Wit & Whim

One of the greatest anxieties of my final months at school revolved around a very simple question: What the devil comes next? I had toyed with half a dozen ideas, but was not particularly optimistic about any of them. The thought of going back to school immediately I had simply written off. I did not want to be forever a student, never moving on to the next thing. I was ready to be productive, and I was weighing my options. My favourite was sitting the Foreign Service exam and becoming a world renown diplomat. I have not ruled it out entirely in the long run, but in the mean time, I cannot take the exam until February, and even then, only one in every hundred is accepted, and almost no one on their first try. So although it was one of my favourite solutions, it was not a short term answer to what I would do after College. Should I just sit on my keester for ten months? I think not. I could have stayed on at Penney's. I would have had a good shot at promotion, and it would not...

June is a long time ago. Since June, a great many things have happened. Some of these things have been major landmarks, others have been silly little things of no significance to anyone but me. Nonetheless, their passage has left me feeling as if this June were as removed from me as the distant past. I always tell myself, upon writing a blog post, that it was fun, that I always enjoy it, and that certainly now I will do it more often. I make a liar of myself. Writing is work, and no matter how well I enjoy it while I am in progress, the inexorable pull of my own laziness always makes itself felt when I next think about writing. Indeed, if you wonder where I found the strength to overcome my laziness and procrastination to start writing today, you may thank--or else blame--Emma. She is making me confront my inane excuses and get to it; good women do stuff like that, you know. The first minor event since I last wrote was that Andrew, Jenna, Emma, and I went to an Arctic Monkeys (A ...

There once was an old house on the side of Harrison Hill--which is not really a hill--and in that house there lived a boy, who was actually more of  a man than a boy. He lived in this house with his two brothers, his mother, and on certain special occasions, like weekends and holidays, with his father. They all lived there happily on the edge of the Thousand Acre Hood. But our story today, disappointingly, tells us nothing about the doings and such of the Thousand Acre Hood, nor of the many adventures of its inhabitants; it limits itself strictly to the a meager how-do and an update from the House on  Harrison Hill. You see, the hero of most of our stories recently gradumacated from college and received a really swanky piece of paper telling him that he was awesome. Let's face it; I already had some sneaking suspicions that I was awesome, but now I have the seal of an accredited university to make it official. The final tally had me graduating Summa Cum Laude in German and...

         I realize that research is never as interesting to everyone else as it is to the author, but for any who might be interested, this is the presentation I gave today. It represents an ultra truncated version of my original paper, but a fair portion of the most important elements are intact. I'll post my thoughts on everything else tomorrow.   In the wake of World War II, each of the Allied Powers envisioned an Austria shaped and governed by their designs and contributing to their interests. If independence were to return to Austria, it would be on a timetable and in a form approved by the Great Powers. For the Americans, the British, and the Soviets, the plan had been to occupy Austria, eliminate all traces of Nazi ideology, and then decide what “to get out of or make out of Austria.” But Austrian politicians and Diplomats were not content to be reduced to a puppet state, and swiftly consolidated behind a plan new to create ...

This will be the last spring I see at IPFW. The above will seem like an unimportant and insignificant phrase to many of you, but the reality is that I have spent a fair portion more of my life there than many of you could imagine. In less than a week, or so I imagine, I will watch all the trees burst into blossom for the last time. I will watch as the student body discovers that the air outside is indeed good for breathing, and I will watch the vast, unyielding, landscape of yoga pants bloom into booty-shorts with no intermediate stage. I  will watch the trees burst into blossom, and they will as gorgeous as they ever have been; even as they have grown more perfect each year since I first arrived. Campus has changed since my first year. New buildings have risen where there were none, new clubs and groups have formed to meet the social needs of the campus, the student populations has increased in number, and the trees have grown in a way that campus administrators only wish ...

America is not a nation fueled on Christian thought; it is a nation fueled on suppositions of moral superiority. You think my words too harsh? Think about it for just a moment. Gandhi, who was himself not the most innocent of parties, put forth the idea of Satyagraha, or the force of moral strength over physical strength in the world of politics. It is not necessary to be the greatest in numbers, nor to be stronger in either the ways of violence of intellect, but merely in the ways of perceived moral superiority; from there, mastery follows, because none dare act in the face of perceived morality. In Gandhi's case, he challenged British control, on the grounds that they were abusing the Indian peoples--plural, not singular--and were refusing the Indians self-determination, of which they were fully capable. At the same time, when Jinnah went to Gandhi and Nehru to ask for protection of the Indian Muslims in the face of Hindu majority, Gandhi rebuked him and told him to get hi...

Sunday morning began rather later than it normally would have for me. In one way, you could say that the reason was that I hit the snooze button eight times, after--of course--listening to the opening cadences of M.I.A. 8 times, but cutting it off before the acoustic guitar gives way to the electric. In another way, you could say that it was because I was--am?--a lazy bum, and just did not want to drag my carcass out of bed. To some extent, both of the above would be true. The real reason, however, is that I--and several unnamed accomplices--had just finished watching the last season of breaking bad at 2:30 the night before, and one does not simply slip off into gentle sleep after that. I will not say anything about the show here, because everyone should watch it and spoilers would be a bad thing. Without spoiling anything, I can say, it was really good. How good? I might just buy into TV as a potential art form; that kind of good. Anyway, my Sunday started late, and I took no pa...

I realize this exercise is not as exciting for everyone else as it is for me, but I feel the need to go through and do my beginning of semester overview, mostly to reflect on what I am into this semester; to organize my thoughts, don't you know. In the first part, on the surface, it comes to me that this will be an easy semester. Granted, I am taking 15 credits while I am taking on a full-time, or near full-time, load at work. Nonetheless, I am still not anticipating any issues. I suppose I should begin by confessing that I am taking two of the easiest gen eds on the planet. I am taking Physical Systems of the Earth and Weather and Climate. I am nearly blinded by the sheer ease of these selections; it almost does not seem moral, and I find myself questioning the choice, purely because it does not challenge me, at all. Although, I must also note that these were the ones that I could fit into my schedule, without having to add Monday classes: the lesser of two evils. The first ...