what i do at work.

i'm always trying to explain to people who aren't grad students and especially people who haven't gone to college (specifically in the humanities) what it is that i do. not because it's that interesting to anyone but me or because i feel the need to validate my professional existence, but because a lot of people i know have an interest in my life and thus are asking what it is i do for like 18 hours a day.

so my 595 professor showed this last night in class and i thought it was a good example of critical social theory applied to the real world...regardless of how i feel about the west wing as a television show.

the shuffle in my winamp brought this song (the jennings cover version) up earlier, perhaps appropriately as i was scouring cnn.com for election news.

i try not to post cheesy slideshow videos as a rule, but this just really struck me, just now.


i know electing one man as president isn't going to magically fix the mistakes we've made in the last 8 years (or hell, the last 200 years) as a country, but everything starts with small steps. it means a whole lot to me to think that we could be a bit closer to living in a country where the people who work in government are as decent as the nice lady at shopko who goes out of her way to be helpful or the great people i work and play with every day. i don't think that's too much to ask and yet, i've been profoundly ashamed of the majority of the people who represent the rest of us to the world at large since i was old enough to be at all informed, and i'm excited to think that maybe i could wake up tomorrow and see things starting to turn back to a point where i could someday hear that "proud to be an american" song that i sung off-key in second grade and actually believe it again.

"It's about the moment when you recognise the difference between ego and pride and your sense of service to your friends, family or yourself," he says. "Once you've had that epiphany, you can't really turn around and pretend that you haven't. It's about accountability."

owfuck.

my teeth hurt a lot. just a few particular ones. but they've hurt since saturday morning. i spent a month eating insane amounts of candy, so i suppose it wouldn't be a surprise if i had a cavity, but...i stopped eating candy a few days before the pain started.

all i did right beforehand was drink a bunch of alcohol and get elbowed in the mouth by some dude at the bar. clearly those things couldn't be connected to tooth pain.

i deal with pain pretty well, but tooth pain is more aggravating than most.

grrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzz...

speaking of the stabbies

i was up all night working on pres #1 (pres #2 as well as proposal #1 and revision #1 pending)...so i think i'm going to go home and get in bed and fucking close the shit out of my eyes for a few hours. i'm planning on working until at least 2am tonight to catch up on all the shit i missed this weekend (not a complaint, i'm glad i missed it). but i don't think i can make a straight trajectory from now to 2am without a little napping.

i'm excited about the film festival next weekend and the mason show on wednesday, but as a result of those things i'm going to have to fucking kill myself to get everything else done that needs to get done before the 14th (and after the 14th up through thanksgiving, when i'll be partially in seattle and partially here/selway and i don't mean at different times i mean divided between the two places at once like a quantum molecule or some shit).

when you know a week holds a possibility of multiple all-nighters but you don't know when, you have to take as much sleep as you can get whenever you can justify it. i can just barely justify it now, so i'm out.

laterz.