It's the day before Buy a Lot of Cadbury Eggs Monday

Otherwise known as Easter.

My point here is not to put down Easter, any day on which a clucking bunny lays chocolate eggs filled with cream is clearly a wondrous day indeed.  And snide comments about commercialism and religious holidays aside some people that I respect a lot are Christians and I'm not big on looking down on anyone's religion or lack there of.

That said, I am into recognizing that others exist.  Which is why I'm writing this post that is mostly lacking in content.  On a site where I can waste time playing stupid mindless games someone decided it was appropriate to announce to everyone that our lord is resurrected and such and... what is this "our" Kemosabe?

Site for mindless games on the internet, what makes you think everyone is Christian?  "My lord is risen," I'd have no problem with, but to assume all the readers have the same religion as you is less than cool.

The construction "is risen" is, I think, attempting to bring a tense we don't quite have in English.  Ancient Greek had a perfect tense that is different from our own which was about actions in the past with definite repercussions in the present.  Sort of like how, "I've opened the door," implies that the door is still open if not augmented by something else (I've opened the door many times in the past.)  So I read "is risen" which is technically present tense (risen is an adjective here) as an attempt to describe a past event with consequences reaching all the way into the here and now.  Thus an attempt to have a tense that includes past and present to show a causal relationship between a past event and the present situation.  Sort of a shorthand for, "has risen and is still in the resulting state."

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Just to have some content, here's an excerpt from a thing on trying to explain Easter in a French class:

Nothing we said was of any help to the Moroccan student. A dead man with long hair supposedly living with her father, a leg of lamb served with palm fronds and chocolate; equally confused and disgusted, she shrugged her massive shoulders and turned her attention to the comic book she kept hidden beneath her binder. 

I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that sounds pretty far-fetched to begin with. 

In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the grammar lessons of a six-year-old if each of us didn't believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? If I could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes. So why stop there? If I could believe in myself, why not give other improbabilities the benefit of the doubt? I told myself that despite her past behavior, my teacher was a kind and loving person who had only my best interests at heart. I accepted the idea that an omniscient God had cast me in his own image and that he watched over me and guided me from one place to the next. The Virgin Birth, the Resurrection  and countless miracles -- my heart expanded to encompass all the wonders and possibilities of the universe. 

A bell, though -- that's fucked up.

Audio of a shorter version here.  It should at least explain what the bell comment is about.

My Biblical Argument for Marriage Equality (and against both homophobia and trans*-phobia in general)

Please open your bible to Galatians 3:28:

There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

You might have slightly different translation, for example if you're King James only you'll read, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."  The difference in translation isn't important to us at this moment.  The bit about there not being male and female is.

That's the whole of my argument.  Seriously.

Now context, or just reading the last two words of the verse, will show that this is talking about Christians, but since Christians are so concerned about what effect (basically none, for the record) marriage equality will have on Christian marriage they should probably be concerned with what the Bible says about Christians.

Try to say marriage should be between a man and a woman, and only that, without using the concepts of male or female.  It really can't be done.  Strip away the concepts of male and female and, "Marriage should be between a man and a woman," becomes, "Marriage should be between an adult person and another adult person."  A position otherwise known as marriage equality.

Homophobia requires definitions for, at the very least, heterosexual and not-heterosexual (bi-phobia tends to fall under homophobia) but try to define those terms without using the concepts of male and female.  If male and female are treated the same then there's no difference between a man who is attracted to women, a man who is attracted to men, and a man who is attracted to men and women.  And if they're treated the same there's no difference if I substitute the word "woman" for "man" in the previous.

Right now if a woman wants to get married the test in places without marriage equality that doesn't exist in places with it is to ask, "Is her partner male or female?" with the response being, "She can get married," if the partner is male, and, "She can't get married," if her partner is female.  But for Christians, at least according to the Bible, there is no distinction between male and female so that question (Is her partner male or female?) can't be asked.

Transphobia requires one to believe that there are people who should be male or female but are instead acting/presenting as/being/whatevering female or male respectively.  Just try to find a way to argue for transphobia that doesn't use the concepts of male and female.  It can't be done.

Similarly for those who don't fall on the gender binary, how would one be able to argue for discriminating against them if there is no gender binary?  If they're Christian than their holy book says that there isn't one.

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Secular arguments for discrimination of minorities of a gender related type (non-heterosexual people, non-cis people, non gender binary people) are all crap and fall apart at a glance like the space ships in the abandoned port on Brontitall*.  The religious argument is all people have to fall back on.  Most of those people are Christians.  Yet, if one is a Christian then there is neither male nor female for all are one.  Which, if followed, would make gender based discrimination (whether based on the gender of the people one is attracted to or one's own gender) impossible.

So that's my biblical argument.

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--
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*

ZAPHOD:  Hey. Hey look at this. Look what we found man!
FORD: Amazing!
ZAPHOD: It- it’s a derelict spaceport.
FORD: Looks like no one’s been in for centuries. All these amazing old ships…
ZAPHOD: yeah.
FORD: Just rust and wreckage.
ZAPHOD: Yeah. Spooky man. Like, um… what are those things eggs come out of?
FORD: Birds.
ZAPHOD: No, no, after that.
FORD: Eh?
ZAPHOD: What do they come out of the birds in?
FORD: Eggshells?
ZAPHOD: Ah, that’s it! Just like huge, broken eggshells. And all the dust man, and the huge cobwebs.
FORD: And where you get huge cobwebs you get -
ZAPHOD: Yeah-
SPIDER: Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
ZAPHOD: look out man!
[Thud]
SPIDER: ‘Scuse me.
[He scuttles off]
ZAPHOD: One huge spider.
FORD: Polite though.
ZAPHOD: Trans-Stellar Space Lines. Must’ve been real groovy ships once, but now -
FORD: One look and they’d fall apart. I mean look at that one.
[A crash]
ZAPHOD: It fell apart man!

This looks like a situation that calls for civil obedience

Hey, I can use the blog for the moment (before I was able to log in, see for sure that I really was logged in, and do absolutely nothing else.)

So here's what I wanted to talk about basically the... how is it that no word comes to mind that covers peeing and pooping?  Toilets in Arizona.  The bill, if passed, would cover public restrooms, bathrooms, showers, baths, dressing rooms and locker rooms, but for the sake of simplicity I want to limit this to access to toilets in public.

The bill, if passed, would make it illegal to access a public restroom if the sex recorded on one's birth certificate didn't match the sign on the door.  Basically.  Heard about it via Ana Mardoll but has since shown up elsewhere (for example on Fred Clark's blog.)

Now the only way to legally enforce such a law would be to require everyone, on attempting to gain access to a restroom, to furnish their birth certificate or a legally recognized copy to show that their birth certificate matches the sign on the door.  If someone didn't do that they'd be detained pending confirmation that they weren't trying to gain access to the birth certificate-not-matching-restroom.  It would have to be done to everyone because of the whole "equal protection" thing.

Laws like this are not made to be legally enforced and they are not intended to take equal protection into account.  They're made to fuck with people the lawmakers don't like.  Only two types of people -- make that three, no one expects the Spanish Inquisition.

The types of people who will be inconvenienced include:

1: People who don't look the way someone thinks a man or woman should look and thus has the cops called on them.

2: People who are trans, and out, but would rather use the correct restroom than the legal one.  Since they're out it's very easy for someone who doesn't like them to call the cops on them as soon as they enter a correct but, under the bill, illegal restroom.

3: People who are transitioned and use the legal restroom.  (Seriously, imagine seeing this woman in the men's restroom, would your first thought be, "Yup, she's in the right room"?  Be honest.)

4: Anyone who isn't comfortable/isn't safe in a situation where a restroom has someone not of the restroom's designated gender in it (and that very much includes the person not of the designated gender) because the bill, if passed and followed, will legally require men to use the women's restroom and women to use the men's one simply because their birth certificate disagrees with their gender.

5: Other people I forgot to mention.  Probably.

In reality enforcement of the law would be on the basis of, "You look funny to me, I'm calling the cops," except in cases where it seriously is as transphobic as, "I know you're trans, I'm calling the cops as soon as you step inside a restroom."

But besides pointing out that the bill manages to be both stupid and evil (so often we're left wondering which, here we can answer, "Both,") what can be done against it?  Well hopefully pointing it out, again and again, everywhere, until anyone who supports it is simultaneously laughed out of the room and not trusted in any capacity that requires basic moral reasoning, will stop it from ever becoming law.

But if it does become law I think an effective protest strategy would be civil obedience.  No, I didn't leave out the first three letters of the second word.  Obedience.

A lot has been written about civil disobedience.  When it works, when it doesn't.  When, where, and how it should be used.  That's not what I'm talking about here.  What I'm talking about is obeying the law, if it becomes law, as written.  Not as intended which is a way to harass anyone who doesn't fit into the lawmaker's idea of proper gender roles, but as written.

No one, with no caveats about how much they may look or act the part, can legally use the restroom labeled as for different sex than listed on their birth certificate.  And since it's tied to birth certificate, not actual sex, drop your pants(/skirt/shorts/dress/kilt/whatever) for show and tell isn't enough.  It needs to be on the document, and the only way to know that it's on the document is to have the document available and read it.

So imagine the law passed and a concerned citizen was worried it wasn't being properly enforced in the Capitol Complex (sounds like a psychiatric condition, I say as someone with multiple psychiatric conditions) in Phoenix, Arizona.  (For those, like me, who don't know such things without looking them up, that's where the Arizona Legislature meets.)  So that citizen goes to the entrances to the restrooms there and requests to see the birth certificate of anyone seeking entrance and, if the person attempts to enter without furnishing such citizen calls security (the Capitol Complex must have security) because the person using the restroom appears to be breaking the law.

That concerned citizen might get kicked out of the building in a hurry, but that would just serve to make other citizens even more concerned that the laws are being broken in that building because the person was only trying to make sure the law was obeyed, and using legal means to do it, so why was the person kicked out?  What criminal activity were they trying to hide?

Only one way to find out: another concerned citizen must step up to take the place of the first one.  And if the second one is kicked out a third one must step up, and so on.  This probably falls under the category of being an asshole, but it's not against the law.  In fact, it would be obeying the law, because a law of this nature can only function if ordinary citizens call security/the cops when someone appears to be breaking it, and since anyone who doesn't show their birth certificate to enter the restroom appears to be breaking it, stopping the members of the Arizona State Legislature from being able to access toilets without first showing their birth certificates isn't civil disobedience, it's civil obedience.  Obeying the law to the letter.

And if the bill becomes a law I think that might be an effective form of protest because I think that after a certain amount of time of that happening non-stop the legislators would get sick of it and want to be able to get to the damn toilets without having to show their papers first.

Of course, that's just how it looks from this angle, and even though I'm closer to Arizona than usual, I'm still far away so this might not be the best angle on Arizona.

Apparently a bus is seven times faster than a pedestrian; or I met Izzy!

So today Lonespark and I met Izzy, it was for too short a time but a great meeting none the less.

Things to come out of said meeting:
-What passes for conventional these days is shape-shifting dragons and Scotland.

-There seems to be a lack of works about the [whatever] apocalypse in which people act like people.  Consider the zombie apocalypse, it's always assumed that those who rebuild in the after time will be the ones who follow a philosophy of, "If things get tough I'll trip you so I can run away while they chow down on you," not, "I don't care that ze can't keep up, I'm not leaving zir.  I'll carry zir if that's what it takes," and the people who side with that person when given the choice.  This in spite of, "We take care of each other," being the more inviting option and the one with the better retirement plan than, "Social Darwinism taken to a literal lethal extreme."

-The fact that there has yet to be a Hitchhiker's Guide/The Hobbit crossover is absurd.  It's not just the actor, it's that he was in his dressing gown when the dwarfs showed up, it's that when you get down to it what Arthur Dent really wants is a Hobbit hole and not to be interrupted by adventures but if Ford/Gandalf gives him a nudge out the door then he's all, "I'm with you.  I'm bloody well with you."

-Vampires are the new Manic-Pixie-Dream-Girls.  See Underworld and Twilight where the vampire is the magic lover that exists to break the ordinary human out of their humdrum lives.

-Squid is best served fried.

-It's been too long since I've been to an actual city (Boston in this case) as opposed to, you know, Portland.  I'd forgotten what a city looks like.

-A possible name for that project would be "The Night Shift".

-And such.

---

As for the first part of the title, the bus ride home from Boston crossed the path that I knew I'd be walking home, and then took exactly the same route to the station that I'd take back to the spot from the station.  I guessed it would take me half an hour to walk from the station back to the spot.  In fact it took 28 minutes.  It took the bus four minutes to make the same journey in the opposite direction.  Thus, it would appear, a bus is seven times faster than a pedestrian.  At least over the bridge and in the city.  I imagine that on long straightaways it's more than seven times faster.

Selma Botman and the good and bad of Wikipedia

Selma Botman had a Wikipedia page before she ever came to USM and apparently her Senior Advisor was tasked with keeping it up to date for some time.  I question, seriously, whether or not she met the notability guidelines.  The USM Presidents before and after her apparently have not as they have no pages, but that's not why I've started writing here (with two other articles waiting to be finished off in the wings which is not usually the case.)

I think she meets the notability guidelines now.  When she became the first USM President subject to a no confidence vote and that got people's attentions at least from the Czech Republic to Chicago then I think she rose to the level of notability that Wikipedia enforces, sometimes with absurd force, in an extremely uneven fashion.

I thought Botman was all in the past, I thought that Botmangate (I hate that name, by the way; there's a reason why I'd rather have an eight word long tag than use the much shorter "Botmangate") was over.

Then on the 11th, my mother's birthday, it reared its ugly head again.  This time with a relative flurry of activity on her Wikipedia page.  It doesn't take much to rise to the level of "relative flurry" because her Wikipedia page generally has exactly zero activity.

It turned out that one of her most vocal supporters decided to try to rewrite history.  It was not the usual supporter, the "Senior Advisor" with Wikipedia name Ptortx, nor did it follow the usual pattern.  In the past the standard method of Botman supporters had been to delete the entire section of the page regarding everything they themselves have not written, that section being known as "Controversy."

Now at this point I could point out that the sections they did write are mired in problems.  First, they are (or were, in the activity that followed  the Botman supporter's attempted redaction of history there has been reformatting) out of order.  Two times the word "Previously," was used to indicate that as you read further forward you were actually going back in time (until you weren't) other times you were just supposed to know by magic what the order of events were.  Second they had no properly formatted citations and the citations they did have were to editorials, the one area of newspapers even less subject to fact checking than the coverage of politics (where it has, only mildly jokingly, been pointed out that if one candidate said the earth was flat while the other spoke the truth the headline would read, "Candidates disagree over shape of world," and the article would never indicate which was right.)  Third they were out of date.  I'm going to have to look this up because unlike Botman supporters I want to make sure things are actually true before I stick them on Wikipedia, but I believe the university was in a state of financial health for all of one year when she was at it.  Yet the Wikipedia article still indicates, with citation, that she restored the university to financial health even though when she left she'd somehow managed to loose seven and a half million dollars (rounding down) with no indication as to where it went thus taking a year that should have resulted in a small surplus (half a million dollars is small when we're talking about the figures involved) based on revenue and operating costs and somehow (I don't think anyone has quite figured out how yet) managed to make it a year with a more than seven million dollar deficit.  That's not exactly restoring it to financial health, even though the Wikipedia page still says she did that.

I'm somewhat worried to point out that it has reached the point where deleting the "Controversy" section no longer erases all record of the no confidence vote as it is now mentioned elsewhere in the article.  Somewhat worried because I'm not sure that Botman's supporters have noticed that it is mentioned elsewhere yet.  (Though maybe that's the reason for the change in tactics.)

I could point out these things, but that would drag me too far into tangent land.  (One of the articles waiting to be finished is about Babylon 5 and the rhetorical technique of, "I could mention this, but I won't.")

What I instead want to focus on is this:

Wikipedia's greatest weakness is that anyone can edit it.  A few keystrokes and Wikipedia says World War II never happened.  Wikipedia's greatest strength is that anyone can edit it.  One person reverting the page and suddenly Wikipedia says we're back in a world where World War II did take place.

This is dangerous and at the same time good.

Selma Botman's supporters can keep on vandalizing the page to make her look like a saint or even to simply muddy the waters.*  That's were the danger comes in, the revisionism.  For example, the section called "Controversy" should have been called "Controversies" from the moment it was added (blame where it is due, fault of the person who added it not Botman supporters).  At some point in the editing history of the page someone removed all reference to the first major controversy to break with respect to Botman from everything on the page but a couple of external links with no mention of why they were there.  (I think the person who added the "Controversy" section didn't know how to cite references and just added their references as external links.  At the time the "Controversy" section was dominated by the pay raise controversy, now it is devoted entirely to the vote of no confidence.)  So we can see historical revisionism at work with regard to Selma Botman's page.

But everyone else (for specific examples: 67.255.220.223, Foulolron123, 130.111.129.86, 141.114.161.162, Namiba, 67.255.218.207 (note that those IP addresses are all different) ***) can set the record straight.  That's it's strength.

Now that editing Botman's page is back on people's list of things to do**, now that her two most vocal supporters (Erickson and Eagan) are both active on Wikipedia with respect to this and it's reached the point of (Erickson) introducing falsehoods instead of (Ptortx) simply deleting the truth, I think we'll probably reach the point of things being quite interesting with regard to the page.  There are already spirited discussions on two talk pages (one on one of the editors', one on the talk page of the article itself.)  The annoying thing is that the facts of the case really aren't in dispute.

This isn't conclave the rules to force a referendum are in the Faculty Senate Bylaws, freely available online, the rules for what constitute a passing vote on matters that require the intervention of the Chancellor and/or Board of Trustees (like, say, getting rid of a sitting president) are laid out very clearly (a two thirds vote of those voting) in the university's Governance Document/Constitution (which supersedes the bylaws.)  Nothing should be complicated or controversial.

One thing that interests me is whether the other things will come out/come back.  The Pay Raise Controversy, for example has been excised from the page, will this new attention on the page get it put back?  The Rosetta Stone Controversy probably doesn't have sufficient sources (as I noted in a footnote it's here and on the blog of one of her supporters and apparently nowhere else) to every make it onto Wikipedia, but various other things might.  The broken promises, the financial distress, the vindictiveness, the daycare, so on.

The day care is interesting because if you look back through the news it turns out that her position completely changed.  Find a news article from when she closed it and you'll see her saying what a heart wrenching decision it is but the money saved will go to supporting academics (most commonly cited broken promise: "The money we save via this painful cut will go to supporting academics," the cut is made, the money never shows up.  At least on the academic side.)  Find reports from the time of the vote of no confidence (I don't know if you can or if this was done entirely verbally) and they'll say that she got rid of the daycare because she thought no one was using it.  (It was always full and had an absurd waiting list.)

I'm trying to remember now whether the shit list was the work of Botman or the person before her.  If it was her then that should definitely make it onto the page, but likely won't.

The shit list happened thus:
Administrator 1: We're tight on money, we have to cut.
Administrator 2: Who should we cut?
Administrator 1: I've got an idea (esoteric formulae unrelated to anything relevant) These people!
These people: Uh... you do realize we're profitable, right?  So cutting us will lose you money, not save you money.

But there seriously was a list made up of, we don't have enough money so we'll have to cut programs, we've used these (not money related) criteria to make up a list of potential programs to cut.  What?  They're all profitable?  Who cares.

Thankfully, if I remember correctly, nothing ever came of the shit list.

I wouldn't put it passed Botman, but I think the shit list was in the previous regime.  Some vague sense of what preceded what leads to that (if it was in her regime it would need to have been right at the start) as well as the fact that the previous regime was best known to me for its leader needing to be taken aside so it could be gently explained to him that, "Yes, this program costs a million dollars a year and so cutting it will mean you're spending a million less, but it makes two million dollars a year.  Two is bigger than one.  Twice as big in fact.  Cutting the program will leave you with a million dollars less, not a million dollars more," which seemed to indicate the same kind of thinking that was behind the shit list.

Then again, Selma Botman shared in that form of thinking.

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* Some of the edits were to change the date of the no confidence vote, meaning that if anyone tried to get more information on the no confidence vote that took place that day they'd find out that there was no no confidence vote on that day.

It is sneakier than outright deleting it.  Instead it just makes all information on the page about the no confidence vote suspect because it's like getting a history book that says World War II took place in 1832.  How much are you going to trust the rest of the "facts" presented when you start with that?

No, the edit didn't change the year, it changed the month, indicating it took place in the first third of the year rather than the second and that it took place on one day rather than two, and that it took place before the petition forcing it to take place was delivered (mind you the edits also eliminated any mention of the petition.) And eliminated any reference to the almost month long process in which those tasked with organizing the vote tried to get input from all of the faculty (not an easy task since they numbered in hundreds) and constantly worked hand in hand with Selma Botman, the person the vote was about, to create a fair process.

It also indicated that there was no dispute as to the outcome of the vote, where in reality the dispute was never settled and has since become moot.  (It doesn't matter that it passed while Selma told every news source that would listen that it failed because a little over two months later, after talks with the guy in charge that were kicked off by the vote, She resigned.  Sort of.  She resigned in a way that didn't count as quitting and thus kept her huge salary while losing all the responsibilities that were supposed to have come with it.)

** I was going to do a major edit.  I was tracking down every news source including one that thought the vote was part of some grand conspiracy for world domination, and incorporating the reliable ones.  Learning how things are cited in Wikipedia (my only previous involvement in Wikipedia**** had been reverting malicious edits.  Like someone who replaced the definition of tool with the name of a person they didn't like.)  Putting things into order, tracing rumors to their source, finding out that the Rosetta Stone controversy stayed almost entirely word of mouth and never made it into a cite-able source unless you count this blog and the blog of one of her two most vocal supporters, and so forth.  But then my computer managed to crash in a highly unusual (for it, not for computers in general) way that managed to delete both the draft and the backup I had in case anything happened to the draft.

So that didn't happen, but other people were drawn in by the activity too and thus deleting and falsehood has been undone.

***  Of which I am at least one, I think I do have a Wikipedia account but since what I've done on Wikipedia is seriously limited to reverting malicious edits and occasionally correcting punctuation, I generally don't feel the need to log in.  I'd have to figure out what my account was to be sure, but I don't think I've felt the need to log in in years.

**** Unless I've forgotten something, which I don't think I have.

Not getting a ride home and being out of oil

My mother does not live with me (for the most part) but her car generally does because where she lives (with her boyfriend) is so out of the way that driving two cars out there every night and back every morning would be a tremendous waste of gas and thus money.

As a result every morning when she has work she shows up at my house to pick up her car and since my university is on the way to her work gives me a ride in, thus saving me a walk that takes an hour (or more, depending on conditions.)  This semester when I get out of class is generally close enough to when she gets out of work (which varies) that it's made chronological sense for her to give me rides home as well because even if I have to wait around almost an hour it's still quicker to ride back with her.

On Wednesdays there is a meeting of the Classics Club* which I have been attending this semester with the result that on Wednesdays I get done with on-campus stuff at almost exactly the same time she gets out of work.  (Seemingly independently of when she does, if the meeting runs long her workday runs long, if the meeting runs short her workday runs short.  It really is remarkable.)  You'd think this would be a good thing, less waiting and whatnot.

You'd be wrong.

Instead what happens is this, as soon as the meeting gets out I call her, this time I borrowed a cell phone so I could call without taking the time to walk to the nearest phone.  It turns out if I'd called her two minutes earlier it would have been the easiest thing in the world to give me a ride home but instead she now is committed to going to another city, would have to turn around once she got there, come back to the city I'm in, be pointed in the wrong direction, pick me up, turn around again, and head back whence she came.

Now there is no secret to this meeting on Wednesdays.  None at all.  She knows exactly when it starts, how long it usually takes, and what the variations are in length, and so forth.  All of this has been made clear both by myself and by experience.

Which leaves me wondering... well... wtf.  It seems to be like clockwork, no matter when she gets out, no matter when I get out, the phone call is always two minutes too late (give or take but not by much.)  Now I could try to disrupt the entire meeting by saying, "Gee, it looks like we're about two minutes from done, I need to make a phone call."  I'm not about to do that.

So instead what happens is I get told, "I wish you'd called two minutes earlier."  The first or second time I believed this, but at this point I have my doubts.  She knows that I'll be stranded with an hour long walk between home and myself if she takes that turn onto the interstate, she knows that we almost always get out at about the same time, as the pattern continues I feel more and more like if she really wished she could have given me a ride she'd wait a few minutes before committing to leaving me behind.

Anyway, hour long walks with a heavy backpack tend to leave one very much in need of a shower, and me more-so than most because I've actually been unable to fit one in these last few days and on Monday I had to walk some of the way in and most of the way back from school.  Not to mention cause to sweat yesterday.

So after getting all ready to take a shower I discovered that there was no hot water.  I checked the furnace, did all of that stuff, tried to coax it into turning on by setting the thermostat absurdly high (the highest level isn't actually labeled but I think it's 90 degrees Fahrenheit.)  And then, finally, I realized that the oil tank read empty.

So what followed was a prolonged period of trying to heat enough water to accomplish something.  At this point I wouldn't say I'm clean so much as rinsed.

And that is how my day will end.

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*Tomorrow (Thursday the 14th) at 7 PM there's a lecture at USM: A Cupid May Look at a King: In-Between Spaces and their Occupants in Roman Art by some Harvardy person, Elizabeth (Lizzie) Mitchell.  Next Monday (the 18th) at 4:30 PM there's going to be a showing of The Life of Brian.  At some point in the future there are going to be dark T-Shirts with the original Latin from The Life of Brian in white and the corrections in red.  If you've seen The Life of Brian you know what Latin I'm talking about.  (Romans go home!)

If you'll happen to be in the greater Portland area at either of these times and are interested in the events, or you'd like a T-Shirt, let me know and I'll give you more information.

Well... fuck.

So I mentioned that applied for the "Maymester in Greece," and that I was tying a lot of my hopes to this.  Not to mention a fair degree of my extremely hard to come by motivation.

Now it looks like it might not happen.  The problem isn't Greece.  Greece is fine and safe and all is ok on that front.  The problem is that people think Greece is unsafe, and, also, people are poor.  Stock indices aside the economy has not rebounded.  Also it's never completely clear how well the credits will transfer until the credits transfer or don't (this is Harvard we're talking about, nothing is ever easy) so that scares people off.

If not enough people sign up, no Greece.  Right now number of people signed up is apparently equal to about four.  Which explains why I have heard neither, "You're rejected," nor, "You're accepted, give us a $500 down payment."

So if you know anyone who can get the money in time (about $4,000 US plus airfare) and wants to go to Greece with a great teacher on a trip-course backed by Harvard, point them at this site tell them to ignore the fact that the deadline for an application is passed and just to email the people saying they're interested (and probably fill out the application too) and maybe it can be saved.

More likely you don't know any such people, and not enough will sign up to justify the trip/course in the eyes of whoever is in charge and thus hopes and dreams shattered on the rocks.

Hence the title.

[Added:] And it's been cancelled.