Conspiracy

You know any environmentalists?
You know any conspirators?

Etymology.
Environmentalist: mindful of what you live in.
Conspiring: breathing with/together

Living in Portland has driven me to explore my predispositions against environmentalism. As a disclaimer, I feel guilty for the ways I think differently than the majority of those around me. Cite my Catholic upbringing, cite my Midwestern origin, cite what you like. The majority of those around me now seem to value a bird that dies by flying into a window more than most issues.

A flier at school (Lewis & Clark's proprietary law school) seeks to enlist fellow followers to record incidents of birds' kamikaze actions directed towards our law school's beautiful scene-framing windows. Poor birds. When the fight is at our doorstep (or windowsill), we do feel the rumble of battle.

Thousands of miles away, our citizens, or rather former citizens, now our military advocates fight under orders of which we and they do not know the real causes. I recently watched a film entitled "Why We Fight"; the same question I have been asking myself since I became conscious of the meaning of a fight (3rd grade, defending a boy with gills from an obese 2nd grade girl with misplaced aggression; I got sat on). Turns out, in my estimation, that no person fights for any better reason than I have ever fought: for justice, for injustice, for anger, for greed, for misunderstood altruism, for vice or virtue, depends on who's asking or watching.

Save the birds? Save the Muslims? Save the victims? Save the aggressors. From themselves, I argue, those with power should be shielded. In the words of anyone without it, or anyone who has seen its "swiss"ing of cheddar, power corrupts. I was raised with power, though my power was intrinsic, inconceivable to a child, inappropriate to one so young and naive. My power lies on a plateau among Americans. Who reading this has had a single day in their life where food, shelter, unconditional parental love, access to transportation or communication or protection was a viable question? No questions here, ever. Hate me if you like, it wasn't my choice, though I wouldn't forfeit this privilege for anything I've encountered beside it. My childhood was not wealthy, but it was distinctly rich.

So the dinosaurs went extinct 65 million years ago. I like the idea of dinosaurs, of creatures that used to rule and reign over the world and have perished. Romans. My recent research reveals that the extinction event that wiped them out occurred between the Cretaceous and Tertiary eras, which means long, long ago to laymen like me. Meteorites seem to still be the most accepted theory of causation, so I guess not much has changed since I was a kid after all.

Dinosaurs dropped the ball, humans are on their way. "Dinosaur" comes from words meaning "terrible lizard." I wonder what they'll call us. Homo stupidiens?

Long live Earth. Short-lived is humanity.

One page on.

New concept. One page on (insert hopefully novel topic here).

On the Rockford Bar Crawl this year I threatened to stab a guy in the mouth for harassing the door guys at Bar Louie. I didn't have a knife. It worked though, he left...without any stab wounds in his mouth and I managed to get the stragglers of the RBC into the bar. Sorry to whoever got in my way that night, I don't know my own strength sometimes, just in a left-handed way (it's less than what I think).

Onwards Ho!

One page on politics.

Some of my new colleagues and contemporaries at Lewis & Clark's law school have recently made mention of an upcoming gubernatorial election here in Oregon. There're even friggin' Facebook profiles for the candidates for governor. http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=500077589

So Gov. Kulongoski isn't doing so hot in the surveyUSA.com approval ratings. http://surveyusa.com/50State2006/50StateGovernor060921State.htm

I looked over the demographical breakdown of these approval ratings until I was pissed off and satisfied. The demographical distribution follows that of the state of Oregon's population closely across the board (gender, race, age, etc.). They (surveyUSA.com) profess that the sampling error is +/-4%. Sounds good for a sample size of 600 out of 3.6 million right? Where do they find this sample of Oregon? I'd love to have them to bounce ideas off of.

Turns out, after a quick look into the website's statement of methodology, I would just have to randomly dial Oregon phone numbers and give thousands of people a professionally recorded telephone survey to get the opinion of these 600 ordinary Oregonians. Does anyone out there take random unsolicited phone surveys? Do the people that do represent the population of voters in Oregon well? Do politicians cater their platforms and campaigning to a public they see based on bullshit systems of surveying the public like this? What self-respecting, politically-informed, well-educated American takes the time out of corrupting and exploiting humanity and the Earth to answer a recorded phone survey on what they about the Gubernator?

I guess I didn't mean this to be a page of questions. Who's going to answer? They're rhetorical, all of them. The answers in my limited ignornant view would be no, no, I hope not, and no one respectively.

I wish I knew more about the inner workings of a campaign and the political engine that runs beneath/within it. Ignorance is not bliss if the stats scream lies.

Embarrassing as f**k!

I'm sitting on my couch having a rocks glass of cheap Australian Cabernet. My roommate, Seth, is sitting next to me studiously pouring over his Parkland Chemistry book. It's warm for February in this town and the college partying of spring is approaching like a squall line. My old war wounds are starting to ache: the torn quadricep from being body slammed Randy Savage style by Frolf National Champion, Justin "Huggie Bear" Heffernen, the permanent lump on my skull from... wait... I can't quite remember how that happened.

Unofficial St. Patrick's Day is this Friday, March 3rd. It's now the only day I consider recreational drinking in the morning acceptable, down from everyday previously (just kidding). The Friday after that is home to the Rockford Bar Crawl, which is likely one of the largest (at least most populous, the Phi Sig or Phi Mu bar crawls are probably "larger") bar crawls shitty CU campus bars see all year. I have a habit of getting rancidly drunk on the RBC and doing something embarrassing as f**K! This is a habit I hope to break in 9 days. The Friday after that (17th of March if you're keeping track) is my little sister's birthday as well as "Official" St. Patrick's Day, which is just one more opportunity to blame my Irish heritage for the trouble I get into by drinking too much.

All in all I'm frightened of the month of March and the weeks to come. Beware the Ides of March, et tu Brute!