saturday, november 11

•••    this is the 428th anniversary of the night tycho brahe saw a supernova in cassiopeia. I wonder how many of us would notice if a new object as bright as jupiter showed up in the sky. I think I probably wouldn't, unless it was in the middle of the big dipper or orion or something. sort of sad.

I do notice when the moon is full. tonight it is, and with the sky so crystal clear and cloudless, the moon's brightness gives its surface features a certain impossible clarity that's visible even in its afterimage on the backs of my eyelids. looking at it, stuck up there in the sky outside my window, it's hard to believe it's almost two hundred forty thousand miles away.

then again, you could be even farther away than that, and I wouldn't have a clue. 9:34 PM

•••    okay okay I know we are all really sick of this election but this has been bothering me since wednesday:

I wish people would stop saying things like, "if you're not smart enough to figure out the ballot, you shouldn't be allowed to vote." no, that's not a direct quote from any particular person, but haven't you heard something to that effect at least once since this whole mess started? anyway. it's making me angry. the idea that there should be a minimum intelligence required to gain voting rights is so thoroughly elitist it makes me ill. besides, you know what? you don't have to be all that stupid to be easily confused. my grandparents are all pretty smart, but they're not entirely with it all of the time. I can totally picture one of them -- or several of them -- being confused by the holes and the lines (and me being annoyed and impatient with their slowness, but that's why I'm an obnoxious teenager and not a poll worker). and even though some of them have, I think, rather deplorable political leanings, they should still be allowed to vote.

besides which, no matter how figure-out-able that palm beach ballot was, I don't think anyone would argue that it's intuitive. the mechanism by which you vote for the president of your country should be intuitive. and, hopefully, that is all I'm going to say about that until they finish the recount. politics schmolitics blah blah blah. 8:42 PM

•••    these are really neat. all this time I've been reading chrominance and I never knew the picture in the design was from an actual photograph! the web is full of wonders, hm? 6:35 PM

•••    how unlikely is it that the total number of votes cast for bush and gore each have three digits repeating in the same positions? (48,999,459 and 49,222,339)

also, objecting to a handcount of the palm beach county ballots seems pretty sketchy. not that anything about this election is turning out to be unsketchy, particularly in palm beach.

you know what else is sketchy? penn refusing to host us today (ostensibly because of some problems with their field and rain and scheduling), and then refusing to come to our field instead (it's a twenty minute drive) because they wanted to get drunk for their homecoming football game, and then contesting the forfeit on the grounds that they did everything in their power to honor the match contract! grrr. penn is usually a pretty cool team, too. they're fun to sing with. but today we scrimmaged each other, half in normal positions and half in ridiculous positions (I flanked!), and then we sang together. so it was fun, but not exactly the ideal way to end a season. ah well.

work now. 3:04 PM

friday, november 10

•••    I like concerts. no matter how imperfect they are, the music that stays in my head afterwards is always beautiful. (not that this one was especially imperfect. for once I played every single written rhythm instead of just inventing them.) I have even grown to like the ritual of concert dress, especially now that we're allowed to wear all black. (I have yet to find a satisfactory white dress shirt.) the only thing I don't like is standing there at the edge of the row, clarinet in hand, listening to people clap and trying to figure out how to avoid looking at them. applause makes me blush, and staring out into the audience knowing I am lit head to toe by stage lights even though I can barely discern individuals in the shadows is a little eerie.

but it's all worth it for the music, you know.

now there are a bunch of people in my room watching braveheart. I haven't been paying enough attention to keep track of what's going on, but there seem to be an awful lot of dead bodies. also scottish accents. I feel a little funny sitting here in my all black concert clothes with people sprawled out across the floor, slumber party style, blocking the way to my pajamas. 11:05 PM

•••    today is also quintessential autumn. the weather isn't beautiful by any means, but it's the kind of autumn weather you see in picture books when you're little, the kind of day peter spier would paint -- blustery post-rain bluegrey, with fallen leaves scuffling all over the place and bare branches reaching up to catch the clouds, people stubbornly resisting the change of seasons by wearing hats and scarves over their sweatshirts, and a certain ominous dimness to the sunlight reminding everyone that the solstice is closer than we think. 1:09 PM

•••    today is concert friday. if I weren't a pacifist, and he weren't dead, percy aldridge grainger would definitely be on my hit list. however I've warmed up to vaclav nelhybel, since he does have such a terrific name. (hey swatties, come watch. it's fun.)

by the way, your one vote could have made all the difference. 9:59 AM

thursday, november 9

•••    there is life beyond the election:

today we taught the fourth graders about electricity. they couldn't believe it when we made an aluminum can roll across the desktop by waving a charged balloon over it. the world is magic, I tell you. after the demonstrations and discussions and experiments, we turned them loose with nine-volt batteries, little lightbulbs, and lots of wires. it looked like christmas with all the lights blinking on and off across the room.

I went to a talk tonight about the evolution of language -- not so much the biological evolution of the capacity for language, but the developmental stages of language itself across hominid evolution. we are oh so very sophisticated, we humans. but we do not have nearly as nice a species name as the vervet monkeys. 11:07 PM

•••    this is starting to feel like a bad joke.

I got all my work for today done though! yay me! now off to class in the rain. 6:37 PM

•••    every night the sunset turns the sky inside out. during the day the colors are in the trees against the solid blue behind, but twilight turns them into shadows as the color flows into the sky, as if the autumn leaves were painted in watercolors and someone had spilled a glass of water all over it, to make it bleed into one swash of gradient color before the whole thing flows together into murky dark.

and then every morning the sunrise turns it rightside out again.

I slept too much and now there's more work than time. and a car with fishes painted all over the sides just drove by. fish swim in the sky, birds fly in the sea, elis is over here now, and I am going to breakfast. then work. 7:43 AM

•••    this just gets more and more ridiculous. what I don't understand is how, even after they've disqualified almost twenty thousand votes, both gore and bush had more than they did in the original count. where are these votes coming from? were they just lying on the floor someplace? I don't get it. it doesn't make me feel especially confident about all the other really close states, either. 6:15 AM

wednesday, november 8

•••    now the whole election thing is coming back to bite me. not only did I stay up all night, I didn't do any work because I was too busy keeping track of the polls. so now I'm tired and facing twice as much work as usual. I suppose it was worth it.

I've been having conversations all day about the election and the nader factor, but michael moore has done a decent job summarizing my thoughts on the nader thing, so I'll spare you the political diatribe. the general concensus among the bits of the swarthmore population I ran into today seems to be that we need instant runoff voting. I'm all in favor. (either that or the states need to take a clue from maine and nebraska and get rid of the all-or-nothing system, which is just ridiculous.)

naptime, then worktime? decisions to the left of me, decisions to the right... oh I'm sorry, that was completely unintentional. bah. 11:07 PM

•••    I guess I can't sit here on the edge of my seat for ten days waiting for them to count all the overseas votes, so I might as well go to class. I do hope that all the people who didn't vote have reconsidered about how much we all count for. two hundredths of half a percent is still significant. 9:31 AM

•••    it does seem off, doesn't it, when most of the states are filled in red but the national popular vote favors gore. stupid electoral college. 8:38 AM

•••    this morning keeps getting more and more surreal. first there's this recount stuff, not to mention the fraud allegations. (if I had accidentally voted for buchanan I would be sick.) go gore.

then I went down to breakfast. we always have music on in the breakfast room, and today I think it was tuned to the college station. the song playing was a lounge singer doing a rendition of nin's "closer," over a double-time version of the opening sequence from the sesame street theme song. (you know, doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo, doodidoo -- before it gets to the "sunny day..." part.) I kid you not. it was very very weird.

as I was leaving the breakfast room I saw the decorations hanging on the opposite wall: a giant black spider model, with a legspan of at least five feet, holding a bush/cheney campaign sign with the word "for" replaced by "is." bush/cheney is president. the spider was also wearing a little white straw hat, with the words "I may have a cool hat but I'm still politically disillusioned. vote nader." written in black marker across the red-white-and-blue hatband.

as if the world wasn't strange enough all by itself after only three hours of sleep. 8:26 AM

•••    freaking florida! I'm never listening to a media projection again! 7:49 AM

•••    gag gag gag.

ah well. at least it was suspenseful. and hey, I voted. 2:54 AM

tuesday, november 7

•••    I remember the 1988 election too. I was in second grade, and my little accelerated sped group studied the election in what I now realize was ridiculous depth, considering we were seven years old. we had these flimsy little books printed in red and blue on newsprint, full of issues and positions and silly campaign photos. I thought michael dukakis was a much better name than george bush. maybe that was some subconscious thing because everyone in my family has a two-syllable first name and a three-syllable last name, so I'm used to the pattern. or maybe bush is just a dopey last name. I was concerned about the pollution in boston harbor. I was concerned about trickle-down economics, once I finally figured out what that meant. I was also distinctly unimpressed with politics in general.

(interestingly, that election grows more and more relevant to my own life in funny retroactive ways -- first I moved to cambridge and got to see boston harbor to myself; then I came to swarthmore, where michael dukakis is one of our more well-known alumni.)

I have vague memories of 1984, hearing various people express their complete and utter disgust for ronald reagan, but by the time the actual election day we were all busy waiting for my overdue baby sister, so that ended up being the really important aspect of november.

I remember surprisingly little about the 1992 election, except for my mother's indecision about perot (?!), and then his oyster speech. I wasn't sure how I felt about being ross perot's oyster, but then again I probably didn't count to him since I couldn't vote. I also remember watching the returns at a party with my father, where a bunch of mit fellows were doing silly impressions of various politicians and cheering every time clinton won a state. I had a conversation with my father a few weeks before the election about how incredibly old george bush looked, so much older than he seemed in 1988, and as we watched the returns I tried to save a mental picture of clinton so I could compare it to the way he looked at the end of his term.

in 1996 I was upset that I wasn't allowed to vote. but I have to say, as first presidential elections go, this one is turning out to be at least statistically interesting.

faith, you can't leave manhattan. where would I get my new york minute fix?

also, I love this commercial. 11:51 PM

•••    woo! gore wins pennsylvania; I don't have to feel guilty, and I was part of two whole percentage points! haha! 9:51 PM

•••    so instead of watching the election returns I have to go to a silly dress rehearsal. sigh. 6:35 PM

•••    today has been nicely productive in that way that makes you feel like you are being responsible and on top of things even when that's mostly not true. after astro this morning I went to the health center and got my labwork done, finally. and since I was already getting stuck full of needles I went ahead and got a flu shot, too. I have been remarkably unsick this whole semester, but I figured it was better not to assume I'm invincible. ;)

after lunch I went and voted. yay, twenty sixth amendment! I have to say the stuff behind the curtains on those automatic voting machines is not nearly as exciting as it looks when you're a little kid watching all the grownups infiltrating your school. it took me a little while to figure out how to register a mixed-party vote, but I managed. (who knew there were green party candidates running for pennsylvania senate spots?) I have to say absentee ballots are a lot more user friendly -- none of this lever stuff, just bubbling -- but I still think it's cool that I voted in a swing state. 23 electoral votes in pennsylvania. my vote could decide the election! hahaha!

and then I made contact with extraterrestrial life:

busy morning, yes? 1:15 PM

•••    so, election day. I have two things to say:

1. if I had to choose between gore and bush, I would vote for gore. but I don't have to do that, now do I? and I don't think anyone can even try to tell me that it's a wasted vote when the demreps have been pouring money into changing my swing state mind for the past two weeks.

2. if anyone spoils this election, it will not be the third party voters. it will be the people who vote for apathy by not voting at all. why not go out and cast a write in vote? there's always dave barry. 7:55 AM

•••    glossolalia is back. :) I missed it. 12:09 AM

•••    night, cold, stars, moon, shadows, poetry, sweatpants, jealousy, toothpaste, talk, turquoise, chiquita, ladybugs, phosphorescence

and false-color saturn on the calendar 12:03 AM

monday, november 6

•••    five hours of physics is too much for one day.

however, you can do some cool stuff with magnets. (obviously, right? who doesn't like magnets?) even after I understood all the physics explaining why a neodynium magnet will take over thirty seconds to fall less than two meters inside a hollow copper tube, it was still creepy to watch it. apparently my brain isn't sure how to deal with things that seem to defy the laws of gravity. 5:02 PM

•••    watch out for the afterglow... 8:31 AM

sunday, november 5

•••    oh I just don't know. this weekend seems to be beating me over the head with constant reminders about just how very very public all of this is. which is good, it's what I want, and I am no longer under any illusions that I am anonymous on the web (I was, once)... but it's still a little weerie. I feel unbalanced.

maybe I will have more to say about this later, but now I have homework, and, I think, a journal entry to write. life is a balancing act, among an infinity of other things. 11:05 PM

•••    I'm so exhausted I fell asleep during the xfiles. the season premiere no less. gaaah. 10:12 PM

•••    marfu is widely considered to be one of the best collegiate rugby unions in the country. we had a beautiful game today against millersville, we finished third in the epru playoffs, and in the spring we're going to be playing in the marfu division one championship tournament. how amazing is that? 5:09 PM