when you don't want to sleep, do a cryptic crossword

June 21 2010
Very late night
Miki & Aaron's place
Ann Arbor

Everyone else has long gone to bed but I am determined to squeeze every last drop from my rest day. At midnight we were eating baked potatoes and Miki and I got very close to completing this cryptic crossword after struggling with it for over an hour:


Those in the know know that this shit ain't easy. When we're raised on word puzzles, we learn to master new schemes and schematics in just a short amount of time: word finds, jumbles, scrabbles, crosswords. But the cryptic crosswords are the kind of thing you really don't ever master, I've decided. Most of the time you just sit there baffled by the clues in front of you. If you ever DO complete one successfully, it's usually sheer luck you can thank and not your own hapless skills. Cryptic crossword mastery is an unattainable.

A few other diagrams to help draw the analogy out:

Dubliners -> A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man -> Ulysses
Unattainable: Finnegan's Wake

Teaching yourself drums -> marimba -> piano -> guitar
Unattainable: harp

If you have others to add, feel free to do so.

Today was a good day. Kept getting better health-wise, kept churning through my work and finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel, kept finding spaces to grin in. Aaron's show, Exile & Utopia, was brilliant. The book posters came in today and look wonderful. I'm trying to wrap up all that positive energy and let it carry me through the day tomorrow, which will promise many errands, logistical hurdles, reunions, first meetings, a march, and a new place to stay in Detroit. And that's just the start of a very long 5-day expanse.

For now, though, it's far too late and I'm hitting the hay. Outside there's a lightning parade; inside, oscillating fan whir. Tuesday will bring with it a new sound, and I don't have any idea as to what it will be. I'm just going to listen.

time for a Sabbath Monday

June 20 2010
After midnight
Miki & Aaron's place
Ann Arbor

Allied Media Conference finished up today, and with that, Claudia is headed back home, staying in Chicago area with Miriam tonight. Times have been good so far, although I've had a relapse of my digestive troubles from 3 months ago which has tempered the good times quite a bit. I think I've spent several hours over the last three days in bathrooms. Still, it's been good having good company to keep me laughing and wresting joy out of everything.

Exciting news: I don't know how bodies do this, but they are very good at letting you know when something is wrong, even if you can't see it, and they are just as good at letting you know when your internal functioning is reasonably back to healthy. Just one example: I know when my digestive troubles have returned because my stomach stops growling. In almost no time, the other signs come forward, as certain muscles, organs, and nerves give off a not-rightness that, even though you cannot place it, is real all the same. You eat some food and something about the way it moves through you just seems off, and you know it. Now, after 30 hours of fasting and a few doses of metamucil, I’ve just tried eating again. And the stomach growls are back, and the muscles are doing what they need to, the organs are settling back into their roles, and food is now pleasing to eat, rather than something that gives me trepidation. It’s an amazing feeling, good health.

Despite health problems and difficulty concentrating because of work to finish up, I did enjoy the conference and was especially impressed by two workshops, one led by Climbing Poetree and another, led by several organizers, called “Safe in Our Skin,” which explored the ways we create and build communities of safety without the intervention of state and capital (and specifically the police and other elements of the prison-industrial complex). Lots of people there, filled up the room and then some, which was both heartening and affirming that everyday life experiences of harm and healing are some of the most common things we share and most important areas from which to consider organizing. Their topic is right up my alley, and the workshop had interactive and performative aspects to it as well, which I love. If there’s a dancing workshop at the USSF, I want to do it; these are the intangibles that keep me going.

Also watched a good 30-minute clip of the documentary “Land of Opportunity” in another workshop. The folks behind it are brilliant, not only in their filming style (they have no narration and almost no text, it’s all done through the stories and voices of the people they film) but also in the fact that they’ve been following the lives of six people in the Katrina aftermath for five years. Most docs about Katrina only account for the first year or two after, but as I’ve thought to myself so often, it’s what happens over the next 5-10 years in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast that will be the most telling. I appreciate their sticktoitiveness. Check them out.

Once things finished up today, Linda and I headed over to the Detroit Institute of Arts, at Aaron’s recommendation. They have, reputedly, the best Diego Rivera mural in the country, Detroit Industry, and it is stunning.


Monday the 21st is the day of rest, before the USSF launches on Tuesday. My only tasks are staying healthy, getting groceries, meeting up with someone from Radical Reference, and seeing Aaron’s gallery show and presentation of his master’s thesis. Then, after hopefully a good night’s sleep, I meet Craig and Ben for the first time, have lunch and a beer, check into the Motor City Casino Hotel, march with 15-20,000 others in the heart of Detroit, and hang out with the book for the first time.

the basics

June 18th 2010
Midnight
Miki & Aaron's house
Ann Arbor

First day of the AMC done and resting. It appears I'm having a relapse of the intestinal troubles I had for two months earlier this year. Of course I'm worried that this is primarily being caused by stress rather than any dietary overstepping. The AMC folks claim that there's a relaxation room on the premises with acupuncturists on hand to do their magic. I'm gonna hunt them down tomorrow. This shit needs to end now or I'll be having two very miserable weeks.

Had a difficult time concentrating in the workshops I attended today. Mind is sifting through all the work I need to get done. I rested most of the afternoon and got to have a spontaneous hour-long chat with someone who had just arrived and was planning to stay in the crash space with her son for the next 10 days (with no place to shower, of course). That was probably the highlight. Claudia and Linda like the conference a lot, but all of us were more than eager to head back to Ann Arbor after the day's events. We missed a night of bowling and karaoke in D-Town, but then again, bowling and karaoke will always be there (I assume).

I figure this post would be good for explaining just exactly what I'm up to over the next two months, for those who've been confused; it is a lot of stuff and it doesn't exactly sync up either. Also, there's a slight chance that writing this all down will smooth my thoughts out a little and actually decrease my stress levels. We'll see.

• What I'm up to now is attending the Allied Media Conference in Detroit (June 18-20). Mostly I'm doing this cuz I attended last year, enjoyed it, and Claudia and Linda wanted to check it out and I decided it'd be fun to road-trip out there with them. It's a relatively short affair - just two and a half days - and about 200-300 people. It's very definitely a conference; there are workshops, activities, people tabling from all over the country, lots of mixing things up and learning going on. Perhaps what distinguishes it from other conferences - and this can be both intriguing and frustrating - is how much it avoids academia and academic jargon. No one presents papers, no one holds heavily theoretical presentations or discussions. It's meant to be very hands-on and relatable, generating tangible skills and tools for use in movements for media justice and intersections with other movements. Not to suggest that the theoretical heavy-lifters and trailblazers out there sit this one out: Critical Resistance, INCITE!, Grace Lee Boggs and the Boggs Center, all of them are out in droves. It's a genuinely inspiring convergence as well as a great introduction to current struggles in Detroit. I'm doing book promotion here but it's on the sly.
  
• A few days break, Claudia heads back on a solo road trip to the Twin Cities, and Linda and I stay for the United States Social Forum (June 22-26). The USSF is not a conference or a summit. "Forum" is not entirely accurate either. The best way I can describe it is as a 'space,' specifically a space developed and built over many years to encourage the maximum number of encounters, dialogues, connections, and amplifications possible in a short timeframe and small convergence area. Put another way, the USSF intends to catalyze and strengthen movement-building at a rate that is much faster than organizations and organizers are used to. This isn't to say there aren't workshops, activities, and plenaries like at any other conference (there are over 1000 workshops for this USSF). But what makes the USSF unique - and very unpredictable - is the fact that, in just a five-day span of time, there is a space so open and usable that people end up using it for all kinds of spontaneous, surprising, and powerful things. The last USSF was in 2007. I burnt out after just a day; I couldn't see any of the workshops because 10,000 other people were trying to see them too. But all around me was this vibrant activity that was definitely not listed in the program guide: ad hoc gatherings, spillover discussion groups, assemblies and alliances formed on the spot, creative ventures, direct actions, and levelled critiques of the whole process from start to finish. Oh yes, the shit is overwhelming. But it's unlike anything I've ever been to, and that's saying something. Uses of a Whirlwind will be released at the USSF, and there will be a big release party on Friday the 25th. Our collective is also organizing three workshops/panels, and I'll be presenting or facilitating for all of them. I'll be relocating to a hotel in Detroit with them. To top it off, I'll also be reuniting with my antiracist peeps from New Orleans, and exploring radical Asian America through several caucuses, assemblies, and gatherings for APIA folks. Somewhere in there I think I get to sleep.
• After all that, my collective, Team Colors, hits the road for a tour (June 26-August). We're a militant research collective that inquires into struggles and everyday resistance in the United States. We cast a wide net, but our general focus is on class struggle, class composition and decomposition, mechanisms of control and capture by state and capital, the commons and enclosures, precarious labor, social reproduction, and processes of 'becoming' in everyday life. A lot of people go "Huh?" at this stuff, but there's a certain significant contingent out there that loves this shit. We love it, I think, because we feel these inquiries are incredibly necessary in order to combat anti-intellectualism in movements, steer away from the fetishization of activist-identities and into radical community organizing, and centralize the political as found in the mundane, the everyday, the basic needs and practices of life and living in common. Our book is just the latest of many ventures we've been on, but since this is a great opportunity to inquire into more organizing around the country and spur important discussions, we'll be holding lots of events throughout the summer and fall. I for one will be working events in Bloomington Indiana, Chicago, Madison, the Twin Cities, New York, Philadelphia, Portland Oregon, San Francisco, Oakland, and Gainesville Florida. There will likely be other events in the South and Southeast that I'm trying to set up right now. Even more events will take place throughout the fall, but by that time...
• I'll be in grad school at UNC-Chapel Hill starting August 24th, for a doctorate in geography. Geography is not just about maps and capital cities; it's the intersection of many knowledges - history, politics, environment, society - that intends to understand and explore 'space' as it exists on the surface of the earth. It's also well-known for taking increasingly radical turns of late, due to its openness, its reckoning with its own very colonial history, and its challenges and critiques that problematize so much about the world we're in while also finding excitement in resistance and change, whether organized or unanticipated. I told them I want to study radical Asian America post-1965, but we'll have to see if that will hold.

OK, gotta head to be - way too late and I need to be up early again for the second day of the AMC. And I have a red bean cake here with my name on it.

the brave new editor goes to a workshop on collaborative editing

June 18 2010
11:31 am
Allied Media Conference, Wayne State University
Detroit

I'm trying to remember what the AMC was like a year ago when I went. Certain familiar elements: a generous spread of croissants and honeydew melon in the foyer of McGregor, faces I can connect to an organization or place but not a name. What stands out the most is where I was at that time: tired, stinky (I stayed in a crash space with no showers), consistently enthralled by the workshops and discussions, and - perhaps most notably - generally bored. This was before the book or grad school was a sure thing. Back when I was a thin wisp of a boy, pinching pennies at a nonprofit job. Back when I went to the beach on hot days and sunned for 3 or 5 hours straight - even on weekdays.

Now I'm in a room of 30 people chatting about collaborative editing, feeling some mix of wisdom, empathy, a strong sense of detachment, and the not-too-thinly-veiled-in-its-smugness sentiment that "My twin sis could drink you all under the table."

I don't know why I picked this workshop; I don't know how I'm going about picking any of these this time around. The first one I went to looked promising, done by the Prison Poster Project, but they didn't describe in any detail what their activities and processes are like, or with any great critical or theoretical lens, and unless you know next to nothing about the prison-industrial complex there was nothing so revealing about their presentation. I still learned some stuff. I can't say whether that's enough, tho. I mean, you can learn stuff from watching "Keeping up with the Kardashians." If you don't get at the questions of place, space, power, complexity, contradiction, theory, critical analysis, and desire, then there's just this wide maw where someone's raw material was supposed to be. I see the maw everywhere I go now.

My mind might also be distracted. There is a book coming out next week after all. And I am getting impatient to move to North Carolina before another person can tell me "You are going to be missed here so much" and make me feel even sadder about the whole business.

Exciting news: Asian folks can get fat. Witness Exhibit A. I don't think it's a weight thing, but my body is very obviously changing and building up a paunch that never used to be there. The fucken thing actually strains and groans against the button and zipper on my jeans after a hearty meal now. Possible reasons: 1) having no full-time job for five months, and thus no steady routine; 2) having once had a full-time job for over two years, which involved more sitting than any other work I've done previously; and 3) eating exceptionally well because I've been home with my parents more often. If this lasts the rest of the summer I'll really get worried.

The night before we road-tripped out here, Claudia and Linda and I went to a dinner on Summit Ave of this group of Asian folks who have been talking about forming some kind of thing - organization, activism hub, whatever it may be. It was one of the odder experiences in recent memory. Look: you try having a 2-hour conversation with 15 other people and none of them are speaking in a common language, and see how far you get - or whether you can even follow along at all. Also, count as a given that the group is getting impatient about meeting and talking and wants to start getting 'active.'

The drive here was smooth and uneventful, and we got to feast at Cafe Japon for Miki's last week there. I had me this sashimi dish that could make grown, jaded old men weep.

More to come. Hi Detroit.

this shit is revived

Breathe, blog! Breathe! The goddesses are mixing up some magic this summer, and dammit, I'm taking you with me.

analysis of a facebook update map

Part II of a series.

Last post was an unadulterated time-space map of a particular virtual moment, mapped via facebook updates. Let's see what we learn.

TIME

Coleen wins cookies for her guess of October 2008. This was not hard to figure.

In fact, we can pinpoint things more exactly. From these updates--

is watching the master debaters.
is watching McCain get spanked. Righteous...
is watching the debate over pizza and beer. i love being an adult.
is going to watch tonight's debates at Hamburger Mary's... wanna join?
is lovin rainy nashville, getting ready to crash the debates part 2.

--we know that the updates happened on October 7, 2008, in the evening, during the second televised presidential debate between Obama and McCain. (One of the updates even experienced this spatially while 'lovin rainy nashville,' home of Belmont University, where the debate was held.) The number of facebookers commenting on the debate may seem unusually high or low, depending on how you look at it. But there's no denying the virtual experience of the election cycle as a generalized, almost incessant current, perpetually weighing on many a facebook mind:

is excited that Biden is so genuine. Erica now has a growing fondness for Joe Biden.
saw Obama in La Crosse this morning. The heat off that man gave me sunburn.
An Electoral College TIE? Its Possible!!
is so sick of the bullshit and games that are politics. But be sure to go vote tomorrow, and register to vote by this weekend if you are not already!

That last update is particularly curious, an honest assessment of the unforgiving drudge of electoral politics in the United States. We're sick of the politics, but don't forget to vote! The swash of cynicism and earnestness all at once - what could it mean? The time-space map in this case is less about messages and meaning as it is common experience and emotion. Posting this update would seem nonsensical if it weren't for the implicit understanding that other facebookers would feel the same way, would perhaps even say the same thing. Is this liberating or constraining? The 'freedom' to update on whatever crosses your mind - though inane, profane, or utterly confusing - yet also consciously aware that the updates only 'work' if read 'in common' through positive resonance? Let's imagine McCain wins in November. A facebooker posts "I feel like killing myself right now." In most other contexts, this would be read with alarm and worry. But all it takes is one comment on the post - "Dude. Feel the same." - and we know that these aren't actually musings about suicide, but rather a commonly shared experience being coped with in virtual public space. We do this all the time now; we assume a kind of common exists (though with little real/sustained effort from any of us).

Contrast this with other ways people commented on the time:

If I fail pathophys, do I get a second try, like the $700 Billion Bailout? God save the bankers!
paulson looks like he just robbed a bank...

It could be argued that the bailouts and other common experiences of economic crisis were arguably more important than the election cycle, especially when read in context of today's facebook update time-space maps ("Still looking for a job..."). But only two posts directly reference this. My facebook friends appear to have moved eagerly towards producing common experiences of the election rather than the economic crisis. What facilitated this? What is the result?

Without the assistance of spectacle, we have many mundane allusions to time:

is grateful to everyone who organized CR10.
is Oktoberfest, bitches!
is potentially addicted [to running marathons].
needs to find her winter coat because its looking like its time to start bundling up.
is either kicking of statement of purpose ass or else statement of purpose is playing rope a dope. We can all guess which is really happening.
should be in Hawaii by the first of November and in Washington on the 18th or 19th.
is performing at Intermedia on Thurs Oct 9, 7 pm with Ibe and Sun Yung - plus wine and beer!
is starting to really like his classes.

One way or another we can deduce the time of year from this. We relate to seasonal changes, warm enough to run a marathon but cold enough to find a winter coat. We relate to pressures like statements of purpose for grad school applications, or classes, or, um, Oktoberfest. Other posts merely help us map out the near future: when a performance at Intermedia will be, when someone will be visiting Hawaii or Washington. And for the truly discerning, there's posts about the success of CR10 - not a generalized knowledge in an era of spectacle, but the mere mention should mobilize the brief excitements of those who are in the know, and perhaps even motivate those who aren't to find out.

SPACE

Meanwhile, what's going on in this time of October 7, 2008?

is curious about this years showing of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" as in, is there going to be one...?

The space covered in a facebook update time-space map is flooded with comments like these: wry, humorous, fearful, coy, steeped well in the times. It's impossible to know exactly what the facebooker is referencing, though the many guesses are resonant - a freakily unexpected McCain election as the "nightmare before Christmas," perhaps.

But it's not important to know or understand all the references. Comments like these are made to highlight the wit of their makers.

is finding out that doing nothing can be the most difficult thing to do.
is trying to think of what she's doing right now.
hates anatomy. but she loves you.
would like to start ending all of her sentences in "also"...also.
is looking for others in the Bangor area who want to play kickball. Possibly in ridiculous outfits. Are you in?
is playing offense against his head cold.
is back to real life... well school, not really real life.
has the ugliest sweater of them all!
is bonding with Tori Amos instead of sleeping.
19 dollar airbed is sounding pretty enticing right now. sleeeeeeeeeeepy.

Sometimes it's hard to detect the difference between wit and depression.

Yay unemployment.

And things get even stranger when the source of wit is other facebook-produced material. Them feedback loops can be voracious.

refuses to change his status message just because some people are bitter about the sun in California.

I count myself among this crowd, always intent on clever posts. Lately I've been wondering why I do this. Every time I have important news to share over facebook, it's always done obliquely. I don't write things like "I got accepted at UNC!!!" I do "UNC says yes, and throws in a fellowship nomination to boot. Holy shit. It's on." All told, that is about three or four times more energy than was needed. Is that a sign I'm a writer? Possibly.

A good many writers inhabit facebook, attempting to pull language out of its duldrums (where it usually languishes in the virtual world). They can weave poetry.

head is his only home unless it rains.
still loves...and will always love, and will wait until time makes to reconnect our souls together...

Sometimes the poetry is unintended.

is finding it.
is a drifter.

But what really goes on in the space of facebook is a much sadder and meaner game than what a few whimsical writers might believe it to be. It's still a business, and all of us its consumers. We all know well the massive data mining that facebook generates, turning our free public creations into marketable privatized content. The larger consequence of this is an unsettling arc away from creativity, imagination, and desire. Facebookers have learned to replace whimsy with accounts like these:

hates fax machines!
is listening to Jane's Addiction and running my dog on a trail under fresh snow!
is NERVOUS! and really excited....
is revising a story.
is marketing at midnight.
is busy.
is up and at em.
homework done, go to target, buy furniture. Groceries and floor will wait until tonight.

There's a lot more where that came from. What's perhaps most concerning is that such honesty reveals a lot of bodies running themselves into the ground. The space of common experience we all can draw on interminably, it seems, is that of anti-leisure. Why write "is busy" unless you already know that everyone else understands, that they sympathize?

Facebook holds a mirror on a people in ill health.

is coughing.
is friggin' exhausted!

Here is a space we can all agree we're not happy in.

is in Partial Hell!!!

(Of course, facebook is where we also learn to mince words enough so that our reckoning doesn't become too fully wrought in public. Partial Hell is better than Hell, after all.)

Seemingly the only happy ones out there have learned to harvest the wind that facebook offers - networking/marketing, depending if you're the anticapitalist/capitalist type:

is http://explodingdog.com/title/imamess.html.
thinks YOU should come to Daman. My latest choral awesome-ness!! Check it out!! www.theesoterics.org.
is thinking you should all visit themelononline.com and if you like what you see, maybe donate a buck or two to keep us ripe.

More than anything, today's on-line time-space rewards the savvy and self-deprecating, witnesses to technological blossoms fraught with wonder and uneasy tension. Beneath every "Cool!" is a whispered "Oh shit."

apparently has hazel eyes. Thanks Wikipedia!

name that time-space: the facebook update map

Some unspecified time ago - and probably because I was excessively bored - I browsed over all my facebook friends' most recent updates and wrote them all down. I present them to you now, in their full, unedited (save the names, which have been scratched out), schizophrenic glory.

Of course, it's common for a lot of us to browse over people's updates on facebook. But there are some funky things that go on with this kind of activity. It's a lot more than witticisms or frequently pointless announcements ("I had some coffee!"). With any and all social interactions, what we choose to reveal to others in a public setting (even a virtual public like facebook) ends up pointing to a set of experiences specific to a particular time-space. There need not be seamless (or even half-assed) conversations at work; rather, we end up contributing to a map of experience that finds as many points of convergence as divergence, commonality and difference.

Sorry for the academic jargon. Concrete example: during this year's NFC Championship game, practically all my friends' updates had to do with the status of the Vikings and/or Saints. What does such a map illustrate? 1) That I have extensive networks in both Minnesota and New Orleans (which I do). 2) That these networks of friends made updates on a very public event, not to inform people of its details, but rather to bond, argue, or engage in common experiences of the event. 3) That this game, as a virtually-experienced spectacle, ended up capturing much of our attention and interest, and thus served as perfect fodder for a virtual engine like facebook. 4) That other virtually-experienced spectacles (i.e. the healthcare debate) or other everyday, real-life experiences (i.e. coming home from work) were temporarily shelved in favor of facebook update excitement around the game.

That said: can you name this time-space? Do you know the exact year, day, and time when these updates happened? What does this say about my networks? Does this match up with your networks? What does this say about our virtual public life?

I'll have the answer (to the first question, not the others) in my next post.

is watching the master debaters.

would rather be at Skate's On The Bay.

is going home (my friends)...

is watching McCain get spanked. Righteous...

is already tired of her work schedule for the next 3 months...

is watching the debate over pizza and beer. i love being an adult.

is starting to really like his classes.

got a new apartment in the international district!

is going to watch tonight's debates at Hamburger Mary's... wanna join?

is performing at Intermedia on Thurs Oct 9, 7 pm with Ibe and Sun Yung - plus wine

and beer... hollaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...

is busy.

would like a night stand.

is up and at em.

homework done, go to target, buy furniture. Groceries and floor will wait until

tonight.

is lovin rainy nashville, getting ready to crash the debates part 2.

Yay unemployment.

should be in Hawaii by the first of November and in Washington on the 18th or 19th.

wants to be in Osaka with The Boy right now. Only 4 more days...

is made of cool brew mocha & soy milk.

is sick. Stupid con.

is http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/oct/07/pink.floyd.keyboardist.denied.last.wish.

refuses to change his status message just because some people are bitter about the

sun in California.

is glad Steven finally got his charger back!

is thinking you should all visit themelononline.com and if you like what you see,

maybe donate a buck or two to keep us ripe.

really believes that everything IS gonna be alright.

needs to learn to take things one day at a time.

is enjoying a bunfire and chilling with folks at my house.

still loves...and will always love, and will wait until time makes to reconnect our

souls together...

is friggin' exhausted!

is marketing at midnight.

is in Partial Hell!!!

is considering switching back to analog after spending 1.5 hrs on the phone with the

HP people and THEN coming home to find that the printer has done a Lazurus.

is revising a story.

is nothing short of perfectly relaxed in perfect company.

is "NYC, here I come!"

is potentially addicted [to running marathons].

needs to find her winter coat because its looking like its time to start bundling up.

is jealous that her sister is going to Londonium this weekend.

is either kicking of statement of purpose ass or else statement of purpose is

playing rope a dope. We can all guess which is really happening.

hates fax machines!

An Electoral College TIE? Its Possible!!

<http://www.washtimes.com/news/2008/sep/23/an-electoral-college-doomsday/>.

is NERVOUS! and really excited....

is listening to Jane's Addiction and running my dog on a trail under fresh snow!

wants to get out of the city, permanently.

is curious about this years showing of "The Nightmare Before Christmas" as in, is

there going to be one...?

is so frustrated that the internet can't find the server that she needs in order to

transport herself 7 miles today...

is reveling in a lovely full night of sleep...

is bonding with Tori Amos instead of sleeping.

19 dollar airbed is sounding pretty enticing right now. sleeeeeeeeeeepy.

is freezing.

has the ugliest sweater of them all!

is tired from all that fun (i.e. rockband) this weekend.

is back in Seattle.

is smiling...and almost back to health.

is wondering why he had to get a flat tire.

hates Evan. A lot. No...seriously.......jk.

is barely moving.

is playing offense against his head cold.

is back to real life... well school, not really real life.

is coughing.

is looking for manatees in the rio dulce.

is 7 days until home!

head is his only home unless it rains.

enjoyed the rain last night! it's still hard to believe that it goes months without

raining here.

is finding it.

is a drifter.

is mourning the loss of the Cubs. Why has the universe been so cruel to them and

their fans?

is looking for others in the Bangor area who want to play kickball. Possibly in

ridiculous outfits. Are you in?

is Oktoberfest, bitches!

is fighting paralysis.

is listening to noisy rain.

is saying tha world jus got alot less smarter...RIP to my friend & family, tha

"Ghetto Scientist."

is so sick of the bullshit and games that are politics. But be sure to go vote

tomorrow, and register to vote by this weekend if you are not already!

is ohhh minnesoooota.

If I fail pathophys, do I get a second try, like the $700 Billion Bailout? God save

the bankers!

paulson looks like he just robbed a bank...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122304922742602533.html.

is impatient for the 5 day weekend.

is glad to be.

is http://explodingdog.com/title/imamess.html.

is excited that Biden is so genuine. Erica now has a growing fondness for Joe Biden.

would like to start ending all of her sentences in "also"...also.

wants to know how she'll get home now that this has happened on her regular bus

route: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10535521.

is obsessing over one teeny little word.

is going to be in Cali this weekend!

hates anatomy. but she loves you.

Thanks everyone for your birthday wishes!

apparently has hazel eyes. Thanks Wikipedia!

is trying to think of what she's doing right now.

is ready for California. oh wait, that's still weeks away. Pat- bring some Bay Area

love with you!

saw Obama in La Crosse this morning. The heat off that man gave me sunburn.

is grateful to everyone who organized CR10.

is tying up the loose ends of his application to SU.

is finding out that doing nothing can be the most difficult thing to do.

thinks YOU should come to Daman. My latest choral awesome-ness!! Check it out!!

www.theesoterics.org.