Ah, Irony

There is an enormous, creepy mosquito hawk flying around my living room.

The creepy mosquito hawk is there because the windows are open.

The windows are open because we set off a bunch of raid bombs to kill creepy bugs.*

In other news, David Sedaris spoke at UO tonight. He also signed my book and we joked about funny political bumper stickers. The speech was fabulous. I almost peed myself laughing. That man is fucking hilarious. I'm very excited, particularly about his discussion of zombies. As a result of his recommendation, I must go and purchase "The Zombie Survival Guide" immediately.

*Ok, so the bombs were intended to kill fleas, but the point remains that bugs coming in because we opened the windows to get rid of the bug poison is ironic.

Spam poetry

So I have a love/hate relationship with spam e-mail. I hate that it takes up space in my inbox, but I love when it comes in the form of random poetry. I think this is my favorite, if only for the refernece to "stiffened rabbit carcas."

"XVI. Laying a Ghost: The Jeannette and the Fram
This perfection, this absence.
Would their world not remain comfortably
They move against, or through, or by, or toward.
XII. The Mystery of the Missing Ships: The Franklin Search
To watch me watch drowned snow lift from the lake.
A rabbit carcass in its stiffened fur.
So you can watch me watch uplifted snow
snowdrops and crocuses might be fooled
A salamander scuttles across the quiet
In the dread circle hemmed by glaciers,
In Florida, it's strawberry season—
Against which we have been projected? What . .
Snaps of ice cracking in the hidden air.
Everywhere, utterly.
Whiteness, those pediments that rise
IX. After the Great Northern Expedition
Life, or only joy, that stands out
Merely a mockery of spring"

Interesting Times in the Senate

I'm exhausted tonight but wanted to share the events of a Student Senate meeting I covered this week. While the job is much more exciting on nights such as this, it's also 100 times more stressful. My editor shared the reporting duties with me on this one, as the meeting didn't end until after our deadline to submit the paper to the publisher. The news was so important that we pushed the deadline back to accomodate the story.

So tomorrow is the end of the student elections, which I've been working very hard to cover. There's always a lot of breaking news. However, I think everyone was a little shocked to find out that a candidate had been removed from her current position , especially since we got the news just one hour before the meeting.

The meeting was expected to take a while and provide some interesting material, based on the agenda. What happened, however, was rather unexpected , even for someone who's been covering these meetings for a while now and thought she was somewhat in the loop.

The life and times of a Government reporter

Wow, I look back and realize that no matter how much crap I give my friends about not updating their blogs (*coughcoughRobin*), I'm even more of a slacker.

I have an excuse. Since January, I have been the "campus politics" reporter at the paper. This is an interesting job. At this school, the student government is autonomous from the administration and controls nearly $11 million of student fee money. There is a lot of apathy among the students here, but it really is important to know who controls your money. I've learned more about the student government than I ever thought possible. I'm actually quite confident that this is good preparation for covering the daily activities of any other level of government. From what I've seen, the Student Senate meetings here are pretty similar to say, City Council meetings. As much time as I spend sitting through long, tedious meetings, I've come to really enjoy the political reporting. There are certainly drawbacks, as with any beat, but I like understanding how the government works. Even at what seems like such a minor level, being on the inside is fun. I hope that someday I can keep a government beat at whatever paper I work for.

Anyway, the real point is that last term, I spent nearly 20 hours per week sitting through budget meetings, so blogging was not on my list of things to take the time to do. I've been trying to decide what types of things I'd like to write about. Technically, I'm also the federal politics reporter here, although I haven't had much time for federal stories, so I can't really write commentary like I used to. Something about having to appear objective. I'd like to do something more like "Mr. Burns" and write about my experiences as a reporter, or this may become more of a personal blog than it used to be. In any case, I will try to post more often.

For now, I'm off to wait on the primary election results for my beat. There were a lot of candidates this year, and the general election starts Monday. They're really keeping me working.