The university where I've been temping is one of Pennsylvania's state-school system universities, and that means that it specializes in teacher education above all other things, and the School of Education has a large undergrad and graduate faculty with diverse teaching and research. This got me to wondering about what goes on down on the first floor--Special Education. What research questions do they address down there?: What if we did take them to the zoo?

But then I found one of the oddest sites I've found on the web ever. I warn you in advance that I'm not sure whether this is actually the diary of a special education teacher (as it claims), or whether this is grotesque parody. I do know that I couldn't stop laughing in spite of myself. Ladies and gentlemen: TardBlog.

While channel-surfing last night, I came across the almost indescribable experience that is E!'s "Star Dates: Dustin Diamond". Here are just some of the highlights:

1. Dustin took his first date to Yankee Doodle's on the Santa Monica Promenade, which happens to be the bar where (thanks to the Joe Mulder curse*) I watched Pitt lose its Sweet Sixteen game to Kent State after Indiana had knocked off Duke to leave us as the highest remaining seed in our bracket. OK, maybe this was actually a lowlight.

(*I could watch any sporting event very enjoyably with Joe; however, if it was an important game involving a Pittsburgh team, the Burgh squad was doomed if I watched with him.)

2. Dustin and the skank (note: I do not mean this as a generic Diceman/construction worker term of general derision for woman; I am just using it as a very precise term to describe the personality/essence of Mr. Diamond's first date) made for a nice pair because they seemed to share one very special bond: they both wanted to get her as drunk as humanly possible. The three basic shots were a cut to her cleavage, a cut to Diamond forcing another large beer or glass full of liquor onto her, and a cut to her double fisting whatever she was drinking. After she staggered back to the car, we got some post-script talking-head scenes that suggested a heavy makeout session and possible intercourse after the cameras stopped rolling, but only Screech and the skank will ever know for sure.

3. Dustin's second date was with the third runner-up in the World's Strongest Woman competition, and for their date she took him to Gold's Gym. I'm not making any of this up.

4. The second date actually seemed like the beginning of an ongoing relationship. Again, not making this up.

If you can catch a re-broadcast of this show, by all means it is the comedy gift that just keeps on giving.

After the last post, I decided to update the California governor's residence situation. California remains one of six states without an official governor's residence. The city of West Sacramento is currently offering land to the state for a new governor's residence. According to that article, Governor Gray Davis has set a goal of getting a governor's residence built by 2006. The Reagan-built residence was never occupied by a governor, and was eventually sold. Some people, however, believe the best option is to buy it back. The full background story is told in the Preliminary Report of the Governor's Permanent Residence Commission.

To see some comically angry quotes on this issue, look here.

I decided to take a little respite from The List, as I realized it had been a long time since I had read any non-fiction. So what did I discover? Around the same time the S.F. Chronicle made The Fiction List, they also made a non-fiction list. I have no plans to work through this one systematically in any way, shape, or form, but it did give me a few ideas. There are a few Western history books on there that I would like to take a look at, but also I have been thinking lately about picking up some New/Gonzo Journalism books, since I've really enjoyed what I've read in the genre in the past--particularly Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson.

In that spirit, my latest read was Joan Didion's The White Album. I enjoyed it thoroughly. Broken into five sections, this features about 20 short pieces, many of which are themselves broken into 3 or 4 distinct vignettes. I don't know that there's one overriding theme, but the recurrent subjects are the '60s and its aftermath (up to the late '70s when this was published), life in California, and Didion's own quirky politics which are basically left-center, but seriously divergent from the mainline of '60s protest culture. Some essays are intensely personal, such as the one about Didion's experiences on her first book tour and particularly the one about learning to cope with intense migranes that put her out of commission four to five days per month. Two of my favorites are "Many Mansions" and "Bureaucrats"--the former dealing with the strange cultural/class politics around the new California governor's mansion built by the Reagans and never inhabited, and the latter discussing Caltrans's efforts to create a diamond lane on the Santa Monica freeway and the strange cultural and other miscalculations involved therein.

The closest Didion comes to a personal political manifesto is the penultimate essay "On the Morning After the Sixties", in which she ruminates about what it was like to be at Berkeley in the mid-fifties, prior to the massive upheaval of the '60s. She says her generation came of age in a more "personal" time, that they were "the last generation to identify with adults" and that for them "the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man's fate." The last line of this essay will be the thing I most take away from this book when I think of Didion: "If I could believe that going to a barricade would affect man's fate in the slightest I would go to that barricade, and quite often I wish that I could, but it would be less than honest to say that I expect to happen upon such a happy ending."

Didion is perhaps bleak in this pronouncement, but I appreciate her honesty and I have often identified with this sentiment myself. However, I also know enough about Didion's other work to know that she is not apolitical as a result of such thinking, and that she must believe in some possibility of positive change. I have also come to believe that, although I think that those changes are much more likely on the micro, local level than higher up. I think improving some people's lives is a manageable task, while "improving life" is not. Believe it or not, this actually makes me less cynical than I used to be; maybe grad school was not my complete ruination after all!

I'll be heading back to the list now, though between my two jobs, looking for a permanent job, and being sick and thus exhausted for the last couple of days, my reading has ground if not to a halt then at least to a trickle. I'd like to get through a couple of books over the next week that need to go back to the library, and then get to the gift that arrived in the mail two days ago--thanks Jeff!!

I hope I can post something a little more light-hearted sometime today or tomorrow...

I spent most of last night very ill, shivering in a sweater and under blankets, and not even trying anything as radical as food. Fortunately, while I get sick with some frequency, it doesn't tend to last long, and I am back at work today. I did, however, go to bed at 9 p.m., so I missed the State of the Union, but if you've heard one you've heard them all--great country, standing ovation, could be doing better, but look at all we've done, great country, God, standing ovation. For still more cynical takes, check out the lefty blogs I'm now linking to.

Quote of the (insert any unit of time here):

"Now, patriotism is defined as love of country. It's not defined as love of militarism or love of government edicts of any kind. You know, unexamined, unintelligent patriotism, you know, my country, right or wrong, love it or leave it, gets us nowhere and results in bad country and western songs." --Janeane Garofalo

The quote appears in this Howard Kurtz transcript on cnn.com. The gist of the interview is that the mainstream media cannot totally ignore the anti-war movement, but they marginalize it by having celebrities come on to talk about it instead of movement leaders and policy experts. Thus it looks like it's just a matter of bored actors fighting their latest cause celebre instead of serious people thinking seriously about issues and disagreeing with the company line. The irony of making this point by interviewing Janeane Garofalo is not lost on me, but I think it's a valid point nonetheless.

One Super Bowl comment: With all the ABC cross-promotion going on during the game (and understandably so since it's the biggest audience of the year), I kept expecting Al Michaels to read a tagline along the lines of:

"Do you believe in Miracles? Starting tomorrow night watch Skeet Ulrich.....right here on ABC!"

Oh, and the Beallsvonian now has a new and expanded links section in the left column; so far it's basically friends, but I hope to add political and fun links too very soon--possibly today if work is slow enough.

How to screw up a perfectly nice weekend in two easy steps:

1. Hit a patch of ice.
   
2. Hit a guard rail.
   

I'm fine, and the car is semi-fine. I was able to drive it home and to work today, but it's going to need some fairly ex(t/p)ensive repairs. The passenger's side headlight cover is destroyed, and the fender cover will have to go as well. Basically, a lot of plastic will need to be replaced. This could have been a lot worse--I was able to slow to 10-15 mph, I wasn't subsequently rammed, and I was about 5 miles from home and a nice old lady let me stay in her kitchen while my dad drove out to the scene even though it was midnight.

I'm not sure what the lessons are here. In part I'm happy that I'm OK and that my dad is being so great to me--coming out to help, and dealing with the insurance and repair issues since he's a veteran of this sort of thing. On the other hand, I either have to beg money from relatives or pretty much wipe out the money I've been saving toward moving--neither of which is a happy prospect, though again I'm lucky that the former is a legitimate option. AND, it was already becoming clear to me and is now crystal clear that I just don't like winter. For a while now I've thought that I would stay in the East for several years and maybe in 5-10 years settle in L.A. I'm increasingly sure that I'm going to speed up that timetable. So I guess this is a moment of clarity in addition to being a big ol' pain in the ass. Why does it seem like everything that's happened to me for about a year now has been a cloud, at best with a silver lining, and nothing is ever a blue sky?

To my mind this is one of the sports stories of the year, and yet I haven't even seen it mentioned, let alone played up, on Sportscenter.

The key part of the story, to my mind, is that at the age of 46--the age when George Blanda retired, from placekicking, and everyone called him a timeless wonder--Martina Navratilova has not only won a Grand Slam tennis title but has completed a mind-boggling career Grand Slam. She has now won at least singles, doubles, and mixed doubles title at every Grand Slam tournament. She has won 57 overall slam titles, and she won her first one, the French mixed doubles, in 1974!!!!! Twenty-nine years later, she's a champion again, reminding us that she is the greatest female athlete--and possibly just the greatest athlete--of our lifetime.

Take two on the the comment doohickey.