Fair warning: what is about to follow is little more than an unsubstantiated and undirected discourse, fueled by unabashed partisanship and proliferous naivety.
We won.
But hold on, I'm not talking about the presidency. The victories I'm talking about are in the margins; behind the scenes, where they can easily be missed. The election is a giant box of circuitry, a complex interactions of millions of parts, which at the end of the first Tuesday in November every four years outputs a "0" or a "1". A "D" or an "R". But I'm more interested in what's going on inside.
The first game changer that this election brought about was Nate Silver. For those who don't know, Nate Silver is a statistician, New York Times columnist, and speculatively a witch who has been forecasting elections with frightening accuracy. But despite the jokes about sorcery, what Nate Silver is doing is actually removing the smoke and mirrors from politics. In predicting the election almost perfectly, he dispelled the myth that elections are governed by some indefinable "will of the people" or the mysterious power of "momentum." Elections all boil down to numbers that we can study and understand. I'm hoping that (and here's where the naivety comes in) we are going to see this sports-style punditry fall away, and replace it with a new kind of political commentary. One that focuses on facts.
The second thing is diversity. We are finally, finally, in the year 2012, starting to see the house and the senate get just a teensy bit more diverse. Wisconsin elected the nation's first openly gay senator. Hawaii brought in the nation's first Asian American woman. On top of that, this senate session will have a record number (20) of women serving.
And then the last thing, and this is really where the naivety comes in, is a demographic shift the nature of which has never been seen before. Mitt Romney won seniors. All of them, everywhere. And whites. And men. But we're finally getting to the point where the woman vote is just as important as the man vote; where the black vote is just as important as the white vote; and where the young vote will be the deciding factor of the future of our country.
In Colorado, they voted to legalize marijuana. Seniors opposed the measure by a 2-to-1 margin, but it still passed. The same happened in Washington. Maine and Maryland voted to legalize gay marriage. And many of these measures had been attempted before in these same states. The fact of the matter is that the median voter is not the same person that he or she was 10 or even 4 years ago. The millenium generation has arrived, and they are socially liberal. If I'm right about this, then this trend (despite fluctuations) will continue to develop for the rest of our lifetimes.
Maybe I'm still just high on the knowledge that my candidate won; but I'm excited about the future.
-Nick.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Friday, November 2, 2012
Cannon Delight
None of these took me more than five minutes to write. So I'm pretty proud, considering.
-->
•••
•••
•••
•••
Country, country, oh far and wide.
Unceasing sight for sight to see,
see the light cease at night,
for forts we fight, fortnights lay
siege.
Discomfort fester in a sea
seeking comfortability
wind still whirring, stirring tea
to all the fish, afloat, or flee.
Lifeless, lustless, headless, hauntless
harness lifelessness, be gone with
such and such, or so for whats,
As reason slips. And skips. And cuts.
A newfound friend, a foreign hand
Oh country, country, now our land
You bled and burned and dried and now
this blessed land, not for whom, but
how?
•••
Unrepenting southerner, I lay to thee a
blow
For somewhere out among the stars,
your reason stands to grow.
Not here, nor there, nor
everywhere,
may you tread, black tires forwarding.
Heed, rebellious confederator,
that old Civil forewarning.
•••
I found a cut upon my lip,
Tender and wet across the tip.
My tongue massage, lather, and sense,
whether one slice, or increments.
I found a cut upon my brow,
I saw it yes, but don't know how.
To thee I muse, and feel thy soul,
No clear mirror could I cajole.
Now it is night, I lie awake,
As effects upon my face take.
To know that nicks and cuts abound
returns me to thy battleground.
•••
Away the redbird flew to morn,
wormless, chirpless, now forelorn.
A song he sings to doves and gulls,
"Be mindful of the trigger pulls.
While all wiser, the early riser,
Curtailed hopes may spare a miser.
So dream your dreams and find your
fun,
But know I speak for everyone,
there they are,
there may they stay,
lest they sing:
Men, bombs away.
Two-fold is it true for thee,
a stainless bird, a crooning she.
As ivory feathers adorn our nest,
My scarlet cometh from war out west.”
--Eliot Sill
--Eliot Sill
Monday, October 29, 2012
There's these things and they're pissing me off.
Man, fuck coffee. Or fuck my body. Something's not right — I drink a beverage and now I can't control myself? Fucking Parkinson's juice.
Cigarettes are dumb too. I found one at a party last Saturday, brought it home and smoked it. Now it's sitting in my scented candle-turned-ashtray, all tan, white and black tainting the sky-blue wax, a perfect metaphor for itself. I look at it and feel cool for having a cigarette mashed into my candle. It looks cool. That's fucking ridiculous.
I have work in an hour, and it's the worst thing that could happen to me. Working at Jimmy John's, an expanding company that's glorifying a man's idea to rip off the masses for a solidly made sandwich, thus exploiting the fantastic American laziness and allowing Jimmy himself to live his life however he wants, which he deserves no more than the panhandlers that'd love to score a J.J. Gargantuan that day, sucks. It's a minimum wage job that doesn't compensate its employees with a free meal or sandwich (or cookie, or pickle, or day-old bread, or garbage) unless you work a double-shift. I've worked their four hours today already and have 5-and-a-half ahead of me. Let there be life.
Death is such a fag. Hanging over my shoulder every unhelpful second, checking my work and making silent judgments. If this is the last thing I ever write, and it had better not fucking be, I want death to know that I saw its game for what it was.
Sadness too. Sadness can shoot itself in the head with a dick-loaded rocket launcher. It's either there like a blanket, keeping you draped in it so you're impervious to outside emotions, or its worn like a hat, purposefully worn for certain situations for as long as necessary. You take it at your leisure through movies, books or stories about high school kids whose sports teams get better after they die.
Sadness should be like death, hanging over you but mostly avoided. Death should be like work, necessary for most people but totally fucking stupid to do and done for the sake of others. Work should be like cigarettes, trendy and eventually fatal but people do it for some reason anyway. And cigarettes should be like sadness, unfortunately permanent or sparsely but willfully consumed. Coffee should just calm down; whatever.
--Eliot Sill
Cigarettes are dumb too. I found one at a party last Saturday, brought it home and smoked it. Now it's sitting in my scented candle-turned-ashtray, all tan, white and black tainting the sky-blue wax, a perfect metaphor for itself. I look at it and feel cool for having a cigarette mashed into my candle. It looks cool. That's fucking ridiculous.
I have work in an hour, and it's the worst thing that could happen to me. Working at Jimmy John's, an expanding company that's glorifying a man's idea to rip off the masses for a solidly made sandwich, thus exploiting the fantastic American laziness and allowing Jimmy himself to live his life however he wants, which he deserves no more than the panhandlers that'd love to score a J.J. Gargantuan that day, sucks. It's a minimum wage job that doesn't compensate its employees with a free meal or sandwich (or cookie, or pickle, or day-old bread, or garbage) unless you work a double-shift. I've worked their four hours today already and have 5-and-a-half ahead of me. Let there be life.
Death is such a fag. Hanging over my shoulder every unhelpful second, checking my work and making silent judgments. If this is the last thing I ever write, and it had better not fucking be, I want death to know that I saw its game for what it was.
Sadness too. Sadness can shoot itself in the head with a dick-loaded rocket launcher. It's either there like a blanket, keeping you draped in it so you're impervious to outside emotions, or its worn like a hat, purposefully worn for certain situations for as long as necessary. You take it at your leisure through movies, books or stories about high school kids whose sports teams get better after they die.
Sadness should be like death, hanging over you but mostly avoided. Death should be like work, necessary for most people but totally fucking stupid to do and done for the sake of others. Work should be like cigarettes, trendy and eventually fatal but people do it for some reason anyway. And cigarettes should be like sadness, unfortunately permanent or sparsely but willfully consumed. Coffee should just calm down; whatever.
--Eliot Sill
Friday, October 26, 2012
Editor, give me a title
robert langellier
It's come to my attention lately that there are more important things than blogging on invisible Wordpress accounts about journalism articles you've already written. Like blogging on Classic Brian, for example. I'm going to talk here about why journalism sucks, and why journalists are some of the suckiest people you'll meet. Here are the reasons:
Journalistic publications suck. Classic Brian does not have editors that pare down my silly antics and acrobatic wordplay after just having told me to write with more voice. It does not tell me I need to transition from point to point. So I won't.
Editors have no idea that you're 21 years old. Someone told them all that everyone is 11 and just learning the language. They will treat your clearly thought-out and purposeful sentence constructions as your 5th grade teacher would. I'm aware that "A white button-down." is not a sentence. It's a sentence now, fucker.
Editors get really mad at you for not knowing AP Style in its entirety. Why would I ever spend five seconds learning some of the most meaningless memorization facts ever thought up? If I write "Austin, TX," the world isn't going to end when you change it to "Austin, Texas." That's an editor's job, anyway. They have to have to do something, right? In other news, I'm going to lose about a half a letter grade in my class for my unparalleled failure to know or look up AP Style in my articles.
The word "snark." The magazine work I do is a pathetic excuse for storytelling. I get 600 words to tell a story. Fuck that. I poop 600 words. What kind of story can I write in 600 words? All I can do is draft an advertisement. Vox Magazine is a well-designed Add Sheet. My editors compensate for this literary straightjacket by gleefully informing me that I can insert some "snark" into my writing. Thanks! I squeeze a droplet of voice into a story, and I unfailingly get this comment back from whichever editor is reading my story: "Great snark!" Good god. I want to throw up on my Word document. If you think a pinch of "snark" is going to save a story and make it worth someone's time, God help you, and may journalism destroy you.
Journalists take themselves real seriously. Especially with stuff like ethics. Accepting gifts. People treat free beer or a hot dog like it's a car. I did a story last week where my videographer and I were offered some barbeque from a source. She hadn't eaten all day, man. It was night time. She said no, and left. Jessie, you are literally starving. If you're so susceptible to brainwashing that you can't eat a sandwich and tell the same story you had before your sandwich, you shouldn't be in journalism. I'll take all your beer.
Journalism is for pussies and people with poles in their butts.
It's come to my attention lately that there are more important things than blogging on invisible Wordpress accounts about journalism articles you've already written. Like blogging on Classic Brian, for example. I'm going to talk here about why journalism sucks, and why journalists are some of the suckiest people you'll meet. Here are the reasons:
Journalistic publications suck. Classic Brian does not have editors that pare down my silly antics and acrobatic wordplay after just having told me to write with more voice. It does not tell me I need to transition from point to point. So I won't.
Editors have no idea that you're 21 years old. Someone told them all that everyone is 11 and just learning the language. They will treat your clearly thought-out and purposeful sentence constructions as your 5th grade teacher would. I'm aware that "A white button-down." is not a sentence. It's a sentence now, fucker.
Editors get really mad at you for not knowing AP Style in its entirety. Why would I ever spend five seconds learning some of the most meaningless memorization facts ever thought up? If I write "Austin, TX," the world isn't going to end when you change it to "Austin, Texas." That's an editor's job, anyway. They have to have to do something, right? In other news, I'm going to lose about a half a letter grade in my class for my unparalleled failure to know or look up AP Style in my articles.
The word "snark." The magazine work I do is a pathetic excuse for storytelling. I get 600 words to tell a story. Fuck that. I poop 600 words. What kind of story can I write in 600 words? All I can do is draft an advertisement. Vox Magazine is a well-designed Add Sheet. My editors compensate for this literary straightjacket by gleefully informing me that I can insert some "snark" into my writing. Thanks! I squeeze a droplet of voice into a story, and I unfailingly get this comment back from whichever editor is reading my story: "Great snark!" Good god. I want to throw up on my Word document. If you think a pinch of "snark" is going to save a story and make it worth someone's time, God help you, and may journalism destroy you.
Journalists take themselves real seriously. Especially with stuff like ethics. Accepting gifts. People treat free beer or a hot dog like it's a car. I did a story last week where my videographer and I were offered some barbeque from a source. She hadn't eaten all day, man. It was night time. She said no, and left. Jessie, you are literally starving. If you're so susceptible to brainwashing that you can't eat a sandwich and tell the same story you had before your sandwich, you shouldn't be in journalism. I'll take all your beer.
Journalism is for pussies and people with poles in their butts.
Monday, October 22, 2012
Nick - We Had The Magic All Along -OR- The Future Of The Shadow Of My Footprints -OR- Make It A Priority To Learn: A Reprise
You know what's cool? Statistics. Statistics are so cool. This year I'm taking a class that involves writing a very light junior thesis (only has to be around 20 pages) on a topic of my choosing relating to the politics of international development. And before this year, I thought statistics were math on a piece of paper.
I know a guy working on his PhD, who once told me that I should "take more statistics. Statistics is like magic for grad students." Well, Robby does not lie.
When you want to do research and actually contribute to the field to which you have dedicated your life, you need the tools to evaluate the world. Evaluate the world in a way that can easily be translated to empirical numbers and facts. And to do that, even though sometimes it's boring, you need to know your math.
I feel like a lot of political science majors don't really get it. They don't learn anything and they spend their entire undergraduate career in courses about theory and political philosophy. But hold that thought for a second, I'll come back to it.
Today Monday night improv was cancelled, and I had some free time. I discovered Khan Academy, which is a great place to go if you want to learn things. And it helped me figure out all the statistics trouble I was having.
I think that with all the great free resources we have available to us now, we can move to a new generation of higher education. A generation that is more focused on research than theory, more focused on learning practical skills instead of leaving it up to you to put your skill set and the real world together. I feel like I stumbled into a tract of the political science department reserved for a few brave and lucky guinea pigs; here's hoping that the people of the future will get this opportunity earlier and more consistently.
I want to see higher education advance. I want to see people understand more, instead of just learning more. I want to see students learn how to do research instead of how to look at it.
I'm rambling, so I'm just going to cut myself off here and end on the same soap box that I ended my first ever Classic Brian post on: make it a priority to learn. Before this year, I didn't know that empirical research was a thing that one could study. There's a whole world of material out there you haven't even heard of yet.
-Nick.
I know a guy working on his PhD, who once told me that I should "take more statistics. Statistics is like magic for grad students." Well, Robby does not lie.
When you want to do research and actually contribute to the field to which you have dedicated your life, you need the tools to evaluate the world. Evaluate the world in a way that can easily be translated to empirical numbers and facts. And to do that, even though sometimes it's boring, you need to know your math.
I feel like a lot of political science majors don't really get it. They don't learn anything and they spend their entire undergraduate career in courses about theory and political philosophy. But hold that thought for a second, I'll come back to it.
Today Monday night improv was cancelled, and I had some free time. I discovered Khan Academy, which is a great place to go if you want to learn things. And it helped me figure out all the statistics trouble I was having.
I think that with all the great free resources we have available to us now, we can move to a new generation of higher education. A generation that is more focused on research than theory, more focused on learning practical skills instead of leaving it up to you to put your skill set and the real world together. I feel like I stumbled into a tract of the political science department reserved for a few brave and lucky guinea pigs; here's hoping that the people of the future will get this opportunity earlier and more consistently.
I want to see higher education advance. I want to see people understand more, instead of just learning more. I want to see students learn how to do research instead of how to look at it.
I'm rambling, so I'm just going to cut myself off here and end on the same soap box that I ended my first ever Classic Brian post on: make it a priority to learn. Before this year, I didn't know that empirical research was a thing that one could study. There's a whole world of material out there you haven't even heard of yet.
-Nick.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Questions about nose zits
robert langellier
I don't even know how to react to this feeling. I have a zit in my nose, man. It doesn't really hurt, I don't think. It kinda feels like a rash or a skin inflammation, except a rash that also takes up the air inside your nose. It kinda feels like my nose is distended. Like somebody's blowing up a balloon in my nostril.
I'm just really out of my element here. What in my life can I compare this sensation to? Besides balloons. It really opens up the doors of perception for me. This is a thing that, as far as I knew, wasn't supposed to happen, wasn't able to happen. What am I supposed to believe now? Maybe I'll get a zit on the book I'm reading. Look out, "White Noise," you're about to get stuffed with pus. I hope the pages stick. Then I won't have to keep reading it. "White Noise" isn't good, guys. Don't read it. Maybe I'll get a zit on my imagination. Maybe I'll get a zit on my friend. That would be wild. She'd have to sympathize with me for the zit that she has.
More importantly, everywhere around my left nostril is pretty sensitive now. So how am I supposed to pick my nose? Get back to me on that, guys.
Is the tissue stuff on the inside of your nose still even skin? Can a zit develop on that stuff? I guess so. So that begs the question: if that's skin, then where does your skin end? Does it keep on wrapping, up inside your nose and folding under the inside of everything in your body? Can I get a zit under my scalp? On my retina? That would be insane. Imagine that popping; your entire visual world for a few moments would be a white explosion of upside-down pus. I can't say that I don't want that to happen to me someday.
Guys, do any of you have zits in your noses? I'm thinking about getting some people together to talk about it.
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and tag this with my name. To 100!
I don't even know how to react to this feeling. I have a zit in my nose, man. It doesn't really hurt, I don't think. It kinda feels like a rash or a skin inflammation, except a rash that also takes up the air inside your nose. It kinda feels like my nose is distended. Like somebody's blowing up a balloon in my nostril.
I'm just really out of my element here. What in my life can I compare this sensation to? Besides balloons. It really opens up the doors of perception for me. This is a thing that, as far as I knew, wasn't supposed to happen, wasn't able to happen. What am I supposed to believe now? Maybe I'll get a zit on the book I'm reading. Look out, "White Noise," you're about to get stuffed with pus. I hope the pages stick. Then I won't have to keep reading it. "White Noise" isn't good, guys. Don't read it. Maybe I'll get a zit on my imagination. Maybe I'll get a zit on my friend. That would be wild. She'd have to sympathize with me for the zit that she has.
More importantly, everywhere around my left nostril is pretty sensitive now. So how am I supposed to pick my nose? Get back to me on that, guys.
Is the tissue stuff on the inside of your nose still even skin? Can a zit develop on that stuff? I guess so. So that begs the question: if that's skin, then where does your skin end? Does it keep on wrapping, up inside your nose and folding under the inside of everything in your body? Can I get a zit under my scalp? On my retina? That would be insane. Imagine that popping; your entire visual world for a few moments would be a white explosion of upside-down pus. I can't say that I don't want that to happen to me someday.
Guys, do any of you have zits in your noses? I'm thinking about getting some people together to talk about it.
Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and tag this with my name. To 100!
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
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