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January 19, 2006

Hello there. My promised political post will still come at some point--it's not time sensitive--but in the meantime I figured I'd let everyone know that I'm alive and well, albeit (shockingly, I know) busy. I've received one grade, which was disappointing, but was also in my anticipated worst subject; one on which I've hung higher hopes is in the system now, but I can't access it to find out how I did. Tantalizing. I'll (hopefully, or not) have all of them by the end of next week.

Otherwise, I've been busy with ACLU stuff, designing a website skeleton (see here until we get a school account and/or our own domain name), working out an approximation of a talk radio show I'll hopefully be doing with president Jake this semester, and putting some preliminary work into establishing a summer stipend for students doing unpaid summer work in the field of civil liberties.

I've just created a workout mix by which process I have unwittingly energized myself. I've also commenced work on the hip-hop mix, though its completion is pending until I become better versed in the field. Tomorrow evening Summer and I are considering attending a jazz singer featuring a singer I heard on some radio station or another the other day.

Summer made a delicious dish of shrimp in a spicy yogurt sauce this evening, easily trumping the Cooking Light chicken dijon stew we made last night.

Tomorrow I hope to work my way back into my running schedule. We may also get a small weight bench (not one with any attachment for barbells, but one that can raise to an incline) the better to workout in the comfort of home. I still drool over rowing machines.

I'm currently reading The ACLU vs. America by some key members of the Alliance Defense Fund (Osten and Sears), which I may actually pass around to family members as a good example of precisely why I am finding my association with the ACLU so rewarding. Thus far the two main thrusts of the book have been (1) discussing the homosexual threat to the American family (and its agenda to bring about the destruction of the same via the dissolution of the institution of marriage--the slippery slope argument that by expanding marriage to encompass gays, we will have to expand marriage to include anything(s) that want(s) to marry anything(s), thereby destroying marriage), and (2) condemning the way "activist" judges bypass the will of the majority to protect minority rights. The frequent grammatical errors, calls to tradition, and heavy rhetoric mask some devious insinuations that the members of the modern left are the equivalent of the Nazis in Hitlerian Germany, particularly implications that leftist intellectual elitism is congruent to eugenics. I may well address some of the book's claims of leftist and ACLU hypocrisy again at some point, particularly as I gameplan for the coming radio show, but now is not the time.

I'm also still plodding through Augustus to Constantine, and reading bits from Integrity & Dramatic Life by Anselm Berrigan as a respite from those two. Once I finish The ACLU vs. America, it'll be on to The Politics of the ACLU or Truth, Torture, and the American Way or some other such thing. Once I finish Augustus to Constantine, it'll be either something I pick up at the fantastic Myopic Books across the street (Ferrill's or Barrett's biography of Caligula or a book on Messalina, perhaps, though there are some Chomsky books I'm interested in, too), or it could be Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In the meantime, there are Civil Procedure, Contracts, Property (an interesting addition this semester), and Torts to compete for my attention, and next Wednesday I have to actually write a four page paper for Legal Methods, in which we are currently discussing advocacy and rhetorical tactics in writing. Look out, world.

Also I hope to put my new acrylic paints to some use soon.

With the gift certificate provided me by one Marc Allen, I have ordered a watch that I might be more cognizant of the time. It has a leather band, that I might have to deal with neither too-loose metal bands nor sweat-insulating plastic bands. It was also on sale from 70 to 20 dollars, AND it has a black face with a blue tint that reveals itself in light. Cool beans. Hey speaking of time-cognizance, I think my energizing mix (playing constantly through my headphones for the entirety of this post's composition) has worn me down enough that I might consider sleeping now. Apologies to those to whom I owe further communication, though some may be on their respective ways. Now I must sleep.