More random thoughts.

I only seem to use this thing when my computer isn't available and Facebook isn't working. I wish this was an effective FB replacement, but I haven't persuaded enough of my friends to blog. I got an Ello invite, so I'll see what's up with that here soon.

My laptop is doing some Windows updatey noise. It's been 15% complete since I started writing this. One of the things I hate about Windows is that it'll randomly interrupt you to restart and update. Just straight-up mess with your chi. Oh well.

I have a crapload of homework and real job-ish work. Still 15%. I don't go on your seedier goat porn websites, so I don't get computer HIV, but I'm sure you know best, Windows. Continues to be 15%.

Since this is probably a snapshot of my current life and I won't post for another month in all likelihood, I might as well tell you about my life these days. I'm teaching three classes in two days next week. We'll be learning about public opinion polling and primary documents. Not the first classes I've taught, let alone been responsible for. A lot of work all the same. And I have my own classwork to do.

17% now. Sweet Lordy hallelujah amen.

It's almost Halloween. I don't know what I'll wear, probably a couple things for different events, but I plan to be at the premiere of Poe Ballantine's new movie. Almost certainly the first and last time a movie of any note will premiere in Chadron.

Laptop's stopped doing Important Laptop Stuff and started rebooting normally. Gonna wrap this up and get back to work. Have a nice however long it's gonna be, folks.

My Alma Mater Is A Banana Republic

This is a recent op-ed I wrote for the Eagle. They declined to publish it, because they're worried about more political interference from the Student Senate, but I figured I'd post it here because it's important to push back against the hypocritical fascist bastards trying to shut down free speech on campus.

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution reads, in part, that "the freedom of the press shall not be abridged." The unifying principle of patriotism in America is not race, nor allegiance to a monarch, but allegiance to the Constitution; this is judged so important to the body politic that the military (including ROTC officers) are made to swear to "uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States." Thomas Jefferson, who knew a thing or two about the Constitution, famously said "I would rather newspapers without government than a government without newspapers."

Chadron State College's experience with both has proven the sage of Monticello correct once again, as the People In Charge try anew to forget that the Constitution was forged to bind them.

There was a letter to the editor last week regarding the propriety of a comic that joked about using Eaglecards to take drugs. The people whose job it is to promote Chadron State to prospective students got upset at this article, because apparently a tongue-in-cheek joke that upsets the authorities is going to destroy our enrollment figures. As we all know, the students thinking about coming here are going to see a joke about drugs, clutch their pearls and drop into a fainting couch.

Google, get your shit together.

Just spent like ten minutes trying to make Google sign me in with the account I actually use instead of the random account Viaero gave me for my phone. Should not have been this hard.

I'm at a show at the Broker, it's all right but I'm rocking beyond nowhere near enough reality right now. I'm trying to think of some way to be productive since I'm far too sober ATM, but this was the closest thing that came to mind.

I've played a lot of chess tonight, trying out Hikaru Nakamura's hyperdefensive strategy as white and the Sicilian Defense as black. I'm getting good at the former, but I get the impression that the Sicilian is hard to play well. My ranking for live chess has improved though... I'm about 1000-1100, only about 100 points below my non-live ranking.

What else... I've been sick since Labor Day. Wouldn't be out tonight except that my friends and I made plans. This is also why I haven't done a comic in three weeks. Well, that and the thesis.

That's coming along swimmingly, though. I made my first map for the thesis this week; just a map of central Asia before Genghis Khan started breaking shit. My advisor says it's pretty good. I've seen the fairly simplistic maps that predominate the field of Mongol studies; putting out something that's got more information while being prettier and easier to read shouldn't be hard. The background in art and geography is helping me a lot. I'll try to provide a pic for the net here soon.

Speaking of random stuff helping out, it turns out Draya spent her childhood riding a Mongolian horse, which is important because they are different from other warhorses. Not as strong or fast, but they can endure twice as much. Mongol strategy often involved pretending to run away and tiring the enemy cavalry out, and then attacking. Mongol horses aren't very common on this continent, so knowing someone who grew up handling one (and dating her, no less) is incredibly lucky.

Apparently one of Draya's relatives is a translator over in Mongolia, to boot. Which gives me heart about this degree, especially if I go on for the Ph.D. Even if I don't teach, I can almost certainly travel abroad and earn a living translating stuff. My Russian skills will help with that too, as they're next door. If I can somehow learn Chinese, I'd be set.

Anyway, enough rambling for now. Now that I, well, have an app for this, I may post more often.

The Legacy of the Region 23 Complex and Wellnitz Fires.

A full day of my life later, not counting the interview times.

Thanks for everyone who helped out, one way or another!

Lunar Eclipse, 4/15/2014.

^Taken with my Sony Cyber-shot just now, right outside my apartment on campus.

I would have completely forgotten about the lunar eclipse, except that I needed to dash to my car to get some tax information (yes, I waited until the last minute). On my way back in, I noticed the moon was red. So I woke up Draya, who has to work at 5:30 AM, to come see it. She agreed it was worth it.

Anyway, I have a friend in Scottsbluff who can't see it through the clouds, and friends in Scotland who can't see it period because it's morning there. So here's the best of the pics I took.

LA face with a Chadron booty.

Nate and I were hanging out last night, rocking beyond reality, and this song came on the radio. I'm a fan of the Dandy Warhols, but I didn't recognize this song. The jangly guitars at the beginning are supes trippy, and were the perfect end to a very odd night.

Yeah, might as well talk about that night. The Sigma Tau Delta (OMG THAT SPELLS STD!!!) open mics at the Broker have been ongoing since I was an undergrad, but they've been wrecked lately by a particular group of teenagers. We can't actually forbid them from coming, or playing, but we've tried to figure out controls to filter out the worst. Everyone can only do two works now, no sign-ups are allowed after 9:00 PM, and as of last night that seems to have worked. There's a couple people that get up and sing a cappella rather badly, people that read truly shitty stories (," stated James), but it's not as bad as it was two weeks ago.

This is important, because two weeks ago it was bad. Like, if 75% of all the performers were Creepy Dave bad. It was so bad that Nate, Shanda and I had running MST3K-style commentary on Facebook about how bad it was. We also resolved that at the next one, we were all going to deliberately suck. Nate was going to read the lyrics from Rebecca Black's "Friday" in the style of William Shatner, and Shanda was going to read the lyrics from "Ice, Ice Baby." And I? I was going to perform "Baby Got Back," a la the Jonathan Coulton version:

Moments Like These Make Facebook Kinda Worth It

The last post wasn't able to post because she blocked me after that. ^_^

An Academic Journey to a New World - Part II.

While writing that last post, I was casting about for some kind of image. I take it as a point of pride that I can usually find some manner of appropriate image for most of the posts I do. While I ended up settling on that drawing of Carthage I made (it's hanging in my bedroom to this day), my first thought was to post an image of one of those Carthaginian coins with the map of the world under it that was cited in the paper.

I found the website of the guy that postulates this particular theory well enough, but what I couldn't find was a clear image of the full coin. (That guy, Dr. Mark McMenamin, isn't even a historian as it turns out, but a geologist... so he's not speaking in his area of expertise.) Anyway, I saw the coin to your left, and I saw a detailed image with a section of a that coin that looked really detailed as well as an artist's rendering of that coin, but I haven't been able to find any other instances of the coin on the internet.

However, doing a search for Carthaginian coins wasn't fruitless. These are some examples of what I found, after the jump:

An Academic Journey to a New World - Part I.

When I was an undergraduate student, I took a class called "History of the American Indian." It was taught by Dr. Hyer, who at the time was Chadron State's newest history professor, and nowadays is Dean of the School of BEAMSS here.

Back in those days, the history faculty's approach to homework was mostly no-nonsense. You did a paper, and two tests. Depending on the professor, you might have a couple other minor projects or homework besides that. I like that philosophy - it doesn't waste anyone's time, and at the end of it all, if you paid attention and did your work you had something pretty impressive you could show people. (Which is what I'll be doing shortly.)

I have my own approach to homework - I don't want to bore my professors. In my World War II class, I wrote my term paper on Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut" because I was pretty sure Dr. Rankin had read a million papers about Hitler and the Holocaust and the Battle of Stalingrad already. There was nothing I could say on that score that hadn't already been said by someone a whole lot smarter than me.

But I could do unique, so I did. In this case, I chose to examine pre-Columbian contacts between the Old and New Worlds. Dr. Hyer suggested I limit my inquiries to only one possible pre-Columbian Old World society, so I chose what seemed the likeliest unproven candidate: the Phoenicians/Carthaginians.

This is something I'd read up on a bit. I'd always been an avid fan of Phoenician/Carthaginian history. When I was a little kid, I learned the Phoenician alphabet - it was probably my first act as a linguist. When I was in high school, I did a presentation on the Battle of Cannae, still studied in military colleges and considered one of the most brilliant military victories of all time. Also in high school, I drew that picture up top; it was supposed to be a representation of Carthage. I drew it from written descriptions and not pictures or maps; it has the Bursa and the two harbors connected by canal, and a statue of Dido.

Point is, I knew a lot about the subject. And I was fairly familiar with the arguments advanced in favor of Phoenician contact with the New World.

I am reposting my paper for that class, so you can all see what I wrote back then. It's after the jump.

HIstory Harvest Ad Final Take And This Time I Mean It.

After three different recording sessions, this is what we've finally got to broadcast. You'll hear it on the Alleycat and maybe some other stations if we get lucky.

I both love and hate the Bean Broker.

I love the environment, I love both their coffee and their tea, I love the people that come here to hang out, and I love the baristas. It's easily the best coffee shop I've ever been to.

I hate that sometimes I can't concentrate on what I'm doing. I've been trying to type an email to a professor for the past half an hour while fielding a conversation with someone that doesn't understand that my typing and staring at the computer screen means I'm busy. And I can't just say I need to focus; that'd be rude and for various reasons I can't afford to offend this person. But goddammit, I'm not and never have been one of those people that can multitask, and I can't ever come here anymore without running into this guy, so I have to kiss an hour of productivity goodbye every time I come down here.

If you see me at the Broker, please say hi. Feel free to challenge me to chess, invite me for a smoke, whatever. I value my friends and don't mind spending a little bit of time with them. But please don't spend an hour talking my ear off about the same stuff we talked about last time you ran into me here if I'm obviously busy. I'm a graduate student with very little free time... please respect that.

Da svidaniya.

I was complaining about the snow on my car when I left the Old Main this past Saturday, calling it "snowy bullshit" and my friend Vera took the liberty of writing it on my windshield.

She stayed with us for about a week. We met because my friend Nate dated her on and off for about a year, but she ended up being one of my closest friends. We both seem to have similar personalities.

Just got my grades for this term.

'sup.

Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.

My buddy Nate and I have been living parallel lives in reverse ever since July 2011. We've both noted this phenomenon, and with my move, the chapter has finally closed.

July 2011: I arrive in Fort Collins, Colorado on a Greyhound. After hanging out with a friend for the night, he picks me up and we hang out with his brother for a few days at a Rennfaire, and then go to Chadron, where I have a job offer with Wreckers as security for Fur Trade Days.

I'm functionally homeless for two weeks as I take out loans to get a house that I'll share with Nate. I'm crashing on his couch, or when he's got family visiting, in his backyard. His parents are nice and I do a lot of cooking to sort of earn my keep until the stuff I mailed from Portland to myself arrives and we can get a house.

In short order, we do get a house. Technically one-bedroom, the basement can easily serve as a second bedroom. We'll eventually make the mud room (think a garage that you can't park a car in) into a third bedroom. I get the actual bedroom, Nate takes the basement. We don't know this yet, but it will be infested with wasps in short order. We will have a "Bug Board" keeping a running tally of bugs slain by each of us; at last count he was leading 127 to 6.

Nate gets a car. The first time I moved to Chadron, it was for a girl. Her parents still like me, and her dad works at one of the dealerships, and he hooks Nate up with an excellent 2001 Buick with all the stuff for $1800. We have a house, we have wheels. I need a job. He's got a job cooking at the nursing home.

The stress of college life.

There's an ad trying to get me to play Naruteymans Z or something on the internet that I just saw on my Deviantart. I don't know why, in this era of targeted ads, they think I'd be interested. While it's true I play a browser-based game, and that I somewhat like anime, I'm not interested in kids' animes.

I'm grabbing ahold of that because that is the least, smallest, tiniest problem I have before me. I think that's the way to go here... ease into this. I just tried to take a sip of water, just to discover my mug is empty. Which reminds me that the office manager (don't dare call the lovely and capable Brenda Brown a mere "secretary" or you'll soon regret it; she really is the most useful person in the office, myself included) has gotten tired of people not pitching in for Culligan water, and has staged a strike. The water cooler has a call to action taped to it. Tragedy of the commons. I'm going to go get some faucet water, I'll be right back.

Coming back from that, I noticed a stress ball on my desk. It's got a smiley face on it and it was given to me by my Intro to Graduate Studies professor. I'm going to skunch him a few times before I continue. There, much better.

They want a campaign, and they're damn well gonna get one.

I'm going to be a candidate in the 2014 Student Senate elections.

I'm not eligible to run for President, and probably won't be eligible to run for Vice President. That's okay. What I want to do, I can do it from the Senate. And what I want to do is put an end to the corrupt government that currently dominates there.

Here's the situation. Last semester, Student Senate's Finance Committee was disbanded by fiat. Imagine President Obama having the power to disband the House Ways and Means Committee because he finally got sick of the Tea Party's shit. That's what happened here, except in this case the Tea Party was the good guys, and the guy doing the disbanding wasn't even elected. It was Aaron Prestwich, some hired CSC functionary, elected by nobody. The Eagle, which is our student newspaper, rightly kicked up a fuss and pointed out just how contrary this was to constitutional democracy.

Time to get grading done.

It's gotten better than the pic suggests, but this was basically me at the beginning of the semester.

I'm giving out a lot more 100%s these days, though; apparently my students are paying attention to the things I write. Their writing has also significantly improved, so my endless harping about it has gotten through.

Still, as the semester wears on, I have a lot less time to grade their work and do my own. It's maddening, a little bit. But I think I'll pull through.

Just got an article published in the Eagle.

Go check it out.

I complained about the "tuition fee" bullshit and explained, in great detail, just how much bullshit it was.

Snow and cleaning.

We're preparing to move. The first step of that, though, is preparing the house to be shown off, which could happen any time after I give 30 days' notice to the landlady.

The house is not ready to be shown off anywhere, except maybe an episode of C.O.P.S., so Draya and I are cleaning hard. We cleaned our bedroom last night, and today's the kitchen and maybe bathroom. Tomorrow's the living room. Sometime this weekend, the downstairs needs cleaning badly, and our roomie will have to either do it or get us to.

It snowed yesterday and last night, so we played some Christmas music as we cleaned. Loreena McKennitt's "A Midwinter Night's Dream" is a pretty spectacular Christmas album, and everyone should own it.

And with the snow comes perpetually wet shoes, which annoy me like little else. So I'm currently airing out both socks and shoes under my desk; I've got my office fan blowing on full power with the socks draped across it. Laugh all you like, but my shit's gonna be dry.

A bunch of important shit is coming due this week. I need to pick spring classes, first and foremost. Then I've gotta come up with a draft for my personal educational philosophy, and I've got to write a book review for my history class. I already did an assignment on experimental research for my intro to grad study class. I've gotta finalize my loan shit this week. And I chose this, of all weeks, to prepare to move.

Bleh.

This is some scary shit.

A professor in Wisconsin just got in trouble for telling the truth.

She required some US Census data for a class, and of course it wasn't available during the recent government shutdown. When a student asked why over email, she told the truth - that the Republican/Tea Party led House shut down the government.

And that little Tea Partying shitbag of a student took a picture of the email, sent it to Fox News, and it became the latest non-controversy controversy on their contrived news network. The professor was reprimanded.

But the fact remains the truth - the Tea Party wing of the Republican Party did shut down the government. That is so established that centrist news organizations like Time Magazine have reported it as true. Some of the classes I'm helping with are also teaching it as true, because it fucking is.

Turning academia into the latest front for partisan warfare - or more specifically, Republican partisan warfare (Democrats aren't doing anything, and generally the liberal-leaning academics go out of their way to embrace Republicans there) - risks damaging the institution further. We need colleges and universities to teach our kids the truth, and when professors risk professional danger to do that, in many cases they won't.