Why it's better not to dream (literally)

I do not often dream (or at least I don't notice somehow), which I generally find to be a good thing. When I dream, I find that I wake up more often in the middle of the night, I find the sleep itself to be more restless, and generally, I'll only finally groggily get out of bed while still not rested after one dream is particularly disturbing and makes me not want to go back to bed. So, yeah, that's fun.

Perhaps more importantly, for our present purposes, it should be known I very rarely dream of anything, you know, sexual. I'm not entirely sure why that's the case, but my subconscious just doesn't seem to go that route with dreams. Sure, when I was a kid, I could have the same dream twice where I had to chase the Red Baron through labyrinthine trials and mind games, but does my dream self ever get freak nasty with some hot ladyfolk? Never. Also, "freak nasty with some hot ladyfolk" may or may not be the correct contemporary nomenclature. I didn't go to the Urban Dictionary for this one. Anyhow, usually, I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything, and it's been pretty sweet to never have to deal with the dreaded "nocturnal emission," but sometimes, you know, having a dream like that might be cool?

But, BUT, I dreamed last night, and the set-up for my dream is one that is entirely sexy. In this dream, this super-attractive girl and I were friends...with benefits! Come on, guys, you know this to be objectively sexy. I mean, this dream is literally, "Meet up with a hot girl for touching." So this girl and I are going to meet up, and my dream is basically taking the next left turn possible into Sexytown. So, as you can tell, the dream is going well. But just as I put on the blinker to make that left turn...

Dream sexy friend wants to talk about emotions and feelings. She would like to discuss how it's obvious she wants something more than just "friends with benefits," and how I've been messing with her head for a long time now, because why don't I just get it? And the worst part is, as she was saying this, I saw her point. I thought to myself, "Oh, man, the signs have been obvious. I am a dick, even if unintentionally!" I felt pretty bad about my dream self. In my dream, I actually felt remorse, and that pang you get in your stomach when you realize you've done something pretty terribly that's not exactly fixable. You know that feeling? You know that feeling you get at work, when you realize that you've been doing something terribly wrong the whole day, and then you think about whether you can fix it or not, and then realize you can't, and have that thirty seconds of sitting there staring ahead before you tell your boss, and it feels awful? I physically felt that, times ten, while sleeping, and even once I woke up, while being berated by a friend that doesn't even exist.

So, obviously, there was not antiquing in Sexytown in this dream.

My subconscious, basically, set up the ideal sexy dream scenario, only to then pull the rug out from under me and make me feel guilty about a friend that I literally made up. Nice work, brain. Thanks. Just, whose side are you on, anyway? Oh, and then my next dream was one in which I met up with an (actual) ex-girlfriend. And then I helped bring groceries in from her car to her house. No joke. That was the very next dream. The one after that was the disturbing one that made me get up. We don't have to discuss it.

This is why I'd rather just not dream.

I discover Rihanna's "Umbrella," only slightly late

If you've read any posts on this blog about music, you've probably figured out I am not a pop music connoisseur. I have nothing against the genre or anything, it's just much of what I've heard in the past hasn't really fallen on appreciative ears. But, I'm always willing to give it a shot. For example, it took literally years, but about a month ago, it finally clicked why Kylie Minogue's song "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is brilliant.

But that's not what we're here to talk about. Yesterday, which, for those of you keeping count at home, was August 21, 2009, I was browsing the increasingly-ungood Pitchfork, and came across the top 500 tracks of this decade, and specifically, the 50-21 list, page 3. Which is where, at number 25, is Rihanna's "Umbrella." I liked her track "Please Don't Stop the Music," so I decided to give "Umbrella" a listen.

Listening to the song, I know I had heard maybe a line of the chorus at one point, but I had never heard the song, ever. For those of you doing the math at home, the song was released March 29, 2007. That's you know, two and a half years ago. And, according to Wikipedia,

The song has also achieved commercial success by topping charts in the United States, Sweden, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, Germany, France, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, as well as reaching the top ten in many other countries. Following a successful chart performance worldwide and a positive reception from critics, the song is listed number three on the 100 Best Songs of 2007 published by Rolling Stone magazine.

In 2008, "Umbrella" earned Rihanna and Jay-Z a Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration in addition to receiving nominations for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. It managed to stay at number one in the United Kingdom for 10 weeks, the longest time spent by a female and in the 21st century, on this chart.

And I had completely and totally missed its existence. The video on YouTube has scores of millions of views. I don't understand how even someone that isn't really paying attention to pop music could miss this song. And, holy hell, is it awesome. Just so, so awesome. In case you need proof:

If that video no longer works, I bet you can figure out how to go to YouTube and search "Umbrella." Anyhow, that's one of the more catchy choruses that has ever existed. I want that song to be the soundtrack to my life.

I'm unsure how I managed to completely miss this song. I feel like somewhere, at some point between late March of 2007 and yesterday, I probably should have heard that song. The people I've told that I just found this song have unequivocally responded with, "Really? How did you not hear that? It was huge." I'm such a failure.

There's no real point to this post other than these 1) "Umbrella" is awesome. 2) I wasted two full years of my life not hearing it. 3) Never, ever write off an entire genre of music. Except for country. Country blows.

Recapping the Summer: Kentucky Derby

As mentioned quite recently, I had quite the summer of stuff and things and other stuff, and I thought it might be fun to share some of the highlights. First up, the Kentucky Derby!

Getting to Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky from Chicago, if not flying, necessitates driving through the entirety of Indiana. From the Northwest corner, which includes scenic Gary, to the Southeast corner, which includes nothing, the three members of our car experienced all that Indiana has to offer. And, all three of us came to the same conclusion. Namely, that Indiana is awful. Indiana may be the worst state in the union, and that's including bullshit states like Delaware and North Dakota. Indiana is a desolate wasteland of crushed hopes and dreams, and sadness wafts off the roadways like heat in the August desert. The roadways, it should be mentioned, more often than not get siphoned into one lane in each direction, even on major freeways around Indianapolis. Ostensibly, this is for construction occurring. That we never did see occur.

All these opinions of Indiana had solidified in our brains before we ate at the Taco Bell in Lebanon, or went to the Walmart in the middle of Bumfuck, some hour or two south of Indianapolis. Now, this may seem like hyperbole, but I might rather spend the rest of my life in the actual Lebanon than the one we stopped in for lunch. Bet you don't think about how white trash Indiana can be. But oh, man, can it be. I think that's enough description for that one. But the Walmart. My lord. The Walmart.

Before this trip, I had actually never stepped foot inside a Walmart. I'm sure part of that is the remnants of the "Walmart is evil" stuff that has been pounded into every liberal's head, but now, I have an entirely new reason not to go back to one. The stifling sadness. And not even from the customers, though once you're that far South in Indiana there is something you're going to get a special breed of Walmart customers. No, it's from the people that work at a Walmart in nowhere, Indiana. The checkout girl, pregnant and still a teenager, was staring off into space the whole time I was there, helping no one, and I just got the feeling her single thought was something like, "There had to have been a way to escape this." The older employees seemed more resigned to their fate of living and working at the Walmart in Southern Indiana, but you could tell they weren't particularly happy with it, or perhaps even with the life decisions that had brought them to this juncture.

On the other hand, I bought a really awesome Cookie Monster hat for half what they're charging online.

But finally - FINALLY - we leave Indiana, and get to Kentucky. KenTUCKY!!! We'll skip the uneventful Friday night in the motel, and go straight to Saturday, the big day of the Derby. I had packed my finest white linen pants, pink linen shirt, and horse racing hat, ready for the awesomeness. And then the forecast was rain. Soooo, I realized I wasn't going to be comfortable in my special Churchill Downs gear, put on my jeans and track jacket, and piled in the cab from the motel with my friends. I had also brought a change of clothes in my backpack, in case the rain did get particularly intense, and I needed dry stuff.

The entrance to the infield at Churchill Downs on Derby Day is a clusterfuck of people, many already drunk, bottlenecking through the gates. There are no tickets - it's forty bucks for admission, and they never stop letting people in. After getting in, they have Military Police checking bags for any booze, and, well, really, that's about it. You can bring in coolers, you can bring in bags, women can bring in huge purses, you can bring in rolling suitcases.

You can't bring in backpacks.

The MP checking everyone's stuff looks at my backpack and says, "You can't bring that in here." I look ahead at people already admitted, and see, for example, a woman with a bag bigger than my backpack slung over her shoulder, and ask, "Um, why not?" MP says, "I have no idea. Maybe someone last year tried to strangle someone with a backpack. But you can't bring it in." I ask what I can do with it, he says take it back to the car or throw it away. Seeing as I don't have a car, I have to opt for the latter. Of course, the only things in my backpack were other bags, but those were fine to bring in. Naturally. Makes perfect sense.

But, we get in, and we've brought chairs, so we set up as close to the track as we can, and go get our mint juleps and place our bets. Derby day, by the by, is about 13 races in total, with the Derby itself being something like 11th. We've arrived after four races, so I bet ten bucks a race on races five through eleven. My friends do the same, though bet in substantially higher dollar amounts. And then, we sit back, drink a ton of beer, and wait for the races.

Now, here's the thing. There are a lot of people in the infield during this day. And, there are police on risers between you and the track. And the horses run by really, really fast. All this is to say, you can't really actually see any of the races. You get maybe a blur of the horses as they go by, and then you check the screen to see if you've won or lost. So, really, there's not much to do but sit and drink. And then some people might decide to run across the tops of the porta-potties, but they're mainly idiots.

So basically, being in the infield at the Kentucky Derby is the exact same thing as if someone had said, "Hey, I have an idea? Why don't we all pay forty bucks to sit in a field for eight hours and get plastered? Oh, and as you leave, be sure to throw about two hundred bucks on the ground for all the beer you drank and all the bets you lost. Oh, because you will be betting on a sporting event you can't witness." And, yes, in our entire group of seven people, not a single person won a single bet.

And then, the Sunday after it's all done, we had to drive back through Indiana. And guess which state doesn't sell alcohol on Sundays? Mutherfucker.

It's been a hazy summer

Hooooly fuck I haven't written in something like five months. Oops. In my defense, it's been a long summer - Kentucky Derby, Indy 500, New York for a week, Boston (twice), California for two and half weeks, Maine, Las Vegas, and probably another place or two I'm forgetting. Not that I'm complaining, mind you; it's a pretty douchey first-world gripe to say, "oh, man, traveling all over the country while I'm on break from grad school is so rough, you know?" That being said, traveling all over the country while I'm on break from grad school is so rough, you know?

What's not exhausting is getting on a plane almost weekly and going somewhere. It's that when I get where I'm going, I'm either going for a) some sort of big event like a wedding or sporting event or what-have-you, or b) seeing people I haven't seen for a while for a very short period of time. That means that either a) the event is alcohol-centric, or b) my friends see me for only two days, and really want to make it count. Which, of course, means going out drinking and carousing. This has led my body to, basically, hate me. I'd be surprised if my liver didn't sneak out in the middle of the night back in July sometime, leaving a note that says, simply, "You're on your own, asshole." And I couldn't really blame it.

All this leads me to actually be excited for school to start up again. One of the other reasons I haven't written anything for so many months is that, when I do have free time, it's usually spent staring off into the middle distance while I play last night's Conan on Hulu. Unless I'm busy, I'm not doing shit. That is to say, when I have a lot to do, I find I get a lot more of the ancillary stuff done. My get-up-and-go gets up and goes when I lack a structure. In fact, aside from a two-week class in June, I'm not entirely sure I've used by brain since the end of April. Here's where you put your own joke in about me not using my brain since much longer than that. Har har.

So in just about a week, school starts again. Counter-intuitively, this means that I'll also be blogging more, reading books more, playing more music, and generally being better at life. Until then, though, you're still more likely to find me at the bottom of a bottle of whiskey than making progress on David Copperfield. Fucker's 900 pages, did you know that? Christ.

I fail Talking Heads

I was taking the train to Trader Joe's the other day (what do you expect from a white middle class guy (also, apparently, for those of you that live outside Chicago: people here do not call the train here the El...it goes underground, you know)), and put on some music for the ride. I chose Talking Heads' Speaking in Tongues, because it is just an amazing record. I mean, so many good songs. It starts with "Burning Down the House," and doesn't go downhill from there. That's a good album.

Anyhow, I put on the album in my headphones, and start listening. I arrive at my stop with the album mostly over, and that's okay. But as I get off the train, walk up the multiple flights of stairs, through the turnstiles, into the open air, and start walking...I realize, all of a sudden, the album's over.

That the album ended is fine. These things happen. That I was met with silence in my ears is fine. These things happen. But that "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" came and went with only a single mental notice is not fine. This should not happen. "Naive Melody" is a beautiful song - in fact, it's more than that. I wouldn't call it an anthem or anything, but it's "Naive Melody," for Christ's sake. It's a song that makes you take notice, makes you think to yourself, "This is what a perfect song should be." And, last week, I became inured to it. It didn't even register to me. And I hadn't even listened to the record for months.

A few years back, I decided I needed to give The Beatles a rest. Not because I listen to them all the time - I think they're absolutely brilliant, but I never was a Beatles defender, so to speak - but because we hear them so much, we tend to forget how innovative and wonderful their music is. So I intentionally stopped listening to The Beatles. For about a year. And then dusted off my copies of Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, and Rubber Soul, my three favorite albums of theirs. And, goddamn, were they more amazing than ever. Anyone younger than about 55, myself absolutely included, can't really understand the impact The Beatles had when they made music. And the way they literally transformed music, and held the hands (no pun intended or wanted) of listeners as they went from catchy songs about innocent love to extremely well orchestrated songs and studio manipulation to get a feeling across, as opposed to just releasing a song, made music what it is today.

Talking Heads did that in the 1980s, the same way Radiohead did that towards the end of the 1990s, and continue to do so today. And though I certainly wasn't around when Talking Heads released Speaking in Tongues, I've always listened intently, knowing I was listening to something special. It's an album you can listen to alone with the lights out and your eyes closed, and be completely satisfied. And "Naive Melody" is the perfect capstone to that record. And, last week, it went past my ears - with headphones on, no less - with only a single passing thought, which was "I should turn this song up," which I did. But I didn't listen to it. And that troubles me. I want Talking Heads to always stir emotions in me, and I don't want to put them on the shelf for a year to make that happen again.

As soon as the album ended, and silence came over me, I literally was saddened that I had failed in appreciating the beauty of "Naive Melody." I don't know when or how to listen to it again.

If you thought you didn't care about Jimmy Fallon, just wait for this post on the Oakland A's

Sometime around 2am tonight (tomorrow morning?), I'll get myself to the airport and be whisked, ever so gently, to Phoenix, Arizona, home of your Oakland Athletics spring training facility. This is the second year in a row I'll be going to the A's spring training, but there's something very different about this year.

I've heard of many of the players.

Nomar Garciaparra. Orlando Cabrera. Jason Giambi. Matt Holliday (who still hasn't touched the plate against the Padres from the playoff game in 2007, but that boat has sailed). To be honest, I am incredibly confused. We're signing actual players? Usually, Billy Beane does the exact opposite of this and, halfway through the year, right before the trade deadline, trades off everyone good for half a year of a veteran. But, this year, we're overloading on tenuous offense early in the season. If Eric Chavez stays healthy, it's almost like a real lineup.

Usually, the mantra for the A's in the beginning of the season is, "If people can stay healthy, we have a shot at winning." But it seems like this year, the mantra is, "If enough people can stay healthy, we have a shot at winning." And I like that a lot better.

But I'm still confused. I don't get you Billy Beane...I don't get you at all. Just get us into the playoffs.

All that being said, Bobby Crosby was the starting shortstop for the A's until about two days ago, when Oakland signed both Orlando Cabrera and Nomar Garciaparra. A former Rookie of the Year, Crosby's got to be pretty unhappy he quickly he went from starter to third string. He's made it clear that he'd rather play everyday somewhere else, but man. What a slap in the face. Maybe if he played more than 50 games a year it wouldn't be such an issue.

So, to sum up: what the fuck is going on in the Oakland front offices? Only time will tell, but I'm a lot more excited about spring training than I was when I booked the tickets in December. We're in it to win it this year. Or, at least contend. Let's start small.

The critique nobody wanted of the first Late Night with Jimmy Fallon

I just watched the premiere episode of Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, because, well, what the fuck else am I supposed to while not getting drunk, and I have a few thoughts. I'll bet you can go to Hulu by the time you read this and catch yourself up if you didn't watch, yet still feel like it's VERY important to know what I thought about the show (you don't).

The monologue was very Leno-esque. I don't mean that in a "not funny" way, as some of it was somewhat amusing. I mean that, though all the hosts short of Ferguson can't merely allow laughter to follow their punchlines but instead have to add a few words of "banter," Fallon copies Leno in that the comment following the (somewhat stilted) joke tended to dumb down the joke by explaining it in a laughing manner. If Fallon (or Leno) asks why firemen wear suspenders, and finishes with, "To keep their pants up," you can be guaranteed that during the applause, Fallon (assuming we've removed the previous parenthetical) will look over at his band leader (?uestlove, of course), and say, "Well, something's gotta hold them up!" And people will stop laughing.

The slow-jamming the news could become good. The awkwardness of that was more on the Roots than Fallon.

The game played with the audience, "Lick It For Ten," could almost be a Letterman game. The game had three audience members come on stage and lick a lawn mower, a printer/copier, and a goldfish bowl, respectively. However, what Fallon and Co. don't seem to realize is that Letterman's games either 1) don't involve the audience and thus can be relied upon to be good because they're ridiculing Rupert Gee or playing the utterly absurd "Will It Float," or 2) are actually comedy routines or rejected monologue jokes that don't actually need audience participation. Unless you're The Price is Right!, don't rely on your audience to provide humor. They can only be fodder.

Dangerous choice having Robert De Niro as the first guest ever. I was worried at first that Fallon was going to slide into what I would do if I had a talk show and got to meet De Niro, and fall right into fanboy mode and just say, "Oh my God...you're Robert De Niro," over and over again. But Fallon calmed down pretty quickly.

As Fallon stated outright, De Niro is notorious for not giving particularly great interviews (side note: "notorious" actually has no negative connotation, according to the OED), and he didn't disappoint here. Fallon handled the anti-interview pretty well, almost Conan in style, in that he announced he would be asking De Niro questions that could be answered with only one word, and was calm enough later in the interview to bring the joke back when De Niro answered a very leading question with only one word.

When Justin Timberlake came out, Late Night turned very quickly into the Late Late Show when Craig Ferguson has a friend on as a guest, where they share inside jokes and leave the audience out. Fallon had Timberlake do a few impressions that I'm sure were hilarious in the green room of SNL, and were pretty funny here, but it seemed a lot like they were at a party, and Fallon was saying to Timberlake, "Oh, oh, do the one where you're John Mayer! Guys, guys, you'll love it!" And everyone else at the party just doesn't care. As well, they did their ne'er-requested Gibb brothers talk show song from SNL.

So, to recap: in his first show, Fallon had moments of Leno, Letterman, O'Brien, and Ferguson. Also, he shares the same first name and structure of last name as Jimmy Kimmel (consonant-vowel-double consonant-vowel-consonant, in case you didn't want to do the math yourself). That being said, I liked Jimmy Fallon better tonight than I ever did on SNL, and think he could ultimately be on to something. And at least he didn't also copy Chelsea Lately. That being said, I don't have DVR, and if I'm ever up this late again, I'm reading a book.

You know what the best part about this whole post is? If you're reading this, you literally couldn't care less what I think about the Jimmy Fallon show. But, hey. We're just trying to keep limber here with the writing. They can't all be gems.

Newspapers for dummies

This morning, I'm reading my favorite anti-American neo-communist fishwrap, the New York Times, and I come across a story that gives me pause. And I'm not talking about the story that merely had the headline "Michelle Obama Goes Sleeveless, Again," which might be okay in the Style section, but certainly not The Caucus, where it appeared. However asinine I think that is, there are other articles that demand our attention today.

I'm talking about an article entitled, "Germany Rejects Bailout Plan for Eastern Europe." Now, I haven't even read the whole article yet. In fact, I haven't gotten past the first sentence. That's because the first sentence is this little beauty that blew my mind:

BRUSSELS (AP) -- Germany rejected appeals Sunday for a single multibillion euro (dollar) bailout of eastern Europe, even after Hungary begged EU leaders not to let a new ''Iron Curtain'' divide the continent into rich and poor.

What the fuck, New York Times and Associated Press? Let's start small. First off, do we really need a parenthetical legend to explain what a euro is? I understand that newspapers, even ones as esteemed as our Gray Lady, write to target like a fourth grade reading level, but that's just ridiculous. If a reader has to stop in the first sentence of reading a piece on the economic structure of Europe because he or she doesn't know what a euro is, it's probably a good wake-up call that he or she ought to do some background research.

But almost more importantly, while technically accurate in that a multibillion euro bailout will, in this economy, always equal a multibillion dollar bailout, implying that the euro can be described as "a dollar" is incredibly lazy and poorly researched. Actually, researched isn't even the right word. Because if you're on the international beat for the AP, you already know that a euro is not a dollar. So, it's just poorly done. Very poorly done.

In the spirit of terrible journalism, I have decided to cull some back issues (back issues can't be the correct phrase) of the Times in order to see if I can't update them to be more in the new style of the Times. Pun kind of intended. So, here we go!

1. President Obama (James K. Polk) on Saturday described his expansive budget proposal as “a threat to the status quo in Washington (Cambodia)” and cast himself as a populist crusader willing to do battle with special interests to expand health care, curb pollution (dogs) and improve education.

2. CHICAGO — Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation’s most familiar voices, died Saturday (Tuesday) in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90 (107). (Notice also the Chicago dateline for an event that happened in Arizona.)

3. Despite huge enforcement actions on both (three) sides of the Southwest border, the Mexican (Chinese) marijuana (black tar heroin) trade is more robust — and brazen — than ever, law enforcement officials say.

If I had readers I'd say, hey, make your own in the comments! But, really, I wrote this whole things so I could replace the word "Mexican" with the word "Chinese," and really that even failed because I couldn't find "Mexican" as a noun, because then I could have done what I really wanted, and and replaced it with "Chinamen." But, life goes on.

Why would anyone give up anything alcohol related for Lent?

First off, a couple weeks ago, I wrote a scathing rant against something Joe Biden said about Russian foreign policy, but as I clicked "publish post," Blogger, and thus Google, decided it would be better if I didn't publish such things. And blew up my internets. I decided not to rewrite it, and Google Help is actually anything but, so the short of it is, we're all out an interesting post, and I'm probably on a Federal no-fly list now. But, we move on to new topics.

I'm not Catholic, but having gone to a Catholic college and being surrounded by a lot of Them, I usually do the whole Lenten sacrifice thing, basically just to see how long I could go on whatever it was I gave up. Usually, about a week, max. Well, except last year, where giving up Taco Bell actually lasted me about two or three months. Before I fell back down to Earth. Hard.

This year, though, I decided I really go for the gusto, especially considering I'm back in grad school, where it's very easy to fall into debauchery, so we might as well swing the other way as far as possible. And, seeing as it's another Catholic school, it seems only fair that I test myself.

I've given up drunkenness within the state I reside. Now, let's get one thing straight before I go any further. Not once did it cross my mind that I'd actually give up alcohol, as a whole. Why set yourself up for something at which you're destined to fail? Seems less than rational. And besides, this is self-sacrifice, not suicide. After 40 days of Lent, it's Jesus that's dead, not me.

As well, the conditional "within the state I reside" is crucial, as I have a trip to Spring Training planned for less than a week from now, and I'll be damned if I leave the snow, go to Arizona, watch baseball with a good friend in the sun for three days, and don't get plastered at least once. I mean, come on!

So, let's do the math. Obviously, this all started on Ash Wednesday, which means we're about...60 hours into Lent. And though, obviously, my Lenten sacrifice allows me to drink some alcohol, I have not done so since Tuesday night. And in those sixty hours, I have been more productive than usual. I've finally, after it being on my shelf for at least a year and a half, gotten 75 pages a night done of One Hundred Years of Solitude. I've been much more on the ball when it comes to writing for the blog site that actually pays me. As far as school work is concerned, I started a paper today that's due the first week of May. Basically, I've been better at life.

And it sucks. I know this is the part where I'm supposed to say, and I'm sooo much happier, and more alert, and get things done, and all that bullshit, but that's not really the case. It's Friday night, the night my Spring Break starts, and instead of wanting to go out and meet friends and watch them get drunk, or even just have a drink and watch TV by myself, I'm just angry with my healthy life choices. There's even an interesting show tonight - one of the dudes from LCD Soundsystem and Hercules and Love Affair are both doing DJ sets three blocks from my apartment, but I'm pretty sure DJ sets blow unless you're drunk. I'm pretty sure that's science.

Did I bring this upon myself? Yes. Are you supposed to feel sorry for me because I haven't been drinking for three whole days? No. Should I even be complaining because I'm getting shit done that I usually put off? No. Will I continue doing so until Lent is over, or give in to getting hammered some night for no good reason? Yes. Will it annoy you more than a string of rhetorical questions? Absolutely. And, unfortunately for you, will it mean I spend more time writing on this site? Definitely.

So enjoy. You're in this with me now.

Change and hope should be prepositional

I have bad news for all of us. Barack Obama is going to be sworn in as president one week from today (that's not the bad news), and guess what - there's a good chance he won't change the world. Even with a Democratic congress and a victory in November current presidents would most likely call a "mandate," there's a good chance we're so far fucked that to extricate our country from all the issues facing us might not take only four, or eight, years.

Here's my main concern: for all the excitement Obama garnered, for all the amazing speeches, for all the policy he and his team have been leaking over the past few weeks (I don't know that any president-elect has gone this far in revealing plans prior to inaguration, but not the point), Obama still ran on the rather vague dual platform of "hope" and "change."

Why does this bother me? Because "hope" and "change" are not complete thoughts. This minor disobedience in grammar functions doesn't necessarily bother me from a syntax standpoint, but more so in the lack of actual content. We have to have hope in or for something, and we need change to be from one thing to another. Hope in. Hope for. Change to. As much as we all love and are happy with Obama, I need the blanks filled in a little better than we got during the campaign.

So, over the next week, as nearly-president Obama keeps on trucking, keeps on appointing Clintons to Positions of Influence, keeps on tempering previously made statements, I'll keep on waiting to know exactly how Obama actually is going to unfuck us. Of course, he does have four years. Which is a long time. My exact words when Bush was sworn in in 2001: "It's only four years. How bad could it be?"

I have higher hopes for Barack Obama.

See what I did there?

Oh, Illinois politics, you are awesome

Oh, look, I didn't write at all in December. It was a long month. No time for much of anything. So, let's jump back into it, shall we?

Being in Illinois while Rod Blagojevich is still governor of the state is kind of the most fun thing ever. Every single thing he does seems 112% calculated to be a huge "fuck off" to everyone, ever. Oh, I'm under investigation by the FBI and I know my phones are tapped? Watch me try and auction off a Senate seat. Oh, everyone wants me to cede all power and resign? Watch me actually appoint someone to the Senate seat I was just trying to sell. Oh, I just got impeached by a 114-1 vote? Watch me hold a press conference and deny any wrongdoing, and state that I'm going to fight this. Yeah, that's right. Me and my awesome hair will make it through this just fine.

You'd have to think that at some point Blagojevich would have looked at the track record of the governers in this state, and then realized you can't get away with being a corrupt politician out here anymore unless your last name is Daley. Those guys, by the way, can still get away with murder. But, no, Blagojevich decided that he'd tempt all sorts of fate and go ahead and outcorrupt even the previous governer, George Ryan, who's sitting in prison right now for...let's see...sale of government licenses. That shit's JV compared to selling a Senate seat. I'm pretty impressed.

I can't wait to see what Blagojevich does next. Eats a baby at a presser just to see if he can get away with it? Appoint himself president? I actually half-expect him to appoint me to something, because why not at this point? I'm about as qualified as Burris, except I don't yet have a mausoleum built for myself. I'm donating my body to science anyway. At least let some med students have some fun.