But you have to understand the context!

"She's like a helper monkey crossed with a parrot, with the social graces of a small biting rodent."

- how I just described my lovely 17-month-old daughter in an email to a friend

I only read it for the articles

Okay, if nothing else induces to read all ten pages of the New York Times Sunday Magazine's special report on the rise of the blog as the basic unit of political discourse in America, then by all means click on over to ogle at the provocative picture of Ana Marie Cox (aka "Wonkette"), whose mischievous pose at a GOP schmoozefest is worth the price of admission.

I know that The Jersey Exile is hardly up to the standards of Daily Kos, Eschaton, and the force of nature that is Wonkette, but I'd like to think that occasionally I muster up a nice bout of righteous indignation about the state of the world today. Lately, though, I've noticed that a lot of my political anger just isn't there like it was before. Maybe it's all the history being crammed down my gullet of late, reminding me that despite the gloom-and-doom predictions of the Left, four more years of George W. Bush won't end Civilization as We Know It. Good Lord, if two terms of Reagan didn't kill us all, nothing can!

And who knows? Maybe the best thing that could ever happen would be for the Asshole Prince to win this time around and actually be forced to clean up the total mess he's made of things - both here and abroad. We might even be treated to the delicious spectacle of an impeachment (even a double impeachment, for if Dubya is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors then Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney is ten times as prosecutable!), if the Dems can rally the troops and win back the House and Senate in 2006.

Maybe that's why in the end few if any people come to my neck of the blogosphere. because who on the Right or the Left wants to hear that no matter who wins come November, it's probably going to be okay. The sun will still rise, the moon will still wax and wane, and the Red Sox will still choke after getting everyone's hopes up for nothing yet again.

There is a certain optimism that can be gleaned from a pessimistic view of the world - I have an old T-Shirt from my rock climbing days that purports to be the property of the Fat Boys Mountaineering Club, whose motto is "Aim Low and Overachieve." These are sane words to live by. Maybe in the era of white-hot political brinksmanship we should all be striving to be less like Kos and Atrios and more like Wonkette, who may not change the world but who will get invited to all of the cool parties.

And in the end, isn't that what's really important?

If I could do it all again

No, you're not dreaming - that is a wedding cake made entirely of Krispy Kremes:



Perhaps my wife and I could renew our vows?

"It's 'The Love Boat,' only in a library"

In comparing our student schedule here at the Widener Circulation desk to the rotating special guest cast of The Love Boat, I was struck with an idea: why not write a pilot screenplay for an Aaron Spelling-esque treatment of an anonymous large academic library along the Charles River? I mean, what doesn't go on within the walls of a institution like Widener...

Marx make brain hurt

Is it fair to make a student read Marx, Engels, and Weber all in the same week? I guess I should just count my blessings that I'm not reading any of this in the original German.

And we fired Grady Little for what, again?

Remember how when our last manager got canned for losing Game Seven, the owners held up Terry Francona before Red Sox Nation as a shining example of someone who wouldn't keep our diva ace Pedro Martinez on the mound for one pitch longer than he should be there? In fact, I seem to remember that being Tito's only selling point over a manager with a winning record who had brought up closer to the World Series than anyone else at the helm since 1986. Francona wouldn't have left Pedro in, or so the refrain went.

Whoops. In last night's nail-biter between the Sox and Yankees, Terry Francona proceeded to demonstrate that it's a lot harder to walk the walk than it is to talk the talk as he, too, allowed Pedro to pitch for one inning longer than he should have and thus for all intents and purposes gave up Boston's last chance at wresting the AL East Divisional title away from New York.

Can't wait to see how the Boston Dirt Dogs react to this one...

UPDATE: Here it is!



"I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy. I can't find a way to beat them at this point. You just have to give them credit and say, 'Hey, you guys beat me, not my team.' I wish they would [expletive] disappear and never come back. "-- Former Ace Pedro "Sonny" Martinez

Calling Chief Brody

Just when I had convinced myself that it was perfectly safe to go bodysurfing along the chilly New England coast, my friends at Surfcaster.com share the news that a fifteen-foot Great White shark was spotted cruising the shallows around Martha's Vineyard. Yikes. Apparently the shark has gotten herself (the folks at Woods Hole determined that it's a female) stuck in one of the Vineyard's salt ponds; while she's busy finding her way back out, this real-life Jaws has become the island's main attraction, chased by local news helicopters and curious onlookers in their boats - thrillseekers who are stupid enough to get up in the grill of a Great White that hasn't eaten in days in skiffs that a fifteen-footer could capsize in a heartbeat.

The strange thing is that the more I see pictures and videos of the shark, the less I find myself terrified and the more I'm starting to feel sympathy for her. Whereas in Peter Benchley's Jaws an even larger shark was able to haunt the fictional Martha's Vineyard of Amity Beach without ever being spotted until it struck from the unknown depths, its real-life counterpart can't make the slightest move without a million eyes following it. The Woods Hole people even tagged her! How small and powerless such a creature seems now, when stalked by all the world...

Mind you, I'm still not going back into the water anytime soon!

An anniversary

I've been at the Widener Circ Desk for a year now, and wow, has my life ever changed since I added the evening and weekend shift here to my existing part-time stint down in Modern Greek helping with Cataloging. It's interesting to have gone a full academic year at a public service desk, as I think I've finally gotten a feel for the ebb and flow of Circulation traffic - and I have to say I like greeting the grad students and faculty from last year returning from their respective Summer sojourns.

What about Elmo?

An article on CNN/Money Magazine's website highlights an unusual metric for predicting the 2004 Presidential election:

It's as unscientific as it gets, but the theory, according to some people in the costume business, is that the winner in every election since 1980 has been the candidate whose masks were most popular on Halloween.

So far this year, Bush masks have been outselling those of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry by a 57 percent to 43 percent margin, according to one outfit, BuyCostumes.com, the online arm of Wisconsin-based costume marketer Buyseasons Inc.

I bet if Sesame Street's Elmo declared his candidacy, though, he'd mop the floor with both of them!

(link via Jason Clarke's Biggerboat)

The (pre) postseason begins

Tonight the Yankees come to town, leading the Boston Red Sox by four and a half games for the American League Division title. With ten games in the regular season left to be played, the arrival of the Pinstriped Menace to Fenway Park brings with it a palpable playoff buzz, as if we've skipped the rest of September and the month of October entirely and gone straight to the World Series itself. Pedro Martinez will take the mound for the Old Towne Team, facing New York's ace hurler Mike Mussina - after a couple of shaky starts, will Pedro be able to regain control and lead the Sox to victory?

The frightening thing is that no matter how this series and the rest of the season goes, Boston is at this point almost assured a berth in postseason play (both Anaheim and Texas are presently six games back for the AL Wild Card). It's like getting two playoffs - but I wonder if can Red Sox Nation hcan andle sitting on the edge of their seats not once but twice this Fall...

Another day, another 'Dear John' post

There's nothing more sad, really, than a blogger's ultimate post. Despite the multiplicity of voices that this form of expression enables and supports, when a once-enthusiastic self publisher of the Information Age hangs up his or her hat the format is remarkably similar, resembling a cross between an obituary and a breakup note:

Part One- The Restatement of Blogosphere Cred: "When I started blogging, you noobs didn't even know what a 'blog' was."

Part Two- The Inevitable Mission Creep: "I started this blog as a place for my id to run free, but now all I get are angry emails/comment spammers/a feeling of dread whenever I let this place go for 24 hours without posting."

There's a variant to Part Two (The "Andrew Sullivan Wannabe Clause"), in which bloggers who really thought they'd be able to support themselves through online donations are given a rude awakening after several months of paying ludicruous bandwidth overage fees and with no one purchasing them even one item on their Amazon Wish List.

There's another variant to Part Two (The "Neil Pollack Invasion Clause"), in which a writer in between paying projects becomes enchanted with the blog format, only to leave it gasping for life when it becomes evident that he or she is giving away free intellectual product.

Part Three- The Recounting of Good Times: "I'll never forget when I totally Fisked that piece by Bob Novak; or remember when everyone put 'Fair and Balanced' on their mastheads? That was cool."

Part Four- The Exhortation to Keep Fighting the Good Fight: "Even though I'm giving up on blogging doesn't mean you should, too. I mean, who am I going to read if everyone bails?"

Part Five- The We Can Still Be Friends Bullshit Closing: "While I may post here from time to time in the future, don't count on it. I will, however, keep the link to my Amazon Wish List up-to-date, just in case."

Actually there is something more sad than a blogger's ultimate post - a blogger's penultimate post, warning of the inevitable ultimate post, such as the one Tom Tomorrow's blog has been sporting for a couple of days. I mean, it's bad enough that you'll be leaving us soon enough, but can you at least wait until you're actually leaving to break the news? Or is the advance warning a kind of cry for affirmation: convince me that what I'm doing here isn't a waste of my time and energy and I'll keep the bloggy goodness coming - for a few more months, at least.

I dunno. It's not that I blame people for abandoning the medium. But is tossing a new post out every day or so really all the hassle that some bloggers make it out to be? Neil Gaiman seems to find the time for his blog, despite the fact that he is nothing less than a God On Earth (tm) these days, so even the successful contracted writers shouldn't get an easy pass on this. Starting a blog is like buying a houseplant - all it really needs is regular watering and a fresh plant food stick every fortnight and it's going to thrive, or at the very least not die. And yet how many of us manage to kill even the hardiest of the vegetable kingdom through ignorance or neglect... or resentfulness, as even the barely-palpable tugs of responsibility that a ficus tree or a blog entail come to chafe over time until they become intolerable and force a drastic decision to be made that in the end benefits neither the blog/plant or its owner.

All right, maybe I do blame people for abandoning the medium! Just water your danged blogs, people - is that too much to ask?

Confessions of a Diet Coke drinker

Matthew "The Comments Are Turned Off For Your Own Protection" Yglesias has a problem, only it's not what he thinks it is:

Walking home through Shaw from a friend's house I happened upon a small store on 10th and S advertising soda and beer. I thought I'd stop in and pick up a Diet Coke. A pointless, but amusing, anecdote ensued:

Hanging outside was a black guy who queried, "whatchoo doing?" as I headed in. "Buying some soda." Then I walked to the soda fridge and saw nothing but regular Coke. So I walked out. "How you gonna walk into a store, then walk out, and not buy nothing?" "Well," I said, "they didn't have what I wanted."

"What's that, fancy boy?"

"Just some Diet Coke."

"You think you're too good for me?"

"No."

"Fuck off, man."

So I did. Ah, gentrification....

Matt's anecdote, amusing a vignette it may be about the ever-rising tide of young professionals in the big city and the changes such a demographic is ringing on the old neighborhood, is perhaps better read instead as an addict's cry for help. You see, Mr. Yglesias has an eight-hundred pound gorilla on his back - an urge to consume Diet Coke so overwhelming that it sends him trudging through the inner city from bodega to bodega to "score" his "fix" of the artificially-sweetened beverage.

We can only be thankful that Matt wasn't "jonesing" so badly for his carbonated elixir of choice that he didn't fly into a berserker rage and open up a 8-ounce can of whoopass on the poor African-American gentleman who was clearly attempting to give him a gentle reality check about his addiction and what it was driving him to.

Matt, you're in a safe place, among friends here who care about you. Admit it - you have a problem. Diet Coke is well-known to be the drug of choice for information professionals - blogger's heroin, they call it. Brave and self-aware individuals online such as J.C. Clarke have already owned up to their out-of-control Diet Coke consumption and sworn to break the habit - surely you can do the same. Haven't we already lost enough of our finest minds to aspertame and caffeine?

Food, folks, and fun

This post is going out to fellow blogger John "Rev" Tynes, whose joyously gluttonous foodie dispatches remind me of my salad days in the kitchen when I was courting my to-be wife with night after night of homecooked goodness. Allez Cuisine, Rev. Allez Cuisine!

So this afternoon my wife and I finally had a chance to entertain my best friend Mark and his lovely wife Cinda for the first time since they were married in late May earlier this year, which meant I had a legitimate excuse to go to the grocery store and spend on one blowout meal what I normally do to feed the household for a week. And this one was indeed a blowout: orange and celery salad with walnuts, Sicilian cracked olives, chicken sausages with roasted garlic (the only thing I didn't prepare from scratch myself), a fresh fava bean frittata, and baked tuna steaks with shredded potato and red onion. The overall theme was the cuisine of Sicily, as I'd acquired this wonderful cookbook about Sicilian food a couple of years ago and never had an occasion to cook out of it... until now. Its recipes and beautiful full-color photographs are finally spattered with just enough olive oil and lemon juice to consider the tome "used" as far as cookbooks go!

I also made some hummus, a tradition that goes way back when having my best friend - another amateur gourmet and first-class gourmand - over for dinner or vice versa. At the time we were both on a hummus kick and thus always began our meals with a plate of pita wedges and a batch of homemade hummus, usually with enough garlic in it to alter one's state of consciousness. Over the years I guess the tradition just stuck, and some ten years or so later we're still chugging along with it: while Mark has been more or less refining his hummus down to one perfect strain, I tend to experiment as wildly with the form as I can get away with, swapping the chickpeas for black beans or cannellini for instance or tossing in all manners of tasty additives. Today's hummus was the classic garbanzo-and-sesame tahini variety, only with a roasted habanero chile thrown in for kick. And kick it did, though there was just enough raw garlic in there to provide a counterpoint to the incendiary little hot pepper that is one of the hottest naturally-occurring ingredients known to Man.

The beverage of choice was a six-pack of Sam Adams' Hefeweizen, which is quite good this year and actually met with the approval of Mark, who is not only German but takes his Hefeweizens in particular very, very seriously. There was a bottle of Sicilian white wine chilling in the fridge, but we never got to it; instead, I brewed up some coffee and Mark and Cinda shared with us some of their homemade strawberry ice cream, which was as delicious as it sounds. A delightful meal! I love having an excuse to pull out all of the stops, even if it means having to wash every pot, pan, dish, bowl, and spoon in the house - not to mention eating ramen noodles for the rest of the week...

Remains of the day

I said it last year, and I'll say it again now - out of all of the things written, said, or sung about September 11th, 2001, this poem of Ani DiFranco's is the only one that even comes close to capturing the reality of that awful day:

yes,
us people are just poems
we're 90% metaphor
with a leanness of meaning
approaching hyper-distillation
and once upon a time
we were moonshine
rushing down the throat of a giraffe
yes, rushing down the long hallway
despite what the p.a. announcement says
yes, rushing down the long stairs
with the whiskey of eternity
fermented and distilled
to eighteen minutes
burning down our throats
down the hall
down the stairs
in a building so tall
that it will always be there
yes, it's part of a pair
there on the bow of noah's ark
the most prestigious couple
just kickin back parked
against a perfectly blue sky
on a morning beatific
in its indian summer breeze
on the day that america
fell to its knees
after strutting around for a century
without saying thank you
or please

and the shock was subsonic
and the smoke was deafening
between the setup and the punch line
cuz we were all on time for work that day
we all boarded that plane for to fly
and then while the fires were raging
we all climbed up on the windowsill
and then we all held hands
and jumped into the sky
and every borough looked up when it heard the first blast
and then every dumb action movie was summarily surpassed
and the exodus uptown by foot and motorcar
looked more like war than anything i've seen so far
so far
so far

so fierce and ingenious
a poetic specter so far gone
that every jackass newscaster was struck
dumb and stumbling
over 'oh my god' and 'this is unbelievable' and on and on
and i'll tell you what, while we're at it
you can keep the pentagon
keep the propaganda
keep each and every tv
that's been trying to convince me
to participate
in some prep school punk's plan to perpetuate retribution
perpetuate retribution
even as the blue toxic smoke of our lesson in retribution
is still hanging in the air
and there's ash on our shoes
and there's ash in our hair
and there's a fine silt on every mantle
from hell's kitchen to brooklyn
and the streets are full of stories
sudden twists and near misses
and soon every open bar is crammed to the rafters
with tales of narrowly averted disasters
and the whiskey is flowin
like never before
as all over the country
folks just shake their heads
and pour

so here's a toast to all the folks who live in palestine
afghanistan
iraq
el salvador
here's a toast to the folks living on the pine ridge reservation
under the stone cold gaze of mt. rushmore
here's a toast to all those nurses and doctors
who daily provide women with a choice
who stand down a threat the size of oklahoma city
just to listen to a young woman's voice
here's a toast to all the folks on death row right now
awaiting the executioner's guillotine
who are shackled there with dread
and can only escape into their heads
to find peace in the form of a dream

cuz take away our playstations
and we are a third world nation
under the thumb of some blue blood royal son
who stole the oval office and that phony election
i mean
it don't take a weatherman
to look around and see the weather
jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks
and boy did he ever
and we hold these truths to be self evident:
#1 george w. bush is not president
#2 america is not a true democracy
#3 the media is not fooling me
cuz i am a poem heeding hyper-distillation
i've got no room for a lie so verbose
i'm looking out over my whole human family
and i'm raising my glass in a toast
here's to our last drink of fossil fuels
let us vow to get off of this sauce
shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
and find that train ticket we lost
cuz once upon a time the line followed the river
and peeked into all the backyards
and the laundry was waving
the graffiti was teasing us
from brick walls and bridges
we were rolling over ridges
through valleys
under stars
i dream of touring like duke ellington
in my own railroad car
i dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
in a grand station aglow with grace
and then standing out on the platform
and feeling the air on my face
give back the night its distant whistle
give the darkness back its soul
give the big oil companies the finger finally
and relearn how to rock-n-roll

yes, the lessons are all around us
and a change is waiting there
so it's time to pick through the rubble, clean the streets
and clear the air
get our government to pull its big dick out of the sand
of someone else's desert
put it back in its pants
and quit the hypocritical chants of
freedom forever
cuz when one lone phone rang
in two thousand and one
at ten after nine
on nine one one
which is the number we all called
when that lone phone rang right off the wall
right off our desk and down the long hall
down the long stairs
in a building so tall
that the whole world turned
just to watch it fall

and while we're at it
remember the first time around?
the bomb?
the ryder truck?
the parking garage?
the princess that didn't even feel the pea?
remember joking around in our apartment on avenue D?
can you imagine how many paper coffee cups
would have to change their design
following a fantastical reversal of the new york skyline?!
it was a joke, of course
it was a joke
at the time
and that was just a few years ago
so let the record show
that the FBI was all over that case
that the plot was obvious and in everybody's face
and scoping that scene
religiously
the CIA
or is it KGB?
committing countless crimes against humanity
with this kind of eventuality
as its excuse
for abuse after expensive abuse
and it didn't have a clue

look, another window to see through
way up here
on the 104th floor
look
another key
another door
10% literal
90% metaphor
3000 some poems disguised as people
on an almost too perfect day
should be more than pawns
in some asshole's passion play
so now it's your job
and it's my job
to make it that way
to make sure they didn't die in vain
sshhhhhh....
baby listen
hear the train?

SELF EVIDENT
Written, performed & produced by Ani DiFranco
From the album “So much shouting, so much laughter”
© 2002 Righteous Babe Records Ltd


Peace.

Olympic withdrawal

Oh, it's here big-time now. Just when my wife and I had grown accustomed to being greeted by gorgeous aerial views of the Acropolis and the mountainous Greek countryside before a recap of the day's events every evening, it's gone. Bye bye, 28th (Modern) Olympiad - we'll pick up the conversation again in Beijing come the Summer of 2008, provided China doesn't go and do anything stupid in the meantime... like invade Taiwan. And of course there'll always be the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, but unless you really, really like figure-skating - or curling, my personal favorite frozen "sport" - it just isn't the same.

At any rate, I won't be missing the Games so much as I'll be missing Greece, a place I still haven't been to yet, although having devoted most of my adult life to Greek language and literature and having married an actual Greek! All of that is set to change next August, however, as I've been invited to give a paper at a conference that will be held on the slopes of Mount Pelion to honor Harvard's own E.A. Sophocles, about whom I've written extensively here on at The Jersey Exile. While I can only hope for the best as far as those arrangements working out, meantime I will mourn the ending of my virtual fortnight in Hellas, although I'm pleased as punch that the Greeks ended up defying the critics and naysayers and delivered an Olympiad worthy of their ancient predecessors. Kudos to the pundits who later apologized for their lack of faith - the best of these mea culpas can be found in many places online, including here.

All in all, it was a great summer for Greece, from the fairytale victory in the 2004 Euro Cup to an almost perfect Summer Games. Too bad the Fall isn't promising the same kind of magic thus far for the Greeks - the celebrated national team lost its first World Cup qualifying match against Albania, 2-1, and then only managed a draw against their archnemeses the Turks this Wednesday. Granted, Greece still has another seven games to go over the next year and half's runup to the 2006 Cup in Germany, but it's a dispiriting start nonetheless. Maybe it's all the celebration that's been going on in the country. Once the confetti has all been swept up and tourists all leave, perhaps then coach Otto "King Otto" Rehhagel will be able to whip the Greeks back into respectable fighting shape once more (as he did before).

Two games back

Dare I believe?

Reaping what he's sown

So much for the post-convention bounce - just a scant week after the conclusion of the hatefest that was the Republican National Convention, the incompetent incumbent ("the incumbetent?") saw the triumphant reports of his double-digit lead over Kerry in some polls swallowed by a spate of natural disasters and human atrocities: hurricane after destructive hurricane slamming into the Florida coast, the Chechen school standoff and its bloody aftermath, even the news of former President Clinton's impending quadruple-bypass heart surgery. Now Dubya faces a shitstorm of his own making, as fresh and potentially damning inquiries into his spotty National Guard service have resurfaced and are - take a deep breath - being aired on such mainstream news outlets as 60 Minutes this time around. Last night's story on CBS provoked another release of previously "lost" documentation from the White House which more or less confirms what most of us suspected all along - that our "War President" failed to meet his obligations while serving in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War and only garnered his much-touted honorable discharge in the same manner as he got his plum noncombat fighter pilot berth in the first place, i.e. by pulling strings and using his father's political clout.

And now comes Kitty Kelly's tell-all about the Bushes titled The Family, which alleges that our born-again, clean and sober hero of September 11th was snorting cocaine at Camp David while Poppy was President, if her sources are to be believed. Primary source Sharon Bush, the former wife of George's cousin Neil Bush, has since backed off her initial assertions, but as Karl Rove and his political smear machine know all too well at this point, the average American never reads the retractions, which is why the ads floated by the Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth" hurt Kerry's approval ratings as well as they did. Well, what's good for the gander is good for the goose; let Rove and company do some damage control for a change as their golden boy is exposed as the substance-abusing, draft-dodging compulsive liar that he is. No wonder Bush is trying to wriggle its way out of one of the three scheduled debates against Kerry before the November elections - his campaign is literally hanging by the thread of self-delusion that the GOP rank and file need to maintain in order to stomach backing this born loser for a second term. Even the normally unflappable Dick Cheney has resorted to base scare tactics in order to keep the electorate in line, insinuating earlier this week that if Kerry were to be elected, the nation would almost certainly be attacked again by terrorists (Cheney insists that his remarks were taken the wrong way, but he knew damned well what he was saying, and what kind of an effect such comments would have less than sixty days before the election).

Will the people allow their fear to overlook the simple fact that over the past four years the Bush Administration has done nothing but careen from disaster to disaster, and will almost certainly do exactly the same if (re)elected to office? Or will sanity prevail and the United States of America take its first step back from the brink and onto the path of civilized behavior in early November? I guess we'll find out soon enough!

Reading

A bit of fiction before the deluge of readings for my history class begins: The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, by Steven Sherill. The story is exactly what the title suggests, a tale about the celebrated Minotaur of Greek mythology and his quest for a life with meaning, which eventually finds him working as a short-order cook at a roadside greasy spoon in the Deep South. I'm only about a hundred pages into this novel, which was Sherill's first (he has another out just this year, Visits From the Drowned Girl), but I'm enjoying it immensely. I haven't read much fiction since I began writing myself again, and now when I do read it I catch myself lingering over certains turns of phrase or particularly vivid descriptive passages, admiring the workmanship of a fellow craftsman. I think I'll finish reading this before I throw myself back into "Confessions" - not only on account of Minotaur being an excellent read but mostly because I want to recharge my creative self with some positive energy before getting back to my own writing. I know that the act of putting pen to paper or in my case stylus to touch-screen can be therapeutic, but the events of the past couple of weeks aren't something I necessarily want to be working out in my novel. There's enough of that in there already!

Fortune cookie

"Your luck has been completely changed today."

Sounds good to me!

Give me something to sing about

Still attempting to process the emotional bolus that was stuffed down my throat by the events of the past week. Any one thing would be bad enough on its own, but being forced to multitask in this regard is simply not fair. But seeing as the universe is not bound to fight by the Marquess of Queensbury rules, it's probably best to learn to roll with the punches and maybe get a return kick to the groin in here or there when God drops his guard. It's times like this when I'm glad I'm a committed theomachist, or else I might feel guilty for thinking such blasphemous thoughts.

I will return to the matter of my friend's death when I can do the matter justice - it is not fitting to discuss it in dribs and drabs, only when traffic here at the Circ Desk will allow. As for my mother, she appears to be unharmed physically by her accident, although that's cold comfort for someone who was already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from a previous car accident. Again, this is something I'd rather not discuss, if I can't discuss it at length; besides, my mother's story is far more complicated, and that story doesn't belong here at The Jersey Exile (although I reserve the right to attempt to capture it in an essay someday, if only as just compensation for providing a sympathetic ear through difficult circumstances).

Something I will agonize about here and now is whether I should get my Masters degree in History or not, as the first week of classes at Simmons is fast approaching and I have to make a final decision that will commit me one way or the other. I am literally of two minds on this issue, and I bounce back and forth between the yeas and nays so quickly and arbitrarily that my wife has refused to talk about the subject until the Fall Term begins and my choice is made for me. Whereas yesterday I was hell-bent on jettisoning the History component as being overly time-consuming and unnecessary considering my almost-Masters in Classics, now I'm reconsidering. Maybe it's working here the desk that undermines my resolve: I sit here all day and check books out to hundreds of students and faculty in the discipline I'm planning to eschew and I wonder if I'm not making a big mistake in doing so. Isn't the reason why I chose the double degree the fact that it would allow me to dip my toes back into academia proper? Library science courses may be engrossing, but at the end of the day they're different animals than the graduate seminars I was taking at Boston University in Greek and Latin literature. Of course there was a lot of bad with the good back then, but I find myself missing the atmosphere of free-range intellectual inquiry nonetheless. Can I really live without it for the next few years? Should I live without it?

At any rate, I will have made my decision within a week. Right now I'm leaning towards the double-degree, and not just because it's the path of least resistance. Maybe the reason why I'm angsting so much over this issue is that in the end it is a trivial one - much more enjoyable to fret about than family matters or departed friends. Here I am able to afford myself the luxury of wallowing in indecision, like Schrodinger's Pig, soothing my troubled soul with a cool mud-bath of uncertainty.

p.s. Okay, I do have something to sing about. Yesterday I took my daughter to Crane's Beach in Ipswich for the very first time and we made a marvelous late summer's day of it - I built a sandcastle and she and the incoming tide destroyed it, we frolicked in the surf, and Andriana chased herring gulls, sandpipers, and the occasional poor and unsuspecting boy. The wonderful thing about having a child is that you always have a reason to go to the beach, even on the darkest of days.