Hey France!

Two posts in one day, but with good reason. France, a country I know about only peripherally through my boyfriend and through a 3 day romp in Paris with my cousin Laura in 2003 (which was lovely, but honestly paled in comparison to our near-death in the forests of Germany), is having a holiday. A building was burned down, the People got some Freedom, and I’m sure everyone is singing La Marseillaise or something now. Here is my Bastille Day tribute - Flight of the Conchords with “Foux de Fa Fa,” which makes my French-speaking boyfriend absolutely crack up. I like it because it uses the word pamplemousse.

Weather Nostalgia: Extreme Edition

I go through jags of missing Japan every once and a while, but there are some times when I look about and think, “Thank god I am not there anymore.” Most of these instances involve very hot or very cold weather.

Let’s start with the hot. My town in Japan was around the same latitude as Atlanta in the USA, so it was much warmer in general, and there was the general presence of the ocean to muck about with weather patterns. I live in close proximity to many bodies of water, but dealing with lakes and rivers is much different than dealing with an ocean. I don’t mind warm weather at all, and enjoy a sun-bask like anyone else, but as the saying goes: “Hell - it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.”

I abhor humid weather, and learned the Japanese word for it (蒸し暑い, mushi-atsui) as soon as I could. Minnesota can be deadly humid on occasion as well, and that kind of weather has been creeping up on us. I don’t have air-con in my apartment, and have taken on a few occasions to taking a respite in the basement, chilling out on the cooled concrete in the dark with the circuit breakers and someone’s laundry that has been drying on a line for approximately four months.

Minnesota’s humidity is rendered bearable, however, by the fact that it breaks spectacularly. A humid day usually leads to violent weather, with sheets of rain, hail, thunder, lightning, the sky turning pea-green and the occasional tornado. After you ride out the storm, the humid weather is cut away and you’re left with a week or two of the best summer weather anywhere on the planet.

When I got to Japan, being forewarned that the walls in my house would literally sweat (and they did), I was on the lookout for clouds, waiting for the storm break. I saw them roll in, familliar black and green across the mountains, and plucked my laundry in from the line, ready to go out and enjoy some cool weather after the front passed. Storm, boom, bang, crash, whoosh - and it was gone… but the humidity remained! I came to find out that the humidity begins around late May or early June and can persist easily through September or early October.

The other extreme was the cold. Given that I endured some deepy bone-chilling -20F (-28C) weather in Minnesota this winter, you think I’d miss the comparatively mild Japanese winters, where the temp rarely dropped below 0C (a balmy 32F). We had snow a handful of times in my town, whereas I was blanketed in the stuff while moving into my south Minneapolis apartment during a blizzard on December 1 of last year.

Minneapolis homes, however, are made for the six months of chilling winter. Insulation, central heating, sealed and double-paned storm windows. Japanese houses are made to fall down in a neat pile if there is an earthquake, hence my paper-walled reed-floored house was an icebox. I get shit from locals about being “too cold” during 32F weather, but I tell them to try sticking it out in a sawdust house with only a CO2-belching kerosene heater and an electric blanket. The only person who still thinks this sounds like fun is my father, who likes winter camping and is also crazy.

Sometime around the long two week spell this past January when the wind chill raged below zero on a regular basis, the radiator in my room clicked off in the middle of the night. I woke up around 6am with my face and nose absolutely freezing and was convinced I was back in Japan, as that was how I would wake up every morning: warm body under futon with electric blanket, and everything from the neck up damned-near frostbitten. “Oh crap oh crap what time is it is there gas in the scooter I have to get to work and make a lesson plan and make copies and set up the room and… oh. Oh wait, no. Zzzzzzzzzzzz.”

Where I’ve Been: Chicago

Finally got off my rear today and uploaded some of the photos that have been chilling on my camera for a while. I went to Chicago at the end of April to see one of my best friends of all eternity, Kat. Here are a few of the highlights - the story of The Best Pascha Ever is forthcoming!

Some of the carvings in the wonderful Ida Noyes Hall on the University of Chicago campus.

In the kitchen of Kat’s apartment

Union Station, Chicago. I have a big spazzy love for grand historic spaces.

This is back in Minneapolis, at the bike shop about four blocks from my house. Gallagher is an adorable chow, and a great shop dog. Unflappable and accepting of both kids and tummy rubs.

Paraphrased Conversation with Roommate

Me: (puttering on the internet) Ooooooh, look at this neat townhouse!

Katie: (in the kitchen) You’re looking at a townhouse?

Me: Oh, no. Just playing another round of “Stuff I Want To Have Now.” It’s a great game.

Katie: Ha! Also a great game: “Man, I’m Glad I’m Not That Guy.”

150 Clicks on Wikipedia

I found myself on Wikipedia today, which is a pretty frequent happening ’round these parts. Like so many of you, I have been browsing around the site, see something linked, follow it, follow something else, and then find myself wondering how I got from point A to point B.

When I was in Japan, some folks that frequented an expat message board would set up Wikipedia games to kill time. The organizer would give two terms, and players would have to find the shortest link between the two using Wikipedia pages. There would also be a bonus term that the player would get points for if they could work it into their linking chain.

Today, I did a small clicking experiment. I would start with the Wiki featured page, and click on a link randomly, writing down the page name for each 10 links I followed for 150 pages. Here you go:

0. Jurassic Park (film)
10. British Merchant Navy
20. Gold
30. Dar es Salaam
40. Maurice Koechlin
50. Shikoku
60. Philology
70. New Deal
80. United States Postal Service
90. Church of Scotland
100. Houseboat
110. Global diplomacy
120. Geographer
130. Utterance
140. Speed of light
150. Cambrian Explosion

Interestingly, it only takes three steps (Cambrian Explosion - Earth - Dinosaur - Jurassic Park (film)) to get right back to where I started.

Spectacular Gladiator Doom!

Chris and I are unabashedly fond of the new re-make of American Gladiators on NBC. It’s exciting, it’s ridiculous, it’s competitive, it at once takes itself seriously and is wonderfully camp. It was a Saturday morning staple when I was a kid, so I’m sure my normal truckload of nostalgia heaped upon it makes it even more glossy.

During this second season, they are introducing new gladiators, and after they are revealed on television, the website is updated with “profiles” of the gladiator characters. We realized this week that some of the profiles include hysterically awesome long sentences. Here are some of our favorites:

• Rocket: This is one ruthless competitor who will charm you with a blinding smile right until the moment he roars up beside you like lightning, to toss you to your doom.
• Zen: Born to create chaos, this mysterious warrior uses superhuman speed and highflying skills to dispatch anyone unlucky enough to cross his path before they even realize they’re in danger, and the slips back into the shadows like a ghost to wait for his next victim.
• Phoenix: Soaring into the sky like a spirit from the flames who has been kissed by the sun, the beautiful and bewitching Phoenix is as impossible to defeat as her mythical namesake, and just when a competitor has fooled herself into believing she’s got a chance, this dangerous bird of prey rises with talons fully extended to shred anyone into submission.

L’Étoile du Nord

No matter where I go, no matter what I do, I’m always coming back home to you. Happy 150th birthday, Minnesota! Commencement is going on in full force for various colleges this week here at the University, and as tradition states, they sang Hail! Minnesota, which is at once the official song of the University and the state. Also, it made me all teary. Yeah, I’m a sap, but I don’t much care.

Minnesota, Hail to Thee!

Hail to Thee, our state so dear,

Thy light shall ever be

A beacon bright and clear.

Thy sons and daughters true

Will proclaim Thee near and far.

They shall guard thy fame and adore thy name;

Thou shalt be their Northern Star!

The Most Appetizing Name Ever: Shed.

Once upon a winter, my roommate Katie and I were planning a trip to exotic Spring Green, Wisconsin, to see various things like The House on the Rock. However, due to financial crap raining down on our heads the week prior, the trip was canceled.

However, if there’s one thing that Katie likes to do, it’s internet restaurant research. Given that Spring Green isn’t exactly a bustling mecca of food, not a lot turned up, except for this: Shed LLC.

An LLC, for those not familiar, is a limited liability company in the USA. You usually see the abbreviation after small business names, and we had no idea what a restaurant would be doing with it in the name. Not only that… shed. Shed! Who names a restaurant “shed”!?

We were unable to explore the realities of Shed LLC for ourselves, so it has taken on a level of crazed speculation in our minds. Is it actually in a shed? Does it operate a second business, like outfitting Spring Green with custom table saws? Someone gave props to “who-ever makes there [sic] divine desserts.” This place is still on the must-try list.

Fitter, Happier

This Saturday, Chris and I went over to the Hub bike co-op on Minnehaha to scope out the goods. I came away from it $200 lighter but with a lovely red Specialized hybrid bike. Love!

This morning, I lifted it out from the basement and contemplated riding to work. However, I was cold, and didn’t particularly know the way, so I did another new thing: loaded the bike onto the front of a bus. I usually ride the bus to work, so the driver had extra patience with me, but the rack was awesomely easy to use, and the bike survived being strapped to the front of a crazy accordion bus barreling down I-94. I rode my bike over the Mississippi, and was annoyed at how my muscles raised a protest at even that. Sorry guys, this isn’t watching TV.

In my daily perusal of the online world, I found out that it is Bike Walk To Work Week, that Minneapolis is second only to Portland as bike-friendliest place in the country, that the stunning Greenway goes mere blocks from my house, and bike commuting isn’t that hard. So, having nowhere to be immediately after work, I cuffed my pants and decided to ride the 5 mile route home.

I wanted to punch something about a fourth of the way into the ride - riding straight into a headwind and going up a lot of hills and switchback ramps will remind one just how out of shape one is very quickly - but after getting a wonderful view of Minneapolis from the badass suspension bridge, it was all downhill and easy flat riding through the Greenway.

I know five miles is kind of wussy compared to what a lot of bike commuters in town do, but I was pretty proud of myself. I had to walk up a couple of the steeper ramps, and got a bit lost trying to find how to get on the Greenway at Franklin Avenue, but even with all of that and going quite leisurely, I still got home only 10 minutes later than I normally do when I take the bus. Sweet!

All of the transit options I have open to me are even more encouraging now. I have a monthly pass through work that gives me unlimited rides on all buses and the light rail train to the airport/Mall of America. I have a bike that is sturdy, comfortable, and light enough to lift on and off bus racks - say I rode to work, but in the afternoon it started to crap down rain; I could just put the bike on the front of the bus and get home the way I normally do. Plus, I have my car for when I need to get places that the buses or my bike can’t easily take me, like my parent’s house outside of the city.

The People On The Train

Last weekend, I went to Chicago for a whirlwind weekend of awesome with Kat, one of my oldest friends. In order to avoid the hassles associated with air travel, and dodge ridiculous gas prices, I took the Amtrak train to Chicago. I have a deep love for trains that only grew stronger in Japan, and the trip down was relaxing and pleasant; one has the feeling of actually going somewhere instead of being sealed in a tube and shot through the air, only to emerge bewildered and in a new location. In a train, you can see where you’re going, and lounge in first-class-by-airline-standards chairs, sometimes two of them. The train is part of the vacation, not just a means to an end.

When you’re on a train for eight hours, you have to amuse yourself. Being a veteran of 12-14 hour flights to Asia with much less room for traipsing about, eight hours on a train was cake. Space to stretch and walk, huge windows you could gaze out of, a fully stocked lounge car with a glass ceiling on the top level and a small cafe below, and no shortage of people with whom to chat. Here are some of my favorite folks I met on the train last weekend:

• A grandmother who moved to Minnesota from New York to be closer to her family, and found herself enjoying it. She stopped flying about 20 years ago for no particular reason, and enjoys the train. She was going through Chicago to meet friends in Cleveland, and then they were all going to the Kentucky Derby (which was run today, though I didn’t see her on TV). She hadn’t been very excited about the Derby until about 3 days before her trip, and was wondering about what large hat to buy.
• A man from Montana who was convinced the world’s dependency on oil had ruined everything for “thousands of generations.” The grandmother and I didn’t disagree with him.
• A former business professor from Superior, WI, who sat across the aisle from me and would occasionally make the whole car jump when she answered her cell phone by screaming, “TERESA!” She and I talked for a bit, and she encouraged me to keep traveling, as I mentioned that I didn’t have anything in particular tying me down to Minnesota to prevent long trips, just a matter of saving money. She gathered that I had a boyfriend, but that I did not live with him, and told me that people living together was the reason that so many marriages ended in divorce. I politely disagreed, saying that I felt there were a number of factors worldwide leading to higher divorce rates, but she stuck to her guns. I then lead her along with a kind of “shucks” tone and said, “Well, my parents did live together before they were married,” but crushed her eager I Told You So face with “… and they’ve been married 30 years this summer.”
• When returning to my seat from the cafe with a warmed chicken sandwich, a lady accosted me in the lounge car asking where the cafe was. I pointed behind me to the tiny stairs leading to the lower level of the car and said, “Back there.” She nodded, but turned back around and ambled into the adjoining passenger car. I followed, very much wanting to sit down, when she whipped around again, demanding the same information. When I told her it was in the car behind us, she huffed, “Well! You could have told me that.” Not content to just be a shrugging Midwesterner, I sassed, “Ma’am, I DID TELL YOU THAT.” Oooh, sass fight in the train!
• Hands down the best train person was the employee manning the cafe on the return trip to Minneapolis. He worked the all-train announcements like a classic DJ: “Gooooooood afternoon, train 7 bound for Minneapolis and points west! This is your lounge assistant, letting you know the cafe is open and ready to ROCK. YOUR. WORLD. That’s right coffee-cookies-soda-HOTSANDWICHES are all available so COME. ON. DOWN!” Really excellent.
• A crowd of teens dominated the lounge car for most of the return trip, and they did what teens do best in a cafe - look over and touch everything, stuff their pockets with free sugar and cream packets, and wind up buying a Snickers. The rockstar lounge attendant was very even-handed with them but still had a sense of humor with their demands. A girl whined “No fresh fruuuuuit?!” and the attendant asked, “Would the young miss also like a pony?”

Diamonds: She’ll Pretty Much Have To

I’m a spazz when it comes to rings. Naturally fidgety, anyone who has spent more than about 30 minutes around me will be subject to one of my many nervous habits, which include but are not limited to: folding or shredding pieces of paper into bits, taking apart pens and putting them back together, manually checking to make sure all the knuckles in my fingers are where they’re supposed to be, or twirling a ring on and off my finger until it goes flying off somewhere and I have to retrieve it, embarrassed.

Before this goes any farther: Mom, I am not engaged. So stop making gasping sounds, and put down the phone.

As I drive various places during the week, I occasionally listen to commercial radio and sometimes keep from punching away from the blasts of advertisements. Jewelry commercials, they are everywhere. He went to Jared, every kiss begins with Kay, Tom Shane from Shane Co. and his monotone, and - all the time - Dean and Umit from Wedding Day Diamonds going on about something NEW and AMAZING that is SURE TO KNOCK HER SOCKS OFF.

Or at least shut her up, as evidenced by this billboard that is in downtown Minneapolis:

LouderYes.com is a website affiliated with Wedding Day, and is supposed to be proposal tips for fellas to get a “louder yes” out of their girl. I guess that loud yes comes after she is lulled into a shocked lapse from her normal obnoxious womanly chatter, which is exactly why you want to marry her, isn’t that right, Guy?

In addition to this, I saw ANOTHER board on the side of Hwy 280 last night. Chris and I were driving back to Minneapolis after a lovely evening with his fam, when there it is, a big white glaring slab of ridiculous: “This should shut her friends up.” Another massive diamond perched on a diamond-encrusted band. So not only is your harpy girlfriend perpetually screeching in your ear, but the topic invariably turns to her equally shrill friends who pester her non-stop about when you, Guy, are going to pop the question already. Aha, problem solved! You can quell the chirping of not only your woman, but others that you might not even know, just by getting affianced. And who doesn’t want a quiet wife? Ta-da!

I’m not opposed to conflict-free gems, and would be fine with owning one someday. But the whole “diamond as defining love” association, and especially this ludicrous Wedding Day campaign, has me not only quite pleased with the simple claddagh I have, but keeps my desire to punch pig-headed morons appropriately primed. Clearly, I talk too much for them to listen to my objections to the ads.

Fate to the Wind

The project deadline had been crowding up more of my brain by the day, so I set my alarm and determination to come into work early today to get it done, or at least make significantly more progress. However, I tossed and turned thinking of queries and interfaces and how would we determine this dataset, and didn’t crash out until the BBC World Service clicked onto the radio.

Awake before my alarm and bitter about it, the shouting returned in my head. No use in going back to bed, and I had a building key anyway. The quiet would help me get some work done, and the meeting wasn’t until 10am. Lyndale was barely coming to life as I slid up, but all the lights dutifully turned green for me. I was early enough that the coffee shops were still dark, though someone was tugging out some trash to the curb by Franklin. The freeway hummed, and was busier than one would expect for 5am.

Turn onto campus, cross the bridge. On the east river road, a shape moved in front of me, slowly. It was a duck, determined to have an early-morning staredown. He refused to move, so I rolled down my window and whistled at him. Two of his friends were hunkered down on grass opposite, and he indignantly continued his waddle.

Nobody on the sidewalks, nobody on the roads. A campus police car idled quietly behind a new stopsign, though I didn’t pause long enough to determine if the officer was dozing or not. The white marble of my 112 year old building is blue; the sun is coming up somewhere far east of here. I fight with my key in the fussy lock, and move through the hallways without turning on the lights.

Opening the windows in my office, I wheel my chair over and sit by the cold April breeze. There are cardinals singing two-note songs to each other. It’s a 5:30am that makes you at once wonder about life, and also wonder about not much at all.

Garfield, You Lazy Kitty

Garfield Minus Garfield: “Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb.”

What else can I say about America’s (possibly the world’s) most prolific cartoon cat? I certainly checked out my share of Garfield books from the library when I was small, but the Garfield animated cartoons left an indelible mark on my psyche. Not just the comic genius of Garfield’s Halloween Adventure (”Caaaaaandy, candy, candy, candy…”) or the Chevrolet-worshiping natives in Garfield in Paradise, but also the sentimentality of A Garfield Christmas and the genre-bending Garfield’s Nine Lives.

Despite all of that nostalgic gushing, I don’t really follow Garfield. While the comics taught me a bit about comic timing during my formative early elementary years, they grew stale as soon as I moved on to “Calvin and Hobbes.” Still, Garfield has never changed: he hates Mondays, loves lasagna. But does Garfield retain his humor if you take random panels from all the comic strips and perform a mix-and-match? If you have an absurdist sense of humor like the one I’ve developed, he sure as hell does.

Low Journalism and Patrick Stewart

I was at my parent’s house for dinner with Mom on Tuesday night, and leafed through the newish issue of Newsweek. In the back, in the short entertainment blurbs, there was a tiny interview with Patrick Stewart, most well-known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard on Star Trek: The Next Generation (which, it is worth noting, is my favorite Star Trek). Stewart, for those completely in the dark, is one of the most gifted stage actors of his generation, and is currently in a production of Macbeth on Broadway. It’s within this context that Nicki Gostlin caught up with him and asked him some of the most mind-blowingly lame and stupid questions ever, wasting both my time reading it and Mr. Stewart’s by having to endure her ignorance. Happily, he verbally bitch-slapped her back to reality in this choice bit at the end:

When you’re onstage, aren’t you worried about weird Trekkie fans in the audience?
Oh, come on, that’s just a silly thing to say.

But they are weird.
How many do you know personally? You couldn’t be more wrong. Here’s the thing: if you say the fans are weird, that means there is something essentially weird about the show, and there is nothing weird about it. I’m very passionate when people like you snigger.

You make me touch your hands for stupid reasons

Here we go, fresh from the Internets, it’s the YouTube capture of Dramatic Reading of a REAL Break-up Letter. I laughed so hard I cried, as did many people I work with, and my roomie, and my roomie’s sister who showed it to us last week (thanks Sarah, though I don’t think you read this!).

It’s Amazing What Traffic Police Can Do

Monday, I went to see the taxman. Given that my taxes are pretty simple (W2s, rent certificate, mutual fund), I probably could have filed online, but I got to hear straight up that I was getting ALL of my tax money back in rebate! AAAAND I qualified for the $300 economic stimulus package, which I will not use to stimulate the economy, but stimulate my retirement fund. Sorry, Prez!

Then, I set a land-speed record for spending my tax rebate. Not 10 minutes after leaving the tax office, I backed out of my parking spot in elation and whammed the front corner straight into a concrete pole. Shattered bumper, driver’s side turn signal kapowed, and a dinged-in fender. Guess we know where that money’s going to. Sigh.

An estimate from the shop that did the repairs the last time I smashed my car into something  gave me a near heart attack. $300 for parts, hmm, sure ok, that will probably go down when they look for used stuff from junk yards… $450 for labor and body work, yeah I guess so, this is why we have savings accounts… NEARLY $600 for paint supplies and labor?! I’d mentioned that I was looking to do this, um, cheaply, and that paint wasn’t a thing. I don’t want my car to be pretty, I just want it safe. He insisted that paint was part of the deal, it’s their standards, their reputations. Hmm. Well, I’d better shop around.

I parked the car on the street and retained a half day of vacation for Friday afternoon to go out to other auto places and look for guys that would do the work sans paint; I’ll get a little paint kit from Napa and touch it up myself. I also didn’t feel too keen driving it about, since the turn signals were out and it looked like someone had ripped the front jaw off of the car. Amusingly, the busted up bumper was shoved in the back seat, clearly visible… because it’s the bumper of a car and is huge.

The week goes on, and I arrange with my friend Neil to take a walk around Lake Calhoun and chat this evening, with his girlfriend Erin also joining us. Neil arrives at my house before I do, and hands me what was on my car windshield. A ticket from a traffic cop from approximately an hour ago, citing me with a violation: “Failure to display current license plate/tabs. No permit visible. No front plate.” Cost? $105.

I flipped out pretty hard at that point, because there was no place for me to put my front license plate, THE BUMPER IS GONE. And, as my license plate number is printed on the ticket, it means he had to have walked around the car to the back and seen the bumper in my back seat with the license plate on it. I’m blown away that I got this ticket when my car was parked! It’s one thing to pull me over and say, “Miss, it’s dangerous to drive without a front bumper, and Minnesota law requires a plate to be displayed on the front and back of vehicles, I’m going to have to write you a ticket,” but the car wasn’t even mobile, and I don’t even live on a busy street!

The final gem of this was a cryptic section of the violation: “Tow Category: 4 HR.” TOW!? Why would they tow my car, and dear lord I did not want to find out and have to pay at the impound lot, which is officially the Least Happy Place On Earth. Of course, trying to get in touch with any government person was made of fail because the entire city shuts down at 5pm. Neil managed to get in touch with someone who was able to confirm that the tow notice meant they’d be coming for my car. I don’t have an off-street parking spot, but Erin was gracious enough to offer her spot up to me for the evening, while she parks on the street.

So tomorrow, I will work a half day, then go storming into the Government Center and demand justice, because this ticket is the biggest load of crap ever. Then I will retrieve the car from Erin’s, give her back her parking sticker, drop the car at my parent’s house to deal with at a later date, and then go have some damn drinks. If you need to find me, I’ll be at the bar, really really happy that this week is OVER.

Coolio: The Interview

I cannot get over this interview. It is hands down the best thing I have read or will read this week, maybe this month; I am willing to sacrifice the rest of February’s potential reads for it.

In short, Coolio has a cooking show, and told Newsweek about it: “Everything I cook is good.”

Here are some of the best quotes (though it is a short interview):

“I’m ecstatic. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word before. This show is our baby—she’s really beautiful and she’s an Amazon woman.”

“My motto is, I cook better than your Shaka Zulu mama. And I wash my hands a lot.“

Are you making a profit?
“Coolio do not work for free, let me just say that. Coolio got six children, and Coolio likes nice things. And Coolio likes voluptuous women.”

We Will Save You With Ice

Right now, it is neither Friday nor springtime. I boycott this day.

In the meantime, it’s hard to fight fires when it is ONE DEGREE outside (which is something like -17C, you Aussies with your Summertime and your Beach and your Wine and your Good Times). The apartments above Maxwell’s on Washington Avenue caught fire yesterday morning, and they were able to put out the blaze. This is the building after:

We really do live here by choice. Really. I promise.

Yes We Can

The day after the 2004 presidential elections, I got onto a bus pretty bummed out, but with my “Kerry/Edwards” pin still hooked onto my lapel. It was suitably gray outside, and everyone on campus seemed to be walking around in a haze. Two older women sat across the aisle from me in facing seats, and one leaned over to the other and said, “I bet she’s sorry her vote didn’t count.” Not only was that awesomely false (since I turned in my ballot, and since Minnesota went to Kerry in the end), but I’m astounded I didn’t explode a crater into the street with my fury. Instead, I think I seethed my way home and tried to get a grip on what had happened and, more importantly, what would happen. I wound up spending two years outside of the country, which was a good thing all around.

I don’t remember what John Kerry said at the DNC convention in 2004, but I know that Barack Obama’s speech (part 1, part 2) continued to move me to tears years after it was given. “Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!” I feel a bit like I’m grasping for better words to express my support and belief in Obama’s campaign, especially in the face of so many excellent speeches that he’s given. I found this today while blog surfing and have been ringing like a struck bell ever since.

Created by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, here is what he had to say, and the video is below:

I was sitting in my recording studio watching the debates…
Torn between the candidates
I was never really big on politics…
and actually I’m still not big on politics…
but 4 years ago, me and the black eyed peas supported Kerry…
And we supported Kerry with all our might…
We performed and performed and performed for the DNC…
doing all we could do to get the youth involved…

The outcome of the last 2 elections has saddened me…
on how unfair, backwards, upside down, unbalanced, untruthful,
corrupt, and just simply, how wrong the world and “politics” are…

So this year i wanted to get involved and do all i could early…

And i found myself torn…
because this time it’s not that simple…
our choices aren’t as clear as the last elections …
last time it was so obvious…
Bush and war vs. no Bush and no war…

But this time it’s not that simple…
and there are a lot of people that are torn just like i am…
So for awhile I put it off and i was going to wait until it was decided for me…

And then came New Hampshire…
And i was captivated…
Inspired…

I decided a while back that my support would go to Obama, and if he didn’t receive the nomination, then I would volunteer with a non-partisan “Get Out The Vote” campaign. I know I can’t just drop out if my guy doesn’t get the nod, because I feel that politics is something you have a responsibility to pay attention to, that the world is run by those who show up. Tomorrow night, at my caucus site, I’ve got a guy that’s worth showing up for.

He Shall, From Time To Time

President Bush’s eighth and final State of the Union address was tonight on television. If I had been faithfully playing along with this, I’d probably be dead. Fortunately for my liver, the wine we had was really bad, and there were big spouts of time where I was shouting at the TV.

Quote of the evening that had me laughing because it was so sad and true at the same time: “Six years ago, we came together to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, and today no one can deny its results.” This is the act that educators, including my mother and aunt, have termed “No Teacher Left Standing.”

Man, where’s President Bartlet when you need him?