Need...Food

Ugh. I was dumb this morning and couldn't locate the plastic tub of leftover red curry, just the rice, so I could only pack one meager meal for my 12-hour day. I ate it very slowly--one piece of sauceless spinach and cheese whole wheat pizza at lunch, one piece at the 3:30 dinner with a side of peanut Clif bar and water. Now I am all lethargic and dreaming of the meal it will take every last ounce of energy to prepare in the event that I actually make it home someday.

Today there have been some amusing stories in the news. Like Jack Nicholson wanting to buy a(nother) castle, but in Iceland, until he learned that there were no castles in Iceland [citation here]. And the new president of my university is getting paid twice as much as the president of the country--oh, wait, that's not amusing, just disgusting.

My group project is really interesting, but it seems sort of amorphous and disorganized, at least mentally, so far. The one guy in our group is silent and seems willing to do only the absolute minimum required. He will die. Otherwise, though, I like the people in my group and we have good discussions and some synchronicity of thought.

Did I tell you our topic? Probably not.

The focus is something along the lines of: Muslims in the Middle East are fighting to reassert Islamic values amid Western influences because they view it as an assault on their beliefs and way of life. There's a secondary focus that views the Christian Right in the United States as a parallel. Obviously this is just one idea we're exploring; there are at least a dozen related ideas that we'll get into. And I'm loathe to discuss it on this site because, honestly, my knowledge of these issues is practically nothing, really, and it's not a subject I'm interested in debating online, just researching.

I do have opinions, at least loosely held, but y'know, I'm a white girl from a shade-grown, liberal town. What do I know about the realities of life there? Of the life of my politicians or military officials? I don't know. I just don't want to get into it. I'll show y'all the project when it's done, sure. I'm just not going to talk like I know from where I speak, because I don't, and without tons of reading and/or experience I'm unlikely ever to have, I never will. I'll just listen.

I can call it "objectivity," not that I believe in the concept, really. But it's what journalists are supposed to do.

In my copy editing class, some students argued with the instructor over whether or not it was reasonable to think that Congress censored President Clinton after the Lewinsky mess. This was a single sentence in an AP Stylebook exercise; we had to mark it so that "United States" was abbreviated, congress and president were capitalized, and the word "censored" replaced with "censured," because that's what the Congress did, and that was all in the damn stylebook. Why argue over something that indicates that you had no idea what those words meant? Just note to yourself that you were ignorant about something and move on. I do it all the time. I am pretty ignorant about a lot of details.

But the big picture, man, I know it all. Right.

Kill Bill: Vol. 2 this weekend. Chris is working until 5 Friday, so we're probably going to catch a Saturday matinee at either the Neptune or the Oak Tree. None of this paying-full-price garbage. Also, Rachel has informed me she will be in town and wishes to grace me with her presence, so I'll look forward to that.

My brother got into his fancy-schmancy music camp this summer and gets to spend two months in Aspen, Colo., studying bass with the principal bassist for the New York Philharmonic who moonlights as a teacher at Julliard. And he might get to do something with Edgar Meyer. I mean, yeah, wow. And I might get to be mom's driving partner. I've never been to Colorado.

Wow, I need food. Brain is dying, quickly.