R.I.P. Don Adcock

I posted a truncated version of this on Don's "Legacy Guestbook", a forum and medium I expect he'd hate, but I know he'd love to see how many lives he touched expressed in that guestbook.

Don meant a great deal to me. An only son of a single mother, I needed a male role model in my life. Don filled that role for me for almost my entire life up to his passing. As a child, I remember him taking me so many places, to things like Wolfpack football and basketball, jazz concerts, art exhibits, donut shops. Things I thought were cool, in other words. Even in recent years, I have deeply relied on his advice, have enjoyed watching Wolfpack sports with him, have listened to much jazz and relished in the absurd. We have taken more rides to Cup a Joe and other surrounding coffee shops than I can count, to the point that when I enter these establishments, they ask where my friend is.

That's going to be a hard question for me to take for a while. Don has been ever-present in my life. At every major milestone, he has been there, expressing his pride. When I have needed help -- and there has been more than one period in my life where I needed it sorely -- he was there, ready to help me. The first person to call. The first person to express excitement, joy or sorrow at events in my life.

There were whole segments of my life where no one was closer to me than Don was. Not my parents, not my other friends, no one. So without him, I have to be honest, I don't know what I'm going to do. I am blessed and lucky to have the support of many, but I have rarely felt unconditional love as purely as I did from this incredible person who was of no blood relation to me at all but let me know that we had adopted one another as father and son.

I am lucky that I did get to express the importance of that bond to him several times during our relationship. I remember sending him a letter when I was 17 or 18 years old, telling him that he'd saved my life and that I loved him like a father. He told me that the feelings were reciprocated, that he saw me as a son. It was an expression of the way he'd been living it out for years, but it meant so much to me that those words were said.

The last time I saw him -- and the pneumonia was so bad, I was pretty sure it would be the last time -- I let him know that I loved him and how important he'd been to me. He accepted that, but didn't really want to think about/discuss the fact that his time had come. So he asked me, even though he was barely able to talk, to tell him about my life recently. There have been a lot of great things that have happened to me in the last year/few months, so I just went over all of them. His face, which was gaunt and sweaty and pale, lit up when I told him these things. And his wife was gracious enough to tell me later that he had mentioned how pleased he was with where I am in my life.

I couldn't have gotten here without him. It's strange that I'm working a job as a youth minister now. He had no interest in Christianity, as far as I could tell, but he taught me how to be a minister in whatever way I am doing it now. He showed me how healing it is to be someone others can look to for help, for a listening ear, or even just to crack a really bad joke and cheer them up. I've identified that I am really interested in being a good role model for young people precisely because of the time and effort Don took to be that for me. And I see now why it was fulfilling for him just as it was for me.

I will miss Don more than I can express, but will do my best to carry his optimistic, curious spirit with me as I continue to walk through life. Thanks for the memories, my good friend. I have listened to so much jazz in your honor - right now "Stardust" is playing.

I also want to send my love, which will also be expressed in person, to Don's wonderful family, people I feel lucky to know.

edit: By the way, I'm told the photo at the top of this post was taken close to the end (before the pneumonia really took hold, but while he was sick.) His good humor and attitude are clearly visible on his face even given the bleak outlook. Man, I loved that guy.

Writing and not-writing

I am a weird person.

I know. Stop the presses.

But sometimes I don't realize why I do the things I do, and who I do it to (sorry, I started writing a Bill Withers style song there ... take that last little part off.)

One example: I spent over two years not writing fiction. I have now started again, and I can't believe I ever allowed myself to stop. I want to explore it in a blog post, because maybe someone else has this problem, or maybe I'll entertain you with my stories of suffering and chillaxin'.

I started writing down stories as early as I could dictate them for my mom or grandmother to write down, and continued doing so until they actually made sense. (I also no longer dictate to my mom, as she claims more important things to do.)

I guess you could argue that my mom and the other authors in my family are the reason I have always had this interest. At least, if you're anything like the 8 million people who have learned I have degrees in English and have responded "AWW, YOU'RE TAKING AFTER/JUST LIKE YOUR MOM!!"

But that isn't true. Maybe there's a genetic component, or maybe my seeing it going down all the time in my house prevented me from finding it weird, but... It's always been my thing. And it's always been designed to make myself laugh while I do it. My mom's writing is great, her books are some of my favorites, but they ain't funny, that's for damn sure.

Anyway, I digress. I wrote for many years, sort of seriously beginning in high school. I received nice encouragement from a teacher or two and some other folks, which was cool, but didn't make or break the thing. It was still just a part of every day, just like eating breakfast or awkwardly trying to talk to some girl in second period I thought was hot.

Once I went off to college in Greensboro, I stepped it up quite a bit. I took fiction workshops, where I actually got some great feedback, along with some less-great feedback -- but that's the nature of the thing. It didn't bother me to get criticism. I liked it. It helped me to see things I had missed, to add dimensions to the stuff I never would have considered.

At some point, though, a couple of years later ... I just hit a wall. I'm not sure what it was. I lost faith in my ability to tell a story. Completely. It seems so simple to sit down and just start writing, but I was robbed of that process. Or I robbed myself of it, maybe.

The great thing about writing stories in high school and early on in college is that it was the one part of my life where I just. Didn't. Care. In life, I was going around feeling like I was "different": in the way I thought about things, the things I cared about, etc. I was awkwardly aware of that fact.

But I could make up weird characters and mark them with all the silly, dumb, sometimes screwed-up thought processes that I was afraid others would see in me, or that I saw in others, and there were no boundaries. I could write them all down in a way that all the surface details had changed, but the issues were exactly the same as I felt them. I was completely protected while completely exposed. In short ... it was a pretty great thing to be able to do, just for my own peace of mind.

But at some point, I got way too "serious." As an undergrad, I won some creative writing scholarship after doing pretty well in one or two workshops. And I won some writing contest at Greensboro. It was the thing that was supposed to tell me, "hey, pretty good job as a beginner, perhaps if you WORK YOUR ASS OFF you will actually do something with this." For me, though, it was: yo, you're going pro. Better get REALLY good really fast, because the standards have changed. Better not screw up!

All of a sudden, it wasn't something I was doing for me anymore. I was trying to write something that professors, classmates, etc., would like. Every single line being written on a blank page -- in a first-draft situation, mind you -- would be read, re-read, re-re-read, and then exasperatedly deleted. I'm a ridiculous perfectionist when it comes to school or work projects, etc. Something like this blog post is just tossed off, but "serious" things I spend insane amounts of time reworking over and over. So I guess I moved my creative writing into that domain, which was an imagination-killer.

And I hate admitting this. But after some time -- in which there was a major health scare dealing with my mom's heart and a pretty bad breakup with my long-term serious girlfriend, at which point I transferred to NC State -- I just gave up. Started putting my energy into some pretty stupid stuff. Wasted time, money, hung out with the wrong people, the whole nine. Knew I was not being true to myself but just ignored that glaring fact. I just wanted to get away from acknowledging that I'd failed at the life I chose, or maybe that chose me, before I'd really given myself a chance.

There was one spot in between then and now that I wrote seriously. I picked up this mentor at State who saw some of my old stuff and started riding me to write a novel. I thought he was crazy, but finally he got through to me. I started it. Just pushed myself really hard, wrote 25-30 pages in the first sitting and was amazed that I had managed to do it without thinking about the opinion of my intended reader (in this case, that prof). I got the best response imaginable from him, so I was suddenly energized. I got a little over 100 pgs, turning it in to the prof bit by bit to great praise, before it started seeming real. And then the dumb shit started happening again.

I was suddenly doing the write a line, erase the line, erase the line before it, go twenty pages back and find an awkward sentence, rewrite the entire page, forget what I was doing thing. I was getting concerned about the thing not working, particularly since I chose an insanely convoluted form and a similarly weird plot. I started thinking about all the wrong stuff, and it stopped me in my tracks. No other way to put it.

After a month or two, this professor got sick of my not turning stuff in to him, so he (publicly, in front of most of my classmates) told me he was tired of caring about my writing more than I did and even that I should find a new thesis adviser (an unrelated project), etc etc. What I had been trying to tell him was that I did care, in fact I cared too much. I never did succeed in explaining why that was my problem. His response was usually something along the lines of, "Why the hell do you care [what others think]? You're just some guy in RALEIGH." For some reason, I didn't find that helpful....

Well, I was seriously bummed by that. I felt like I was finally the failure I had always worried I might be. It seems so, so very dumb in retrospect, but sometimes perspective is nowhere to be found in situations like this.

So that's when the drought REALLY started. And I was unbelievably sad, all the time. Life was not cool for a while there. I took a semester off from school, tried to reassess what I was doing with my life. Sat on a couch a lot. In a completely unrelated tale of woe, got injured at a job and reduced to one hand. That was a rough time, but it was actually somewhat beneficial as far as this writing saga goes...

I came out of it thinking I needed to put my nose to the grindstone and finish my master's degree. I only had a little bit left to do, and I felt fired up to do it. After that "semester off" thing, you kind of want to apply yourself twice as hard to make up for it. And I did that. Finished the degree, and now I've truly achieved Mastery (in looking stuff up and writing papers about it.)

But as that was going on, I just started messing around with fiction a little bit here and there, just to pass the time once in a while. It was tentative at first, and I didn't want to jinx it by getting really excited.... but I have been building it up for months as a practice again, and I'm happy to say it's BACK TO NORMAL. I hate to trumpet that so loudly, but I AM SO HAPPY THAT IT'S BACK TO NORMAL. I just wish I could randomly flag people down on the street, just to yell in their face IT'S BACK TO NORMAL.

I no longer really care what anybody thinks of it. Yeah, I've missed some time that I could really have been putting into it, and maybe I'm a little bit behind, ability-wise, than I would have been if I had never had this weird block problem. But I really *don't care.* It's funny how good it feels not to care.

I think part of it just has to do with the natural course of "growing up", which I once didn't think I'd still be doing at 26, back when I was... well... naive. I have gotten older, heavier, perhaps a little dumber, and I just kind of stopped caring as much what people thought of me in social situations and stuff. It's kind of a take me or leave me attitude. Lets me be freer in my speech. I don't worry about sounding "different." I think the not caring about some imagined "audience" for my creative work is just an extension of that. So what if I fail?

I'd rather write some stuff and have it be a complete failure than not write stuff and sit around playing internet poker, or playstation, or watching some dumb movie I'm only half focusing on. This is my free time, I'm supposed to use it in a satisfying way. So I'm doin' it. Yeeaaaahhhhh.

So, the short version of this (oh holy shit why didn't I just write the short version of this) is that I can now safely say, after testing the situation for quite a while, that writer's block has been vanquished, the novel I started has advanced to a new place, and I feel generally more creative and more whole as a result. Which, I have to say, is bad-ass.

I owe a lot to the people in my life that have offered me words of encouragement here and there about this. I have a few good friends that have hounded me about why I wasn't writing. At the time, I found that somewhat annoying to have to deal with. Now I can't say how much it means to me, because it would have made a lot more sense to just give up on me like my mentor did. Oh yeah, and no thanks to that dude. That's a whole other story, but at least he gave me a horrible character to use.

I hope this is the end of my not-writing phase, but I am not ruling out the possibility that I'm going to have to battle that again. It would be silly to assume I have completely won here, but it's hard not to feel really good about it. For the first time since I was 19 or 20 years old, I am writing because I want to for fun, not because I'm trying to please some professor or classmates or win some fiction contest. That's an... oh, fine, I'm going to say it... epic win.

Next post: more entertainment, less emo. More than likely also less length as well. In other news, wtf, it's 2 a.m.

Cell tastic

So I finally got to upgrade my cell phone today, having been a faithful Verizon customer for two years. It came just in time, too, because a young lady I was hanging out with recently pointed out that I was using the phone she had TEN YEARS AGO!!! Embarrassing. You gotta be more up on your cell technology than that, if you want to really impress someone.

Well, I will still not be impressing anybody with the new phone, but to me it's pretty brilliant, because it has a keyboard (no more taking eight hours to peck out a 120-character text message) and it kinda LOOKS like a smartphone, even though it isn't one, and will be bulky and uncomfortable in my pocket. Holster, anyone? If it's good enough for Aaron Dixon, it's DEFINITELY good enough for me. Nah, just kidding Aaron, you're one of the few people that can actually pull off the cell phone holster. I would look like a wannabe IT guy. And by that I mean information technology, not like the trendy flavor of the month "it girl" gracing the pages of your favorite fashion magazine.

However, there is a major problem with my new cell phone. It has a very stupid, horrible name. And it is printed in all caps in the email I received, so I repeat it here: it's the VERIZON WIRELESS RAZZLE.

Now, that's a horrible name for a phone. So bad that I'm worried that letting it out here is going to result in lowered respect from my peers. But it's a risk I'm willing to take.

What I want to do, though, is to come up with some other name for the phone. Now cell phone names are kind of arbitrary, which makes coming up with something else a simpler proposition.

I wanted to just make up a few ideas for a name and hopefully get suggestions from others. Whatever I decide on, I'm going to tell people that's the name of the phone. Because I can't bring myself to say "Verizon Wireless Razzle." (However, I just realized I probably won't ever be asked the name of my phone, since I never have before, but I've come too far into this hypothetical exercise to give up now.)

-the Verizon Amused Salamander
-the Samsung Narwahl
-the Droid Moisture Farmer
-the Motorola Motorola
-the Blackberry Useless Piece of Crap Without a Pricey Data Plan
-the Sony Playstation 4 [would enjoy breaking nerds' hearts with this one]
-the Kyocera Michael Kyo-Cera
-the Nokia Let's Go to Burning Man
-the Samsung "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" [ed. note: Sam(my Davis Jr.) sang that very song. He also sung it.]
-the Sanyo What Have I Done With My Life
-the Siemens ... there's nothing I can add to that to make it more amusing
-the Panasonic Bacon, Egg and Cheese


I could go on, but I think it's actually getting a little bit TOO silly, so I will call it a night (holy crap I just realized it's really late) and hope something better appears to me in a vivid, meaningful dream.

See ya soon Razzle!

Later, home

I left my childhood home, my mom's house on Mayview Rd., for the last time ever a few days ago. My mom and I moved there in late 1986, when I was three years old, after having first lived on Oakwood Avenue. I don't remember much about Oakwood, but I know we moved away from there after having one too many drunks stagger into our yard to pass out. (My mom may well have embellished this, but I still kind of like the image.)

I remember the first time I ever saw the inside of the Mayview house. What I noticed were ... stairs. Lots and lots of stairs. I did not like the fact that my bedroom was only reachable by climbing what seemed like Mount Everest at the time. But I'm sure it didn't take me long to get used to it.

It was really a wonderful place to grow up. It had a big backyard -- seemed much bigger to me as a kid -- two stories and a basement, a lot of nooks and crannies to explore. The basement started out as my playroom, where I hosted many an imaginary sword fight with plastic weapons and suits of armor. There was this wooden toy chest that was filled with all kinds of random plastic crap and nicer toys as well, and in those days of constant entertainment, it felt like I could just drop a hand in there and pull out something that would define the entire day, at least in my imagination.

The yard was amazing, too. It felt like there was just so much running space for my friends and me. When it snowed, it was an even better playground. And when I was eight, a treehouse would be added to the mix. I spent the night under its little tin roof during sleepovers with friends many times, and have vivid memories of being woken up by the sound of rain on that roof.

Other things that come to mind include: Christmases. It was always me and my mom, and while she was alive, my grandmother. Our tradition of buying a tree every year slacked off over the past few years, but we used to get a big tree that filled up almost a quarter of the room. When I think of this, I remember the smell of the tree mixed with the odor of cider on the kitchen stove.

It's funny how you can't write about this without sounding like cliched tripe. I apologize, this is a rare occasion on which I am getting sentimental without much cynicism mixed in. I am actually a little embarrassed of that, but it's probably because I'm programmed to distrust cliched images like rain on a tin roof or cider cooking on a hot stove. But that's actually how it was.

Some other completely random things I remember:

-Getting Shaq's rap CD, Shaq Diesel, when I was in 5th grade. Thinking I was the coolest human being on the planet, and, in an attempt to impress a girl in the neighborhood I had a perpetual crush on for many, many years, opening my bedroom window, setting my boom box on the sill, and letting it blast its siren song out into the neighborhood. "You better than Shaq Attack? Fool, shut up liar, / I lean on the statue of liberty when I get tired."

-my 5th birthday party, which included a crazy amount of organized games in the backyard, a crazy magician dude named Tate the Great, and the gift of a Nintendo Entertainment System from my dad. Hooking it up in the basement after all partygoers had left (because I was ordered to wait until they had all left, damn these stragglers!) and completely killing it on Duck Hunt.

-going ahead exactly one decade for the hell of it ... my 15th birthday, where all my friends came over for a game of Diplomacy. Aaron Dixon and I, as Italy and Austria, kicked some Russo-Turkish ass. Then a limo came to pick us all up and take us to ComedySportz (greatest use of a limo ever. I don't know why I wanted that as a birthday gift, but it was my gift that year.) Afterward, we all came back to my house for some rousing battles in Bloody Roar and Mortal Kombat Trilogy.

-the time Hurricane Fran destroyed the place. My mom and I had just moved downstairs to sleep in the living room when two gigantic oaks fell on both sides of the house, destroying both of our bedrooms. The living room ceiling was starting to leak major water so we bailed out, drove through the hurricane to a friend's house and came back the next day to survey the damage. I'll never forget how incredibly upset my mom was, the most frightening mix of terror and grief I've ever seen anyone express.... and I guess I was in such shock that I was amazingly calm, almost shell-shocked as I walked through the rubble in my bedroom, trying to find things to salvage. We moved into an apartment for a year, the place was rebuilt, and we finally were able to return. I was so happy to be home. Man... I'm going to miss it.

-my grandmother picking me up from a Christmas Eve visit at my Dad's house, telling me my mom has my present ready for me, but I 'won't like it very much.' Arriving at home to see my new puppy Chopsticks, with a bandana tied around his neck, running down the stairs to greet me. I thought there was going to have to be a catch, that we'd have to give him back for some reason. We took him for a ride in my grandmother's car and he puked a ton. I thought that was going to be it for ol' Chopsticks -- take him back to the previous owner! We don't want a puking dog. But fortunately, he was forgiven, and he lived until I was a junior in college.

-being allowed to have a girlfriend over, with privacy, at age 16.

-other ways in which I pushed the limits of what I was supposed to be allowed to do as an older teenager. Not things I'll share here :P But I do associate some of those memories with that house, and they're mostly good ones.

-the draft in the kitchen, the way my mom always kept house plants next to the table that grew much too large for their allotted space, and the framed Yeats poem with illustration she kept on the wall. It was one of the first things I was able to read on my own after learning to read.

-the way the basement went from my playroom to a room for Ed, at the time a graduate student who rented the room in exchange for teaching me guitar lessons and driving me places. I looked at him as the big brother I always wished I had. Then when he moved out, his room became my room. I felt like more of a man, just having turned 15. These days, Ed is still a great friend of mine, and I'm past the age he was when he lived there. Time moves far too quickly.

This is just a random assortment of memories and nothing approaching a coherent post, but I don't care -- I just wanted to save some of these things for later, when the house will be more of a distant memory. Because just as with all things that were once a given, or routine, change is inevitable after enough time has passed. The thing that bums me out, though, is that there is no replacement for "home." My mom's new house isn't my home, it's her home. My apartment now is sort of a temporary home, but it doesn't have the same comfort, exactly. Anyway, I've been enjoying remembering things about the place, and I'll continue to write other things down as they come to me.

Next post won't be so sentimental, I promise. It might also have coherent paragraphs, but I can't guarantee that.

Bloggawhat?

It has been far too long since I blogged, but I've got a good reason this time -- I've been pretty caught up in the vast amount of shit I must accomplish in order to finish my master's degree. It is a year late, due to circumstances out of my control, but in some ways that makes it even sweeter. Honestly, last fall when I got injured, I figured I didn't have a chance in hell of finishing. I was already feeling like the practice of writing papers and reading swaths of critical articles had left me, and had the conviction that I had chosen the wrong field of study when I started out.

In many ways, I still feel that way, but I have gotten real about it as well. When I was applying to graduate schools, I was being advised about my fiction writing by a professor who I really looked up to at the time. This person encouraged me to apply to MFA programs, and to go for the best ones. I only applied to a few of the top programs, and NO mid-level programs, which was probably some of the worst advice I've ever gotten and I should have known better. We all want to believe we're awesome, though. The "safe" school I applied to was good ol NCSU, and since my mom had been a fiction writing teacher there until recently, I didn't want to enter the MFA program, so just applied for the MA.

Well, that was dumb, because wouldn't you know it, I bricked on those MFA applications. The prof I was dealing with said sure, come to State, we'll do the thesis together. Blah blah blah. But the latter part didn't work out, and I was forced to change topics very soon before I was (originally) scheduled to graduate.

The rest is kind of history, but this is all to say I have felt very, very unmotivated to write a paper in a field that doesn't interest me (I guess I was hoping for more close readings of texts and analysis of the way they actually worked, as far as style, mood, word choice, etc. -- and less about politics and horseshit, which much of literary criticism seems to be.)

So the fact that I have finished a draft and now am just shy of finishing a major revision is a very, very good thing. I have like two weeks before it's due, I've got to pass a Spanish test next week, and if I can square all that away, I will actually finish. Which is amazing to me. I really had just about written it off.

The next barrel of monkeys will be finding a job, and I am drawing thin as far as ideas for that. Ideally, I'd like to work for the government. Like, starting off at the bottom at some agency office, being a solid worker, rising up through the ranks. I know that the government takes good care of its employees and offers a good retirement package. Unfortunately, however, all those jobs are being cut at the moment. So I will have to figure something else out.

Some volunteering I've been doing has been making me think working with young adults/kids might be a good thing for me. Believe it or not, I've been a teacher for a 6th-7th grade Sunday School class for the last couple of months. I've just enjoyed it so much. Anyone that knows me well knows I'm kind of a cynic about religion, but this is a church I grew up in, with all the right political/social stances, and it just seems to have naturally worked out to come back. That has been a major plus for me, probably the best thing that's happened to me all year. I was really proud of them, they put together a fundraiser and raised like $500 for Haiti relief in one afternoon. Cool stuff like that.

What else... well, I had an awesome experience at an invitation poker tournament that my good friend Ed brought me to. It was a 45-man (or thereabouts) tournament with the top 5 places winning money. I had an awesome run... though I can't really credit myself with amazing play, I just managed to get my chips in when I was ~60% favorite or better, and all my hands held up, until the end. When there were four of us left, I caught two pair on the flop out of the big blind. A guy with a similar chipstack to mine made a huge overbet, I thought he was just stealing so I reraised all in, which was an overbet in itself. To my surprise, he called, with just one pair. It was looking AWESOME for me, but the turn and river cards were both diamonds, giving him a flush. So I was out in 4th for 200 bucks. If I had knocked him out, the 3rd place guy would have been out quickly after (tiny stack) and I would have been playing heads up for the win. 500 for 2nd, 1000 for 1st. So while I was happy that I won what to me is a fairly significant amount of money (lets me have some entertainment anyway), I was hurting over that for days afterward! Man, so close yet so far away. But that's how it goes.

This blog has been all over the place so far, and probably won't be entertaining to most, but whatever. The last thing I wanted to say is that I have gotten back to doing the kind of writing I love to do, just for myself. I haven't had a lot of time for it the last week or so because of the impending school stuff, but it feels so good to be back to exercising that creative muscle. The best thing, probably, is not caring about showing it to anyone. If I write anything worth showing, I'll show it, but otherwise, I'm just going to enjoy myself. And that's a nice feeling.

This is gonna sound over the top, but it's true -- I feel like this has been one of the best years of my life so far, things seem to fall into place one after the other. There are plenty of things I still lack, like, well, a job, and a female that is not my dog -- but I trust things will continue to line up properly as long as I keep giving all my effort. I am actually happier on my own than I have ever been, and I think that's saying something.

So this hasn't been a very humorous blog post, lacking all the constant attempts at sarcasm I normally season these with, but screw it, I just wanted to throw a general update out there. I know a few people read this, but I also like to keep it kinda as a log for my own reference, like "oh, looks like I was feeling pretty good in April 2010, what a naive fool I was!!!" Or something like that.

Who are the Word Police?

Since no one has yet stepped up to the challenge, I'm declaring myself a self-appointed sheriff in the realm of lame, useless, and often cringe-inducing new words that somehow become ubiquitous within days of being introduced. If a word or phrase is lurking around these parts without my approval, this is fair warning that it may be shot down.

I apologize in advance for offending anyone who uses these words, I'm just cranky about the English language. I'll be the old guy yelling at kids to get off my lawn and to stop using double negatives.

Let's try a few of these on, shall we?

1) Epic. Let's get a quick google definition... "very imposing or impressive; surpassing the ordinary (especially in size or scale); "an epic voyage"; "of heroic proportions"; "heroic sculpture"
So it's a specialized word, right? One of those words you save for, well, a truly epic occasion. Like when you decide to set out from San Diego in a kayak and wind up in Wilmington, NC months later. That's epic. Eating a sandwich that is delicious is not an epic action. It's just a good sandwich. It would only be epic if it took you years to eat, or if you had to slay some sort of demon/dragon to gain access to said sandwich.

*sub-annoyances*
-Epic Fail. I know this one has been around for a while, but it still makes my skin crawl. You're walking down the street and you drop your lunchbox. It pops open and your apple rolls down the street and into the gutter. "EPIC FAIL!" you announce to anyone who'll listen. "I JUST FAILED EPICALLY! CHECK ME OUT!" No, to fail epically would be something along the lines of Napoleon and/or Hitler staging a massive invasion of Russia and losing a bloody war of attrition, leaving millions dead. That's an epic fail. Since the war in the middle east has cost many lives since 2002 and hasn't yielded Bin Laden, you could argue that it's an epic fail. If they caught him after 10 years, that'd be an epic win. An epic win is not finding an open gas pump at a crowded filling station. And this brings me to...

2) For The Win (FTW). How hard is it to say "This cookie I'm eating is good"? Why complicate it by holding it up, grinning, and saying "cookie FOR THE WIN!" What did the cookie help you win? Are you the new cookie eating champ? Or is it the cookie that won? I don't get it. Places where this phrase is acceptable: the set of Hollywood Squares, sporting events.

3) Fuck my Life (FML). OK, this is one that started out kinda cool in my view, just because the site that spawned the saying was pretty brilliant. You could peruse all the horrible things that were happening to others, which made you feel slightly less pathetic. But now people have started WAY overusing this. "I missed the bus and I have to wait 15 minutes for the next one. FML." "I just opened a soda and a little bit of it sprayed out on my shirt. FML." I think there needs to be a minimum requirement of a certain level of horror and embarrassment for this one. "I got explosive diarrhea with zero warning at my senior prom, FML." That should be considered a mild FML.

4. Creeper. I am not sure why this has caught on so much, but I have heard people at many different age levels using this. I'm not really opposed to the word so much as the idea that you can just add "er" to an existing word and have it mean basically the same thing. Letters cost money, you know! Plus, 'creeper' should really mean 'something that creeps', like maybe a spider or a millipede. A creepy person doesn't creep, they're just creepy.

OK, allow me to apologize for my curmudgeonishness (new word!... I guess that makes me a curmudgeoner) but I thought it would be fun to attack a few words head-on. There are plenty more that I object to, but I'll save those for another time. Oh, and if I offended anyone, I was basically just joking... you can use whatever words you want. It's a free country. FML.

I'm just sitting here thanking God and whoever else that my Brian Wilson year is just a few short days from being totally over.

This has been a year that began in total darkness, with me finding more and more light here and there as it's gone on. Funny thing about majoring in English because you're not sure what you really want to do with your life: majoring in English does nothing to help you discover what you really want to do with your life. That's been a journey that I have delayed embarking on for far too long, and a big part of this year had to do with making up for lost time on that score. And what did I have to do to achieve that? Well, bust my ass fixing up people's yards, for one thing. Having to really put my head down and push hard to get to the next stage. Basically, I had to go through a time of trial to get a sense of the strength and resolve that's somewhere down there.

So I guess you could say I had a total crisis of faith months ago. The shitty, nonexistent job market compounded matters, as I ground away at odd jobs until I finally landed a gig at a law firm downtown. Of course, three weeks into that I was horribly injured on the job, and got to go back to the land of unemployment, only with a disability check this time. (It doesn't make it suck all that much less.)

Add to that having to withdraw from school two semesters in a row for completely different reasons each time, and you've got a bullshit sandwich.

But now... man, I finally feel strongly that I'm on the other side of all that stuff, rather than stuck in the middle of it. I'm moving to a new apartment day after tomorrow. I'm starting my last semester of grad school in a couple weeks (granted, I'm starting it for the third time. But still.) I'm... well, I'm still limited in what I can do for a job, but I'm meeting with my lawyer about that next week to discuss what I can and should do. Things are coming together.

One thing I've learned: my inner life is all that really matters to me. As long as I can write funny stories, read books, listen to music, and spend time with my friends, I don't feel that I really need anything more than that. A boring job -- like maybe a government desk job, which is one avenue I've been looking into for my post-graduate employment -- is all I need. As long as I've got my mind and a good group of friends, I'll be satisfied.

So... good riddance to 2009, but I'm still pretty glad it happened. I'll look back on it as a defining year. And, with any luck, won't have another year like it ever again.

Peace to everyone out there, and good luck for 2010. We still have two years until the horribly cliched apocalypse arrives, or at least that's what I gather from current cinema.

OK, yeah, haven't posted in a while, blah blah blah. It wouldn't be a blog post by me if it didn't begin with an acknowledgment of the fact that I never post.

I'm finally coming off this crap about the injury. I have finally, after three full months, gotten the splint off my left hand and can use it in a limited fashion. I'm told I might not ever get full bendiness back in the thumb, but frankly I'm just glad to have it operational and with intact nerves.

I guess if you read my blog, you could see for yourself that I had kind of a hard time while that was going on. Since it's a work injury, there is little recourse for me to take -- kind of messed up, but apparently the laws in this state aren't exactly friendly to workers. I'm thinking about writing an article about my experience and trying to get some local paper to print it. People should know how little protection they have under the law as workers in this state. Unless you like a 2/3rds pay disability check which doesn't account for potential lost wages in other endeavors, in which case, by all means, go lose your hand in a work accident.

Things are looking up, though. I'm about to move to a 1 BR apartment in North Raleigh. It's a nice place. And in all other areas, I'm just feeling optimistic. There are a lot of unknown factors regarding the future, but I feel quite capable of controlling those factors to the best of my ability.

I guess this isn't exactly as sustainable life skill to be proud of, but I have had the chance to play a lot of poker over the last few months, and have gotten pretty good at tournaments. This month so far I've gotten over $600, mostly from really huge multi-table tournaments with micro buy-ins. I don't spend every hour of every day on it, but when I wasn't able to type and could only use one hand, that was one of the few forms of entertainment available to me.

There are a hell of a lot of people I lost contact with this year that I miss quite a bit. Being out of it for several months at the beginning of the year combined with the fallout from that and then the injury BS, I've spent a lot of time out of touch. Want to rectify that with as many people as possible.

So.... holla.

In other news...

I don't think TV has ever come close to reproducing any entertainment as perfect as "Blind Date." Not only does it epitomize the idiocy of short-attention span television in general (bumper-sticker like slogans pasted on the screen at almost all times, weird animations usually of the lowest-common-denominator-appealing variety), but it also features the nationally televised crushing of souls.

I don't know where they get the competitors for this show, but it seems like a Blind Date representative goes to bars in order to find the most pathetic horny loser in the nation, and then they set that person up with an attractive, appealing "Date." They are then asked to eat sushi off of one another within 15 minutes of meeting each other, cameras right there on them.

I often think about things that are wastes of time to intellectually pursue, but I can't shake the idea of advanced sentient aliens on other planets picking up bits and pieces of a transmission of "Blind Date." I'd bet they'd be setting their phasers to "completely f'ing obliterate in a burning horror show of death."

And also: Do you think anyone that met on Blind Date has later gone on to get married? Do you think they had a Blind Date-themed wedding? Discuss.

Ohhhh snap, it's yet another blog.

I'm going to save the excuses and the i-would-have-blogged-but-this-happeneds. Truth is, if I had a left hand that HAD THE POWER, I'd be telling you stuff that would curl your already-curly hair. But I don't, so I ain't, which means I'm not.

I miss stuff. I have been doing a lot to make sure the straight and narrow is still a viable path, but I miss the insane stupid shit that I previously would engage in. I'm not going to lie and say I don't miss that.

Right now, I miss being in love. I miss the feeling of improving myself for someone else. Shit, that's what I want. I want to be accountable to someone I care about. I want to have to change my daily habits to achieve that. And I guess it's pathetic, especially since everyone's getting married. God damn it.

And I fucked up. A year ago, I let the best mentor I've ever had just give up on me. Because I hadn't been doing everything I was supposed to do. And why? What have I gained? Noooooothing.

Can you take stuff back? I mean, do you get any points for acknowledging past idiocies? I don't think so.

I have been getting back to the rhythm of writing. At this point, it doesn't matter. I just want to articulate everything correctly. I don't want to be that guy that once thought I was good and actually wasn't.

My hand is broken, and there is plenty I can't do. But there was plenty I can. So watch the hell out. You might have already written me off, and you might be surprised.

Dude... I have a note from home saying why I couldn't blog for the last few weeks. I'll scan and upload it soon.

But I imagine you want the short version, in fact, I imagine you champing -- literally champing -- at the bit, waiting to hear the tale. Champing your ASS off!

So the short version is: after getting injured at work, I am now a one-handed man. For the next few months, anyway.

As to my injury, I won't describe it in graphic detail. Just know that the ER doc eagerly snapped photos of it with his iPhone to "show his class." Also, it was caused by a falling wall cabinet's sharp edge slicing through my thumb. You don't want any more information on that one, trust me.

I had to have surgery to reattach the tendon, and since I'd been gripping really hard when the cabinet took a life of its own and tried to kill me, the cut was even worse than it could have been. My split tendon parts retreated way up to the tip of the thumb, so an incision had to be made along the length of the thumb to find/reattach it.

Yeah.

It's been a major interruption and a completely lame series of events, but trying to find that elusive bright side, I gotta say that if/when I do get use of my hand back, I am going to feel like I just got some sort of ninja voodoo superpower. (That's a good idea for a comic book superhero, by the way: Two-Handed Man.)

Thankfully, not everything has been lame -- my oldest friend just got married and I had the honor of being a groomsman. It was great and crazy partying, even by wedding standards. So I at least had that to enjoy.

Plus, hell, I used this as an excuse to get TV and DVR in my room. Can't argue with that, right?!

Well, I'll blog more later, but my typing ability is very limited. I have voice recognition software for most of what I'm saying, then I go back and edit, one key at a time.

Until next time... sooner, I hope.

This blog is like a bastard child that I'd like to deny altogether, but a tiny pang of guilt once in a while reminds me that it is indeed my progeny and that continued neglect could give it issues it'd have to deal with later in life.

So I come back to blog once more.

The truth is, I'm just blogging because I made a Resolution yesterday, and yes it was enough of a Resolution to warrant capitalization... in fact, it was a *Resolution*, an important one, in recognition of the fact that the time-suck that is the Internet can, from time to time, crowd out the other things I need to do in life (consume nutrients, excrete waste, watch reality television.)

The Resolution was that I was going to, y'know, spend less time on the Internet, 'n stuff.

Hence, I must BLOG! For it is written in the Parable of the Well-Meaning Slacker: "And the slacker did rest, and it was good. And he rested some more, and that was also good. Then he got on the internet to blog about his rest, and lo his many followers took his words to the people of the dormitories, and yea, they did follow his slacker example and the world soon ended oops."

So.... yeah. Haven't blogged in a while, but I've actually been busy (hence my attempt to use the Internet less, but whatever.) After many moons worth of searching, I found a temporary kinda job that has been going pretty well. Doing admin tasks, answering the phone, doing runs, etc. for a law firm. I've had that kind of job before, so it's kind of nice to get back into that sorta routine... but I have a lot more actually to do at this one, so it makes it more interesting. Can't argue with that.

And, if all goes proper-like, I should be done with school in December, though I don't really want to jinx it by saying that. After having already been held up by the wackness of last semester, I am ready to get out of there. I don't feel quite right walking around on campus. Maybe it is because I am *eight freaking years* older than the new crop of freshmen this year. Oh well, at least it's the master's degree I'm sticking around for. Being in undergraduate classes this year would suck, especially because it would be just like me to put off the freshman biology lecture till the last semester (which I actually did do as an undergrad. And to think I felt old then...ha.)

There are a few things I would like people to know about. As long as you've got these things, you'll be fine ... and this will also save me the trouble of blogging what I've been doing for fun the last little while. Picture blogging is the future, just like picture menus at McDonalds and pictures offered by financial services companies about which mortgage to choose.

This:



This dude:



That:




Best film of the year:




OK, so I think I got out of this post pretty clean. Not too much time spent, you got your basic photo sensory overload, everyone's happy. Now remember, don't stay out too late on a weeknight, be neat, do your laundry the day before instead of the day you run out of clean clothes, and try to call home once in a while. It won't kill you. Good night.

monetize me

Update: I have now monetized my blog, which basically means that ugly and useless ads have been added to the site. Luckily, I don't think anyone reads this site, and those that read the posts are reading it through Facebook, so no one will be bothered by the ads, but I will also not make money.
I would ask people to come here and click the links to help me stay "in food," but apparently it takes like 10,000 clicks to even get started. Ridiculous! I guess I'll keep my blog monetized, just so I can tell people I have a monetized blog, if asked.

Elk supper and more

Hey. Did you dine with some elk tonight?

If you did, what a coincidence, so did I. It was a crazy experience.

I have been in Asheville for the past couple of days for a visit, and I went with a small group of family (my dad, my aunt, her grandson) to this place, which turned out to be. freaking. awesome.

It's just a large expanse of land where they've reintroduced elk to NC -- it was originally killed off here in the 18th century -- and they just chill and graze in this giant meadow, chewing on some grass, staring each other down, occasionally acting crunked.

We brought a picnic and sat at the edge of the meadow. A couple of female elk noticed us and came pretty close, despite a sign that said "Do not approach wildlife" (perhaps if they'd added a comma between the third and fourth words this would not have occurred.)

They were absolutely gorgeous animals, and seeing them act semi-natural was a heck of a good time. There was an aspect of guilt, though. There were cars full of people all up in their shit, (at times literally), people leaning out their windows, gawking, taking photos, making noises at them. And they are apparently so used to this that they barely seemed to notice.

That's got to be a kind of lame existence. I was trying to imagine if every time I came to sit in my lawn chair out back of my house in Raleigh, as I am wont to do, if Far-Side-style deer wearing sunglasses and hawaiian shirts and other tourist gear gathered several yards away and attempted to verbally prod me into doing something more interesting. While the image this produced was amusing in its own way, I also realized that would kind of suck.

And I know that's anthropomorphizing them in a way, but man, some lines were just not meant to be crossed! Next thing you know, people will be mating with these majestic chaps and lasses, creating a Dr. Moreau experience for a new generation. I mean, there were already several people in this meadow field getting drunk as hell, god knows what they had in mind for the latter part of the evening.

When I got back, I realized to my horror that my dad's back door had been left open. Given that earlier today my dog tried to jump in front of a moving damn car, (one of the dumbest things I've ever seen an animal do.. she was trying to play with the bastard!) I became somewhat fearful that she had escaped the house and committed suicide in some equally idiotic way. But she was sitting obediently outside, right by the front door, gladly yapping at me on my arrival.

I love that crazy kid!

At the top of the Blogger menu, there is a link that says "Monetize." I am so down for that. Please pay me $1,000 per post. Thank you. Monetize on.

I'm kind of amazed that this post is still going, so I think I am going to memorialize what has already been written by ending the post.

PS: I'm still laughing about Sarah Palin resigning as Governor.

Back-to-back blogging, I'm on a roll here.

I'd like to begin this post with a shout-out to my buddy Jake, who helped me move a metric ton of furniture out of my old apartment and into storage. It took most of Saturday to either mentally prepare for it or do it, and it was cool of him to give up his time for said purpose.

The funniest part was when we were lamenting the insane heaviness of some of the things I own (sofa-bed, I am coming for your soul) and picked up a large recliner I have. When I picked it up by the front end, it seemed much lighter than it should. I remarked, "Oh, this is EASY!" and, with perfect timing, the retractable foot rest part came out. I fell into the chair on my face, providing many laughs.

The other thing that happened was the death of Michael Jackson. I am going to offer some completely unoriginal thoughts on this.

Michael Jackson was convicted in the press for being a freak, a monster, a child rapist, and possibly an alien. Every time he was in the news, it was a punch line. Now, I'm not saying that's wrong. But it just strikes me as odd that he's suddenly a shimmering god in everyone's eyes.

Don't get me wrong. I, like everyone else, enjoyed the hell out of his music when I was a kid in the 80s. I'll never forget the first time I heard Thriller as a really young kid, and the crazy laughter scared the shit out of me, but the song was so awesome I just wanted to hear it again. And then when I saw the video, it was like an even more intense version of that. Crazy, fucked up, frightening, but awesome.

In a way that's the best way to describe Michael Jackson, I think. Crazy, fucked up, frightening, but awesome (in the sense that he was a goddamn creative genius.) Why can't the news report it that way?

I understand the inclination to want to remember someone in a positive light when they die. But that's the job of pastors and funerals. If the media doesn't want to seem like complete hypocrites, they need to be a little more grounded in, you know, what they've been saying for the past 15 years. Why does it have to be one way or the other?

I'm just looking forward to the inevitable biographies that tell more of a realistic version of what he's like in person. Say what you will about the guy, he was a fascinating figure. And "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" is basically the pinnacle of modern pop music. There will be no argument on that subject.

Hey. Well. A lot has changed since last I wrote. I will save the details, because it's not an incredibly interesting story, but let's just say I have a lot more time on my hands these days, and less personal space. I have another semester left to do for my Master's because of some health type problems (see above) and this same situation has left me currently without employment.

It's funny, because it used to be pretty easy to get a job. Maybe a crappy job, but you could still find a job. You'd go around to 20 or 30 places, fill out applications, and you'd get at least a few call backs for interviews. It was a grind, but it eventually paid off.

Let me report for anyone that is still comfortably employed: the economy blows right now. I believed it when I heard reports and stuff, about how things were going downhill, but that was when I still had a job. It didn't seem real. Now it does. It's been a couple of months looking and applying, dropping off resumes, calling numbers from classified ads, and still nothing. I can't even get a call back from Burger King. WTF???!?!

I have been trying to hack it by doing what I like to call, in order to maintain some sort of claim to being part of the intelligentsia, "independent landscaping by contract." That basically means someone asks me to dig a ditch in their yard, I say cool, how much will you pay me, they say literally any number and I accept. Us independent landscapers by contract can't be choosy about rates these days.

As you might imagine, this does not provide a very good/reliable/satisfying income. But as much as I was embarrassed at first about the situation, I have to say I've been in pretty good spirits lately. There's something really nice about putting your body into your work -- something I'm not very familiar with, being a pasty-faced book-readin' type -- it gives you a chance to think about whatever you please, and its a satisfying feeling to see that you did a good job when all is finished.

All that time to think has given me a chance to think about what I want to aim for once I get the M.A., even though I'm pretty sure, given the economy's current state, it's not going to open all that many doors at the moment. But it's also given me a lot of time to think about ideas for my own writing, something I've been getting a lot more involved for some time.

Random, disorganized thoughts:

• Obama is still president. This is awesome.
• The other day, he had a press conference where he got mad at someone who asked if he was still a smoker, in light of his new anti-smoking law. He looked and sounded more pissed than I've ever witnessed -- he's a cool guy after all -- and said something I thought was pretty awesome: "You think it's neat to ask me about my smoking, as opposed to it being relevant to my new law." Seriously? Neat? Excellent work.
• Do you think when he got elected as president, the first thing he said was "Guys, this is really neat." I do. Either that or "Wow! Nifty!"
  
• I still don't use Twitter. I have an account but live in fear of it. Why is there a new thing like that every time you turn around? Can't people just be happy with newsgroups and AOL 3.0?!!?!?
  
• Gov. Mark Sanford, who confessed to an affair yesterday, had a tearful/awkward/painful to watch press conference. He had been flying to Argentina to get with his mistress, while telling his staff he was "hiking the Appalachian trail." While I sort of feel for him and especially his family, the press conference was particularly amusing in places, because he kept saying things that made no freaking sense. Example: "The biggest self of self is truly......... self."
• Having a dog never gets old. The longer I've had her, the more attached I get. I'm not one of those (obnoxious) people that treats a dog like a child, but I'm basically saying if I could only afford a pack of ramen a day, I'd split it with her.
• I'm basically only continuing this list because I think it's fun to put bulleted lists on a blog.

OK, the spell has been broken. I just wanted to update this long-neglected blog. It seems like I always go months between posts, but I think that is going to change now. If anything, it's just fun for me to go back and read posts months later, so I can shake my head and go "What the hell?"

Peace.

Just heard on MSNBC:

"Up next: so what were Republican members of Congress thinking during President Obama's speech last night? Well, a couple of them were caught using that instant messaging system called ... Twitter... and they were a-twitter, and some were a-tweeting themselves, or being tweets, by putting out tweets right in the middle of that, um... that speech last night. If you notice, their fingers were outtasite. You're watching Hardball, only on MSNBC."
-Chris Matthews (and yes, I rewound my DVR to make sure I got this quotation right)

It's well past time that I blogged.

I have been playing around with this tumblr thing recently. I was quoted on Taylor M.'s site, or I suppose I was tumbled there, and then I started looking around on it and made my own. I am a sucker for the novelty of such things. In some ways it's cool, but it also feels discouraging of super-long posts. Like today I started posting D.H. Lawrence poems on there and realized "hey, what the heck am I doing? This certainly is a waste of time."

I guess I had an excuse, though, because I was sick today -- have been for several days. I'm feeling somewhat better now, but I'm faced with so much stuff to do... and here I am wasting time via a different Internet medium!

This is kind of an interesting time, because I have no idea if I'm going to be able to get a job after I get my degree in May. I've been sending out resumes like a banshee-type creature, but it hasn't yielded much fruit so far. I feel like I'm plenty qualified at this point for several different types of work, but the news about the economy is scary, and I never had the most marketable degree to begin with.

But in a way, the whole process is fun, because having nothing determined for me means the possibilities are endless. I've been working on making it my policy to feel little to no discouragement when it comes to economic news.

What else...

I liked Obama's speech tonight -- thought he got the job done properly, rousing his base and also explaining the situation to the nation. I have high hopes for what he's going to do. And is it just me or does the first lady get more beautiful all the time? I mean, damn. Props to ya, Barack.

Jake and Richard and I watched it together, and it felt cool to have the three of us, who have watched many a Bush State of the Union address together in impotent frustration, congregated to see Obama's first big one.

I won't lie, it's been a rough couple of weeks, and the next couple of months aren't likely to get much better, but I have been really successful at finding bright spots such as that lately, and ways to let go of stress by focusing more on them. 'Cause life is a beautiful thing, y'all. HZA out.

Dog Letter by George Saunders

I love George Saunders. Here's a very short example of why.




Dear Master,

I suspect you may be surprised upon surmising this missive. Perhaps you do not expect I can even understand the English language, much less express myself in said language, via the written format. You have perchance never heretofore imagined me, in the dark of night, pen clasped between "toes", standing upon hind legs with all the earnest desperation of the bestial attempting to become lucid, practising my "letters". That floor is damned slippery! I believe it is the cheap tiles you and the Mistress hath procured! I'll be working, on, por ejemplo, the letter "S", and suddenly, whammo, I am all asses-and-elbows - ie, have punctured the silence of night with the sound of furred eager body impacting the floor, my back "paws" having slipped out from under me!

And then must hurry and hide the pen, in case you come down investigatorily! But yes, 'tis so: I think, I feel: I write. And have a request: there are times, deep in the night, when you have been "tippling" and/or "getting pershnockered", when, perchance overwhelmed by joy (I hope it is joy, and not something darker), you shed your puzzling overskin and stand in the kitchen, moving hips and all, to that melange of painful-high-pitch and human squawling you call Purple Rain. Master, this display sets off in me unpleasantness of the first rank! Your various hangie-down things, the strange hairless hairiness of you (neither here nor there), makes me want to bite you. There. I've said it.

Did you know, though normally "so so sweet", I can bite hard as hell? I can, sir. I practise on the back leg of the "sofa". Go take a look. You will see. Imagine that back leg is your central and (methinks) much-prized hanger-downer. Keep up with the midnight kitchen-gyration sans clothing, and you will get it, right on that unit, no lie, Master.

Otherwise, all is well. The behind-the-ears scratching: well. The running-to-get-tennis-ball: well. The perking-up-of-ears when you speak lilting babytalk: I understand that as the cost of doing business.

But the dancing: I will bite your member, swear to God. It doth ignite a dark dread in me of times ancient, when, perhaps, we were not allies, but enemies?

Anyway, what the heck. Very happy. No complaints. Imagine me doing that "grin". Love you, man.

Although one thing more: do not call me "Scout". My name is "Biscuit". You gave me that name. "Scout" debases me. "Scout" is for babies. Also: do not - ever - take me by the front paws and pretend to waltz. I am of an ancient race. We hunt, we run, we protect: we do not waltz. When you waltz me - think about it - I'm at member-height.

And now: a walk? A walk? A walk.

Love, "Biscuit"

Obama

I am so proud of America this week. First things first: no matter what your politics is, the fact that a major political party has nominated a man of mixed race -- who LOOKS like a black guy -- is a truly great thing for this country. Forget the rhetoric that says his background helped him get the nomination -- that's revisionist at best, we all know there have been plenty of capable black people in politics that haven't been able to run for higher offices because of assumed notions among the populace about race. It truly is because he is an outstanding politician -- and, if you're one of the millions of people that got to know him by reading his books, an engaging writer -- that he was able to succeed. He's proven himself as one of the best politicians currently operating, and has a consistent life record of excellence. Don't let anyone fool you with "affirmative action" nonsense -- he overcame a major hurdle to get where he is. A majorly unfair hurdle, a flawed perception, but one that exists.

But I think he will be seen as the guy that broke the barrier. It's unfortunate that it took hundreds of years and an exceptionally talented human being to do so, but I think this candidacy has so much potential to CHANGE those perceptions that are keeping talented politicians from non-white backgrounds from being considered for these high offices. I think our country will be so much the better when all cultures have truly equal representation in the government (let the government reflect the "melting pot" people love to say America is) -- I envision it as Voltron coming together to form the most awesome, innovative government the world has ever seen. It's a possibility, at least.

Regardless of what happens in the general election, it's a true sign of progress that he's been nominated, but by no means suggests there's no more progress to be made. It's heartening, though, in a time filled with bad news.

I recommend people tuning in to Obama just now go to barackobama.com and read his "Blueprint for Change"

OBAMA '08!! OBAMA '12!!