In the past, I have frequently become righteously outraged at my female friends who claim “there are no good guys (at Duke, our age, etc.).” However, the more I watch and observe, the more I start to wonder if they’re right.

I suppose I should begin by clarifying what I mean by a “good guy.” Specifically, I’m talking about guys who treat all women with respect. This encompasses many actions, including, but not limited to: never misleading a woman about his intentions with her, never misleading a woman about his love life as a whole, generally treating women as people with feelings and not simply objects for pleasure, etc.

I originally believed this type of man to be fairly easy to find if one were actually seeking him. My experience and observations taught me that women frequently say they want these things, but are easily distracted by charismatic men who possess none of the qualities they claim are most important. I figured the “good guy” was out there, but he was simply being ignored because he didn’t stand out well enough. Now, I’m no longer so sure.

Every time a woman at Duke claimed all guys are dogs, I used to vehemently deny this and proclaim that I could name ten “good” single men. After learning more about some of the men I used to put on this list, I don’t think I can continue to make that statement with conviction. Now that I’ve been single for a few months, I’m starting to wonder whether I even belong on it.  I keep drawing closer to the sickening conclusion that, almost without exception, guys are only as “good” as they are limited by their opportunities. I hope I’m an exception, but time will tell.

Being in Australia has accelerated my social dynamics learning curve. In addition to learning a bit about how to read women’s reactions to me and how to make a positive impression, I’ve also learned a bit about male-female interactions as a whole. However, most illuminating has been what I’ve learned about myself, and how easy it is to become the type of guy I’ve always despised.

Sexual desire, mixed with fear of being undesirable and euphoria at actually being desired, can powerfully influence behavior (at least with me). Following the end of my long-term relationship, I was irrationally terrified that I’d never be able to attract anyone else. Now that I’m getting the attention of other women, it takes deep self-reflection and will not to abuse my newfound success. Being American in Australia makes it less challenging to attract girls. Add to that the fact I sort of have rhythm and I’m older (but not creepily so) than most of the women I meet, and it almost becomes easy. What’s difficult is keeping in mind the kind of person I strive to be, and acting accordingly in all situations.

Right now, I’m sort of juggling two girls. Nothing has progressed with either of them to the point that I’ve crossed an ethical boundary, but fairly soon I’m going to have to make a difficult decision about how to proceed with one or the other (or neither, I suppose). The longer I delay that decision, the more I become like the people whose behavior I’ve admonished in the past. I know it’s not right to lead them on, but I now understand why it happens: it’s just soooo much easier. I’m really not looking forward to a conversation about how I’ve met someone else and don’t feel right seeing you anymore. When you add the fact that I’m only here for a limited amount of time, it gets even more difficult.

I guess I’ve said all this to say I have a better understanding of how crazy, fucked up situations happen and how guys I thought were good end up using girls. I wonder if I’ll still be able to think of myself as a good guy after all this is said and done. I suppose time will tell.

I know most of you know this already. And one would be entirely correct in pointing out that in an election cycle with many more compelling people, events, and stories, it’s really not very justifiable for me to devote my efforts to ranting about Alan Keys. I would have agreed, but then I saw a link to the “Q&A” section of Keyes’s website.

First of all, it’s worth noting that the Keyes campaign apparently doesn’t understand what “question and answer” means. I put “Q&A” in quotes above because while normally people understand that to mean “information presented as responses to questions,” Alan Keyes and his campaign staff understand that to mean “make a lot of ridiculous unsubstantiated statements in bullet point form.” Second of all, and more importantly, however, one of the “Q&A”s pertains to the “truth” of Keyes’s Senate race in Illinois against Barack Obama. And I put “truth” in quotation markes because… well… see for yourself (all emphasis his):

When Alan entered the race, there were only 86 days left before the general election — a fact conspicuously absent in media accounts of the outcome. At the time Alan announced, Obama already had the race sewn up for all intents and purposes — in large measure because he’d already gained endorsements from all of the state’s major media.

The fact of how little time was left in the race was conspicuously present, in the sense that the papers didn’t write about it until it happened, which, coincidentally, was 86 days before the election. I’m pretty sure people didn’t need to be reminded of how close it was to the actual election to know that. Also, if “at the time Alan announced” he was under the impression that “Obama already had the race sewn up,” why the fuck would he even get in the race? He didn’t even live in Illinois… a fact that is conspicuously absent from Keyes’s summary of the event on his website.

Also, who were the newspapers supposed to endorse? It was either Obama, a candidate who had withdrawn, or a candidate who had not yet been named. Who would Keyes have had them endorse?

To illustrate the significance of these media endorsements, consider that immediately after Alan’s announcement, the biggest of the endorsing newspapers released a poll that claimed over 70 percent of voters favored Obama — yet the paper refused to publish the basis for its self-fulfilling poll. This poll was then cited as authoritative by the state’s media throughout the campaign.

How does this illustrate significance? They released a poll because all of a sudden there was somebody else running. And oh by the way… given that Obama got 73% of Illinois votes in the general election, it strikes me that the basis was, um, reality… I have no problem of a poll that got within 3% being cited as authoritative. That’s better than a lot of polls…

Alan did not personally seek the nomination. Instead, he was drafted by the Illinois Republican Party to fill a vacancy created July 29, 2004, when the GOP’s original nominee — Jack Ryan — formally withdrew, due to a sex scandal involving sealed documents from Ryan’s 1999 divorce. (It was reported that the Obama campaign pressed to have these damaging confidential documents made public to embarrass Ryan.)

Hey Illinois Republican Party–How did “drafting” Alan Keyes work out for you guys? Oh, it was a huge embarrassment because he was almost literally a carpetbagger? Well alright then.

Also, I fail to see the relevance of Obama’s campaign pressing to have his divorce papers made public, if in fact it actually happened, to anything. Leaving aside that I would like to know if my Senator liked to pressure his wife into having sex in public with strangers, that’s politics. Maybe Jack Ryan shouldn’t have been a giant cockbag.

Alan’s overriding motivation for challenging Obama in what was clearly an uphill race was to expose Obama’s unconscionable rejection of the Illinois version of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act — a measure Obama blocked as a state senator (even though a similar measure was passed by the U.S. Senate with support from Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy).

Okay, this is absurd. Basically Keyes is alleging that Obama supports… killing babies? I’m too lazy to look this up, but what the fuck is a “born alive infant protection act?” Once you’re born alive, you’re a person, and regular protection laws apply to you. And I find it incredibly hard to believe that Obama supports killing babies.

When Alan launched his candidacy on August 8, 2004, Obama had just been pronounced by the national media the “star” of the Democratic National Convention. Note that prior to his convention speech, Obama was virtually unknown outside the state of Illinois. This much-heralded “star” status continues to give Obama a virtually free ride by the media in his quest for political influence. He certainly had a free ride throughout his Senate race against Alan — rarely being asked challenging questions or pressed to account for his contradictory votes or positions.

Again, Keyes curiously fails to acknowledge the fact that he he knew exactly what he was getting into when he chose to run. And what, was the media supposed to help Keyes take down Barack to make up for the fact that he had never lived in Illinois and, forgive me for repeating myself, got into the race with 86 days left? Because that would be a stupid thing to expect.

When Obama was facing Alan’s predecessor, Jack Ryan, Obama promised Ryan six well-publicized debates, so voters could see the difference between the two candidates. When formidable orator and debater Keyes became his opponent, however, Obama reneged on his promise of six debates and reluctantly agreed to just three — all of which Alan clearly won, and none of which received wide media attention. (In fact, the first debate — in which Alan obviously outshone Obama — was televised by delay on C-SPAN, not live on statewide mainstream television.) The debates were also timed near the end of the election season, to prevent Alan from building any possible momentum.

How and why would they have done 6 debates? There were 86 days left in a contest that was polling 70-30. And why would Obama’s campaign have any incentive to debate at all, given that they were up by so much? Even three strikes me as a gift on their part. And Alan Keyes can’t reasonably accuse him of reneging on a promise to Jack Ryan on the basis of expecting it to carry over to him in entirely different circumstances, can he? Or am I wrong here… you tell me.

The most egregious lunacy, however, is clearly this:

“The debates were also timed near the end of the election season, to prevent Alan from building any possible momentum.”

Let me see… hmmm:

“The debates were also timed near the election season, because Alan didn’t get in the race until there were only 86 fucking days left, thus ensuring that any debate would be near the end of the election season.”

Fixed.

Not long into the campaign, Alan was publicly abandoned by the state’s Republican Party for his pro-life and pro-family positions. His viewpoint was labeled “idiotic” by the chairwoman of the state GOP because he defined the gay lifestyle as self-centered “hedonism.” Soon afterward, this chairwoman (who also strongly advocated so-called “abortion rights”) was prominently featured in Chicago’s annual gay pride parade.

If by “pro-life and pro-family” he really means “virulently homophobic,” then I think we can agree on this one.

I love, by the way, that even now, when he’s re-writing history to make it look like he was somehow deserving of victory but robbed by people and circumstances outside of his control, that he matter-of-factly admits to having “defined the gay lifestyle as self-centered ‘hedonism.’” How homophobic do you have to be to admit that as the sanitized version of your thoughts? Like really homophobic, right?

Also, I know he was totally okay with moving around like a mercenary to try to win an election, but did he really think that was going to play in Illinois? There’s no way, right? He can’t be that oblivious…

Obama had close ties with billionaire socialist George Soros throughout the election — which included Soros’s help in mobilizing considerable financial backing.

Financial backing that he didn’t need because for much of the election cycle he was running unopposed, but yeah, sure. No, wait… wtf. Definitely let’s call out every candidate for very wealthy supporters, Alan. And let’s start with all your Republican buddies. What’s that you say? They’re not your buddies and actually rather dislike you? Touche.

Unlike the rest of the Midwest in 2004, Illinois — due to its domination by corrupt politicians and media in Chicago’s Cook County — stood out as a “blue” state that year, even inordinately so. To appreciate the extreme character of liberal politics in Illinois that season, see a three-dimensional graphic published right after the 2004 election depicting the extent of Cook County’s liberal mindset — the most liberal major county in the entire nation that year.

So, you’re complaining about the unfairness of Obama being better-suited to represent the electorate than you were? How is this valid, complaining about the electorate? You know why Yassir Arafat doesn’t run for President of Israel? Partly because Israel has a Prime Minister and not a President, but mostly because the people who would be voting in the election don’t really have a lot in common with him ideologically and he knows he would lose.

Also, it should be pointed out that if you’re merely going by voting data (which he is), you’re ignoring the fact that a lot of people were a) fed up with the corruption and scandals of Jack Ryan and the Illinois Republican Party and b) disgusted at Alan Keyes’s blatant homophobia and opportunism, and the way he attacked Obama on a racial basis. Everything up to and through the election influenced their preferences, and they voted accordingly.

So his causality is backward here. He’s using a data based only on a vote that he lost by a laughably wide margin, at least partially because of how distasteful Illinois voters found him to be personally, to try to demonstrate why he lost the vote… The same vote that he’s using as evidence, yes. It would sort of be like me speeding, getting ticketed, and then trying to play it off to my parents that I’d been pulled over because police were profiling me on the basis I’d been ticketed.

I would have come up with a better analogy, but even I’m a little confused by how stupid this is.

Also, did anyone else notice that most of the rest of the Illinois map is red? They did, right? Okay… just checking.

These kinds of factors place Alan’s much-publicized loss in perspective. In the end, Alan still gathered 27% — which amounted to 1.3 million votes from independent-minded moral conservatives who refused to be misled, mostly outside the Chicago area.

Yes, they do put everything in perspective: while Alan Keyes’s candidacy was doomed at the outset, he nevertheless managed to turn it into even more of a debacle than it would have been otherwise.

And never have I seen such a big deal made over winning 27%. That’s fucking ridiculous. 73% of people, given a large enough sample size, don’t agree on anything. I bet 73% of Illinois didn’t even watch the Super Bowl. Fuck, 73% of Illinois probably doesn’t even believe in the scientific method. And yet–73% agreed on Barack Obama. So let’s call this what it was: a huge, old-fashioned ass-whooping, the likes of which haven’t been seen in years, and likely won’t be seen again for a long time. You know… the kind of thing that deserves to be much-publicized.

Not a bad three months’ worth of work, actually. Some observers suggest that if Alan had been able to campaign against Obama throughout a full election cycle, he might possibly have been able to overcome the inherent disadvantages he faced, penetrate the media-sustained shielding of Obama, and pull off an upset win against the powerful “Daley machine” that runs the state’s politics.

Ha. Haha. Hahahahahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Okay. Sorry about that. But seriously though… really? Keyes links to all kinds of illegitimately-sourced material in this, including that ridiculous non-attributed (and probably homemade) graph I referenced above, and couldn’t find even one single sketchy reference to validate this batshit-fucking-crazy claim. Who are “some observers?” Paid staffers? Blood relatives? Intimidated hostages? Seriously, who are these people… I would like a warning before I run into them.

If anyone could under the circumstances, it would be Alan — with his clear voice of reason and moral principle — provided he had enough time and resources to organize a widespread grassroots effort. Obama later admitted that Alan had profoundly unsettled him, due to Alan’s unflinching appeal to Christian ethics.

Keyes doesn’t provide any context or basis for this claim, nor does he provide a reference for the claim he attributes to Obama. I feel like that’s probably because Obama’s statement, in a larger context, may have referred to how he was unsettled by Keyes’s offensive homophobia–which, we know from above Keyes doesn’t find offensive, and probably would refer to as “Christian ethics.” But hey, what do I know? I just have the capacity for higher-level reasoning.

To recap, Keyes:

• Doesn’t know what “question and answer” means

• Excuses his loss on the fact that he got into the race incredibly late while he simultaneously
• Blames the media for not waiting for the Republicans to pull their heads out of their asses and nominate a candidate, which means he arrogantly
• Assumes he would have received those endorsements had he been in the race earlier despite the fact that he
• Is a blatant and unapologetic homophobe in a socially liberal state

• Thinks somehow that it’s reasonable to dismiss the loss on the basis that he had little in common with an electorate

• Whines after the fact about his participation in a system whose characteristics and features he was fully aware of when he moved from Maryland to Illinois to run a carpetbagger campaign

• Levels against Barack Obama the hilariously unlikely charge of supporting the killing of babies

• Advertises his surprising lack of understanding of a) causality and b) time

• Makes shit up, including a very unofficial and sketchy looking graph

• Tries to convince people that one of the absolute worst showings ever in a US Senate campaign was entirely the fault of people other than him, and

• Demonstrates beyond even the faintest shadow of doubt that he is fucking insane

Let it not be said that I don’t ever write about the Republican primary…

There are a lot of reasons I don’t like politics.

There’s the fact that billions of dollars are spent on advertising and campaigning when they could be spent on actually fixing problems about which the candidates spending the money to air attack ads occasionally talk. And the fact that the next time even a middle-income candidate wins a national election will be the first.

There’s the fact that, to win elections, candidates disingenuously try to cast themselves as existing at the dead center of the political spectrum, regardless of their intentions once elected. And the fact that this is done often in response to the results of polling and surveys.

There’s the fact that candidates pander shamelessly to whichever group is in front of them, with full knowledge that they will probably not be caught by a lazy and complicit media. And that the aforementioned media regurgitates the same campaign-generated talking points, always looking for the next “sound bite” that can take the place of actual insightful analysis.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. I could do this forever. But I want to get to the what is currently the biggest reason I strong dislike politics:

The almost institutionalized blatant disregard for logic and reason.

Consider this:

You are a civics-minded citizen of a country where, in politics, there are two political parties. Every four years, each party has a primary to decide who they will nominate to run for the President of your country. You are a member of Party A.

Party A has had only one man elected to the Presidency in the last 28 years (this spans 7 elections). He was profoundly intellectual and smart as a whip, but could relate to people of all walks of life. Beloved by young people (typically the hardest to inspire to have an opinion in these matters) and embraced by members of a diverse array of races and ethnicities, he was a captivating speaker whose oratory was often its own story. Eminently personable and likable, he nevertheless managed to campaign shrewdly, always making sure that the terms of the contest were defined by him and not his opponent (Party B was and is exceptionally good at defining the terms of the race). And in a country where personal faith is always a political issue, he succeeded in the almost impossible task of marrying liberal social positions to support from the faith community.

Every other candidate who has run in that span has generally failed for reasons which, in retrospect, should probably have been obvious. Too stiff. Too phony. Too elitist. Too arrogant. Too aloof. And they have all failed to dictate the terms of the campaign, instead fighting losing battles where the issues and their context were defined by their opponents.

It is primary time for your Party. There are two candidates whose policy positions are roughly the same on all the issues of note, however:

One candidate is a Senator from a large state whose citizens generally vote for candidates from Party A. While she is incredibly knowledgeable about the issues and has tremendous experience in government, years of corruption, cronyism, and partisan politics have left your country longing for a change from politics as usual–a brand of politics many associate her with intimately. Often a stiff speaker, this candidate has the backing of most of Party A’s establishment because of her longstanding ties to said establishment, but has trouble inspiring younger voters, moderate voters, and independents, all of whose votes will be required to win a general election.

In addition, this candidate has had unfavorable ratings that have peaked as high as the mid-40s since her entrance into the public arena (which happened over 15 years ago). In fact, a decision by Party A to nominate her would likely be the only thing that could unite Party B behind their own generally lackluster, uninspiring nominee (who is even disliked by many factions of his own party), simply because the entirety of Party B finds this candidate to be, possibly, the most distasteful member of their country.
Should she be nominated, Party B will have a field day turning the context of the campaign to issues that have nothing at all to do with her ability to lead the country, and her credentials will be lost amid what will likely be a dirty, excessively partisan campaign–a campaign which will alienate moderates and independents, who should be Party A’s natural allies.

The other possible candidate Party A could nominate is also a Senator from a large state whose citizens normally vote for candidates from Party A. While he is young and relatively new to the national political arena, he displays an alacrity with the issues that belies his comparative inexperience. A speaker who at his worst is compelling and at his best is inspiring, he has shown an almost unprecedented ability to bring together economically, educationally, racially, and even politically diverse groups of people, a refreshing change from the politics as usual decried by the electorate. While he has not generally been the choice of Party A’s establishment, he has racked up impressive primary wins in states not generally won by Party A’s candidates in the general election by virtue of melding support from moderates, young people, and a tremendous grassroots movement with support from traditional factions of Party A.

While his inexperience will be attacked by members of Party B and their candidate in a general election, he has tremendous success defining the terms of his campaign and the context of the election. He has turned what is inarguably his greatest strength–his ability to inspire and tap into a growing desire in many members of his country for change–into one of the defining issues of the campaign. And while Party B dislikes him on principle because of his affiliation with Party A, he engenders none of the vitriol his primary opponent does in Party B.

So… which one would you vote to nominate?

———

I obviously don’t need to tell you that Party A is the Democratic Party, that Party B is the Republican Party, that the first candidate is Hillary Clinton, the second is Barack Obama, and that the presumptive Republican nominee is John McCain. I took their names out, however, in an effort to show just how stark the choice really is between Clinton and Obama for the Democrats.

They are similar candidates on the issues; they have mostly the same beliefs and have much in common with Democratic voters. But Hillary is, possibly even more than her husband, the most hated political figure in America today to members of the Republican party.

Even the primaries they’ve won should be instructive. Hillary has won states like Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. Who cares? Regardless of whether Hillary of Obama ends up being the nominee, a Democrat is going to win those states in the general election. Obama, on the other hand, has won states like Alabama, South Carolina, and Georgia–states that normally vote for Republicans in general elections– where his broad appeal would give him a chance against McCain that Hillary won’t have. This is especially true with McCain, a candidate unlikely to appeal to the very conservative voters who normally comprise the Republican power base in those states, as the opponent.

In the last two elections, the brilliant Republican strategy has been to a) define the race on terms favorable to George Bush (i.e. turning Al Gore’s and John Kerry’s experience into negatives and turning Bush’s dogmatic obstinacy into a positive), and b) shore up support in the states that normally vote for Republican nominees while putting the Democratic nominee on the defensive in states that normally vote for Democrats. In the last week of the 2004 election, John Kerry was campaigning in Michigan (MICHIGAN… you know… auto makers and unions, socially liberal, big urban areas) because he was worried he might lose it.

Republicans don’t even like McCain. While nominating Hillary will unite his party behind him, nominating Barack will put even deep red states in play, possibly setting the stage for an electoral college landslide the likes of which has not been seen in years. And in the most recent polls run, Barack runs 7 points stronger than Hillary against McCain. 7 points, by the way, is a huge margin. And yet, despite all of that, Hillary, with the support of the party establishment and the superdelegates who will almost certainly decide the nomination, will probably be the nominee of the Democratic party:

In pre-Super Tuesday polling, Clinton leads Obama by 6 points when Democrats are forced to make a choice between the co-frontrunners. But Clinton ties McCain in a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, while Obama bests him by 7 points.

Seriously. This is the most illogical thing I’ve ever seen. Even if you’re a Hillary supporter, can you really say that she’s so much better than Barack that it’s worth the unconscionably larger risk that she loses in the general election?

By nominating Hillary, the Democratic Party would basically be saying, “hey, logic and reason… fuck off.” So, of course… that’s exactly what they’re going to do.

And that’s the biggest reason I hate politics today.

Global warming is a growing problem that cannot be denied; watching “Jesus Camp” where an evangelical home-schooling mother explained to her young kids that global warming was a farce perpetrated by the liberal media (I suppose “brainwashing” would have worked in place of that last clause) was demoralizing and infuriating. Global warming is a real problem with no easy solution, and the denial of its existence by such a large section of the country makes it even harder to address in a constructive way.

But with that said, if the melting of the ice caps and the corresponding rise in ocean levels end up submerging Florida and rendering it uninhabitable, I might go out and buy a Hummer tomorrow.

Why the sudden vitriol? I read this in the Orlando Sentinel:

Millions of Americans in 24 states are turning out vote to in Super Tuesday presidential primaries from Georgia to Alaska today. Meanwhile, some dedicated if confused Florida voters are trying to, as well.

Elections offices across the state are reporting hundreds of calls from voters wanting to know where they can vote today. The answer is that Florida already had its presidential primary — last week.

“We’ve had over 100 calls at least over the last two days,” said Kathy Adams, a spokesperson for the Palm Beach County Election Supervisor.

Seriously. What the fuck.

Okay, I understand that the Democrats not awarding any delegates in their Florida primary (and the resulting dearth of campaigning by Democratic candidates there) probably contributed to less awareness among the electorate. Fine. But something tells me that these hundreds of people who were calling in don’t really follow politics closely enough to even know that. Hell, Rudy Giuliani pretty much moved to Florida in advance of the primary to campaign, and might have met everyone in the state (which makes it especially funny that he had such a poor showing… apparently the more time you spend with Rudy, the less you like him). Where were these people for the last three months? Under a rock.

Oh… some of them were in California? Like, they actually live in California? What? Oh, you’re serious? Well alright then:

Closer to home, Orange County elections officials say they are dealing with a combination of confused voters from Florida and California.

“One of my staffers has figured it out,” said Orange County Election Supervisor Bill Cowles. “They are California voters going online and looking for the Orange County [California] election office and calling us instead.”

Don’t even get me started on California.

[Alright, let's talk about California: who are the 4% of people who take the time to get out and vote in the California Democratic Primary and then vote for someone other than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? I'm not even going to complain about how they went and voted for Animatron2008 right now (although that is originally why I didn't want to get started on this). I at least understand a Clinton vote theoretically, even though I disagree with the choice. But a vote for someone other than Obama or Clinton? What goes through their head during that moment when they're pulling the lever for John Edwards (or, apparently, one of four other people who pulled out even longer ago, or, even more stupidly, Mike Gravel)? Is it something like, "Uh, yeah, I know he pulled out a few days ago and has absolutely no chance of winning anything at this point, but that notwithstanding, I would like to take my almost-certainly-numerically-insignificant vote and guarantee that it will be meaningless." Or is it, "Huh... raw cookie dough is delicious! Guuuuhhh, John Edwards for President!" I suspect something closer to the latter.

But seriously though... really?]

I’m taking a “Grassroots Democracy” class right now, and we spend a lot of time talking about democratic (small d) theory and about representation and politics. And I’ve always found the founding fathers’ ideas about equality and freedom and liberty very inspiring. But I’ve come to the conclusion that there are people who shouldn’t be voting. People from California who call an office in Florida to ask questions about their primary shouldn’t be allowed to vote. People in Florida (or any other state) who don’t even follow the campaign enough to know that THEIR PRIMARY ALREADY FUCKING HAPPENED should not be allowed to vote. They just shouldn’t. End of story.

“There is a fairly large part of the public that doesn’t pay much attention to politics,” said [University of Central Florida professor of political science] Aubrey Jewett. “I supposed all the hype and talk about Super Tuesday finally convinced them to come out to vote.”

Jewett said he isn’t surprised by the confusion.

“Hopefully they will pay more attention to the process and will be ready to vote the first Tuesday in November, and not the second Tuesday,” he said.

No sir. Hopefully they won’t.

So first things first:

I’m back.

Sort of. I’m back in the sense that I’m going to start posting again, but I’m not going to be all the way back in that I won’t be nearly as prolific as I was over the summer. As classes are currently in session, I’m going to shoot to post a few times a week at most, when the mood strikes me. I don’t know how this is going to work, but I do know that now that I’ve re-started, it should be easier to keep posting. When I stopped toward the end of the summer, I told myself I was just going to take a couple of days off. Then a couple of days became a couple of weeks, which became a couple of months… and you get the idea. This phenomenon is actually the same reason (pretty much) that I’ve inexplicably gained 25 pounds since I’ve been at college.

Anyway, the point is, I’m going to be posting again.

—————————-

So… with all of that said, I want to start this post off with a story:

Last weekend, I went with two friends to see a student performance of The Rocky Horror Show. The show was staged in a black box kind of format, where there were 6 or 7 rows of chairs arranged in an L-shaped mass along two sides of a square. The corner opposite the corner where the chairs met contained the set, and the play took place on/around the set and in front of the chairs.

By about 20 minutes before showtime, the audience was mostly seated, and were being entertained by two of the cast members (one male, one female), who were roving throughout the chairs interacting with individuals and small groups. And by “interacting with individuals,” I really mean, “giving lap dances.”

Pretty standard for Rocky Horror festivities. I’m neither outraged, nor judging, especially since they were generally being really good about it, in the sense that they were going mostly for their friends, for people who seemed to be interested, and generally not for anyone who would have felt uncomfortable as a result of the proceedings.

A few minutes before the show, however, a female audience member called the male cast member over to give her a lap dance. He went over, and gave her a lap dance, only, in the process of doing so, grabbed one of her breasts. A pretty good-sized handful, mind you… this was not accidental touching.

One of my friends and I were watching this, and while the theater was dimly lit, it was pretty close to where we were sitting and we both noticed the look of shock and discomfort that flitted across the girl’s face when this happened. We may have been the only people, because of lighting and angles and where our gazes were directed at that moment, to have seen it. And even had other people seen it, the atmosphere didn’t really lend itself to anyone being even a little bit surprised.

My friend and I ended up discussing it both before and after the show. His argument was that it wasn’t that big of a deal; if you call someone over to give you a lap dance, that’s the kind of thing that you should expect. By asking for a lap dance, you’re implicitly consenting to a handful of lap dance-related acts which may include getting fondled.

I’m purposely not characterizing his argument as “she was asking for it,” partly because the person I’m talking about would never make that argument, and partly because I appreciate the distinction between, for example, merely being in the theater dressed up (as many people were) in outrageous costumes and adding on the additional step of calling a guy over to give you a lap dance. But I objected to his reasoning pretty strongly.

Should she have been expecting to be fondled? Or should she have at least taken into account the possibility? Should she have considered that by explicitly asking for a lap dance, she was implicitly consenting to other acts?

I didn’t think that she should have. I understand that when you’re asking for a lap dance you’re asking for contact, but my distinction was that you’re not asking to have your privacy/space violated in any way. To that, my friend pointed out that it’s a lap dance (which I duly noted), and that as she had given her consent to be touched by a crotch, she had pretty much consented to lots of contact. And from there, we ended up debating the idea of implied consent, never really reaching consensus.

I understand the idea of implied consent, sort of. I understand, for example, that someone who explicitly consents to sex is pretty much implicitly consenting to being kissed (and that during sex, kissing becomes a situation where consent is assumed unless explicitly stated otherwise). That’s a pretty logical case to make though. And, actually, the framework of American adolescence contributes to the ease with which most of us agree about how clear that case is. Does everyone remember learning the bases, or the four f’s, or however you learned it? Male-female physical interactions are governed by a linear system; kissing comes before fondling, which comes before oral sex, all of which come before intercourse. I know, I think, one person who did those steps out of order, and she is clearly the exception and not the rule, as I’m sure most of you will agree.

What of consent in non-linear situations? And what of consent in situations we don’t normally think of as requiring consent?

How should two partners in a monogamous relationship approach the idea of consent? Does being in a relationship and having previously consented to certain acts turn consent into something that must be explicitly revoked instead of explicitly granted? More generally, does having previously consented to certain acts imply future consent for the same acts?

Does one person consenting to go on a date with another where there is an understanding that the invited party will not have to pay for anything imply consent for certain acts later in the evening and turn consent into something that must be revoked?

And, of course, does asking for a lap dance imply consent to being fondled?

———–

I don’t know the answers to these questions. Actually, that’s sort of a lie. I know, intellectually (and viscerally) that consent must be explicitly granted in the vast majority of all situations. I know that paying for a dinner does not entitle someone to even so much of a kiss. I know that being in a relationship with someone does not imply your consent to a smorgasbord of sex acts as soon as you’ve consented to them each once. And I know that the idea of “implied consent” is a very slippery concept to define.

I also know that a lot of people have a lot of different opinions about these questions. I was partly shocked and partly bemused when, in the course of a discussion about consent within the context of a relationship with a diverse group of college students, a female who I would consider borderline feminist happened to mention that a guy who “always asks all the time before he does anything” is sort of lame. And while everyone jokes about having to put out after dates, there are a large number of people who would be angry if, after a nice dinner, their date hopped out of the car with nothing more than effusive thanks.

Seriously. What do people think about this stuff? This started out with sort of a point, and I ended up realizing as I was writing that this is a very complex issue. So let’s hear it… what do people think of implied consent?

There’s a bit that Lewis Black does (I think it’s in Black on Broadway) where he talks about how, when he was a child, one used to be able to drink safely out of the hose/tap and get clean water. He continues from there, lamenting at how, to save money, the government stopped cleaning water as well as they used to, leaving people to buy bottled water instead. The main part of the joke is about how bottled water companies are really just screwing you, and that “spring” probably just means an old couple in Pittsburgh filling up plastic bottles in their bathtub. I’m paraphrasing, of course, and Black does this with quite a bit more righteous indignation than I’m conveying, and it really is quite funny. The point though, is that it’s funny because it’s supposed to be a sort of absurd situation that isn’t really how bottling works in real life.

Except for that, um, apparently it is.

In the event that you don’t click the link, the story is about how PepsiCo is changing the labels of their Aquafina brand bottled water to reflect that the water originates “from public sources.” Which, of course, is really just a less blatantly off-putting way of saying “you’re paying for tap water, you fucking moron.”

I don’t mean to imply that people who drink Aquafina and/or Dasani are stupid. I’m not going to lie to you… in the continuously updating list of “Jim Davy’s Favorite Brands of Bottled Water” (it’s merely one of many lists that I keep, btw), Coca-Cola’s Dasani brand bottled water currently occupies the top spot, cleanly edging out Poland Spring and sitting roughly 673498 spots ahead of Dannon water.

Digression… have you ever had that shit? Dannon water is almost without a doubt the most disgusting liquid I have ever swallowed. It just tastes disgusting. And I know that there will be those of you who mock me for saying that different brands of water taste different, but don’t even lie to yourself… a) different water tastes different, and b) you have a favorite brand. Maybe even that pretentious, overrated Evian shit.

In any case, Dasani, tap water or not, tastes delicious (particularly when cold). Aquafina isn’t that good, but is made from the same “public sources” that Dasani is. And I don’t mind paying for Dasani, really, I don’t. Partly because tap water in Durham tastes only marginally better than Dannon, and partly because bottled water is really convenient.

I’m going to level with you though. I’ve not been under any misapprehensions here; I’ve known that Dasani was filtered/purified tap water for awhile. In fact, I suspect that you did too. I’ve actually written this entire post because I really wanted to include this:

“Pepsi and Coke do not make a lot of profit” on bottled water, said Kolpak, adding that people may talk about the issue, but will likely continue buying some bottled water. Victory Capital owns about 3 million shares of PepsiCo among its $62 billion under management.

Um… what?

Let’s think about this… Pepsi and Coca-Cola run tap water (which is, um, free) through a purification process, put it in some very cheap plastic with some cheaper plastic on the outside, and then charge upwards of $1 for 16.9 fluid ounces. Upwards of $5 if you’re at a sporting event.

There’s nothing but profit there! WTF is he talking about, they don’t make a lot of money on bottled water? They sell a lot of a product that costs them almost nothing to make, that they don’t pay to market at all, and they can’t make money? I don’t understand this. If they don’t make money on bottled water, how do they make money on soda? Soda is water and flavoring shit (which costs extra), and they sell it at roughly the same price in a can that’s roughly the same size. If they’re not making money on the water without the flavoring, how do they make money on the water with the flavoring? WTFF?

The real question then, becomes, um, exactly what are they making a profit on? Are they selling actual coke on the side or something? And oh by the way, if they’re not making money on it, why are they selling it? It’s surely not worth enough to them to just sell it out of the goodness of their hearts, because they know people like me appreciate the taste of an ice cold Dasani on a hot summer day. Seriously… how do you fuck up making money on selling tap water? That old couple in Pittsburgh could make money on selling tap water. Damn.

Get it away. Now.

Why the sudden urgency about this? Well, it turns out that obesity may be contagious. I wish I were kidding.

Even leaving aside the wider implications of this on more varied aspects of life, this is probably the scariest thing that I’ve read in the last year.

These findings are the result of a 35 year study tracking over 12,000 people (which is a great sample size for panel data) and were recently published in the very legitimate New England Journal of Medicine. I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty shaken, so I’m just going to quote this at length, and again, there’s not a lot else I can say to cushion the blow:

When one person in the study became obese, his siblings’ risk of also becoming obese jumped by 40 percent, while his spouse’s risk jumped by 37 percent. More strikingly, if that person had been named as a “friend” by another participant, the second participant’s risk of becoming obese shot up by 57 percent. If the friends were of the same gender, the risk was even higher, at 71 percent. (The study found a man’s weight gain would have no significant effect on his female friend’s weight, and vice versa, but the study did not have many male-female friendships to examine.) If the friends were particularly close—judged in the study by the fact that they both named each other on their lists of loved ones—the risk that one’s weight would follow the others’ increased by a whopping 171 percent.

The upshot of this, of course, is that you (yes, you) need to not get fat so I don’t get fat too.

Seriously though. 171%? Wtf? Considering that a lot of friendships/relationships revolve around spending time together, and that a lot of that time involves consuming food, there’s not a lot of things to be hopeful about here. The one silver lining appears to be that friends’ influence on each other goes both ways, meaning that losing weight can be contagious like gaining weight is. But let’s be serious… America in general is getting fatter; there’s no pressing need to fear your anorexic friends.

I immediately gave thought to conducting my friendships via telephone, but apparently even that doesn’t work:

The reason people have such a powerful effect on each other’s weight is hinted at by one of the study’s most intriguing findings, says Fowler: “Friends who are hundreds of miles away from you have as much of an effect as friends who are [geographically] close.”

Obesity, then, doesn’t spread among friends simply because they’re hanging out together, “going out to eat at the same places or going to the bar or going to the park and running together,” he says. “It’s spreading through ideas about what appropriate behaviors are, or what an appropriate body image might be.”

Um… so you’re telling me that just being friends with someone is enough to do it? Holy crap. Oh… what’s that you say? It gets even scarier? Oh, by all means, carry on:

Even people who’d never met each other were affecting each other in a six-degrees-of-separation way. If your friend’s friend’s friend, or your friend’s sibling’s friend, gains weight, “that will have a subtle effect on you over the course of two to four years,” says James Fowler, an associate professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, and the other coauthor of the study. “When we change our own lifestyle and become heavier or thinner, that has a ripple effect through the whole population.”

I’m done. This is it for me. I’m locking myself in a small room a treadmill and no means of contact with the outside world. I’ll eat occasionally. It seems like the only thing to do, huh?

In the last few days, it has come to light that Tim Donaghy, a now former NBA official, “fixed” or otherwise affected the outcomes of at least some of the games he was charged with refereeing, probably at the behest of the mob. He likely bet on some of the games he refereed, and the games he refereed have exhibited strange numerical patterns over the last two years (the time period over which he is alleged to have fixed games). The FBI has apparently been following the case and accumulating evidence for about 18 months, and because they didn’t let the NBA know until after the conclusion of this year’s NBA Finals, Donaghy was allowed to referee 5 pretty high profile playoff games this year, including the very high-profile and generally lamentable Spurs-Suns game 3. Donaghy has resigned in disgrace, and is apparently going to cooperate with the FBI in their investigation.

That’s pretty much what we know so far.

Basically everyone in the media has been (justifiably) ripping Donaghy and (far less justifiably) warning of the impending downfall of the NBA. Everyone on ESPN has chimed in with their take, and they basically all have nothing good to say about the prospects of the NBA. Bill Simmons wrote his 7th (or it seems like it) column on the death of the NBA, ignoring the very obvious boy-who-cried-wolf parallel that’s starting to spring up when he does that. Wilbon and LeBatard excoriated the NBA on PTI; every other NBA writer I’ve seen has ripped the NBA as well.

I think this is all getting a little out of hand.

The NBA is not dead. The NBA is not even dying. And while it has been popular in these articles to write some variation of “David Stern would gladly trade his current problem for having a marquee star indicted on the same charges as Michael Vick,” and imply that the ref betting on games is far worse than what Vick did for each’s respective league, I think the Vick situation is more likely to bode ill for the NFL than this ref thing is likely to doom the NBA.

Let’s think about this logically for a minute.

The NBA is firmly ensconced in 2nd place out of the “big 3″ American sports leagues (NFL, NBA, and MLB… I refuse to count hockey as a major American spectator sport). The NFL is a clear number one in terms of viewership and fan following, but the NBA is a clear number two. And baseball has many other inherent, structural problems that are going to prevent it from surpassing the NBA anytime soon.

For starters, MLB is evolving into a league of white Americans and foreign imports (primarily latino imports). While this is great, and while baseball’s world-wide audience is expanding, this is terrible for baseball in America. Young African-Americans are still choosing running back and small forward over center fielder; this betting scandal will do little to change that. MLB is facing a return to the days before integration, when whole segments of the population didn’t even bother with baseball, ensuring a lower quality product on the field. When you combine this with the now inherent distrust many Americans feel for, say, almost any player who hits 40 home runs in a season, it is quite easy to see that baseball isn’t going to be surpassing the NBA anytime soon.

Secondly, and, for my money, far more importantly, the NBA has always been more player focused than team focused. How is this relevant to the betting scandal? Consider a game next year when Kevin Durant’s Sonics are playing Kobe Bryant’s Lakers. Given what each of these teams did personnel wise this offseason, it is unlikely that this game would be a terribly important game in the grand scheme of things. With that said, it is very likely that my roommate and I will stay up on the east coast to watch this game. And we won’t be alone.

Everyone who tunes into that game is not watching because they particularly care which team prevails. They’re watching because there’s a great chance that Durant or Kobe will do something absolutely ridiculous on the court. People aren’t worried about catching “Sonics vs. Lakers,” they’re interested in catching Durant and Kobe. As such, insofar as a crooked ref might impede Durant and Kobe from displaying their basketball skills, people will care. But if he’s just calling a few more fouls to affect the teams’ ability to cover the over/under, most people really aren’t going to care. Hell… NBA refereeing has been terrible for awhile now, and people haven’t turned the channel. People care about individual players doing spectacular things. Tim Donaghy hasn’t impeded that.

A great example of this, btw, is how the NBA continues to match up the Heat and Lakers on Christmas Day in its showcase match-up because of the presence of Shaq and Kobe. Another would be how ratings for the Finals between the Spurs and the Pistons in ‘05 Finals, a match-up between two true “teams” without lots of superstar players (even Tim Duncan is unheralded given his skills) were the lowest in recent memory. Or how this year, TV networks and the NBA were ecstatic that the Cleveland LeBrons outlast the Pistons so they could promote LeBron James for the NBA Finals agains the Spurs. Players are more important that teams no matter how you cut it.

The NBA, far more than the NFL, is a player-centric league. The NFL has 22 players on the field at a time, and they’re all wearing helmets that obscure their faces. While jaw-dropping feats of individual skill and athleticism are not uncommon, success in the NFL more often requires teamwork and coordination among stars and faceless, nameless teammates. The NFL, as a more team-centric game, tends to promote team allegiances more than allegiances to players. While you might be tuning in to see, say, Vince Young, it’s far more likely that you’re tuning into see the Tennessee Titans. If an official was fixing NFL games, I think it would be a much bigger deal because of the dynamic of the league. There are fewer games in a season, but, more importantly, more fans would be more offended because their allegiances are to the teams that are getting screwed, not the players who are putting on a show regardless.

In that vein, the images of the respective leagues (NBA and NFL) are actually heading in opposite directions. Everything that David Stern has done over the last few years (whether implementing a strict dress code, offering officials increased powers to issue technicals, issuing huge suspensions/fines for even slight misconduct, or promoting teams and players that generally shy away from controversy), he has done with an eye toward improving the NBA’s image among American sports fans. He has been mocked for this, certainly, but the fact remains that when NBA All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas ended up being a total shitshow with extensive lawlessness and misconduct associated with the culture Stern is trying to disaffiliate the NBA with, the main name that became associated with the mess was Pacman Jones… an NFL player.

The NFL, while still the undisputed most popular league in America, is facing a huge image problem. From the teams like the Bengals to individuals like Tank Johnson and Pacman Jones, the misconduct of NFL players is not only growing to be almost commonplace, but has been dominating the recent news of the league. And while it is laudable that new Commissioner Goodell is doing everything he can to change the culture, he has quite a way still to go. What makes it even more difficult for him is that because so many players in the NFL are faceless and nameless, fans are more likely to take isolated acts of misconduct and apply them to a wider stereotype of most players in the league.

I actually think that, depending on the outcome, the Vick thing could turn out worse for the NFL than the Donaghy thing turns out for the NBA. Donaghy is not a player, and while betting on NBA games might be down in the short term, people who watch the NBA aren’t going to stop watching the NBA. While I don’t think the Vick thing is going to stop people from watching the NFL, I do think that it exacerbates an existing and growing problem that will continue to face the NFL long after people have forgotten Donaghy’s name. The fact that Vick is a mega-star doesn’t help matters; as one of the few players whose unhelmeted face most Americans might recognize, Vick’s misconduct is worse for the NFL even that Pacman’s.

In any case, the NBA will be fine. Nothing to worry about really. Although if the upshot of this is that the NBA gets some competent refs, I will be ecstatic…

As some of you are sure to have noticed, my weekend review was not published this weekend in a timely fashion. This was because I had planned beforehand to make this a Harry Potter wrap-up post, only I’d been stewing over it too much to trust myself to have written coherent thoughts on it before now. Even last evening, on the phone with a friend who’d also read the book, I found myself frequently reduced to using obscenity to communicate my displeasure.

Yes… displeasure.

I finished the book at about 6:45am on Saturday morning, and was so pissed at how it had wrapped that, even as tired as I was, I couldn’t fall asleep for another 45 minutes or so. My first impression of the book was that it was my least favorite of the seven (and not by a particularly close margin), that it had been ended clumsily, and could have done with a blanket revision.

So I gave myself a few days to stew, re-read the final third-ish a few times, and I’ll admit, it’s growing on me a little (but not enough). Certainly not enough that the vast number of positive media stories have made sense to me. I still think that it’s my least favorite of the seven, and I still wish she’d ended it differently. But I’ve waited long enough… here are my thoughts on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

OKAY… HERE’S WHERE A NORMAL PERSON WOULD PUT A SPOILER ALERT… AND I’M DOING IT AS A COURTESY (YEAH, I CAN BE NICE SOMETIMES), BUT DAMN, FINISH THE FUCKING BOOK ALREADY… IT’S BEEN OUT FOR OVER 72 HOURS… GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER

There were things that I liked, certainly. Most notably, I found myself very impressed by what Rowling did with Dumbledore’s character. In a series that has been full of complex characters who are not always what they seem, Dumbledore’s presence in the first six books had been purely good. I appreciated finding out about his history and about how his past is more checkered than he let on. And, if anything, I actually left Deathly Hallows with more respect for Dumbledore because while he was tempted, faced personal hardship, and had done things that he very clearly regrets, he nevertheless managed to turn his life into one of which he could be proud.

As much as I like the way that Rowling developed Harry, the fact that Harry has never been tempted by evil makes him a less interesting and less complex character. Leaving aside implausibility (if he was offered a way to save his friends/bring back his dead family and friends, he would jump at it no matter what it involved, right?), it’s just less interesting for Harry to be such a one-dimensional character. Notwithstanding his use of unforgivable curses (a first for him, which really surprised me given how his character has been developed), Harry has never exhibited dark tendencies of any kind. Dumbledore managed to overcome his past failings/dalliances with misdirected personal ambition and become a representative of all that was good in the wizarding world. This is more plausible, more interesting, more easy to identify with/aspire to, and generally more compelling.

There were also very specific scenes which I really liked a lot. I really liked the scene where Harry digs the grave for Dobby by hand; I thought it was extremely moving and a fitting end for Dobby. I really liked the description of the “Battle of Hogwarts;” it’s hard to imagine a proper fantasy series without an epic pitched battle of some kind, and of course Rowling’s was brilliantly crafted. That it stood out from a lot of the rest of the book in that regard is actually a bad sign, but nevertheless, I enjoyed it immensely.

With that said, however, there were many more things of which I was not a fan:

I really didn’t like how she handled Snape in this book. I noted in my preview that I thought he would turn out to be good and that there had to be some iron-clad reason why Dumbledore trusted him, and I really liked how she resolved that issue. It is fitting that a deep personal love is the only thing that could compel someone to put himself in such danger, and the only thing that would be above possible corruption. For example, when Narcissa Malfoy pretends that Harry really is dead at the end because she’s more concerned about Draco than Voldemort, we see that love can overcome any other motivator. I think she handled the theory of Snape great. But as arguably the most unique/compelling character in the series, we literally only saw him for one chapter, and that was through his memories. I would have enjoyed an expanded role for Snape in Deathly Hallows.

I also strongly disliked how Rowling rather unapologetically turned Harry into a Christ metaphor. And while I kind of saw it coming, and while I appreciate the irony of Harry Potter ending up as a great Christian allegory while organized Christian religions around the world bash the book for its connections to witchcraft and wizardry, I must say that I was rather hoping that she would do something else with the end. Consider that:

Harry basically “dies” to save the rest of humanity, willingly walks to his death without second thought (totally at peace with his decision), has to endure the jeers of the death eaters as he stands facing death, “dies” for a little bit, comes back, and triumphs over evil forever (because of his willingness to face death). I mean, God damn it. Why did she have to do that? One of the things that had been great about Harry Potter had been that nobody had ever really seen anything like it before; it was a great feat of imagination that was unique and original. To end it in such a hackneyed way–indeed, the least original way possible, if you think about it–disappointed me a little bit.

I was also not really a fan of all the time spent with Harry, Ron, and Hermione traipsing through British woods and camping. If one can say anything for sure about this book, it was that there was whiplash-inducing shifting between really fast-paced action and rather dull, monotonous scenes. Obviously a book can’t be all action, but it’s not like she was developing characters in that time; hearing them bitch at each other got old pretty quickly.

And while we’re on the subject of the end, I thought it was ludicrous that after making a big deal of Griphook taking the Gryffindor sword from Harry in Gringotts, Neville just kind of had it in the end to kill the snake. Where the fuck did that come from? And I mean, I was as happy as anyone to see Neville do something important and overcome being sort of useless, but wouldn’t it have been waaaaaay more fitting to have him be the one who killed Bellatrix Lestrange, given what she did to his parents? And after building up Ginny’s magical abilities in Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince, to have her play basically no role in the end disappointed me and surprised me a little bit. Although, the end did allow for me to wildly enjoy seeing the word “BITCH” in capitals in a Harry Potter book.

Speaking of that, btw… Does anyone else think that maybe the 9 and 10 year old (and younger) kids reading this thing are maybe a little young? I read a lot of books when I was younger before I should have, and I can unequivocally say that I didn’t appreciate them as much as I would have had I been older. Here, I was incredibly lucky to have aged at roughly the same rate as Harry; to grow with the characters and to see the emotional weight increase as my own emotional maturity (theoretically) increased at the same time. But do we really think that this book is the best thing for really little kids to be reading?

I wasn’t really a fan of the hallows thing either. Seemed like a cop-out to me. Although I also noted that she’d have to do something about the wand thing, creating the hallows to resolve that issue was sort of odd. And also, if Dumbledore got the elder wand when he dueled Grindelweld, how does that makes sense? If Gridelweld was dueling with the elder wand, how would Dumbledore have been able to defeat him? What’s the point of a wand that makes you an undefeatable dueler if you can be, um, defeated?

The absolute worst thing, though, was definitely the epilogue. Fuck. Seriously. It was totally unnecessary, but if you’re going to have it, fucking tell me something other than that a) Harry and Ginny get together and have kids, b) Ron and Hermione get together and have kids. What do they all do for a living? How does Harry deal with his post Voldemort life? How has Hermione chosen to direct her considerable intellect? And to let us know that Neville is the Herbology professor at Hogwarts is little more than a cruel joke; in demonstrating her willingness to let us know what happens to other characters and then not telling us about anyone else, she’s basically saying “hey, fuck you,” to the reader. What happens to the Weasley family? How does George live without Fred? And what the hell happens to Hogwarts? Who’s the headmaster? In a series that has seen so many different characters be developed so richly, her choosing to end it on such a note is extensively frustrating and more than a little bit infuriating.

Anyway, those were my somewhat-mitigated/blunted first impressions. Perhaps I will have more later on, after I think some more.

(Oh, and before I forget… my preview post was really good, in retrospect… I very rarely give myself credit for stuff like this, so I’m allowing myself this one pat on the back… please forgive me.)

In other news:

• Um, don’t look now, but Ron mother-fucking Paul led all Republican Presidential contenders in dollars raised from men and women affiliated with the military, including those on active duty, handily beating out even John “but I was a prisoner of war” McCain. He’s obviously not going to win, but what does that say about how the US Military feels about the current state of government in the US right now? I’m sure someone who feels like they know more about the military will jump down my throat in the comments section, but I just think it’s interesting that the servicemen are supporting the one Republican (I think) who’s advocating getting out of Iraq. And I just think it’s interesting that Paul, who’s fucking crazy, garnered the most money from the armed services.

• By way of an update…my post on Ichiro being overpaid generated quite a lot of rancor in the comments section. This was not entirely unwarranted; it was one of the worst posts I’ve put up here. I’ve opted to leave it up, unedited, but I just want to update the situation by pointing out that Ichiro’s new deal actually will call for the Mariners to be paying him through 2032. He’s apparently deferring $5 million a year at 5.5% interest. Can we at least agree that this is a terrible idea for the Mariners, to have someone on their books for 20 years after his contract is up?

• For anyone who is a fan of baseball and the old Goldeneye video game (or humor), this is a must read… It’s not new, but the site that it’s from is sort of my new obsession. I’ve actually laughed to the point of crying at a couple of the posts here. It gets my top possible recommendation. Seriously… go there. Now… don’t even bother with the end of this.

• I’m sort of torn on this story. On the one hand, it occurs to me that one of the reasons that American students are falling behind their foreign counterparts is that too many parents don’t take the underlying attitude of these parents in China, for example. I mean, just from personal experience (and observation of my friends), what is generally the best way to perform worse in school grade-wise, other than a coke-habit, is to acquire a girlfriend (or boyfriend). I have a lot of respect for a country that prizes academic and intellectual success over making sure that you have a boyfriend when you’re in middle school. At the same time… you’re worried that teaching kids how to waltz is going to ruin their lives and make them lovesick zombies who suck at school? Really? I mean that’s a bit much there. Although we all know that China is fucking crazy… so who knows?

• Also, I didn’t happen to watch, but apparently tonight’s Democratic debate involved questions that had been submitted in video form via youtube. As a result, questions could be sung/acted/etc… apparently this ended up being pretty much the way any sane person would have expected… People have been giving me shit for being unregistered, but I mean… to participate in this? Really? You’re giving me shit for wanting to merely go and watch the circus without wanting to get shot out of the cannon? Really?

• I’m following the Tour de France about as closely as I usually do (which is to say, rather closely), and let me just say that I think it’s really funny that the guy who’s leading this year is looking increasingly guilty of doping violations despite the Tour’s efforts to clean up the sport and prevent just this situation. Personally, my position on performance enhancing drugs in sports is pretty liberal–if it wasn’t for the fact that there are people who wouldn’t want to take them even if they were legal who would be at a competitive disadvantage, I would be absolutely in favor of them. Let’s think about this–you’re telling me that given the traits that we prize in athletes (intense competitiveness/desire to be the best/ability to perform freakish physical feats), it’s reasonable to expect them not to be tempted by performance enhancers? That’s bullshit. The Rasmussen thing at the Tour is funny because it’s illustrative of how you will never be able to stamp performance enhancers out of intensely competitive endurance sports. (BTW… for the record, I’m kind of a Contador fan… so I hope he destroys Rasmussen on the last mountain stage on Wednesday or in the last time trial.)

• And finally, Mike Vick is crazy. I would write more, but expect a full post on this subject. I’m holding up a little bit because I think we all know what happens when you jump the gun on a potential scandal. Although I’m fairly confident this is different, why repeat the mistakes of the past if you don’t have to repeat them? But for now, I will say that he’s really fucking stupid. He’s a professional athlete who had no reason to do something that stupid except for that he couldn’t think of anything better to do. I know it’s probably too much to ask that he read a book or something, but surely Madden ‘08 could keep him occupied? I guess not… what a fucker.

I haven’t done this in awhile, but that has not been for lack of material. So, may I present to you, a special two-week edition of What Are You Googling?

“i hate tony larussa”

Yes. I do as well. You will always be welcome here with open arms. Tony LaRussa’s (hey, did you notice that I typed his name wrong for the entire live-blog?) idiocy knows no bounds. Unfortunately, owing to his stellar (and entirely undeserved) reputation for being a good manager, we may never see the end of him. Oh well.

“alfonso soriano skinny” and “mccarver 160 soriano” (many variations)

Continuing with the All-Star game theme, I’m glad to say that there were many people besides me who realized that Alfonso Soriano doesn’t hit 40 home runs a year and weigh 155 or 160, as McCarver claimed. That was fucking stupid. Come on. Fuck you Tim McCarver. (Aside, for those who care… ESPN’s player card for Soriano lists him at 180.)

“they have went”

This person was led here because I quoted someone from a wrestling message board concerning the “death” of the esteemed king of douche, Vincent McMahon. I in no way condone this type of grammar or syntax. And if this was a result of a grammar argument between two people and they typed it into google to see who was right and resolve the issue, well they’re both stupid. Nobody has went anywhere. They might have gone somewhere, but they sure as hell didn’t “went.” Damn.

“durham police suck”

No sir. I have always found the Durham police to be quite helpful. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I found myself utterly lost in a very not so fun part of Durham to be lost in at night, and was assisted most graciously by a Durham police officer. It is only the Duke police who suck. Slight difference.

“AMERICANS DON’T VALUE VIRGINITY” and “male virginity unattractive”

Um… alright then. I don’t really know what to say about these. For the first one, though, chill with the caps lock. I don’t understand people who use caps lock all the time. It weirds me out. And also, negates the purpose of using capital letters in the first place (to draw attention to or place emphasis on something). If everything is in caps, then you may as well have nothing in caps. And as for the second one, I’m going to just leave that alone.

“catching herpes from having sex once” and “gential herpes by holding hands”

Two different sorts of stupid here. First, you absolutely can get herpes from having sex once, if you have it with someone who has herpes. I don’t know why you would have sex with someone who has herpes, but if that’s your thing, cool, just know you might get herpes. I’ve never understood people who wonder about how often you have to have sex to expose oneself to an STD. Every time you have sex people… it’s pretty logical.

The second one though… I mean, unless your partner has herpes, rubs her hand in the open sores, then directly afterwards holds hands with you, after which you then take your hand and rub it all over your skin… I assume that nobody does this, but then again, I also thought that nobody would be stupid enough to think you could get genital herpes by holding hands. This is astonishing, and as good evidence as any I’ve seen that public schools are failing children in America.

“DUKE ‘KILL THEM SLOWLY’” and “KILLIN WHAT TO IN JULY 2007″

If the first person is talking about Duke University, I’m going to go ahead and say he has some unexpressed anger that he should deal with, probably with the assistance of therapy, medication, or, optimally, prison. Wtf is his problem? And the second one… hmmm. Is he looking for something to do this month and settled on “KILLIN,” and is looking for other people to join him? Really? This is getting really weird.

“clutch ‘kville’ fox”

This is like the trifecta of shittiness right here. Clutch is shitty because it doesn’t exist. There is no such thing as fucking clutch, okay? Stop it with the clutchness. “Clutch” is a figment of your imagination that results from small sample size and selective memory. Fucking stop it. “Kville” I’m taking to mean the shitty FOX show and not the wonderful tent city, and hence, is also shitty. And FOX… well, we all know how I feel about FOX. And if we don’t, let me remind you that FOX employs, besides Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, Bill O’Reilly and, I feel like, Karl Rove. So FOX is a perfect fit here.

Whoever searched this? Um… this site is probably not for you. I can only speculate, of course, but something tells me you won’t like it here. So you should just turn yourself around and navigate somewhere else… Seriously. Get the hell out of here.