Saturday, October 7th, 2006 Eh, who cares? So, I've decided to drop two classes this week. The first on the chopping block was stats, even though I knew that I shouldn't have taken that class from the very beginning, but being the lemming that I am, I still endeavored to take it. So, this means I will see the guys in my cohort, whom I have really grown fairly fond of, less often. The other class was a Psych course that fullfiled some requirement for the major that dealt with Learning and Cognition in animals. They just wanted too much- tons of readings, required lecturs,  three exams and a term paper. yeah, no thanks. I actually went up to the small town of Taylors Falls this last Monday and took some pictures of the great scenery and when I got back, I really didn't want to read anything for the exam I had later on in the day. That Learning Course was also a night course, and at first I thought it would be cool to not have class in the day time, but it really turned out to be a bigger hassle having to wait for rarer night time busses in the colder nighttime weather. Then I would have to get home, eat and get stuff ready for my Tuesday Morning course. But now this really frees up my schedule to just do what I wanna do. Sure, I still have a horrible assistantship where I am my professor's lap dog to go around and do stuff all over the metro area, but whatever. The fewer books I see the better. I'm really growing so weary of school nowadays. I can't help but think of the really really smart people that I know that have just gotten fed up with school... hmm, now that I think about it, I think that about90% of my friends are really intelligent and that a good 85% of them have expressed some disdain for education. So there are days when I ask myself what the hell I'm doing up here. After all, of the two classes I have left, (Research and Supervision), I have no idea what's going on in Research - the guy just sits back and hits you with tons of stats that you can't possibly understand unless youve had a course or three in stats, and while others try to understand and follow, I really have no patience or motivation to do so- and a really only a mild interest in Supervision. Of course, now I really have no idea how long it's going to take me to finish up here. I prefer to take it easy and not pursue any classes that I have no interest in until the very end, so I'll just take two or three tops every semester and hopefully be out of here by 2013. Ugh.  that sounds so bad. Okay, moving on. You know, I've grown to like a few things about the Twin Cities. Not everything. In fact, I think most things annoy me about this place. I mean, come on, whoever designed the highways around this place was drunk. It's nothing BUT highways, and merging ramps go on forever, and then when it's time to merge, GOOD LUCK! The neighborhoods around here run the gammut from depressing and scary to pretentious and snooty. Good neighborhoods are usually surrounded by bad ones and you really can't even live in them unless youre a millionaire. Still, I can find things to enjoy about the place- mainly the downtowns. Saint Paul Downtown is always quiet and rather classy. Minneapolis Downtown can be the ghetto, but it's bigger than SP so it does have its nicer areas. I also like the more "connected" feeling I get from the Twin Cities. In Madison, it felt much more like a dinky place trying to prove that it was all that based on what it had, while neglecting to mention what it didn't have. So I do feel like I'm in a "real place" now, for better or for worse I suppose. Obviously, the drawbacks are that I'm farther away from anyone I know, and that the trip to campus is a bit more inconvenient than in Madison - the busses run more frequently, but theyre more packed since fewer routs go to campus (compared to Madison where campus was really the only place anyone needed to go so all busses passed through it essentially so your bus was hardly ever that packed). The Campus itself, I feel, is a lot nicer than Madison's, but less convenient, since it's divided into three chunks - Saint paul Campus, Minneapolis Campi (east and west bank). Most impotantly though is that I like how much there is to do around here. yeah, I know I just got here, but despite all that I have done, it still feels like I have SO much to see and do. How long before I get bored though? You never know. Well, I think that's gonna do it for me for now. Here's to having more time to myself and my website- woot!

Sunday October 15th, 2006 Love can make a man forsake his website mistress I apologize to you all for keeping you in suspense on my goings on. But really, I haven't had much "going on" to speak of. This week I got really sick and had to spend most of my days in bed with little to eat save for chicken noodle soups and the one time Jimmy Johns Sandwhich. MMM. Extra Avocado Spread. It started out with a lot of phlegm backed up behind my nose and throat, which is just the nastiest sensation anyone can experience because no matter what you do, you can always just feel it back there. Ugh. So that lasted for about two days until Tuesday when I had to go into class all congested in the freezing cold! And when I heard about the snow falling for Wednesday's forecast, I just decided to set that class for Advanced Research out and stay indoors. I didn't leave again until Friday Morning for Part 2 of that class. But yeah, since Tuesday, I've just pretty much been congested and fighting off a nasty cough, which has seemed to subsided a bit, even though yesterday was probably one of the worst days for it. I'm still not at one hundred percent though, which leads me to believe that this is gonna be with me for quite a while. Oh, and because the apartment is friggin cold, it's taken me even longer to heal up. Meh, Whatever. I have to do this stupid presentation for my supervision class on Tuesday and I've pretty much given up on it because I've reached a point where I've done all the research on it that I can and honestly, I'm not that thrilled about having to present this massive amount of information in a coherrent fashion. I've had to look through a whole bunch f articles for stuff pertaining to self disclosure and that's really as exciting as it gets. In other news, The Minnesota Wild are 5-0 so far this season, which is cool. It should facilitate my transition into hockey, but I'm not sure if I could ever be a real fan of the sport. There's just something about it that I just don't like and I'm not entirely sure of what that is. It's neat to catch the games on local TV though since I'll pretty much watch any sport even if I'm not that into it at this point. All right, well i got work to get to, so I must jet, but I will leave ya'll with a picture of my cohort. From left to right, There's Jeff who is a really cool guy and easy to get along with (though that's pretty much true for any of the people up here), then there's Aimee, whom I really don't know much about other than she will specialize in eating disorders. Your's truly is next, looking most dapper followed by Fengquin from China. I don't know much about her since they're making her take all her masters courses again because if youre from China, apparently, they don't count. Whatever. The older dude up top is our prof. To his left is Ju Ping who is from Taiwan. She's only in one of my classes so I don't know much about her either. Chris is next, who actually reminds me a lot of Jason from Wabash. He's the guy who went to Hampden-Sydney (read previous entries) and finally, there is KyJin who is from South Korea and who set the whole photo op up. Kyu jin is pretty curious about American culture- not that he's new to ths states but every now and then he'll come across a colloquialism or just a random term and will want to know everything about it. As an English Major, I am happy to oblige. He along with Jeff, Chris and I, and occasionally Aimee hang out together whenever we can, which is cool because that never really happened in Madison. Later.

Monday October 16th, 2006 I wonder... I really can't tell if my utter apathy is due to me being in the wrong profession or if I'm just fed up with school in general. Can you believe this? I'm down to my last two classes, and I still have a hard time getting things done- not because theyre hard but because I just don't care. I don't care about doing a good job to be more precise. The subject matter itself I can take or leave, but actually worrying about how good it looks or whether it lasts as long as it should- that stuff I really don't care about. I had all day to work on my presentation but what did I do instead? Actually, I'm not even sure. I think I surfed the web a bit for some holiday gifts for friends and family. Oh and I fiddled around with the NBA 2006 i got for ten bucks. All that when I could have been working on this presentation that is no where on my "important things" list. Wait, there it is, right under "throw out old phone books." So, BossboyX is officially five years old today and I'm wondering if I should continue spending ten bucks a year for the domain name. It's not like it's that important to me anymore to be known as BossboyX, though I guess to be honest, it wasn't that important five years ago either. I better get on that soon if I don't want some weirdo swiping the name for his Leather Fetish website. It's crazy the stuff they'll put on there too. For instance, on this one site... wait. How did I get to talking about this from my introductory paragraph on how I should be working on that horrid presentation? Focus, I must learn how to focus if I am to get anywhere tonight and lamentably the thing that would involve logging off this thing and getting some real work done. I'm not sure if it's worth it so I'll just use this time to complain some more. Note: I just left this posting for a few minutes and found myself looking up pictures of the Saint Paul Skyline for no apparent reason. Which brings me to an interesting Idea. From this point on, I'm going to keep a log of my activities and see how often, if at all I work on my project... 7:40 Saint Paul pictures/talking to Funk online 7:53 Read Steve Kerr's article about the Southeastern Division 7:54 Printed out bibliographies for class presentation 7:58 Checked email 8:00 called scott to convince him to play Fantasy Basketball 8:10 printed out informed consent sheet for tomorrow 8:13 checked online banking statements :-( 8:20 talked on phone some more 9:00 read through another article to improve presentation 9:22 read article on Yahoo on the Wolves/Pacers game and talked with Funk about it 9:30 Frasier and Cereal eating 9:50 Thinking about how to extend presentation 10:00 News 10:30 Nightline 10:45 Printed out roleplay 11:00 Thinking about a different roleplay/Seinfeld/amazement at Bears 11:30 final Roleplays typed up/Will & Grace 12:34 Shower 12:50 Printed out last things and sent my final presentation to the laptop. 1:00 Lights out.

Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 Back up for another year I just paid my fee so BossboyX.com will be up and running at least until next Octubre, so let's all gather round and do a little jig. Ready? Go! Melanie, you're not Jigging! Fine. Wanna know something about The Twin Cities? They have TONS- TONS of suburbs. And even more odd, they have TONS - TONS of malls! I've only been to two (including the mall of America with Funk way back in Winter of 04), but they're really all over the place.  Big, Small, whatever your size. It turns out that the suburb of Edina claims the first ever Mall in the US and so I guess that's why they're so popular around here. Really, theyre just as huge as strip malls were in Madison. Anyway, Last night I went to the Maplewood Mall, although I guess I didn't actually go in it since by the time I got there it was closed, save for the Barnes and Nobles, which was the only place I was interested at all in going in the first place. I went to the Half Price Books by there first and found a couple of cool games for cheaper than retail, so i bought them. Unfortunately, they really haven't made me feel any better (i bought them sorta to cheer me up). Damn you Madison Avenue and your materialistic brainwashing! They're pretty fun though I guess. One's not really a game- it's the Expansion Pack to Civ 4. They have this thing called a Warlord leader, and he can give one of your guys a ton of experience to make him nearly unstoppable. I used that on a gunship and got shot out of the sky by a rifleman. At least they have the Vikings back in there, which is good because I really like making berserkers. The other game i got was Psychonauts, a story of these kids that train to become soldiers that wage wars inside the minds of people (aka, Psychonauts). I heard a lot of buzz about it, but so far it's just meh. Part of the problem, I think comes from the fact that this is the PC version and unlike the much heralded console version, it has a shaky camera that annoys and frustrates me to no end. I'm getting really tired of all of these political ads on TV. There are three major races going on right now. The biggest one seems to be the Amy Klobachar vs mark Kennedy for Senate race. Amy comes across pretty well and likable while Mark was the first to go negative and kinda seems too rigid and mean. In one of his ads he claimed that Amy would make it harder for people to get drugs like Lipitor if she were to run the show. Amy's ad: "That's ridiculous, My mom takes Lipitor." Poor Mark. She'll prolly win so that's ku. Then there's the Bachmann vs Wetterling race. Patty Wetterling: child got kidnapped and ever since then she's been fighting for children's safety. Michele Bachmann: ultra conservative who thinks that gay people are after little children ( I swear we took that out of the brochure in the latest edition). During one race, she was spotted hiding in the bushes as her opponent gave a speech outside. News cameras caught her and she just got up and left without saying anything. Oh and here's a good one. She got up at a church and gave a little speech and said that God had told her to run for Congress, and because she said it there and the Church's pastor personally endorsed her, it may have cost the church their non profit tax breaks. Oh and to show how sneaky she is, Bachmann used to have the Republican national Committee do the smear ads while she only approved the her own ads that highlighted how great she was. That way, she could say that she never went negative because the Republican Committee did the dirty work for her. That was true up until last week where she finally "approved" a negative ad. Wetterling on the other hand really doesn't have much claim to fame, but i can't say I'm a huge fan of hers since she's also been really negative the whole way through. It's just draining. So, I'd vote for Wetterling since she's the lesser of two evils. And then there's the really heated race for Governor, which strangely enough is the one I'm least interested in since both candidates do as much mudslinging but they don't have a goofy dufus running like in the previous one. They're probably each just as bad as the other so who cares? I'll be leaving now. take it easy all. maybe next time I write on here, the draft will have gone through and I can talk about that for a whle.

Sunday, October 29th, 2006 What is it with me and old, overweight women? I caught the Wolves/Bulls preseason game on Wednesday. I know that it was just an exhibition game and that it doesn't really matter, but still, it was pretty enjoyable. Even went into overtime where the Bulls gave up and went home. My favorite part of the game: when some fans sitting not too far away from me (I was up in the nosebleeds, like three rows away from the back wall [interestingly enough, those were the 'best available' but there were rows and rows of empty seats in front of me]) started yelling at KG, whom he felt wasn't giving it his all- "Come on, KG! I payed twenty one dollahs!" I think five minutes after that KG sat out for the rest of the game. As far as the Wolves go, they looked a lot better than last year. Theyre still not gonna be all that great, I don't think, but at least it doesn't look like theyre struggling to make shots. They don't all drop, but it looks more like they know what theyre doing when they hurl the rock up towards the basket. And if Eddie Griffin plays all season like he did in the last quarter and a half of the game, the Timberwolves should be defensively sound. That dude was blocking shots and stealing the ball like no one's bizz, almost as if he had been roused into a masturbatory rage, which not even Carl Monday could stop. Okay, so here we go. Let me set the scene for you. Evil Professor Dumbface for whom I am a research assistant had set us up to go to Maple Grove- a suburb of Minneapolis that's pretty far. If you got a map of the Twin Citie's metro area, MG would be on the Northwest-most corner. Im not sure how many miles away it is but it takes a good twenty minutes on the highway going 65 miles an hour. She wanted to work with students froma transitional school up there. The school - OSCT- takes in 18 to 21 year olds who have mental difficulties and try to give them the skills that they will need to get a job. Amazingly, they are almost always able to place their students somewhere. And it's not like they just put them anywhere. They do a good job of placing thier students in a general field that they may be interested in. So, we had already gone up there in like September and met with a student in our program who works there-Christine- and the school's principal to ask what they might need for us to implement. I don't think we came out of that first meeting with a great sense of what we were doing except that it would involve assessments. It wasn't until this Tuesday that Christine met with us to talk about the possible assessments we could use. Along with professor dumbface, Christine and myself we had two other students in my program who wanted to participate in the study. There was Chien-Yi who is a second year Masters student and Ju-Ping a first year doctoral student (like me). We spent an hour and a half on a tuesay evening doing NOTHING but playing around with assessments and concluding that we would call ACT to get information on the raw score data. So, the plan we have set up is to get to OSCT on Friday at 1:00 to meet with the teachers there and let them know what our plan is (my professor's half baked idea is to demonstrate that these students have real interests and want to be social and blah blah blah just like everyone else so they shouldn't be placed in jobs like cleaning toilets just because 'everyone assumes' that they have no interests'). So how is this going to work? Well, Christine will already be there. Chien Yi has prac so she's gonna have to drive there directly from prac. What does that mean for Ju-Ping and me? Well, we both have class together until noon. So, what happened last time was that Professor Dumbface drove me after I was done with class. Well, actually, the last time, I got down there at noon, and she was just there casually typing away on her computer and when I looked at her, she said, "oh, I'm typing an exam. My husband is driving us so we're just waiting for him to get here." We ended up leaving that day at like 12:30, and even got lost and we still made it before one o clock. So, I just naturally assumed that this time would be no different. But I didn't want to be the one who said it. After all, saying it would mean asking for the favor of riding with Blubbertard for a half hour.  Instead, I waited to see how Ju-Ping would play it. If she could find her own transportation, maybe she would be kind enough to give me a ride with her. Unfortunately, Ju-Ping has no method of driving on Fridays, so she asks the prof if she would give her a ride to the school in Maple Grove, to which the prof says that she would, and I of course just kind of naturally fall in with that group. On Thursday, about 26 hours before we were scheduled to go, my prof and I have this meeting scheduled at 11:00, for which we only used twenty minutes. Basically she says, "Oh, by the way, my husband needs an operation and the only time we could squeeze him in was at 3:30 on Friday so what I'm thinking is that we will finish our meeting at 2:00 and then I have to rush my husband to Saint paul for his operation. And it's pretty tight because we're going to have to pick up Ben (her 23 year old son) from school along the way. So could you drive yourself and Ju-Ping?" This is why I hate telling people I have a car. Because then I become a resource. I say "fine" but... Thing is that I can't park on campus and I have a class right before we have to leave. "oh," she says. "I have a parking pass. You could use that." So it's going to be this really complicated thing where I have to give her a call the next morning when I get to campus, and then she's going to give me her pass, and then i have to drive to the parking garage with her pass. Oh, but wait! I just realize something. You see, all month they've been tearing up my street here. It's no joke. It is insane how much theyve demolished to put in new water pipes. I've seen the street deteriorate to the level beyond a dirt road, where it's been muddy for blocks on end. good luck driving through the holes and mounds of dirt everywhere. It's been a nightmare. I was actually thinking of writing an entry about it with pictures just to show everyone but i never got around to it. But it looks like theyre finally cleaning everything up because theyve put in new sidewalks (our street didn't have them before) and are starting to pave driveways again. And that's where the problem comes in. I got a notice saying that our driveway was gonna be done this week and if we wanted to use our cars that we should park them outside (despite the signs they put up last month that said that there is to be no parking on the streets from 9/27 to 11/10 from 7 am to 7 pm... i hate this place.  So, I couldn't guarantee that I'd be able to drive since I might be  trapped in. Any normal person would have understood this and might have said something like "hmm ths is getting too tricky, maybe we should reschedule." yes it would have been a pain to cancel since we had to work with over seven people's schedules, but,lady, your husband needs treatment! What does she say? "Oh, well. Find a way to make it happen." And then she continues to type on her computer because gee whiz she's busy. We even exchange numbers so that I can call her that night and let her know what brilliant plan I have come up with. So, on the bus, I think about how I'm gonna work this out, and I do get a rather brilliant idea, which is to ask Chien Yi to give both Ju-Ping and I a ride back from Maple Grove since she'll have her own method of transportation. As soon as I get home I send Chien Yi an email and copy Ju-Ping on it. Unfortunately, time passes and i still don't hear back from Chien Yi and I need to call Dumbface. I feel really resentful at this point. I mean, I personally don't care about what happens to me. If they need to take me with them to the hospital because they can't make a quick pit-stop, I'll surivive. But it's the fact that the fate of Ju-Ping is in my hands that i detest. I mean, she doesn't know what's going down because idiot lady doesn't communicate anything to anyone. So it's my job to find a way to get her back to campus- bah! So, i give her a call, and tell her that I'm just going to hope that Chien yi will give us a ride back, failing that, I guess JuPing and I will go to the hospital with them. I guess I could try bussing it back to my place. Then the first sensible thing she says all day comes out of her mouth - and no it's not "let's cancel or postpone the meeting".  She says that we could try to cut the meeting short since we kinda know what we want to say there. Luckily not two minutes after I hang up with her, I get an email from Chien Yi letting both Ju Ping and I know that she would be able to drive us back. It seems as though everything is going to be okay. It seems. Friday. Noon. Our Research class goes over with this assignment that's due next week and just seemed to pop up out of no where. So, it's like 12:05 and I get my stuff together because I gotta go and so I go from the third floor down to the first and as I head towards the faculty offices, I see that there are snacks in the computer room that were leftover from the potluck the previous day. I figure that since Ju-Ping is still up in class in the third floor, I'll just help my self to some potato chips. As I'm munching, I hear the thumping of Dumbface and as she walks by, complete with coat and purse, she looks turns to look in the room, sees me and says. "oh. there you are." "yeah" I say, as I chew on the chips. "I thought we were going to meet at noon." She says in a very serious tone. "Yeah, uh..." I say, swallowing my bite so that I can proceed to tell her that class went late and that Ju-Ping is still up there. Then, suddenly, she takes this attitude towards me and mocks me saying, "'Yeah uh'-Ben's gotta get to school. Where's Ju Ping?" I get so angry at her at that point and just limit my words to information. "I don't know. She was still in class when I left." "All right," she says, as we hurry out. "Let's just go." Firstly, I'm not sure exactly what she thinks she's doing mocking me like that and secondly, if it's because of my lateness, how the hell was I supposed to know that it was going to be tight GETTING to Maple Grove? I knew that it was going to be tight leaving, but never once did she mention anything about having to drop off her son before going to Maple Grove. And in fact she had only told me of any complications the day before! And furthermore, if last time we were there until 12:30, when I got there at 12:00 sharp only to find her sitting on her big fat ass, leaving me with nothing to do for thirty minutes, how was I supposed to know that I should be there at 12:00 on the dot this time? If maybe she had told me that they were going to drop her son off before hand, i would have rushed, but without that piece of information, it all seemed trivial. Why leave on time if the meeting doesnt start there until 1:00? it's not like we can change people's schedules to accomodate our arrival. I just assumed we wouldn't be leaving until 12:15 or so. Man, that pissed me off. And lord she's a pain in the ass to be around. She acts like everything revolves around her. I've been re-reading my American Dialects book that I used in the course of the same name taught by good old Campbell. It's really interesting as it deals with how dialects developed through time in the US and so I try to read a little bit each day on the bus. Knowing that I didn't want anything to do with anything that was going on in that car, I decided to just read in the backseat. Ju-Ping had fortunately caught up to us before we left so she was in between Ben and me in the backseat whilst dumbface talked and complained and whatevered to her husband who was driving. Anyway, I decided to take out my book and read, and then Ju-Ping became curious about what I was reading so she asked, "oh what's that?" I told her what it was about and I'm about to go in to detail about how the dialects swept through the US, when Blubbertard, who's one of those people that is talking to one person, has a though enter her head and then just switches gear to talk to someone else, suddenly turns around and abondons her conversation with her husband to ask Ju-Ping (and maybe me as well) "What class did you all have?" That further irritated me. I don't care about cultural differences anymore, I't just rude to interrupt someone when theyre in the middle of something just for your own selfish reasons. Ju Ping answers her and I just kind of act annoyed and begin to read on my own.  Ju-Ping answers her question and even she knows not to be rude- and she isn't even from here!- and begins to motion to the book again, as if to say, "so you were saying..." oh, but that is in vain, as Blubberface interrupts again and says something like "oh that must be fun, i bet it's fun. I remember blah blah blah it's all about me..." I just give up after that. I can't help but think of my old Spanish coordinator in times like these, who was also very annoying. But it was different. At least with her she was just ridiculously strict and scary. This lady is rude down to the core and expects everything to revolve around her. If something happens, you need to know about it even if she doesnt tell you. Theyre both trapped in their own worlds, but at least the other one never mocked me with a childish attitude for something that didn't even matter. During the Meeting, everyone kind of went around to introduce themselves (teachers at the school, the researchers, the principal, dumbface, etc). Both Chien Yi and Ju-Ping said their names and then said that they were volunteering for the project. I just said that my name was Fernando and that I was a first year doctoral student, afterwhich, my professor added, "and he's also my research assistant." When dumbface told everyone her half brained idea, the teachers wisely said, "it would be nice if you could tie it back to reality. becaues our students are often very unrealistic and, yeah they want to be doctors or crime scene investigators, but they can't and you often have to remind them of that and it can be painful. That whole, 'you can be whatever you want to be' isn't true for most of our students." I admit, I took some pleasure in hearing this. He was basically telling her, "lady, your study isn't going to be worth jack. Sure everyone WANTS to be something but how is that actually going to help our students who CAN'T be those things?" So yeah, when we first started thinking about what we could do for this research crap, it was the second week of school and she said she wanted to get all the data before thanksgiving. Somehow this is now a 2-3 year project. Luckily for me, I'm gone once May hits. I'm sure there are to be many more fun filled adventures awaiting me with Blubbertard. Be sure to stay tuned to all the action. As for me, I've had fun today with the draft. I should make a Fantbask06 page on bbx to display the neat team names and logos that we've come up with for this season. I'll get to that at some point, but right now I am tired from writing so much so I'm gonna head on out and relax for a bit. take care...

Tuesday, October 31st Dizzle-bate On Sunday night, the local television station carried the race for senate election debates. It was really funny hearing (R) Mark Kennedy attack (D) Amy "the klub" Klobuchar. It came down to sounding like: "Screw Amy! She's too nice. Nice people are weak. Why won't she debate me on Iraq? Hey, you, third party cadidate (an 18 year old kid from what I could tell), I'm gonna use my question directed at you to ask you what you think of the fact that Amy Klobuchar won't debate me about Iraq?" To which the kid responded, "I haven't recieved an invitation for such a debate. If that's an invitation you just tell me when and where and we'll do it." But how could anyone not like Amy? I mean she used her question directed at the third party candidate to ask him about his campaign vehicle affectionate called "Gus the Bus"- some bus that runs on like sunflowers and lollipops or something- and smiled asking him about how he came up with that neat innovation. All her ads are so bright and happy and she seems so genuine. Contrapose that with Mark Kennedy, who has really dark lightng in his latest ad to scare me into voting for him with a really serious look on his face. He's toned it down... er up rather in his latest one, but he still can't smile. And then there's Gov. Pawlenty who's running for re-election who has done his fair share of mudslinging at his opponent; he has a new ad now where he says 'how about a positive ad for a change' as though he hasn't played by this year's republican standard before proceeding to tell me about how great all the changes he's made through MN are. There's this great Pawlenty ad about how he's the best man for the job because he doesn't support giving in state tuition college tuition for illegal immigrants. There are so many things wrong with that. Firstly, I hate out of state tuition. It's been the bane of my existance ever since I left Wabash. Secondly, do we really have a problem with mexicans coming straight across the border, all the way to Minnesota and enrolling at the U? Complete with GRE scores, letters of rec, TOEFL scores, and application and fees? I'm missing something. I must be! Okay, so it's not just mexicans they're talking about, but still, when you see the ad, all you see are images of people running across a grassy field during the night. Those filthy Canadians! Im gonna go to sleep.  Oh and happy holloween. Oh and the Bulls beat the pants off the Heat. Though I am rather miffed that I'm not able to watch basketball on TNT for the first time in years. I'll debate getting cable but for now... no good razz frazzin....