The Revolution Will Not be Televised...

Christ it's 3:53 am I just woke up after a panic attack/nightmare about the newspaper. Essentially, I dreamt that Jen (Ed-in-Chief) and I had been working all summer (which is true) on the new design (also true) and the new staff came in for trainning week and they were all brilliant (they should be, right? I hired them). The staff seems smart enough in my dream, in real-life there is a sizeable amount of returning newsies but we also hired a lot of fresh meat for the news desks and I completely stck my neck out for a few kids who I felt deserved a chance. In the dream all of the returning and experienced staff is gone and I find myself explaining to Kira, Tony and Megan that they are now the ENTIRE news desk. Truly, in real life I believe in these kids, but in the dream they aren't like the real people, they're terrible and vaguely FOX new-ish.

The whole thing is very surreal and I'm dressed like the boss from Office Space with that fucking annoying coffee mug and smug sing-song voice. We hit budget meeting on Sunday and the stories are miserable, Jen and I spend the night re-writing, barely finishing the paper just in time. The next morning the streets are littered with copies of the redesign Emerald and students are screaming "I won't read this crap! It's Different!" (this is TRULY my worst horror considering how hard we fought to bring this paper up to date) and Melissa the Ad Dept crazy control freak is just cackling with laughter at our failure.

How Freudian, and how intense - now I'm having journalism and re-design nightmares, what next?

Go, boy, Seek happy nights to happy days.

The last few weeks have found me particularly alone and somewhat moribund. Whereas in the beginning of the summer I found myself surrounded in a brief, sensational, warm and glorious moment of friendship and compassion, dancing and ectasy, love and passion, now my friends have left town in the final weeks before school starts and the weather has turned cool and damp. The absence of my friends has left me alone to work at the bookstore or the newspaper during the day and spend my nights singularly in my apartment, and while I am often content to busy myself with my writing or work, this moment in my life has made me wonder; if you're not seeing someone or dating someone do your friends fill that void, and when they cannot be there are you left eternally feeling incomplete?

I spoke to Christina for the first time in months the other day, she called me in a hushed tone early in the morning because she was at her parents house. She and her boyfriend are breaking up and it is truly breaking her heart. She loves him, unlike anyone I have ever known and he made her truly happy - something which I believe she deserves more then other people. She called because she needed to talk, and because I am pretty much one of her oldest and closest friends, and because I think she felt very very alone at her parents house.

Her emotion reflected something of my own present isolation, and I realized that what had been sticking in my mind was the lack of human contact. It feels months since I have even touched someone even though it has only been hours, and it feels ages since I was last enthatuated in some blushing romance. I miss the smile of someone right now especially, and with no friends to distract me from disecting my past I have been canibalizing my memories of her. It hasn't been a particularly pleasant process - mostly it has meant me realizing my faults and mistakes and building resolutions - but I have come across something that makes me feel slightly better. I am really happy with who I am right now. I've done what I wanted to do, lived how I wanted to, and fucked up plenty in the process, but standing here right now it doesn't seem that long ago that I was packing up my life back in California ready to leave for college. Three years later I find myself in an apartment be myself, but even alone, I will always have my friends.

Coffee: The New Health Food

I've been hearing some interesting things recently about my favorite beverage (unadulterated, and legal to drink in public beverage that is) and as it turn out everyone's favorite uncontrolled substance coffee isn't just not bad for you - it's fucking great for you. So drink up, it might just improve your health.

Well folks, it's official...

We here at the University of Oregon are a bunch of partyn' stoner liberals with the WORST dorms in the nation (that's no surprise to anyone who lived in Bean, where I found myself using a blowdryer to thaw my hands from the freezing drafts blowing onto my keyboard through my window which lacked any weather stripping). Aside from being the #1 ranked school in the "dorms like dungeons" category we ranked fifth in the "refeer madness" list and were listed as the #14 party school. Sigh, if only that were true. Princeton Review's University of Oregon rankings, what a SHOCK!

I (Heart) George Bush

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush offered up a new entry for his catalog of "Bushisms" on Thursday, declaring that his administration will "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people."
Bush misspoke as he delivered a speech at the signing ceremony for a $417 billion defense spending bill.
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we," Bush said.
"They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." (bold is mine)

No one in Bush's audience of military brass or Pentagon chiefs reacted.
The president was working his way toward a larger point. "We must never stop thinking about how best to defend our country. We must always be forward-thinking," he said.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush's misstatement "just shows even the most straightforward and plain-spoken people misspeak."
"But the American people know this president speaks with clarity and conviction, and the terrorists know by his actions he means it," McClellan said.