"The morning was still green and motionless." - Eugene Zamiatin

I was reading the BBC News online as I often do and I came across this interesting story about making a reality show out of politics. I thought it was a silly idea to begin with but then I thought about the silly system of elections that we have here and decided that it made sense and was in fact a good idea. Although, perhaps they should remove the "Reality" show element of the idea.

Anyway, I don't really care to talk about politics since my co-workers convinced an undecided that she should vote for the Conservatives because they said that it would be better if we had a better relationship with the U.S. I disagree because although they are a major (the largest) trading partner we have they aren't really that helpful. I don't think that if they weren't there other countries would be invading us left right and centre (though preferably from the left because then we wouldn't have to deal with the Conservatives). What motive would anybody have? Sure we might have been overrun by the Soviet Union but that fell because a dictator can not, effectively, control a large country and adding the second largest country on the planet wouldn't help that control situation.

Umm... I was going to write something useful but don't really remember what it was. I might as well post my schedule for the fall because it is pretty good.

As you see I have Tuesdays off first semester again. I didn't really do anything useful with them last year so this year I will try to do something, maybe get a job, write papers or write angry letters-to-the-editor for no real reason.

I went to the library on Monday night and got out random CDs and they have all been disappointing. I usually don't go looking for specific CDs because if you have them in mind then they are never in and you have to put them on hold. I got out a few magazines and some books. I got this neat book out that has "important magazine covers" in it. The other books I got I don't think I will end up reading because I still have two that I got out last time that I want to read and haven't. They haven't been read yet because I haven't sat down to finish WE yet and that's about the only reason. Thankfully they are paperbacks and they can't be put on hold by other people so I can keep them for quite some time now if I bother to renew them.

I don't know when I started writing like this... Saying every random thing that came to mind. It seems like a new thing because I never wrote like this in papers. In those I always just get to the point and then I don't know what else to write, which is a problem because they are rarely long enough for the requirements. I suppose also that I'm not really writing about anything that is all that useful, at least not to most people other than me. This really is turning out to be a long winded episode of the "You're in Lingwhatics Show".

Almost all the paragraphs of my post start with "I", actually that isn't true. Now not even half start with "I." I was going to say something useful somewhere in this post... Oh ok... Question: Why don't very many guys keep taking language classes? I have been in 4 language classes at my various universities, actually 2 at each one, and in the beginner class about 1/3 of the class was guys and it just goes down from there. In my Intermediate Spanish class there are only 5 out of 40 people, and in my Advanced French there were 4 out of 17 but the other 3 were going to be French teachers so they had to take it. I was the only one taking it just because, though that turned out to be one of my worst plans ever, I got the lowest grade I got in any university class ever in that class and I took a full year of Engineering and did very very very little homework. (That statement about the homework can be independently verified by many in my classes, they were annoyed with me on that point.)

That's what I was going to talk about... Engineering. I was thinking about it the other day, well that isn't exactly true I have been thinking about it for the last long time. Probably since about November, anyway that isn't the important part. The prep cook I was working with on Monday morning was asking me what I do and I told her my little story about changing from Engineering to Linguistics (and she actually didn't ask me how many languages I knew, which was great.) and she was then telling me a story about finding a pay stub for an engineer and s/he had made almost $300 000 that year and got a $17 000 Christmas bonus. Anyway, it wasn't the pay that I have been thinking about, it is the usefulness of Civil engineers that I have been thinking about that that I could have done that. I could be doing that and be almost done. Oh well. I guess I don't know where this was going, I think I'll stop here and maybe continue later.

Song: If I Ain't Got You - Alicia Keys

Book: WE (I will finish before tomorrow night)

ToDo: Book List