neverending math equation

we had a camp out of sorts in convo mall yesterday, which took me back to 2003, and my introduction to politics.

i regret not being on the board this year, but i don't regret not running. stepping aside was healthy, in a personal sense. it helped to further clarify everything, really.

i've become deeply fascinated by the developing midterm congressional elections in the US. we're still three months away. joe lieberman could lose the democratc nomination in connecticut.

i was floored by the campaign video of jim talent, republican senator for missouri. an incumbent senator in the party that holds both houses of congress and the white house is running on an anti-washington platform. it's ludicrous. i still believe that jim green and co. would have won the municipal election had they run an anti-city hall camapign, however. jim talent understands his base better than the left in vancouver does. NPA=status quo. if you say 'keep a good thing going', you elect the NPA. jim should have campaigned to continue the insurgency.

mojave 3 and phoenix will be here in the same week this september. the 24th and 26th, i believe.

a swiftly tilting planet

notes:
+ i've got exactly seven courses left in my degree. three more upper division political science courses and four more upper division history courses will give me 123 credits, a history major with a north american concentration, and a political science minor. i can do three courses this fall, three in the spring, and one next summer. next summer will give me breathing room, in case there are any snafus. next week i will declare a polisci minor and drop my labour studies minor. it's strange; i feel that there is so much more that i should know before graduating.

+ three beers currently come in stubbies: red cap, red stripe, and phoenix gold lager. i like the latter best. it's got a gorgeous retro label and it's tasty too, unlike red stripe and red cap. we played canasta last night while drinking, variously, lemon rum, gin, rye, and beer. i've never had rye whisky before; it tastes like candy. so sweet. my favourite tonic water is the superstore house brand; i think it is 'president's choice'. the safeway house brand and schweppes are lousy. canada dry is ok. in any case, i prefer plymouth gin.

+ amanda and i walked into CJSF today and got ourselves a radio show! we'll be doing segments, possibly leading to full hosting duties, of 'sfu news and issues' this fall. finally, an outlet. maybe i'll finally try to start a music show too while i'm at it.

+ we went through the residences today, and i got all nostalgic for my summer in shell house. that was three years ago. 2003. wild. it changed the way i see the campus.

+ my mussolini paper is now late, but i've got very little (aside from 25% of my grade) invested in it. i did get 35/40 on my internationalisation paper, which equals 87.5%. i failed to investigate the history of the conception of 'trade in services', whioch would definitely have added a lot of meat. i've got about four of the 10 pages i need for the mussolini paper, and can fill at least two up with the moderate/maximallist/hardline tensions in italian socialism from 1919-1924. then another page or two on the technocrat/populist/peasant/industrialist/bourgeoise tensions within fascism over the same period. maybe i'll fill a page with quotes of mussolini hating socialists. he made several speeches about it.

+ five years later, the doha round of WTO negotiations has collapsed. no one seems to care! guys, this was a big deal in 2001; they moved to qatar specifically to avoid protests and media coverage. in a sense, it's smart that we aren't celebrating:
see, in multilateral negotiations, there's always someone who can jam the system, which is why the doha round has put multilateral liberalisation of trade "somewhere between intensive care and the crematorium", to quote india's minister for trade and industry. multilateralism is being replaced with bilateralism, which is far more closed door than the WTO ever could be. the left went from strong systemic criticism of international trade regimes to hipster bicycle fetish parties. what the fuck? the drive to make make social change fun so that people will want to join in has turned into an 'up with people' celebration of our own awesomeness. i miss bill clinton. we didn't hate him; we hated what stood behind him. now we all hate bush so much that we're ignoring the machine.

these early days

washington was wonderful. learning about different organisational cultures is always fun, as is being in towns that i've never seen before. i'd like to spend a lot of time in washington state. i'd like to spend a lot of time everywhere.

delillo's players finally kicks in about halfway through. he starts talking about terrorists and global capital and computers and it's all wonderful. currents of invisible life. waves and charges.

in a recognition that i do, in fact, live below the poverty line, i've spent the last several days downloading a lot of albums from soulseek.

• the millennium, begin (1968) - lovely soft/sunshine pop album. curt boettcher arranged a lot of the association's more ornate stuff. thi is kinda up-with-people, but i really love that. touchstones!
  
• the association, anthology (1960s) - more lovely sunshine pop, less ornate; the geeky indie version of the 5th dimension.
  
• everything but the girl, idlewild (1988) - solid and wonderful adult contemporary. my vinyl copy is worn out! the other, less skilled but more honest side of swing out sister. 'the night i heard caruso sing' is about the cold war, and the little things that help people get by! it's all detail.
  
• luscious jackson, fever in fever out (1997) - who knew! this is a really super album. i also really enjoy the 1999 semi-hit 'ladyfingers'. i listened to 'naked eye' all day on saturday. i understand why people mock this band, but, again, i've separated myself from the decade-old hype and it's a really nice album!
  
• jobriath, jobriath (1973) - the biggest gayest glam star that never really made it. bowie was ambiguous, but jobriath was just really gay. morrissey is a big fan! i can hardly handle it all. gospel and swagger!
  
• the pursuit of happiness, love junk (1988) - super cancon power pop. i've been playing guitar along with all of the basslines. i requested the replacements, 'bastards of young' when moe berg was DJing at the tap, on bloor st in toronto, and he played it. that is my moe berg story!
  
• sonic youth, rather ripped (2006) - somehow, i've never ever listened to sonic youth. justin was playing this at the peak on friday and i really enjoyed it. gorgeous guitar sounds; 'incinerate' has a wonderful pace.
  
• modest mouse, this is a long drive for someone with nothing to think about (1997) - not sure why i've never heard this before. i have been listening to lonesome crowded west a lot lately.
  
• bread, the very best of (1970s) - soft soft rock. i love everything.
  

i miss aspects of my old job a lot. i miss having authority and backing. telling people that i could take care of something, or arrange to have something raised at the appropriate point, or the ability to have a positive influence over my community. a lot of it is ego. when my term on the co-op board is up, i'll be out of a functional governance position for the first time in several years. i'll still have senate, and NDP committments. i imagine i'll just dive into those a little more. i do love high level decision making, though. it's a comfort zone for me at the university now. i have to remember that these are still early days. the question of the large v. small life is still weighing. early days. i don't know what could possibly be on my polisci final exam, because the course is really just about how things are. the current of invisible life - transnational flows of currency. little green numbers on boards. shipments tracked by satellite. a stock portfolio. my stock portfolio. i explained mao II today as being about the supplanting of novelists by terrorists in the world of ideas. white noise is about the fear of death, but also about academia. hitler, as a cipher for total unimpeachable meaning, is just a token, a lifestyle, a field of study. nothing means anything. or, everything means everything to everybody. cans of food in supermarkets! labels!

i listened to scott walker on repeat at the peak on friday. i'd be working, then stop and just stare at the stereo.

progress board

for anyone who was curious, my paper, "the collision of internationalisation and privatisation at sfu" is finished at about 3600 words. it's not bad, i guess.

i'll be up in about 4 1/2 hours to go to washington state. it's been a good day.

let me lead you into love

we've moved. it's an adult house. an upstairs, a downstairs, a courtyard/patio, a real kitchen, laundry. we got a new bookshelf and it is already 2/3 full. it's nice to be surrounded by books and records again. i can feel stress rolling off of me. an 8 month move, man. we're not quite organised, but almost enough to feel settled. from our windows we can hear the skytrain in grandview cut and the signal at the crosswalk telling blind people that it's time to go.

i'm stalled at 1200 words now, and i'll be having jan deliver my paper to the polysci depertment on wednesday for 5% off in late marks. this lets me work all day at the library tomorrow. i had to come home early today, and was only at the library between 12 and 5, due to a 7.30 co-op meeting. since 2003 i have been doing the bulk of my paper writing at the library, and it really works for me. i invariably meet caelie there, but it's ok because we're both working on papers, albeit of different scales. we provide each other with mutual decompression.

i'm not stuck, just stalled. i write in chaotic chunks. i'll leave paragraphs unfinished, and jump around, so that any time that i get stuck on the phrasing of a certain thought i can jump to another. it's a strategy for maintaining momentum. there's always a thought to finish. i can't work at home anymore. there's just too much else going on. books. so many books.

working vacation this week; a trip through central washington with university administrators and some student society teammates. i think they hate me. the latter, that is. it makes for a funny dynamic, feeling distrusted and disliked by fellow students but comfortable and freewheeeling with administrators. we're spending the night in ellensburg. ellensburg has the highest number of coffee cafes per capita in the world. 34% of the 15,000 residents are below the poverty line.

i have a book titled nuclear choices. it's a not a metaphor, though it easily could be. is it a double entendre if the second meaning is merely the first-as-metaphor? i was trying to work last night, and ended up reading pieces of nuclear choices and vancouver: from milltown to metropolis. see, this is becoming a definite problematic.

my bicycle is in the courtyard, which will certainly incline me towards running smaller errands on it. when i have to fetch it from a different space, it feels like an adventure rather than daily life. i rode to and from the baseball game with rich and his friend aaron on saturday night. our team went from 0-3 to 4-3 in the bottom of the eighth! such excitement. baseball makes me want to read don delillo.

sean is coming back this fall. i hope that we'll do a lot of hiking together. he'll be for me what i am for amanda. we have to get her to my level so that sean can help us both.

internationalisation in post-secondary education. GATS. globalisation. institutional drivers. IBT. i'm using my own meetings this spring as references for this paper. i'm writing about my own work. it's exciting, in a sense; this is the only the second paper i've written that i feel is actually a contribution to our collective knowledge. no one else has written this paper with these sources. no one else has done this work in this context. i know this for a fact. now i am excited. tomorrow, when i'm working at the library, i'll keep that going as a mantra. thousands of people have written about world war II, mussolini, communism, and every possible combination thereof. very few people are writing about internationalisation in post secondary education. even fewer are writing about it in the BC context. even fewer are writing about SFU, and none of them, as far as i know, sat on senate or SCUP during this spring's IBT discussions.

capital flight

i went to the walk-in clinic today to get help for my finger, which is infected. it was all puffy on the side, with a nice spot of pus beside the nail. the doctor recognised it right away, and i was out within five minutes. after picking up my prescription, i checked the active ingredient in the sleep aid 'nytol'. yes, it was diphenhydramine again. i.e. the same agent is sold under two different named with two different uses: benadryl for allergies and nytol for sleeping. i also seem to have developed an incredible sensitivity to medical situations. i didn't faint, but i nearly did. it was a delayed reaction; i made it in and out before i felt the effects, but they came on hard when i got to safeway to fill the prescription.

i've been preoccupied to some extent with the concerns of jack gladney in delillo's white noise, esp. around the effects of consumed agents. the horrible intertwining of my chance encouters with, say, benzene, and my ultimate fate as an individual. will my death be any more than the sum of my ingested chemical traces? flashing stars. nyodene d. myelx. i'm looking forward to reading libra. i've had no urge to read past 60 pages of players, though. i'm enjoying rules of engagement; it's better than minus time.

i've left myself 3 days to write this paper. tomorrow i will be moving, all day. on friday i will be peaking all day, with the exception of lunch, when i hope to meet pauline at the highland pub. can i pull it off? probably. i met my neighbour liz today, who said 'ah, whatever; that's 16 pages. the introduction to my thesis was longer.' her thesis was about non-verbal pain cues. i.e. how humans express the level of pain they are experiencing through non-verbal cues. there are lots of applications, from accurate WCB claims to identifying instances of systemic racism in emergency rooms. i love hearing about people's enthusiasms, esp. when they are guarded about sharing them.

some words: thixotropic. isostasy.

joni mitchell's the hissing of summer lawns has become completelty inseparable from family road trips to eugene, oregon. there's a huge overwhelming sense of the unreachable to this album as well. court and spark, blue, don juan's reckless daughter, and esp. hejira do this to me as well. an intense nostalgia coupled with a severe mystery. would i be happy holed up in a cabin with my record collection and library? yes, for a time, at least.

food technology. the profession of 'food technologist'.

rifles in their hands

i've finished minus time, and may move on to rules of engagement, also by catherine bush, next. i started it today; it's really good, again. 40 pages in, it reads as definitely more mature than minus time. helen was unquestionably still growing up and sorting her childhood out. arcadia has her own life. it seems as though this novel will address my long-standing concern with polisci students; they learn all about how the world works, but consider themselves all to often 'above the fray', too studiously removed to treat actual politics with anything more than a curious disdain.

on sunday we went to lynn headwaters and hiked all day. we've got good stamina. with water and snacks, we could do something more serious. as it was, we chanced giardia and cryptosporidium by drinking from norvan creek. it was delicious. i've been skeptical of the 'most liveable city' title, but i felt it on sunday. this city is beautiful. perhaps we will go to belcarra next week? or a hike on top of buntzen lake?

i got quite drunk off of several gin and tonics. in fact, far more drunk than i should have been. i attribute it to the exercise and dehydration earlier in the day. maybe i had a parasite after all? i was mixing them in a bombay sapphire bottle again, which feels so wonderfully classy. it's a gorgeous colour.

we really will be moving. we spent some time in the new townhouse tonight and it is very nice. i can sleep well thinking of how to lay out my den and organise my bookshelves. the kitchen is beautiful; new everything. beaonca, who moved out, left us two frozen pounds of ground beef and a 2 litre jar of sauerkraut. we will eat the beef but will happily send the sauerkraut to a good home. maybe we will have a sauerkraut party? we've got a gorgeous washer and dryer setup as well. it feels like a place where adults would live. the courtyard will be fine, if a bit barren. perhaps a housewarming in august.

i simply can't focus on my polisci paper. i'll try again at school tomorrow. i can't feel the crunch, the pressure. i'm hoping that moving will kickstart me. 4000 words; 6 days. only preliminary research done so far.