surprise not-headsets

i spent so much time talking on Skype this weekend that this morning, it feels like i have a phantom usb headset on my head.

i reach near my mouth, expecting to find the microphone there so i can adjust it, and there's only air.

i'm such a dork.

the giant pool of money

thank you, new york times.

today, the new york times printed an article about an NPR show about the mortgage crisis. now, i don't regularly listen to NPR. i know this either makes me a bad liberal or a bad person in general, but i prefer music to talk. anyway, back in may, this american life did a show about the mortgage crisis, and the links between subprime mortgages and wall street.

for once, it's something that cuts past all of the financial jargon and actually explains the happenings in layman's terms--terms that make sense to all of us who aren't investment bankers. my brain often turns off when i read financial stuff, and a lot of it is because i don't understand what they're saying and i get frustrated having to google every other term, sift through the results, and find a half-decent explanation that doesn't explain the word in terms of six other pieces of financial jargon that i have to then look up and define all the terms in those definitions...ugh, it's recursive.

anyway, it's fascinating. you can listen to the show or read the transcript if you're like me and the speakers at your computer workstation suck. i highly recommend it.

more palin drama. sigh.

my head is spinning.

people are affirmatively hoping for a Bristol Palin wedding before the election? i was incensed enough when they stated in the abstract that "she will be marrying the father of the baby." it gave them an out...after the campaign, things could be reevaluated, and Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston wouldn't necessarily be pushed by the tide of public opinion into an ill-advised bond.

but, a highly-publicized wedding in the two or three weeks between Bristol's eighteenth birthday and the election? that's a publicity stunt, if i've ever seen one. and, i feel awful for Bristol and Levi. dealing with a teenage pregnancy is tough enough without the eyes of the nation scrutinizing their decisions. they should be left to talk to people they trust and then decide whether to keep the kid or give the kid up for adoption [or, had it been earlier, to consider abortion...although the beginning of the third trimester is definitely too late for that]. they can consider getting married, but they should have been left to do that on their own time--not as a face-saving element of mommy's campaign.

i'm not trying to disparage marriage per se. marriage is not always the wrong decision when two people end up having a kid. however, a pregnancy is no reason to immediately make people marry. the fact that his sperm collided with her egg in the right way doesn't make the two of them compatible for life, or even compatible for a few months or years. yes, it means they have some huge life decisions to make for the welfare of the kid. and, if they decide that they can be happy together for the long-term, then marriage is a legitimate consideration for them to make. but, marriage is not a legitimate response to the fact that mommy's closest political allies have a strict policy of forcing teenagers to marry the other teenagers they knocked up.

rushing into marriage only risks putting the kid in a situation borne of resent. no one wants that.

the end of blissful ignorance

apparently illinois bar results are coming out tomorrow.

well, fuck. my stomach is tied in a knot, and i won't be able to sleep tonight.

i has a bukkit!!

okay...well, i don't actually has a bukkit. but, this blog is on the first page if you google the words i has a bukkit.

and that makes me happy.