less than two weeks until the semester ends for me. this week is a short week, we have a long weekend so only work 3 days. then, next week is the last week and is also only 3 days (of course exams begin on friday). i must say i am ready for the semester to be over. i taught 3 new classes this semester and enjoyed the process, but nearly all my students are seniors, and if you remember the final weeks of your senior year, i am guessing classes are not what you remember.

i went to a baseball game this weekend. fun actually. it rained a bit, but the game was great (a few lead changes and it went 12 innings). the speed of the players and skill is roughly double a, although it is billed as triple a.

this weekend i am going to cuernavaca (a town about 30 minutes from where i live). the place is billed as land of eternal spring- never too hot or too cold (guatemala is also billed the same way). an acquaintance has a house there and two friends of mine and i are going down for a few days. my buddy is finishing up his second book, and i have been working on writing a foreword and am also writing one of the chapters. the idea is that he wants to have different styles, so i am taking a chapter that he wrote and making it into a scene from a film/play. creative writing is not something i have done for a while, and i have never tried to write a scene for a play, especially one that is not really for a play (it is prose) but that needs to at least look like. i have to say that the process is quite fun. i have done a few drafts and after each my friend and i get together and he tells me what he likes and what he does not (in the end the book is his). from there i come up with changes and then we go again. i have not been able to devote as much time to it as i would like, but that is part of the purpose for this weekend.
in the end, i do not see myself putting together a whole book by myself. but, working on a collaborative project is fun and knowing that it will be published is cool (the publisher is the owner of the house where we will be staying this weekend). i think i will leave the creative writing to others as they are better at it than i, but i am intrigued by the idea of writing a kind of introduction to the book. he and i have talked a lot about the book and i have read all the drafts and given lots of feedback. the process is fun in the sense that ideas i come up with he implements into his story (sometimes not always). so now i am going to try and place the book in a larger context and make some connections between genres and how it fits into whatever we are calling literature nowadays (postmodern seems rather done). also, i will be translating my own work into spanish so that the book will have a somewhat broader appeal down here (although the creative part will be only in english).

lots of projects are cooking. we started a philosophy seminar that meets every two weeks and i presented a few weeks ago. my presentation was the basis for an essay i wrote which i then sent to tech with my graduate application. on that note, i spoke to the secretary of the grad school today and she said they are now reviewing my app. i should know within the next two weeks what their decision is. in many ways i am nervous, but i keep reminding myself that if i do not get in, i will apply more places next time and will have more experience with the subject in general. we shall see.

as i am sure y'all have to deal with constant media bombardment regarding the democratic primary season, i will make this comment brief. also, i must admit my only sources of information on the campaign are the new york times, the economist, the wall street journal and an occasional article from the washington post. certainly none of these are unbiased. indeed, i should make a whole post about what is happening at the wall street journal where the chief editor has resigned, thereby paving the way for murdoch and his own ¨supereditor¨ to take over the course of the paper, one of the most respected in the country (if not the most respected), and run it toward a more centric, mainstream media fluff line. disappointing, but what can you expect: i doubt anyone actually thought this newscorp takeover would make the paper ¨better¨ but i doubted it would move from its previously business-first slant with often surprising, though always well-funded, tangents found in its investigative articles.

ok, enough about the wsj. so clinton won by about 10%. the media claim that this is enough to keep her in the race (although i doubt the clinton campaign needs or does listen to what most media outlets purport in this area). is this a bad idea? if obama were such a strong candidate would he have not already put her away? she has lost, months ago, the edge in campaign funding and seems mainly to hold the lead with white-male middle to lower class workers. will this win her the presidency?

to flip it, would obama win the presidency with his currents constituents? are both fucked? is mccain in a better position now that they are both concentrating on each other rather than on him? the general sentiment is that as they battle each other, mccain gains support. really? would someone who was going to vote for clinton or obama switch to repub? doubtful. likewise, are there repubs watching the dems and thinking, oh yeah, i want to vote for one of those two instead? slight.

if anything, the battle keeps interest in the election. in years past we have had somewhere around 50% voter turnout. interest seems paramount.

do i think that the dems will be beat the repubs? no. but, i think that the current situation has nothing to do with it. they will lose because of a fracture; this current situation is not the rupture to which i refer. dems have a very wide range of beliefs, and making them all fit into one candidate will ultimately fail. a third candidate is bound to appear and suck up some of those votes. the repubs have a better ability, at least in recent history, to rally around one individual. my ideas on why this is (religion, group-think mentality) are irrelevant as they are simply opinion. however, i do believe a two party system is bound to screw over lots of people. in recent years it has been the dems. i doubt this will change in the near future.

i might as well add a few more things.

first, i am fairly convinced that water can be addictive. i stopped drinking sodas a few years ago (my first year in mexiland) except for the occasional soda with street tacos (and really, they have nothing else to drink, so you might as well have soda to wash down the cow head). in any event, i have increased my coffee levels (but as i drink instant most of the time i feel like this is really only partially bad) and gone absolutely insane on water.

today, for example, i have drunk almost 3 liters. no shit. bathroom? yes, please.

i am sure that this has a lot to do with my body getting used to the amount of water and then simply feeling dry or parched without it, but when i go to bed at night, i cannot even keep track of the number of times i filled up my water bottle that day.

i also am not sure that i eat less because of all this water i drink. the advertisements told me (and i always listen and believe) that drinking two liters a day would reduce my appetite. that, boys and girls, is a lie. so much for filling up on water.

in other news (for me), i watched a few good movies recently. i'm not there, the bob dylan flick, was quite good. also, i liked the into the wild movie based on the book by jon krakauer. as i reread the book a few months ago, it was good to see a film be somewhat true to its roots. somewhat. that is the fun of conjecture i guess.

timmay, i did indeed see rambo. all i was hoping for really.

if i were to leave this land of plenty (mexico that is), what would i do? paying more than 1.50 for a movie (to own) seems steep. how will i get my pirate fix? bit torrent? is that even legal still? would this mean i have to pay for internet access? i have not done that since...
never really. when i was at tech i just used the passwords of other people (and most of the time i did not even know that, so it was sweet). well, i did use skip's password for a while. or was that brian rob's? curtis's? meh. the point is that i like not having to pay for internet access. maybe i can find an apartment complex and a neighbor with wireless whose signal is powerful enough to reach my apartment. mmmm. free internet. i dont think we should have to pay for that. of course, i have similar feelings about batteries, medicine and film. i digress.

school is almost over down here. this is our last full week of class. next week we have a four day weekend (labor day). the following week ends on wednesday. then final exams start. of course, i did sign up to teach summer school to make extra cash, but i will have a few weeks in between which should be cool for resting. i still have to go to work, but without students, this campus is awesome. my favorite times of the school year are just after students leave and just before they arrive for the new semester. i think i am the prototype.

ruthless.

ok, so i took some time off. i had to write grad school applications, written sample, blah blah blah.

it would be easiest to say that i made a mistake when i studied an ma in literature, but that would also be a mistake. it was not an error; it will help me in the future; it was expensive.

all those statements are true. of course, i could also say i have blown off three years in mexico, but that would be incorrect. because of my time here i have figured out a better idea of what i want to do in the future. surprise surprise. it involves going back to school. nothing like 5 more years of graduate school. why have just one master's degree when you can have two? and a doctorate. i have to be accepted first before any of this happens, but i should know in the next three weeks or so.

worst case, i sit tight here and apply to more schools in january (cornell would be at the top as well as a few schools in europe). on the other hand, there is something to be said for going to a cheaper school, cornell is outrageously expensive, and simply working my ass off to make my time there worth it.

so then a question: is the name of the graduate school that important? or, can you go to a somewhat lesser grad school and simply become a prolific reader and writer as a way to advance at the next level (post doctoral degree)? i am hoping on the latter.