A day of thoughts, both big and small

It was actually two days of thoughts, big and small, but I really only remember the things that happened today, so I’m going to just blend them all into one. As you may guess, this is going to be one of those rambling stream-of-consciousness entries that jumps from topic to topic as they come to my mind. Enjoy, if you dare! (You should dare! Take a chance!)

I am going to get my foot checked out at the Health Center tomorrow. It’s been hurting for about two weeks now. I’ve been running on it, nevertheless. Doing so is probably not the smartest idea, but in the past, I’ve always just run through the pain. I mean, all that muscle soreness and stiffness and pain when you start running again after a few months off—that doesn’t go away quickly, and if you wait until it does, you’ll be running only once or twice a week. That’s no good. I think you’ve got to run through it, and push harder. That’s the only way the pain goes away, really.

Well, maybe I was wrong. I did take a string of four days off at the end of last week, and my foot wasn’t feeling abnormal by the end of them. But then I went out running and the pain came back. It’s this weird sort-of-like-a-pulled-muscle feeling, but it’s right under the back of the arch of my left foot. Usually it’s fine while I’m running, but it really starts to hurt once I stop, or when I’m walking around. Lately, it’s taken on a more serious kind of pain, and it’s hard to describe. I think the best word to describe it is “scrunchy”. It feels like things are kind of stringy and moving and bending in there.

I hope it’s nothing serious. Eek.

Monday night, I went to the Common Council meeting at City Hall. I stayed for an hour and 45 minutes, but had to leave. They hadn’t even gotten to the resolution on the Maromas site yet; instead, they were bogged down in details about sewage and sprinkler systems on the old Remington Rand property. I learned a lot about some city issues, but didn’t get the story I was looking for. I did, however, recite the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning of the meeting. It’s probably the first time I’ve done that since high school.

Heh, I remember those days. When I wouldn’t say the “under God” part. Or when I wouldn’t say any of the words, just standing there instead. I was so anti-American back then. I was pretty stupid back then, too. At least in that way.

Other events happened Monday night, but those are reserved for a Private entry.

Oh, but before I get away from Monday, let’s talk about a discovery I made that night. The U.S. Army finally got around to putting up their informational website on the Middletown project, and uploaded a bunch of PDFs with Frequently Asked Questions. Well, I know most of those questions have been asked at least once—because I wrote a lot of them! I mean, they didn’t paraphrase them or anything… they just took the questions I asked in my email verbatim and put them up, with the PR answers, on the Internet. I feel kind of cheated. I may just be unaware of the protocol, but I would assume that my communications with the Army would be a private manner, whereas the Army spokesman’s responses would be a matter of public record, or at least open to publication since I identified myself as a reporter. Hmm.

There is a girl in my AMST200 class that looks freakishly like Erica (ex-girlfriend) looked at the end of high school. I’m talking same glasses, same facial structure, same eyes, even the same hairstyle. Same mannerisms, too! She bends her arm at the elbow and puts it down on the desk in front of her, cups her chin in the center of her palm and covers her mouth with her straightened fingers in class. Erica used to do that (mm, photographic memory). In short, the resemblance kinda freaks me out.

Tonight, while standing on the corner, waiting for the light to change, on the way to dinner, a rather large man in the back seat of some large SUV rolled down his window and told me that he wished he “had a head of hair like” mine. He also said that he would like to take a time machine back in time to get back to a point where he had my kind of hair. I didn’t know if I should take him seriously or not, so I kinda just laughed it off. I probably should’ve been more polite about it. Oops. I hate missing opportunities to make the world a friendlier place. Really.

At dinner, Jan Marie caught up with me and suggested we try that new place on Church Street, Café Ology, for coffee. w00t.

I also talked to Erica tonight, for the first time in a while. She wants to be a lawyer! That is exciting. I wish I had some concrete idea of what I wanted to do after college, besides avoid the corporatized brothel that is mainstream post-college employment, and fuck with The Man enough to still be outside the system while I, nevertheless, change the world for the better.

Mm, at least some form of youthful idealism still resides within me, even if it’s still very poorly defined. But these are thoughts for another entry.

The results from Super (Fat) Tuesday are nearly all in. It looks like Hillary and McCain were the big winners of the night, though Obama is still very much in the race for the remaining primaries. I was thinking before that, politically, I should’ve been hoping that Romney won the Republican nomination, so the Democratic candidate would sweep the general election in the face of Romney’s evil nature. But then I thought, in the general election, Romney probably wouldn’t catch as much flak for running the negative ads that turned so many people against him in the first place. And then, the prospect of a Romney victory would fill my heart with unmitigated dread.

If McCain wins the GOP nomination I think things will be tough for the Democrats—either Hillary or Obama. For Hillary, I think the consensus that she won’t be able to garner enough moderate/Independent votes is a real concern. Though I think she’d talk the tough talk it’d take to fight back against a general-election-mode McCain. Obama, on the other hand, might be able to entice some middle-of-the-road voters, but when McCain and the Republicans make this election another rehash of 9/11 and bring the focus to national security, I don’t know how Obama (“middle name Hussein”) would hold up against the prisoner of war and military man McCain.

Also, I’m against the pansy-ism bipartisan rhetoric of Obama. Sure, bipartisanship is nice and all, but I’d rather have someone who’s willing to use the Oval Office as the bully pulpit, who’s willing to take the Republicans to task for blocking the “will” of the American people. After seven years of Bush shoving around the Democrats and then a year of the Democrats being shoved around by a Republican minority, I’m thirsty for some exercise of raw political muscle. I think Hillary is the better candidate to give me some o’ that good old fashioned ass-whoopin’ politics.

And yet personally, I don’t particularly like either Obama or Hillary, for different reasons. As I’ve mentioned, I’m an Edwards man. But I guess I’ll vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination. ::Sigh::

Two small things. The first: the Argus is on top of things this semester—a real step up! Especially their Wespeak series, with the focus on different groups around campus writing on prominent topics. I’ve found the Wesleyan Republicans’ Wespeaks to be particularly refreshing; not so much for the quality of their argument (the first half of their argument against Iraq withdrawal was excellent but the latter half got muddied in a naïve geopolitical history of the Middle East) so much as the fact that they’re finally taking a vocal stand on important issues. When seemingly the entire campus is engaging in that goose-stepping chant of “Yes, we can!” whenever someone invokes the magical syllables “oh-BAH-mah”, they had the balls to (I think, wrongly) call for supporting Romney. And their argument against divestment in General Dynamics and Raytheon was, I thought, spot-on and brought out important gaps in SEWI’s arguments that had not yet surfaced in the wider campus conversation.

The second: now, in a more rational state, I realize that all those nasty Wesleying comments are probably the work of one or two people, who are likely tied to VDS. I will ignore all such negative comments in the future. When every post gives people a chance to start their own little ACB, it’s time to just let it go.

And finally, I had coffee with Beau today down at Klekolo. He may be reading this, so I won’t gush too much, but I’m really glad we sat down to talk. He likes Clone High, the Smashing Pumpkins, and politics. And he seems to have an excellent grip on the real world, which is refreshing when so much of my time is spent inside the bubble. I hope he and Keith and I can all sit down for lunch sometime in the near future.

And that, ladies and gentlemen and others who choose not to define themselves within the binary (I am still a partial product of the bubble, of course), is all. It’s off to reading I go. Good night!