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Murfreesboro Mosque III

Ah, Tennessee.  Your tradition of ignorance lives on.

Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States is from here.  Trail of Tears and all that? Pet Banks? Yeah, we got him. We're proud as fuck of that guy. We also got Polk, who was so similar to Jackson that they called him "Young Hickory." Then there's Andrew Johnson, who tragically fucked up Reconstruction while also becoming the first American President to be impeached. Tennessee was with the CSA during the Civil War, of course. Let's see - there's also the overblown madness of the Scopes Monkey Trial, which is only kind of our fault, and then Dr. King being shot & killed in Memphis, but Ray was from Illinois, right?  It did take us until 1953 to get rid of poll taxes, though.  I mean, I know it's not all bad - there are many good things about Tennessee - but there are days when it really doesn't feel that way.

The Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, which you can read about from me here, here, and to a lesser extent, here, (and visit their FB page) is back in (local) news again, as possibly the dumbest trial since - well, Scopes, maybe - ramps up here in the 'Boro.

The thrust of this most recent round of legal wrangling stems from the complaint from local hatefilled anti-Muslims that they weren't properly notified of the County Planning Commission hearings that approved this building, because if they had known, they'd have shown up to protest it.  This, despite notices in one of our local papers preceding the meeting.  Apparently, the paper's not good enough, says local shithead Brian Gregory of Millwood Drive in Murfreesboro, who was empty-headed enough to say out loud, to a reporter, "I thought the county should notify me. Should I be expected to go down to the Square every day and pick up newspapers?" To which the answer of course is YES!!!  Yes, goddammit, you ridiculous dumb lazy motherfucker!  If you want to know about shit, seek it the fuck out!  What's next, you asking for fucking Paul Revere on horseback riding through Murfreesboro yelling "The Muslims Are Coming?"

These people also think that the notice that was published in the Murfreesboro Post needed to have borne a big red label reading WARNING: MOSQUE instead of the Planning Commission doing what it always does and following years of court-tested legal precedent and rules and treating the Islamic center just like any of the other too-massive places of worship which dot Murfreesboro.  See - you have to treat them differently because they're Muslim, and many folks here wash out their mouths after they say that word.  They have tried, over the last two years or more, to intimidate the mosquers away, then to claim that they were terrorists in open court, making all kinds of ridiculous statements.  There's been vandalism, the Daily Show, and so on, and now what?  "Well, we think we shouldn't have to read the newspaper to find out about stuff in our community we don't like.  And also, the Post is too small to count.  Oh, yeah, and there should have been flyering."

So you're a sense-of-community impaired dickhead who doesn't like living here is what I get out of that. You couldn't get a group together to flyer, and your paper's not widely circulated enough.  Wow. Between all of that and the Muslims already (for 30 years) in our community who'd like a bigger building, I think you should move.  I think you'd be happier someplace else.  I know I'd be happier if you were someplace fucking else.

But perhaps not; since here you're led by King Dickhead, otherwise known as Kevin Fisher, who has to be the dumbest mouthpiece for hate ever to defile dirt with his very presence.  Using a string of garbled sentences, sports metaphors and misleading language, he's been leading the charge on this thing for a couple of years now, since he unsuccessfully ran for School Board.  He's one of those guys who's never really on message - claiming in one spot that he's just defending a "love centered community" and in another saying, "I should not have to chase down information from the government, especially when it involves an ideology that I do not agree with."  Once again, for the cheap seats: IT WAS IN THE FUCKING PAPER!! The newspaper.  It's everywhere - libraries, the schools, grocery stores. You're not having to chase it down.  Also, Kevin - I disagree with your ideology, and I'm tired of chasing down your information on Facebook, Google and in the paper.  I want my fifteen minutes back, and in future, you should send me this information directly, or perhaps rent a dirigible with the notice painted on the side.

Look; this all gets down to you people hating on Muslims, and thinking that they shouldn't have a bigger building here because, according to you, they're bad for the community.  Try to see this from my point of view, folks: I think 99% of what religion does is bad for the community, and your big-ass buildings rape your god's soil and block out his sun.  I'd never hear from any of you fuckers again if I had a choice, but I don't, because it's your country, too.  Sharing is about nobody getting all of what they want. Just admit it - you don't like the competition, and you've got an ideological axe to grind, but really, really, you don't have a logical argument that actually works.

All I ask is quiet. 

Springnoises

You can tell that Spring has arrived on the campus where I go to school; as if the official date were like a starter's pistol forcing everyone into a Springtime race, the boys' hair got shorter (and apparently we're going back to patterns and shapes shaved in; I would get a big CMB 'cause we all we got), Winter beards went away, and bowties came out.  I even heard part of a conversation about bowties the other day.  The girls have whipped out the cute shoes and the doubletake short shorts.  Fake tans are in evidence. Everyone's just outside for the hell of it instead of the outside simply being the obstacle between your current inside engagement and the next one.

True to form for Tennessee, as soon as it went from being 50-60 degrees out with people bitching about the cold, and hit the 70-80 degree range, people started bitching about the heat.  I'm not even sure this is a conscious bitching decision for many of these people.

So as I'm walking to class on Friday, I see a guy with a massive boombox cradled on his shoulder, cranking the tunes old school, and it hits me; I won't be late for class, because apparently it's 1985.  My wife keeps telling me that the 80s are back, but come on.  Civil War re-enactors don't actually saw one another's legs off, and there's no reason to carry a fucking boombox.  Especially if you're a white kid, and especially if your music is for shit.  And it's always for shit.  Never in my whole life have I heard a tune on a boombox and thought, "I'm glad I heard that."  It's like those boomcar guys who seek to turn the whole world into the inside of a taicho drum and play music by bands who have a guy who plays "lead distortion."  Actually, I think that's a staff position in GOP races.

The biggest thing I realized about this person though, is that he has to be young, much younger than yours truly.  He'd have to be lacking in historical perspective to make this decision, would have to have missed out on times when people didn't have a choice but to lug big fucking stereos loaded with tapes and D batteries around in order to enjoy their jam, which is what we didn't call them then.  He wasn't around to fully appreciate the technological global moment of muted sound that happened when Walkmans really took off and headphones proliferated and we no longer had to put up with the garbage music only listened to by people who are still developing taste.

Or maybe his iPod broke.  I just hope this doesn't become a thing I hear all the time, or I might have to start taking a hammer around with me wherever I go.

No Retreat

So we're not even three full weeks into the semester, and I have dropped a class.  Actually, I only went once.

I originally put myself down for 18 credits this semester, 6 of which come from an internship with the Democratic Party of Tennessee, and I'm earning those already.  In fact, I've been earning those since early December, and I just finished a 32-page booklet layout for them last week.  I have to do 240 hours worth of work total, write a bunch of blog entries and file reports.  The remaining 12 credits were going to come from an Honors Tennessee History (Should be easy enough, yeah?  I grew up here.) a Survey of US History through Reconstruction (an absolutely MAMMOTH-in-terms-of-student-number class taught by a bored man who has already decided I was a cynic on the 1st day and is easily impressed by classroom use of Greek and Latin), Spanish II ('cause there were so many hanging plot points after the first one, I needed to see the sequel to see how it comes out) and the eventual problem: Intro to African-American Studies.

I enrolled in the course because immersion in things I don't fully grasp is effective in terms of education for me, as it is for many.  When I read the course description, it sounded great.  I was then told that I would need to purchase three books for the course - one history book written by the guy who invented Kwanzaa, a book by Queen Latifah, and Decoded, by Jay-Z, which I have since read.  I was a little dubious about books written by entertainers being 2/3 of the course reading list, but I soldiered on.

On the first day came the dealbreaker.  It wasn't my professor's kufi or dashiki, nor was it his use of 1970s black militant slang.  It wasn't his insistence on being referred to as "baba," a title he claimed he earned in Zimbabwe (and which is religiously-based, excluding me from using it ever), and would only answer to, eschewing "doctor" or "professor."  It wasn't the mild overtone of sexism evident in the division of the material in the syllabus.  Okay, maybe it was all of these things and more, but the big deal for me came in the form of a mandatory $150 retreat halfway through the semester.

I don't retreat.  I don't see the reason for it.  I've been on retreats, and they're not for me.  I know that the reason for such things is meant to be stepping back, stepping away, quieting one's mind, and getting in touch with what Kevin Spacey famously referred to as one's "inner selfness."  There always seems to be a spiritual element to such things, however, and I can't see myself once again getting roped into gossamer metaphysical bullshit that happens in the mountains where I'm undoubtedly seated around a fire with a talking stick or something led by a guy who fancies himself an African wise and holy man breaking down my issues with authority.  I could do it, and all I would get out of it would be a blog entry. So, here you go. Here's the blog entry.

The kicker to all of this is that I emailed him after the 1st class to ask for more details about the retreat, and he never answered.  Four days after I emailed, I dropped his class.  He still hasn't answered, i guess now feeling that he doesn't need to. I feel manipulated, cheated, and a little ridiculous about the whole thing, but I think those feelings would have been tenfold had I stayed in Baba's Self-Analysis Black Pop Culture class.

Yeah, I'm still pissed.

Clearing the Air

I feel that I need to clear something up a little bit.

Back in September, as my PHIL 1010 class was just getting ramped up, I wrote this, more or less as an excuse to post my silly doodle of Descartes' brain in a jar.  In the midst of this post, I referred to my philosophy class, taught at MTSU by Dr. Hinz, as "boring."  Well, I think I should address that, and then tell you a story.

In the final analysis, it most certainly was not a boring class.  For me.  I engaged with the reading, did my homework and Dr. Hinz's style of breaking things down grew on me, and ultimately, I found that I was looking forward to my Tuesday/Thursday trips to class.  I would have to say, however, that fully 90 % of my classmates were boring, having adopted defeatism and apathy as their methods for getting through what was, to many of them, a twice-a-week, 85 minute slog through stuff they either don't get or don't care about.  Buncha bastards.

And at the end, I think Dr. Hinz was fully aware of the slovenly nature of my fellows, as he became fully awesome on our last day of class.  Our semester concluded with ethics; Benedict, Rachels, Aristotle, Rand, Kant, Bentham (who has been additionally fascinating to me for years now because of this), Mill & Nietzsche.  That meant that by the last actual class day, last Tuesday, we had been offered cultural relativism and virtue ethics, Rand who is mostly refuted by Kant (and common sense notions of not being a fucking dick all the time), Mill's utilitarianism, universal standards for morality, and finally, Captain Mustache up there's slave morality vs. master morality.  And right at the end, just before he kicked us out to go study for our final, which was yesterday, Dr. Hinz did this thing, which I will present as a shameless Nietzschian paraphrase, because it happened last week and I have brainfry:

"These are important things to think about, and I would urge all of you to step outside of your boxes and really do philosophy.  Many think that they can simply fall back on God for morality, but let me tell you something - getting people to be domesticated and work together requires taming them, and you have to punish them to do that, like when I train my dog not to poo in the house.  The right to judge and punish comes from somewhere, so we make up God for that authority. (No one in class challenged this.) But we have to be responsible to be held responsible, so we create 'free will,' and for punishment to mean anything it has to extend beyond this existence, so we invent the eternal soul.  But none of you thinks very hard about this, content to be entertained and brainwashed into simply moving through life without questioning.  Everyone suffers and dies, there are no exceptions, not even Jesus.  If the mark you want to make is your name on a rock when you're dead, then keep going along like you are.  Okay - have a nice break!"

It was awesome.  I was dumbfounded, surrounded by a sea of hurt, bummed out, confused people.  He just torpedoed their days, and if his aim is on, their lives.  I thought it was just great, and needed to share it with my readership, both real and imaginary.

Xmasness, Part VIII

The holiday season is upon us again, like a shuffling jingle-belled zombie or a flatulent cloying distant relation who comes over for a Halloween party, spreads his crap all around so that you can't avoid seeing it, plays music too loud and somehow manages to stay until sometime after New Year's Day, fucking talking during your favorite television programs.

 This year, I am a homeowner again for the first time since early 2007, and it makes a difference.  An acceptable time for a civilized society to put up its OUTDOOR Xmas decor is just after whatever major holiday preceeds it, and that would be Thanksgiving for most people.  (Indoors, I apply the same rule I do to everything in private life: it's private, and I am therefore neither authorized or required to give 2/5 of a shit.)  A society in decline however - like ours - is filled with people who decorate - largely for the supposed or assumed benefit of others - coupled with an insanely short attention span that makes them leap from one "special" occasion to the next in a vain attempt to capture what they have come to think of as joy, but what is actually only distraction.

Enter Racistrix and Cypher Fucknut, who live on my cul-de-sac.  She's the one who warned me about the "coloreds" at the end of the street like it was 1956 as we were unpacking my bookcases, and he doesn't speak and makes no impression.  That's their house up there at the top.  First off, they started putting their shit up the night of my mom's birthday, which was the 8th.  Of November.  When I said good-bye to her that night, that mutant scrotum of ornaments was out there already.  On the ninth, they attempted to wave cheerfully to me as they were up on ladders stapling crap to their house.  I would point out that this was 2 days in advance of Veteran's Day, and that they actually had to take down the American flag they normally fly to put up the current poinsettia-splattered standard.  Could've waited until the 12th, at least, to start, but noooo - gotta get a big jump on fucking up the front of the house so we can go inside and make everyone else fucking look at it.

By the 14th, I was already having "car out of control, destroys their lawn" fantasies as I'd pull into our little dead end to go home.  Now, fifteen fucking days later, it's like Home Depot's holiday aisle took a giant, steaming dump on their lawn.  I would invite you to regard the details, as they certainly haven't: You will perhaps immediately notice that the Baby Jesus is being born at the North Pole, where there not only was no room at the inn, apparently there wasn't space for a manger, either.  Then we have dwarf Santa waving to Santa, some Karen Carpenter candy canes, a creepy hippo in a hat and some drunken swans or ducks or something.  The sole good thing about this "scene" is that it's quiet.  Nothing makes noise.  I hope they know better, but I'm taking nothing for granted.

Look, here's the thing; I like some of the outdoor Xmas stuff, I do.  I also like chocolate milk.  Sometimes it's very refreshing and delicious.  I don't, however, want five glasses of it in a row, and I don't want to drink it like it's water every goddamn day for what I'm sure will eventually turn out to be two fucking months.  These people with the deflated Santas and disassembled snowmen like little CSI: North Pole crime scenes on their lawns over Thanksgiving weekend?  Yes, fine.  Good.  Reasonable.  We're on your time, so to speak.  But this shit above is excessive and ugly and demented and bent.

Might be the only Xmas rant this year, but I wouldn't count on it or anything.  It's a tradition & I can do excess as well as anybody.

Full Circle

If you've been following my blog longer than is healthy, say, for instance, since Autumn of 2004, you might remember my 5th and 6th posts, both of which have to do with primary elections that happened in Escambia County, Florida.  I worked on a campaign for J.E. Jones, a republican candidate for County Commissioner District 1.  I managed it as well at it would be managed, got Jones to a lot of events, got him name recognition, coached him through debates and interviews, made the signs and put them up, hosted events in my building, and investigated the infractions of the other candidates in the race.  In the end, we got stomped like a roach on white carpet, and I lost the faith, not just in the people of Pensacola, who lied to me and voted in the old criminal they once threw out, but I also haven't worked on another race since then, not in any really serious way.  17 races between 1999 and 2004.

I ended up with this interesting artifact, though - a DVD of the campaign ads we did for Jones, complete with Roads, Mole People, shattering glass that produced complaints, bad props, inaudible dialogue - the works.  They're so bad, they're funny, and we knew that then.  Recently, in my Politics and Elections course, my professor was referencing what kind of ads "no money" campaigns would make, so I brought the DVD in and showed it in class today.

They were confused.  Some of them thought it was funny, but for the most part, you could see the opinions of me going down like a Hindenburg whore.  They mostly didn't get it, didn't understand that not everything is slick, and that candidates are often crazy characters with no real business running for office; that campaigns are crazy times with no money and no sleep and no time.  Regardless, I was glad that I had this leftover collection of weirdness from the past that could inform the present.

Thanks, Jones.

Discount Salvation

Just happened:

I was at Books-A-Million, buying a birthday card for my mom, and these sour-faced people walked in, an old lady, a young lady, and a guy.  I was standing near one of the front registers, finishing the process of checking out.

OLD LADY: Where are your Bibles?

BAM EMPLOYEE: Most are in the back corner underneath that white sign, but there's a whole table in the center with discounted ones on it, near the middle aisle.

GUY (sotto voce): Discounted Bibles?  What's that supposed to mean?

ME (in what I internally think of as my "ready for a miracle" voice): Well, my friend, if you can pause on your journey just long enough to lend an ear, I'll tell you what it means; it means that, back there on that long table full of discounted Bibles, and between those gilded leatherette covers is some of the cheapest, bargain-basement discount salvation that you'll ever get your hands on, it means that the Word of Jesus Christ is now available for your purchase price of only (gestures back to the employees, gets no help) - well, I don't know myself, but I bet it's pretty blessed cheap!  I assume that your evident chagrin is coming from a lamentation that Bibles should never have to be discounted, but I would ask you a question: Did Mary charge for the Good News that the Lord was risen on the third day?  (pause) SHE DIDN'T, DID SHE?  And was there a ticket price to see our Lord a'crucified on the hill of skulls for the sins of man?  Maybe, but it didn't compare to the available options that the Lord God has seen fit to have on a veritable buffet of Holiness back there on the table, CENTER AISLE!!!  CAN I get an "Amen?"

OLD LADY (small): Amen.

ME (leaving): Get thee ready for a discounted miracle!

VOICE BEHIND ME: Does he work here?

Sometimes, you have to make your own fun.

Occupational Hazards

So, the Occupy Wall Street / Occupy Everywhere Else / 99% movement / revolution has been going on long enough now for the vast majority of us to become slightly culturally numb to it, to accept it, to be glad or infuriated by its presence, or in the case of some rare people, to pushed beyond the edges of sanity, common sense, or intelligence by the simple facts of its existence.  While it is tempting to say to people who seem not to fully understand the implications of this thing, "You either get it or you're a comfortable, non-sympathetic financially stable airheaded prick," I don't think that digs deeply enough.

Across the pond, there's MP Louise Mensch, featured above, trying to point out that perhaps, if you are part of an anti-capitalist movement supporting christing STARBUCKS is an ill-planned move, but instead when she opened her noise hole "anyone who's ever taken part in big capitalism (which is often unavoidable, especially if you're broke and HAVE to go to Wal-Mart or not have food or clothes) has had their opinion rendered invalid by queueing up for a latte," and she was rightly taken the piss out of for it, too.  She's nowhere near as bad as career dunderhead Sky News' Adam Boulton, who compared the Occupiers in front of St. Paul's to Nazis occupying France.  He will be immediately fined under the provisos of Godwin's Law of course, but I hardly think that's good enough; perhaps fucked to death with Pickelhauben?  Yes, that seems appropriate.  Well, to me.

Here close to home, Occupy Nashville has had some recent luck with the higher-ups in Nashville law after having some initial bad luck with a pack of Tennessee Highway Patrolmen (in Smokey Bear hats!) and a trumped-up last minute bullshit curfew designed to clear Legislative Plaza.  The night court magistrate refused to prosecute the arrests and let every one go, and the Occupiers have recently been to see Governor Bill after weathering a firestorm of shitty insults from state Republican lawmakers.  A lot of it is here. What isn't there is the most egregious thing they're having to deal with, John Stefanski, leader of Occupy the Altar (which has one member that's not John for a total of 2) and a certified, card-carrying putz who's on street corners with signs encouraging people to pray rather than protest.  A mixed message, to be sure.  First off, John lives right here in fucking Murfreesboro, so I'll be on the lookout for his ass, and second - John, choose your words more carefully; I've occupied a couple of altars in my time, and while fun is had by all, you'll need some clean-up to happen before Sunday services.  You've been warned.

Meanwhile, Oakland cops have apparently taken a break from cracking open skulls to kick back and tear gas some people, so things are obviously way more intense there. Probably because they've actually managed to shut down a port, and that will make things uncomfortable for a lot of people a lot faster than blocking other public spaces and church walkways.  A different approach, you might say, and you also might say that deliberately shooting canisters of gas and toxic chemicals into people's bodies and smacking them against the ground whilst restrained is police brutality.  In fact, I'm saying it, just said it, seems pretty clear-cut to me.

The major kvetch I hear about this thing from people who don't get this thing is that it's open-ended and vague.  Yeah.  Here's how it is, though: things are fucked up, and protesters will stop protesting when things are less fucked up.  This is not a difficult to understand arrangement.  This has always been the arrangement.  Listen to what they have to say or walk around.  In the meantime, let's see what happens next.

Ten Years Old

Remember that big hoopla a couple of weeks ago about the 10th anniversary of 9/11?  That thing where everyone in the nation - and possibly most of the world - took a moment and thought about where they were and what they were doing 10 years ago?  I did that, too.  But I'm doing it again today, 17 days later, because it was 17 days after 9/11 that my wife gave birth to our first child, Max.  And today he's ten.

Staggering.  Literally.  Sometimes I just stagger about, enjoying how the furniture feels when I bump into it.  Then I reassemble it with wood glue and allen wrenches and tungsten.

Max is in the fifth grade, which he does not like as much as the fourth grade (his teacher last year was a hard act to follow), and we have recently seen a bit of a grade slip due to various factors, but we're working on it.  He's musically inclined, singing in the school Chorus, taking steel drum classes and piano lessons.  He's just moved into his new room, and as much as he hated the move and the very idea of it, he seems to have settled in the new room quite nicely.  He has a workbench now with tools and electronics and things to work on, piles of books and tape recorder, wire, rope, rocks, and 'scopes of various varieties.  He still reads constantly; Big Nate, Rick Riordan, mythology, 39 Clues, Wimpy Kid, fables and stuff about sorcery and alchemy and monsters.  His favorite superheroes right now are Hulk, Thor, Green Lantern, Iron Man and Batman.

He makes up intricate imagination games for any he plays with, and is fiercely competitive at any game he's not making up as you're playing it.  He makes a lot of notes and small comic books on Post-its.  He sings in the shower, and makes superhero noises.  Good acoustics.  He's sensitive and moody and easily over-stimulated by people noises.  He gets sucked into television still, no matter what's on.  He's lately been most interested in Phineas and Ferb still, but also Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends from the early 80s, and also Voltron, Jimmy Neutron and the Fairly Oddparents.  He's fun to hang out with still, but for different reasons.  He loves his sister unless she's whiny, and feels very protective of her.  He likes sleeping with the dog in his room.

We're supposed to be bowling and doing laser tag and stuff tonight, with cake and pizza and stuff well into the weekend, so you all have ample chances to wish Max a happy birthday.  And stuff.

Back to School

I am in my third week of classes at Middle Tennessee State University.

It is an interesting experience to walk a college campus for the first time.  I mean, I went to MATC for a while, but all my classes were in one building and stuck off the edge of State Street, and it never felt like college - I guess because it sort of isn't.  Not so, the MTSU experience.  I walked to my car today after classes - I have to park just off campus because MTSU parking is a nightmare slide into hell that every staff person has been trained to lie to you about - past columned buildings with too many stairs across a sun-dappled quad shadowed by trees.  I heard four languages spoken before I got to my car, and saw one person dressed as a giant panda.  College.  Where the half-stoned libertarian who sits behind me in Electoral Politics spouts crazy nonsense, and I've seen guys with their shirts off playing guitar in a circle.

First smells I picked up on: lots of perfume, gum, cloves (really), sneakers, soda, and in the early morning hours, freshly showered women.  Judge me if you must.

My first day on campus, I considered changing my major to Parking and Urban Vehicular Management.  After I found a space and walked a mile or so, I thought I was prepared, with my little maps and class schedule printouts jammed into my shirt pocket - and realized outside the building which houses my 9:10 Spanish class that I had brought no room numbers with me.  As I was looking for a side entrance to the building, this guy followed me, and it turned out that he was on the way to my class, so I followed him after that.  I ducked into the Language Lab and pulled my #s off my page on the MTSU site after my Spanish teacher started off our relationship by alphabetizing us, which moved me from the back corner to the middle of the front row.  Yay. 

The people helping thing is sort of a theme for me now, though - this one girl loaned me her Philosophy reading (my printer had been packed for the move) one morning, and I've had people offer me pens, directions, or help repeatedly.  It's a fairly friendly campus, until you try talking to someone you don't know as they're going from class to class in the giant, lemming-like rush of humanity that streams from the new College of Education building to Peck Hall several times a day.  It's best to keep your head down and avoid the earnest evangelicals and poster salespeople.

Peck Hall is a square buidling constructed around a courtyard by people who were concerned about a coming zombie apocalypse 40 years ago.  My department and advisors are all housed there on the second floor, and I have a MWF class there, too.  Every single time: "Well, you can believe Mr. Pecker - " "My name is PECK."

Walking around campus is cool - it's much more like a little city (or, I suppose what I want a city to be like) than is even Murfreesboro.  Lots of different kinds of people walking to and fro, people obviously there for a lot of different reasons.  Every ethnic group and size and shape of person.  I see a lot of headscarves and tighter-than-skin jeans, which I think misses the point a little, & a lot of dyed hair and really interesting clothes.  Not a lot of obvious gay couples, but everyone's in a hurry, so I don't see a lot of couples, period.  I keep getting addressed as though I'm in my 20s; "When I was your age," or "The fall of the Soviet Union, which happened before you guys were born."  This makes me feel like Jon Cryer in Hiding Out, except, you know, I'm actually supposed to be there.

Finally, if you are speeding down Middle Tennessee Boulevard, I want you to die.  I want to personally hack off your leaden right foot with my dull-ass Swiss Army knife and suffocate you with it.  You will then be mounted roadside as a warning to others.

So, yeah.  For those of you who've asked or wondered: it's weird, I'm not entirely sure I like it, and I'm struggling with it a little bit as school's never really been a natural thing for me to do.  Further bulletins more toward the end of the semester.  Now if you'll excuse me, I have to know where 193 countries are on a map by Friday, and I have twenty pages on free will to read in the next hour or so.