Not-a-Blogger

I am really not a blogger.

Notablogger was taken though, and so the most firm statement I am able to make is that I am not a real blogger. This is probably a sufficiently harsh critique of my blogging skills (and my general communication skills really) and so I will not attempt to debase myself or my writing further.

Why then am I here? I don't know really.
I suppose it is meant to be an attempt at rendering the supposed therapeutic advantages of live journaling to the benefit of my psyche. We shall see if my efforts bear fruit and I will try - when possible - to include a running discussion of these successes/ failures as a topic of this blog.

I have recently relocated from Montreal to Chicago. Quite a culture shock really, but not nearly as dramatic as the extreme dislocation I experienced in my previous move from Austin to Montreal. That was culture shock. This is more a cultural tremor, personified surely in the sudden anxiety I experience each time an el train passes over my head. I am told the el system was designed to last 30 years. Many parts of it look absolutely ancient, as if design specifics were stolen from crumbled roman aqueducts, but with much less structural engineering involved.

Not that I dislike the aesthetic by any means. I have always been rather fond of degradation.

I have now a 1.25 hour commute twice daily. This has increased the amount of time I have for reading fiction by about 100,000%. This gives me something quite obvious to write blog entries about, and so part of this blog can be considered an extension of the somewhat large amount of "wasted" time that I already spend not doing work.

Surely though this digital psychiatric facility is positioned to be rather helpful in my academic pursuits. I have frequently rued the fact that I have no one that I can talk to about lattice gauge theory and effective field theory and nonperturbative supersymmetry and trying to draw feynman diagrams in stupid latex picture environment and what-not. Perhaps by talking directly into the digital ether of the internet, I can garner at least the benefits of one side of a scientific discourse. That being, of course, listening to myself spew half-wrong gibberish about perturbations and potentials, but at least its something.

One thing I need to say, just in case anyone is reading this. If you catch me saying assumably, please remind me that it is not a word and I really mean presumably. I am trying desperately to break this habit, and truly the integrity of my relationship might very well rest on my success. Probably not though. As long as I don't pass it on to our children (theoretical children, not real ones), she will probably allow me to continue cohabitation with less than grammatical perfection.
I read alot of news also. Usually I wish that I didn't read as much, but I can't really help it. I read 3 articles today about Chavez thinking that Noam Chomsky was dead! That's just overkill I think. Chomsky's response was sort of interesting though. I wonder if they will meet. What do you think they would talk about?

"Si Presidente Chavez, senor Bush does remarkably ressemble your catholic notion of satan."

"That's very interesting; I was unaware that he shed sulfur. Is it from his cloven hooves, or is it somehow an unavoidable consequence of his dawning of the flesh of the human?"

Anything else interesting today? Oh yes, President Musharraf claims that the guy with the ambiguously violent sounding name - Armitage - threatened to "bomb Pakistan back to the stone age" on Sept. 13th 2001 if they did not cooperate with the Bush administrations 7 points. The NYT is nice enough to quote a "south Asia specialist" who use to work for the state deparment in saying that she finds it hard to believe that such an exchange would take place.

Uh huh. Sure. Because the US never uses threats to accomplish diplomacy? Or maybe because
Army-tage is a friend of hers and she knows for fact that he spends his nights in footed PJ's cuddling a room full of teddy bears with names like "Wallace" and simply doesn't have a violent bone in his body? (sorry, my metaphor may have gotten out of hand there.)

No! She actually says that Armitage probably would not have threatened a sovereign nation with penultimate destruction because that part was already implied by the US stance in the first place!! Here's the quote if I can figure out how to do this:

'I would find it difficult to believe he talked about bombing Pakistan specifically because, while I don’t know the exact contents of the conversation, I do know it was a pretty firm ultimatum' as far as taking sides with the United States or supporting the Taliban.

Well, that only took me about 10 minutes. This is just silly to me. Don't reporters realize the irony of these statements?

-- A goverment official today was acused of threatening to anihilate a sovereign nation, sometime allie, and minor nuclear power. The administration refused to comment on the accusation, but an expert told us "why would an official threaten a country with destruction when we already have a standing threat against that country?"

I feel better already.

In other news, Lucy had a baby, the total wealth of the top 400 richest americans increased by 120 billion$ in the last year and yesterday we learned that Richard Branson wants to fight global warming by investing 3 billion$ in alternative energy.

Two of these three stories are kind of cool and one sort of sucks. Can you guess which one? If you guessed b) than congratulations, you can spot the horrendous capitalist glutony that promises to cripple the fragile economic structure in the US. This amounts to about a 10% increase, which might be reasonable if it coincided with a 10% increase in spendable income for the 37 million or so Americans living below the poverty line but, alas, it does not. Oh well, at least Warren Buffet is giving all his money to The Gates Foundation to fight poverty. I like the sound of that guy. Even if he is from Omaha. He sounds like a real principled old bastard. I wonder if its easier or harder to be principled if you are worth 46 billion$. Supposedly he still lives in a house in Omaha that he bought in the 50's for 60 thousand dollars or so. I wonder how much work he's done on it. He also owns a million dollar house in California of course, but that's nothing compared to the crazy estate Michael Dell has just outside Austin, and Buffet's like 3 times richer than him!

Anyway. Tangent. I'm not obsessed with rich people! I swear!

On another related note, the honorable Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, Il, vetoed a bill that would have forced big box stores like wally-mart to pay a living wage of 10$ an hour. Aparently he got some threats, I mean advice, from some walmart people about the potential movement of stores outside the city limits. I guess it originally went through the city council 35 -14, and to override the veto it needs (in another vote, for some reason that is completely beyond me) 34 votes. Some council members are saying that they might be ready to change their votes from back in july. I wonder if they have also been talking to the Waltons, who btw, scored big in the forbies 400 today with 5 fucking Waltons tieing for 4th place with almost 19 billion$ each. Holy shit that's alot of money. Someday they'll have to split the list into two: 400 top riches Americans, and 400 top richest Waltons. Of course, America might be renamed Walmerica by then, so I would wait to start printing t-shirts and bumper stickers.

ok shit. I have blogged too long. This is kind of fun. I definately am feeling the therapeutical effects. Now I dont even need to work out tonight!

This picture I am including for no good reason. Yes. That's me on the right.