Because I'm Close To Playing The New Demon Hunter CD to Death

Trent Reznor's dayum fine. But "The Hand That Feeds" sounds like it's the middle of another song.

*snaps fingers*

yeah, I said it.

But then, I never listened to The Fragile like I hear it should be listened to.

Anyway tonight I figured it would be nice to get some longass playlist on youtube of NIN videos blared through my room while I tidied up the bathroom.

Although "tidied up" is not enough of a verb.

For example, did you know that when you're wearing latex gloves - not the hand shaped thick yellow ones, but the proctologist-white powdered type...when you're wearing those to scrub the inside of the tub. When the gloves are turning first yellow, then dark beige, it's time to take a break because the chemicals are almost done eating the latex and are about to start eating your fucking hand.

So I found out many things about the house I've been living in for a few months. It's dustier than it is "dirty." Yeah I know, dust is dirt. But I noticed so many crevices...either the house was originally built a generally considered Long time ago (pre-1920s, since the tile in the bathroom resembles such in a bathroom in a house I know was built in the mid-20s) and hasn't been ...not so fancy as "renovated" but never really looked at; or it was built up to a couple decades after when I really think it was and has been ran into the ground. That, or the previous residents all had a weird habit of kicking at...they're not called vertices, but that intersection of where the walls and floors meet.

Damn. I gotta stop clicking over the the other NIN videos...he's distracting.

So I was ... no wait hold on. The Marilyn Manson songs came up now. I guess he got a new album last year, and one of the singles called "Heart-Shaped Glasses"

She reminds me of the woman ... she was dressed in white
And I couldn't take my eyes off her
But that's not what I took off that night

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOH, A COY MOTHERFUCKER ARE WE??? THOU DOST NOT KISS AND TELL...say no more say no more...retard.

Puerile dweeb. And I'm not even going on the "ooooooh he's thingin bout thiiin." When I had a problem with that I didn't listen to that stuff. My freshman roommate pleaded with me not to throw away my CDs, but to at least give them to her so she could sell what she could.

*rolls eyes* I liked his music in high school. Antichrist Superstar was... really perfect album. Some of it I knew didn't "make sense" for me but the stuff that did, really did. To a 16 year old girl who liked Goth-Industrial music and liked Skinny Puppy's "Rabies" album upon first hearing it. The first attribute no longer applies. And it's like...bleh. his music has all turned to shit, and not just because I also listen to different and some genuinely better stuff now, but it just...sucks now.

But the song sounds pretty. Nice and sad and pretty and "pop-gothy."

Perhaps Robert Rhett's Memoirs As a Starter

From reading Foner's Free Soil Free Labor Free Men it looks like....the Southern Democratic Party kinda...painted itself into a corner. I'm 'bout halfway through the chapter on the Democrats who defected to the Republican Party in the late 40's & 50's...

Since the book's about the ideology of the Republican Party, it's not about the Democratic Party, and isn't about the South. So I'm trying to keep that in mind when I form the impression that there was some body to the Bogerman that was/is the Slave Power conspiracy.

But then...they're politicians bitching about the party they just left. Zell Miller was just as much a politician as Jim Jeffords, and I don't see how the non-radical, pre-war Republicans should be considered any different.

And this too, sounds kinda...umm selective:

A local Republican paper in 1858 estimated that 40 per cent of the Michigan Republicans came from "the old Jackson party."

Republican paper saying that. I mean people complain today about ooh ooooh the liburul/ konservativ bias in media, and they're right. This book and Holt's Whig Party frequently refer to newspapers as "the Whig party organ in Kentucky/Tennessee" or "the Van Buren administration's mouthpiece, the Blah Blah Gazette" with quite familiarity.

So what I want to know of, is a book that covers the Democratic Party at the same time. Many on the Democratic Party are focused on Jackson though.

wow.

The awesome part of this is that I can't think of any way to improve it.

I Think Even The Tinfoil Hat Feels More Loose

Anyway.

Wilmot Proviso. We all know the Wilmot Proviso, right? Something something Mexican War, something something, acquired territory, amendment to some bill in Congress that definitively denied possibility of slavery in the new territory, everyone goes apeshit it gets defeated. Therefore, slavery is again pointed to as a cause of the Civil War. Voted down along sectional and not party lines as additional proof.

I'm guessing that that last part is a tough pill to swallow, if you're of the "civil war was not about slavery" mindset. My knee-jerk mindset is that I don't want to hear anything good or laudable about the early Republican Party so far as it was a resurrected Whig Party with its economic platform.

My (hopefully) more reasoned mindset is that the first states to secede may well have seceded so as to protect "the Southron way of life" and any politician in the South at the time would damn well have agreed that slavery was a part of it. But the war started, going from First Manassas, over secession itself. I count Fort Sumter being bombarded as what anyone else would have been within their right to do; the political wisdom of attacking it instead of starving them out being another issue.

[But oh oh ooooh the tariffs! Well then, if that's the case, how was there a Whig Party in the South at all? Henry Clay was from Kentucky. oops! ]

So...we straight? If by Civil War you mean everything from 1860-65 then I got nothing for you. I break it up into Pre-Sumter, slavery may have been a motivating factor in secession; it was secession over which the Tyrant King played out Ft. Sumter, which drove other states to secede, which brought us to First Manassas, the first meeting of armies...over the right of secession and the Revolutionary Ideal of 1776, the right of consent of the governed. I allow for the condemnation of the institutional American slavery. I'm not Southron so I don't really care for approval by any, but roll my eyes at "omg Southron=dumb hick." It made the Civil War class I just got a B+ in (quite likely on account of my distracting rambling as such) seem more like...like same old, same old.

Where was I? Wilmot Proviso, yeah. From Michael F. Holt's Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War. The title explains the book and it supposedly is not written with a view to "everything inevitably led to the Civil War," 985 small print pages before 263 pages of notes and index. Read this.

Developing a distinctive party stance and record on the [Mexican] war also required continued cooperation with southern Whigs, which could never be achieved on the Wilmot Proviso. [Wilmot was a northern Democrat from Ohio.] To the dismay of extreme antislavery Whigs...most northern Whigs, like their southern colleagues, were primarily concerned in 1846 and 1847 with returning to power, not with venting sectional grievances. ...control of the House depended upon the ninety seats to be contest in 1847, and most of those seats were in the South...of course, party unity would be necessary to carry the presidential election of 1848. The problem was not simply that the Proviso divided southern Whigs against northern Whigs. It was that opposition to the Proviso in the South, like support for it in the North, could not provide southern Whigs with a distinctive party position to it in 1847 and 1848 because of the bipartisan sectional consensus against it. To compound the problem, southern Whigs were even more eager than their northern colleagues to demonstrate that they matched Democratic support for American armies...because enthusiasm about their exploits in battle was especially avid in the South. Just like northern Whigs, however, southern Whigs quickly realized that opposition to all territorial acquisition offered them a viable and distinct platform.

Finish checking your email? Opposing Wilmot Proviso in the South wasn't enough to distinguish a Democrat from a Whig, as supporting it in the North didn't define, either. There was no viable "they don't support the troops" tag to pin on the Whigs...Henry Clay and Daniel Webster both lost sons in the war and everyone fell for the rah-rah bullshit. But what the Whigs can do...is oppose any acquisition of oil reserves from the war, as Democrats in both north and south were down for that along party lines and not regional.

Territory! I meant territory! Not oil reserves, how...utterly silly of me.

Read this now.

To fathom southern Whig confidence in the issue, one must understand the reasons for southern opposition to the Proviso. Contrary to the accusations of northern antislavery men, there was no widespread southern conspiracy to spread slavery by attacking Mexico. Most southern Whigs and many southern Democrats, including John C. Calhoun, who joined the Whigs in opposing a war of conquest against Mexico, believed and openly argued that slavery could not possibly exist in any territory to be acquired from it. Whatever the accuracy of that analysis--and it was undoubtedly wrong about California--for most Southerners the significance of the Proviso was symbolic, not substantive. They regarded it as a humiliating insult by the northern majority, a denial of the equal rights of white Southerners even when they had no intention of exercising those rights, and an attempt to subjugate Southerners to northern dictation, that is, as an attempt symbolically to reduce white Southerners to the status of slaves. Southerners who were particularly sensitive about defending their individual and collective honor and particularly fearful of enslavement to someone else's power refused to tolerate it. Some Southerners did indeed expect to carry slaves to acquisitions wrested from Mexico. But to most--and especially to most Whigs--Southern Rights, the defense of republican liberty and equality, were at stake, not the extension of slavery.

Bwahahahahaha....what a reasonable...totally coherent to today's students of history and political economy, manner of approaching an issue. What I put in bold I'd really love to check out, but the notation at the end of the paragraph is to Holt's other book, which I bet has the directions to get the speeches/whatevers that gave him that impression, because that sounds like one helluvan inference.

And yeah sure, tariffs this, tariffs that, Damyankees sux0rz, the idea of a Slave Power conspiracy is pretty up there with 9-11 Truthers (and I say that as someone related to probably three of 'em) on the "you've got to be fucking kidding me" scale, depending on who you're reading, but...

So the North had Yankees and the Burned-Over District up in their grill. The South had the FireEaters. Starting to look more and more like a tie.

I'll Be Making MY List

12

Find a Ultrasound school near you

I'll Be Here All Weekend

Augustinian Calvinism: There's always room for U.

aaaaah, I kill me.

Not as bad as the joke I thought of last night while writing my term paper on Lay Investiture:

Gregory's defensive points in these letters are more founded upon the gravity of Henry's specific sins, than any extreme understanding of the Gelasian formula. Hell, even Pope Celestine V could have excommunicated Henry.

*hangs head in shame* I need to take up either drinking or emailing Thomas DiLorenzo.

From My Final Today

"the Nullification Crisis and Calhoun's threat of secession in 1833 erupted over a fundamental disagreement on the nature of the ratification of the Constitution: whether it was a voluntary-conditional agreement upon satisfaction, subject to renewal at each political generation, or a voluntary agreement once it was created to the satisfaction of the generation that signed it, and binding on all men thereafter."

I think I'm gonna get an A for pulling stuff like that out of thin air. Oh well. The class is over. Time to finish my Medieval term papers (two, mofos, TWO!) and get ready for the final tomorrow. Then after the Thursday morning final on Roman Law in Medieval Europe, it's back to Rise and Fall of the Whig Party.

Overheard Yesterday

Guy1 Yeaaaaah that guy is SOOO huge.

Guy2 Oh yeah huh like Schwarzenegger

Guy1 That guy's really tall

Guy2 Like Schwar....how tall is he?

Guy1 Uuuuuh. Like...I don't know but he's pretty tall. Maybe like, six some-

Girl Yeah 'cause of all those steroids, that's why!

So there you have it. Steroids make you tall. Bones are muscles are bones.

.

So just what is it about sleeping on a kitchen floor for two hours to make someone else's snoring not so loud?

I swear I'm gonna just buy an effing taxi on Christmas, so I don't have to spend the night at my brother's house again. I live only 20 minutes away by car. I don't freaking get it.

Not States, Plural-The State, Singular.

I clicked on a googlevideo that started with "The United States of America, born in 1776."

And right then my eyes glazed over.

No.

That which was born in 1776, particularly since it is the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution stated as the beginning, is not what we inhabit today.

That which was born in 1776 said "we are free."

That which we inhabit today says "you are subjects of the state."

Was that which we inhabit today born in...Appomattox in 1865? The Tyrant King's second inauguration a month before? First Manassas?

"Oh oh oh but Fort Sumter was the start of the war! 'Cause like...ummm...stuff went BOOM!"

The books aren't saying much about the Confederate states having seized federal forts and property, either because it isn't interesting to them; or that their method of doin' such was deemed inconsequential. DiLorenzo's Real doesn't really address anything other than Sumter, and even if he did address others like Sumter I'm still not trusting his Vallandigham piece in it so, too bad for him. I guess what I want to know is...what was the nature of the federal property within the states being seized? Were anti-secessionists harmed? Who were they, were they soldiers or just bureaucrats? Was there any such thing as a Southern anti-secessionist? Were people given ample time to get their shit packed to git?


Anyway...did this .... this...."you are subjects to the state" notion...born at First Manassas.

No.

Tyrant King >>>Never-President Henry Clay >>>Nicholas Biddle >>> Alexander Hamilton.

God bless Aaron Burr, even if he did take his sweet ass time.

I posted earlier that I didn't believe the War of Etatist Supremacy (copyright...me) could accurately be considered a "Second American Revolution." I think differently. True, most of what people mean by that idea is that they're giddily choking on the dead Tyrant King's cock... ideologically, much to their chagrin I'm sure.


While they were revolutions, and things were changed radically blah blah, the people involved had 80 years of successful consolidationism on their shoulder.

The men of "76" had Jonathan Edwards.

The Union had the Burned-Over district and cities called Smyrna in New York.

Men of '76 had Sinners In The Hand Of An Angry God.

The Union had a "new holy book" that seems to have deified the notion of American Exceptionalism that everyone up there really really seemed to want to believe. The "city on a hill" notion pre-'76 iirc was more of a "don't be evil or God's gonna whup all our asses."

A is not B.

I wasn't even going to consider the religion stuffs. I think I'm done now.

Let Me See That Bloggy Roll

It's so depressing to read about Reconstruction. Obviously in a less personal manner, it's akin to an email from my dad about how nutto my mom was when they were together.

In the Senate, the bill to enlarge the Freedmen’s Bureau was passed, 37 to 10. The bill provides: 1^st. That the Freedmen’s Bureau shall be maintained, giving the President power to divide the section of country included within the provision of the bill into twelve districts;

Like nobody there saw this and thought HFS this is the federal government carving up people and their lands, like Poland was done 80 years ago. Or Africar a few years later. I know, there are huge differences, one being that Poles aren't really people to begin with.

Oh right. Because every man who did think that was either dead, or silenced for having spoken up a few years ago.

3d. That the Secretary of War may issue supplies, medical stores, etc., and may provide for the shelter of freedmen and refugees;

Why the Secretary of War? Because there was no department of Health and Human Services yet.

6th. That schools and asylums shall be built for the freedmen at the expense of Government

Someone get Horace Mann a cigarette. Oh wait, he was already dead. Oh wait but what a wonderful tangent that brings me to anyway. It's Saturday, no one's comin' over.

His only means for gratifying his eager desire for books was the small library founded in his native town by Benjamin Franklin and consisting principally of histories and treatises on theology.

say it with me now: AWWWWWWWWWW. No p0rnz.

He graduated as valedictorian of his class from Brown University in 1819. He then studied law for a short time at Wrentham, Massachusetts; was a tutor of Latin and Greek (1820-1822) and a librarian (1821-1823) at Brown University; studied during 1821-1823 at Litchfield Law School (the famous law school conducted by Judge James Gould in Litchfield, Connecticut); and in 1823, was admitted to the Norfolk, Massachusetts, bar.

Sounds like he did fine, having only Benjamin Franklin's library at his disposal. How did he live.

I don't trust any of these politicians coming out of Massachusetts.

From what I learned in spring quarter, the Early Republic class, was that when the Treasury hit a surplus and the federal/national debt was paid off, that moneys went back to the individual states "since it was their money." [ No, it wasn't brought up that it was the moneys of the individual peoples; that if today California would get the money that CA residents paid in taxes back as refund...might as well just send it back to Washington since not only would I not see a cent of what I was extorted out of back, but I'd rather not have to witness the smugness of the politicians unveiling what they're going to use it for. When I get mugged by someone in the street, at least the mugger runs away, I probably won't have to go with him to the liquor store and watch him buy cigs with my moneys. ]

So it was the state's money, or at least that what we all told ourselves, and with that money, schools were built, some famous school for mental handicaps or deaf or something. Taking into consideration the fact that's about as good as it was going to get, I'm fine with that.

But this thing in Massachusetts; that Mann was a state representative and such...don't sound no good.

Need to kill time?

First, have a single parent who raised you be adopted. With a bad memory/penchant for making things up. To whom you don't talk anymore.

Next, be almost obsessive about the past.

Noooooooow.

Try to look people up online. Y'know, your mom's adopted mom, her husband...who are dead--bonus.

Have no knowledge of origins. Middle names....great grandfathers who gave their son their same first name are totally awesome.

Oh did I mention that your 14-day free subscription to ancestry.com expired about 8 months ago? So you can't use that. You're stuck with Mormon geneaology websites.

ooh ooh oooooooh have it be an international adoption. From war-torn Germany, perhaps with still shitty records four years later. And when you did have that ancestry.com trial subscription and saw the place your mom, her twin brother, and a-grandmother port left from in Germany? Totally forget the name of that port and don't put it down anywhere.

I Think It's a Tie So Far

Oh. I was listening to this. And because I got hired somewhere today, I shall be buying it. I surprisingly do think it's better than the last one. "Sixteen" is awesome. I don't like the idea of having to go into the only music store in Rivercide that'll carry it, though. One of those NOTW stores. yeeesh.

An A on the Early Middle Ages midterm; which I somewhat expected from how easy it felt while taking it. A B+ on the Law and Society in Medieval Europe, the one that smashed my face; much better than I expected, as I was thinking I'd have landed a C if I were lucky.

I thought I did okay in defining a placitum and instead had tons of marks all over it and finally at the bottom "you missed this" written. Really doubt the Civil War midterm will be back tomorrow. And as to that, surprise will be very bad.

Yes.

This will not make my Early Middle Ages readings any more done.

Can't Sleep

Damn dude, I don't know why I should. I've been inside my room for most of the day. If you don't count the intern thing this morning, which was ingloriously cancelled. Without my knowledge. Until I got there. Even though...there still is no email saying it was cancelled. And I called Friday and talked to two people who have a clue as to what's going on there, neither of them told me. If anything I made up for it by applying at a ghetto Mcdonalds.

Ghetto Mcdonalds. Not a redundancy. While all Mcdonalds are ghetto by "virtue" of the ah, dinner rush clientele--though perhaps "ghetto" isn't the word so much as "trasshholes" a real ghetto Mcdonads is one placed in a neighborhood so diverse that I refuse to walk there, though this brings up several really annoying problems.

uno-menudo: Relying on the buses to get to work and back means I won't be able to work through an evening shift, having to be physically out the door by 8pm at the latest.

doso-minoso: Waiting at these bus stops while it's dark. Yeah, I'm paranoid and apparently give off a "no-sunshine" vibe to people who, if I ever got a bad drinking habit, I'd be tempted to call "my kind" of people or people "like me" so I tend to be left alone, there's a big chance that uno that won't hold up forevah and doso that I'll likely miss bus and be stuck with my fucking head for about an hour.

tresay: the people in this stupid city are fucking crazy. Just absolute batshit. I'm convinced that everyone here is here for a bad reason.


quatro: every other Mcdonalds is about an hour away by bus. Meaning again, I can't be there really early, nor could I stay late.

For some reason lately, I think this has been when I've looked at the bus schedules and the maps and such. I imagine Riverside to be the result of ... a micro view of Henry Clay's American System. Had he gotten all that he wanted, Jackson stayed in Tennessee or John Tyler had backed down...the whole country would be Riverside.

Dammit

If I were hired to have moved myself in, I'd fire myself. Was wondering why o why I was missing so many books, IMing Riley about every other week with "hey maaaaaan did I lend you X?" Turns out I had two whole full boxes of books still in the garage from when I moved all my stuff in back in August. Awesome...although the Decameron was lame when I had to read it, and I haven't read at least half of them all, some being for classes and barely opened, some being from Jon.

And We Vote!

This is how you study for midterms.

[01:57] Paula: okay, you know how a while ago you said you thought the government shouldn't issue marriages
[01:57] Paula: only civil unions
[01:57] Paula: would the governemtn uphold civil unions they way they uphold other contracts?
[01:58] Paula: or would a civil union dissolve as easily as a marriage contract is dissolved?
[01:58] Joss Fritz: hmm
[01:58] Joss Fritz: a good question
[01:58] Paula: man, it is soooo annoying when people say "gay people aren't allowed to marry"
[01:58] Paula: 'cause they ARE
[01:58] Paula: they aren't being excluded because they are gay
[01:58] Paula: jeez
[01:59] Paula: they can enter a marriage so long as they fulfill the current legal requirements of a marriage
[01:59] Joss Fritz: well
[01:59] Paula: but you know this, but I need to gripe
[01:59] Joss Fritz: [01:57] Paula: would the governemtn uphold civil unions they way they uphold other contracts?
[01:58] Paula: or would a civil union dissolve as easily as a marriage contract is dissolved?
[02:00] Paula: it would be good if the government upheld civil unions the way it upheld other contracts
[02:00] Paula: well?
[02:00] Joss Fritz: i'm not sure of the difference between the "the way they uphold other contracts" and how that's different from how they uphold marriage...except there's No-Fault and "moral" reasons and such
[02:01] Paula: "other contracts"...i mean business contracts
[02:01] Joss Fritz: and i'm not sure how that "the way they uphold other contracts" would be different with civil unions
[02:01] Joss Fritz: yeah
[02:01] Joss Fritz: i really don't know
[02:01] Paula: like, you know, for example, between a service provider and a consumer
[02:01] Joss Fritz: did you argue with someone jsut now about it?
[02:01] Paula: like how they can sue each other for not providing what was outlined in the contract
[02:01] Paula: or not following it
[02:01] Joss Fritz: yeah
[02:01] Joss Fritz: so...in that case
[02:01] Paula: they should be able to do that with marriage
[02:02] Joss Fritz: to get out of a civil union, someone would have to prove something more than "i'm finding myself" or "i'm unhappy"
[02:02] Joss Fritz: ?
[02:02] Joss Fritz: if the government were treating it as the same as other contracts?
[02:02] Paula: yeah, I'm thinking now, and I'm guessing for that to happen, people would have to draw up extensive contracts
[02:03] Joss Fritz: yeah
[02:03] Paula: very specific things they are expectnig from your partner
[02:03] Joss Fritz: but people are stupid
[02:03] Paula: they should
[02:03] Paula: people should do that
[02:03] Paula: that would make them think twice about shit
[02:03] Joss Fritz: i wonder how many people would alksjf;lasdfjkads
[02:03] Joss Fritz: that too
[02:03] Joss Fritz: would fill their own civil union contract with bs like "love MEEEEEEEEE"
[02:03] Paula: it would also clear up lots of sdkjfowiuoiuwera
[02:03] Joss Fritz: "long tiiiiiiiiiiime"
[02:04] Joss Fritz: "so hoooooooooooneeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"
[02:04] Paula: well, people aren't very business minded, so I wouldn't doubt it
[02:04] Paula: jeoawueroiweuroiwjera
[02:04] Paula: I would be very specific
[02:04] Joss Fritz: in which case, the situation would be the same as now
[02:04] Paula: what do you mean
[02:04] Paula: OH yeah
[02:04] Joss Fritz: well the "dumbasses getting divorced all the time" situation
[02:05] Paula: yeah yea
[02:05] Paula: yeah, people are so dumb
[02:05] Joss Fritz: but the gay thing would be solved
[02:05] Paula: definitely
[02:05] Joss Fritz: OR
[02:05] Joss Fritz: OR OR OR
[02:05] Joss Fritz: OMG THIS WOULD BE GREAT
[02:05] Paula: lol
[02:05] Paula: OR?Q!
[02:05] Joss Fritz: the government could make up its own general civil union contract
[02:05] Joss Fritz: AND YOU COULD GET A GOVERNMENT STAMP
[02:05] Paula: what wouldsldkjfoiwuer
[02:06] Paula: SDKFJOWEUROWEIRUA
[02:06] Joss Fritz: that'd be so easy, wouldn't it?
[02:06] Paula: damn, that would be great
[02:06] Joss Fritz: City O God....soon as we elect people who caaaaaaare
[02:06] Joss Fritz: who care long time
[02:06] Paula: sdfkwerjwerwueyr
[02:06] Paula: me soooo caring
[02:06] Joss Fritz: ONLY five dollah for government civil union contract
[02:07] Paula: KSJFOIWUEWER
[02:07] Paula: LOL

3am Freak Out, Wednesday Edition

Samuel P. Chase.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

I think that's enough.

Random Think From Today's Class

First...the South was full of a bunch of really stupid people. LOLOLOLZ...okay whatever.

Doso...the South started the war. Ft. Sumter. Lincoln manuevered it so that they fired "the first shot." Which they did...so they started the Civil War. And it's totally fact and anyone who thinks diffurntle is a neo-Confederate because the .... well because you're a neo-Confederate and that is superplusungood.

if Lincoln had to manuerver around like that, then isn't that implying that Lincoln already had decided on war; that it was just a matter of making the South look as the aggressor...because they were not?

Lecture today centered around the advantages that both South and North had. North had more in population, manufactures, rail, draft animals, on and on. At least a 3:1 ratio in...about everything. It was numerically obvious that the South had no chance to win, or at least outlast the North.

If that's the case, that kinda makes the "South started the war/was the aggressor" to be kind of...a head scratcher. Unless you hold that they Did start the war...because they were just stupid.

Come On.

Republicans did not generally adopt the argument that there was a danger of slavery spreading into the North until after the Dred Scott decision of 1857....for it declared that slavery must be protected by the national government in the territories. "It is now demonstrated," announced the moderate Cinncinati Commercial, "that there is such a thing as the Slave Power," and Republicans who had not already seen the wisdom of Chase's constitutional arguments quickly adopted them...But many Republicans went even further, and claimed that according to the logic of the Dred Scott decision slavery could not be barred from a state any more than from a territory. If slavery were protected by the Constitution, they asked, how could a state, without violating the Constitution, exclude it? "Does the Constitution make slaves property?" asked one Republican speaker. "If so, slavery exists in Ohio today, for the Constitution extends over Ohio, doesn't it?"

-Eric Foner. Free Soil, Free
Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil
War. page 97

uuuuuuuuuuuuuh. Seriously, I've been suspending judgment throughout the civil war class. Using "TB" as initials for Lincoln is more out of habit than as a judgment based on any actual research I've done any farther than reading blogs and Di Lorenzo's The Real Lincoln. Also when I'm writing notes down, I can't spell Lincoln. I don't know why, but I can't do the "l" and then the "n,"it always gets made into an "h" with an extra bump, and then I cross it out. And mess it up again. I don't _really_ care, and even if I did, I'm not from the South, so I don't "get" anything out of having an ungoodthink opinion. Nor am I from 'the North.'

The stats I've heard "oh well only 10% of the Southern soldiers actually owned slaves so it wasn't about slavery"...ummm. How many head of households were soldiers? How many young men who ended up fighting were in a position to have the kind of wealth where they could choose to own slaves or not? If I have 7 literate kids under the age of say, 15, and I vote socialist, then yeah, only 12.5% of my household voted socialist. OBVIOUSLY, my home is not a socialist-leaning home. Oh wait. But that can wait for another time, as I don't have the answer to how many of the soldiers in the CSA were actual head of households or not.

The subject of Texas overrides that of Clay's System. After the face stomping he and Nicholas Biddle receive from Jackson in the early thirties, that subject kinda dies out and, as I understand it (which is probably an oxymoron) "internal improvements" isn't dusted off as super brand new innovation until the New Cripple in 1933.

Part of my suspension kinda hangs on the issue of slavery. Oh yeah I know. The War of Northern Aggression was not about the issue of slavery. I get it. That doesn't mean slavery was not an issue, does it? Douglas and Lincoln were not debating tariffs. No, I don't know how Douglas really did stand in the Democratic Party, so he very well may have been more northerner than Democrat. If slavery was only an issue because the North was bitching and moaning...why did slaves run away? Frederick Douglass, anyone?

But then I run into the above posted section from my reading last night. Oh good God, people. If a southern state is violating the Constitution when it excludes slavery...then grow a pair and nullify the damn part of it that does that. Declare that aspect of the Supreme Court decision null and void. Did they overstep in that decision, or in that court opinion? Then defy it. Declare your state to be one that will not will never tolerate slavery, that any slave, as soon as they step foot in this state, are free. You bring your slaves through this state for whatever reason? All of your slaves have the power to sue for their freedom and we'll be damn sure to pack our courts full of people that'll love to free them.

South Carolina nullified federal laws, under Jackson, of all Presidents. That, cupcake, takes balls.

Douglass said that if federal agents went kicking in his door to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law, that those federal agents would have to fight for their lives.

But but...Kansas all over again! Oh no! Anarchy!

Well gosh, sounds like the peaceful thing to do would be for the Northern states to just secede from the union that the Constitution binds them to. The Slave Power is entrenched throughout the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branch? Everyone in the restaurant you eat at regularly smokes? Get the hell out and don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Buncha damn babies.

Midtern Score 2/3... of the way through

So far it's pretty damn close, me kicking ass at Early Middle Ages, only to get my face stomped in at Roman Law in Medieval Europe an hour later.

I walked out of the second midterm two minutes ago. Out of the building was a guy standing out, waiting for the guy who came out of the class right behind me. I recognized him as the big guy who sits in the back of both Middle Ages classes.

*tilts head back* FUCK. *leans head forward for full effect of the
word at the guy behind me* DUUUUUDE. There wasn't a fucking thing on
that midterm that I fucking studied for. Fuck!

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Next up is Thursday morning, where I have two of the six posted essay questions to choose from. I tried to figure out with the guy I sit next to in that class which ones he'll pick

"Oh, he'll pick the 'compare the compromise of 1820 with the 1850 compromise 'cause he's been on it so much...it'd be awesome if he picked the 'slave power as rhetorical tool' one, but he won't, he'll probably take Stephen Douglas and popular sovereignty 'cause he was soooo on and on about how it was wrong or something"

Oh wait no. He said that he'll have his grandkid pick the essay questions at random.

Herman Husband's Gonna Smack My Bitch Up

Other than "moral indignity" of slavery, why would a Northern wage laborer care about slavery? What would he gain by slavery ending in the south?

And no, you can't give me that "oh well the wage labor was so awesome" since they knew they were slaves too. Or at least were told so by Southern ... I guess the term would be Fire-Eaters.

Why did they vote Republican? The Whig economic stuff? How did Stephen Douglas differ on that mofo? He was a Democrat yeah...but in the North. Did his popular sovereignty ideal for Kansas carry over to internal improvements.

Why was the Democratic Party split so late? The way it looks, Lincoln was able to win in '60 because the Democratic Party thought it was still running against Henry Clay, or his puppets/war heroes (Clay always losing to war heroes....awesome!).

But Clay died a whole senate term before the '60 campaign. The Whigs only lasted two more years before they dissolved and then coagulated back into the Republican party. Economically, still Whigs, socially, politicians who just can't help themselves but bitch about the South, I guess.

Calhoun died in when? Early 1850. Ten more years of goofing off, people like Stephen Douglas and James Buchanan partying together. I don't understand why. Oh well.

Don't Do Drugs, Kids

Otherwise when someone tells you "hey, your friend *finger quotes* Joe *finger quotes*molested your little sister" you won't fucking remember it ten years later when your little sister calls you and has to bring it up so as to try to protect your stupid ass because you're too fucking cool to stop buying pot.

I'm jus' sayin.

But then, go ahead. Not like anyone can be mad at you. You genuinely forgot! You were so loaded all the fucking time, it's not like you have only one sister, it's not like you got calls from people at 1130 pm all the time back then to be told this shit. It's not like a few years later when you made her go with you and everyone else to see *finger quotes* Joe *finger quotes* because he's got a super cool video game thing; well it's not like she bitched about how she'd rather just wait outside in the dark and was super pissed the rest of the night because she had to go in...not like she didn't voice the idear that if *finger quotes*Joe *finger quotes* or anyone related to *finger quotes*Joe *finger quotes* was gonna be at your wedding that she was gonna walk out, bridesmaid in a stupid dress and everything. And everyone in this "family" is so close that we share our collective war stories all the time but daaaaarrrrn if she didn't ever fucking mention this one.

Gosh golly that neeeeeeeeever happened, huh. Just plum forgot about it.

Most Awesome Conversation Ever

*phone rings*

...

*phone rings*

*I think it's my alarm going off again, as I use my cell phone for my alarm*

*phone rings*

*grabs and looks at phone 1 missed call. Hmm, who...Oh. 1 minute ago. oh. It's the internship. Probably didn't get my email of yesterday saying for the 2nd time that I'm not going to any of their classes or anything this week because I have to catch up for classes. Bah. Back to sleep.*

...

*phone rings*

*Now 2 missed calls. From different phone numbers. So ... gah she's crazy. She's calling from one phone and then going to another when she sees I don't answer. Well I'll just wait for the ring that says another voicemail is on and then delete it and go back to sleep...there's an Email already sent for this.*

...*phone rings*

Dang. *picks up phone* mmmmellow?

yeeeeeeeah Fritz? Dis is Jessie. I know you emailed us, but uh. But I forgot what it said. Did I wake you up?

mmmmyeah but...the email said I am...not, coming in this week

Oh okay I just

I will be in umm....umm Wednesday.

Oh okay I just...so you're not going to the digital camera class?

Nah I don't umm, have a digitial camera *that's not a piece of junk*

Oh you don't need one for the class. So if you want to come over you know...we have sandwiches.

Oh. Hmm. Okay, bye.

storytime

Maht' was waking up Billy and Eddie by yelling at me, “I am not a whore,
don’t call me a whore etc,etc,”

aaaaaaaaah the ole "don't call me a whore, said the whore" line.

*drags off well-earned cigarette.* Don't call her a whore. I remember it well.

Huh? What about? Hell if I know. I remember...her boyfriend wasn't there at the time. It had to be either on a weekend, or during the summer. For some reason the summer before I started seventh grade is sounding very real. It would make sense... Dareck was supposed to be getting ready for the 10th grade but because of some scientific hocus-pocus I wasn't yet aware of he was able to kinda sorta get out of going to junior high and high school. 'Cause it was so hard for him, you see.

Why, people at school threatened to steal his music tapes and wouldn't back down when he'd start fights with him! Oh, the transgressions. I on the other hand had learned to just hate myself and be done with it when I got made fun of for being such fucking weirdo...dirty clothes, sociable but awkward, for some reason not a retard like the kids in my classes later told me they thought I was but unusually smarter than most of them. So...squeaky, bitchy wheel gets the grease and whatnot.

How does that mean I was alone with her? Hmm. Well, this could have been when he was visitiing his girlfriend all the time in Yucaipa for days weeks at a time, but before my middle brother and his girlfriend would have me over for the weekends to hang out with them.

Thank you public school system that did not assign huge ass difficult and complicated books to read over the summer. Was sitting home all day. with Her.

And her just...being herself, and me just...being what she was telling me to be, she was getting on my...haha...getting on my nerves. No. I was going to have an ulcer having to deal with her anymore than I was. Yelling, screaming, being a vindicitive bitch. I don't remember what over, would probably be embarassed if I knew. Dishes weren't done to her liking, or I thought there were so little so as to not need doing right then...shit, it could have been her habit of reading newspaper articles out loud before I got to read them myself. I hated hearing her voice, and her ironically mimicing the logic and sense of Sowell or E. Williams' columns, or really anything interesting...it wasn't as if I didn't read the same articles myself. Perhaps it was related to her stupid yippie dogs. I either didn't show them any affection, didn't walk them outside enough, or that they came to me too much instead of her.

Early in the day, when we were both human, she told me about how her mom was so mean to her.

stop laughing.

*another drag*

So yeah...her mom was so mean to her and called her a whore. Oh that was so mean because it wasn't true and it really wasn't true and she still said it, and I never was one.

By the end of the afternoon...

I hated earthquakes as a kid. Maaaaaaaan I hated them. They scared me. Like...EARF FALLING. No good. Terrifying. The idea that "our" situation would just get suddenly worse...not only were we poor and living like we were but now there were no more roads...oh mah God. Bad news. Every night for years after the Northridge in...94? yeah I would pray to a God I didn't know specifically that there wouldn't be another huge earthquake in the middle of the night.

But right then a huge good ole' California falling into the ocean type of one would have been a Godsend. We'd already gotten to the point where she was pushing me into my side of the room, telling me idunno what. I was a few feet away from her, trying to stop crying. She started to yell at me about how I was "acting like a whore" and she "never would have acted like that to my mom."

Oh! Oh! Oh! I didn't know who John Calvin was, but right then I saw proof of free will. And I took it.

*sniff* "yeah well then why did your mom call you a whore?!"

Right before she lunged at me, before I felt my shoulder and head hitting the wall and my scalp subject to her waving grip, I saw her eyes. She was hurt.

Good. Finally.

*stomps out cigarette*

Unexpected

Eh. Names changed; I'm not in it. Didn't ask for it. Not muuuuch new that I learned. Cept maybe why I don't have any name on my bc under "father." But even that's just guessing.

I was going to explain what was going on in the past.

I came to Lone-Pine after Maht' was writing to your grandmother about Dareck. A few days after I moved to Lone Pine I told to come over to the welfare office. Mrs. Dartela greeted me and told me that I need to sign a simple document. “It is to make you eligible to baby-sit Dareck, in case Maht' gets run over by a truck.” I agreed and she called her secretary to come in and be a witness. When the witness came over she change the words and she said something about being responsible for Dareck. She said it in a joking manner and I was joking about it too.

A few days latter, I had a conversation with the person in charge of the welfare office, M*n** Cli***rd. During the conversation, he told me that Dareck had to flown to the hospital for smoke inhalation twice. I told M*n** that Maht' told me only about one fire, but I did not know that there were two. He reassured me that there were two incidents, it was due to fire in the apartment and it was cause by Maht'.

The next day I went to the welfare office and I asked to see Dareck’s file. Mrs. Dartela told me that she will not allow it, she will allow me to read only the part starting from the time I came to Lone-Pine. I can read it only in front of the D.A. and in his office.

I went home and told Maht' that I am going to force them to let me read the complete file. Maht' runs over to the welfare office, latter she runs over to the Priest. The priest (Catholic) came over to talk to me he said, “You don’t need to read the file, you were not around for the last two years. Stay out of that.” I told him that I am not Christian and I may not feel obligated to listen to him. At that moment, he got angry with me and yelled at me to stop. I assumed it was an issue of a confession and I did not force the issue.

About a week latter, I got a job working in a gold mine as an underground miner. The job was to starts on the night shift. The hours before my first day, I tried to sleep during the day but Maht' had a fight with property manager. The police were call, and a report made, it was not exactly the right atmosphere to relax. After coming home from my first day of work, I got arrested for the first time. (I finally got some sleep) I did not lose my job in spite of the fact that I was 72 hr in jail. (Miracles do happen)

The next days were fights and arguments, mostly the way you described it, “a lot of in your face type of fights.” During the arguments, Maht' was repeating the issue of “where were you in the last two years.” She also was saying you could get the blank out of here; he is not your kid.
I went to the welfare office and asked Mrs. Dartela about getting a blood test. She said, “No, we don’t need a blood test, we have your signature.” I told her that this is not how babies made, and I left the office.

I was laid off after about four weeks and about three weeks latter, I was reinstated. During the unemployment period, we had a visitor. He was Maht'’s previous boyfriend, Ted. He left the house after a few moments, and later I decided to visit him. It was night when we got there Maht' showed me his home, he was living with his parents. I told him not to come over anymore, but he was upset and claimed that he was spending lots of money on Maht' and the kids (sound familiar). I told him that’s it is just too bad, and I repeated the issue of don’t come over there.

Ted run inside his home and got a rifle, he pointed it at me and talked some shit. I stood there using a few words too. I figured that if he wanted to shoot me he would already do it. Maht' watched the drama awhile in hiding behind a tree, and then she decided to run away. I stayed there taunting Ted but after he notices that Maht' was running away, he decided to get inside his home. I was happy but in a few moments, I find out that the drama made me very weak. The other time I felt that way was, when I saved Will Carson. Ted called the police to, they came, and talked to me, I told the police if Ted stays away, we could forget the incident.

About a week after I got my job back (the boss was a Jehovah Witness and he try to convert me) I was arrested the second time. This time the D.A. Mr.Ronnin, refused to drop the charges. Maht' told him that she smashed the marriage certificate on the table but Ronnin said that I should be able to control myself. Maht' did not realize that she established my self –defense argument, she was into the drama part of the story. Mrs. Ronnin suggested, an order of counseling, I refused at first. After the probation, the welfare and others talked to me including Maht' about counseling I agreed. I made a verbal agreement with Mr.Carter the probation officer that Maht' and I will go to counseling. I told Mr. Carter “I am not going to plea guilty to the charge.”

I lost my job again and this time there was no going back. Maht' had the habit of visiting my boss’ wife to study “Jehovah” but Maht' always made sure that the boss’s wife knows that I am very abusive to her and the kids. I was also spending all my paycheck on beer and woman’s. “I don’t know when dose he get paid he never spend it on his wife and kids.” (Maht') The boss’s wife told me that when I picked up my last paycheck.

The order for counseling was impose on to me only. Latter on I found out that I should of asked the judge to include Maht' in the order, buttttttt . After the order for counseling given, the fighting, and the verbal abuse, intensified. Some time she would flinch at me challenging me “come on karate guy.” There was no real punching on my part.

Maht' was waking up Billy and Eddie by yelling at me, “I am not a whore, don’t call me a whore etc,etc,” Billy and Eddie will wake up hearing the arguments, and they will see me leaving the house. Later on she went to Monty Python telling her side of the story, and Monty talked to Billy and Eddie and they confirmed her story. The last day I saw her in Lone-Pine she made fun of me facing her ex boyfriend pointing the rifle at me. “You knew he was not going to shot, it was a set up to impress me.” She also made a few comment of his ability to perform as a boyfriend; you know what I am talking about.

The next day she was gone before I woke up. I went to Yosemite National Park to look for a job. I did not find work and I cam back in about ten days. Upon coming back I was approach by Monty Python he told me that Maht' is in a shelter home for abused woman and I am not allow to visit her. He continues telling me about her daily complain and horror stories. “If only 10% of it is true, it is horrible” (Clifford) he said a few other thing but I ignored him.

My side of the story is that I did not hit her at all accept the one time that I was arrested for, it is her fabrication and games. She lied to Monty and he transferred Maht' to the woman shelter without her being hit.

Shortly after, I was contact by the county and I was serve paper for back pay of child support. I challenge the order and I received a court appointed lawyer Londa Anisean. She had a privet practice in Bishop but the county hired her to represent me. She asked about my signature and I told her what happened with Mrs Dartela. Linda said that she heard about Mrs Dartela doing the same thing before. She also said, “You were not represented by a lawyer.” Linda filed the proper documents and we never heard from Inyo County again. Linda instructed me to keep in touch with her and call her every three week, she authorized a collect calls. (I am sure she charged the county for it) I think she is Jewish; she had no problems saying my name.

From Lone Pine I went to Anaheim I lived on the corner of Euclid and Cerritos practicing Karate there. I did not know where Maht' living and I did not care. While in Anaheim, I got a letter from the probation department, telling me that they did not get any report of my counseling progress. They threaten me with reinstating the charges and I reply with a letter telling them “black you, I am not going, we had a verbal agreement. I am ready to face the charges” That was the last time I heard from the probation office.

About six or seven mounts latter, I received papers from Orange County. I appear in the county office and that was the first time I learn your name. That day (it was Friday) I went to Maht'’s hotel room and you know what happened there. On my way to my van Maht' run after me and asked me to call her. I called her latter and she was talking fine but every few moments she was becoming loud and offensive. I figure that a neighbor is passing by and she is trying to impress the neighbor. With the little bit of normal conversation that we had she manage to tell me that her boyfriend is very loving, understanding, and he love the kids. He also want to merry her and they live happily and such.

About two days latter, I came over again with the food for Thanksgiving as bait. Maht' took the bait and she showed me that she already have food for Thanksgiving. I did not see you there that time. I believe that you placed with the neighbor before i got there. After I drop the bait, I walked back to my van. Maht' came after me to talk to me. This time her story about her wonderful boyfriend was different, he wasn’t exactly the best and she wanted me back. I told her that she first has to change her lies and the images that she created about me. She had to go as far as facing charges if necessary. She agrees to do it but she asked for $20,000. The conversation end up with “blank you” and that was the last time I saw her.

I listened to Linda advice and challenged everything. I was appearing in court every two weeks for the next six or eight months. I also lost my job because I had to be absent from work and it was not cover by the Union contract. After the blood test Linda said "keep challenging everything, you don’t know how they got such a high numbers and you like to know it. Your signature in Lone Pine maybe a factor resulting in such a high number” Linda was not representing me in Orange County but I could talk to her because Inyo County did not drop their claim.

Orange County provided me with a court appointed “lawyer.” I could never talk to him and he never returned my calls. He was always busy doing something, I don’t know what. In most cases, he wasn’t in the court room when I was appearing. The last time I talked to him I told him “I am going to Colorado and then to Wyoming.” He said, “I am not recommending it you have to appear in court in two weeks.” I said, “You can do it for me, you are my lawyer I’ll call you when I’ll get there, good bye.”

The day I left California, I called Maht', she wasn’t home and I talked to her boyfriend. I told him that I received her petition for divorce and I am not going to challenge it, she can have everything she wants. Her boyfriend told me that she is in a bible study with a Christian group and I should call latter. I told him no, he can deliver the good news to her. I did not hear from Maht', Orange County, or my "lawyer" or Linda any more.
Until your brother called me.

10/24/07

Mostly so I don't lose track of which specific day it was...today.

Gave my oldest half-brother the info I had on someone who is in all likelihood his dad. Was not planning to, don't want to think that I maybe did it because I am pissed at my second oldest half brother for our phone conversation the day before yesterday. He just called, we talked, I ran out of stuff to say, told him that I found it, he asked for it. He got it, then said that he had to go, 'cause he was going to call him right then...I told him he's a couple hours ahead of us, maybe three I think two, said he was going to call him right then okay whatever, if you want to call me back afterwards go ahead, okay bye click.

drama/

So Yeah

Civil War class sucks.

What's supposedly an upper-division ooh ooh ooooooh university level course is two hours and forty minutes a week of copying down powerpoint notes while the instructor either tells us about immigration and how people in North Dakota have no opinion today on immigration that isn't ignorant. And every other issue is somehow related politically to the abortion issue today. The Know-Nothing Party of the 1840s is really the party that Bush should be in. But then when he told us about the competition for jobs that the natives had against immigrants, he explained my question about the influence of union violence and forcing wages to be raised by...

oh wait. I didn't ask that 'cause I knew it'd have been pointless. I'll just find out on my own later.

Boring. He showed us a chart that showed that there were more banks in the North than the South by 1860. Not so much just for our information, but so as to say that the South was ignorant economically because it doesn't tkae that much complication to run a cotton plantation with a thousand slaves. "Not that the south was ignorant...although they were hardy har har"
The chart gave me a lot more other questions, but I didn't want to ask 'cause it wasn't really about the Civil War so much as I guess an extension of the bank situation in itself. What kind of banks were these? Private? State, federal? What was the nature of the medium of exchange by then? I assume specie was almost completely out the window again; everyone just kept winking and nodding on the way out of the banks like they did in 1819? How did the influx of gold from California in the 50s change that? Or did the gold even get that far back east?

Meh. The Medieval Europe classes are cooler and more importantly right now, gonna take up more of my time anyway with the 10-page stereo manuals I'll need to do.

College Is So Important

Oh what oh what was I to do today between 10AM and 11AM, my precious special hour in between my two unplanned Medieval history classes. I'd slept in an extra hour this morning so didn't have time to make coffee, no matter since paying attention to lecture is enough to keep me awake the first class. But by the second class though if I don't eat anything or drink anything caffeinated and or sugared I'mma get all whiggy and unable to pay attention in that 11AM class and just think about food and how really incomprehensible the instructor is.

But I can't go on campus to eat anywhere. The campus commons thought up the great idea that, hey since everyone almost everyone is on campus between about 10AM and 2PM, to not open any non-breakfasty food stuffs until 10:30 and close everything at 3PM. Plus the commons food area is new, so there's plenty of mouth breathers bouncing around taking up space (for all the renovation, the walking space is still hideously small) and standing around like business majors while the register is yelling at them for the next person in line. And it's packed.

Oh it's packed no duh. No duh that I stand in line for more than 2 minutes in such a crowded herd and I start thinking the logistics of mass sudden panic or hysteria were someone to really actually Whig out or something. So buying a peanut-butter sandwich for $2 and 12 minutes isn't an option.

I know I'll walk down the street to the "University Village" (lolz how original and quaint!) and get Starbucks-not only are there no alternatives here but the UV has TWO Starbuckses. So the plan becomes to walk quickly, get coffee, sit down somewhere and drink, read for a couple minutes, then walk quickly back.

Noooo problem and at like, 1035 I get paranoid and start walking back. I don't know what it's called, but the freeway goes right over the street and walking under the freeway pass (overpass?) is the only thing separating me from the very edges of campus.

As I cross the street (where cars turn right to enter the freeway) I notice that standing in the middle of the one thru-lane is a construction worker holding a stop sign in front of a car. Hmmmmmmm. Guy tells me and the fourish other pedestrians that we have to wait at the curb because of construction.

And of course there's a middle-aged man who tries to go anyway, looking very important. When the construction worker says Again "You have to wait at the curb they're moving a beam on the freeway" out comes the cell phone. Two fly Azns, one on a razor scooter and one on a skateboard, move right in front of where I'm standing so that if I want to see the construction I have to be the jerk and move to the side even though I have no problem with just standing still. The fourth person was a girl who stood near me.

A couple more sets of people coming from the UV join us. Two more cars move forward and get stuck behind the first car. Worker starts waving his arm at the two cars to just move the other way, get on the freeway or whatever. The farthest car...is talking on the cellphone and doesn't move. Worker also has to yell at us each time a group tries to move forward.

Him: You have to wait here at the curb. Construction.

Dumbass: But I have claaaaaaaaaaass!

Him: I have work. So?

Dumbasses best friend: You should just go anyway.

Dumbass: Yeah I know, huh. *stands still*

It kinda just repeats like this over a couple more sets of people. Oh my Goooood mister construction worker I have classssss! Don't you know I go to the University of California??? I can't be laaaaaaaaate to Genderism in Early America! If the instructor takes attendance (although now that I think about it womyn studies classes are uber fascist about attendance), even though most classes here are lax about EVERYTHING, and even though everyone knows there's bigass construction going on along the street, if I show up late to class from this the teacher will FAIL me for the course.

I'm surprised no one said "You suck."

Oh yeah, 'member how I said there was only One lane going through the intersection? Some genius in his Bro-Mobile decided since there was only one lane the construction worker was standing with a stop sign, that if he can just outmaneuver him...

So the worker got to yell at him. "What you didn't see the STOP sign I'm holding? Think I'm gonna let you through instead?" He didn't say this until after the Bro-Mobile started honking at him.

The girl behind me was joined by a boyfriend type guy.

Boyfriend: Gah, why don't they like, have robots like, do this shit and stuff? They'd be so much better.

Girl: I knoooooow. 'Cause like...these guys are stupid.

You bitch! He's at work! Fuck you!

Even more awesome about that was that as I was leaving to go back (I had to leave the children, hoping perhaps that they'd all get abducted or something) I saw another student almost get hit by a car because suddenly the concept of "green light means cars are going somewhere lolz" was too freaking hard because of the trauma of having to stand around for *checks phone for when I called Catholic to tell him about it*...not even nine minutes. Even less for the girl that almost got hit I'm assuming.


By the time I was on the phone, they were all allowed to cross. As I passed, the construction worker who wasn't holding up traffic anymore was lighting up a cigarette.

Even with backtracking a couple minutes I still got to class on time.

Still Moving Soon As I Can, Though

He just turned around perhaps more out of habit than out of self-consciousness or fear twirling the left side of his mustache, narrowing his eyes at me in confusion.

I bet I looked confusing to him. In his cultural paradigm if he were to know my age he'd think me a harlot or run to police about me being an old maid (or would it be the other way around? *shrug*) on account of my clothes. He saw me laughing at him. "You sir....are excellently awesome!" And then I ran away, back into my time machine. Thus was my pestering of Thomas Nast.

"Parents want the assurance that when their children go to school they will learn the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic – not social indoctrination regarding alternative sexual lifestyles. Now that SB777 is law, schools will in fact become indoctrination centers for sexual experimentation," she said."

Oh wait. Mixing them up.

Schools will become indoctrination centers? So like, they weren't before?

The only thing I can find redeeming about living in California is that if you're gonna have libertarian ideas or free market afflictions, this is the place to test them. Here, we get both sides of the stupid.

Addendum: I don't mean to equate the pro-homosexual agenda with the perceived threat of a Catholic Horde of lil' over a century ago. I just can't but laugh at the irony that they at that time complained that Catholics were undermining the "foundation of America" by not sending their kids to public schools and instead setting up their own.

From my textbook in which there is this excerpt from this book:

Another foundation stone of our free institutions is the Public School, of which the state has and should have the entire direction without any ecclesiastical interference whatsoever...Pius IX says that it is an error to hold that "the entire direction of public schools...may and must appertain to the civil power, and belong to it so far that no other authority whatsoever shall be recognized as having any right to interfere in the discipline of the schools, the arrangement of the studies...or the choice and approval of the teachers." .... Bishop McQuaid in a lecture...[in] Boston, February 13, 1876, declared: "The state has no right to educate, and when the state undertakes the work of education it is usurping the powers of the church." [Italics and 3-dots in the original]

hahahaha. Pay for what you get, and such.

meh.

Couple of problems with his article. Idunnonorcare if the link works.

Uno I thought we were "designated" as Generation Y, 'cause we all chawed on Pokemon cards in junior high and listened to shitty pop music before it got all "angsty" right after 911.

I have three younger sisters who at 911 were 13, 11, and 9. Just at the same time that they had the mental capacity to be aware of the nonpersonal entity that is "government" and the world outside their home, political leaders/evilfasicstdummmies (take your pick) were legislatively reacting to 911. The oldest one is only Now entering college and being challenged to think politically about such things (and yeah, probably being told what to think like we all were, but nonetheless), while the other two are bout halfway through high school. (But then they're also Israeli Jews who are used to such things anyway.)

I think this is incredibly different from people our age who got 911 as a senior present basically. If anything, we started our late teens/early twenties in a different mindset, mentally capable of not assenting to the legislative reaction and the consequences thereof.

Additionally, from the time we're about 5 years old we've been pigeon-holed into thinking of only people our age/in our same grade as our peers. Think back to 7th grade and walking home past an elementary school, seeing the 6th graders. Would you have considered them your equals, or were they just kids? The "we learned more/earlier than they" doesn't hold unless you're talking perhaps pre-algebra. You can read "Red Fern Grows" at 12 instead of at 13 and you're still bawling at the end just the same; you read "Animal Farm" before your senior year and nothing's going to happen to you. (Except maybe get paranoid.)

Doso what is his problem with ethanol farmers? I thought we were supposed to be getting away from petrol-based energy? I don't like how he equates "politically active" with "caring about new shiny things like global warming." Does he imply that when he was our age his/their "new shiny political thing" was civil rights and racial integration in college campuses?

So when Friedman categorizes "This generation of college students" I can only hope for the sake of his intellect that he's talking about the incoming freshmen students, and has no idea who those who came just before them.

Invasion of the Manichees

Although perhaps they weren't Manichees on campus Friday. Just the run-of-the-mill, anti-gay-lifestyle (although I guess "anti-gay" would be more accurate), magic Bible quotes on one side of one guy's standard, the other side having a picture of two guy about to kiss with a red diagonal slash through it. The Other guy with the longer standard, listing everyone goin to hell on one side and on the other...idunno.

I tried to avoid them the hour in between classes mostly 'cause I don't know anyone on campus anymore, so the likelihood of running into anyone I know in the crowd was close to nil. Still had to pass by them to get home a couple hours after though, and somehow the crowd was even larger than before.

The guy with the longer standard was standing on a milk crate with a whistle, yelling about how a man needs a woman helpmate. In between Huey and Duey was Louie, a chunky male student in a NIN t-shirt with long brown hair holding up a side of cardboard with a pentagram on it that said ...something Santa.

Whatever. I guess since it's the fall quarter, this is the first time a lot of freshmen manchilds see em.

In related news, I got into listening to sermon/Bible studies from the local-ish radio station. A couple of the pastors/teachers are okay...well out of the three I regularly listen to only one is genuinely still rad to me, he's the one who enunciates every. Single. Syllable. Perfectly. There's the one who sounds like a white boy...I'm not sure how that describes. He complains that people study Biblical criticism, that people study evolution, sounds like a fundamentalist. And then there's the guy who runs at 1AM. He kinda. I don't like him.

Was explainnig Matthew 16:13-20. Non iam from my Reformation class exactly a year ago, nor the Middle Ages class that had a lot of Papal docs earlier this year, sed etiam dating a Catholic for a couple years up until bout a monthish ago...and I'm really interested in how an evangelical/fundamentalist talks through this one.

So...the money verses:

17Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed
to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.

He pointed out that Jesus used Peter's old name. Not really sure if he said why He did that. (It was 1am)

18And I tell you that you are Peter,[b] and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades[c] will not overcome it.

uuuuuuh you have to do the very thing that everyone gets mad at the Catholics for doing, which is know the linguistic mysteries and secrets of the text. No, in this one time you cannot "just read the plain words of the Bible" but understand that if you took Hebrew, that "Peter" isn't Petra but is petras which means little pebble, small stone or some such. When Jesus says on this rock we're all supposed to somehow know that Jesus is pointing past Peter to the...some important rock behind them. The term that comes up to my mind is Dome of the Rock, but I'm not sure. Perhaps it was where Jesus was later crucified. Building the church upon the cross and whatnot.

They Hate the Haters, I Hate the Game

This is awesome. Al Sharpton debating Chris Hitchens. I'm only 15 minutes into it, at the beginning of Sharpton's first rebuttal.

Because I want to use another title for a post, I end with this. Was given this flyer today on campus:

How To Handle Hate Preachers

Hate preachers thrive on attention and publicity. They use provocative language in an attempt to "hook" people. They frequently press charges and fund their homophobic campaigns by winning lawsuits.

• Some effective strategies that others have used include:
• Ignore the haters completely.
• Do NOT touch any of the haters...
• Conduct a positive campaign of rainbow ribbons, buttons, banners--'Not in R House."
• Form a 'moving circle of love' - surrounding haters. Hide them!
• blah blah bunch of dumb crap that'll not get done on this campus...
• Play music like "I'm coming out" and dance around them.
• Grab a bunch of people and have a same-sex kiss-in all around the protesters.

On Overproof

Have class on Civil War in two hours.

So...if y'all had slaves (yes, Y'ALL), then you were rich. And praaaahbably lived in the South. Lectures have been about a week of proving this. Efficiency isn't mentioned, only profitability...in toto I guess, not relative to "free labor" (and yes I will put that in quotes). Slavery was profitable.

But then, Foner relates the Northerners who would visit the south and come back home to write and publish how backwards and stupid and ignorant and such the South was. Roads are crap, mechanical efficiency is bunk, the free white males are lazy...dun dun dun. At the same time, professor in lecture compared the wealth of the South and North, concluding that the South "had" all the wealth. Of course the suppos'ed basis of this is in the fact that they have slaves, but that's not what I'm getting at right now.

What I wanna know. Was the North not as wealthy because of the American System? State governments spent all their revenues/focused tax/tariffs on canals and roads, subsidies to manufactures/factory builders -- I suspect that the builders er investors at Lowell were not James A. Hills, and if they were, how does that possibly hold as the rule for so many other states?

If the North really did blow all their blow on public infrastructure, and the South apparently didn't (although, maybe the politics differed locally-a county along the Mississippi I guess or some other high-commercial traffic area, may have less scruples than someplace..."in the middle of nowhere")...theeeeeeeen.

I have $20. Paula has $20. I buy $15 worth of nail polish, Paula buys one 99-cent nail polish. Walking out the store, the fact that she has more moneys than I do...isn't really the point. It's truuuuuue. But not everything.

OMG PICKCHURZ!

Turned my brains into mush after like, 4 minutes. And I'm sure I didn't help anything by forgetting how to move forward after I apparently changed the controls. Like Turok, the screen movement just....*keels over dead*

I found it at a thrift store out here. My then-roommate dropped off a pile of souper-Azn clothes, so the owner gave me the game free when he saw me scrounging for the $1 change he said it cost.

Ugh, I'm getting dizzy just looking at it.

How to

Write a lameass article. And more importantly, get on my nerves.

"I can't believe the U.S. House of Representatives can pass a resolution recognizing the Muslim holiday of Ramadan, which we did this week, but can't send out certificates with the word 'God' on them," Camp said. "It doesn't make any sense. The policy needs to be changed."

Changed...changed to what? To allow both Ramadan to be recognized and that oh-so-specific name "God" to be on the flag or certificate? Or for none of them?

One proposed compromise was to put out a uniform certificate of authenticity while allowing members to add messages they choose, but some lawmakers objected to that approach, the aides said.

Objected to that approach...whhhhhy? Did you ask?

This particularly bugs me because of a conversation I had this weekend with another "writer"

person: yeah so I did the phone interview, and he was so rude!

Me: Rude? How can...how do you know he was rude, what umm what gave that off?

person: He could tell that I didn't know who he was and got all "uuuugh!" I'm sorry sir, but you are not that important, ok?

Me: ...well, do you know who he is?

Person: kinda, but not really.

Me: did you like, do any research?

person: I should have, I guess.

Me: Name, just...Google. Guy's name. hit Enter, and read!

person: yeah well, he was acting ... acting like he's a *nother name* and I'm sorry but he ain't.

Me: were you interviewing *nother name* ?

person: No. But that guy was so rude though.

and on and on and on.

prooooooooooobably not.

actually when i finally fell asleep i wanted to stop thinking about something, or at least to try to stop a mental thing that i've been doing lately and i don't hink it's a good thing.
so i finally get to sleep and it's like, i really want this thing and i wrestle in a shallow lake with someone who kinda drowns me (he's the devil) and right before i die he lets me go and says something kinda cryptic...i go to this old guy and the thing i want is like, this position in some program, something where i'm filling out paperwork and realize that the old man is like, already in. and I think wow this would be so great for me and my 'boyfriend' I'll be so set and but this guy who almost drowned me was so close to me. and what he said was so close. he dumped me onto another side of the pool where what he said turned into paper which turned into a pile of frogs that swam away. I was looking for the old man I was going to replace. and, not really sure of the game I kinda just swam around, laid low when i saw lights flashing and a man walking around in the upper areas of this building. it got lighter and i found my boyfriend and didn't tell him everything that happened. was really ashamed. the old man i was going to replace was dead. he'd been killed in the night while I was sitting around watching the lights. he was killed like, by the lights, by no one else being there. by me being not there. but there was no body; just his younger family wanting to know where he was. we go wading waist deep in the same water, I remember where he should be (almost outsmarting the drowning man) but before we can reach the place, he falls out of the tree boughs above us, above that spot and lands onto the pavement. already dead. lift him up and realize that his wife is still upstairs and maybe alive so she needs to be reached. i'm no longer the protagonist, no longer the 'hero' saving people, that's now some guy. we all (hero, his girlfriend, his little kid sister, me) all go up this building and climb the twirling staircase to where she may be. she's not there and we have to go looking for her. while the hero starts yelling, his little kid sister walks away from us and disappears. i know this because i was the only one who saw her leave the group. hero realizes and starts climbing down the staircase furiously to reach her. i imagine what would happen if the little girl falls on top of him while he's still climbing down to save her; maybe he'll not be strong enough to save her, maybe he'll totally break her fall and she'll shove his head into the wall of the staircase which is now more like a well i guess and he'll be the one who dies. halfway down his girlfriend gets heroic and starts climbing down after him so that she can help him catch her. we're all certain that his little sister is gonna be found having fallen. there are two staircases like this, one on each end of the pool. i get downstairs to the other one. the other one has a wider edge that leads into the water and a small fence like you'd see on the edges of mountain roads to keep the cars inside; that fence has about a ten foot gap in it for people to enter and exit the water. hero and his girlfriend are on the other side. we're absolutely certain that we have to be on the lookout for what the drowning man/devil is going to do that we're not paying attention to and that it's about the little girl being killed. at the edge of the pool, before the fence, perhaps only visible from the waist or so up, with four maybe five men in business suits that all look the same on his right and his left, is rudy guiliani in "9-11" garb. dirt, sooty suits, yellow plastic hard hats. he's laughing. not laughing, he's smiling. not like something funny was just said or seen, but like he's laughing at something incredibly inappropriate, like he's a filthy kid. the kid sister falls out of the sky. the hero and his girlfriend were basically trying to call out for her. i was looking at the edge of the fence when what looked like a ragdoll fell out of the sky, hits her head at a bad angle on the fence and lays facedown onto the ground. i reach the scene before the hero does, but while i'm screaming and crying "my baby" which is what the hero is meaning to say, i can see the face of guiliani and he's so laughing at what just happened. and i start to think about how i'm in the middle of a stephen king novel and i don't like stephen king novels and haven't read any since i was in the eighth grade for a reason, the reason being that the endings were all the same, the meat of the books were so gory, and movies were so cheesey. but so obvious. i ponder how lame the little girl looked when she fell, as is someone just tossed a raggedy ann doll onto a miniature scaled set. i'm screaming and crying, pacing the floor a little, then start to think that this probably doesn't look real so I start to laugh in my crying and somehow make an inside joke with guiliani, go back to crying when i turn and face the hero. i wake up and it was a bad dream. i don't like bad dreams, i know that they're not just synapses defragging themselves for more space. this one wasn't, even with the special cameo by what's his name, (and yes i do think that that's embarrassing) or the fact that the hero was very definitely some youngish movie star that became popular over the summer, (yes also embarrassing) or that once you realize who you're talking to and tell them/it to go away, that they will/have to. that they've been to you in dreams before and only now i'm thinking that i wish to fuck i kept a diary when i was younger that i now had access to 'cause then i'd be able to see what set that off then. to see what set off my allergic reaction that summer like the one i had back in may of this year. was it really the same year i had to watch my brother's best friend yell in front of everyone in the apartment complex at the guy who ... to our youngest brother while the cops came to arrest him, that i watched this knowing that brother's best friend had done practically the same thing to me for the past 2 or three years, and i didn't say anything. and my mom's boyfriend starting...fuuuuucking a, doing what he started doing to me around the same time. was it that summer that i started one day to suddenly just break out in hives all over my legs and panics in the middle of the night, that only went away with benadryl after about a week? about exact same as what i got caught with in may of this year, after all the stress that built up.

wow that last part had nothing to do with the dream i got out of 45 minutes ago. well, oh well. needed to be said. if i may be a total recluse in real life I guess at least this is something.

but now i'm curious as to when i first started having dreams like the one i just had. i remember what it was. standing around what was basically train tracks, and someone who looks like a guy from school is saying something to me. and i get really scared, but just tell him No. and that he has to go away. i didn't look up to see what i already knew, that he was gone. i didn't have the guts to look up at him either, 'cause that would have meant Really Bad Thing.

i know i've had other dreams like that later on, 'cause that's probably the only way i can remember the first one. this was similar to those. and has been so long, only after, after making an honest attempt to rid myself of the mental sin i've been in; though i hate to say "making an honest attempt" 'cause i think it's more like finally realizing that it isn't pleasing to God to fill my head with the notions (no, not notions of that, gosh i roll my eyes at you) and that i've been doing it ...geez since i was first a loner which would be...four years old? ever since i've been aware of being wronged i'd in my loneliness fill all of my free time in either rehashing what happened over in my head, supplanted with what i should have done, what i could have done, and then practicing in my head what i'll do in x situation, in x conversation. everything else is satellite to myself and what i'm doing, down to imagining my shoes.

everyone else does it? okay, fine. i'm not in everyone else's head, so ...whatever. and i kinda don't think it's the same. ha. as if i have a reference.

so anyway, it's sometime last week that i first realize that the level of such is not good, and a sin, and since then it's been...on my mind to stop it. on my mind as a struggle. that, it's just substituting something else. if i really want to talk to Him (hahaha not Him-Him, just another person i haven't named here and am too sleepy to try to make a name up, certainly not one i'll remember) then i should stop doing it in my head and rationalizing my feelings and actions and beliefs mentally, i should maybe try real life. and then i get such 'characters' in my sleep. well, haven't been able to fall asleep at all for about an hour or so, anyway.

*pulls fallen-out strand of hair off arm, onto trash can next to me* and now i am totally convinced that waking up in the middle of the night is bad for my hair. пока.

the tough questions

[22:22] Me: well, the music i'm listening is putting me to sleep
[22:43] Me to someone else: i'm going to go back to bed and read


as I have shown, I obviously soooo called sleep way before...before the timestamp of this post.

how am i supposed to get monoxide poisoning or some other such
if my roommate shows up with loud ass friends at midnight
so effing loud taht i wake up and close off the air vent that leads into my room 'cause they're loud and coming in like a freakin speakerphone?

and you, guy that like...roommate's friend that always asks me what's up in front of the entire poker table and then as i get back to my room I have to hear the 'uh, your roommates are getting freaked out by us' maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan I am doing tottaly so super rad that I look like i just rolled out of bed and can barely form out words.

And speaking of getting your ass handed to you in a good way

really now, is there any other way?

Awesome!!!

Spiders jumping up out of the left side of the double sink onto my face while I do dishes.

Well, not onto my face, more like onto the plate I grabbed before I saw it and started mumbling "eeeeeeeeh" and poured hot water on it. But it would have if it had the chance.

.

I'm such a ...ugh. I just...I totally got my ass handed to me. In a good way.

1 Hour and Five Minute Later Trascript

So...talk to me.

*looks at mousepad on her desk*

And...and tell me straight. Even if I get mad or upset...so, what?

I...I don't care about the subject. About the way it's presented.

You don't...care?

I mean, I do care, I think it's important--I think the regional, sectional differences are really interesting the way that the North and South really did see themselves as two basically two different nations and the...the federalizing of ... of civic law, of civic rights, I think that's really interesting but...

But...

But I don't respect duBois.

...You don't...respect...duBois?

Well. Not "disprespect" even though that's what I just said. I ... *mouse pad again* I mainly don't agree with him. I agree more with Booker T even though he's... [duBois outlived BTW by almost fifty years so it's hard for me to call them contemporaries] I'm not completely sure they were contemporaries

They definitely butted heads

They certainly did and I just...agree with Booker T more, and ... no he certainly does have his faults

*nods*

And I don't...I don't care anymore about...about the rightness or whatever, of having to read duBois that doesn't matter to me, I just want to get out of class. Not out of class-class, but to be done, and get my work permit and just...get out and I...I know that I won't do well in such a seminar, and I looked and there are others I can take

*nods*

So...

And really...you did not have to tell me all this. You've obviously thought about it and your perspective is very different and truthfully...what I have to say doesn't interest you. What you are interested in, I am not interested in. You could have just dropped the class. Your voice, in the class, would have been very...enlightening, and had you shown up something something others could have learned. But you won't be there.

Oh yeah absolutely...at the same time I said I'd be here at 4pm and didn't want to just not show up and you said your email needs a 48 hour response time so...

And I could tell yesterday that you were not happy in the class

[I did audibly snort with disgust when she started to like, pretend to cry like a baby instead of just saying 'you have a kid' or something like "us urban people got our own thing goin on while the rural folk are all chawin on hay"]

so just...be...you already have a sense of what you want to pursue about history, so ... Be. A. Scholar. And do your thing.

*shook hands, I left*

College sucks and the sky's blue

If I had just been able to get in contact with this professor over the summer I would have had no problems at all.

I'm enrolled in the 19th-century U.S. seminar for the upcoming quarter, and am curious as to whether you have a specific time period or theme in mind for the class. Or...well, I haven't taken a seminar before, so truthfully I'm not exactly sure. I've tried reading what I can over the summer on the Whig party (Michael Holt's), and while it's great, there's more to the United States during the 19th century than just that. Any input would be appreciated.

No response. I didn't send it until 8/29. Because there was no available listing of who was actually teaching the seminar until then. I enrolled in the seminar back in May. It was the only seminar both on the U.S. in the 19th, and the only one with no professor listed.

I found out yesterday on the syllabus she handed out that she does not use the campus email as listed on the...the campus website. Uses a yahoo email and apparently doesn't know how to set her campus email to forward emails to...to the yahoo one. And I guess either never checks the campus email anyway, or just...doesn't...just doesn't whatever.

I had a similar problem exactly a year ago with the black "Nationalism/Assimilation" class I took. Not exactly the same; that professor responded that all he had was a reading list for the last time he taught the class a couple years ago if I wanted it. Which I responded that I would really appreciate the reading list (like I Really want to jump into a class titled that cold)...and never got a response from him again. When I got his syllabus, the email listed wasn't even different from the one I had been using. Maybe not very similar, but close enough for me to not want to have anything to do with ethnic studies professors. They're just so...impossibly unprofessional.

Seriously, duBois is not going to turn over in his grave just because you occasionally checked a different email that doesn't have banner ads for free makeup or pizza or std cures along the sides of it. Having been a spoiled college kid himself, he'd probably actually appreciate it.

I tried talking to this professor earlier today. Turned out she was in a hurry to prepare for another class she's teaching, so could I come back at 4-which is her actual office hour anyway. But after ... well, Jon's advice was to talk to her about my umm "concerns" and if she sounds like she's dead set on her direction for the class, then to just drop the class immediately , drop it like a rock. I asked if I could drop it like it's hot. He said I could do that too, but I'm not sure right now if I want to. ummm. Nah I'm pretty sure.

We didn't say much when I just went, just that I'm interested not only in something different from slavery and the notion and expectations of Reconstruction...or whatever...but that I am not comfortable with the aaaaaaaaah I guess "method" of historial analysis. Translated into English, I do not respect that kind of scholarship. I think it's a joke. My experience with academic people related to this study is that they're mind-numbingly, incredibly fucking ignorant of the very history they want to create and guilt trip others into celebrating.

Whether this makes me a bad person, or whether I should just right now save this post as a draft and go back to slinging pizza where I belong...what, am I going to graduate school? With my shitty GPA, not immediately after graduation. Doesn't really matter so much as that I don't want to take the seminar now.

Oh boo hoo it isn't so much about the fact of what I read over the summer. Even if I'd read all summer about Reconstruction itself, or the later 19th century there's no way I'd want to be in that class. I can read and study Coin's Financial School just as much as Gouge's History of Banking in the United States. Not a problem.

If I stay in the seminar, I'm not going to do shit. Not as in some positivist, ...idunno. I didn't get any work done last night after I got out of the seminar class itself. Didn't even go running. I looked and was surprised that it was already 11pm by...well, by 11pm. And that's...that's what I've been doing ever since I got here five years ago. Annoyed as fuck by how stupid this all is, depressed by how completely apathetic and ignorant this place is, and instead of gosh golly bucking down and jumping through the stupid hoops for my work permit, I completely tune it out and do my own thing, whether reading von Mises, or the random discount books the library sells for 50 cents...the last one I got that way being Bagehot's English Constitution. Or Mark Noll's Scandal.

And maybe that means I'm not a good person, it almost certainly proves me to not be a good student.

sigh. Whatever. I'll drop this seminar, already talked to the History advisor...all the other seminars this quarter are full and not admitting anyone else (the others going on right now are 20th century US and American Thought/Culture, either of which can be doable), so to keep fulltime student status I'll take in ...whatever the hell it is I showed up for today, Law and Society in Medieval Europe. Same instructor as the Early Middle Ages, so I know what kinda to expect, and he's immensely respectable. Guess since he's also teaching a seminar on the Middle Ages/Medieval History in the spring quarter, I can do that. Popeasaurs are cool, it won't be that bad.