"einstein" and my quartet

another story. this one is about the genius in my group for political violence, who i will call "einstein". this is the same boy who a couple weeks ago was too dumb to do the readings for his presentation. two weeks ago, we were supposed to pick out an article to distribute to the class. einstein has yet to do so.

now, my topic for the group presentation is why the patriot act unnecessarily limits civil liberties. i will argue that security can be maintained without infringing upon civil liberties.
einstein is going to present on why people should care about their civil liberties. the discerning reader will note that these topics ARE NOT THE SAME.

so yesterday, i say to einstein, "so, einstein, have you found an article yet?"
"well, actually, i think the article YOU picked out is the best for my topic."
"um. that's MY article. it's about designing an alternative to the patriot act. you have to find YOUR OWN article. about CIVIL LIBERTIES. it's not hard."

has he not done any research? did he read the article i gave to him?
let me quote the abstract for you:
"while better information and analysis is needed to fight terrorism, there is reason to fear that transforming domestic counterterrorism primarily into an intelligence matter is unlikely to appreciably increase security, but will seriously threaten civil liberties. this article outlines an alternative approach that will serve to obtain the intelligence necessary to prevent catastrophic attacks without compromising civil liberties." (italics mine)

i keep thinking about how funny it would be if we passed out a sheet with the same article on it two times, with a little note like, "mel found it first! apparently there is NO OTHER article about civil liberties!"


on another note (LOL!!), here's my quartet playing at the departmental recital on sunday! lucky for the world, the recordings seem to be really heavy on mel. (i'm on alto).

https://jshare.johnshopkins.edu/bbubnas1/public_html/Studio%20Recital%20Fall%2005/SeventhHeavenRag.MP3

https://jshare.johnshopkins.edu/bbubnas1/public_html/Studio%20Recital%20Fall%2005/Bach.MP3

three stories about my mom

since my mom accounts for 25% of my readers, i think it's time to dedicate a blog entry to her!

1) it's the summer after 5th grade. i'm 10.

mom says, "mel, you have to make a choice between ballet and swimming. i don't have time to do both."
mel: i choose ballet!
mom: no, sorry, you have to do swim.
mel: but mom! i want to get pointe shoes!
mom: i think you'll like swim.

2) it's december 2004, 11:00 pm. i am hungry.

mel: mom, will you take me to the blue ribbon diner?
mom: oh, that burned down last month.
mel: WHAT!???
mom: that diner in schenectady? it's gone.

the next day, mel finds pictures of al at the blue ribbon diner from a week ago.

mel: mom, the blue ribbon diner did not burn down. al was there last week, see?
mom: well, it LOOKS like it burned down. AL, YOU WENT TO THE BLUE RIBBON DINER LAST WEEK WITHOUT MY PERMISSION??

3) it's circa 1997.

mel: mom, can we go to sugarbush (skiing place)?
mom: you know how they spent all that money connecting the two mountains? they went bankrupt/out of business like three years ago.
mel: really??

now it's december 2004.

mel: what did you do this weekend, maggie?
maggie: i went to sugarbush!
mel: MOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

three lessons

1) if you buy a pack of gum from the vending machines at hopkins, it comes with six sticks. odd, yet extra delicious.

2) if you write the worst paper in the universe, graded by a professor who apparently went to SIENA , you will get an a.

3) if you try to thicken up some sauce by boiling it, and then dropping in little bits of cornstarch, the cornstarch cooks into solid white globs. yum.

rage: the "angry joy"

can someone explain to me in small words why it is that there's no international military? there's like a million gajillion people who want to be in the peace corps, or amnesty international or whatever. here's my idea. take the peace corps, and give them guns. all this shit that we're learning about in political violence really blows my mind. why is it that we'll send people to build houses in rwanda, but we can't authorize them to shoot the guy with the machete who's chopping up the pregnant woman? the US doesn't want to use its military to carry out humanitarian missions to stop genocide? fine. i think there would be plenty of people who would voluntarily join a humanitarian army. just because no one wants to go to iraq to die, doesn't mean that people don't want to help. in rwanda, almost a million people were slaughtered in 100 days in 1994. that was only 10 years ago. GRRR!!! all we had to do was send in a few people to knock out the extremists, and it would have been over. they didn't even have guns! come on!! if there was a volunteer international military, i would seriously think about joining. "but mel! you hate guns! and blood! and exercise! and killing!" yes, but here's something else i hate: genocide. god, i'm such a do-gooder i think i'm going to make myself sick.

in my other class, the body politic, we're reading schiller. now, i can't understand it (of course), but it's his fault. he talks so much about like, fairies and unicorns that you're all, "aww! isn't that pretty! i must agree with whatever it is you're saying!"
for example," "Even before Truth's triumphant light can penetrate the recesses of the human heart, the poet's imagination will intercept its rays, and the peaks of humanity will be radiant while the dews of night still linger in the valley." here's some mel trivia: in high school, i made this list of "happy words". i know, TOTALLY GAY, right? uumm...i forgot where i was going with this. the point is, schiller uses "happy words".
how does the english translation know to capitalize "Truth" when all the nouns in german are capitalized?

i must be in drama-mood instead of comedy mood because last night i watched iron chef instead of the daily show/colbert report. also, i'm mentally preparing for the OC. time for marissa to cheat on ryan, hooray!

too much fun

oh, halloween. you know you had a good time when you wake up the next morning with glass embedded in your toe, bruises all over your body (including one the size of your entire right ass cheek), and a giant dent/bump in your head. oh, and you also wake up literally screaming in pain because you have a charlie-horse type leg cramp in your right leg which continues to hurt three days later. "been getting some intensive physical exercise, mel?" you may laugh. let's just say that ddr will do that to you.

here is james's halloween story which i'll gladly share with you:
"i woke up with a lingering feeling that i had vomited somewhere. but i didn't know where. i just knew that last night, i threw up. so i got up to go look for the vomit, and when i got to the door, i realized i was standing in it." it's much funnier when he tells it.

this leads me to sunday, when i should have been writing a paper. but i was too tired to do anything other than go to the bathroom.

last night, boy was it time to write that paper on hobbes and rousseau in relation to a bush speech on national security, focusing on the elements of sovereignty, freedom, and equality. jesus christ. honestly, this paper hurts to think about. it was SO BAD. i really don't understand why i still have to write papers. obviously i can write a paper. i went to class. just leave me alone!!!

it goes something like this:
"bush's speech on national security has many hobbesian and rousseau-ian (is that a word??) elements. like, for example, sovereignty. bush thinks that sovereignty comes from the people, so that's like a democracy. only not really exactly, because we don't vote on every law. but close enough. so that's kinda like rousseau, who also thinks that sovereignty should be democracy. actually, i'm not really sure that's true. meanwhile, hobbes, um, thinks that democracy is okay too? maybe? i really don't know. what was this supposed to be about? oh yeah. therefore, sovereignty.
also for some reason, democracy (i mean sovereignty), freedom and equality are the same thing, so i don't have anything else to say. the end!"