Fear and Loathing in Somerville

This morning I woke up and noticed a pretty significant amount of snow on the ground. So I hit up weather.com to see just what was going down, and found that not only would it be snowing all day, but there was a SEVERE WEATHER ALERT. Then it hit me - maybe Emerson'll be closed today! I hit up the website - "Emerson College will close at 4:00 pm."

Well HELLS YES, right? I mean, I have class from 2-4, but at least I don't have to work my 4-8 shift. Right? RIGHT?

Wrong.

For reasons beyond logic and...reason...here I sit, where I sit every Friday, and I get up and walk around every fifteen minutes to check up on five labs, two of which are being used by a combined three people. The other three...completely empty. Of course they are, though. The College is closed.

Anyway, the good news for me is I have somewhere (here) to vent all this, and the bad news for you is that you feel compelled to read it, even though the whole time you're saying to yourself "mmhmm...yeah...well, okay...that kinda sucks...what?...oh, okay."

I do wish I had something of substance to write about, something that could take my mind off this wretched shift and entertain the masses.

Well, there's this - remember how in the last post I was like "blah blah blah lunar eclipse blah blah blah it's cool but I wish I didn't have to be afraid of getting knifed blah blah blah"? Yeah, well, I said it. Check it out. So last night around 10:30 I was walking home from the grocery store with my roommate Gray when he suddenly said "dude, walk quickly."

There's only one reason anyone says this when walking around a city at night. So in addition to quickening my stride, I kept an eye on our shadows, conveniently located in front of us, to see if another one would join. We got about a block when Gray said, "All right, we're good. That guy totally had a knife. Like, out. He was just holding it."

And that'll be the last time I take the "peaceful route" at night. It's all main drag from here on out!

The worst part is that if Gray got stabbed and I had to call 9-1-1, I don't think I could say for sure if we were in Somerville or Cambridge at that point. Of course that wouldn't happened. Because we would totally take the would-be-stabber.

Heading for the Light

As struck as I was by the lunar eclipse (I don't recall having ever seen one before, but when I saw it I probably stared for a good two minutes before I realized I was really close to a bunch of dark alleyways and it was like 11:30 on a weekday), that wasn't even close to how weird it was to see the guy who works at Subway (who looks strikingly like John Turturro) on...the subway.

I KNOW. Right?

skimaster173 (12:58:51 AM): hello lobstr johnson
lobstrjohnson (12:58:57 AM): what's up
skimaster173 (12:59:22 AM): wanna get high?
lobstrjohnson (12:59:29 AM): nope

And that's all that happened.

I Found The Best Thing!

Gino's East delivers nationwide. A few of you reading may already know this because you were in Nebraska in the summer of '04 when we did this very thing. I always remembered that experience fondly, but had not considered applying it to my own life. This makes me an idiot. In spite of my idiocy, I have now recalled it, and decided it absolutely must be a thing we do this summer. I can't recall it specifically enough to say how it stacks up to the popular Portland pizza places (I do love alliteration), but I do recall it being a fantastic pizza experience. Join me!

Ugh

Got sick yesterday, and from what it feels like today, it's gonna be a long, long week. Mondays have a tendency to obliterate my immune system. I inevitably sleep 'til at least noon on Sundays, then have to be up at 8 on Mondays, which makes for a lot of staring at the ceiling, thinking I'm about to fall asleep at any given moment. Then I woke up at it was a piping 12 degrees out, -7 once you get that wind chill in there. Aside from Thanksgiving 2005 in Milwaukee, it's easily the coldest I've ever been.

Though from what Yahoo's telling me, those of you in the Midwest have little sympathy; it was -40 in Minnesota, so that couldn't have been good for you.

Summer's way too far away.

EDIT: Oh Thank God I just found out Monday's a holiday and I don't have work or school. Best news ever.

Depending on Your Upbringing...

John Stewart is either...

The host of a late-night fake news show.

The Green Lantern.

Or the guy who wrote The Monkees' "Daydream Believer."

I'm going to try not to post too much election stuff, but this is too fascinating and under-reported to not get out there.

Here's something that anyone who hasn't been following this election doesn't really know - the average voting Democrat has very little say in who the nominee will be. This year anyway. See, even though primary coverage focuses largely on who won which state, Hillary still came out ahead. She won less states, but the states are broken up into delegates, which are proportional to which districts and communities each candidate won. And delegates decide who gets the nomination. This was true in the past, but in the past the winner of each state took all the delegates, instead of them being broken up.

I like the new system. It gives each vote a little more weight. And the funny thing is, if this was the only deciding factor, Obama would currently be leading by five delegates.

Where the monkey wrench comes in is that there are these superdelegates. These are people in Congress, Governors, other ranking officials of the Democratic party (including past Presidents and Vice Presidents...there are actually a lot of people who qualify). These people can vote for whoever they want, regardless of popular vote, and will almost certainly decide the outcome of the Democratic election. I don't think it's been publicly admitted, but it's widely accepted that this system is in place to ensure that the party favorite still wins, instead of the one the people want in office.

So as of right now, Hillary is estimated to have almost 100 more superdelegates on her side. Nothing's decided, necessarily, until the Convention, but I thought this was an interesting side that isn't getting a lot of play in "the mainstream media" - depending on how you look at it, your vote is worthless because the party will pick whoever they damn well please, or your vote counts more than ever, because it's going to take a massive swing of support for Obama to take down Hillary. There are still a lot of primaries left, so it's totally possible, but the party seems intent on getting her into the Oval Office.

There's Evil In the Air and There's Thunder in the Sky

This is one of those strange sort of evenings. I could easily fall asleep right this second, but I find myself consumed with a weird vibe and a bizarre energy and I want to write and write and write but I can't think of a damn thing to write about. No columns for Megazine. No reviews. That's not entirely true - I started on two separated pieces but was unable to form coherent thought or clear argument. Important hurdle in the pundit business.

So I come here, where I can do whatever the Hell I want.

This is a night when I'd be ready to hit the town right now, but the town's shut down. There are no trains and I have no money for the common cab. It's also difficult to rustle a crowd together at 2 AM on a Wednesday evening, Thursday morning. I don't have any commitments for another twelve hours, and I'm reasonably caught up on my school work, but that can't be true for the majority of the Emerson landscape. And, there is the matter of transportation.

In Portland, I expect one of you to answer my call at this time of night and drive to Salem or some other God-forsaken land. Just because we can.

My, I am possessed tonight, aren't I?

My plan, a plan I'm fairly certainly can succeed, is to be done with work by July. After that, let's unleash the camping trips and hikes. Two months completely lacking commitment are hard to come by, and I'd like very much to seize it. Never mind the fact I'll be completely broke by then. Ben said it, GO for broke.

Damn, I've run out. It could be "Bat Out of Hell" distracting me or just your average mental collapse, but I have absolutely no more thought. Okay bye!

Superficial Tuesday Observations

Howard Dean looks bad in high-def.

Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty have the worst banter; Wolf is incessantly trying to impress Cafferty, who seems to genuinely hate him

Mike Huckabee and I have almost nothing in common, except apparently we both love John Denver.

Biggest news tease yet - a picture of a toddler being thrown from a burning building, and Wolf says, "you're going to find out what happened to the toddler, coming up next."

The guy they put in charge of the polls has an exact duplication of Wallace Shawn's voice. I keep expecting him to yell "inconceivable!"

Even if it's almost entirely fake, I really like that you can see people walking around parts of the Situation Room. It's like you're there!

Every commercial is geared for people who make over $100,000 a year. There was one for a job search site that only has "$100k jobs...for $100k people."

Lou Dobbs called the touch screen "magic," and I suspect he actually believes that.

Anderson Cooper just gave the death stare at the camera as they went to commercials

Campbell Brown is apparently the newest member of CNN's political team, but she's almost certainly the hottest. Abbi Tatton's Australian (New Zealand? British? who knows) accent ranks a close second.

Huckabee keeps referring to himself as "this old razorback." I don't even know what that means.

God damn it Huckabee, stop telling that story about how you were 8 years old and your dad took you to see the Governor because you might never get another chance to see a Governor and isn't it funny because you ended up becoming a Governor!

They managed to prop Larry King up for a solid hour (which still gets him out of the studio a little after 10 in LA, where he broadcasts from...meanwhile Carl Bernstein is ready to roll into the wee hours).

VH1 Will Be Right For Once

It really is Best Week Ever in pop culture. Well, best seven consecutive days ever, anyway. Last Thursday, LOST season 4 kicked off in...not quite high gear. There wasn't a moment like in the season 2 opener, when the mysterious hatch from the end of season 1 was revealed to be a rather posh laboratory and living quarters. Nor was there anything like the reveal that a suburban book club was actually taking place on the island (well, technically it was on the OTHER island), as in the first episode of season 3. But there were some pretty fantastic set ups that'll make it all the harder to wait for the rest of the season after these first eight episodes air (damn Writers' Strike...just give them their due money already!).

Then the week kicked more ass with Super Bowl XLII (that's 42, for the roman-numeral-illiterate), and even though I didn't say it at the time for fear of a beat-down, it really was immensely satisfying to see the Patriots get owned. Especially because they played so exceptionally poorly. They only got that first touchdown because the Giants got a penalty. The Giants showed up to PLAY, and they earned that victory 100%.

And now today...Super Tuesday, which I've been looking forward to...for awhile now, but especially since the primary/caucus season began. And even more so after John Edwards and Rudy Guilliani dropped out, and even though the Republican party doesn't want to admit it, theirs is just as much a two-man race as the Democrats'. And somehow, McCain is completely unstoppable. And as much as I'm not all that big a fan of McCain because he, somehow, still supports the war (never mind Bush's kooky Social Security plan and, depending on what day it is, those tax cuts for the wealthy), you gotta give it up to him. Just...what, six months ago his top advisors straight-up quit and everyone (myself included) was going on and on about how McCain won't be elected by anyone, anywhere. Of course, that was when Fred Thompson was the GOP frontrunner, so things have certainly changed.

But man, Mike Huckabee really can't get out of this race fast enough. And really, as if you didn't have reason enough to be really freaked out...

But it doesn't really matter because, come January '09, it really will be either a black man or a woman in the White House. Maybe both. After last Thursday's freaky debate where they actually didn't just pummel each other for two hours (admittedly, that's what I had hoped for), anything's possible.

Best election ever, it really is.