As I was about to roll out of town for the ~4 hour drive to Chicago, I visited the library, in a last ditched effort to listen to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire before the movie comes out in November. They didn’t have it. Dang. Well, I still needed something to listen to, so I just browsed.

I saw the audio version of Ann Coulter’s book How to talk to a Liberal (if you must). I had seen this book on some best-seller shelf a while ago, and thought “Woah, apparently I should know who this person is”. So, I thought I should learn more. Of course, here was my opportunity, and I didn’t really feel like it. After all, my real goal here was to ease the lonely drive, not to educate myself on current public figures. If it was bad, annoying, etc., what was I going to do?

I kept browsing, and then found Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men. To be honest, I never thought I would read this book. Although Moore is certainly a hero to many of my friends, and while I certainly am more inclined to agree with him on political issues than I am someone like Ms. Coulter, he is not a hero of mine… I find many of his tactics offensive, and many of his fundamental ideas don’t appeal to me at all…

But, I thought, maybe I should try an experiment… I’d get both of these books on tape, and then alternate listening to them. They represent what most Americans view as the far, opposite ends of the political spectrum, so much so that I think many people on the left and the right don’t really want to be associated with the one people might naturally associate them with. So, I decided to go for it, also picking up In the Time of the Comet by H. G. Wells, in case I couldn’t take it.

Well, basically, I couldn’t take it. I did make it through one tape of each one on the way up there before it just got to be too much, though, so I’ll say a bit about the first couple of chapters of these books and what it was like to listen to them “side-by-side” like that.

Oh, and before the start, in case it’s not obvious, I’m aware that I’m biased in this review, so if you’re tempted to write and tell me that I’m biased, don’t expect a reply.

The first chapter of Coulter’s book was certainly more annoying than what followed. I think the most troublesome thing about it to me is that she talked about liberals as if they are all exactly the same, so if Ted Kennedy did something wrong, then so did I, because she would consider me a liberal. Some of her assertions made me laugh out loud, like that liberals won’t engage in a real argument but instead will only focus on a catch phrase like “Bush Lied”. I can’t help but wonder if she can’t tell if a liberal will argue or not because she wouldn’t give them time to speak. I imagined myself on a talk show with her, and had trouble imagining how I’d be allowed to get a word in edgewise. The official amazon.com review summarizes some of her advice as “don’t be defensive, always outrage the enemy, and never apologize to, compliment, or show graciousness to a Democrat” and while I can’t say that’s an exact quote, I bet she’d think it was at least a fair summation. She offered a few examples of how some Democrats had been rude to Republicans who had shown graciousness. I agree that some of those were rude, but I was not at all convinced that this was the rule rather than the exception.

What’s certainly more striking — and, I must say, more interesting — about her writing is her actual positions on some of the issues of the day. It’s a bit hard to tell her position sometimes, because she is mixing humor with political commentary, which doesn’t bother me, but it’s sometimes hard to tell what’s hyperbole and what’s her actual position (turns out there doesn’t appear to be a website called “ihateanncoulterwithahothothate.com” (I tried google and several variations in case I was remembering it wrong, but I certainly couldn’t find it. If someone can correct me, I’d be most appreciative), but if there was, I’m sure she wouldn’t be seriously believe that the author was trying to present something unbiased).

So, for instance, I bet she doesn’t really think that the US should invade France… Like, I don’t think she’d support sending actual American troops to France and actually trying to topple their government. But, it doesn’t matter, because this is a good lead-in to what I have to say that’s positive about her: she presented a nice, thorough argument for why France is not a good friend to the US. I don’t agree with her, but I do respect her for presenting a historical account of all the ways that she thinks that France has hurt the US. During the whole “Freedom Fries” thing, with right-wing Americans pouring french wine down sewers and stuff, I took it as very simplistic frustration with France opposing the Bush administration’s intent to invade Iraq. Coulter’s presentation certainly made more sense than anything I heard anyone say at the time. I could say the same thing, actually, about the case for invading Iraq: I listened to most of Colin Powell’s speech before the UN, to all of Bush’s “Cincinnati” speech talking of the urgency of going into Iraq, and read/heard countless essays advocating that position. None of those made as much sense as Coulter’s presentations. So, nice work, Ann.

But, at the end of the day, I do not feel bad about not ascribing to her feelings about how to deal with Islamic nations: “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” I don’t recall any lip service in what I heard to respecting Islam, or that the majority of Muslims are not terrorists. Her case really seems to be that we should irradicate the religion, not by killing all Muslims, but I guess by killing enough of them to control Islamic countries, and then deliberately converting them to Christianity. No, I don’t see that as good. I believe in the freedom of religion, not just for Americans, but for everyone. Furthermore, I do not see the survival or prosperity of the United States as being fundamentally threatened by this religion. And, I guess I just need a really good reason to think that we should be risking American troops and overthrowing other nations. So, I guess I’m definitely a liberal to her. For this, according to her, I hate my country (I even hate homosexuals!) and I don’t want to engage in reasoned debate. I don’t know, maybe she’d make an exception for me. chuckle

Ok, after finishing the first tape of Coulter’s book, I put in Michael Moore. It’s a difficult comparison. I think Moore is probably just as set in his ways as is Coulter, I’m not sure I could say which one is more fundamentally biased. But, the parts of Moore’s book that I heard were much more about bashing the Bush administration specifically, not conservatives in general.

I liked both books best when they were being specific, and the least when they were generalizing. So, Moore went into detail about his understanding of how the Bush team won the 2000 election illegitimately. I don’t know if all of his facts are true or not (I suspect that at least some of them aren’t). But as with Coulter’s France presentation, I appreciated that he was at least presenting a thorough case. And, what can I say, I do think there’s real reason to question the legitimacy of that election. But, hey, that’s ancient history at this point.

I admit that I listened to more of Moore than of Coulter… it is really difficult to listen to someone insult and belittle you for your beliefs and those of people who you associate with. I’d be much more inclined to hear people like Coulter out if I didn’t have to feel like I was being whipped at the same time. But, she’s not writing to me, she’s writing to people who already hate liberals. Perhaps this is why it doesn’t feel like real political discourse.

And, of course, that exact same criticism is true of Moore. I don’t know how many conservatives actually sat through Farenheit 9/11, but if they did, they knew that this movie was not made to get them to defect from the GOP… it is an opinion piece, created for people who are already inclined to agree with the author. Stupid White Men is the same way. So is How to talk to a Liberal.

My favorite part of what I head in Stupid White Men was Moore’s talk about black Americans. It was definitely not the standard Democratic party line, or any other standard line. It was quite a bit different than any treatment of the issue I’ve ever heard. Thought-provoking.

Well, anyway, the end of the story is that as I entered Chicago it was time to turn on the radio to hear the results of Patrick Fitzgerald’s news conference, which turned out to be the indictment of Libby, who subsequently resigned. I actually got to hear a good deal of the actual news conference, which totally triggered my “CSPAN Syndrome” (the feeling I get when I’m seeing original political sources live). I loved it. Compared with what I’d just been hearing, it sounded so… calm, so rational, so predictable in its reason. I didn’t feel like I was trying to be convinced to believe something, I felt like I was hearing a report on something. Patrick Fitzgerald did a great job dealing with the press, I thought, giving very consistent answers and refusals to answer all of their questions. I also thought the press did a great job of probing him, trying to get a sense of the things he didn’t want to tell them about.

So, what can I say? I prefer to learn about politics in less venomous ways. I don’t think many people are stupid. I don’t like being called stupid, nor do I like people calling people I disagree with stupid. I do like the American political process. I like it when the press presses politicians for information, and I like watching politicians handle these encounters with grace. I like hearing political opinion, too, but I definitely prefer it when it’s presented civily rather than with lots of belittlement of others in the public debate. But, I guess, in the abstract, I’m glad that it all exists. I just know what I prefer.

Haven’t written in the blog since a week ago, which made me wonder what I’ve been doing. Well, one obvious thing is that I just got back from a Fri-Sun trip to Chicago, to attend the wedding of my friends Brooke Davies and Darren Schmidt. I thought “Oh, I could write about this” and “Oh, I could write about that” and the thisses and the thats sounded like good things to write about, so I will. But, they don’t really relate to each other that well, so I would like to do them as separate posts.

Which brings me to the “meta-blog” aspect of this post: I kind of want this post to be like an introduction to the next few. The only way I can imagine doing that is to keep changing the post time on this one. Otherwise, you’ll see the ones I write afterwards first. I guess I could save them all as drafts and then post them all when I’m done. But, I don’t like that… I like to put up little bits every day. So… Idk. I guess you’ll just have to get the introduction after the chapters. Sorry! shrug

Now that I have my new turntable, I’m able to listen to selections from my vast vinyl collection again. I recently found myself singing Cinema Show a relatively well-known song from 1973, during the Peter Gabriel era of Genesis. I have a live version on the album Seconds Out, so I played that the other day. Yeah, wow, good tune.

Anyway, today, while I was eating lunch, I was singing it in my head, and realized that I didn’t know all of the lyrics, so I figured I’d check the web. Naturally, I had no problem finding the lyrics. I had most of them, including “take a little trip back with Father Tiresias”. But the key line I was looking for was the following statement, being attributed to Tiresias:

I have crossed between the poles, for me there’s no mystery.
Once a man, like the sea I raged,
Once a woman, like the earth I gave.
But there is in fact more earth than sea.

Yeah, ok, what the hell? The real words I was missing were “I raged” and “I gave”. But, learning the words didn’t really satisfy my curiosity.

Well, thanks again to the World Wide Web, I also had no problem finding out more about Tiresias. I certainly recognized the name, I’m sure I knew it from studying mythology in high school. I probably would have been able to remember/guess that he was a prophet. But I certainly didn’t know that he had spent time as both a man and a woman, and lost his sight by agreeing with Zeus that sex was more pleasurable for a woman than for a man. Hera, who learned with this information that she had lost a bet with her esteemed husband, struck Tiresias blind.

So… woah. This song is apparently a poem about sex being better for women than it is for men…. with an apparent comment that it’s because women are “giving” where as men are “raging”. This has really changed my understanding of the song, to say the least. I wonder when, if ever, I’ll be able to hear/think about the song without having to wonder if sex is a matter of “raging” for me as a man (I’ve certainly never thought of it that way), or whether being “giving” in sex brings one more joy. Or whether it was that way for Zeus and Hera. Or whether it’s fair to say that earth “gives” while an ocean “rages”. Or…

The inspiration to blog about this was not because of these particular questions. Rather, it was because I was struck again by how interesting it is when one’s understanding of a song can change suddenly when one learns the actual lyrics. Much has been made of the misunderstanding of song lyrics, but in this case, I didn’t have any of the lyrics wrong, I just knew I didn’t exactly know all of the words. I was really close, but just a few holes in my understanding, combined with an incomplete knowledge of the mythical character involved, made me pretty much not get the point of the lyrics, even though I’ve known the song (minus a few words) quite well for about 20 years.

OK, that’s not all that deep either, but what do you want? It’s just a short post to a blog!

Regular readers of this blog (HAHA!) were probably concerned (HAHAHAHA!) about the dangling stories about two bits of Internet shopping I’d done recently. Both are resolved now, so I figured I’d just finish those stories up really quickly:

First there was my turntable that came with a broken needle. The eBay seller was extremely upstanding, and made sure that I got a brand new cartridge to replace the broken needle (he couldn’t find a seller for a needle without the cartridge). This almost certainly means that he lost money on the whole deal, so I definitely respect him for doing the right thing. Thanks. Anyway, I’m listening to some 1970s Genesis on vinyl as I type this. Just what I was looking for. It’s good to remember how much 7/8 can rock when done well. Anyway…

The other issue was my kitchen shelves which arrived just before an email that said that the seller had rejected my paypal payment. How strange. A few emails to them were ignored, and finally I decided I’d call them. I did, and after fumbling a bit with the explanation (”no no, I have the shelves, but as far as I can tell you never received payment from me for them”), they took a credit card from me and the matter was finished. A day or two later, I received an email from them gushing with thanks for my honesty. That’s nice. I guess it’s something like honesty, but I think they should have thanked me for my tenaciousness. If the phone call hadn’t worked I would have given up. Anyway, it worked, I got my shelves, they got their payment, all is right with the world.

Quick review: about what you’d expect from a 80’s era “broadway opera” about neurotic modern-day New Yorkers dealing with the complexities of life and romantic relationships.

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Like most of my geeky friends, I’m darned impressed with google. They clearly have some incredible brain power at all levels of their organization. They do lots of good stuff, useful stuff, they are making a name for themselves by making steak, not just sizzle.

However, I caught a glimpse of them looking like a plain old annoying company this week. The issue was with my gmail account. I’d been receiving a whole bunch of copies of “returned to sender” mail. Apparently my address got used in a huge spam mailing or something, or maybe in a virus or something. Whatever the case, definitely a super-human number of these things, like, in the tens of thousands. This wasn’t me or anyone else sending mail that got returned, this was some computer issue.

All of my email gets delivered to two mailboxes, and curiously my HoosierNet mailbox didn’t get flooded with these things. Maybe some of my filters there caught all of these, but I don’t know. But I did see a lot of them being delivered to my gmail account last Friday.

Well, Monday or Tuesday of this week, I was having some trouble with my gmail account, and I noticed that it said something very much like “You are currently using 2655 MB (100%) of your 2656 MB.” What?? Now, I get a LOT of email, and I never clean it out of my gmail account, so I’m accustomed to there being like 550M or so up there. But….? Woah. Apparently those returned-to-sender messages were worse than I thought!

So, I figure, I just need to delete them. Should be a no brainer, right? Search for ‘mailer-daemon’, and delete all the results. WRONG! There is no “delete all the results of this search” feature. wtf? I mean, every mail program has that, right? If you can figure out how to do a mass “select” then you can do a mass “delete selected”. Not gmail. You can only delete one screen at a time, which seemed to be 20, if I was looking at search results (even though I set my preferences for 100 on a page… search results are still 20. I might be missing something, but I can’t find it if so).

Figuring that this was just crazy, that those smart-apples at google certainly thought of this, and want to make it easy for me… I searched the documentation. Nope. As with so many documentations, it answered lots of questions, but none of them were about this. They did link me to a web forum type place where lots of people were complaining about gmail. Gotta hand it to them for that. But, yeah, there I found lots of people complaining about the exact same issue… no mass delete.

So, I ran through the motions one more time, but decided it was time to contact them. Like lots of websites, they first scanned the question that I’d entered and showed me a bunch of links for help pages that might help. The links were pathetic. They were nowhere near what my problem was. I mean, they seemed just like an average company, but if I worked for google and knew that the world viewed my company as the company who made sense out of web searches, I would be embarrassed to look like such a sluff on this search.

So, I submitted my question. I got an automated response almost immediately, again suggesting that I check out some help pages. I replied and said that they didn’t have anything to do with my problem.

A day or so later, I got a reply that said that they didn’t have a mass delete feature, but thanks for suggesting it, and they are working on it.

The point is not that this is horrible. It’s not that google is evil. The point is… this seems so… typical. Google is the company that my friends and I keep marvelling at that they do everything so well and don’t hand out the typical crap. Well, this seemed like totally typical crap. No worse than average, but if Google ever seems average, they will probably go bust immediately. Their whole business model is based on being better than average. They seemed average at best in this case.

Ok, whatever. I decided I’d delete many screens of the dumb messages and at least try to free up a few MB of space. I did… it was very slow, but I probably did about 1000 conversations. And, when I looked down… 555MB used (20%)! Woah! I don’t know if one of those conversations was a bunch of replies to itself and actually had 10,000 messages in it or what… I wasn’t paying close enough attention. However, I had a working gmail account again! Yay!

As glad as I am to have it working again, I still have to pause and think… “If a HoosierNet customer wrote to use with a similar complaint, we would have temporarily upped their quota, taught them how to mass delete things, and offered to do the mass deleting for them if they seemed confused.” To think that our podunk Indiana nonprofit ISP is offering better customer service for this particular kind of problem than is the mighty Google… hopefully it’s just a soft spot for them and not a harbinger. For all that I love about them, I certainly do hope so.

Well, who knows how related it is, but I was at least forced to consider the possible negative implications of “doin’ it all”. On Sunday night I ate my vegan version of “spaghetti and garlic”, the ground-beef version of which my dad used to make on Sunday evenings when my mom ate popcorn. Anyway, when I was going to bed (early, I was very tired), I felt like I had a piece of flat parsley (featured in the dish) caught in my throat. I couldn’t get it out. shrug I went to sleep.

I woke up with a peculiar sore throat. It pretty much went away during the morning, but I still felt pretty out of it on Monday. I still thought that maybe I was just tired from my exerciseful and otherwise busy weekend. But, I did a lot of blowing my nose and sneezing on Tuesday and Wednesday, and today I’ve been coughing. All a pretty normal progression. I certainly can’t say I’ve been miserable, but I’m pretty sure that I had a mild case of something.

So, maybe doin’ it all can lead to a depressed immune system. Even if that’s true (which is questionable, I mean, I might have just gotten sick) I have no regrets. It was a fun weekend.

And another is coming up!

Matece, Michael V, and a few other people I know all drove down to LEAF this weekend. Jan K was also going down from Urbana. Emily and Casey both live down there, and were also very excited about the event. All of them encouraged me to go too. I definitely considered it…

But, it turned out to be the weekend that everything happened. The Hilly Hundred being the big one, but Saturday was also the night that Ira Glass was speaking at the IU Auditorium, and the night of the Eroticon. Tad then scheduled his housewarming/pumpkin carving party for Friday night, and just to round things out, Mark R invited people over for soup on Sunday afternoon (which I thought was a courtesy to the Hilly Hundred riders, but I don’t actually know how much that motivated him).

Well, I decided that since I didn’t go to the dance, I’d better make sure to have a really good time doing all the things I could this weekend. Ok! So, my motto became “doin’ it all!”

It got off to a bad start when dinner and conversation with Kynthia lasted much longer than either of us really intended on Friday night. We almost missed Tad’s party! But there were still several people there when we got there, and it was fun. But, I didn’t want to drink a lot or stay out late, since I was scheduled to pick up Erik at 8am, so we were only there for a short bit. Some other people there certainly were drunk, though!

Saturday, I picked up Erik. We rode to indy together, so this was our second experience with long distance cycling together. I think we’re a good match for each other. I think I slow him down a bit, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and we have good conversation and otherwise seem to be good company for each other. Amy N went with me last year, but bailed this year because she had a wedding in MN. Sad! But oh well…

The ride went really well. According to my bike computer, we averaged well over 13 mph both days, which is far better than my typical 12 (it may not sound like much, but it’s probably a 10% improvement over last year). But, what was more striking was that I just wasn’t that phased by any of the hills. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly treated several of them with due respect, I thought a lot about strategies for getting over them and certainly had to cope with a lot of difficulty. But, almost without exception, I finished every one thinking “that didn’t seem as bad as I remembered it being”. My only theory on why is that the biking I’ve been doing has just resulted in me being in better shape/better conditioned, which is nice to think about… but so much so that I hesitate to believe it because I know I’d be biased towards believing it. But what? The size of the hills didn’t change significantly so… shrug

After Saturday’s ride I took a bath, talked with Sue, went to dinner with Kynthia, and then raced to the Audirium to see Ira Glass. It was good. I didn’t know what to expect, but he basically just sat and chatted about doing the show and what he thinks about it and stuff. He did an amazing job connecting with the audience, giving us all (if I may speak for everyone) the feeling that we were his friends and he was excited that we were willing to let him expound on his opinions for a while. I left feeling like if I passed him on the street, he’d recognize me… which is ridiculous of course, but that’s the feeling I got.

Of course, I’ve got my mild issues with him and his show. I was glad that he acknowledged that they should have a greater variety of background music. His descriptions of the formulas and tricks that they use in producing the shows were very much in line with a lot of the things that I’ve noticed about the show, I found it a wee bit odd that he was just unabashedly admitting to us how formulaic and “tricky” they are with it. I am a bit bothered by that kind of thing, but he obviously isn’t, and indeed seems to think that all journalism should be done that way. Of course, all journalism is formulaic, so what’s my beef? Not much, but I guess I’d like to believe that information could be broadcast in a number of effective ways that didn’t all follow some formula. Anyway, this isn’t supposed to be an entry about my opinions on those things, I’m just talking about my weekend.

After the talk, Kynthia took me to her house where I picked up my car and went home to get ready for the Eroticon. I had decided to go, but as partial compromise I’d decided I wasn’t going to spend lots and lots of time on my outfit. “Just throw on a dress and go check it out” is what I said, again thinking that I shouldn’t drink much or stay out late. So, that was the goal. I chose a dress that Sue had gotten as a DGP possibility, but that was beaten out by another possibility. A bit hard to imagine, because it was a nice dress, and I thought it fit me well. I wore a red “tissuey” scarf and that was about it… Oh, I had a funny pair of cheap but “fashionable” black flip-flops that I wore, which was good because I was worried about what shoes I might wear. The were too small, though, so they bothered my feet a bit.

The event was good! Lots of people there, which was nice because the last couple similar events were not very well-attended. I saw a number of people who I know (and I’m not going to try to list them in case they don’t want their attendance broadcast on the ‘net) but mostly hung out with Renee and Jeremy and some of their, uh, circle of friends. I like them, it was fun. And I did a good amount of chatting/dancing/flirting with other people. I was glad I went.

I stayed out just a bit longer than I’d intended, but I was in bed before 2a. At about 7:45 I woke up, two minutes before my alarm, and started getting ready to go. My socks and pants that I had hand washed hadn’t dried yet, which I was disappointed in because I’d hoped that the synthetic fibers would make them dry that fast. Alas. However, they did both dry incredibly quickly in the dryer. Like, less than 5 minutes. Very dry. Impressive.

Not much too different to say about the Hilly today. It was fun. I guess the biggest surprise was a rift in the usually flawless organization of the event. When we got to the lunch break after riding 28 miles and climing well over 1000 feet of hills, there was no food there! Some logistical problem resulted in the food being late. I don’t know the details, but would sure like to know what happened. If anyone reading this knows, please share! Anyway, as I suggest above, I typically think of the organization of this event as exemplary for anyone planning any major event, and this one problem is not going to turn that opinion upside-down. Still, it cannot be denied that it was a blemish on their previously (for me at least) spotless record.

But, other than that, the Hilly went well. I’m still amazed by one hill very near the end that just doesn’t look like a hill. Surrounded by farm land, it really feels like you’re on level ground. But, just as with last year, I was getting totally demoralized feeling like I was pedaling really hard and just not getting anywhere. However, it turns out that this section is a hill, similar in many ways to “water tower hill”, which is just after it (check out the Sunday elevation profile and you’ll see the two hills right near the end) and which we all respect greatly for being a difficult hill to climb. So, yeah, it’s weird. So, even though I was trying to convince myself of that, it was still demoralizing. Ironically, I felt much better as I trodded very slowly up water tower hill, just because I totally felt like I was on a hill.

Anyway, we finished the 51 miles of today’s ride in 3 hours and 45 minutes of biking, which felt like great time to me. It was shortly before 2p when we left the road. I gave Erik a ride to the School of Informatics and then headed over to Mark R’s for the soup/party. I was the first one there, which was surprising to me. The only other people who came were Ann and Nancy from Urbana, also fresh from the Hilly. It was fun to see them and to compare notes on the ride. And Mark’s straw bale house is really cool. And, as Ann and I independently observed, the soup really “hit the spot”! Great thing to have after the ride. I was pleased.

I came home, talked with my mom on the phone, and took a bath. Now I’m winding down and will go to bed early, aiming to be to sleep as shortly after 10p as my body wants to sleep. It’s been a busy weekend! But, I’m finding recently that I’m enjoying being busy. As much as I like being alone, it feels good to my psyche right now to feel like I’m doing lots of things. Of course, some of the things that I do are alone, not social events. So, it’s not the being with other people as much as feeling like I’m living life with lots of energy going in to cultivating joy. There are many kinds of joy, so it makes sense to do many types of things to experience it.

Quick review: Shouldn’t there be more to “intelligent drama” than setting a play in two time periods at once and talking a lot about science and literature?

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Quick Review: I’m surprised that a film as creative and as artistically made as this would leave me with so little to say.

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