filchyboy-by-proxy: Going Insane

Christopher’s blogus interruptus continues unabated.  It’s a bit quiet out here in the Slogosphere without the light touch and quick wit we’ve come to expect from him, sprinkled throughout the day.

He’s not entirely incommunicado; our filchyboy emailed a link today to a rather nice article.

Serendipitously, it’s to Neal Pollack’s Fighting Words: Everyone in America--Myself Included--Has Been Driven Insane by This War

My closest friends and I agree, we're on the edge of a national nervous breakdown.  Jittery, on edge, ready to jump into anyone’s sh*t at the slightest provocation.  Pollack’s article offers a modicum of sorry comfort through validation.  We’re not alone in this; we’re all going mad together.

I feel like I’m fighting the now-chronic urge to rant – not a silly little bitchy whine, but one of those spectacular force of nature rants that a few of you have witnessed here at this blog.  The kind of rant that will peel the paint off the walls and suck all the air out of the room.  Yeah, a massive collateral damage kind of rant.  It’s the unremitting pressure of polarity, combined with prolonged exposure to immense insensitivity and persistent violence to the senses that’s pushing me, pushing us all to the brink.  We’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth.  One small slip and we’ll lose our grip completely.

The folks who bring us Prozac will surely reap the benefits from our insanity.  There’s probably a stampede on mood-altering drugs as we speak.

Perhaps, if I were a more prudent, right-wing kind of person, I would consider buying stock in companies that manufacture and sell Prozac and Zoloft and similarly calming goodies.

But that’s insane, too.

9:12:57 PM    comment []

The University of Michigan, Affirmative Action and Diversity in front of the Supreme Court

No surprise here: I’m in favor of diversity.  Am I in favor of Affirmative Action?  Yes…on a qualified basis.  I’m in favor when it can ensure diversity in an environment which either resists it or in which diversity does not yet exist.

Great article last night on this topic featured in National Native News on NPR.  Yeah, I bet most of you think that the affirmative action program at the University of Michigan and at other graduate schools is a black-versus-white issue.

It’s not.  National Native News cited the example of Native American students attempting to get into law school in Arizona.  Before affirmative action there were virtually NO Native American students admitted to the program cited.  Now there’s a whopping forty Native American students.  Give the number of graduating and practicing attorneys in this country (not to mention the percentage of Native Americans in the general population in Arizona), that amounts to diddly-squat, no real threat at all to all the other students and lawyers in the U.S.   But as cited in this same article, that’s incredibly important to the Native Americans who want and need representation on the issues of Native American law in this country.  Native American attorneys have a vested interest in the topic, just as female attorneys have a vested interest in laws which affect women.  That’s not to say that non-Native American or male lawyers won’t be impartial or aren’t highly motivated – but let’s face it, if you live it, you have a different perspective on the subject.

There are many people who are against affirmative action – notably, women who feel they are slighted for not being a person of color.  If women now represent more than 50% of college enrollment today, do women still need the assistance provided by affirmative action?  If enrollment is still far below the actual population percentage for certain minorities, does it not indicate there may yet be a need for assistance?

Being a woman and a minority, I get the dubious honor of walking in both worlds.  I can see that women are beginning to approach a point in time where we will no longer need the assist; we’re not all the way there, but we’re getting much closer.  The U of M suit indicates how close we are as women to no longer needing the hand up; we’re simply going to have to be far better qualified than anyone else to gain entrée, and that’s what we’ve fought for so long as feminists.  Time to celebrate this success and start getting to work.

On the other hand, it’s still not clear that minorities in this country – ALL persons of color, not just blacks – have reached a point where an assist isn’t warranted.  It may come down to a case-by-case, school-by-school assessment as to whether we’re reaching equity, parity.  As long as a percentage of minority students attending a highly popular school does not in any way approximate the distribution of minorities in the general population, we may still have issues with diversity.

Sure, there will continue to be cases like the one against U of M until our society changes.  One female candidate suing U of M feels she’s a poster child for diversity; perhaps she would be at another school.  But at U of M, they’ve probably weighted the population for older-female-non-traditional-students-with-strong-backgrounds; this group may be more than adequately represented and in line with the general population.  At the university located here in the state of Michigan that I’ve recently attended, half or more of the students in any of my classes fit this description; does this group still need extra weighting, extra assistance?  I can only recall a couple of black students during my two years on campus, yet the local population is nearly 40% black.  I can’t even hazard a guess about equity for other groups.  It’s still pretty obvious there’s an issue here, as plain as the nose on my face.  It may not be as simple as weighting applications through affirmative action, but ignoring the issue will not make it go away.

I like the quote someone blogged recently about democracy; it fits in this case:

Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner. 

We've reached a point where it's no longer clear who are the wolves.  Who's the majority today?  And who stands to be harmed?

(Note: Due to time constraints I’m posting this article sans links to certain supporting documentation; I will return to add links later.  Thanks!)

4:16:35 PM    comment []

Now in the Netflix queue

1984 - featuring Eurythmics on soundtrack

Adaptation (not yet released to DVD)

Brazil (previously viewed)

City of Lost Children

Conan the Barbarian (previously viewed)

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

In the Company of Men - featuring Aaron Eckhart

Kung Pow: Enter the Fist

Living in Oblivion

Memento

Next Stop Wonderland

Shadowland

Still Breathing - featuring Brendan Fraser

Tampopo

The Four Feathers

The Spanish Prisoner

The Tao of Steve

Truly, Madly, Deeply

Twenty Bucks

Unbreakable – featuring M. Night Shyamalan, director

Who is Cletis Tout?

Wings of Desire

This is a majority of the movies in my Netflix queue; most are based on suggestions posted at Real Live Preacher’s blog.  There are some I still need to add – like Paul Hinrich’s suggestions this morning in my Movie posting this morning.

The previously viewed movies are those that I’ve seen before, but it’s been so long that it’s time I saw them again to judge them from my current mindset.  ‘Brazil’ I loved enormously the first time around; ‘Conan the Barbarian’ I enjoyed as a simple good-over-evil action flick, but I think it got short shrift in the marketplace when it was released (it’s been so long that I can’t recall!).

Is there anything on this list you think is a major dog, not worth Netflix envelope and postage?

2:15:55 PM    comment []

IRAQ-O-METER

Just in case you’re a goal-oriented, highly-focused person who really doesn’t have time to weed through all the hype and links at the big news sites: check out the Iraq-o-meter.  You'll get the facts, fast.

Of course, if you have an urge for humor in pathos, you’ll be interested in the same site.

12:48:43 PM    comment []

Shout Out

Please excuse this brief message from management here at Rayne Today:

HOWDY, MICHELLE!  ;-)  THANKS FOR THE PHONE CALL!!

We now resume so-called normal blogging.

11:53:33 AM    comment []

Rejected crayons

I wouldn’t have rejected this one; I’m actually rather fond of it.

Maybe I should look for an Easter dress and bonnet in “Spank Me Pink”. Got a favorite? Come on, you know you do!

9:23:57 AM    comment []

The lost blog post:  Movies

Nuts, I really hate that when that happens.  I had a perfectly good post inspired by Real Live Preacher about movies.

It’s vaporized, most likely overwritten by accident.  Oh well, that’s for the best; it wasn’t one of my better writing assignments.  The cosmic editor purged it and asked for a do-over.

Since I first attempted to post about movies, I’ve opened a Netflix account and gotten a few to sample based on comments left at Real Preacher’s blog.  These were the first victims:

Frailty – dark, gratuitous violence, nothing here that’s not telegraphed ahead.  Disturbing; could be the giving-into-the-voices theme that's bothersome (is Dubya giving into the voices?).

Donnie Darko – again dark, but oddly enjoyable.  Could be the Jake Gyllenhaal factor; could be the Jacob’s Ladder-like thing this movie has going.  I could watch this again, I'm sure.  Filming has an interesting quality -- clarity and contrast combined.

Signs – ambitious, entertaining, but not as good as M. Night Shyamalan’s previous work in The Sixth Sense; worth seeing, if for sake of comparison.  (Stupid me, I thought this film was done in black-and-white; I found out the next day that the video output connection on my DVD player was loose, hence the B/W only output.  I re-watched it in color; frankly, I think I liked it just as much in B/W.)

I’m not certain what I’ll order next, but I’ll go back and check Preacher’s comments to see if there’s anymore tips I missed.  Two out of three isn’t too bad; certainly better odds than the lottery.

7:45:38 AM    comment []