably looked pretty scary.

And it's only January, people! JANUARY! There are, like, ten whole months of madness to go, assuming that the election will actually end on Election Day -- which isn't as sure a bet as I'd thought it was before 2000! I am going to go crazy. I am going to go crazy and, before that, alienate all of my friends and family by becoming a crazy mad election zealot, glued to the 24 Cable News I (for the most part) despise.

If anyone's curious, I'm for Dean, because I think he's got that thing, that je ne sais quoi, that whatever it is that energizes people. Inspires them. Myself included -- I just watched him on the Daily Show and first of all, was stunned that he was doing the interview, and then even more so by the way he did it (which is hard to explain, and really has to be seen, but suffice it to say he pokes fun of most of his recent campaign missteps). And then I danced around the house laughing for reasons I can't quite understand, wanted to wake my parents up and show them, or call my friends and be all, "Look at this guy! Look at him! He's making fun of his creepy smile! Don't you want him to be your President? Don't ya don't ya??? And don't you want him to win New Hampshire, just to show all of the pundits how completely, totally wrong they are AGAIN?!"

It's a good thing I decided to dance alone, I think, because I don't want to start alienating friends and family with my craziness this soon. Still got ten months! Ten whole months!

And so I post this LJ entry.

Here's something for the campaign-obsessed on my flist: [livejournal.com profile] campaign_desk is a feed from the Columbia Journalism Review, a project that's following and reality-checking the news coverage of the 2004 campaign. Kind of like The Daily Show, but not as funny. Just as informative, though.

In other news: I have a new temp job at a law firm starting tomorrow. Already! Dammit! I wanted to be an unemployed poverty-stricken slacker for a few more days, at least! I'm actually not kidding, which says a lot about my work ethic. I asked my father about the firm, and he said, and I quote, "They're evil." Oh, happy day!

Please, please may they have internet access.
fearlesstemp: (lionel)
Obligatory OC Commentage: I described the show's premise to my mother the other night and she said, "Oh, like Fresh Prince?" and I almost fell over because dude! It is so almost exactly like Fresh Prince! Carlton=Seth! Will=Ryan! Except they're not related, but still.

In other news: I have become completely obsessed with The West Wing now that it's in syndication on Bravo and work it into just about every conversation I have. This is because (a) I can't bear not having someone to blab to about my new obsession and (b) my life has been so boring of late that there's been very little outside of the TV world to talk about.

Which kind of changed tonight! I think I've mentioned before that I'm taking a grad history course at a local university to see how I like it, and today I had to go to the school's "Welcome to the Graduate History Program!" meeting. I was, of course, SO NERVOUS, proving that the new poise I've been rambling about to people in my life is a complete fabrication. I feel like I'm no longer shy because I don't meet new people that often nowadays, what with being a lame unemployed temp who chills with the same group of friends she has for years. But tonight, having to go meet a whole group of people for the first time? Nerves! Nerves!

I would like it noted for the record that I was NOT late; in fact, I was actually very, very early. This is good because it took me four tries around the MASSIVE circle at the main entrance to the campus to find the Visitors' Parking, despite the fact that the Visitors' Parking is right off of the circle and marked by a huge blinking lit-up sign. I am not exaggerating; a huge. blinking. sign. And I did not see it! I drove around the circle so many times, and so slowly, that the students sitting in the bus kiosk on the circle stared so much at me my third time around (I was going ridiculously slowly in an electric blue station wagon with a hole in the bumper -- suffice it to say I was conspicuous) that I had to get off the circle and drive around the rest of the campus a bit before I could go back to the Mysterious Circle Drive Of Hell Or At The Very Least Major Annoyance again.

Finally spotted the massive blinking sign and pulled in, parked the car, and realized that the lot was located as far as humanly possible from the building I was headed to. This annoyed me because (a) I am lazy and (b) I was not wearing sensible shoes. You'd think after twenty-three years living in this world, I would realize that umbrellas and sandals do not mix. If you feel you need to bring an umbrella, then odds are you need to change the sandals! Why do I never realize this? So my feet got all wet and gross and I felt self-conscious about the sandals, fearing they would realize a girl who can't even choose proper footwear does not belong in their university.

Speaking of the university, I must take a moment and marvel at how annoyingly designed it is. Everything looks alike -- no, seriously. It does. It was all built at once, and it's all symmetrical and white and with intimidatingly high arches everywhere, and it's difficult to get to one area from another because there are Very Specific Ways Of Getting Places which aren't obvious at first! I kept wandering around, ending up in areas cordoned off with chains and padlocks and stuff. It was like a nightmare! I almost got to the point of throwing down my bag, screaming, "I can see it RIGHT THERE, why can't I GET THERE?!?!" very dramatically a la someone in a horror movie. That, or maybe asking a fellow student for directions.

It was totally just like a nightmare.

Anyway, the meeting itself wasn't really a nightmare, except for the part where the guy who did most of the talking was boring enough to make me come thisclose to falling asleep. I talked to a couple fellow students, found the bookstore and bought my books, and got some cheddar cheese and pretzel combos on my way out. I call that a successful meeting, myself.

Post-grad school meetingage, I drove out to meet Anna and Jo to go to one of the Dean meetups in our area, a different one from the one Anna and I went to before. The one Anna and I went to a few months ago was nice, at this cool coffeehouse with lots of young people. This one? Was held at the library and we three were the youngest there by twenty-five years easy. I felt like we'd accidentally walked into the local AARP meeting, but no! It was Dean! I was surprised how many older people are, like, crazy into Dean. As my friend Jo said, "I didn't know there were liberal old people! I thought you just got bitter as you aged." I had felt the same way, probably because the most politically active member of the senior citizen set I know is my grandfather, a man who had always been a strong supporter of the Democratic party and now falls to the right of, well, everyone on the ideological spectrum. Tomorrow he wants to dictate a letter to me about Andrew Greeley, btw. My life is so exciting.

Regardless! Loooots of older peeps. Anna and I were so jealous of Jo (in that way where you're not jealous at ALL) because the one guy in the place who looked like he could be under forty sat down next to her for a minute. Said under-forty was sporting this orange-highlighted mullet/tail hair disaster from the early eighties that was so terrible, you couldn't look away. Seriously? Worst hairdo ever. The kind of hairdo that's so awful that when someone wearing it sits down next to one of your best friends, you canNOT look at your best friend because you know -- KNOW -- that if you make eye contact, you will not be able to prevent hysterical laughter. The type of hairdo that makes you want to kidnap the wearer and take him to a cabin in the woods until he grows the hair out to a length sufficient to style differently. The type of hairdo that, hours later, is still making me cringe and feel bad for the guy.

Anyway, Mr. Hockey Hair got up after a short conference with the guy sitting two seats down from Jo, and soon we had to do the sit-in-a-circle-introduce-yourselves thing I always, always hate and had been grateful for avoiding at the grad school meeting. Public speaking sucks! Okay, so it's not really public speaking when you're just introducing yourself, but still! All those eyes on you! Nerves! I'm pretty sure I made no sense when it was my turn. The other people were interesting and in only one or two cases suspiciously crazy-acting (one guy got all bug-eyed in passion over the whole thing, and later nearly had a fistfight with another guy in the meeting over being a bad listener or something -- I missed the bulk of the fight because I was in the bathroom! How unfair is that?). It was a pretty good meeting. Don't agree with Dean 100%, but nobody's perfect (save myself, natch), and he's not afraid to call Bush out. Not to mention the fact he's getting people fired up.

And lastly, Note to self: CALL AND ORDER NEW CONTACTS TOMORROW. Have been operating off of same disposable pair for almost twice as long as I'm supposed to. Eyes are very upset b/c of this.

And now I go off to lull myself to sleep with my tape of The West Wing. Happy times.
fearlesstemp: (Default)
So I went with [Anna}, my favorite pinko-commie friend, to this anti-war meeting tonight and boy, it was a trip. The meeting was endless, if informative, and I certainly got to know some interesting people. Sample dialog:

Boy Whose Clothes Consist Entirely (And I Mean Entirely) Of Patches (Patches, for Short): I don't think we're paying enough attention to Palestine.

Emotional Pigtailed Girl: I would like to echo what Patches said and say that we aren't paying enough attention to Palestine.

Redheaded Doctor: I would like to say that while I understand what both Emotional Pigtailed Girl and Patches are saying, the peace movement in America is facing a FIERCE TEST and I think we should focus on that. We are about to be TESTED! We must be FOCUSED! DETERMINED!

Facilitator Dude: Excellent point.

Patches: I hear what you're saying, but I still don't think we're paying enough attention to Palestine.

Emotional Pigtailed Girl: I would like to say that I completely agree with Patches.

[Ten minutes of pointless, roundabout discussion resolving nothing.]

Facilitator Dude: I hear what everyone's saying. How can we fix this?

Random Peacenik: I think we should make a flier.

Facilitator Dude: I think that's an excellent idea.

That turned out to be the go-to solution for almost everything, making a flier. Every time a flier was proposed, it sparked a twenty-minute discussion of who would make the flier, where it would be copied, how it would be picked up, where it would be distributed, etc.

It was a good meeting though! Very informative, and it's nice to see people being all active and stuff. Even if I did have to sit next to a smelly guy with a nervous tic who kept talking to himself. Or maybe he was talking to me? I couldn't tell. I smiled and nodded a lot.

Anyway, after that, Anna and I grabbed dinner at the local vegetarian person and I was feeling SO socially responsible, eating vegetarian and attending peace meetings and the like, that I felt the immediate need to go to the nearest massive corporate box store and thusly we went to Border's. There, Anna and I indulged our Border's Tradition, which is to go to the young adult section and pull out The Likes of Me, a book which has, I believe, the funniest back cover ever! Ever! Reproduced here for your enjoyment:

Cordelia Lu Hankins is half Caucasian, half Chinese -- and all albino. She has grown up isolated from the world, with her distant father and a giant stepmother named Babe (after Paul Bunyan's blue ox), in a remote lumber town in the Pacific Northwest. She is convinced she is ugly and that her father has deliberately hidden her away. Then in the summer of 1918, when she is fourteen, she meets the dashing Squirl. Squirl is charming and handsome, and Cordy falls desperately in love with him. But her father forbids her to go near Squirl. One day they meet on the mountain and Cordy receives her first kiss, as well as a wild ride down a log flume that gets Squirl fired.

Determined to follow Squirl, Cordy runs away. She begins an exciting adventure that takes her to the sideshows of Seattle's Luna Park, where her unusual looks bring her fame. But her journey also brings tragedy in this thought-provoking coming-of-age novel. Randall beth Platt has created an original, resourceful teenage heroine with a strong voice and a gutsy determination to make her way in the world.


Okay, so, I'm sure the book is quite good and maybe someday I'll actually read it (I tend to go for fun over substance in my YA novels, which is why I'm such a fan of The Princess Diaries and the like), but I don't know if it could ever live up to the sheer enjoyment factor of that back cover.

And now I must go to bed and ready myself for another day in the salt mines, aka the law office. But! Tomorrow's Friday! Woo!
fearlesstemp: (fight the man)
Am covering reception, one of my favorite duties. I just have to sit here and field phone calls and try not to look vacant should anyone stroll in the office doors.

Clearly, Al Gore and I are soulmates or brain twins or something because yesterday I came stomping downstairs and burst into the living room and announced (and I did announce, it is one of my more obnoxious qualities -- I have the tendency to burst into rooms in my house and interrupt TV-watching with my Random Thought Of The Moment), "You know what? I think Al Gore should come out against this whole Iraq thing because, well, it's wrong, but also because in a couple years when, should this go off, everything's a mess, he'll be the only Democrat out there who can say they were against it at the beginning. Don't you think?"

And then my mother looked at me and said, "Uh, yeah, he did that. Today."

And that kind of stole my thunder. But also, hey! Al! I'm with ya! Kind of! I'm one of those awful people who's more Green than Democrat (at least, mainstream Democrat) but doesn't have the nerve to vote Green because I'm too scared of the Republicans. And also, there have to be a few liberals in the Democratic Party, keeping it honest! Well, if not honest, less Republican-ish.

Since I've already crossed the line and started talking politics, which my mother brought me up never to do in mixed company (but hey, this is my journal, so whatev), let's go on. I'm in a serious quandry with the gubernatorial election in my fine home state, New York. You see, I was raised a Democrat, that's always how I've voted, and I've often said that the only way I'd vote for a Republican would be if JC asked me to as a test of my devotion, BUT there are complications this time. My uncle Kevin, my godfather, who I love love love, is employed by the state at a job that's dependent upon Pataki staying there as govenor. So! If I vote for a Democrat, I'm effectively voting him out of a job! But! My principles! What am I to DO?? And Tom Golisano the Creepy Paychex Guy is just making it more complicated.

And that is all for now.

NOTE: And, you know, it's not like I hate Republicans. Some of my best friends are Republicans! Ok, one of my best friends is a Republican! Kristen the Republican Bride. I'm in her wedding. And I love her no less because she voted for Bush. And that is all.
fearlesstemp: (Default)
Just read this article on salon.com after my history professor mentioned hearing about the potential Jeffords switch earlier on the news. Am now happy, excited, hopeful -- it probably won't happen, and I haven't even read a lot about it, but the mere possibility of a Republican Senator defecting to the Democratic party is just too exciting for me not to enjoy right now. A few people have mentioned that Zell Miller from GA may switch too, but I don't think he will. So, only happy, peppy, excited thoughts from me on this as I enjoy imagining Democratic control of committees and the legislative calendar.

Until now, my roommate and I have been quite guiltily reading articles about Strom Thurmond's age and infirmity. Feeling like Very Bad People. Don't have to do that today!

Woohoo!

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