Part I: Bill Clinton and me

Well, after struggling for a few weeks at not being creative, I figured this week I would turn my attention towards the other topic of the class, community. As a political science major I was quite excited to discover that Bill Clinton would be coming to Fort Wayne to give a stump speech for his wife Hillary. While I am by no means a Hillary Clinton supporter, I did feel the urge to go listen to the former President of the United States give a speech and also, to watch democracy in action.

I did not want to go alone and find myself in a room full of Hillary Clinton supporters so I first needed to convince my friend Chase to skip class and come with me. After doing my own little bit of politicking (which I'll get to later), to get him to come on this little adventure, we were on our way. We left IPFW shortly before the start of our 4:30 class. This reminds me, I have to send an e-mail to my professor in order to explain why I wasn’t in class. I felt bad, but really how often does someone like this come to Fort Wayne? Hopefully he'll forgive me. I mean I’ve had him since school started in the fall and, I am pretty sure, this is the first class (out of like fifty) I have missed. And, after all, it was educational.

We arrived at about 5:00, approximately two hours and thirteen minutes before the President would begin speaking. A line of people who wanted to hear the President had already filled up the entire Grand Wayne Center and spilled into the street outside. We took our place in line and began to take in the sites.

Now, before I continue, I should probably give a brief description of my best friend Chase. Deep down we are extremely similar people. We both tend to be smart asses and we both feel a slight sense of intellectual superiority over others in the most important things in life (namely politics, all of history, sports, fantasy sports, betting on sports, and South Park). However, while I struggle immensely to bury this innate sense of self-satisfaction, which always tends to piss people off, Chase relishes it. Now, like I said, I am an Obama supporter and not at all a fan of Hillary Clinton. Chase is the same. Here we are among about 4000 people that don’t think like us. However, while all I wanted to do was watch the speech, Chase decided the only way he would go with me (which goes back to the politicking I had to do to get him to come) was if we upset people so much that we both ended up getting tazered like the kid from Florida at the John Kerry speech.

…

Ok, where was I? Man, don’t you hate it when your typing along minding your own business when some jokester thinks it would be a good idea to pull the fire alarm at IPFW? There I was in Neff trying to communicate on my blog, to my classmates, about my awesome experience at the Bill Clinton speech when I get rudely interrupted by AAAAANNNNNNNNN (look an onomatopoeia). That’s like the second time I have had to leave a building at IPFW because somebody has pulled a fire alarm. I am pretty sure it wasn’t a test because there was no fire truck outside. Although, by the time I copied and pasted my post onto Microsoft Word, saved the document, opened webmail, attached the post, and mailed it to myself, the truck could have already left. I mean, I wasn’t about to just leave because the building might be on fire…I already had like four hundred and fifty words. Anyway, thanks to that prankster I am already way over the word limit for this week. I certainly wouldn’t want to just keep rambling on like I did last week.

So, I guess this will be the first part of a two part posting which I will finish next week. I’m sorry if you’re just finishing reading my post for this week because next week’s post will be way better. Next week when I go over the President’s speech I will get to a crazy Obama supporter (not named Chase or Conor), crazy right-wingers exploiting small children, a disgruntled security guard, a verbal warning, futuristic brain scanning devices, women that think they’re better then you because they drive hybrids, and, who knows, maybe they’ll be a tornado warning too.

The problem with creative writing

Man, creative writing is so difficult for me. I really am just a boring person I suppose. I sit here and try to come up with something interesting to talk about but, if anybody has seen my blog, a lot of times I just revert back to talking about Indiana basketball. I can't write poems except maybe limericks, those are easy. I'm not huge on the idea of blogging. The idea that anybody in the world could (theoretically) see what I am writing about is bothersome. Yet, at the same time, I know I have to "force myself to get in the right position" to write a blog. Since I am not creative, I guess I'll just give an account of a day in my life. Well yesterday, or I suppose it was Tuesday, as I sat in Dr. Amidon's class I realized I didn't have a snow scraper in my car. Great. Over the course of about an hour and a half, two inches of snow and ice piled up on my wind shield. When I got to my car I realized it would have taken at least an hour for the defroster to take care of all of it. Instead I decided to clear off my windshield with a gym sneaker. I wonder what other students were thinking when they saw me outside of my car trying to remove snow with a shoe?

-Wow, look at that idiot trying to beat up his car with a gym shoe.

-Poor guy, he’s paying so much for gas that he can’t afford an ice scraper.

-Really?

Anyway, I was about half way through beating the ice off of my wind shield when I suddenly realized that I didn't have to work tonight. At first, I thought "Wow that's great I don't have to work tonight"...just like that. But then, I suddenly got a deep sinking feeling in my gut. I realized I was going to have to visit my girlfriend. Great, I thought. The last thing I want to do tonight is go see her. God, why didn't I get scheduled at work? Oh well, maybe I can tell her....no never mind IU plays on Wednesday. Oh man, I am going to have to go visit her, I have no excuse. As I was driving over there, I found myself continually contemplating driving off the road...I mean the weather was horrible and even professional drivers like me make mistakes. In the end, even being the unintelligent college student that I am, I decided against the idea.

I finally got over to her house and slowly began walking up the steps to her door. God, I really don't want to do this. Why can't I just go home? I can't because I work the rest of the week and I won't see her much until the weekend. There is no other choice; I am just going to have to deal with this.


I knocked on the door. Then I rang the doorbell.


I see her turn the corner into her hallway, happy to see me as always. She was already in her pajamas, excited as can be. Here we go. Just get this over with and get on with life.


She opened the door and let me inside. No sooner had I entered the house and had a chance to remove my sneakers (the non-snow removing ones) and my coat before I heard his voice. God I hate this guy. He’s the reason I didn’t want to come over here in the first place. He's always so happy and witty and he is always over at my girlfriend’s house on Tuesdays. I get lead into the living room at 8:05 and I know I’m going to have to pretend to be interested in what this guy has to say for at least an hour. I enter the living room and finally get a good look at him.

Hello, Ryan Seacrest,we meet again.


Why God? Why am I going to have to listen to this guy talk and listen to other equally uninteresting people sing for an hour? I hate American Idol. It's not that I'm against the whole mass marketing of the show or anything like that, in fact, I think the creator of the show is a genius. One day, IPFW will probably have a marketing class just to teach how amazing the marketing was behind the most popular television show of all time.

It also isn’t because I particularly dislike the music. My buddy, who is in a band, is always bashing the music. Oh, American Idol, it’s so commercialized…or it’s such a fad…or none of those people have any talent once so ever. So who cares? The only music I listen to is marketed to me by gigantic corporations. I don’t listen to music often, but the music I do listen to is all main stream.

With music in general I am pretty indifferent. I usually listen to AM radio mostly, so I really don’t get to listen to that much music on the radio, simply because there is not that much music on AM radio anymore. On top of that, the only music on AM radio requires a person to be fluent in Espanola or the Bible and I’m only partially fluent in one of those.

Oh man, there is still thirty-five minutes left in the show.
(twenty-three minutes worth of commercials)

The worst part is I could be watching CNN’s, very limited, sixty hour coverage of the Texas and Ohio primaries. Oh well, maybe American Idol will show updates on the bottom the screen as the results come in…I can see it now oh wait that’s just another Ford Motor advertisement.

Twenty minutes left in the show.
(fourteen minutes worth of commercials)

The thing is, I actually like the concept of American Idol and I actually enjoy seeing my girlfriend most of the time. The problem is she has been watching this show religiously (along with thirty million other Americans) for like five years now. This show honestly makes me wish Grey’s Anatomy was on.

Eight minutes left.
(seven minutes worth of commercials)

Finally, I thought of something that made me completely forget about American Idol

and Ryan

and Randy

and Simon

and Paula

and Ford

I remembered that IU is playing Minnesota tomorrow. Not only that, the game is going to be awesome because it will be senior (and Eric Gordon) night at Assembly Hall in Bloomington.

Not only that, I’m going to be there for the game.

Shows over…


It was so awesome, IU beat Minnesota by fourteen points and I got to listen to all of the senior speeches after the game. Seriously, for DJ White two words, one hyphen— Warrior-poet.

So as you can see, in the end, I once again am stuck on the boring topic of IU basketball. There are so many more interesting topics to talk about, but for some reason I can never really come up with any. I wish I could come up with something more interesting to talk about, but I just can’t do it. I don’t know, maybe next week I will be able to come up with something a little more creative. I know like an IU limerick.

Subjects for Blogging

I am not that good at keeping up on blogging. Last semester, I also had to keep a blog for Professor Amidon’s class. The class was Business and Technical Writing and all the students were required to have about 35-40 blog entries over the course of the semester. I always had such a hard time filling out my blog entries for the class because I often felt like I just didn’t have anything to say. The blog was not about business or technical writing per se, but a place for Professor Amidon’s students to discuss ideas about a general topic each student had chosen earlier in the semester (which was supposed to be concerned in some manner with business). I chose to write about the effects of blogs, but often, students just chose to follow their favorite football team.

Again this semester I am having a hard time making sure my blog is kept up to date, but since nobody in class has my site link yet, I guess it is not too late to catch up. I think the reason that I have such a hard time keeping up my blog is because I feel like I am talking (on my blog) just for the sake of writing. I understand that it is an important outlet to focus on writing openly and creatively, but I just have a hard time shaking the feeling.

I guess this feeling comes from a resentment of people that talk simply to hear themselves speak. Everybody knows about the kind of person I am talking about. I do not know if these people just generally resent silence or are scared of not being the center of attention, at least, for part of the time. I was at this thing last Saturday taking a tour with a group of, more or less, extremely intelligent people. Now every four or five minutes, the tour guide would stop and politely ask if anyone in the crowd (there was approximately fifteen of us) had any questions. One girl had to ask at least one question every single time the tour guide stopped. Literally, she asked as many questions as the other fourteen people on the tour combined. It drove me crazy. And trust me, most of these questions were not exactly well thought out, pre-planned questions. The questions were more like, well the guide asked if anyone has questions, so I better say something. The thing is, I actually had a conversation with the girl later that day and she seemed like a really nice person. I’m not making the claim that people that do it are bad people, it is just one of those personality traits that annoys me.

Now I feel bad, because I also hate people like me that just complain about other types of people without ever saying something directly to that person. I mean who the hell am I to judge other people? What makes the girl that asks a bunch of questions on a tour, worse than the boy that sits back and rips into her because he has a hard time thinking of things to talk about on his blog?

Because really, the fact is that the girl that had to speak to hear herself speak, which I thought annoyed me, was really a God send because it gave a boy, who couldn’t think of anything to discuss on his blog, something to write about. So, I would like to thank that girl on the tour that would not stop talking for giving me something to write about.

Sincerely,

The boy with nothing to say

Fun as a kid

Do you ever have the opportunity to watch a movie later in life that you really enjoyed as a kid? I’m not talking about a Sesame Street sing along, but a movie that you liked when you were nine or ten. I guess what I am getting at is a movie which is actually supposed to have a plot and be entertaining to some degree. I watched 3 Ninjas on Encore Movies yesterday and…wow. It’s not so much that I feel bad for watching the movie as a kid, but the fact that I probably forced my mom to watch it several times as well. I felt horrible about it. The acting is atrocious and the story is ridiculous. There really is no redeeming quality to the movie. I almost wanted to call my mom and apologize for forcing her to watch that when I was a kid.

But, I was just a kid. There are lots of things that you should enjoy as a kid because you can’t (or at least shouldn’t) enjoy them as an adult. However, there is one thing that has seemingly flipped as in which age group in society is supposed to enjoy it. It used to be an activity that was for small kids, but now kids are not allowed to play it, at least in many parts of the country. In addition, now there are many adults that play the game (I even think there is some pseudo-professional league on FX). I’m talking about dodge ball. In many places kids are no longer allowed to play dodge ball because too many parents think that it singles out the weaker students in the class. I really hate how much this country coddles kids today and shelters them from feeling any sort of rejection. I’m not going into any in depth debate on parenting. All I’m saying is that every kid should have the luxury to enjoy a gym class or recess with dodge ball. It’s a fun game that a lot of kids really enjoyed. And remember, while parents may be trying to shelter their kids now, they may also be preventing kids from playing dodge ball that may excel at it. Perhaps, excel at it more than anything else they will ever excel at in life. Then, parents will be forcing those kids to feel rejected by almost every adult in society when they are forced to join adult dodge ball leagues someday. And that’s not fair to those kids.

IU basketball

So obviously Indiana basketball has taken a prominent place, for all the wrong reasons, in the news as of late. I find it so funny in the world of college athletics, which is a multi-billion dollar industry, impermissible phone calls are such a big deal. There is so much pressure to win, especially at a top-tier program like Indiana. The pressure is even greater because IU is the only school in the Big Ten that makes more money off of its basketball program than it does off of its football program. This is important because men’s basketball and football programs have to make a lot of money or other athletic programs like baseball, golf, or any female athletics program would have to be marginalized.

I am not saying that what Coach Sampson did was right or that he shouldn’t be fired for it. I’m just saying there must be a lot of pressure on a coach to land that next big recruit to make sure the program remains at the top, which in turn keeps it profitable. There also has to be a little bit of irony with Indiana (along with every major university) demanding that, not just coaches, but players be held to such a high standard of ethics, when the university literally makes millions of dollars off the interests fans have in watching their talents on television. But, on the other hand, Indiana uses that money to help other college athletes achieve their dreams. Indiana is a great university that has always had a very high standard of not just athletic, but academic excellence which, in part, comes from operating under very high ethical standards. And I don’t doubt that the school will make the right decision.

I just wish that Indiana was in the news for some reason other than the alleged recruiting violations that the school is currently facing.

Week III

Well, there has certainly been a lot going on this week. So instead of picking just one topic and writing about it, I figure I’ll just go over some of the things that I have been paying attention to lately.

First, I want to thank the graduate students that helped teach class last week. They were all very courteous and were able to keep a laid back atmosphere and get all the class exercises done. Thankfully, none of them took their authority position too seriously and were very helpful in guiding the rest of us. I even got home in time to see the tip of the IU game. That brings up another topic for this week, sports.

The Super Bowl was amazing. I don’t like the Giants, but that was definitely the best football game I’ve seen since USC played Texas in the 2006 Rose Bowl. However, as much as I enjoyed the Super Bowl, it is always a sad time of year for me. Unfortunately, I now have to wait seven months before the 2008 regular season begins. I guess it really doesn’t matter though, because I am a Buffalo Bills fan. I should actually be glad football is over because it will be seven months without feeling constantly disappointed and having almost every week start off on the wrong foot because the Bills lost. I can now let other things in sports disappoint me instead. For instance, I can now be disappointed with the Indiana Hoosiers, which after losing to Wisconsin last Thursday, are now 0-3 against top 25 RPI teams. In addition, I can be disappointed that Bobby Knight, the greatest basketball coach ever- of all time- ever is retiring. Finally, once basketball runs its course, I can turn my disappointment to the Chicago White Sox. The White Sox, with the league’s fourth highest payroll, will probably continue to underperform in 2008. Not only that, but their weak spot is middle relief pitching. So they are often winning for a good portion of the game before they disappoint me two and a half hours into the telecast. That should keep me disappointed right through September, but hey, at least football will be back by then…and the cycle of disappointment can continue.

Next, Monday’s fog was pretty ridiculous. I had to drive in it for a couple of hours and I must say I never remember fog being that bad in Fort Wayne. I felt like I could have been driving around in Sleepy Hollow. I am a delivery driver, which is a pretty sweet job for a college kid. I can talk on my phone all I want, listen to music, and make in the neighborhood of $15 an hour (could be more if gas wasn’t so expensive). Still, driving down Parnell, trying to find a street address with people behind me was quite difficult.

Finally, Super Tuesday was yesterday and wow there was a lot of media coverage. The funny thing is they have almost turned the election process into a sporting event. It is ridiculous. Come to think of it even Fox, on the day of the Super Bowl, was mixing its political coverage with the pregame show. It looks like John McCain is going to win the nomination for the Republicans now, but the Democratic nomination (since they don’t have the winner take all primaries) is still neck and neck. All I know is that I am really pulling for Barack Obama. But, if politics is now a sporting event and sports continue to disappoint me, than that means that Hillary Clinton will probably end up winning the nomination from the Democrats…and the cycle of disappointment continues.

Last semester at IPFW

I remember in August of 2003 coming to orientation at IPFW. I really had no idea what was going on, I just remember that I had scheduled the last OASIS session before school started and then skipped out on the majority of it except for the class scheduling part. Now a mere five years later I am all set to graduate in May with my BA. I never really thought much about the fact that I was graduating, because it never seemed to be that important of an accomplishment. I had merely reached another milestone in the road of life. But it has been quite an interesting journey for me at IPFW and I find myself lamenting from time to time, as this semester continues, knowing that I am almost done.

However, I can't complain too much because I was actually all set to graduate last year. Unfortunately, I did not know what I wanted to do afterwards, so I added English as a major. So as an English major, with a concentration in writing, I am more or less completing the entire major in one year. That means I have the privilege of taking my sophomore writing class in my last semester at college (since for some odd reason my history writing class counts for my sophomore literature interpretation class, but does not count for my sophomore English writing class). Better yet though, the only W200 class that fit in with my schedule was a Technical writing class. Technical writing classes are usually filled up with all engineering majors, but I now have the pleasure of sharing a class with them.

Well one of my assignments today, in my sophomore writing class, was to write a brief introduction about myself for my fellow classmates. I had to tell them that I was a fifth year student at IPFW. I had to tell them that I was an English major. I had to tell them that as a fifth year English major I am just now getting around to fulfilling my sophomore English writing requirement. Further, I am taking a technical writing class, designed for engineers to fulfill that requirement. My classmates are probably going to think that I am the stupidest English major at IPFW. I could have told them more about myself, you know, to explain my situation- I didn’t.

To be honest does anybody really care about first day introductions? Now I understand, in our class, with our small size and constant interaction it might be important, but what about in a class where all we do is listen to lectures? I met 100 people in my first week of the semester and I don’t remember any of them. I might recognize there face, but I couldn’t tell you the major or high school they attended. Yet every class I seem to take I have to give an obligatory first day introduction of myself. And the thing is, I am never really being myself when I have to give an introduction. I don’t want to say too little, but I certainly don’t want to say too much. I think everybody is kind of like that. So in the end, it becomes more like a roll call. But instead of saying here or present we have to say our name, major, and “an interesting fact” about ourselves. I guess it is just one of those funny little nuisances of university education these days that all students have to go through. Yet, in a funny way, I will probably miss giving those silly little introductions after I’m gone from IPFW.