Aleksandra the Great’s Exploits

Going back and forth to Bryn Mawr at the times that I do, I often get caught in the regular pre- and post-school school zone speed limits. There is even one school that I pass that has its school zone lights on for what seems like the entire day (I drive past that school around 11:15 when I’m running late, and am made even later by having to drive at 15mph).

To incorporate the title: Because I am driving so slowly in the school zones, I find that I don’t really need to pay attention to the road. Instead of waiting for the next stop light, which I may or may not hit, I use the school zone stretch of road to change cds; get a drink; make sure I didn’t forget anything important; put shoes on or take them off; and, hell, even memorize poetry.

Further, there is more need to pay attention to your exact speed in a school zone: You want to get as many msph as allowed without going over and risking the higher fines for speeding in a school zone. So, naturally, some of the focus has to be directed at your own speedometer.

The problem is that most of the time (especially at 11am), there aren’t even any kids around who might get hit by the cars. I think that it’s probably out of frustration and spite that I often don’t pay attention in the school zones.

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There will probably be a much more substantial and important and interesting post coming up in the near future. I just have to beat the game….

After a documented ten-and-a-half-month hiatus—to which I’ll return later—and a change of address, I am returning to blogging. There are, of course, some and great thanks to be expressed:

Firstly, to Mike, without whom I would never have had a blog to transfer to this new site that he has both set up and is hosting. Eternal thanks are due him as long as this site exists.

Secondly, to Christina, who graciously allowed me to use of one of her subdomains for over two years. It is only recently that I was made aware that having your own website is extremely affordable if a nice friend will host it for you, and I became desirous of my own.

Thirdly, to any readers I might have left, though I do not expect to have many (or any at all, for now) after my post deficit.

I believe that those were the primary recipients of thanks. Unfortunately, now the Daily Show is on, and I am dreadfully distracted. It is probably for the best that I leave, though, because the other things I want to say will be better expressed in their own posts.

[Shoot. I just realized that all of September passed (but when I checked my watch and saw that it was the 8th, I wondered whether it was September or October), and I didn’t even make a new post. How dull!]

This evening during the Eagles game I was in my room (at home), reading a collection of Christina Rossetti sonnets (which were very lovely indeed). Every minute or so, the group of people out back or in one of the houses across the alley would chatter loudly, and I had imagined that it was a party. I soon realized that they were being loud about the football game, and I managed to ignore the noise. Suddenly, a bomb exploded. Or at least that’s what it seemed like, since I’ve been reading (for class) about violent colonial battles in Algeria. It was probably only a firework of some sort, but the sound reverberated and shook more than all of the noise-makers fired after it. I had, for about a second, seriously worried that a bomb had exploded.

I caught the last half of The Colbert Report last night, and he had on the congressman from Georgia’s eighth district (Lynn Westmoreland, I believe). One of the first things he said was that the eighth was “a good conservative district” and “a good family district.” Okay, so I was already prepared for some humorous responses to Stephen’s questions. But when Stephen asked what could be cut to help ease the deficit and the congressman said, in either complete seriousness or it was the best acting I’ve ever seen, the department of education, I was shocked. Contrast that to lovely Dennis Kucinich, who sadly will probably never get most of his ideas passed let alone become president, who supports tuition-free higher education for kids in state schools. Can you even imagine free college? Wow.

And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, Stephen brought up the congressman’s efforts to have the Ten Commandments put up in the House building and in the Senate. Stephen asked if he could think of any better place than a public building to put up the Ten Commandments (even my little brother thought immediately of a church), but the congressman said no, they were good things for people to see. And yet as important as they are to him, the congressman only managed to name three. As much as I’ve tried to forget my Christian upbringing, I still remember more than that: don’t take the lord’s name in vain, have no other gods, keep the sabbath holy, honor parents, don’t covent neighbor’s wife (and this excludes the three he named: don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t lie—I guess that counts as not bearing false witness).

I think I heard more people laugh during this “Better Know a District” than I have for almost anything else on The Colbert Report. I kind of hope that that congressman and his family weren’t watching last night.

Inspired, perhaps, by An Inconvenient Truth (and because I’m supposed to be an environmentalist) to become more knowledgeable about environmental issues, I started scanning the articles on truthout’s environmental page. I came across this article about the ads released prior to the “alarmist” film assuring people that green house gases are good.

Against backdrops of a park, a beach and a forest, one ad celebrates the benefits of greenhouse gas-producing fuels.

“The fuels that produce CO2 (carbon dioxide) have freed us from a world of back-breaking labor, lighting up our lives, allowing us to create and move the things we need, the people we love,” the ad runs. “Now some politicians want to label carbon dioxide a pollutant. Imagine if they succeed - what would our lives be like then?”

I almost want to cry. No sensible person is trying to say that we should give up electriciy and return to walking around dark houses with candle lanterns and riding horses to the next farm to pick up some milk in the morning. We can have the same energy we have from the fuels that produce CO2 (nice way to avoid calling them greenhouse gases, because even that name sounds scary) without damaging the environment. Solar power seems an excellent choice considering that, according to another article, the world’s deserts are gradually becoming inhospitable. If people can’t live there, we might as well use the space to collect solar energy.

But I’m still far from knowing as much as I would need to to make an intelligent post. I only wanted to point out those ads, since they weren’t aired in the Philadelphia region. As much as I don’t want to think about it, I’m sure some people believed the ads and think that there are no alternate sources of power to rely on if we can’t use fossil fuels.

About two weekends ago it was Earth Day, and I didn’t even remember until I was using Google in the late afternoon and noticed that the logo was decorated with solar panels and wind turbines. I thought, “That’s neat,” and then, “Oh, crap, it’s Earth Day, isn’t it?” It had been raining all day, though, so it’s not like I could have done very much to celebrate. I’m just disappointed in the fact that I didn’t even remember, also in my lack of environmental action since then to make up for having forgotten.

Another event I completely ignored was May Day. Last year I wanted to celebrate May Day as a socialist (from the Second International), and although I didn’t do anything, I at least remembered it. At Bryn Mawr they celebrate the pagan May Day. I think they’d have every reason to not let me in if they discovered that I made no attempt to celebrate.

A while ago I went to a rather fancy movie theater in New York to see The White Countess. I’m pretty sure it was during the previews for that film that I saw one for Joyeux Noël, a French film about the Christmas Truce of the first year of World War I. It seemed interesting and like something I would naturally enjoy, so I waited and kept an eye out for the release date. I was never able to find a theater playing it, though, and several months later, I couldn’t find a copy of it or DVD release dates anywhere. While it seems somewhat okay to download anime, it feels a bit more illegal to download other films, but since I couldn’t find it I decided to try downloading. I finally found one online, and after hours and hours spent in downloading I realized that there were no subtitles. Now the people in the movie understand English, French, and German, but I would find it pretty impressive if someone could understand all three languages well enough to be able to watch the whole film (it was about equally split between the three languages). Needless to say, I could have watched the movie, but I wouldn’t know what was going on for two thirds of the time.

So I tried to download another file, and that took over a day, but this one came with subtitles. Yay! Except the time at the bottom of the player said it was only 56 minutes long, and IMDB marks its runtime at 116 minutes. I was disappointed that I would have to see the “abridged” version, but it was still better than nothing. Yet, the film was not even halfway over and I had thought I’d been watching it for at least half an hour. I didn’t really pay this any mind at the time, but when I returned to it later I thought that the seconds were ticking slowly. I investigated and discovered that for every 10 minutes that passed on my watch, the film’s clock only noted the passage of six minutes. The title of the post is a line in the film; it seems they were trying to make the viewers understand the meaning. The problem is, though, that there is still a discrepancy between the real movie time and the IMDB data.

Dave and I went to the Sakura festival at Fairmount Park last Sunday. Though the event was free, the things there were quite expensive ($7 for one crab cake sandwich, etc.). And despite what the sign said about a tea ceremony from 3-4pm, some woman came out and shooed all of the tea-drinkers away at about ten of three, saying there would be no more tea ceremony. It was enjoyable, though, and I’d like to go for more of it next year.

That’s not really the subject of this post, though (I didn’t do enough cool stuff or take any pictures to make it a worthwhile entry). I went for a walk by myself for a while and came upon these two metal horse sculptures, upon one of which sat two children. I am of the opinion that you don’t sit on objects of art, so I was already worried about these two kids and their upbrinings. When a man walked by with his bike, the first boy asked if they could ride it, which of course they couldn’t. Then they asked where he got it, and he told them in West Philadelphia. Then the boy asked “Ain’t we in West Philly?” The man with the bike, probably refusing to answer a question so grammatically incorrect, asked the boy if he could repeat his question. So the boy said, “Isn’t we in West Philly?” And that’s when I stopped paying attention to contemplate the boy’s transition from slang to actual, if improperly-used, English. I was pleased.

The transition from daylight saving time to standard time is pleasant because for weeks after (if you, like me, are too lazy to reset your clock and would not dream of waking up in the middle of the night to set it at the correct hour) you can look at the clock and know that you actually have one more hour before bed than the clock says you have. It just gives you the sense that there is somehow more time available in the fall than there was in the late summer.

Daylight saving time, on the other hand, forces you to adjust the clocks almost immediately, or else suffer every time you mistakenly believe there are six hours left before bed when really there are only five. Besides for rushing me in resetting the clocks, daylight saving time confuses my daily cycle. I keep glancing at my computer clock and thinking that it is an hour ahead—surely it can’t be this bright outside at 5:30 when it’s supposed to be dark by 6! In the summer it’s acceptable for the sun to set after 8, but during the spring, when I should spend evenings doing school work and getting to bed, the extended daylight only makes me procrastinate, wishing I had time to be outside enjoying it.

I am aware that it saves energy as well as daylight, and that as an environmentalist I should be thrilled that we don’t have to use electric lighting as much now as we did a week ago. It just happens to be a very unpleasant initial change. And, since I haven’t been feeling well the past two or three days, I blame daylight saving time for messing up my health.

In other news, I have submitted all of my college applications. Hopefully there will be more than a post or two before the one revealing the admissions decisions (provided the response is agreeable).

I recently acquired the Final Fantasy VII soundtrack. While I was listening to it, I realized two things:
1. Unless FFVII is re-released, my little brother (who is eight today) will probably never play it. If he were to play it, the inferior graphics would detract from his ability to like it. His first experiences with video games, after all, were on the PS2.

2. That was the only Final Fantasy game I played long enough to beat. Back then I had priorities; now sleeping and homework get in the way of my playing video games. In an effort to fix this problem, I hereby resolve to beat all of the Final Fantasy games (including VIII, though that could take a while) that I have to date, as well as any that I may purchase in the future.

[Note: I didn’t feel like thinking up a title for this one. Luckily, WordPress did it for me, though this is not my actual 42nd post.]