Double your pleasure, half the fun & Facebook politics

Hoho! Yes yes. This merits some thought. Adding a blog? What self-indulgence. I struggle with this Blog and can’t imagine how much duller a second would be.

Sometimes I jab a USB drive into my eye after I read a post the next morning (this one won’t be an exception… so if I have a red eye tomorrow, console me).

You may not have noticed, but I try to see if the micro is a reflection of the macro. I fail miserably 99.9% of the time, but even that has its appeals. A second blog won’t allow me that pleasure.

The idea reeks of a contrived attempt at convergence. My approach to a journalistic story for a blog would be mechanically different from one I’m sending to print. I’ll prove this to you on the orgy known as Election Night.

I do like suggestions of community blogs, and feel that would be much more productive on many levels. We’ll get the tools down, as well as some team work in. I also believe it has much more legitimacy (at face value anyway).

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Some of my craft classmates saw me stroll in to class today with a massive envelope, MRI in block letters across the front. No worries, it’s only three degenerated disks in my thoracic spinal area. I half-jokingly told the doc it was from my workload in school.

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On to the elections and the outstanding yet meaningless contribution technology has made to it. I’m talking about Facebook (again). They’ve added an “election pulse” option to all profiles, allowing you to list candidates you support.

All candidates have profiles on this social networking site, though I’m not sure if they are legitimately maintained by the candidates, PAC’s or run by Facebook.

The governator, Arnold Schwazenegger, seems to have a legit page. I’m only assuming because he doesn’t have the standard issue American flag as his profile picture. He’s also eating the competition alive, with a 33 point lead over the democratic challenger Phil Angelides. He’s eating him like a cake.

 

This controlled madness constitutes the highest level of political activism many of Facebook’s stoned, pimply users will undertake.

Which brings up the question of legitimacy. How many of these supporters are falling into the trap of youth-partisanship, and how many are genuinely informed on the issues and candidates?

More importantly, how many of these “supporters” will show up at the polls? If these voting patterns transfer over on election day, we might have a flood of democrats winning offices nationwide.

How other contested races are coming up in Facebook’s Election Pulse:

Bob Menendez (D-NJ) has a 12 point lead over Tom Kean Jr. (R).
Sherrod Brown’s lead over Mike Dewine (R-OH) jumped by 15 points in a single day, and is at 36 points.

Other important candidates losing according to the Election Pulse:

Rick Santorum (R-PA), Joe Leiberman (I-CT), Ken Blackwell (R-OH), Lincoln Chaffee (R-RI), and George Allen (R-VA).

If nothing else, maybe a social networking site like Facebook can spark some semblance of interest in politics among the bong-hitting, Halo-playing population that is my generation.

And maybe, just maybe, Kinky Friedman will be governor of Texas one day.

Put the pen and pad away - you’re already a loser

Holy shit! In little over a year, I’ll have a degree in a field imploding into itself. Kind of what space-nerds used to think about the universe.

I’m struggling to ignore my classmate’s panicking via blog about their job outlooks after graduation. Admittedly, a part of me shits itself on a daily basis as well. But if you really stop for a second, you realize we are not the now retiring baby-boomers.

Yes, the baby boomers, who set the standards so astronomically high no subsequent generation will be able to follow. As these fuckers retire, leaving behind a bankrupt government, a crumbling health-care system and bone-dry oil system, we’re sitting here wondering if we’ll ever have it as good.

Did any generation have a guaranteed steady job? None of my reading has shown me a pre-WWII working class family that knew it’d have bread in the morning.

Let’s ignore the middle class, the baby boomers are taking that with them too.

Put simply, we’ve got to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. Or we have to get the fuck out of this country and let it bleed to death by itself. Hell, famines sent thousands of people here, it can just as easily send us away. Can you imagine Mexico having to deal with illegal American immigrants? Shit, they have cheap meds!

And maybe… just maybe… if enough of us are there, they’ll need an decent english newspaper. That’s where the 58 CUNGSJ graduates come in. Anyone with me?

The less you expect, the bigger your surprise.

Unfortunately, Manny criminally stole my scathing post for today, so check his out.

As an aside: Sleep is a commodity (not a necessity) in grad school, so allow me to indulge myself tonight. I’m sure I’ll find something to rant about tomorrow. There always is something (and so there’ll always be a need for us - hang in there guys).

Unwarranted apologies

Zeyad finally showed up at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism after leaving Baghdad and spending three months in Jordan. I showed him where the offices were. Hey, it fulfilled my one good deed of the day.

In case you’re wondering, Blog Jarvis described Zeyad as:

the amazing blogger behind Healing Iraq, a founding father of the Iraqi blogosphere

A classmate and I had the opportunity to spend some time talking to Zeyad today, and I was overwhelmed by the urge to apologize. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders and say, “God dammit man! I can’t imagine what you’ve seen or felt, but I’m sorry we lit the fuse on the firecracker!”

I really wanted to apologize for being the dumb, “Support our troops” and Freedom Fries American. For not being able to point out Baghdad on a map.
Zeyad gave me some peace by telling me the war is beyond America now. He might have said that just to make me feel better. Or he could be right.

In the bombings in Baghdad on Thursday, a roadside bomb that exploded about 7:30 a.m. near the mosque in the Cairo neighborhood killed three people and wounded 16 others, the Interior Ministry official said. About 9:30 a.m., a suicide car bomber detonated a bomb near police vehicles whose tanks were being filled at a gas station in the Karrada district, killing 10 people — some of them police officers — and wounding 17, the official said.

At 10:45 a.m., two more people were killed and 23 wounded when a second suicide car bomber exploded a bomb in the Bab al Sharji district, a mile north of the gas station, near the Interior Ministry’s headquarters. At 3:30 p.m., a third suicide car bomber blew up his vehicle in the Kadisiya neighborhood near a police convoy, wounding seven police commandos, the Interior Ministry official said. At 7:15 p.m., a roadside bomb killed a woman and wounded 13 others in the Amil district.

On Wednesday, Ahmad al-Mashhadani, nephew of Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker of Parliament, was abducted while driving his car in northwest Baghdad, the Interior Ministry official said. Also on Wednesday, a roadside bomb killed two people at the funeral of a Shiite militia leader.

I wonder if Zeyad’s as upset about news like this being buried as I am. I wonder if he realizes just how embedded we are in a bubble of ignorance.

It’s here that our news media, even the Times, has become impotent. They all need a solid brass set and a double dose of Viagra.

Maybe that’s where Zeyad can help.

I was surprised to find out that no one gave him a New York Salute yet. That would be this: