It's strange.

My connection got shifted elsewhere. In two days, there's been a lot of words generated. Not just housing lists (that's been two days or so of work by my colleagues and faculty), but aggravated letters pissed off officials, blame levied on moral failings, blame levied on those with differences, help potentially refused (but perhaps it will go through), theorizing sinister motives, (because of things like that wonderful captioning incident, as well as certain realities of the situation) and some snapshots of life. Repercussions were felt all over the area, as gasoline prices suddenly rose fifty cents a gallon, provoking a different sort of outcry.

Some see it as a terribly clear indication of the ideology going horribly, horribly, wrong. I'm still caught between malice and incompetence. The incompetence is getting to the point where you have to wonder whether someone can accidentally fuck things up this bad. And much like how he reacted to the terrorist attack, G.W. Bush was supposedly strumming guitar, not looking particularly somber, and as his way of saying hello, simply flew over the area. The Congress did authorize an emergency spending bill, but there's a lot of the feeling of "too little, too late, asshole." The private donations are quite large, and they continue to pour in. They may not be able to arrive, if the situation inside is deemed too dangerous for them. I suspect there are probably more than a few people willing to take the risk of going in to save lives. I can only hope that those kinds of people inside see the relief coming and decide to partake of it peacefully, laying down any arms they've picked up.

It's tornado country up here, so windstorms causing devastation are not unheard of. They don't usually get as large or as powerful as Katrina was, but they can still shred anything they feel like. It's scary, and that's without me watching any moving images. The static ones are more than enough.

Separate entry - the sillier side of life. Ish.

There were other things, too. In the same vein that "life goes on", in both happy and disastrous events, there were other things that happened or that were drawn to my attention. 2dlife apparently thought I was worth linking to. Which is cool, but I'm just some guy who aggregates a lot of stuff together, and sometimes adds a paragraph or two of my own reasonably underqualified opinion to it. If I can get by on a paragraph or two of occasional material, then I suppose I'm doing well for myself.

And yes, while there was a hurricane, other things happened. Some people complained of myopism regarding terrorism that masked all the other important things that were happening. I don't know if any of this counts as "important" as that, but it may become useful to refer back to when things begin to settle there.

If there is such a thing as a Homosexual Agenda, there's been no progress in convincing the people who most need convincing that "teh gays" are really rather normal people. The priest preached tolerance. There are others doing it, too. Yet, such things as that happened. The person was perfectly free to leave the church and find another. But I cringe at the missed opportunity for understanding. The Slacktivist points out that there may be a strong error of thought from the person there and from others who think the same way - they may be losing touch with their roots, if they haven't gotten there already.

There's also something to do fun things to your brains with - cows as power supplies, dropping five f-bombs in class, and such. The gem of the night, however, is the sequence of the Page 73 girl that contrasts a bikini-clad woman with disasters in the background. In looking, I wonder - are the eyes draw strictly to the girl, without taking in the context? Does the context interfere with what would normally be a snap judgment about the attractiveness of the girl? Does it provoke a certain shame amongst those viewing if they admit to themselves that, yes, the girl's cute. It's a rather interesting set of photos to look at.

I did my social thing last night. Scarily enough, I wasn't up against the wall just observing through any of my orientation. Mind you, I may not remember a name in all the people that I met. But I was talking to people. Must be that I had a context, even though I didn't really talk about anything related to that context. Still, good to know that I can be massively silly and still get people to talk to me. I did that today with a different one of my fellow first-years, and it appeared to go over well.

The football season starts tomorrow - and I'm not in the band. Wonder what it will be like. Classes start on Tuesday. I wonder what THAT will be like.

And there were some other things, too. I fear that wherever I am, I will be isolated from the rest of the world in some important way. Might be the limitations of the monkeysphere. Might be that I live somewhere that is, by nature, isolated from the rest of the world in several important ways. And I mean that more than just the country I live in, but the city and the university environment itself. I feel like that when I was at home, I was more isolated from the world, but I'm not sure that being here has improved that any. It's like I crossed a DMZ and am now getting the other side of the story, from their perspective. The quote about a three-edged sword comes to mind. Is it bad to be re-thinking what I'm actually getting as an education? They claim that they're primarily trying to teach us methods of analysis and thought. As it stands, I might have picked up some new data, and perhaps read and discussed a few other people's points of view, but I'm not necessarily sure I learned anything about thinking. Perhaps up here in grad school, as I learn about information and collections and such, I'll be able to more effectively peer into the thought processes of my own brain and others'. It promises to be an interesting ride, that's for sure.