Terri Schiavo, Requiescat In Pace

I'm not sure if Terri Schiavo was "alive" or not (Derrida never answered that question as far as I remember in that seminar I went to three years ago), and I am not even going to try to answer the moral conundrum of whether the tube ought to have been pulled or not. I don't quite understand why her case is so famous, but it was all over the news, incessantly, for a week or so now. But now that everyone agrees that she is dead, I figure a Lagwagon song will serve as a eulogy.

Can't believe Alison's disease
Flourescent, the storelights describe the end
and I can't forget it
Demons can return. He caught up with her.
Murderous hands cripple her eyes and mind
and I can't blink so

Hail defeat. It's reached everyone.
Plague generation (our last one)

The sun will rise again.
Not for Alison
That's what I see when I look in her eyes
and I can't breath so

Hail defeat. It's reached everyone.
Plague generation (plague generation)

Maybe I can piece together
five cold days in late December.
Stories of a monster swallowed
in a snow covered Lake Tahoe.
Shining in her desperate despair,
Alison was there.
A moment I can freeze but she can't
be the same person she used to be.
Alison is gone. Alison is gone. (Alison is gone)

And Alison resides, on that frozen mountain side.
Thats what I see when I look in her eyes

~Lagwagon "Alison's Disease."

I've Got A Question, Mark.

Do you want to help the poor? Do you want to help the poor by having the ailing pope set up a seven-point plan for an international lottery for orphans? Do you wonder how you can get the pope (who is far more important than you) to hear this message and to listen to you? Well, I have the answer: climb over the guard rail onto the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, and then let world know!

Since we are on the topic of the Catholic Church, I guess it's interesting to note that the pope is still around, maybe. There was a long period of silence from March 13 until yesterday (Good Friday), when all the world got to see the pope's back on video. Why just his back? How do we even know it's the pope?

What's even more interesting to note is that, according to this article, the Universal Church might change again. There is talk of "governing by gesture and image," which, at best, is next to impossible. It seems to me--and it only seems--that the Church is hiding something.

Am I Crazy?

I'm seriously thinking about going to Harvard for graduate school.

America, Your England

"In spite of the campaigns of a few thousand left-wingers, it is fairly certain that the bulk of the English people were behind Chamberlain's foreign policy. More, it is fairly certain that the same struggle was going on in Chamberlain's mind as in the mind of ordinary people. His opponents professed to see in him a dark and wily schemer, plotting to sell England to Hitler, but it is far likelier that he was merely a stupid old man doing his best according to his very dim lights. It is difficult otherwise to explain the contradictions of his policy, his failure to grasp any of the courses that were open to him. Like the mass of the people, he did not want to pay the price either of peace or of war. And public opinion was behind him all the while, in policies that were completely incompatible with one another. "

...

"England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted passage, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr. Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons.... It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control-- that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase."

Eric Blair, my friend, that's pretty close to describing America in a phrase.

Why are less nets working?

Too much has happened this past week, and I do not want to explain it all here. Here's the synopsis:

1) My older sister is sick (of being sick), and is going to spend a few days here,
2) My father and I installed a new kitchen faucet (which was a lot more work than it sounds),
3) I have managed (with tons of help from Tony, Allen, and the good people at Linksys) to set up a wireless network in my home, and
4) One of my co-workers has not shown up for the past two weeks, and he only called in sick once.

As one can imagine, these four things have caused an inordinate amount of stress, pressure, and anger. The wireless network also cost me quite a bit of money. Things have eased up a bit, now that the faucet is installed and the wireless network is (for the most part) working. But my co-worker is still gone, and my sister is still sick. I guess I'm batting 500. My frame arrived for my diploma as well, so now I seem more like a graduate. I'm still behind in my GRE prep course, but I should be able to catch up rather quickly, since now my brother and I can be online at the same time. So that was a week in the life of Omer. Now I must clean (and possibly rearrange) my room so that my sister can recuperate in hospital-like conditions.