8 Nov 2000 Day after election day
Sitting in my office, waiting for 6 pm to roll around so I can get some money off
of a tutoring victim... lovely, I love tutoring students of advanced classes. I
was teaching an undergrad by mistake, but she's a math major, so I can't get too
bothered.
Comment on the unfinished presidential race: everybody, chill. The people likely
to be most affected by this race are the party hacks who want to go to the best
parties. Their guy wins, party time for 4 years. Their guy loses, B-list. or
maybe even C-list.
I am unimpressed by those wishing to depict either Gore or Bush (or even Nader) as
the anti-christ, the straw that will break the camel's back, etc. etc. I see
either choice as just one more step in diminishing the U.S. in the world arena, and
that's fine by me. We've been riding our reputations for decades after WWII, and
we really haven't done anything of late to merit world leadership.
I don't worry about Supreme Court make-up, or spending of any "surplus", or
environmental destruction because -- gridlock. If the Republicans hold the
Senate, it will be with a 51-49 majority. All you need is a senator from a state
which doesn't go along with the party platform for one thing, and no go on a
bill. President can't sign bills if they never even get past the Senate. Also, it
takes 60 senators to break a filibuster. Whee. C-SPAN is going to be a lot of
fun. I'm glad I don't have cable yet. And the Republicans can lose that majority
if either Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond (or both) die, for the Democratic governors
of N.C. and S.C. will replace them with a Democrat. Chew on that puppy.
Of course, the environmental destruction will continue, as will obscene
corporate tax breaks, but that's due to the intelligence of the industries involved
-- they give money to everybody.
What =can= the President do or not do that may have a big effect? Well, let's see
-- he can write one of those executive orders. He could decide that all federal
offices shall have blue toilet paper. He could make federal employees' lives
hell. That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing to do, because then some people
would quit and perhaps entire agencies could disappear overnight. That would
definitely make government smaller. The President could send out troops. Not for
too long, of course, without congressional approval (all thanks to Congress in the
time of Nixon). THe President could =not= send troops to certain places, which is
fine, because if the American people want a war, dammit, Congress can declare war.
Anyway, my knickers are relatively unknotted.
In other news, I've been looking over some jottings by my wordy friends and note
how some of them love coming up with new labels for themselves, taking this quiz
and that. Though the truth is, they could be taking these silly quizzes for the
same reason I am -- just want to see what the results will be. I've never achieved
self-realization from seeing the result from a test (other than the realization
that I didn't study enough). I pretty much know how well I am with words, numbers,
how I like to live and relate to other people. I don't need someone stamping a
name or a letter on me. Perhaps this is why I've never gotten a consistent result
from online personality quizzes (even when I take the same one twice). I don't
know what it means for me to be an introvert or extrovert. I have fun talking with
other people, and I'm not bothered by being around lots of other people. However,
I'm perfectly content to be alone. Even without TV, VCR, or even =gasp= books.
I think of myself as a content person. Things have got to be pretty fucking
unbearable before I get unhappy (and I have reached that point a few times this
year... let's see, moving in by myself and getting my first moving violation
(while moving - how apropos!) ... mathcamp insanity, as usual ... and a few other
times, but no need to get into it).
Moving on, Stu brought in some shitloads of stuff (unfortunately... or not... some
of it actually belongs to my sisters. I will see if they want the portraits of us
that look nothing like us) and I found one of my old folders of written stuff. I
think I shall type up some of it and post them in my writings section to see if
anyone can guess how old I was when I wrote different things. There's one term
paper in there called "Louis XIVth: the Ego". Some of these papers I could tell I
had written them on the morning they were due (how did I know? Awful spelling
errors and some silly punctuation. It =did= take me a while to figure out commas,
and lord, no, don't try to figure out my prowess in grammar from these pages. This
is a fucking journal, dammit.)
Also, in trying a little competition with Brian as to how many web pages have our
names on them (doing a search in Altavista), I found that Dr. Church had posted up
a few of my silly electronic compositions from 11th grade. So I'll put them up in
my music bin (or what I can play).
I'm surfing around on amazon.com a bit and have found so many damned Austen
continuations. I notice that almost all of them involve Pride & Prejudice and
Sense & Sensibility (both of which had movies / miniseries which have done well of
late). Truthfully, the most I like to think about Austen continuations is
sex. =Especially= considering the movies. Colin Firth is so... mmm! Boy! He's
definitely cuter than Olivier. But I haven't seen many continuations of Dickens'
novels. It's not that he doesn't leave some stuff open -- he does -- but it's true
that most of his people who don't end up dead do end up in cul-de-sacs.
What I find funny about many of these comments on the Austen sequels is that
because Austen never married, she couldn't write about what happens after the
wedding. Well, that's just silly. First of all, she portrays married couples
extremely well in =all= her novels. What one notices among almost all the married
couples is a lack of conflict (and I don't consider what goes on amongst Mr. &
Mrs. Bennet and also Mary & her husband in Persuasion to be real conflict -- they
are in stasis as to their relationships). All the interesting action to Austen
comes from the social changes involved in the courtship dance. One doesn't need to
be a woman to describe a realistic female character, and one doesn't need to be
married to understand marital dynamics. All you need to do is keep your eyes open
and hang around people alot. Which is pretty much all Austen did, except for the
writing.
People like to say that the reason most of these novels centered on female
characters - not just Austen, but also Dickens (I mean, I don't really read many
other authors right now) - end in a wedding and don't go beyond is because women
are then sucked into their husbands' personalities and can no longer become a
driving force in their own lives (well, let me think... Vanity Fair comes to mind,
I know Becky Sharp isn't supposed to be a paragon, but she does indeed show how a
woman's world can work). I don't agree. I think it's because often an equilibrium
is reached and it's difficult to create drama out of that. It's definitely
difficult to create drama out of a happy marriage. The truth is, very few of our
lives could be held up as entertainment. I'm happy that there are people out there
like Austen who can come up with interesting plots.