I am sick to my stomach acid with essays. Deliver me from these things! Why didn't I teach a class that allows for more ScanTron tests, like math? Curse you, fates! You get in here and grade these things.

Actually, once I get going, it's not so bad. But it's the getting that's tough. Anything else that I can find to do (like, say, blogging) becomes an appropriate excuse to put it off (or in this case take a break). Bleah.

Home

It's spring! It's finally spring! Huzzah! I can go ride my bike, finally. Here's to Ra! Remind me to take my sunglasses with me to work tomorrow (I had a squintfest on the way home). I also get paid tomorrow. Mmmm, paid.

Lesser Evilism

Hmm, so Chomsky has endorsed John Kerry for the President of the US. Interesting.

Kerry is sometimes described as Bush-lite, which is not inaccurate, and in general the political spectrum is pretty narrow in the United States, and elections are mostly bought, as the population knows. But despite the limited differences both domestically and internationally, there are differences. And in this system of immense power, small differences can translate into large outcomes.

Well said; I planned to vote for Kerry all along. Still, some leftists are arguing that it's not sufficient to pick the lesser of two evils. Quoth Phil Gasper at GNN:

Making decisions about the presidential election on the basis of the minute differences between the two major party candidates is ultimately a mug's game. Whoever wins in November, we'll need the biggest and most militant social movements on the ground to fight their policies, but when activists get sucked into support for the Democrats the movements are weakened and sometimes destroyed. . . . If we choose Kerry over Bush, we make it more difficult to do the only thing that ever makes a difference for our side -- building real activism on the ground.

In other words, accepting Kerry is not enough -- we need to go far beyond just settling for this lesser of two evils. Okay, I don't have any problem with that.

But to think that we're doing better under Bush than we were under Clinton is facile and silly. I don't want to romanticize Clinton, but does this guy really believe that fascism is good for the left? Besides, does anyone think that Chomsky believes that Kerry defeating Bush shall be the end of it? If only he had some kind of track record or legacy of struggle we could check out to decide. Hmm.

IsPraelestine

Hey, we don't care if the whole world condemns our actions. We're Israel! As long as the US is behind us, no one else matters! IDF chief of staff Moshe Yaalon made it all clear today:

"For a short time it may strengten the motivation to commit attacks but in the long run it will reinforce moderate (Palestinian) elements," Yaalon told a security conference in Tel Aviv.

Yeah, that's right -- these Islamic fundamentalists will react to the extrajudicial killing of their spiritual leader by being more moderate. Brilliant!

Random

Never mind that brain surgery they keep paging me for -- I need my croutons!

TimeWaster™

Uhh . . . Japanese commercials are weird. Do our ads look this bizarre to them, you think?

Today I'm listening to: Groove Salad!