blakerson.com

So I've been here two weeks. And I still haven't been to one of my classes, but I'll review the rest:

-World Lit (English): I hate it. I hate hate hate literature, and I also hate hate hate the arrogant bitches who teach it. It's going to be a rough semester. The first problem was my choice of professor. I signed up for a woman named Elizabeth Scala, thinking it was the wonderful British woman named Elizabeth who I had met a year ago. Instead of a Brit, I got a short squatty Brooklyn native who's really full of herself. Oh, and it's a two-semester course. It's going to be a rough year.
-US History since 1877: My only regulars class is one of my favorites. The prof is a really neat guy named Stoff. He's got the approach to history I always hoped for and thought I'd never find: the little stories that don't get told in textbooks.
-Plan II Biology: Thank God, it's not another stupid memorization bio class. This goes light on the boring freshman year bio stuff and focuses mostly on current events, like ethics and current questions. The first lecture in the class was on the navigational abilities of birds. The next covered a lot of sexual reproduction stuff but the discussion session between described the link between cell phones and cancer (it's not entirely there yet, though possible).
-Logic: What a friggin cool class. It's nothing but brain teasers and complex rules that describe everything. My final will be tough (I have to invent a new language/process of logic) but I'm looking forward to the challenge.
-America from the Outside: Haven't taken it, but the prognosis is bad. The prof sent out an email assigning 45 pages of reading and a two-page paper due the first meeting of class. What's more, two of the three key perspectives on the country aren't even from the outside - they're from the Federalist papers and a modern pundit. Sigh.

All in all, I can't complain. The work gets done, I'm ahead of the class, and I still get plenty of time for fun. Life is grand.

OK, time to revisit the blog comment thing once more. YACCS has been down for a week and I assume it's going to be dead for good; if it comes back up again it won't last long. I'd install eNation but that system annoys me with its perpetual slowness - seriously, every time I post a comment to an eNation site it times out but the comment still gets posted. It's annoying. And no, I won't jump on the bandwagon and move to Movable Type, unless the UT webspace allows for scripting and database management (which is super doubtful). Anyone have any ideas?

Well, my Austin activities are interesting. While I'm finally getting some gaming on after close to two weeks in town (Halo's a pretty big thing in the Honors quad), what's more interesting and time consuming is the complete liberal brainwashing I'm getting. The other day, I learned that some friends of mine are big fans of Bowling for Columbine, and I got interested since I had heard so many good things about this movie. "It's not so much a movie about gun control," answered my new friend Robin to my assumption, "as it is about fear." And on the word "fear," everyone who had already seen the movie joined in in unison. "Well, good," I thought to myself, "I'm joining a cult. The Michael Moore cult. A cult welcome in Austin and hated in every other major city in the country." I still agreed to see the movie, assuming I'd get the same sort of wake-up call as everyone else and at least meet my hippie fate with open arms.

Thankfully, it wasn't a wake-up call. It had a lot of what I expected: a very convincing case for gun control backed by some convincing statistics (while Soph finds them one-sided, I find that Moore isn't the first to use such numbers: in fact, Bill Hicks had the exact same argument ten years ago and nobody listened to him while the numbers got worse). What I hadn't expected, though, was Moore's real point (and the source of the whole fear bit): Moore squarely blames the government and mass-media for inspiring a sense of fear in the people. And with Fry's selling gas masks and Washington recommending terrorism insurance, I find it hard to argue. I wouldn't have believed it until the Bush administration myself, but even Clinton followed the same pattern. One scene in the movie points out (but doesn't directly point a finger at a cover-up) that the day of Columbine was the day of the greatest number of bombings in the Kosovo military campaign - which notoriously hit civilian structures day in and day out.

And I realize why people think Moore's such an asshole: he's the single most confrontational man alive, hands down. The film finds Moore chasing down Dick Clark in order to ask him about welfare workers at a Dick Clark's American Bandstand restaurant in Flint, Michigan (which really wasn't necessary, as Moore already made a film on the subject). Next, he's at Charlton Heston's home harassing him about taking the NRA to hold pro-gun rallies in towns fallen victim to school shootings, where Heston simply gets up at one point and leaves. Finally, in the "Hey, ain't that cool" department, he brings the local press to K-Mart headquarters, asks for the CEO two days in a row, and ultimately succeeds in getting the store to stop selling 9mm ammunition - the ammo used in the TEC-9s owned by Harris and Klebold. And yeah, he's an annoying asshole about the things he does. And maybe K-Mart still sells ammo of different casings. But it's ultimately hard to argue that the man's doing bad things for the world we're in.

Now, to respond to Soph's rant on the movie:
-Yeah, Palestinians and Israelis die every day. But the reality of terrorism doesn't force them to stifle their culture - their underground Marilyn Manson wannabes aren't arrested and movies and video games aren't banned just because the terrorists play them. Moore's point isn't that death by violence is a bad thing - that's a fucking given - it's that in this country it causes mass hysteria every single time a tragedy occurs on our soil. You want increased national security to prevent those deaths? Great, but political theorists have *always* said since before the birth of this country that true security doesn't come at the cost of individual freedom.
-I agree entirely with the point that Dick Clark (and the government-subsidized workers at his restaurants) is completely unnecessary. Again, one of his first movies was about a town near Flint (or maybe it was Flint itself), home of the biggest GM plant until GM closed the plant. The movie covers the consequences for the town and for its people, and that complete sequence would have fit there. But harassing Heston is entertaining because he's such a gun nut - and the gun nuts are the reason guns are easy to come by in this country, hence increased chances of killings.

So, unless you're a gun nut, go watch the movie. Even if Moore's an asshole, it's comforting to hear Chris Rock propose that bullets should cost $5000 a piece. And if you are a gun nut, well, I'm wondering how in the hell you found this site to begin with.

After spending a bit more time here, I'm catching on more to the real vibe of this town and of campus.

-Finding my way around campus is awesome, because I'm catching on more quickly than pretty much any other of the freshmen I know. I'm always the one handing out directions. It's fun being navigator.
-I'm singing like... every day, and it's getting to be really fun when people say "Blake, sing something!" or Matt (this really incredible pianist guy in the halls) sits down and plays a song I know and I just bust out with something like "Your Body is a Wonderland." All I can say to being a singer is this: :D.
-Speaking of which, I made the UT Men's chorus, only to find that it conflicts with my Biology class, so I'm stuck with not being in choir for a semester. Probably for the best anyway.
-Living in a largely liberal town is really, really, really cool. Yeah, it involves a certain amount of sacrifice of the things I righteously earned, but after living it I can see it's well worth it to raise the general standard of living. And don't ask for examples, because all the benefits are intangible and unexpected. Either you get it because you live here, or you just don't.
-My brother's apartment complex clubhouse has free cookies all day long. I want free cookies dammit.
-I swear, everyone you walk past will make eye contact with you and smile if you smile first. How cool is that?
-Clarification: DT = drive-through. Sorry. Blame it on the sleep deprivation.

I'm still meeting new people left and right. This whole living in the honors quad thing is really, really damn cool.

Today was my first P2 activity - the first Voltaire's Coffee at Professor Woodruff's house, just a few minutes down 15th. 35 P2-ites crammed into his living room and talked about Long Day's Journey Into Night for three hours straight. After that, the P2SA pimps were nicer than I ever could have imagined. One of the Co-Prezes, Tricia, was there with her boyfriend Daniel and one of the officers, Melisa. So Tricia was nice enough to ride with me while I followed Daniel, driving Tricia's car, to the C lot so I could park over there. From there, the plan was to give Melisa and me rides back to our dorms, but instead I was invited to eat with them at Katz's - a popular deli on Upper 6th. I got along with those three really well - and they seemed to take a real liking to me and my somewhat bizarre opinions - and it was a feeling I hadn't had since I was adopted by Adam Odeh and Lucy Gloyna in my freshman year of high school. Hell, Daniel and Tricia even kind of resembled Adam and Lucy. So after getting back to the dorm at midnight, I spent some time outside, got bored, and came home to finally catch up on the John Mayer Road Journal (it's the closest I can get to taking daily lessons from the man) and get even more psyched for Heavier Things to come out - it'll be a whole new bunch of music to learn! yay!

Lots upon lots of girls here. But Josh hit the nail on the head when he said "competition is fierce." Girls I meet and get along with are getting chased around by weirdo guys the next time I see them less than 24 hours later. I started out doing the same thing just to keep up with the pack, and then I realized it's fucking retarded to follow a girl's every footstep. Give them some fucking breathing space, idiot dorm residents. But on the brighter side, I got a call from a friend from orientation who I'm getting along with pretty well. I spent a pretty big chunk of the afternoon with her and she's freaking sexy - not in the Marilyn Monroe sense but more like she's a great companion. I hope that pans out.

Choir auditions tomorrow. I'm really psyched to get musical again. Oh, look, it's Thomas paying the old DT a visit:

indigoreeds: pfft, spoony choirboy
snagger64: only straight guy in a room full of hot girls turned on by musicians, and you've got what going for you again?

Please drive through sir.