The Secret of Life

Because I really have no rhyme or reason to this blog, here's a video by the Dead Milkmen. They're definitely an acquired taste, but give a listen. What really helped me appreciate the Dead Milkmen was being a 16-year-old underachiever. Enjoy!

My vote is cast!

So I finally got around to voting (via absentee ballot). Since I recently moved into a new neighborhood (go Riverwest), I had to re-register.

And since there were so many people trying to register and vote, it took me nearly an hour to cast mine. An hour. And this is a week before the general election day. I can't imagine the lines that will be forming a week from today!

The encouraging thing is that there were so many first-time voters there, and I'd say at least half of them were black. So it's a good thing that so many people in Milwaukee have, I think, claimed this election as their own. Let's hope our new government is up to the task. I voted Obama (also Moore for Congress), so there's one in the bag for him.

So if you can, vote early! That way the lines won't be as long on election day, and more people can get time to vote.

Voting for the Beast

So I found this on the Guardian (a newspaper based in London) this morning. I guess I'm a bit flabbergasted, so I wanted to share this ridiculous piece of religious paranoia here...

Click here to learn the horrible truth about Barack Obama!

If you're going to make decisions based on the Bible, shouldn't you follow the passages that give you something concrete to do? Like the ones about living in righteousness, or the ones about giving what you have to the poor, or hell, the ones about not eating dairy and meat together? I just don't understand those people who use the most inscrutable part of the Bible as a guidebook. Not a fan.

And to clarify, I'm still voting for Senator Obama, because he's a step in the right direction, and the stuff about him being the apocalyptic nonsense some odd Christians spout is a bunch of nonsense.

You must...

...go to Ted.com and find out how to make a difference. Check out Dave Eggers, one of this year's TED prize winners, because he's really really cool.

The intersection of heartbreaking rock music and freaky physics

Go see Nova's Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives. But hurry, because it'll only be up for the next week!

Go! Now!

If you still need convincing, Eels is one of my favorite bands. They are just absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking. They can be strange, beautiful, sad, and funny all in the same song. Go listen to their albums "Electro-Shock Blues" (especially Last Stop This Town and P.S. You Rock My World) and "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations" (especially Railroad Man and Things the Grandchildren Should Know).

I can wait while you look up those songs. No, seriously, I'm on the internet now. I have all the time in the world.

OK, welcome back. Good, huh? Like emo for adults.

Have you ever seen one of those Star Trek episodes where they meet parallel selves? Yeah? You know how came up with that idea? The lead singer of the Eels' dad.

The PBS episode is E (the lead singer) finding out about his dad, Hugh Everett III. Along the way, you get to find out about wierd physics, things that don't obey the rules of physics, and you get to find out how E became such a sad, poignant person.

It's just heartbreakingly beautiful.

I'm so excited, I could plotz.

Go watch the trailer (#2) for Watchmen!

Watchmen has been widely hailed as the best graphic novel ever, and having recently read it, I think I concur. It's a very dark book, and a satire on good and evil. Satire really isn't the right word, but good and evil.

If you've never read Watchmen, you should visit your local bookstore and buy a copy.

Anyways, I've been interrupted writing this post, so there you go.

My first grad school project

After being very busy this week, last night I finally finished my first paper for grad school. Go me.

Since I've put a lot of work into it, I thought I had to share it with yall (You both? You singular?) in the blogosphere.

My study is Brownfields. If you don't know what that is (you probably don't), Brownfields are former industrial sites. Unused factories, abandoned buildings, shuttered businesses, etc. If you want a dictionary definition, it's:

brownfield |ˈbrounˌfēld|
adjective [ attrib. ]
(of an urban site for potential building development) having had previous development on it. Compare with greenfield .
noun
a former industrial or commercial site where future use is affected by real or perceived environmental contamination.

Thank you, mac dictionary. But anyways, I'm looking at ways to redevelop these, so that they're not such a socioeconomic black hole. This project that I've been working on is a literature review: I look at what other scholars have done on the subject and try to find holes in the research--errors, but mostly just what they've missed out on.

Most redevelopment that gets done is residential--in fact, most of it is really nice luxury apartments and condos in downtown areas--because developers (and cities that tax them) can make a lot more right away. Building factories is way riskier, and the return is lower. This is good, right?

But the problem is that the actual poor people who lived in these really shitty neighborhoods can't afford these really nice houses. So basically, poor neighborhoods basically get moved (the people of the neighborhoods, not the buildings). So instead of nice apartments fixing the problem of urban blight, they're just moving the problem. And no geographer is really focusing on building new factories, which could at least help the problem of urban unemployment. And in Milwaukee, we need that: unemployment among black men here runs a little over 50%.

So my methods and my ideas will probably be savaged by my professors. And really, my research is shite. But hopefully I can improve that, and make it an even bigger research project.

I have been bothered...

ioofai@mykumagaya.com / yo buddy / yo Knife through hot butter Symbol-A F D M, African Diamond Co., Inc (Precious Metals)

is the inexplicable txt I was woken up by at 3:43 AM this morning. First of all, it's hard enough for me to sleep in with the alley right next to my window and the permanent flock of starlings in my neighbor's back yard, so waking me up really early on the weekend (when I still have a lot to write for school) is NOT cool.

Secondly, African mineral/diamond/mining companies (which I think this is) are probably the worst businesses on the planet. Investors, jewelers, and mine owners make enough money to kill a horse, while the people who actually do the mining work in dangerous and difficult jobs without a union, and get paid in peanuts. See realizingrights.org, Oxfam, and nodirtygold.org for more information. Also not cool.

I googled African Diamond Company, and couldn't find a website (the closest I could get is this. Apparently it's an American company), but apparently you can reach them at 888-418-2112. OR you can write to them at 2325 Dulles Corner Blvd, Suite 500, Herndon, VA 20171. Anyways, their lack of website seems shady. I did track down some photos of their mining operations here.

And THEN I went to mykumagaya.com, and found a Japanese website, which seems a bit like Yahoo (but I don't read Japanese, so I'll need someone to verify this for me). Not cool.

So for waking me up at 3:45 AM, for contributing to the abuse of human rights in Africa, and for using a very annoying anonymous Japanese website, I have now declared a Holy War against ioofai@mykumagaya.com and African precious metals.

The upshot is, don't wake me up with foolish txts at 3:45. I get really self-righteous the next day.

I shouldn't be here

So on Monday, my first project or grad school is due: a 15-page (approx.) paper and presentation. I'm reviewing the relevant literature on brownfields redevelopment. If you don't know what a brownfield is, keep reading the blog, I'll be talking about it a lot.

But I've barely started, and last-minute panic is setting in. So no more blogging for a bit, I've got to work!

iTunes is going to bankrupt me

I just got a usable computer to start the semester; before this I had a used Linux platform. And I know next to nothing about electronics, so I couldn't figure out how to run mp3s on it. And don't bother posting comments about how to run stuff in Linux: I do not want to know anymore.

So I've been filling up my hard drive with music, and I found some pretty cool stuff, if a bit wierd. I just downloaded Lucky Dragons, and a couple days ago I downloaded Fleet Foxes after seeing their show at the Pabst. And I've also discovered Republic Tigers. This may not seem a lot to you with actual jobs, but grad students without jobs, like me, have to rely on their student loans, which you don't get more of until the next semester. Now that I've discovered a way to find good music again, I don't know if I'll be able to stop myself.

Anyways, if you want to get something wierd, go download some songs by Lucky Dragons. I discovered them on the Believer's annual music issue. The song that I first heard (Complement Song) sounds like a basket full of puppies while a Chinese string-and-chime trio plays along. No, I'm serious, go download it now on iTunes, I'm not exaggerating.

Plus I've been listening to "Buildings and Mountains" by the Republic Tigers far too frequently this past weekend. Let's see if I can figure out how to embed the video for that:

UPDATE: iTunes just released all of Radiohead's EP's. I'm not going to have any money left.

Dude, we were JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS.

So I'm involved with a Catholic group called JustFaith (you can find these good people here), and basically it's teaching people about the Catholic doctrine of social justice. The upshot is, Jesus went out of his way to help to show love to and the poor, the sick, the lonely, the hurting, and the marginalized, so as Christians we HAVE to do this too.

So today I met an old drunk bum on the bus. He didn't seem quite all there: he slurred his words, didn't quite hear what I was saying, and he smelled plainly of old liquor. And I just went to JustFaith last night, so our discussions were still fresh in my head, so I talked with him. He told me he recognized me from 5 years ago (he's either lying or mistaken, since I was in Arizona until 2004), and he talked about his childhood in Milwaukee.

Then he asked me if I could spare some money for breakfast, so, again, thinking about what we JUST TALKED ABOUT last night, I offered to have lunch (actually, it was brunch, about 10:00) with him at McDonalds, which was like 2 stops away.

So we get off the bus, this man (whose name is Larry) and I, and the first thing he does is pee.

On the curb.

In front of everyone going by on North Avenue.

He peed on the curb, in front of everyone. And we were just going into McDonalds, which HAS A BATHROOM.

But then I wondered what Jesus would have done, and I decided that Jesus probably still would have bought the man some lunch. I wonder if anyone peed in front of Jesus. He asked me then if I could get him a Big Breakfast, and I told him he could get whatever and it was on me.

So then Larry and I go into McDonalds, and he orders his Big Breakfast. The clerk reacts with suspicion, asking Larry if he's paying. I tell her that I'm paying, and she asks if he begged me (he did, after all). But I tell her that I'm just taking my friend out to lunch. A second later the manager goes up to Larry and kicks him out. I guess I don't blame her: I used to work retail and have had to kick out many vagrants and beggers (and I didn't see it, but there was even a public pee-er in our music section once. I guess public peeing is a bigger problem than I thought). So Larry waits outside and I ask for our meals to go.

So I get outside, and Larry and I have our brunches on the curb outside, and we just have a conversation about small stuff: just shooting the shit, basically.

He seemed very thankful about this. I mean, like, really really thankful. What we're told over and over again in JustFaith is to decrease the distance between ourselves and the poor (and everyone else). Just as Jesus didn't send off checks, but went directly to people with the problems, we should do the same thing too.

So I don't know if I helped Larry out. I feel a little bit better knowing that I at least tried to show love to someone who probably doesn't see it much from other people. But I also feel guilty, because there are thousands of other people just like Larry in Milwaukee, probably much much worse-off than him too. And I might have been completely taken for a ride, too. Maybe Larry goes home to Fox Point because he scams ignorant liberal do-gooders like me. (I am an ignorant liberal do-gooder, by the way. Just in case some conservative libertarian is reading this. Don't want to have to argue that.) But what if Larry really did need help?

Beard: Redux

So I now have a beard that's two weeks old. Because I'm single now, no one's going to make me shave. So I won't.

Part of me wants to grow it really long, just because I can, and part of me wants to shave it off completely. But I'll at least keep the beard for a bit. What do you think?

What I'm reading for Grad School...

So it was my birthday yesterday, and I got a whole mess of books--I have to give a shout out to Harry Schwartz Bookstore, Milwaukee's independent bookseller since 1927--and they're all really good. Er, actually, my parents got me a $75 gift card, with which I got myself a stack of what I really wanted to read.

But I'm a first-year grad student, and, instead I get to read the following:

Does Scale Exist? An Epistemological Scale Continuum for Human-Environment Systems

The limits to scale? Methodological reflections on scalar structuration

The social construction of scale

Human geography without scale

An overview of scale, pattern process relationships in geomorphology: a remote sensing and GIS prespective

PLUS a selection from the textbook

And they're all as dense and boring as you'd expect.

I like grad school, and I like geography (my field). I like the people, and I like all the professors, which definitely includes the professor who teaches this class. But.... oh geez, it gets boring when you're a first year and can't choose your classes.

Since we last talked...

So my now ex-girlfriend (OK, there has to be a new word for that. She's not like the other ex-girlfriends I have) and I finally got together for the first time since we've broken up.

We went to church together (if you're into the whole Catholic thing, and you're in Milwaukee, check out St. Hedwig's on Brady Street), which was nice, then we had a chat at my apartment.

The really heartbreaking thing about the breakup is that we didn't break up because we hate each other. I still consider her my best friend. The reason we broke up was because she has no idea how to let herself go and just let herself be in love. It's not like she's cold, she just, I guess, can't let go. And she admitted that she's just as disappointed in that as I am.

But I guess we'll just have to be friends now. It was really nice seeing her, and I'll see her again soon.

Hi, I'm Nick.

So I'm a 28-year-old who has way too many life-changes going on.

In the span of a month, I quit my job (which I should have quit before), went back to grad school (even though I haven't attended any kind of school since I got my BA in German from Arizona State in 2004), moved, and broke up with my girlfriend (who I was going to marry, but hey, not everything's possible).

Thus you have this blog: a feeble attempt to write down my thoughts and somehow make sense of everything that's going on.

My name's Nick, and I live in Milwaukee. How are you?