Monthly Archive for December, 2004

I just read this. Feeling some of that trademark “liberal anger” coming on. I try REALLY hard to respect peoples’ political beliefs, but I am feeling pretty pissed at those who believe Bush is a moral man. Bush is not a moral man. He is an ignorant supremacist. He has sacrificed the lives of 1325 innocent americans and ten times as many innocent Iraquis in what can only be described as a grab for power.

The war in Iraq has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction (there were none). It has nothing to do with liberation (there are other countries who need to be liberated far more desperately). It had nothing to do with revenge. The war in Iraq is a play to establish a center of power in the middle east for promoting American interests. George Bush believes he can kill in the name of God in order to acquire more power for the United States so that he might better provide for our safety.

Thank you, Mr. President, but no thanks. When one kills innocent people in order to protect his own life, that is not righteousness, it is cowardice. And when one kills innocent people in order to gain power to try to satisfy their paranoia, that is depravity.

So to those of you who believe George Bush is a moral man because he fears homosexuality and has not (to our knowledge) cheated on his wife: shame on you. Shame on you for sending brave american soldiers to their needless death and then hiding behind your willful ignorance. Shame on you for draping the american flag around YOUR self-aggrandizing shoulders while disgracing its name with this thoughtless war.

And shame on me for not being an activist. I lack the actions to back up my words.

Today, I ran across this essay from high school. It part of my application for the Nutmeg Scholarship at UConn, which I did not win. Re-reading it now, however, I am kind of proud of it.

Write an essay of not more than 800 words on one or two of your most significant works and explain the profound impact each of these works had on your intended audience. Significant work refers to a project or an activity that has consequential impact on an audience. It might include an experiment, and original photograph, a multi-media presentation, a speech, or a service program that improved you school or community.

It’s hard for a boy to pass up the opportunity to go off into the woods with his friends and build fires, wield dangerous woods tools, and go exploring caves. So I became a Boy Scout in the spring before I turned eleven. The next fall, all of my friends joined as well, and we had a great time out there. The bunch of us would spend the weekends gallivanting through the woods looking for dead trees to fell for firewood. On one such trip, a handful of us decided to build our first shelter. All we knew about the task was little bits of wisdom we’d inherited from the older scouts, so it was just an afternoon’s worth of pine boughs built around an old stone wall. We built it the best we could, and after crawling in for the night, eight inches of snow finished the job of insulating. In our sleeping bags under that green ceiling with rebellious snow flakes letting themselves in through the holes we’d missed, we felt like we’d built a castle together.

But now it’s been seven years, and I find I’m the only one from that group who’s still in the troop. That has made it easy to lose sight of why I’m still in scouts. It has become a lot like baby-sitting a little brother, except I get to spend two days in the woods with a dozen kids and I don’t get paid. I get a little spread out sometimes.

On a recent fall campout, when I got some time off from supervising, I lit off into the woods to build another shelter for myself. I found a good comfortable site and started leaning logs together, weaving sticks into an outer shell, and stuffing the frame with leaves. Working alone to try to get sticks to support themselves and the leaves between them was a spiritual thing for me. Being out in the woods by myself is one of the things that rejuvenates me the most. Once the shelter had a something of a visual presence, the boys would look through the bare wintry trees and notice it out a few hundred yards from the campsite. They’d come over to climb into the shelter and squeeze a few handfuls of leaves into the holes I’d missed. When their curiosity was settled, they’d run back to setting up tents, and I’d return to my work.

After a few hours, every boy in the troop had made his way back to see me, asking “Are you gonna sleep in that?” or “How’d you make that?” The fact that I ended up sleeping in the shelter I’d built did make me look good. To be honest though, I probably would have been less inclined to sleep in my creation if it had been raining. My shelter building skills, while decent, aren’t particularly well developed.

The next day, the boys took it upon themselves to build a shelter of their own, and I really felt a sense of déjà vu. The two boys sitting up in the branches of an old fallen oak, sharing the job of sawing through its tough inner wood took me back to the days when I had done the same. There were no pines in the area for them to use like we’d had years before, but they managed to create something that looked like it would keep the dark out. Looking back, there wasn’t anything in my Boy Scout career that brought us more together than my first shelter did. And while I’m too old to regain that kinship with the new scouts in the troop, I think it’s pretty incredible that they’ll wake up to the same rickety branches and dry leaves that gave me so much so many years ago.

“A group of players sits in a bar. Each types a rude text
message into their phone. Before sending, they swap phones
and start blindly scrolling through the list of recipients until
someone says “halt”. The phones are returned to the
owners, who hold them to their forehead for others to see
the displayed recipient. Bets of beverages are then placed,
which the player can then win by pressing the send button –
the more inappropriate the recipient, the higher the bet.” (Katja Battarbee, “Co-experience: the Social User Experience”, Chi 2003)

Dave Barry is Magic.

OK, I wanted to comment on a couple of things I’ve seen around campus.

#1 – Fuzzy Boots
OK, it’s a fun juxtaposition, wearing fuzzy eskimo boots in the middle of the summer. But the fact is, it’s fun in the “look at me, I’m rich and I can do whatever the fuck I want, and that means wearing completely impractical clothes” kind of way, and that’s honestly not a pretty attitude. Also, we all know your feet are getting really sweaty in there, and sweaty feet are not attractive.

This summer, I wanted to walk around with a fuzzy hat and ask people in these boots if they wanted to join the Inuit club.

#2 – Fur coats (with bright green fashion running shoes)
OK, first of all you are wearing dead animals on your body. That’s gross. Second of all, you seem to be going for the clever juxtaposition thing again, with the running shoes and the fur coat. That’s cool, but you are on a college campus. Fur coats scream “excess.” College is not about spending power, it’s about doing cool shit and having the time of your life. Now, I’m not suggesting everyone needs to wear Pea Coats and COLLEGE t-shirts, but you need to be at least vaguely aware of your context. Fashion does not happen in a vacuum.

I just needed to get that out.