Typing Drunk

So here’s the deal with Peace Corps. It sucks. And it’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever done. It sucks to be dropped in the middle of nowhere with one person who speaks your language but it’s amazing to know that you will be making friends and playing soccer in a place no one else will ever see. It’s amazing to know that you will make something from nothing when you could be sitting on your ass in a bar bitching about your boss.

There is nothing so exhilarating as knowing that you are pushing past your furthest limits but the emotional roller coaster you are on is unforgiving and a day will pass without you ever taking your mind off what you miss most. 

This isn’t just another abroad trip. It’s life. It’s tough. It’s not something you can leave without ever seeing the rough sides you haven’t chosen to see. You will see everything and feel everything you never knew you could feel. You will find emotions you hadn’t found before and this time you won’t be able to brush them aside with a beer, a friend, or whatever project was due yesterday. But you believe that, in the end, you will be prouder of yourself than you have ever been.

And that’s just Month One.

One Side Attacked Me and the Other Began Negotiating Terms of Surrender

Vote away Congress, playing with lives as the toys of ideology and elites. Where’s my Social Security, my medical care, my living wage, my freedom from borrowing under duress?


And the President, with the white flag of surrender permanently attached to his forehead. Fight the callous zealots! Rip away the façade of populism to expose the sneering elitism! Now I need my bailout and my bonus, or am I small enough to fail?


Forget Boehner, Reid, Pelosi, and McConnell. They’re all at a table, celebrating a job that was never worth doing. Two with most everything they wanted, two just get to move on.


Sweet champagne for baby Boehner and bitter beer for the coward Obama. Three cheers for economic reformation! And shrugs to the quiet masses.


They will all be driven home tonight, jobs awaiting them tomorrow. Succeed or fail, 90% will be re-elected.

Death, celebrated

It is the strangest thing, this campus. Full of hippies, hipsters, fogies, and nerds all trying to be correct and sensitive, all celebrating the end of a life. I am not sure how to feel, balancing victory with respect for death, and it is that balancing that keeps the line of my mouth straight...mostly straight.

I walked through the commons last night - everyone standing and talking when most sit and stare at computers. Is this what it takes for us to be social?

I want to mention that he was living in a mansion two hours from a capital and close to a military academy. I'd like to discuss the appearance that the house was too secure and the activities too furtive for someone to have not had an idea. Maybe it matters that Obama made this a priority and maybe - just maybe - it matters that someone was killed as a shield.

From there, I could write about leadership flaws, partisanship, even problems with international relations, practical and academic. But I really just want to express my confusion. It was a moral victory, a vindication, closure (maybe) and a show of dominance and victory. But bin Laden didn't really matter that much anymore and people are celebrating his death like it's the end of the wars rather than just being death. But maybe the moral victory is significant enough and maybe the symbolism is great enough. Beyond it all, though, remains a simple truth, that death, celebrated, is unnervingly strange.

Video Interlude - An absolutely brilliant representation of the day's ultimate economic debate

Part 1



Part 2

God and the existential Catch-22

So in the midst of all my mind-crunching work, I am having an existential crisis. Intrigued? Well, click on good sir/madam/other