Blog Change

Hey all 12 of you. I've opened a wordpress account and shifted my blog there.

This blog was somewhat anonymous; I didn't want my last name on it. I've never been comfortable inviting my couple hundred facebook friends to view it, etc. etc. I want a page now that carries my name, hopefully one I feel comfortable inviting more people to view.

The content will be similarly useless, but I'm a little bolder now, and not concerned about putting my name to it. Now that local media have published articles about me explicitly stating that my recent essay that won the NM contest describes my rejection of my childhood faith, I think most of those close to me (some of whom hadn't been fully aware of my faithless leanings) have been sufficiently warned.

Gilmorethewriter.wordpress.com

Holy crap, I just won the contest.

I'm completely floored and really really honored to have just found out my essay won the Norman Mailer National College Writing Award for nonfiction. It's the inaugural year for the award and for the Norman Mailer Writer's Colony. My prize includes the most amazing fellowship next summer at the NM Writer's Colony on the coast of MA. Holy hell.

Thanks to blogger/writer/friend Dennis Y. who helped me with some revision of the essay in the final stages, and to my professor, Chris Cokinos (read his August 11th NY Times Op-Ed here, and see his new book about meteorites and the people who hunt them here), who inspired me to hike up into the Uinta Mountains of Utah in the middle of February and then write this thing.

Click on the press release link on this page to read more about me winning, if you are as excited as I am.

Old editorial

I found this letter-to-the-editor I wrote but never sent in 2006. I assume I didn't send it because it's like 500 words, maybe more. It was in response to a letter by this Milhoan in either the St. Petersburg Time (Tampa area) or the University of South Florida student paper, can't remember which:


Brian Milhoan (“Cartoon inaccurate, cheap shot at president,” letter to the editor, 9/21) argues that “It is very easy to be sarcastic about the president of the United States without justification.” I disagree wholeheartedly. To find no justification for criticism of George Bush would be an extraordinary feat indeed, one requiring focused denial and persistent ignorance of the facts, all in a world in which truth is ever-surfacing.

Mr. Milhoan’s explanation of Bush’s promising exit strategy begins: “continue to clean up remaining terrorists…”, which illustrates that his argument is based on the factually void assumption that more time spent in Iraq equates to less terrorist activity, and that at length, U.S. presence will eliminate Iraqi-based terrorism. The facts show differently. As there were no terrorist training camps in Iraq before our invasion, and, according to the chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the new Iraq “is a magnet for international terrorist activity,” a graph of Iraqi-based terrorism with respect to time of U.S. presence would show an initial spike, as terrorists flock into the weakened country, followed by continual growth, as U.S. strategy, or lack thereof, results in increasing casualties and poverty among Iraqi civilians.

This doesn’t make sense to the few who are still in denial of the fact that there were absolutely no ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda before U.S. invasion, and that the lack of such a connection was understood by the administration before our entrance into Iraq. This ignorance forgivable, I admit, given the administrations’ persistent lies to the American people, regardless of the publication of several conclusive bipartisan reports.

When the President states that the “War on Terrorism” is making the world safer, he’s lying again. In March, the Pentagon’s deputy director for the war on terrorism, Brig. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, admitted that since September 11 thirty new terrorist organizations have emerged. He added, “We are not killing them faster than they are being created" (“Terrorist growth overtakes U.S. efforts,” The Washington Times, March 2, 2006).

With the President’s and Mr. Milhoan’s “exit strategy” we will be in Iraq for eternity. In their fantasy land, the world is a safer place because Saddam Hussein is dethroned, and Iraqi civilians are safer with us there than with us gone. In the land of reality, we have failed completely at what we thought we were doing. I’m no longer naive enough to believe that the people who call themselves our leaders have failed at what they are trying to do, whether it be increasing fear in America in order to gain support for freedom-stripping initiatives, securing position for American businesses in the middle east, or increasing our access to gulf oil reserves.

Finally, in response to Mr. Milhoan’s description of Saddam Hussein's history of biological warfare: we shipped the biological agents to Saddam Hussein all throughout the 80’s, up till ’89, despite our knowledge of his treatment of the Kurds. And yes, American troops unearthed uranium depleted shells in Iraq. They were ours, by the admittance of the Pentagon. We used 320 tons of them on the battlefields of Kuwait and Iraq in the gulf war. For the UN Sub-commission’s extensive list of international laws breached by our use of uranium depleted shells, you can Google “use of UD shells.” Then Google “Reality.”

Obama, Democrats Fail

Mandate insurance (Piss off 95% of citizens)
+ No public option (Progressives Meet Underside of Bus)
+ Poorly Funded (Piss off 95% of citizens)
= Fail.

Goodbye Democrats.

After Two Weeks of Grad School

So.

Having been chewed between the teeth of Utah State University's Master's of Literature and Writing program for the past two weeks, I've now been mercifully spat out for a period of 3 days.

And by spat out I mean I'll be going to go to my office on campus tomorrow and Monday to spend about 15 hours doing homework, but I will not be compelled to attend any workshops or lectures; nor shall I be required to teach any freshman composition classes.

To summarize creatively the sensation of being a graduate student compared to the sensation of being an undergraduate student (at the same university!) would take effort of mind and heart I am unable to muster due to this new and permanent sensation of being a graduate student. One things for sure I'm trying to conserve commas which you might have already noticed in an effort to keep moving.


So, the summation of the graduate experience will not be creative; but, it will be accurate: surprise. It is surprising to find oneself waking at 6:00 am, surprising to find that campus does not rise out of the mist at 9:02 am (as I imagined it did as an undergraduate whose earliest class was at 9:00), but exists in whole and complete (if somewhat haunting) form at 6:45, maybe earlier; it is surprising how quickly 50 minutes—in which one hopes to inspire 22 freshmen to enjoy academic writing—pass; it is surprising how long it takes to grade 44 essays; it is surprising how long the average freshman essay is despite instructions requiring only two pages; it is surprising to be exhausted, completely spent, at 11:00 pm. It is surprising to learn through writing on the whiteboard that one does not know how to spell excersize 2.1 or due tommorow.

It is surprising that what I've thus describes comprises only the teaching part of my week — the part I do to fund the part I'm here to do.

It's surprising how, while attempting to inspire surprisingly attentive freshmen, one begins to look for the potential artist in all, the common human experience among all, the glimmer on that lip ring, the wit in that sarcastic comment. This is most surprising, and impossible to justify as anything other than emotional exhaustion and impending personality-splitting.

It's surprising how, having left the first, maybe the second teaching arrangement of the day, one finds oneself engaged in observation of one's fellow campus-walkers in a spirit of curiosity, optimism, interest — no longer cynicism or self-consciousness disguised as a critical eye.

It's surprising to not be the only one who won't keep his damn hand down and shut the hell up in class.

It's surprising to find oneself underlining passages, jotting notes in the margins, reviewing before class, and it's perhaps a bit more surprising to find the other students have done the same.

It's surprising to be enrolled in a senior level Shakespeare class, a requirement unmet in my undergraduate years, and finding the workload that looked heavy on the first day exceptionally light — and I cannot convey this dramatically enough: exceptionally light — as compared to the general requirements of the graduate experience. I put it this way — general requirements of the graduate experience — rather than saying "the workload of a graduate course," because, in a sense, there isn't an individualized workload for each graduate course, but rather, a continuous and impossibly large work-pile for the graduate experience, one that manifests itself in lists within day-planners — lists that are continually bumped from Tuesday to Wednesday then crossed off from Tuesday, then from Wednesday to Thursday and crossed off from Wednesday, and so on, and so forth, into the eternities.

So, it's fun.

Get rid of medicare, or expand it to all.

Tie all government plans together, and let our representatives vote on whether everyone or no one in this country deserves a public option. I don't care if you are 92 or 16. If you break your arm, private, corporate, for profit insurance can make no money paying for your treatment, and will never concede to doing so unless forced by market pressure or regulation. Why ought a 92 year old have a public option to turn to when private, corporate, for profit insurance costs too much, when a 16 year old does not have the same?

Whatever you believe about whether or not health care is a right, it is 100% irrational to argue it is a right for those over a certain age and not for those under a certain age. We can all agree that it ought to be available to all or none. Let's vote on it. I bet those senior citizens might skip their next teabagging event.

I'm not kidding. All or none. Nothing else makes sense. You cannot be a sane person and be both against a public option, arguing about the failure of socialized medicine, and in favor of a public option, praising socialized medicine. Medicare style public option available to all, or none. It's called sanity.

Why I hardly post lately

1. I'm horrified by my fellow citizens.

2. I'm disappointed that Obama keeps compromising BEFORE the debate, leaving the right wingers to whine and complain every bill far to the right before it has a chance of passing. Solution: Come in high, with Single Payer Health Care (like the civilized countries have), and let the corporatists whine us into a compromise -a mere public option. Because Public Option IS a compromise. We're still letting the insurance corporations have their billions, for no good reason besides an absurd and dogmatic (practically religious) committment to free-market capitalism.

3. I'm disturbed by the racial undercurrents of the so called health-care debate. These freaks screaming at town halls, they are saying someone is taking their country away. Glenn beck calls it reparations. All the corporatists are latching onto this meme and spouting that "we need to deal with illegal immigration, since that's what's draining the system!" And, of course, the corporate media repeats again and again that of the however million uninsured in this country, some, no wait, many, no wait, the majority, no wait, practically ALL OF THEM are illegal BROWN Aliens! And what's the difference between, say 10 million illegal aliens, and 49.99 million? Just because the reality is one thing doesnt mean we can't decide it's something else.

4. The corporatists are the ones who never want to do anything about illegal immigration anyway - it keeps wages low. Dems won't do anything because it gives them votes. And I'm stuck here, as a rational person who wants a rational immigration policy, looking at the people who want to fight illegal immigration and realizing that so many of them are EXTREMELY RACIST. Hard to want to jump on that wagon.

5. I've realized just how really, really, really stupid and uneducated most of our country is.

None of these things is fun to blog about.

Menu

My wife and I have a problem. We shop one day at a time, one dinner at a time. Dinner ends up costing, generally, 20-30 dollars, because we buy a bunch of new ingredients for each one.

Instead, we finally made a week long menu this week, as we've been meaning to do for a while, and went shopping once for the entirety.

So here's our 5 meals. There are only 5, because on 2 days I'll be at the restaurant working, and my wife can just do whatever she wants. We're eating together 5 times, and this is what we're eating.

Also, we gave everything fancy names and wrote them out like a fancy restaurant so we actually feel excited about it. Check out the way we represented Wednesday's meal (that's tonight). It's really just cheese sandwiches and tomato soup.

SUNDAY: Baked Chicken W/ gravy from scratch and rice


MONDAY: Rosemary crusted Pork Chops with a Chef's Salad and Dinner Rolls


TUESDAY: Red Beans and Rice with Butternut Squash and Sausage (and the rest of the dinner rolls)

WEDNESDAY: Cheddar and Swiss Paninis with Tomato Basil Soup

THURSDAY: NA

FRIDAY: Alfredo, ham, and mushroom Pizza from scratch

SATURDAY: NA