Making My Decision

I can't remember what I was reading, but I saw something about various primaries around the country, and as a result I had to do a bit of research to figure out when the Michigan primaries would be held. When I saw that they were in January, I realized I had to figure out who I would vote for, which is a lot more complicated than the election in November will be. Come November '08 I will vote for whoever is running against Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards. Such a decision is not simply a matter of blind partisanship - I just know that there's no way I would support any of those three and that I'll most likely support a much larger percentage of the Republican candidate's platform.

But herein lies the dilemma in voting in the primaries - I have to not only vote for the candidate whose views are most similar to my own, but I also have to take into consideration which candidate is a stronger opponent to the Democratic ticket. And despite the veritable smorgasbord of candidates seeking the party nomination and all the research that could be done into their individual platforms, there are really only three candidates that matter in terms of polling numbers - John McCain, Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani. And even with that triumvirate I don't think Thompson has quite the likelihood of success as the other two front-runners.

So really it comes down to McCain versus Giuliani. I like McCain, I really do... but I just don't know if he can do it in November. I think he's lost a lot of political support and capital ever since the 2000 primaries, and I just don't know if he has a strong enough base of support to take the election. He's an American hero, a man of integrity, and a true patriot and I think he would make a fine President... I just don't think it's possible for him to win the election.

But that's not to paint Giuliani as some sort of consolation prize. While I did not pay as close attention to his mayorship of New York City prior to September 11 as I did once the world spotlight was upon him, I was nevertheless impressed with the way he figuratively and literally cleaned up New York City. As his rumored candidacy grew closer and closer to reality I followed its development, curious to see what national policy ides would grow from his experience.

From the start I have liked Giuliani as a candidate. Despite the uproar from the supposed "moral voice" of the party I could care less about his personal life because it has no impact on his ability to govern. And I said the same thing about Bill Clinton, so I'm not just going easy on Rudy because he's a Republican. If his personal indiscretions are really the reason that people don't support him, those people need to look at the bigger picture.

I was flipping through the channels and came in partway through a speech Giuliani was giving to the Federalist Society that was being aired on C-SPAN. I don't know how much I missed, but I caught the last half hour or so. Given the nature of his audience his speech focused primarily on a strict constructionist view of the Constitution versus "judicial activism". Within this context he talked about a variety of issues from terrorism to taxes and everything in between, and I liked him more and more with each additional point he made.

I'll be proud to vote for Rudy three times - once in January, once in November, and once in 2012.

Time and Chance

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
~ Ecclesiastes 9:11

You, my dear readers, are right to call me on my folly. I cannot claim to give up, throw in the towel, and stop fighting the good fight when the battle has only just been joined. I just needed to voice my doubt and despair in the hopes of achieving some measure of catharsis, and having done so I can move on.

Introspection and reflection carry with them an inherently myopic view of the world. One develops tunnel vision, and it takes an outside perspective to see the picture more clearly. I need such reminders, and I am thankful for you that offer them here in this forum.

Giving Up on Love

These last few weeks
I've been confused
sometimes I wonder if
I'm better off alone.

You fall in love
then break your heart.
you fall in love again
it's never ending.

I used to have this friend
who took his fiance
to see Billy Idol
a couple weeks before
their wedding day.
the chick got backstage
and left my friend outside.
next day she called from a hotel
asking for a ride.

I guess I'm giving up on love [x3]
'cause it really kind of sucks

Uninspired
and growing tired
why am I always
so attracted to drama?

So here I am
grown up at 23
will someone tell me
what it takes to be happy?

I play in my band
and write a lot of songs
about relationships
and how mine went wrong.
maybe I'll meet that special
girl along the way
then she'll break my heart
and leave me crying.

I guess I'm giving up on love [x3]
'cause it really kind of sucks

I guess I'm giving up on love
I guess I'm giving up on love
'cause it's not worth it
I guess I'm giving up on love
'cause it really kind of...

The Ataris - "Giving Up on Love"

Beyond being a catchy and over-dramatic title for a song, the lyrics actually hold fairly true. The last few weeks I have been confused, getting over the latest disappointment in my love life. I knew that the situation wasn't perfect and that there was a good chance things were going to turn out the way they did, and yet as much as I thought I prepared myself for that eventuality the reality of it hit me a lot harder than I expected it to. I was miserable for a week, and since then have slowly gotten better along the process of moving on.

Which begs the question - moving on to what? Do I get back on the horse just to repeat the whole process all over again ad infinitum and ad absurdum comforted only by the vague hope that one day it will all work out and make sense and that this whole sad affair will have been worth it? Do I accept that discretion is the better part of valor and resign myself to a life of monastic hermitude? Do I resist the urge to strangle everyone who tells me "It'll happen when you're not looking and least expecting it" and actually take them at their word?

I seem to have developed a self-defeating pattern in relationships that I can't seem to break. With every girl I have dated in college there has been some sort of obstacle - mentally, emotionally, logistically, etc. - that has presented itself and which I have time and again minimized and tried to overcome only to eventually be defeated by. So I spend all the time I'm single anxious and depressed about being single, and then as soon as I start dating someone I'm anxious and depressed about the problems and conflicts that exist in making the relationship work.

If the point of dating is to spend time with different personalities and types of people in order to figure out what it is you're looking for in a long-term partner, I think I've created a pretty good sense of what I'm looking for in a woman. I don't want to be "dating" just for the sake of dating, but at the same time, I'm not looking to find "the one" tomorrow and get married.

Whatever the case, I'm about ready to take myself out of the lineup. I've certainly got enough other stuff going on, especially next semester when I am going to be finishing my thesis and looking for a job. I know nothing worth having ever came easy, but right now it's just impossible.

A Long Way to Fall

This morning was 47 degrees with a clear blue sky... perfect Fall weather. This is really the first perfect Fall day I can think of that we've had this year. Other days it's been 47 degrees, but as a result of clouds, rain, and wind. When the sun has been out it's caused the temperature to raise into the 60s and even 70s in October...... and that's just wrong.

There are few things as nice as a bright, crisp Fall day..........

Take me Home, Jimmy

Over the last year as I have prepared for travel to various conferences and other events around the country I have always downloaded some new music from iTunes to listen to in the airport, plane, etc. as a way of ignoring the unwashed masses of humanity around me. Coincidentally, I think that for both trips I have taken to Orlando for conferences in the last year I have downloaded a bunch of Jimmy Eat World as the new music for my trip. As a result, Jimmy Eat World has become my unofficial soundtrack while traveling. I have The Captain to thank for much of my introduction to their music, especially certain songs that have extended instrumental portions at the end. There's just something incredibly right about falling asleep on an airplane to the last 11 minutes of "Goodbye Sky Harbor", or driving with the moon roof open to the last half of "23".

It's All About Soul

I miss having faith.

Upon leaving a meeting this evening I ended up right behind a group of students who were leaving what I presume was some sort of worship or praise service on campus because the whole time I was walking within earshot of them they were discussing upcoming praise rallies and the lyrics to a particular hymn. As I listened I thought about my own current lack of any affiliation or association with any sort of church or other religious organization, and more importantly how that stands in marked contrast to a time in my life when a good deal of my time was spent either at my church or at various church related functions. I had more faith at 16 then I do at 26, and that's not the easiest realization to come to.

I know that simple attendance or even involvement with organized religion does not automatically equate with faith or belief, and that many people of tremendous faith would not show up on some people's radar as "religious". Religion, belief, and faith are all dubiously and precariously linked, but at the same time they can strengthen and support each other. I don't know if I was a stronger person at 16 than I am now (that's a scary thought), or if the strength of a community of believers helped to foster my own faith, but where once I would turn to faith and hope in time of trouble I now find myself communing with the paler fellows of doubt and despair.

None of us will ever count ourselves so fortunate as to be free from stumbling or struggling in life, and while this may be true there is a great deal of difference in the ways in which we deal with these setbacks and hardships. I know there was a time where I could accept disappointment and failure as a lesson to learn from, or something I could trust that would later prove to be for the best, and that at times I was foolish, young, or naive enough to call myself an optimist.

I now call myself a cynic, am referred to as others as a pessimist, and may even delude myself by claiming the title of realist. All those things that cause me to stumble and struggle, no matter their size or severity, seem to be insurmountable and impossible to recover from. I lose not only faith, but also hope that things will ever get better.

I have been depressed. I spent 4 months lying on my couch, feeling like I had hit rock bottom and that every day was the worst day of my life. I know what it feels like to really have lost all hope that things could ever be better. I'm nowhere close to that, and I'm afraid to think of what it would take to ever put me back there again.

But sufficed to say I have lost faith. I listen to people telling me that things will get better, things happen for a reason, and a whole litany of reassurances that make perfect logical and rational sense. But when one views things from an irrational and emotional place, such reassurances hold little weight or credence. Others may have faith in me, but until I can recover that faith in myself I cannot take comfort in such support.

I want to trust again, have faith renewed, and believe that things will work out for the best. I just can't remember how.

Falling on Deaf Ears

This Tuesday, like so many other geeks around the world, I picked up my copy of Halo 3 for the X-Box 360. The X-Box 360 was my present to myself this past winter after a string of persona victories, and a large part of why I purchased the new gaming system was for the eventual release of Halo 3. I did not buy it at midnight and take Tuesday off of work so that I could play it all night (unlike some people) but I did play for about 3 hours on Wednesday night.

As I was playing online, I realized just how old I am. We heard the voices of younger players and started complaining about having 12 year olds on our team, only to hear the defiant response that they were 13 and not 12. But more so than the age difference, I found myself bothered by the immature and inappropriate language of all the teenagers and other adolescents I knew existed on the other end of the network. I'm not talking about profanity - I don't even notice that unless someone is so incapable of expressing themselves in a coherent manner that all they use to vocalize are curse words.

What bothered me was the use of words like "rape", "queer", "fag" and others without so much as a seconds' thought or hesitation. When I did my student teaching my cooperating teacher made a big deal out of conditioning students out of using words like "fag" and "gay" as commonplace insults, and I guess it had an impact on me. I had never really paid attention to it before, but ever since then I have also tried to discourage such language. Since returning to higher education and spending a great deal of time talking about issues of social justice, I guess I don't know how to turn that kind of thing off any more. I have friends who are gay, and other friends who spend a lot of time working for gay rights issues, so in spending so much time with them I am not able to ignore it any more because I know what it means to them that so many people use those terms interchangeably with any other insult without a second thought. I know I can't really change any one's opinions or behaviors, but it's gotten a lot harder to just let it go unchallenged because I know it's just a lack of ever having thought about it on their part.

But what really got to me was how casually the term "rape" was thrown around. Talking about another player killing them, or recounting one of their own kills, any particularly brutal or surprising kill was described as "Getting raped" or "raping" the other player. I actually called another player out about it, telling him it wasn't cool, but I'm sure he just ignored me.

This semester I started co-advising a group on campus that works with sexual assault prevention and education, and the big reason I got involved is because I want to work to change the attitudes and beliefs of men on campus about what is appropriate and what isn't in relationships and in their daily conversations and interactions with gender issues. I know that most of it can be chalked up to immaturity and "not knowing any better", but after a short while those just become excuses. If males are never challenged about it, they'll never have to think about it, and they can go on the rest of their lives being oblivious to the fact that they are helping to perpetuate and support a culture that allows rape and sexual assault to be topics that are accepted rather than a source of outrage.

I know I'm not going to make a difference calling some 14 year old kid out on X-Box Live. I know that I may be treading the fine line between doing the right thing and becoming that annoying uber-PC activist type. But once you start thinking about it, and thinking about what the language actually implies and how it's nonchalant usage almost normalizes it, I would hope that it provokes at least some sort of uneasiness and cause to reflect.

So I May Have Overreacted...

My dear readers I thank you for your patience and your continuous putting up with me. My most recent post prior to this was nothing more than whining and carrying on in self-pity, and for that I apologize. As it turns out I was, as many people have pointed out over the years, just thinking and worrying about it too much.

The reality of the situation was that her mobile phone died in a way that the Verizon dealer refused to believe her that she had not been submersing the device in water, and she was without access to her phone until that following week. On top of that she counted up the hours she spent at work to a number surpassing 90, so she clearly had a lot to deal with.

She came over Tuesday and we talked at her prompting, and while we don't necessarily have any answers we have a pretty good understanding and I am just fine with that.

Moving right along...

I'm an Anachronism

How can I possibly hope to ever successfully navigate the world of dating and relationships when this is the status of marriage in our society? Clearly I'm not planning on getting married any time soon , but to follow a line of inductive reasoning the complete disregard in our society for what I thought marriage was can only follow to the realms of dating and other relationships.

In layman's terms - I have no idea what the hell I'm doing anymore. That would, of course, presume I ever had an understanding of the dating scene, which by my own admission would be a dubious claim at best.

Once again I find myself spending the whole weekend without hearing back from the girl I thought I had hit things off with.

It's become a predictable pattern. I find a girl that there seems to be some sort of spark with and we start spending time together. Over a few weeks the usual flirtation and cat-and-mouse ensues and the ambiguous line between friendship and something more is crossed in a way that would seem to indicate progress in a certain direction. And yet soon after, whether after a few days or weeks, the bottom falls out for no discernible reason.

I don't get it.

All the signs that would indicate that she (and I'm using the female pronoun to act as a general identifier since this has happened with at least 4 girls I can think of off-hand) is interested and so I respond in kind. Such response is met with seemingly equal enthusiasm, and yet while I seem to gain interest she seems to lose interest at the same rate.

I try to play things cool. I approach the situation with a "let's see what happens" mentality, never betraying any sort of undue commitment with words like "relationship" or "girlfriend". I try to establish a sense of casual dating, and yet time after time it falls apart before it has a chance to even start.

As I have already lamented countless times - I don't get it. It's not like I'm picking up girls at the bar with a clear disposition towards one night stands only to find myself scratching my head when it doesn't work out. And clearly I'm not so unappealing that at least a few girls haven't, from time to time, been attracted to me (though in my lowest moments of self-doubt and insecurity I question the veracity of this claim).

What almost makes it worse is the closeness that exists in my platonic friendships. Being in a program with an extraordinarily unbalanced female to male ratio means there aren't as many guys to hang out with, and as a result I have formed most of my close friendships here in graduate school with my female classmates. And as we have spent our time together and gotten to know each other those friendships have grown stronger, which would presumably indicate that they like me more the more they have gotten to know me. Some have even said the same thing themselves, which leads me to my ultimate conclusion...

I am eminently undateable.

In a paradoxical manner, the more women spend time with me the more they love me, so long as they have a boyfriend, or are attracted to women, or are otherwise safe in the knowledge that we will never date. If they are single there seems to be some sort of threshold that as soon as I start getting interested their interest wanes in an inverse fashion. They could be madly in love with me from afar, and yet as soon as I let it slip that I may be even the slightest bit interested they could suddenly care less.

I'm sure that the resulting comments to this diatribe will spark the debate as to whether this is self-pity or self-awareness. That being said, all I can close with is that if you have a better explanation, I'd like to hear it.

It's About Damn Time

Mitch Albom's recount of yesterday's U of M vs Notre Dame "game"...

I wish I could be happier about it, but the reality is that The University of Michigan didn't win so much as Notre Dame lost that badly. We sure needed the win, but I am hesitant to take it as a sign of a turn-around this season. Still, there are few things as great as kicking the ever-living crap of of Notre Dame's football team.

One of them is Brady Quinn getting hit by a bus.

The other is Charlie Weiss having a heart attack after receiving word that Brady Quinn was hit by a bus, only to stumble into traffic mid-cardiac incident only to himself be hit by a bus.

Go Blue.

Never Forget

Six years ago today the United States of America, and the entire free world, was shaken out of its blissful ignorance and comfort. Despite what the calendar says the Twentieth Century didn't come to a close on December 31, 2000. The new century began on September 11, 2001 just as the Twentieth Century really began on June 28, 1914 with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, thus sparking World War I. All that made sense in the 19th Century and Europe no longer held true after that day in Sarajevo, just as our world has never been the same since that morning on the Eastern Seaboard.

And yet many young, naive fools and even their older and supposedly wiser fellows seem to have forgotten this. For whatever narrow-mindedness or personal bias, they have forgotten. They have forgotten those lives lost. They have forgotten the outrage, the fear, the doubt, and the ultimate unity that brought us all together for too brief a time. They have forgotten that in so many parts of this world there are cowardly individuals who have perverted a religion that is supposed to be a source of peace and love into a justification for their hate. They have forgotten that these individuals live only to subjugate and murder those who oppose them, and instead direct their ill-informed anger at those who seek change and peace.

I just wonder how long it took after December 7, 1941, for our country to forget Pearl Harbor. Our nation seems to have an even shorter national memory and attention span than any other people in history, and I wonder when the solemn promise to never forget will instead be replaced with a vain plea to remember.

I for one will never forget, and hope that others can see past themselves long enough to do the same.

On the Cusp

Does anyone else ever feel like they're constantly on the verge of something? Something great, something new, something big, or just something? It's a sense that a larger understanding or achievement is just within one's grasp and yet still out of reach, made even more frustrating by not knowing what it is one should be reaching for.

I can't quantify or explain it because I don't fully know what to make of it. I suppose I have the luxury of pondering what I should be doing in the metaphysical sense instead of the constant worry of what I have to do in the literal sense. It is nevertheless disconcerting to feel that one should be doing something all while having no idea what that thing should be. It's an existential restlessness...

Trying to Get Settled

So I have been back in Michigan for about two weeks now after my summer in New York, and yet I still haven't quite gotten myself settled back into things yet. I had to move out of my old apartment and into my new apartment in only a few short days between returning from Mexico and leaving for New York this spring, and so I came back to an apartment that things had just been hastily piled into. Coupled with the amount of stuff I took to, and therefore had to also bring back from, New York, I had a lot more unpacking and arranging to do than I thought I would. I gave myself one day off between my return and jumping right into training, and clearly that was not enough time. I've now been in training every day, and when I get back in the evening I just don't feel like unpacking. And so, feeling like the space around me is in disarray, I have not spent as much time at ye olde computer, and hence have not haunted the blogosphere since my return.

Well, my living room and office area are now more or less back in order, so now too must follow a return to other routines.

The topic for today's rant: Celebrities should all be deported onto a remote island where they shall be forced into cages and only released when needed.

Seriously, I never cared about the lives of the rich and famous, but now my apathy has transcended into anger. I am so tired of trying to sift through all the entertainment gossip and get to news about important events and issues. I don't think my utter hatred, distrust, and overall loathing of the media is any secret to any who know me or have glanced upon this tiny corner of cyberspace, but while I can't pass up a good opportunity to bash the "Fourth Estate", I also have to begrudgingly admit that it is not entirely their fault. They are only feeding the insatiable monster that is the lowest common denominator of our culture, and in some respects I cannot blame the media for seizing upon the opportunity to make a fortune off of our collective stupidity. Our culture wants to know more about Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's relationship, Lindsay Lohan's toxicology report, and Britney Spears' debaucheries more than any intellectual, cultural, or spiritual pursuit.

Would confining all of the supposed celebrities to a remote zoo-like island solve anything? Probably not, but at least it would be a more honest approach without the hassle of a middle-man. Just lock them up in glass Malibu-style habitats and allow for the occasional breeding, and let the voyeurs soak it up. We could still make all the television programs and movies we make now - just let subject _______ out of their cage for the day's shooting schedule and then return them to their captivity at the end of the day.

This rant was partly inspired by the selections from Dana Gioia's speech at Stanford's commencement I found at Tony Woodlief's Sand in the Gears blog, reproduced again here:

"There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can name.

Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name.

I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name. Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey.

I don't think that Americans were smarter then, but American culture was. Even the mass media placed a greater emphasis on presenting a broad range of human achievement. . .

Our country is dividing into two distinct behavioral groups. One group spends most of its free time sitting at home as passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens.

The other group also uses and enjoys the new technology, but these individuals balance it with a broader range of activities. They go out—to exercise, play sports, volunteer and do charity work at about three times the level of the first group. By every measure they are vastly more active and socially engaged than the first group.

What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography, or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility."

I admit that I cannot name any of the contemporary great minds that Gioia would look for, but at least I feel bad about that... I hope I'm wrong, but I almost would believe that many of my fellow citizens revel in their ignorance...

The Search for Spock

Make no mistake, I am incredibly wary of J.J. Abrams at the helm of the new Star Trek movie set to be released Christmas of 2008. I don't trust him with it, and I don't like how dangerously close this treads to a "reboot" of the Star Trek universe in the same way that so many other franchises have done. That being said, I am slowly turning cautiously optimistic with more information that has been released.

First off I read an interview with one of the writers that pledged to keep a very close eye on continuity and make sure that elements of the franchise 40 years in the making would not be altered or forgotten. Sure, there has been some necessary retconning along the way, but there's a difference between retconning and blatantly ignoring or altering something.

Second, all of the rumours of big name stars and outrageous casting choices seem to be as false as the producers have always assured us they were. After a running list that included Ben Affleck and Adrian Brody as contenders for Spock, an announcement was just made at the San Diego Comic Con that Heroes actor Zachary Quinto (Gabriel Gray, AKA Sylar) will play the younger Spock. What's more, Leonard Nimoy has confirmed his involvement as Spock as well, signifying that a 24th Century (TNG-era) Spock will also make an appearance.

Looking at him in publicity shots and from roles other than Sylar, I think Quinto has the right look. Here's a picture of him off the set, not looking all creepy-Sylar like:

And since the movie is supposed to be set in the early days of Kirk and Spock serving together, here's what Spock looked like in the pilot "The Cage":



I'd say it's a pretty good match. We'll still have to wait to see who they find for Kirk, but overall I'm satisfied with their decision on Quinto and I have a little more faith in the project than I did before. I think Shatner is still in talks with the producers who are still trying to figure out a way to include him as an older Captain Kirk without ignoring the events of Star Trek Generations, though I would be even happier if they found a way to undue the character's poorly written death in that movie. Come on - between the Nexus, Genesis Planets, Guardians of Forever, time travel, and everything else, James T. Kirk is not supposed to go out like a chump. I doubt that they will change anything about that, but it's just a suggestion.

All that being said, I'm looking forward to Star Trek in 2008 just a little bit more now than I was before.

Boston is Wicked Cool

Though I hoped maybe I'd get a chance to head up (down? over? what direction is it?) there while I was in New York, I wasn't sure if I'd get a chance to visit Boston while I was here or not. Well, that question was answered this weekend and it was awesome. Or, as I was told is a colloquialism to native Bostonians, it was wicked cool.

For whatever reason, I have long held a certain fascination with Boston. Ever since elementary school the American Revolution and the colonial American time period has always been one of my favorite historical eras, and Boston certainly was at the center of that era. When I was in high school I got a recruitment brochure from Boston College as I was applying to colleges, and had the out of state tuition not been so prohibitively expensive I may have tried to convince my parents to let me go there. All of this was, keep in mind, regardless of the fact that prior to this weekend I had never been anywhere close to Boston, nor did I really know anyone who had.

Friday night we packed five guys into a Chevy Malibu and made the trek to Beantown, and it was a hell of a good time. As soon as we got to the friend's apartment we stayed in that night his girlfriend said something in a tell-tale Boston accent, and we were hooked. Everything was closed by the time we got into town, but we still walked through two of the squares in the Cambridge area just to get a look around town.

Saturday morning we got up and prepared for the most crucial aspect of our mission - the Sam Adams Brewery tour. We got to take the "T", listen to the conductor announce the stop for "Hahvahd Squahe" (Harvard Square) along the way, and arrived in Jamaica Plains without incident or delay. All of the suburban areas and outlying cities and towns around Boston proper reminded me a lot of Ann Arbor, which was very cool. I was expecting a large, industrial building when we headed towards the brewery, but was instead pleased to find a very old looking set of brick buildings that looked exactly like a brewery built in the late 1800s should look. The brewery has actually been in Jim Koch's, founder of Sam Adams Brewery, family since the 1880s, and was only renamed Sam Adams in 1985 when Jim Koch reopened the facility under the new label.

The brewery was very cool - the passion that Jim Koch has and has instilled into his employees is very rare to see in a business and actually seem genuine. The Sam Adams brewery in Boston is where things started off, but is now used primarily as a research and development center. New flavors and new brews are perfected there first, and then sent along to the larger breweries and bottling plants elsewhere in the country. After having been there and seen how much pride they take in their craft, I have definitely developed a new respect for Sam Adams, and will look forward to finding the different seasonal beers that they put out.

After the brewery we ventured out beyond the city into a smaller suburban area where one of our host's friends was having a graduation party for finally finishing his degree that he's been working on part time for so long. I may have, in the past, made disparaging comments about Boston fans and people from Boston, and I realize now that there is a big difference between real Bostonians and wannabe - fair weather - bandwagon Boston fans. Real Bostonians, at least the people we hung out with, were great. They gave one of our guys crap for wearing a Yankees hat, and it's great to see a real rivalry that people can be very passionate about, but not take themselves too seriously. Of course, Detroit is going to leave both the Yankees and the Red Sox behind come October, but I didn't tell them that.

At some point in the afternoon, I started picking up bits and pieces of a Boston accent. Unlike my friends who were trying to analyze and mimic certain words or phrases and deliberately force the accent, I just started saying things without even trying. One of our hosts actually commented on how good my accent was sounding, and I didn't even realize I was doing it. I gotta admit, though, I do like the Boston accent. As much fun as it is to make fun of, once you get going it's hard to stop. What's great is that you can just drop "r"s out of words and replace them with an "h" sound, and your words just flow so much easier. I'm sure I still sounded like a tourist, but it was fun either way.

We actually went down into the city on Sunday, and I gotta say that I like Boston more than New York as a city. Sure, New York has all the fancy stores and sights, but Boston just has so much more character to it. All through Boston Common and the surrounding area was a red line indicating the "freedom trail", marking Paul Revere's ride and other historic sights in Boston. We went along Beacon street and saw the bar that was the inspiration for "Cheers", now obviously turned into a theme restaurant with a gift shop and all that. We also went to one of the cemeteries in town where patriots such as Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, John Hancock, and the victims of the Boston Massacre were buried, and it was just cool to be there. The history and legacy of Boston is just so much more visible than it is in New York City, and it made me more than a little sad that Detroit is also really lacking in that sort of living character and history. I love Detroit, but I couldn't think of analogous parts of town to the old parts of Boston like Faneuli Hall and Quincy Market. Really, the closest comparison I can think of would be Fort Michilimackinac and Mackinac Island, neither of which are actually in or even close to Detroit.

This spring there is going to be a large conference with a lot of job recruiting for student affairs and housing jobs in particular, and it just so happens the conference will be in Boston. I've still got my $250 award for the case study competition I won, so that's definitely being put towards a return trip to Beantown.

First, Best Destiny

At the beginning of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Admiral Kirk is listless and unfulfilled by his position at Starfleet Headquarters and the Enterprise is serving as a training vessel with Spock in command. When a crisis emerges and Kirk and Spock discuss whether or not Kirk should assume command of the Enterprise, Spock responds by telling Kirk:

"Commanding a starship is your first, best destiny... anything else is a waste of material."

I know it's a random, geeky introduction to a post, but it serves to set up the main idea of this entry. James T. Kirk was never satisfied as an admiral, sitting behind a desk at Command. His place was on the bridge of his ship, in that center chair, making a difference as captain of the Enterprise.

While I can only hope to compare myself to Jim Kirk so much, the point is that I have gained a much greater understanding of that sense of listlessness, of not belonging, of not being where one is supposed to be over the last few years. I thought that the day I left Ann Arbor for the last time as a student and moved back to Holland was the lowest I could feel, not knowing that my time in North Carolina lay ahead of me a year later. My year in Holland made me angry, resentful, bitter and cynical at the world for not giving me a chance to do what I wanted and make my place in the world. My year in North Carolina taught me what rock bottom really felt like, facing each day more hopeless, helpless, and worthless than I ever knew I could be.

Without realizing it, I compared every state of comfort, belonging, and purpose I either did or did not feel to those same feelings I had while I was in Ann Arbor. I always thought it was just looking back fondly on my college years and the opportunity and excitement they afforded me, a uniqueness to the time and the people that were my undergraduate experience. I had such a profound sense of loss when I was no longer a part of that, and I thought I could never recapture or recreate such a sense of meaning and belonging.

But as I have written about before, all of the despair and uncertainty that characterized my teaching career have been met with their polar opposites since I have returned to graduate school and the profession of student affairs. While certainly not recapturing what I was in Ann Arbor, my experiences have nonetheless been marked with the same sort of success and satisfaction I had felt in my brief exposure to student affairs at U of M. Now as I am more than halfway finished with my summer internship at Binghamton University, I now have been in three totally different positions at three very different institutions, and yet all have given me the same sort of feeling of purpose and satisfaction with what I am doing.

I never really understood the point of educational theory when I was a teacher, and my practice in the classroom almost always came as a result of luck or taking my best shot rather than from a confident execution. By contrast, I love the academic and research side of student affairs and higher education, and my positions as supervisor and advisor has followed from a supreme confidence not only in what I was doing, but that the way I was doing things was right and well-founded. And given the awards and recognition I earned in the past year on both fronts, it would appear that I'm doing something right.

As I said, I've only got about three weeks left at Binghamton, and I'm conflicted about it. On the one hand I miss my colleagues and the familiarity of the home that GVSU became for me in the last year. On the other hand, I really like everything I've seen here at Binghamton, I have been made to feel at home in my office from the first day I was there, and my staff for the summer has been terrific. My time during orientation here at Binghamton has filled me with the same sense of purpose and accomplishment that my time with orientation at U of M gave me. Seeing as my time working during orientation at U of M is what got me to pursue a graduate degree and career in student affairs, that's not a comparison I make lightly.

Just as the command of a starship was James T. Kirk's first, best destiny, maybe I have in fact found mine in higher education and student affairs.

If You Had Superpowers...

So since I've had some free time this week with the holiday I've been catching up on episodes of Heroes via NBC.com (and I've got 6 episodes left, so don't go blowing the season finale for me). I was always interested in the show, but got too far behind in watching the episodes this spring with everything that was going on. The X-Men and their mutant powers clearly had a great deal of influence on the show, which is not surprising given that Jeph Loeb, one of the creators, spent a bit of time writing for both X-Force and Wolverine in his comic career. That being said, watching the episodes of Heroes this week has raised in my mind once again the eternal question among fan boys...

If you could have any super-power, what would it be?

So now as I attempt to answer that question myself, I also put it to you, the commentators on this little corner of the World Wide Web.

For the sake of clarity and simplicity, let's confine ourselves to biologically based powers, i.e. the sorts of mutant abilities and/or gifts demonstrated in the X-Men and Heroes universes. Both refer to the character's abilities in similar terms, and seem to be of the same sort of genetic origin. Without such a caveat we start getting into the sort of powers granted through cosmic, alien, magical, mystical, or technological means and things just get messy.

So now, let's take a quick look at some of the powers exhibited in Heroes and The X-Men...

Claire Bennett (The Cheerleader) - accelerated healing and regeneration
Matt Parkman (The LAPD officer) - telepathy
Nathan Patrelli (The Congressional Candidate) - flight
Peter Patrelli - can copy/mimic others powers
Hiro Nakamura - spatial and temporal teleportation
Izaak (The Painter) - precognition
Nikki/Jessica - superhuman strength?
D.L (Nikki's husband) - intangibility
Sylar - telekinesis/power siphoning
Claude - Invisibility
Ted - radioactive energy release
Meredith (Claire's biological mother) - spontaneous pyro-kinetic generation

The mainstream appeal of the X-Men movies made the characters and their abilities much more in the popular understanding, but just in case we'll do a quick run through of the major characters and their abilities...

Professor X - Telepathy
Jean Greay - Telekinesis
Cyclops - Concussive optic force beams
Wolverine - accelerated healing and regeneration, heightened senses, claws
Storm - weather control, manipulation
Rogue - power siphoning
Iceman - temperature control, can draw moisture from the air and turn it into ice, manipulation of ice to form objects and projectiles
Colossus - can transform body into organic steel
Shadowcat - intangibility
Beast - heightened strength, agility, dexterity; blue fur
Angel - winged flight, bird-like physiology (hollow bones, protective covering over eyes during flight)
Nightcrawler - teleportation, prehensile tail
Magneto - control over magnetic fields and manipulation of metals
Mystique - shape shifting
Pyro - pyro-kinetic control

I'm not saying you have to chose one of the ones above, but it gives you a pretty good idea of what kinds of powers exist in the respective universes. As you can see, there's a lot of overlap (Claire/Wolverine, Matt Parkman/Professor X, Hiro/Nightcrawler, Shadowcat/D.L., Rogue/Peter Petrelli, etc.)

As for me, it's never been an easy choice. Thee have always been certain characters I liked more than others, but some characters have abilities I don't like and some characters I don't like have abilities I like, and so on. To narrow it down to a select few, here are my top 5 choices in no particular order:

1. Accelerated healing/regeneration. Obviously the ability to recover from any wound or injury, rather minor or fatal in a matter of seconds has its perks. There's a reason Wolverine is the best at what he does.

2. Telekinesis. How about the power to move you? (Thank you Tenacious D). Seriously, though, this ability has all the perks of super strength, the defensive qualities of things like force fields, and when directed towards oneself would allow for levitation or flight.

3. Magnetic Manipulation. Let's face it, Magneto is bad ass. In addition to all the control over metals he can levitate, create forcefields, and even manipulate the human body because of the iron in our blood. In one comic book story he even altered the tilt of the Earth's axis along the magnetic pole because of his ability to tap into Earth's magnetic field.

4. Create independent duplicates of myself. The character of Multiple Man, who appeared in X-Men 3, was always one of my favorites. How great would it be to have copies of yourself you could create and then reabsorb later? You could have a duplicate of yourself to go to work while another one did stuff for class, while another one was running errands, while another one was in a meeting, while you were playing video games. I mean, you'd have to switch off which duplicate did what so that one of you wasn't always stuck with the crap task, but just think of how much you could get done.

5. Concussive optic force beams. Not as practical or useful in everyday situations as some other powers, but I've just always thought they were cool. Plus, since I already wear my sunglasses all the time anyway, I'd be used to it. Too bad Cyclops got treated like a chump in the X-Men movies.

So, in thinking about these options, I would have to go with the magnetic manipulation. It's all almost all the perks of telekinesis, almost uncharted levels of power, and applications that would come in handy in everyday life given how much we rely on mechanical and electronic technology for everything that we do.

Of course, such a choice begs the follow up question... would I use my powers for good or for evil?

Independence Day

On this day, 231 years ago, American colonists decreed that they would be the masters of their own destiny. From a shaky beginning and an unsure footing we have since established ourselves as the most powerful, the most secure, the most free nation ever witnessed in all of human history. Granted we have had our stumbles and our shortcomings, but as Winston Churchill observed, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."

So if at least some echo of patriotism doesn't stir in your disillusioned heart today, just remember that in many other places in the world you would not be allowed such a luxury of doubt and dissent.

My Favorite Band

Yesterday I went to a Six-Flags styled theme park with my roommate and his brother who was in town for the weekend. It was like a 2 1/2 hour drive to Pennsylvania, so we had lots of time on the road with my iPod. At one point as he looked through my music collection to find something to play my roommate asked me what my favorite band was, and I had to pause to think about my answer.

It's so hard for me to name a particular movie or musician/group as my "favorite" because I have so many that I enjoy so much. That being said, when I am forced to give an answer I think that my all-time favorite band, most consistently, year-in and year-out is the Gin Blossoms.

I have four Gin Blossoms CDs despite the fact that they only had two major releases. One of the additional CDs is a rough version of most of their later released songs, and the other is a 5 song EP that contains three songs not on their major releases. So all in all, including their single "Till I Hear it From You" from the Empire Records soundtrack and all the random songs from their pre-label releases, I had about three albums' worth of music from them. I have listened to those CDs on a regular basis for the last ten years, and still love every song on them.

So after identifying the Gin Blossoms to my roommate as my favorite band yesterday, I went on iTunes this afternoon and discovered that they released a new album in 2006. Their last CD came out in 1996, so it's been 10 years since there's been new music from them. I actually say them at the Muskegon Summer celebration back in '01 or '02, something I thought I'd never get a chance to do since they effectively broke up in 1997.

So all afternoon I've been listening to the new CD, and it's like they never left. Every track is golden, a natural continuation of their first two albums. No new vocalist, no new sound, no new producer trying to take them in a different direction.

It's like an old friend who you haven't seen or talked to in years just randomly showing up, and everything just seems right.

For more information, check out the Gin Blossoms' website.

Don't Call it a Comeback

You gotta love the random articles that pop up under the main headline on MSN.com...

Ninja, vanish?

And yes, that is a reference to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies...