FInal To Do

Just so I know...

This is my finals-week to do:
1. Ethnography presentation
2. Ethnography paper
3. Group presentation for Am Div (w. MK)
4. Print Lit Theory paper
5. 2,250 word Am Div paper
6. Final for Online journalism (?)
7. Final for Spanish
8. Creative work (need like, 30 more pages)
9. Portfolio for capstone
10. Graduation ceremonies

How Others See Me

I seem to be an invidious individual. At least, to some people (2).

Blessings

Tonight, a huge responsibility was played out in front of me. It was the release party of the journal myself and my fellow graduating English majors worked on since January. I was nervous about the party because I wasn't really involved in the planning process--really, I just looked into centerpieces.

I am really glad that I didn't meddle though, and trusted the girls who planned and orchestrated the event. People showed up, everyone enjoyed themselves, we sold an entire box of journals, we gave away prizes and awards (even though I accidentally gave away my copy of the journal that I worked really hard on to get signatures and stuff in), and people were involved! Usually, English department parties are super bland and everyone stands around awkwardly, and everything is over by 8:00. My editorial team is blowing the English professors minds with how amazing we all are, and how high we are setting standards.

Too bad my camera is on the fritz, otherwise I would post pictures.

I am really proud of my team, the effort they put forth, and how accommodating they are. Everyone is so available to get things done, don't act like 3rd graders who need to be prompted to do anything, and--in short--they get shit done.

They're a blessing to me, and I couldn't have asked for a better group of people (except one person who is dead weight, but we won't discuss that).

New Era [until July 19]

I have thought very briefly and hastily about this.

But, for three months, I am denouncing ice cream. From April 19 to July 19, I will function in an ice cream-free zone.

I feel good about this because at times, I feel like I have an addiction to the frozen treat. I don't intend to indulge in an entire pint of, say, Ben & Jerry's "Mission to Marzipan" or Haagen-Daz's "Caramel Cone" but once I do, it's not something I want to do again.

Instead of ice cream, I will buy a book or CD. After all, Vons sells two pints of the aforementioned treats for $7 so it would be about the same price as something that will last me much longer.

But yes, I may have to substitute good books for the $5 paperback harlequin novels, which is fine by me. I enjoy those, anyway. Hahahaha

Clear Eye Worked for Me!

I got this in an email, and I got really excited--even if it's not really written by Mr. Clear Eye--about the opinions herein. It's a tad long, but it's a good read.

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein's Last Column...

============================================

How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today's World?

As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is "eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.


Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton's is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.


Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.

By Ben Stein

Ongoing

1. Myself
2. Facebook
3. Renee
With flowers and a balloon!!
4. Jessica C.
5. Mom
6. Dawn H.
7. Maria D.
8. Dad
9. Donna J.
10. Creepy stalker guy I knew 4 years ago
11. Dinae C.
12. Jessica G.
13. Linda
14. Krystal H. and Vanessa V.
15. Jennifer R.
16. Erin S.
17. Amy M.
18. Wesley
19. My little brother
20. Sandra
21. Michele G.
22. Jessica C. & Catherine R. & Katie W & Dempster
23. Allison P.
Then, I started worrying about other things. Like, since when do people not give birthday gifts? I'll have to find out from MSN's Miss Manners...