Apparently school is forever

I went to my graduate school orientation yesterday - or, I should say, part of it. Although professional studenting is now my job, even I can only sit through so much talk about Information Technology and whatnot. But the thing that caught my attention was something the Dean of Graduate Studies said. That, on average, a PhD student in the humanities finishes his or her program in eight to ten years. Eight. To ten. Years.

That seems like a lot of years. My goal was to tell everyone I was shooting for seven years and be done in five. You know, be done in the early 30s to start making money again so I can buy expensive shirts and sunglasses. Of course, it's not like I'd rather be working for the next eight to ten, as opposed to schooling. But, so much for vacations, or nice dinners, or new clothes, or eating every day or leaving my apartment, ever.

Chicago

So I'm settled/settling in to Chicago, and aside from it being the Air and Water Show, or whatever it is that sends fighter jets over my fucking head a few times a day (or dozens of times a day, were it still yesterday), things seem to be going relatively okay. Okay in that for the last few days, I have literally spoken to approximately half a dozen people, total (mostly in the process of business transactions), and spent the rest of my time to myself. Which, you might think, would lead to extraordinary thoughts that I could write down and wow the world.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Apparently I don't work on the Rene Descartes principle, in which I can lock myself in a room and figure out the world. No, instead I have spent my days mainly waiting on hold so I could explain to comcast they have no idea what they're doing when it comes to internet, followed by resigning myself to the fact that I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to wireless internet. I bought a used router and it took, oh, three days to figure out the goddamn thing.

Being in a new city is supposed to be exciting stuff. However, being in a new city and being 1) broke and 2) antisocial makes the excitement slightly less so. I don't particularly feel like calling the friends of friends that live here, nor do I have the money to go meet up with them were that I wanted. This leads to a lot of sitting and not exercising my vocal chords for all but 10 to 30 minutes a day.

So, that's where we're at. Unimpressed? Yeah, me too.

How the Democrats will lose this election, which is theirs to win

I've been trying to figure out, for a while, how the Democrats were going to lose this election. I mean, it's been handed to them. Just to prove my point - I was about to write a list here of all the reasons Obama ought to crush McCain, but then realized it would be useless, as 1) there are too many reasons to enumerate and 2) everybody knows them all already anyway. So I've just been waiting to figure out how, by being such awful campaigners, the Democratic party would start seeing the easy win slip away.

And now we have two answers. One external, one internal. Externally, McCain's camp has gone on the attack with the new round of ads and talking points, and explicitly inserting racial fears into the campaign. Now, this ought not to be an issue, if only the Democrats weren't so braindead as to let these attacks slide off them like water off a duck. The problem is, these attacks aren't made of water, and they stick to Obama. Wait, huh? That analogy worked prior to a few beers, and now I'm just not going to worry about it.

Remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth? You know, the group that somehow managed to challenge Kerry's decorated Vietnam record while not mentioning Bush's complete failure to serve during the war? That would have gone away, if Kerry's camp hadn't waited three days - which in media cycles go by even quicker than dog years - to respond. By that time, the attacks were out there, and the damage done. Can't recork that shit. And Obama's doing the same now. Not rebutting the ads that compare him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Not rebutting the Republican talking points that state - explicitly - that Obama is playing the race card the exact same way O.J. Simpson did. Democrats take these issues and think, "No right-minded person would actually believe this!" And then they turn to talking about baby seals in the uninhabited Arctic. While the rest of America, which is full of not right-minded people, couldn't care less than seals they'll never meet, and instead are focused on the pseudo-issues the Republicans (very masterfully) told them to care about. It's the Democratic pretension mixed with deviously adept Republican campaigning that equals ruin.

And then there's the internal issue - the pandering to the center. The reason Obama's so popular, the reason he got the nod over the clear front-runner, is that he had new, fresh, exciting ideas. Things that leftist Democrats have been waiting to hear for years. The base was not this emphatic for Kerry - in fact, there barely even was a base for Kerry. So Obama gets all these people amped for politics, gets people excited to be a part of the system, because he's bringing change to the system.

And then Obama says he's willing to tap our petroleum reserves, and maybe he'll be okay with offshore drilling.

And now, all the leftists that voted for Nader in 2000 stay home, because what's the fucking point. Obama's business as usual.

And so we get idiots that are sucked in by Republican strategy coming out in droves to vote against Obama, and idiots that think Obama's no different than McCain staying home, and lo and behold, all of a sudden McCain has won the election that was literally Obama's to lose.

Good work, Democrats. I am hard-pressed, at this moment, to think of a party that is better at being worse for itself than you have been for the past, oh...fifteen years?

Fake Memphis blues and awkward Chicago blues

On this same trip in which I arrived at the Mormon Chili's and died a little inside, I went to Memphis the next night. First we (again, my mother and me) went to Graceland, which is an experience unto itself. Though I'm sure the experience was meant to invoke exactly such feelings, I came away really thinking Elvis was a genuine, down-to-earth guy. A genuine, down-to-earth, very very weird, dead guy.

But anyway, later that evening we went to B.B. King's restaurant (thank God for spellcheck, cause I can never, ever spell that word right. Anyhow.) for some food and blues. Now, just as one would not got to Chili's for sober eating, one ought not go to B.B. King's place for actual southern blues. I kind of figured that out when the house band broke into a rousing rendition of Bonnie Raitt's "Let's Give 'Em Something To Talk About." Yeah. That happened. I somehow feel like that's not what Mr. King had in mind when he opened a blues venue in Memphis.

So, the waitress apparently didn't know the difference between a beer costing a buck fifty and a beer costing eight bucks, which caused us some consternation once we got the bill. The people next to us also were having trouble with the service, and the gentleman and I get to talking about the not-so-great service, and it turns out he plays the blues, and will be playing a mile from my new apartment in Chicago three days hence. So my dad I and I go (he had flown into Chicago to meet my mother and me). This, now, was Sunday.

My dad and I get to the bar early and at catch Charlie Love and the Silky Smooth band, which involved a lot of fancy hats. And then Linsey Alexander, the man I had met in Memphis, takes the stage. Old black man with pants above his belly button starts the show by saying, "I just took seventy-five Viagra, four Cialis, a fifth of Jack, and smoked a bag of weed. Let's start." This was not I expected from the older gentleman who complained to me about poor service just a few nights before.

Most of his set was him walking around the crowd, with a microphone and guitar, playing to the ladies, making faces at them, and being somewhat lewd. Which was pretty damn enjoyable for a good long while. When he sang the song about fucking, though, it got a little uncomfortable. Especially when he came out into the audience and asked people about their "making love" habits. Of course, as he put it, "I've never made love in my life. Not once. I fuck." Cute.

Anyhow, he goes around the audience, and asks people about their love making habits. "When' the last time you made love?" Or, "What's your favorite room in the house to make love in?" And, then, he gets to my dad. And I'm not looking forward to the conversation, though I don't know what is going to be said. Mr. Alexander looks right at my dad and says, "What about you? Do you know how to make love?"

To which my dad replies, "I remember."

That's my dad.