Phenomenally bad timing

It's 3:44 and I have to wake up at 6 and I still can't get to sleep. Spoiler alert, I guess.

I suppose it's as good a time as any to talk about a movie I watched today, The History Boys. For those who don't know about it, a little background: it was originally a play written by Alan Bennett (who wrote The Madness of George III, whose title was changed in America to The Madness of King George because producers were afraid people would think it was a sequel) that apparently was extremely popular, so they made a movie out of it with all the original cast. Don't think this is some Rent-level fiasco, however--for starters, it's not a musical, and it's also extremely thoughtful and well-acted.

The story centers around an English boarding school where eight pupils are in their last semester (or whatever they call it in England) before college. All of them have gotten high enough marks to possibly get into Oxford or Cambridge, so there is a lot of pressure on them. The students have two teachers with divergent points of view: one, named Hector, likes to teach knowledge for knowledge's sake and makes many long-winded speeches on the power of literature; the other, a comparatively young teacher named Irwin, is far more pragmatic and lectures the students on how they can do well on their exams, which is not by obtaining knowledge but by finding a useful angle no one has thought of before, whether or not they actually believe in it (there is also another teacher, Mrs. Lintott, who is sort of the lukewarm water between them). The movie basically revolves around these eight extremely bright students struggling with whether or not the pursuit of knowledge will have any useful applications in their adult life.

Not much in the way of plot, but boy is there some good dialogue. I especially liked the way
there are no clear villains in this movie: the teachers have radically different teaching styles, but they are all treated sympathetically, and they all have huge character flaws. It is revealed, at some point, that Hector is a closet homosexual who likes to take his students home on his motorcycle in order to grope them in a sexual fashion. This may seem bizarre, but his character is never demonized, and it comes to make sense in a lot of ways: he seems to be sort of romantic poet out of time, and those romantic poets were certainly inclined towards sudden bursts of passion towards younger men (as Hector tries to defend himself, he claims that, "the transmission of information itself is an erotic act"). Irwin, it is revealed, is definitely someone who loves information for the sake of learning, but we learn that part of his drive to make the boys succeed is the fact that he didn't make it into Oxford or Cambridge himself. The kids themselves have a lot of problems too. One of them is gay and in love with another student (who happens to be straight and in a relationship with the school's secretary), one of them is an athlete with mediocre grades who nevertheless has family connections, one is going to go into the army.

The relationships between the students and their teachers is beautifully played out and made me wish I could have those sorts of relationships with my professors (except for the groping part...well, maybe not for some of them). It's been so long since I've seen a movie where people talk intelligently about literature, but they actually do, about Auden and Thomas Hardy and some other things I don't remember now. Hector, played by Richard Griffith, is a particularly good character and probably the heart of the whole movie. I think he is supposed to be based in appearance and demeanor on Harold Bloom, although there are some significant differences--he is an advocate for judging work on aesthetic values alone, but he is also extremely goofy and uses a lot of colloquialisms. If someone could tell me if this man is indeed based on Bloom, I would like to know.

This movie is highly recommended. It makes Dead Poets Society look even more like a piece of shit then it did before. They have actual conversations about poetry that make sense and make you think. Haven't seen that in a while.

Practicum tomorrow, little sleep for me

Unfortunately it's times like this when I get very little sleep, and unfortunately I have nothing to help me with that. Have to wake up at 6 tomorrow too.

Anyhow Mendy has been commenting on my blog and I'm sure he doesn't know that he got me hooked on this song by Café Tacuba called "Volver A Comenzar." Check out an amazing live performance:



I'll let the man himself explain why it's so good:

I can say with little hyperbole that this is one of the best songs I've ever heard. It is an 8-minute single (an intrinsically awesome thing) by a band that, during my time there, struck me as the best in Mexico. Granted, I am a foreigner not inclined towards traditional Mexican music, but I know I’m not alone in this judgment.
But what can you even say about this song? From the immensely exciting buildup before the first verse to the point where the icy synth and tense guitars kick in, to Pinche Juan’s snarling delivery, to the unexpected section in the middle I’m tempted to call tender, to the part where the monster guitars kick back in after that, which is as exciting as hearing The Who for the first time ever, this is an absolute monster of a song. But also well-constructed, excellently played and really honest—it’s about getting old, thinking about your mistakes, not giving up and trying to start again. I have probably listened to this song upwards of 45 times, and I don’t think I could ever hear it and not think of December 2007.

The comparison to the Who I think is very apt, not particularly in musical style but in the fact it sort of builds up and slows down again, and then comes back for an explosive finish, kind of like "Won't Get Fooled Again" (the structure also mirrors "Disconnect the Dots" slightly). I've been really digging this song even though I don't speak a word of Spanish, and I was wondering if someone could translate the lyrics to me or something.

Seriously though, whoever plays the bass on this song has my undying love and affection. I didn't even know people could still play bass lines like that, especially with all the tricky rhythms during the breakdown.

This song is really fucking lush. You'd better love it. With songs like this, I don't see why illegal immigration is even a problem.

Philip Roth, Part I

I think I mentioned previously that I was in the middle of reading everything ever written by Philip Roth in chronological order. That isn't exactly true--rather than read them in direct chronological order, I'm going to read all the books with the same characters (i.e. Zuckerman, Kepesh, Roth) in order, and apart from that read everything chronologically. You may also happen to recall from a previous post that one of my goals for this year was to read the entire repertoire of at least four authors. Philip Roth is a stupid place to start. I've read 5 of what I calculate to be 28 books, so this is going to take me some time, especially since ILL won't give me "The Breast" anytime soon. So far, though, I have read:

Goodbye, Columbus: Not technically a novel but a novella with five short stories tacked onto the end of it, all dealing in some way with the rejection of Jewish identity. Goodbye, Columbus itself is a pretty good if slight read, and it ends pretty abruptly, which is not true of virtually anything else in Roth's repertoire. His protagonist, Neil Klugman, is the first in a line of several Roth protagonists that I find are eerily like myself. He even works at his college library. The story basically details his romance with this rich shiksa, and how it eventually deteriorates due to the rules and strictures of her society, which includes not having sex. This is something Roth is going to come back to again and again. The language is right on, even if there are long stretches where nothing really happens and some of the characters of purposefully eccentric. I personally enjoyed a subplot involving a young black kid who goes to the library Neil works at every day to look at this book of Gauguin paintings. Roth doesn't do this very much, but I think he is much better at using African-American characters than, say, Saul Bellow.

The remaining five stories are very good, perhaps even better than the novella. I personally enjoyed "Defender of the Faith" and "Epstein," if you care, but you should definitely read all of them. This is a good place to start with Roth, not necessarily because it is first chronologically, but also because it introduces themes that would become much more pronounced later.

Letting Go: Technically Roth's first novel, alternately horrifying, confusing, gut-wrenching and silly. Reading about this book online, I get the impression that people don't seem to really like it, and particularly object to the 600-page length. I can sort of see this book being a decent 400-page book, but I don't know what exactly I would take out first. I don't know if this is a success, but there are scenes of astonishing power. Chief among them, to me, is Roth's description of a young couple sitting in a diner, passing time until they are scheduled to meet with an abortion doctor. Also, towards the end, a scene where the protagonist tries to argue with a man whose wife gave up her child to adoption to that same couple. This can sound kind of melodramatic, and it actually is at times, but there is still a lot of power there. My main quibble is that the book seems to be set up half first-person and half third-person, for whatever reason, but then Roth gives up the first-person aspect at the 400 page mark. Don't ask me why.

When She Was Good: This novel is unique in Roth's work in that it has a female, non-Jew protagonist, Lucy Nelson. It is also unique in that she is by far the least sympathetic and most cruel protagonist Roth has ever had, a jerk who continually makes selfish and unreasonable demands of her husband and her family, and then chastises them to the point of tears when they inevitably fail her. As a result, I think this book gave Roth somewhat of a reputation as a misogynist, and I think I remember reading that he happened to write this book at a time when he and his wife were having some problems. I don't think Roth is a misogynist, but I think his female characters are definitely skewed, if not in this book than in others. Apart from how shockingly evil Lucy turns out to be, this book is about as melodramatic as Roth ever got, and while he does some interesting things with the form, it seems like the first 50 pages amount to nothing and the ending is almost a cartoon.

Portnoy's Complaint: I've already read this book before, but it is a phenomenally easy book to reread. Those of you who haven't read it, I beseech you: it's very important that you do. As embarrassing as it is to say, it can tell you a lot about Nathan Sacks. Not the stuff about masturbating copiously into liver pies, I swear: more just my continual need to reject my identity, my uneasiness with having a double life being on the one hand "socially conscious" and on the other being completely selfish, and, as Portnoy says, "Heaven is a shiksa under your arm saying love, love, love," or something like that (a prize to whoever actually knows what the quote is). Basically I just can't play with Jewish girls, if only because my mom told me I should. Philip Roth knows my life!

Anyway, there's nothing else I need to say about this book. It's fantastically structured (an extended monologue to a silent therapist) and merits repeated readings. The dialogue is very loose and very hilarious. There are moments of this book that are absolutely disgusting (although the liver part is probably the peak), but only a prude could say this is not a great book.

Our Gang: This book seems to have been written by a different author. For starters, it's not really a linear novel, it's actually more of a "closet drama," which I learned from Wikipedia is a "play not intended to be performed onstage," despite the fact that there are a few stage directions.

Basically, Our Gang is posited as a very blunt political satire starring Trick E. Dixon (get it?) and numerous unnamed cronies both in the White House and in the press. It's supposed to be a satire of Nixon's supposedly secretive administration, his warlike tendencies, and his tendency to just lie, lie, and keep lying. There are some very funny parts to this book, particularly in the beginning, where Dixon supports William Calley's massacre of villagers in My Lai, but is given pause when he is asked if it is possible that some of the villagers could have been pregnant, and therefore Calley might have unknowingly performed an abortion, which Nixon viewed as, "an unacceptable form of population control." That's about as deep as the political satire in this book gets, which in a way is sort of good, because if it was any more subtle chances are it would be a lot more dated than it already is. It isn't helped by the fact that compared to today's politicians, Dixon seems relatively par for the course. It's an interesting footnote in Roth's career, and definitely worth reading (it's also really short), but I don't know why he wrote it.

Coming up, when I get the chance: The Breast, The Professor of Desire, The Dying Animal, The Great American Novel, and My Life As A Man.

In defense of not voting

Another article I have written for The Cornellian. It was originally much longer.
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In the next few months, students should not be surprised to see mass E-Mails, commercials, and patronizing statements from celebrities telling the youth of America to get out and vote. Proponents of this vision of student-voting utopia are as disparate as Moveon.org, Bruce Springsteen and Pearl Jam (under the auspice of their Kerry-supporting “Vote for Change” tour) and the group Citizen Change, of whose founder, Diddy, coined the phrase “Vote or Die” (which I always felt to be an incredibly offensive gesture to anyone who was actually forced to die for their political beliefs). Youth voting advocates are going to hunt you down and try to guilt you into registering if you already have not; more importantly, perhaps, you will be treated as a “youth voter,” which to modern Democrats makes you almost a demigod, especially in a potentially life-altering election like this one.

Already we have begun to see this: rapper and producer Will.i.am released a Youtube video a few days before Super Tuesday starring a bunch of celebrities, ranging from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Common, confusingly singing/rapping/talking along to a speech by Barack Obama. But at least Will.i.am isn’t pretending to do anything other than support a specific candidate. In that sense, at least, he is a step above his peers. I don’t think I need to be telling anyone that they shouldn’t be supporting a candidate based on what celebrities endorse him or her: I hope to God that this is already blindingly obvious to all of you. However, I reject the notion that anyone’s vote is a) the most important civic duty one can do for his or her country, or b) the best way to change the course of the nation.

There are several legitimate reasons to not vote. Emphatically not among them, I feel, is the notion that your vote will not matter in the grand scheme of things. While this is almost always a correct assumption to make, not casting a vote isn’t likely to change that, unless several million people follow your lead. Similarly, I don’t think that being lazy or uninterested in the political process is a very legitimate rationale either. Not voting, to me, can be seen as a form of civil disobedience, especially useful if you just can’t stand the way we go about electing public officials.

Say, to take an obvious reason, that you simply don’t like any of the candidates present on the ballot. That is as good a reason as any to not vote, although a good amount of Americans seem to feel that a vote for the lesser evil is always the best policy, a position that could easily be refuted by citing several examples in world history. Or say that you simply want to have nothing to do with a bipartisan system of government that effectively squashes any chance for a third party to get a say at anything, and is often criticized (Ralph Nader) for trying to do so. Or say that you can’t support anything having to do with the Electoral College, and can’t understand why we don’t just make it a “majority-rules” election. Again, there is no reason to support such a system if you don’t believe in it, so not voting is a way of passive resistance.

The prospect of not voting in this coming election is relevant to me because it seems likely that the next democratic nominee will be Hillary Clinton, a person with whom I have several policy differences. What’s more, I am disturbed by the idea of having spent my entire life in a country caught in a warring Bush/Clinton dynasty (although I did spend the first two years of my life under Reagan, which blessedly I don’t remember). Considering I always felt I lived in a democracy (yes, I know—the joke’s on me), I’m a bit predisposed to the idea that anyone can become president, even if they don’t happen to have a certain last name. This isn’t probably true, though, so it might come to the point where I choose either a third party or even none of the above. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I defy anyone to prove to me why wasting my time voting for someone I don’t even like would be better spent than, say, sitting at home and playing video games.

Voting is not the be-all, end-all of your civic duty to America. There are several non-voting American citizens that do more for the welfare of our country than you or I could ever do. That’s because they actually do things far more important than voting: volunteering, helping the poor and needy, being a mentor, fighting for the rights of oppressed minorities—all of which actually help people in direct, concrete ways. And unfortunately, I don’t expect Diddy or anyone else to start a campaign of “Volunteer or Die,” probably because volunteering takes a significant amount of time, much more than twenty minutes every four years.

Honestly, chances are I will vote, not only because I view it as a way to be civically engaged but also because I genuinely enjoy the process. However, it is important to understand that there is absolutely no correlation between a low voter turnout and a badly managed government. To label nonvoters as simply apathetic and ignorant is silly. To coerce, bribe, or simply guilt people into voting—whether it’s by sending mass E-Mails or having popular bands recite ridiculously corny speeches—is undemocratic. The best way to get young people to vote is to stick to the issues and allow them to come to their own conclusions, and if that means choosing alternate methods of fighting the system, so be it.

Atheism is always moral and necessary

Here's an article I wrote for The Cornellian (I don't know if it's going to be published or not) about Percy Shelley and the necessity of atheism. It was initially written as a response to an offhand comment my professor made last block about how atheists are generally viewed as "opinionated" and "contrarians."
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You wouldn’t know it by the recent litany of books on the subject, but there was a time when writing something refuting the idea of a God, and specifically a Judeo-Christian God, could get you into a lot of trouble. Percy Bysshe Shelley found this out when he published a pamphlet entitled “The Necessity of Atheism” in 1809, calling into question the idea that believing in a benevolent God was always a morally just viewpoint. Shelley published the pamphlet anonymously, but was still kicked out of University College, Oxford, when he refused to deny authorship. He would of course go on to become one of the best and best-known of the pure romantic poets, many of them, like Shelley, firm unbelievers.

Shelley was among the first prominent atheists to argue that much cannot be explained by rational science, but assigning certain phenomena to supernatural forces is neither morally nor scientifically sound. “God is an hypothesis,” he wrote, “and, as such, stands in need of proof: the onus probandi rests on the theist.” You can’t claim to know something without proof, and if you don’t give me sufficient proof, why can’t I reject it? I myself, as an atheist (a term I don’t necessarily approve of, but I’ll get to that later), decided at a very early age that it is best to stick with what is observable, with the corollary that anything I observe could, of course, always be wrong. With that as my guiding force, I simply see no need to believe in God, and it seems more and more people are coming to the same conclusion every day.

Is there a change in the air? One would think so, based on the phenomenal success of a number of recent books, all dealing slightly differently with the problem of faith: Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Sam Harris’ Letter To A Christian Nation, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and, most recently, John Allen Paulos’ Irreligion. All of these books, particularly Hitchens’, have made quite a mark on the New York Times bestseller list, suggesting that there is an audience for fiery anti-religious polemics even in a country where at least one of the top-tier presidential candidates denies the existence of evolution. Of course, with their success has come a healthy amount of criticism, not only from religious figures but also supposedly “liberal” sources such as Michiko Kakutani, the chief book critic at The New York Times, who remarked that, “[a]t their worst, these books simply spewed invective against religion, helping to ratify believers’ accusations that atheists and agnostics lack respect for others’ convictions (something believers are frequently guilty of themselves).”

Well, no. It is quite possible to be a fundamentalist atheist incapable of being anything other than petty and mean-spirited, but I don’t think that any of these authors (save perhaps Paulos, whose book is the only one I haven’t read) fit that bill. Dawkins describes himself as a “cultural Christian” and celebrates certain religious events like Christmas. Hitchens has always professed a great deal of respect for other cultures and customs, going so far as to say, “I think that religious literacy is very important,” if only in that a lot of great literature is in some way indebted to The Bible, whether it be something like Milton’s Paradise Lost or the poems of William Blake. Dennett has similarly acknowledged that religion is a useful source of mythology. These are atheists who are contemptuous of religion, but one shouldn’t confuse that with being contemptuous of religious people. There are people who are openly hostile towards any individual professing religious views, but there are people like that on the other side of the debate as well.

The term “atheist” is problematic anyway because it encompasses such a broad range of cultural attitudes, political views, and states of mind. It is a term haphazardly defined by the absence of any particular point of view, and as a result, several prominent nonbelievers would like to see the word be abolished altogether, as it seems to suggest that there is a movement of like-minded individuals who gather in certain groups and think in certain ways. This is definitely not what is happening (although Dawkins happen to be the leader of a group of rationalists known as “brights,”—it’s not quite the same thing). Some, like the philosopher A.C. Grayling, have suggested that non-believers should instead go by the name “naturalists,” being linked by their rejection of any suggestion of supernatural governing agents. This seems to make sense to me, but a name is really nothing but a name, and in my quest to prove that there is no objective “truth” to anything, I’ll wear any tag you give me proudly.

I have no problem with people professing their religious freedom in whatever way they deem fit, as long as they aren’t hurting children or committing heinous crimes against unwilling participants. I would expect anyone else to encourage me to not do the same. I personally don’t care if anyone wants to pray in a public school, as long as they aren’t making my kids do it, and I think there are hundreds of more important problems than whether or not the Ten Commandments are on display in any particular courthouse, even if I think some of the individual commandments are pretty backwards and all of them could be successfully argued against. And if you decide to use your religion to justify bigoted, hateful, or stupid views, don’t expect me to sit back and act like I respect what you are saying. I will challenge anyone to debate me, and I will win, because I have science and rationality on my side.

I have several friends who consider themselves atheists, and none of them view non-belief as an absolute. I and several million other people merely believe that atheists, and American atheists in particular, act as a counterweight: we provide an important role in keeping our country from sliding into a religious police state governed by a book that is as contradictory as it is morally troubling, which is the exact opposite of what people like Mike Huckabee would want. Atheism is nothing more or less than necessary in a free society, and even if you don’t agree with it, don’t make the mistake of claiming that it subscribes to any sort of dogma other than, as Shelley says, “nothing involuntary is meritorious or reprehensible. A man ought not to be considered worse or better for his belief.”

Why I hate Paul Simon, or, a dissection of "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover"

I actually wrote this a long time ago on my last.fm blog, but I thought I'd share it with anyone who is interested. In retrospect I should note that "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" is, honestly, way too easy of a target, and I hope in the future to attack other stuff of Paul Simon's with similar gusto, in order to prove that this man is a lyrical meathead. Anyhow, enjoy.
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I don't like Paul Simon. I don't dig his uninspired compositions, I don't like how polished and sleepy they sound, I don't like his voice. I didn't like Simon & Garfunkel, I don't like "Graceland," I'm just not that into him. Now I know it is not my right to bitch about other people listening to him, but I think I can make a good argument for why he sucks.

I will use the famous song "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover" as an example of Simon at his most self-consciously empty-headed. Plenty of people talk about how much of a lyrical genius Paul Simon is, but I don't see it. I think people confuse "lyrical genius" with "occasional use of 4-syllable words." Let's take a look at the opening lyric:

"The problem is all inside your head," she said to me
The answer is easy if you take it logically
I'd like to help you in your struggle to be free
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover

What problem, you ask? We get the fact that this is about some couple having difficulties in their relationship, but we can't really understand what exactly is going on? Is the guy too needy? Is the girl too needy? Is the guy not needy enough? Is this a lesbian relationship? Will he explain himself, or just continue to be vague? Let's continue:

She said it's really not my habit to intrude
Furthermore, I hope my meaning won't be lost or misconstrued
But I'll repeat myself at the risk of being crude
There must be fifty ways to leave your lover
Fifty ways to leave your lover.

You may notice that each succeeding sentence has absolutely nothing to do with the previous one. What the hell is this lady intruding on, and what does it have to do with her meaning being lost or misconstrued? Don't try to tell me this is anything other than incredibly, clunky, uninspired wordplay. Only the biggest idiot in the world would be impressed by him using the word "misconstrued," especially when he happens to rhyme it with "crude," any moron could have come up with that. But in my opinion it gets worse. This chorus is relatively well-known, and it surprises me that actual adults find it either funny or thought-provoking, as this is clearly the sort of thing you would sing in preschool:

Just slip out the back, Jack
Make a new plan, Stan
You don't need to be coy, Roy
Just get yourself free
Hop on the bus, Gus
You don't need to discuss much
Just drop off the key, Lee
And get yourself free.

Songwriter rule #1: You can't just cheat out of finding a good rhyme by adding some random person's name at the end of it. I defy anyone to defend this abysmal attempt at rhyming on any grounds, musical or otherwise.

Putting aside the horrible lyrics, I also reject the notion that Paul Simon is gifted as a tunesmith in any way. Using "50 Ways" as an example once again, I can say that while his chord changes aren't really that offensive, they are in no way really representative of any real "genius" at work. The song is the litest of lite-funk shuffle--if it was any liter it would be inaudible. The most interesting musical aspect of this song is Steve Gadd's stop-start marching pattern, which gives this song a smidge (just a smidge) more rhythmic heft than the average Simon song. But it's the absolute same beat throughout, and when you think he's going to try rocking out when the chorus comes, he keeps plodding along at the same speed. Compare this performance with his fiery drumwork on Steely Dan's "Aja" to see why he was actually thought to have some intuitive musical ability as well as technical skill.

In conclusion, this is a man has even tried to go to fucking Africa to try to liven up his lily-white compositions and he only succeeded in embarrassing Ladysmith Black Mambazo. And instead of appearing in music videos with
the South African musicians he works with, he has Chevy Chase. Fuck him.

This is a slightly better version of "50 Ways to Leave Your Lover," I think, as performed by The Electric Mayhem (oh my God they actually have an artist page for them):


It's still a shame to see the normally unhinged Animal reduced to playing that monotonous Steve Gadd shuffle, but at least he has Rizzo to help him with playing tiny cymbals.

EDIT: Mendelson wrote to me not long after I wrote this to tell me that there is no possible way that Paul Simon could have made Ladysmith Black Mambazo more ridiculous than they already were. My point still stands.

Been a long time

Sorry I haven't been updating this much. There are several reasons why this is, not the least because I was just in an incredibly busy class that I didn't know if it was proper to write about it, what with my name being so Googleable these days. I was just in a class called Reading in the Content Area, which is basically an Education class in which we studied different literacy theories, some of which I can definitely say have more value than others. Part of my class was actually going to a high school every day for two weeks, from 8-11 on every weekday except Friday, when I would spend the whole day there. This turned out to be an exhausting process. I was very unsure about whether I would blog about it, considering there are all sorts of privacy issues regarding my fellow teachers and students, and what's more I'm not sure the experience was all that positive.

Anyhow, even beyond that my life is just a torrid mess anyway. I'm really jonesing for another English class, but I'll have to wait a month--this block I have Secondary Arts & Languages, which is more or less the same class as last time. This means more visiting the same school. Hopefully I will have to talk less about Hannah Montana. No, don't ask me to explain what I'm doing.

What have I been doing with my time these days? Well, aside from fucking everything up, I've been writing a fair amount and reading even more. It must have been a wise person who said, "We write...so that we do not get more pissed off than we already are." I've been delving into a lot of fiction (okay), poetry (not so good), and essays I just sent into The Cornellian after I got a reply saying that I shouldn't complain until I have myself contributed something of value. Yes, I finally relented. I will post these all in due time, probably this evening actually.

Did anyone see Mitt Romney drop out of the race? Wonderful news, even if his concession speech was nothing but more Republican tomfoolery:

Europe is facing a demographic disaster. That is the inevitable product of weakened faith in the Creator, failed families, disrespect for the sanctity of human life and eroded morality. Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America’s vitality; we know that it is the source of our strength. And we are not dissuaded by the snickers and knowing glances when we stand up for family values, and morality, and culture. We will always be honored to stand on principle and to stand for principle.

I think a weakened faith in the Creator is exactly what some of us could use right now. In fact, one of the articles I wrote for The Cornellian (I wrote a bunch, just in case) is about exactly that. I will post it later, even though I think I've made pretty much all of the arguments already in these pages.

You can also look forward to some writing on Philip Roth (I'm in the midst of reading all of his novels, in order of publication), the situation in Gaza, composing music for the upcoming Fuel open mic night, being a miserable individual, my roommate playing Persona 3, my fear of Hillary Clinton's inevitable nomination, and my love-hate relationship (mostly love) with L.A.M.F.

Sorry everyone. It's not like you care.