Random Update

I remember during summer I would write in my blog every day, sometimes multiple times per day. School has made it harder, because unfortunately, it is just as busy as I remembered it. Right now I feel like I have a ping-pong ball in my throat and am just kind of run down. I had a guest in town over the weekend and felt like I was running around a lot. So after this busy weekend, I just want to sit down and reflect via blog.

I am happy the White Sox made it into the World Series. For one, it will bring some attention to Chicago, and second, the Sox played some good baseball this year, and they deserve it. Plus, it's nice that there are no East Coast teams in this year. No Red Sox-Yankees rivlary to grab all the attention is a good thing. Plus, Red Sox fans need to calm down.

I don't watch a lot of television, but I have recently made a point of watching "The Apprentice: Martha" along with my usual dose of "The Daily Show." I have to say, I think Martha Stewart has done a great job selling her lifestyle to Americans, because it is so unattainable. Her TV show only cements this fact: a couple of the projects that her teams have had to work were designing a luxury hotel suite and creating a wedding cake. Martha is an extremely rich woman who lives in Westport, Connecticut and yet she has managed to convince enough people to believe that her lifestyle is attainable. I'm sure her magazine and TV show and cook books (etc.) offer an occaisonal realistic project, but I just can't believe people buy into everything Martha. In any case, I still think it's kind of ridiculous that her insider trading case was pursued so devotedly while people like Kenneth Lay still aren't in jail. Not that she shouldn't be held responsible for insider trading (though she in fact got convicted of obstruction rather than the actual deed), but anyway.

My thesis is going pretty well. Sometimes I feel like I'm not doing enough research, because there is so much to read. My adviser had me read an interesting book called L'enemie Americaine (sorry, I'm to lazy to put in the accents) or The American Enemy. It makes the U.S.-France relationship out to be more hostile than I had previously thought, though it does make a point of saying how it focuses on the French critics of America. A lot of it seems to correspond to the rift created by post-World War I debt payments, and I wonder whether the French related toHemingway more than Fitzgerald because of Hemingway's focus on WWI and disillusioned vets. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald's concern was the American upper-class that the French saw as consumerist. One French reviewer even made the mistake of thinking that Fitzgerald was glorifiying people like Tom and Daisy. As you can see, this is a hodge-podge of speculation and research, so we'll see where this takes me.

Finally, can we just put to an end the Harriet Miers nomination? Some people are choosing to ignore her lack of qualification with the wistful hope that she will in fact turn out to be a moderate. From what I've read, she seems like one of the many sanctimonious religious people that George W. Bush with whom George W. surrounds himself. If he nominates someone more openly conservative than Miers, we should try to defeat that person too. George W. Bush's conservative agenda is not looking good right now as far as approval ratings are concerned. There are amazingly a few Republican Senators that wouldn't vote for a vocal arch-conservative, so that strategy is shot. The problem is if Bush nominates another Roberts and gullible Democrats and moderate Republicans go for it again. That's probably what he will do if Miers isn't confirmed.

Sorry for the choppy structure of this post.