The Brain Dump

So I really dropped the ball on posting last week, didn't I? I blame school, and to a lesser extent society. Four more weeks to go before I'm outta here!

Speaking of outta here, it is official. Christina and I have signed and mailed the contracts--we have a job in China! We'll be teaching at Anyang Normal University (nice to be normal) in the city of Anyang in the Henan Province. We need to be there by the middle of August. Our correspondent, Marvin, tells us we will have a newly renovated four-bedroom apartment waiting for us. Yay! He also apologized because Anyang is such a small city. The metropolitan area only has five million people in it . . .

Speaking of fiction writing (hmmm, not as smooth), my story, "Dick and Jane: A Love Story" (found in the sidebar) was workshopped in my fiction writing class last last Thursday. You may remember me wondering how my professor would respond to it. Well, now I know. He, in a word, didn't. Yes. No comments. All he did was tell the class that whenever he reads a story with metafictional elements he feels like he doesn't have the vocabulary to talk about it. So he doesn't. Part of me can respect that, but then another, much larger, part of me wants to grab him by his writing utensil and yell, "Your the damn teacher--find a way to talk about it!" . . . I'm working through it. Actually, I set up a meeting with him this Tuesday to make him talk about it. 'Cause that's how I roll.

Speaking of rolling on and on with no clear end in sight while the entire country wants to pull its collective hair out and making the hurting finally stop . . . Hilary is still in the race! Y- . . . yaaaaay . . . ! But she's not actually who I want to talk about. John McCain was recently on the Daily Show, and a few things he said really gave me pause. The first thing was how he spoke about Hamas. Jon brought up a comment that he made, saying that Hamas endorsed Barack Obama. Whether or not he was taking out of context, whatever a Hamas endorsement would mean, it was what he said next that really stopped me. He called them a "transcendent evil" who want "to destroy everything we believe in." Now . . . I was under the impression that Hamas was a Palestinian resistance group fighting against their perceived occupation by Israel, which is continually supported by us. I didn't realize that they aren't really people, they're just an abstract evil that needs to be destroyed. That's cool, whatever. He continues, saying, "I think they think that I'm their worst nightmare," something that he is proud of, and I wondered what kind of appeal he was trying to make by playing off xenophobic, anti-diplomatic, sentiments in the American people . . . Don't we want peace in the Middle East? Maybe the ability to respectfully address one another and come to a resolution that fosters harmony between two suffering peoples? Maybe I was wrong again . . .

The second thing that got me was when Jon Stewart suggested a running mate for him. Hilary Clinton. After he overcame his shock, Johnny-boy stuttered that that was something that he had never considered before, but I thought wouldn't that kinda be awesome? What would be a stronger show of bipartisanship than taking someone from the other side as your running mate? It reminded me of the early presidencies, when the vice presidency was given to the runner-up. Have we fallen so far from a common ground that that notion is seen as both ludicrous and disastrous?

Speaking of disastrous, Myanmar sure is turning out to be a shithole, ain't it?

That's all for now. I'll be better about posting. I promise . . .