Buster

Spencer

Zak

Zak is our new foster bird, which is kind of old news but he actually arrived in our home today. Zak is a blue and gold macaw who lived in a "sanctuary" for five years that was actually a dirty old barn with only one light bulb. He had some sort of medical problem at one point that left his right wing and foot weak. He was also left in a cage with another macaw that worked his feathers over a little. We're fostering Zak for Parrot Hope Sanctuary, but he's not up for adoption yet. He still has to relearn a bit about how to interact with humans.

It is New Year's Day (in my mind, it is until I sleep), which means it's time to look over my resolutions for the last year and see if I did any of them.  Then, I usually make some resolutions.  Bah.  Well, here's my 2008 list, comments in italics.  No partial credit.

1. Be a better husband to Amy.  
Amy will always deserve better than what she's got.  But, I will always strive for better, and I did this year, at least strive for it.  Pass, with a D-.

2. Complete four new publications (including the two I'm working on right now), a working draft of my dissertation, and a beginning outline of my first non-dissertation book.
BWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!   This didn't actually happen, though the working draft of a dissertation thing is coming close.  And now I do have four working papers, none close to publication.   And yes, I do have an idea for a book.... but not anything else.  Fail.

3. Clean up my visual appearance. 
I did this!  My parents bought me some clothes.  At various points through the year, including the end, I looked pretty clean cut.  Pass.

4. Force myself to be social on purpose in a purely social situation at least twice per month.
You know, honestly, I've been a lot better about this stuff lately.  I mean it.  Remarkably so. Pass.

5. Bring my "A-game" to teaching at each meeting.
Ouch.  Fail.  Not really on purpose, but... let's just say I had a hard year, with various problems creating barriers to me concentrating on this part of my job.  I was still quite effective, but I wasn't on my A-game.

6. Take better care of my health.
Yeah, that worked for about a month.  Amy and I worked out daily and felt GREAT.... until we got some version of the plague the same week her grandma died.  Then, poof!  Gone.  Fail.

7. Be Meat-free in 2008.
Nope.  Fell off the horse and started eating animals in August, after more than two years.  EPIC FAIL.

8. Pursue the doctrine of micro-philantrophy as much as possible. 
Well, Amy and I got together with some people last December and started an animal rescue.  With that, we've opened our home to litterally a couple dozen animals.  I've given hours of my time to updated a website for Parrot Hope.  I've tried to, whenever possible, be the nice friend that takes care of tabs or whatever. Not to beat my drum but I'll call this a Pass.

8a. Continue to mold my research and academic decisions into working for social justice, equality, and such.  
This I've done, what little research I've been able to accomplish this year.  Pass.

9. Adopt no more pets of any kind.
Rumor has it that Loca, our foster bird, might be a permanent resident because she's so damaged.  Also Abbey, our foster dog, has been here since late August and we're getting worried.  But officially, I passed this one.

10. Spend less time online.
Can't say FAIL loudly enough.  I wonder if this is related to the failure of point two?

11. Try cuisine from at least two new ethnic traditions.
Hrm, I totally forgot about this one altogether.  I don't think I pulled this one off.  Fail. 

12. Be exceptionally limited in consumption of chemicals.
Yeah, not so much.  This is not to say that I've gotten in deep or anything, but I do like me some beer.  Fail.

13. Don't Impregnate ANYONE.
Fingers crossed.... Pass (I hope to God). 

14. Figure out religion.
Take my comment to number 10 and multiply it by 5,000 times.  Fail fail FAILLLL!!!!!

Now, those of us keeping score at home will note that as a whole, the year was a failure, with six passing marks (several by the skin of my rotting teeth) to eight fails (many of which were "epic").  And you know, I'd score the year that way as well.  Honestly, 2008 was just a piece of shit.  And it's my own fault.  If I had done more good that year, it wouldn't have sucked as much dick for coke.

So, New Year's Resolutions for 2009?

1. Finish my Dissertation.  No holds barred, take no prisoners, any given Sunday, insert cliche here. Everything, yes EVERYTHING hinges on this.

2. Get a Fucking Job.  Not as a prostitute, as the resolution implies.  No, just get a job.  Preferably one that's tenure-track and has health benefits. But I won't complain as long as I can pay my bills and don't feel like a complete sellout.

3. Live Less Expensively and More Modestly.  We've gotta stop pissing the little money we get away on worthlessness. I always remember my old friend Niti's words of wisdom... that her grad stipend in the U.S. would have gotten her a nice house with maid service in India.

4. Be Active.  You know why.  I don't need some metaphorical pseudo-jingoistic bullshit slogans to explain this.

5. Less Internet.  More Isolation.  I have to or my brain will melt.

6. Pursue the Following Hobbies: Coin-Collecting, Beer-Brewing, Bike-Riding, Star-Gazing and Kite-Flying.  I need more well roundedness.  Just not physically.

7. Work for good.  I'm bundling micro-philantrophy, animal-rescuing and my social justice research here.
7a. Stay Out of Trouble.  Because I can't keep working for good if I'm in prison, in a hospital, or exiled to a tiny island in the Mediterranean. 

8. Be a better husband.  Permanent part of the list. Because, like I said, Amy will always deserve better.

• Students will stop at no amount of harassment to get a better grade.
  
  
• People are more than willing to risk the lives of themselves and others, venturing out on nasty icy roads and driving like dumbasses, just to buy other people crap they honestly don't really want and don't really need for Christmas.
  
  
• Never trust someone whose age you cannot reliably guess within ten years, especially if that person is a salesman.  Even if he takes a couple of bucks off the price.
  
  
• It's difficult to not mock a "Christian" company that moves several hundred jobs to Mexico right before Christmas.
  
  
• The United States of America does not take adequate care of its military veterans.
  
  
• If you want a free meal, go to Red Lobster in Castleton or Applebee's in Muncie.  They'll muck enough things up that the manager will beg to "take care of things."
  
  
• Telling people that we have no idea where we'll live next doesn't mean that they believe what you say.
  
  
• Guys who make constantly sexist comments are the least likely to see a woman naked without paying her money first.
  
  
• Some people should just hurry up, get over the awkward not-quite-dating phase, and get married!
  
  
• It only takes a couple of months of living in Tennessee to start sounding a bit like a hick.
  
  
• Not every sandwich needs ketchup.  Ham and turkey with swiss on quality wheat bread is the first ever example I've found.
  
  
• Finding out that an old friend has died via Facebook has to be the one of the worst ways that the internet has changed communications.
  
  
• A Nintendo Wii seems to always be a welcome party addition, especially in a Wii-less household.
  
  
• Being victorious at a friendly game of pool doesn't require anything resembling skill.
  
  
• Kids seem to like me.  I genuinely like them.  People seem to think that I should work on creating some children.  But I really like being able to talk to children for a couple of hours, get my fill, maybe even take a couple pictures with them... and then, give them back to their parents.
  
  
• Not even getting daddy lessons at the request of a remarkably well-spoken and well-behaved six year-old can change my declining to become a parent.
  
  
• There's a store in Broad Ripple that'd be doing a lot more internet business if I had gotten a job this past summer.
  
  
• It's not an insult as a geographer to get a GPS unit for Christmas after all.  In fact, it's pretty alright.
  
  
• Transformers is a ridiculous film.
  
  
• Hearing your mother-in-law laugh heartily at jokes about masturbation in that movie is unsettling in so many ways.
  
  
• Some people will never have enough motivation to conquer the process of listing items on eBay.
  
  
• If you show up late enough for Christmas Eve, you don't have to help decorate or clean.
  
  
• Not even parents can withstand the excitement of opening presents on Christmas day.
  
  
• If it wasn't for Christmas gifts, I would live without socks and underwear altogether, it seems.
  
  
• Wick's sugar cream pie will always be delicious.
  
  
• Morning thunder in late December is a welcome little surprise.
  
  
• So is 67 degrees and sunny.
  
  
• Having Aunt Janet in town for the holidays always makes everything better!
  
  
• Believe it or not, five overweight people CAN fit in a Toyota Prius.  And no one even cued the clown music.
  
  
• Weirdest thing: I never wanted to eat Pizza King when I lived in Muncie.  Now, whenever I visit Muncie, I HAVE to have some.
  
  
• Driving to the new Indianapolis Airport makes the aforementioned GPS unit pitch a fit about you being "OFF-ROAD!"
  
  
• There's always going to be one more camera accessory that I want to buy for Amy that's just out of reach.
  
  
• Weimaraner armies make for excellent play dates.
  
  
• There are people I know in my hometown that are in exactly the same place they were as when I last saw them four, seven, or even ten years ago.
  
  
• There are people I know from my hometown who have gone on to do amazing things! 
  
  
• And some of them have displayed amazing resiliency, especially in the loss of a old friend who passed this last week.... which many of us found out about via Facebook.
  
  
• Despite the fact that I miss a lot of people there, I never ever ever want to live in Muncie again.
  
  
• There are about three more people I could arrange to see in the next couple of months who would totally allow me to blow off my 10-year high school reunion (which I intend to do regardless).
  
  
• Taking pictures with a long-open shutter can have cool results in the right environment.
  
  
• The dramatic appearance of Nazi skinheads is an easy way to ruin an otherwise enjoyable evening.
  
  
• Throwing pulled pork barbecue, nacho cheese and sour cream on to a baked potato makes a tasty meal.

• Then again, throwing pulled pork barbecue, nacho cheese and sour cream on to a turd would probably make a tasty meal (you really can't go much wrong with those ingredients).
  
  
• Having a brother again, as well as an awesome almost-sister, can be pretty damn fun.
  
  
• Amy accidentally imitates people that she hangs out with a little too well... to the point that when she came to bed last night, I had to check to ensure that it wasn't my awesome almost-sister there.
  
  
• Never go to Walgreen's when the Christmas stuff is 75% off.  You'll end up with a cartload of random crap.  But at least you'll save money!  Or something.
  
  
• Sometimes, staying an extra day is absolutely necessary, and worth paying the petsitter $28 more.
  
  
• Realizing that two of your all-time superheroes have really fallen from grace in a disturbing and disappointing way (by acting in ways to which you're absolutely diametrically opposed) and are in complete denial about is disheartening, disorienting, depressing... and really just fucking sickening.
  
  
• It also makes for some really awkward conversations.
  
  
• When I packed our stuff in Muncie on the way home, that was my trunk packing equivalent of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
  
  
• Telling an old friend goodbye when you know it's the last time you'll ever see him is the most gutwrenching experience that I can imagine.
  
  
• Even though there are fates worth than death, it doesn't make signing the death warrant any easier.
  
  
• White Castle cheeseburgers destroy depression like David Hasselhoff destroyed the Berlin Wall: efficiently and with good taste.  At least for about 18 minutes.
  
  
• Nothing helps you rebound from all that stress like a bed full of dogs and the anticipation of a new foster's arrival.
  

I've come to the conclusion that I need a professional makeover of sorts.  While this seems like the fodder of perhaps crappy cable reality television, it's more of an online thing. I need to get better control on my online image.

My website shows my picture, and that's a problem.  I've spent much of the last four years looking like a homeless hippie, and the photos on my sites reflect that.  Sometime soon, I'm intending to trim all of my hair and get some pictures taken by Amy so I can change these things, and look better.  I've already set my Facebook stuff to private, friends only, etc.

I've also put up a LinkedIn profile.  It's like Facebook for grownups and businessfolk or something.  It's about networking for work instead of for socializing.  I accidentally sent a bunch of people in my address book "invitations" to add me as a friend, which resulted in some clueless responses, but that's life.

I'm also going to scrub some other stuff with our websites.  I'm working on removing all instances of my name from this blog's templates, so that even though it is somewhat findable, it's not directly attributable.   Beyond that, I'm not sure what else yet.  But I'm pretty certain that the theshears.com front page is going to be radically simplified.   It's a never updated mess!

I know this is selling out, in some ways.  Right now, I don't care.  I need a job.

A few inches by tomorrow night is what the forecast is calling for.  I never have understood people's irritation with winter and snow.  Why hate five months out of the year for nothing more than a fact of life?  I mean, when I was up for that job in Mobile, I was saddened at the prospect of losing snow.

We went to the department's annual Halloween bash the other night, dressed as the totally uninspiring Green Eggs and Ham.  Pictures are available on Amy's Facebook album.

We're also now less than 48 hours from the quadrennial clusterfuck of geographic information known as the presidential and congressional election.  I will be glued to my television and my computer, soaking in the county-level results maps of each state as they become available throughout the evening, attempting some two-bit analysis of whatever-the-fuck may have happened.  It's a geographer's wet dream.

Hopefully, that whatever-the-fuck happened will be a happy thing.  See, the way I'm looking at it and the way all of the polls look, we're maybe 48 hours from one of the happiest, most overjoyed celebrations since the Death Star's destruction at the end of Return of the Jedi.  Remember?  On the planet of the Ewoks?  That happy music that irritated Star Wars purists more than anything, at least until the arrival of Jar-Jar Binks?

I mean, you probably remember the catchy music and everything from the original version (though perhaps the updated scene in the "special editions" released in the late 1990s were a better example of the universe-wide celebration, even if the catchy ewok tune is MIA....).  ("Yub nub!")  Happiest little creatures in the universe!  And nevermind even the obvious parallels between the 2008 election and Jedi, you know, with the final fall of the evil empire and so on to infinity.  Maybe someone can even throw in a funeral pyre where Dubya is burned if effigy to complete the metaphor.

Yes, at least 49% of the voting population will be more overjoyed than those Ewoks, should that fateful moment come when Barack Obama finally accepts the concession of John McCain and takes the helm as the president-elect?  I read somewhere that there's an election night party planned in Grant Park in Chicago.  That will be absolutely insane.  Do you remember what Chicago was like the first time this guy:

won something big?  Something like 1.5 million people came out to celebrate.  I'm betting Obama is bigger than MJ in Chi-town right now, and -- too blatantly rip off John Lennon -- might be rivaling Jesus Christ.   What will Chicago, a very proud (and rightfully so) city do when the native son, the great new hope, wins the presidential election? 

It'll make those happy little Ewoks look like a funeral march, certainly.

Shitty day, already.

I got pulled over today for turning left into a parking lot behind the building in which I teach.  A nearby intersection is marked with no left turn, but clearly this driveway is not included in that marking.  Fucking cop gives me a $135 ticket for turning left somewhere to which it's not illegal to turn left.  This pisses me off enough, but I go in and teach my class.

I go back out to the car after class to move it to my normal lot (I can park in other red lots for two hours), and I repark.  I read the ticket, which yes, I did sign (because you have to), and it says that I turned left up the street, onto a street (not a driveway) for which there's a time restriction.  In other words, the ticket I received was for something I didn't do (what I did was legal) and I have no recourse for fighting it because what it said I did, and what I signed for by force of law, was admittedly illegal.

Sometimes I hate my life.

But seriously, getting ticketed for something I didn't do is ridiculous.  Both my wife and one of my students suspect that it is because of my Obama sticker.  The student, who volunteers for Student for Barack Obama, said there has been a rash of people with Obama stickers getting pulled over lately.  Each of the half-dozen cars I saw today pulled over in Kent had them.  Wouldn't surprise me in the least.

I feel like I've been raped in the ass by this one.  Can you imagine how it must feel to be discriminated against on a regular basis?  For skin color, for ethnicity, for religion, for heritage... I know, it's absolutely no comparison to this kind of oppression, but I felt almost sick.  I still feel awful at the idea of walking out to the car and driving home.  Talk about dehumanization.

Fucking cops.  They want respect, but they act in ways that absolutely prohibit my ability to give them such an honor.

I ended up naming him Miyagi-san.  He's a good little car, really.  Solid, filled with character, and supposedly very dependable.  The Tercel wagons of that era have a pretty strong following, if their online presence is any indication.  And that's always good, especially if I need some simple advice for repairs.  I've gotta change the radio, though.  It sounds awful, barely gets any stations and the tape deck doesn't work, which means iPod is a non-option.  Time to save my nickels.

First, a few quick notes.... The new Ben Folds album Way to Normal is solid.  Not great, but solid.  I'm happy that he's returned to a more aggressive rock-driven style.  But I have a couple of beefs: 1) the song Cologne, which is supposedly big in Europe right now, reminds me way to much of when, on the TV show "Whose Line Is It Anyway," they have the three-headed opera star.  Watch it sometime and compare.  You'll see.  For this reason, I tend to skip it when listening.  2) the whole thing seems overproduced.  One of the reasons that the first couple albums of Ben Folds Five were so good was a little bit of grit which made the piano-rocking-out more believable.  Way to Normal seems too clean... which, I know, is a typical indierock thing to say.  Whatever.  It's definitely a good break-up album, though.  Not as good as Beck's Sea Change, but definitely an album that's about a break up, and portrays this well.

I've applied for quite a few jobs now in a variety of locales.  I will probably either have to take this thing underground or remove any mention of my name in the weeks to come.  I'm leaning toward the latter option.

Also.... going to get a car tomorrow, adopted out Waylon today (and yes, I miss him though the dogs don't), am starting a new side project soon for the next version of the Parrot Hope website, and we already voted for the election.  But enough of the appetizers, how about the main course of narcissistic mental wandering?

There's a weird thought that's been running through my head lately: I'm wondering where my inner scientist went. 

See, through a large portion of my childhood, I did all kinds of science, math and engineering type of things.  I pretended to be a museum curator and charged our dog a dollar (via an I.O.U. that he never really agreed to pay nor never made good on) to enter my bedroom exhibits.  I used a telescope to look at stars, and always scrambled to pull out my microscope to look at my blood whenever I got a cut.  I loved dinosaurs and planets and had facts memorized about the major examples of each by the time I was six and could recite them on demand.  I had a little toy weather station and for like six months straight took observations every morning.  I checked out this one book from the school library about Hawaii like 10 consecutive weeks just to look at pictures of volcanoes.  I grew about 20 different plants and could tell you the scientific name and the care needed for each.  I tried (and failed) to design a car out of a hodgepodge of used parts from my uncle's shop.  I tried (and failed) to build string instruments out of scrap wood and rubber bands, experimenting with a number of ways to figure out the dilemma of acoustics that proved beyond the brain and construction skill of a seven year old, and an uncoordinated one at that.  I knew my multiplication and division tables by heart long before my teachers first breached the subjects, and when I watched baseball with my grandmother, I'd update the stats report for the Reds lineup, from what was published in her newspaper, after each at bat -- yes, including batting average, slugging, and earned run average.  I was probably six at that point.

I always excelled in and enjoyed science and math classes, and even industrial arts classes, all through much of school.  Then, mysteriously, it went away.  I guess it was sometime around the ninth grade, when school wasn't my thing for a while, and my freshman biology teacher really sucked.  She yelled at me multiple times for coloring worksheets incorrectly. It was the first science class of my life that I didn't enjoy, I would guess.

It's also during this time that I was actively trying to reconcile the strict creationist theology that my parents' nutjob church had tried to force down my throat, with the evolution-only approach of science.  What the-fuck can a 14 year-old even do with that?  That's awfully deep for me even now.  Besides, such deep though, or really depth in any way, wasn't cool at that age.  Neither was obesity.   Let's just say I had a bad hand.  I played the cards I had by turning my back on what I was and pretending to be something I wasn't, specifically a non-nerd.

So, I half-assed everything high school, got screwed by having a couple of shitty teachers for science and math (I promptly dropped pre-Calculus when we were told to keep a "math journal" of our experiences, and found myself in a statistics class where we watched Jenny Jones every day instead of talk about anything relevant.  Yes, really.)  I never looked back.

It's weird, though, now.  Here I am, working on a PhD in a humanity/social science. How did I get to that?  I don't know.  I always liked history, too, and of course geography was programmed from birth.  I guess at some point I figured out that I liked to write and was decent enough at it, and that those two fields were the other ones that I was any good at.  That's incredibly oversimplifying, but whatever.  Am I actually challenging myself more, though, being in a field that wasn't my "comfort zone" way back when?  And if this is my "challenging" field, how cool is it that I'm a finished dissertation away from a PhD in it?

All that love for science, not gone, but mostly forgotten.  Remember how I knew those multiplication and division tables?  Yeah, I don't.  I struggle sometimes with basic arithmetic, and it makes me feel like an utter retard.  What a sad skill to lose.  Gee, a challenging high school statistics class might have helped me back during my masters degree when I was fighting and clawing to get through quantitative methods.  Gosh, a religious background that wasn't so cultish and a biology teacher that was less impatient might have let me forge a different path, or at least let me avoid one more confusion as a 14 year-old.

Because, let's face it, being a 14 year-old male comes with its own challenges, namely being so hormone-charged that you'd fuck a tree or even a rock if you could and thought it'd be anything close to pleasant.

Am I bitter about not being a scientist anymore?  I don't think so.  I mean, honestly, a lot of it was my own fault regardless of how much I'm whining about teachers 12 years after the fact.   Sure, sometimes I'm jealous of the physical geographers that I come across because it seems like the "answers" to their research are far more concrete and in some ways easier to generate (not saying their research itself is easier by any means, just different).  And I had a couple of flirtations back with science at various times, like when I took an astronomy class in college and loved it (though I have no idea why I didn't consider pursuing a physics and astronomy major, looking back... it was probably one of my top three classes while I was an undergrad), was a meteorology major for a while, and taught physical geography labs in grad school.  So if it never caught on to me with those exposures, I'm guessing it never would have regardless.

Even still, I miss parts of it.  No, I don't have much interest in dinosaurs or blood or volcanoes or building cars or even calculating baseball statistics anymore.  But, I wouldn't mind being an amateur astronomer.  Yes, I've mentioned this before, way way back when.  But I think that would be a fun hobby.  Another hobby I've been wanting to resume is coin collecting.  When I was a kid, I collected pennies, and had nearly one representative of every year and mint in little books.  I don't know where those books went, but I hopped into Borders today and got a new set.  I went through our piggy banks, found some specimens to fill the slots, and now I am a coin collector, though a small deal one.  Here's my stash (taken in bad lighting with the laptop camera):

Not a bad level of diversity from one piggy bank!

I figure coin collecting serves several of my hobbies, you know, geography (coins from anywhere) and history (coins from way back).  I always liked it before.  And once I fill these penny books (or get them closer to being finished) I'll tackle nickels, dimes and quarters.  Simple enough of a hobby.  Also, since I can't be an amateur astronomer yet (no money and no place to use a telescope), it will serve as a nice filler.

Okay, I'm leaving.  I told you that post 666 wouldn't be that good.

"I can't imagine somebody getting married to someone as poor as you.  It gets kind of rough.
Put two poor people in the same house...

I always tell women, 'You can be poor by yourself, you don't need help.'  And she just got some help, being poor."

It's a funny moment, one of those funny moments when otherwise unmentionable truths come out.  Marriage isn't supposed to be about money, but if you get married without it, everyone suffers.

Well, the latest news out of Detroit reminds me of this scene.  General Motors and Chrysler are talking about merging, with Cerberus Holdings giving up Chrysler's automotive division for a 49% stake in GMAC.  If you read the news, then you'll be prompted to read with nostalgia because this is the historic merging of two "Big Three" automakers, blah blah shut up. 

What is this really?  Two poor folks getting married.  Chrysler's only months from insolvency.  GM's not far behind.  Both of these company's are suffering from corporate cultures of laziness, which has caused their decline.  Given their current economic picture, and given the fact that American consumers aren't snowed by the "Buy American!" rhetoric anymore (meaning, they actually tend to purchase the superior, often foreign-made product now), they are not going to recover.  Might take them a while to die, but they won't recover.

And part of the deal is that 49% of GMAC, by far GM's most profitable anything, goes to Cerberus, which is now out of the auto industry.  So, GM trades it's most profitable division for..... a failing carmaker.  Make sense?

But then, marrying these two anyway doesn't make sense.  By getting married, are they really going to be able to pay the rent by producing redundancies in the automobile market, you know, crap no one wants to pay for anymore?

Oops.  Blew my load there.

I have decided to start a geography blog.  You can find it here.  There's not a fucking thing there yet, and it ain't even pretty (it's the default MovableType template).  Time will come.

I dressed up Amy's blog the other day.  It's a little better looking than before.  I also don't smoke anymore after having a couple months of relapse.  Woo me.  Commit nicotine lozenges are some of the worst tasting things ever.

Fuck, it's late.  That's enough for now.  More later.