Saturday, July 30, 2005

Scream heard 'round the room

Today has been a busy day. I spent most of the morning putting together some furniture I got yesterday at Ikea: a desk, a rolling drawer unit (for the desk), and a bookshelf. I managed to empty about 4 boxes onto the bookshelves and into the desk drawers. In town almost a month and I'm finally starting to move in.

This afternoon I walked around the mammal wing of the Natural History Museum. It was interesting, and a good reason to be out of the house and wandering around town for a while. I had the company of two of house mates and my friend Brooke. She's in town for the weekend to look at apartments before she starts grad school in the fall--and she managed to find a place she liked in less than 48 hours. Now that's skill.

The real excitement of the last few days though, happened very early on Thursday morning. 1:42 in the morning, to be exact. According to our resident Texan, that is when the tranquil neighborhood was disrupted by a blood-curdling scream; her scream. Apparently she screamed for help, and was totally appalled when she found out that none of her big, burly house mates were willing to come to aid a damsel in distress.

What happened to cause such a neighborhood-waking scream, you might ask? The story is that she woke up feeling something small and furry running across her legs. Then saw it scampering across the floor. But wait. This is where the story becomes exciting. After getting bored running on the bed and the floor, this UFO (unidentified furry object) started running across her mirror. It's a vertical mirror.

Now that you've each got little tingly feelings running up and down your spine, you're probably wondering what's wrong with the three of us who made no move to help our traumatized and victimized friend. It was unanimous. None of us heard the howls for aid.

Hold on. If I didn't hear it, and the other two guys didn't hear it, how did I know it was 1:42 am? Excellent question. Having found no assistance with a scream, our take-no-prisoners Texan called me in an attempt to find help in a more targeted, reach-out-and-touch-someone sort of way. It almost worked. By the time I fumbled to my phone and answered it, there was three seconds of silence before the line went dead.

I thought to myself, "What!? It's 1:42 in the morning, and someone who sleeps down the hall is calling me." In my sleep induced dullardry I could only surmise that it was the cellphone era version of sleep walking.

The next day two of us went over to the hardware store to pick up a trap. It's been set in ambush for the past 2.5 days, just waiting for that UFO to come scurrying by. To this point we have thoroughly unmolested peanut butter and an unsprung ambush.

Until I have evidence to the contrary I'm chalking the whole event down to some strange mushrooms in the pasta on Wednesday night.

**Side note. I've been trying to figure out how to insert line breaks between my paragraphs, or at least indent them, for the past 30 minutes now to no avail. If anyone has suggestions, please let me know.

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Who's a liberal?

I am.

I'm not afraid of it, ashamed of it, or uncomfortable about it. I'm not even embarrassed to say the word: L I B E R A L (say it with me, if you want)


There's been an awful lot of crap floating around these past 2.6 decades I've been around as to what it really means to be "liberal." I couldn't possibly try to address all the information, disinformation, and uniformed opinion that has gone into creating a smear campaign against one of the proudest words in the English language. Instead, let me describe what liberalism means to me.


Liberal. To me it means I believe people will make good decisions, most of the time, when they have enough information. This applies to economics, politics, business, even sex lives. I believe that if markets work, people will become more free and more independent. I believe if politics works there will be a discussion of issues and ideas. Discussion does not equal alternating commercials or glib soundbites. It does mean an ability to answer questions on the fly, and being able to deviate from prepared remarks.


I believe that the government that governs least doesn't always govern best. I believe that a government focused on problems will do better than one stirring up hot-button issues. I believe being a good world citizen is like being a good neighbor. You can't expect your neighbor to grab a garden hose and pitch in when your house is burning if you slam the door in his face when he asks to borrow your hand-saw.


I believe that a government that sacrifices the environment for jobs today, but expects technology to solve energy and environmental problems is committing a fraud against they're constitutionally entrusted responsibilities. If there is enough creativity to create technology to solve today's environment problems tomorrow, why couldn't it also be used to solve tomorrows job problems today?


I believe a government that is willing to go into debt to buy guns and bombs but not to build schools or pay teachers is flirting with losing what the Chinese called the "mandate of heaven."


I believe a U.S. that was truly committed to reducing terrorism around the world, and the poverty that breeds it, would quickly phase out agricultural and corporate subsidies--and 90% of our foreign aid wouldn't be needed. All the money the government spends on farms subsidies could go to other purposes, and average Americans would spend the same or less on food. Money that would go directly to farmers all over the world--connecting them to the world economy, and giving them a chance to send their children to schools. A chance to hope.


I believe the world will not get better if we continue to fear for the worst. We can plan for it. We must be aware of it. But we ought not fear it. The world will only become better if we imagine how it can be better, and work to see it happen.


I am liberal because I see this future and I do not fear it. I know a day is coming when same-sex couples not only will have recognized unions, but will be able to jointly raise their children. I know a day is coming when schools will be funded, and teachers paid what they deserve. When children are challenged to be scientists, inventors, philosophers and poets; not just consumers.


I know these things will happen because I know the world is full of incredible people. People who are not afraid to hope. Who are not afraid to imagine. I know these people are working to move the world a little closer to those ideals, and I know we're all better off for the efforts.

I am liberal. I am not afraid.

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Dinner and Disclaimer

Following up on an excellent vodka-pasta made yesterday by one of my house mates, I decided that in my unemployed state there is enough time in the day that I could actually cook something for dinner. I was thinking of an mandarin orange, walnut, chicken and greens salad that my mom would make a lot in the summer. But it's not really what I'd call a meal. It's good, but it's not enough. And if you've seen the weather the last month, you'll know that it's just too hot on the mid-Atlantic seaboard to have a meat-and-potatoes dinner. That's where my good friend epicurious.com comes in.

In 2 minutes or less I had tracked down a lettuce-wrapped mango chicken recipe that with about an hour turned into a dinner that I think I'd be willing to eat again. 2 people could probably have pulled it together in the time it takes to boil rice, but I was doing it solo and for the first time. The result? A minimally delayed dinner for 4. If all of my roommates come down with food poisoning in the next 24 hours, I'm going to blame it on whatever they had for lunch.


On other fronts, I've been spending some time this afternoon and evening wandering the byways of cyberspace. The way it used to be done on gopher, or the earliest days of the web: pages that lead to other pages in a bizarre--get this--WEB!

I haven't ever really read blogs with a critical eye before. I haven't paid attention to the types of things people write about, or who the apparent audience is. It's a much scarier act than I would have originally envisioned. Almost immediately, a line from a friend's page came to mind. She's spending some time in Turkey and was writing about how young boys are revered in its history.

"Sitting at the cafe on Sunday afternoon is like watching a parade. Boys walk arm-in-arm to the Bosphorus, where they fish, swim and play. Then they walk back with ice cream or balloons or fish. They have this amazing brown skin and they are utterly unselfconscious."

My first thoughts on blogging parallel her last comment on Turkish boys. They are utterly unselfconscious.

It is something I am not, and can not, be. Why should you care about all this seemingly extraneous information, dear reader? It's because if you read this blog, and think it doesn't sound like the me you know, it's very possibly because when I talk to someone the words leave my mouth and disappear into the ether. When I send you an email it's a message targeted one person within a context of all of our previous communications. BUT, when I write something for this space, those luxuries are gone.

If you think I'm holding back, call me on it. Maybe I am, maybe not. Regardless, there will be pieces that come up here that will be provocative, strident, and maybe occasionally even impudent. Like Thom Paine, Dorothy Day and Andy Borowitz, I just claimed my soapbox.

Coming Tomorrow: Who's Liberal?

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

A Change in Medium

This is a moment many of you have long waited for. If for no other reason, it means that I'll stop filling your inboxes with lengthy treatises on my topic-de jour. You know who you are (and so do I).

On a more macro-level, I thought I'd use this post as a chance to describe what this blog is trying to do. My new housemates and I have talked a few times that we have our own little version of the Real Worldรข„¢. I mean, what else could it be when five policy school graduates stop being polite, and start living together? Currently there are four of us--representing Minnesota, Wisconsin and Texas. When we're finally at full fighting strength, we'll be joined by an Iowan. Undoubtedly we'll have visitors for shorter- and longer terms, as this is DC.

Not wanting this to be a strictly soap-opera style diary of our lives, it will probably also play host to what, until now, has been my irregular musings on national and world events. In fact, in the next couple of days I might put up some thoughts from earlier this spring when I was having "fun" learning about the Minneapolis electoral process.

I hope you make it back regularly, and if you see something you agree with, disagree with, or find amusing, let me know. I'm always up for a good discussion.