In Defense of This Generation

Posted on June 19, 2012 by | 2 comments

Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot- a lot– to criticize about the millennial generation. There’s creative bankruptcy (see Evan’s post), “slacktivism” and general laziness, ever-shortening attention spans, and of course, loud, obnoxious repetitive music without any discernible beginning, end, or climax.

I cannot state enough how much I hate techno…

Now with all that stated, I do want to address some of the criticisms thrown at Generation Y by our elders and (as they see it, anyways) betters.

Late last year, I came across this article, titled “5 Ways We Ruined the Occupy Wall Street Generation“. In his defense, the author emphatically states at the beginning of the piece that “This is not a sarcastic apology, I’m not a big enough dick to write all of this as a backhanded insult about how lazy and entitled you are. Because you’re not…”. Even so, it’s tough to read the article and not feel frustrated at some of the more glaring errors, or condescended to by false conclusions drawn from them. Despite the author’s best intentions, you can’t really walk away from the piece without imagining him to look something like this:

I’ll get right into things here with his first point “#5. Making You Ashamed to Take Manual Labor Jobs“. The author opens by offering the example of a piece of dialogue that went viral about a year ago.

It’s a great little bit, but I still have to stop things right there. We’re not ashamed to take manual labor jobs. We never have been. In this economy more than ever, there are college graduates willing, ready, and even eager to take jobs sweeping floors, unloading crates, answering phones, or stocking shelves. We’re not ashamed of flipping burgers, we just can’t afford to flip burgers. See, we have this funky little thing called “debt”, and not just any debt, the one kind of debt we, by law, cannot have discharged. To clarify- if I went bankrupt, if fire burned down my house and destroyed each and every last earthly possession I had, the only thing I would have left would be tens of thousands of dollars of debt I still need to pay.

The appropriate reaction…

All that’s to say we can’t take jobs flipping burgers because the $7.25 an hour you get for being abused by the customers and/or inhaling carcinogenic fumes just isn’t enough us to live independently and pay off our various mountains of inescapable debt.  Even if we move back in with our parents (more on that in a minute) things will still be tight- and God forbid we should even think about getting married or having kids until we’re in our mid-30’s. Which brings us to our next point- “extension of adolescence”.

This is a psychologically documented phenomena, and something that’s rather throwing the combined worlds of sociology and psychology. Ever since the line between childhood and manhood ceased to be set at bringing down an elk and bathing in its blood, figuring out exactly when a person ceases to become a kid and becomes an adult is tough. It’s certainly not something new, but it is currently far more pronounced than with previous generations. Take that picture up there for example. Two guys, looking to be in their mid or even late twenties, playing X-Box. There’s the clincher there- the X-Box. The older generations, having had really nothing quite on the level of video games (pac-man doesn’t really count), labeled them as “kids’ stuff” from their inception, and the fact that we still play video games well into our twenties is seen as us extending our teen years, rather than shifting over to being an adult. The author of the article has this as his third point “Adding Seven More Years to Being a Teenager”.

Of course, it’s absolute nonsense once you think about it. What did our grandparents or even our parents do for fun when they were kids? They played cards, board games, hunted, fished, went to the movies, and beat up minorities.

KKK Rally, or as they called it in the 30s, “Wednesday”…

And what do our grandparents and parents do today when they want to have fun? They play cards, board games, go hunting, fishing, and go to the movies (hopefully they’ll have dropped “Harassing Pollacks” from the daily planner by this point). You never hear anyone accuse them of extending their teen years. My grandfather and his friend have been playing cribbage together for over half a century, does anyone tell them that they need to start acting like adults? Let’s face it, when it comes to what this generation does for fun, we really don’t differ from anyone in a previous generation, it’s just that what we do is so radically different, we have the appearance of being immature.

And what about responsibility? Is this generation really lazy and wussy compared to the generation who worked in the mill, took a break to fight Hitler, and went back to working in the mill and raising a family? Last time I checked, we’re in the worst depression since the 1930s (a crisis which we, incidentally, had nothing to do with but still have to pay for) and on top of this we’ve been locked in the longest war in American history- nearly twice as long as the entirety of WWII, just for some perspective. You can say a lot of things about this generation, but you can’t try to claim that we’re somehow just a bunch of young adults still trying to drag out our years as kids.

“Just look at that entitled, lazy kid. No concept of hard work or adult responsibility.”

Of course, we do tend to party, and while I could point to this being true of pretty much every young generation since a Cro-Magnon named Thruk invented partying roughly 43,000 years ago, I’m going to take a different approach.

This might come as a shock to some, but young people don’t want to spend their twenties partying because they’re afraid of turning into soulless corporate drones- it’s because we’re enjoying, often for the first time, full independence. Believe it or not, we don’t want to move back in with our parents and spend our youth still under their watchful gaze. We want our own place, our own job, our own car. We want responsibility, and as strange as it sounds, the partying is simply an extension of our attempts to explore our new found freedom.

As for us being entitled, there is something to be said for that. I recall once riding the subway with this blog’s regular contributor Evan and overhearing two youths snivel that the computer they were getting wasn’t quite as advanced as it could be. That said, there’s plenty of so-called “entitlement” that get’s unfairly pinned on us. The Occupy Movement, for example, was criticized by some as being a bunch of lazy kids that expected everything to be handed to them. I mentioned above that the current economic crises responsible for so many of our problems was- and this is key here- not started by us. What was I doing when the economy started to tank? Nothing. I was consuming the food put before me, buying as much stuff as could be expected from a teenager, and working summer jobs when I could. What did I do wrong? Why am I getting stuck with the economic crises I had nothing to do with? If you want to talk about entitlement, let’s talk about the generation who gambled with our collective futures and expects us to clean up the mess. Same goes for the wars we’re currently locked into.

As for our “armchair-activism”, again, there’s plenty wrong with this, and you could spend plenty of time going through what makes it such a pointless endeavor. Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel irked when someone from an older generation- specifically my parent’s generation (who would’ve been my age in the 80s and early 90s). Say what you will about people who mass-forward e-mails about signing petitions or demanding you like a cause on Facebook, there’s at least a level of interest. Barring the grossly simplistic anti-drug movement of the 80s, I can’t exactly recall the major moral movements of that generation. In short, the whole that this generation might be shallow isn’t without merit, but the people who point the finger ought to be awful careful that they pick the log out of their own eye first.

“What do we want?”
“Fluffy hair!”
“When do we want it?”
“After we’re done snorting crack!”

I’m going to finish up here with this last point- addressing the author of the article’s claim that the number one reason “We’ve ruined the occupy wall street generation” is that “we’ve taken away every reason to go outside”.
Am I the only one here who sees a staggering paradox? Am I the only one struggling to resolve how the “Occupy Wall Street People” need to “Get Outside More”? Last time I checked, the protestors at Occupy Wall Street were literally occupying Wall Street.

“Look at how pale you are! When’s the last time you went outside? Besides yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and…”

Now do we get outside as much as previous generations. Not really no. But then again, I don’t really see masses of the elderly roaming the streets either. Look, the reason we don’t “go out” is because many of us (who would, by the way, love to go out) are living in cities or urbanized areas. Short of just “walking around”, any major outdoor activity costs us money, which in case you haven’t picked up on by now, isn’t something we have just lying around. Between gas, food, entry fees, and other costs, I’d have to spend nearly a monthly payment to my college debt getting forty-eight hours in the great outdoors. That’s the reason we don’t like paying for entertainment (the author’s fourth point), only it’s not because we expect our entertainment to be free (just ask anyone who’s paid upwards of 60 bucks for a new X-Box game), it’s because we’re trying to be thrifty. If we want to get our own car and our own house to avoid the sneers of our elders, we have to pinch every penny until it slaps us with a sexual harassment lawsuit- entertainment is simply a major way we can save money and not go postal.

Look at those people trying to get food for free instead of paying for it! Lazy, entitled bunch of bums expecting everything to be handed to ’em, that’s what they are!

So in sum total, that’s my defense of my generation. It’s not a great generation- certainly not yet, anyways. It’s not the worst generation either, though, and before anyone- anyone– wants to label us as lazy or entitled or juvenile; please, look at us in the bigger scheme of things, and better still, look at yourselves. Would you want the standards you place on us applied to you?

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Posted in America, Canada, media, news, politics, television, video games, Youth

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Obama: the brand

Posted on June 18, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Jim Messina was an undergraduate when he managed his first campaign, and has won every race since then. He’s now manager of the Obama reelection campaign and going to great lengths to maintain his record.

source: huffingtonpostMessina has purportedly read volumes of US election history, but he spent the first months before beginning the Obama campaign in earnest meeting not with successful senators and former campaign managers, but with CEOs and senior execs of Apple, Google, facebook, Zynga, and DreamWorks. While Obama looks for support from left side of the House and Senate, Messina’s also brought Stephen Spielberg and Vera Wang into the campaign. Messina’s campaign, he says, is more based on wunderkind business strategies (Zynga and facebook, for example) than any elections from previous centuries.

The most interesting part to me of Messina’s campaign is the part focused not on intellectual persuasion, but attachment-building via branding. To contrast this with Mitt Romney’s campaign, look at the merchandise pages of each of the candidates’ websites:

Romney’s store has:
2 types of bumper stickers
a window decal
2 buttons
4 different t-shirts (2 of the with just the semi-unrecognizable logo on them)
a baseball cap
a lapel pin, and
(regrettably) a heather grey quarter-zip-up sweatshirt

All of his products are on one page, and most of them look like print-screened logos on shirts from AC Moore.

Obama’s store includes:
iPhone cases,
Earth Day packs,
“I bark for Barack” magnets,
v-neck shirts for women under 45,
calendars,
yoga pants,
a $95 Monique Pean scarf,
a Vera Wang bag, a $95 “Thakoon Panichgul“, whatever that is,
dog bandanas,
dog sweaters,
Joe Biden mugs,
Obama jerseys,
rubber bracelets,
pint glasses,
aprons,
bangles,
cufflinks,
baby bibs,
grill spatulas,
soy candles,
golf divot tools,
and a six-pack cooler.

There’s also about a billion different types of tshirts, buttons, and bumper stickers, and a “for Obama” series: women for Obama, nurses for Obama, veterans for Obama, African Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, Hispanics for Obama, Asian American & Pacific Islanders for Obama, and environmentalists for Obama.

Romney’s shirts say, at most, “Romney” or “Believe” – one of Obama’s shirts says “Health Reform Still a BFD.” Granted, Romney is aiming at a different demographic (LL Bean fans, eg), but Obama’s 19 pages of merchandise make Romney’s 1 page look pitiful, from a branding point of view.

The Obama campaign’s brand-focused strategy is closely integrated with its other image-focused tactics: assigning Romney the cold, out-of-touch persona, for example.
While critics of the Bain capital narrative put out by the Obama campaign said that things like negativity and party inconsistency (Bill Clinton’s subsequent praise of Romney’s management skills, eg) rendered the move moot, an article in Bloomberg said that Messina may not have been so concerned about persuasion at that point: “Messina is adamant that the Bain attack succeeded among the uncommitted voters he’s concerned with, who ignore pundits and are only now beginning to form opinions of Romney.”

For a lot of voters, Romney’s business and managing experience are just off the table. The Bain Capital anti-campaign put on by the Obama team wasn’t so much a persuasion for some voters as an excuse to keep holding their current opinion. K street and the hill will argue about the relevance and logical holes in different arguments, and about the influence of different political figures voicing their opinions, but humans decide things more based on instinct than consideration, I think.

David Plouffe, a political strategist, commented: “When people say, ‘How’s the Bain thing playing?’ it doesn’t matter what the set of Morning Joe has to say about it.”

Voters’ behavior and attitudes are hugely dependent on their initial impressions of politicians. People will take things like the Bain story how they want to, based on what they’ve already consciously or unconsciously decided. And some might criticize the Obama campaign for putting a lot of money into what seems like frivilous merchandise, but things like brand and image aren’t meant to persuade – they’re meant to create a stronger identity and community within the already-present supporters. Such branding is what made Facebook, Google, and Apple such monstrosities – and they are precisely where Messina went for advice.

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The Problem With Protest

Posted on June 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I thought today I might address the subject of protest.

At the tail end of last year, I came across this picture posted on Reddit:

Despite an overall positive response to the message, one of the highest ranked comments was a person arguing that the Klansmen, unlike the protestors, had permits to march, while the OWS movements across the nation were illegally squatting. Because they are on private property, it is only right that the police should respond in the ways they do.

I wonder if that person would’ve reacted the same way fifty years ago, when these young men and women were illegally occupying private property.

That’s the Greensboro Four, occupying private property in 1960 in protest of racial segregation. Ought the police to have pepper sprayed them for refusing to leave? The problem with attempting to make out the OWS protestors as criminals who are attacking social order is that this same reasoning has to be applied to criticize the women’s rights movement, the civil rights movement, the abolitionist movement, and so on. Even the men and women of the American revolution would, under this blind obedience to the law, be considered criminals and rioters- even traitors. Trying to pretend that the OWS protestors are nothing but vagrants and lawbreakers simply doesn’t work.

However, even if you can’t call them criminals, you can at least call them crazy.

I’m not going to lie, I’m not always a big fan of the crazy outfits some people will wear to protests to make a point. I don’t think dressing up as the Monopoly guy is really all that effective at communicating the messages you want to make.

You’re already protesting en-masse, the satire might be a little overkill…

I’m not saying that I’m right, maybe a couple zombie-protestors is just what you need to drive home a point of mindless consumerism. And I’m not against people wearing what they want to wear- I think the Guy Fawkes masks a la V for Vendetta are actually pretty effective at empowering people and creating a sense of unity. Nevertheless, you still hear people trying to discredit the movement because they don’t like the way the protestors look.

Is this what we’ve really come to? Because the OWS protestors aren’t clean shaven or wearing suits and ties (zombie bankers excluded), they’re just a bunch of moochers? Since when does nonconformity to a social “norm” suddenly create grounds for disproving someone’s views? You could take Jesus, drop him the middle of Times Sqaure, and if he’s dressed in the same clothes he would’ve worn two thousand years ago, then he’d be written off as some hobo or crazy ex-hippie.

But of course, not all the protestors are dressed like something you’d encounter in a post-apocalyptic carnival. You will find protestors cleanly shaven and dressed in suits and ties (who aren’t zombie bankers). What do we call these people?

Hypocrites- or at the very best, spoiled and privileged college kids. That’s right, dress shabbily, and you’re a bum, dress sharply, and you’re a naive idealist completely detached from reality. That’s not to say that such people don’t exist- I have a tough time accepting “revolutionaries” wearing Nike or buying from Starbucks, but to attempt to label the occupy movement as a bunch of hypocrites because they aren’t living in poverty is crazy. No matter what you do, you’re either an outcast of society or from the cream of society- either way, you’re message isn’t worth hearing. Perhaps the best mockery of this line of thought is this picture here:

This seems to be part of a greater issue with protest that people have- a vicious antipathy towards protest regardless of the content or the method. Let me explain.

A criticism a friend of mine once hurled at the OWS movement was that they “Just don’t do anything. They came, they complained, and now they should go home.” Now you might point out that many of the protestors are at the Occupy camps because they have no homes anymore, or even that one of the actions of OWS protestors is helping evicted families reclaim their homes, but let’s just focus on the protest itself. To some degree he- he and others like him- have a point; there’s only so much marching, chanting, and picketing can do. Take this guy for example:

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the Knesset isn’t going to rip down the barrier-walls in the West Bank or put a moratorium on new settlements because this guy demands it. There are very definite limitations to what this kind of protest can do, and as much as it is decried as pointless, do these critics really want to see the alternatives?

 

Let’s talk about civil disobedience hear- still (typically) non-violent, but certainly a step up from rallying. We’re talking about sit-ins, human walls, trespassing, and a host of other activities typically leading to charges of disturbing the peace and disrupting productivity. The kind of actions generally associated with MLK Jr., and his inspiration, Gandhi.

Seductive Gandhi is Seductive…

Of course, there are limits on this as well. For all the disruption a group may cause, there’s always the authorities to contend with- you might recall this particular photo:

There’s a case to be made for civil disobedience, but this does really lead back to the original problem of legality. Even if you want to argue for nonviolent actions against the law, one might point out that this is only effective in a situation where there’s a limit on how much you’ll be beaten, imprisoned, or in cases, even killed. I’m guessing that most people wouldn’t have told Jews, Gypsies, Gays, Socialists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses that civil disobedience would have been the best tactic against the Nazis. Considering that the OWS movement is a form of civil disobedience, one might also simply comment that no effective action is being taken by the protesters.

So what about “direct action”, as certain protestors affectionately call it? Black Bloc tactics. The smashing of windows, the overturning of cars, the setting fire to of public decorations (see the Greek anti-austerity protests), and so forth?

While without a doubt the most confrontational of all the protest methods available to the angry and the frustrated, this is nevertheless the single most universally condemned tactic, even by those who are supportive of the goals in question. “The Black Bloc protestors discredit the movement!” you hear over and over. From the latest NATO or G20 conference clear back to the so-called “Battle in Seattle”, you can hear the authorities railing against these “hooligans” and “rioters” and even the major figures of the protest pleading for non-violence.

 

And while the destructive methods employed by the more extreme elements of any protest are attacked, ranking in a close second in ridicule is on-line petitioning, Facebook sharing, and a host of other activities shoved under the umbrella pejorative of “Slacktivism”. The past “Kony 2012” campaign, while certainly questionable in its content, seemed to receive the majority of criticism by those who viewed the young people involved as arm-chair activists; at best, misled college kids caught up in the latest cause célèbre; at worst, lazy and entitled brats on a tier lower than the Occupy hipsters.

Now let’s take a step back and look at all of this. Marching- doesn’t work. Civil disobedience- either illegal or still ineffective. Violence- something to be avoided at all cost. Petitions- worse than marching. Added all together, the only acceptable option for people who believe that the system no longer works seems to be abandoning that belief. At this point, we really have to consider the idea that the issue isn’t with how people protest, but with protest itself. That these criticisms are all just rooted in the deeper reaction against public disturbance. There is an element of society who, when asked what action we should take, simply respond “don’t take action!”. Regardless of how you present yourself, or what you do, or to what extremes you do or do not go to- they will always be opposed.

And as disheartening as that might seem- there is positive flip-side to this.

If you just can’t please these people, why bother trying? With the fact in mind that there’s always going to be someone scowling from the sidelines, you’re free to do whatever you want to convince those who are actually willing to listen. If that’s not comforting, I don’t know what is.

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Fluffy Democracy and the 2012 Election

Posted on June 11, 2012 by | Leave a comment

I’m not a political analyst. But I am concerned – as a student and as a person – by the unquestioned, inherent value in the word and idea of “Democracy.”

I understand the need for a fanatic search for government other than despotism, especially in the past, and especially in the very early history of the United States. Democracy was the ideological banner under which the United States stayed United, after all. And the deification of the ideal upon which the government was sort of constructed seemed to be a pretty good plan – it tried something new, at least; it’s not common birthplace or allegiance to an individual or even language or religion via which Americans traditionally identify themselves, but work ethic and political representation.

And that’s a good and noble thing. But “Democracy” as we use it now is lacking in substance, and only vaguely reminiscent of the word’s original purpose and ideals. It’s a fluff word – a word that’s lost its weight, meaning, and context. Something we can tack onto any object to make it instantly American and socially approved.

And the need for quick and easy social approval is, I think, rooted in the decomposition of political efficiency in the form of the partisan two-party system. The two-party system, whether it is the best model of an election-based political system or not, focuses all public attention and energy on competition for competition’s sake. The goal of traditional political debates has been skewed from clarification of one’s views to beating one’s opponent.

Bill Keller, New York Times columnist and previous executive editor, suggests that the rabid opposition effect is increasing over time. We are in “The Age of Shouting,” politically and culturally, Keller says – where politicians study talking points more than policy and semantic slip-ups receive more attention than real inconsistency. He suggests that the current political scene will be slow to make any real progress towards culling the approach of economic entropy if it continues to value short-term popularity over long-term benefit. Attempting to cling to empty ideals has caused politicians’ relationship with the public to become an empty thing in itself; all intentionality is replaced with the rabid defense of platitudes to which we glue our identities, and any sense of common benefit is drowned out by the cry to defeat any opposition.

Jon Stewart, host of “The Daily Show” , was a guest on “Crossfire” – a CNN show that featured commentators sitting at dramatically angled tables and asking political figures loud questions – in 2005. He called out the show for being culturally destructive and deceivingly theatrical: “What you do is not honest. What you do is partisan hackery.” Stewart said to the hosts, “You have a responsibility to the public discourse.”

The comedian’s call towards participation in productive public discourse is impressively insightful. Democracy is a good and beneficial thing, especially for everyone who is not a) a despot or b) stronger than everyone else. But it does not magically self-perpetuate – because it is literally constructed of the public, it requires the constant activity and engagement of the public. Socially responsible and informed discourse is needed, and we’re not going to get it by finding cheap ways to win arguments. It’s going to take work and a widespread social movement towards real discourse to keep “Democracy” in the American lexicon as anything more than a buzzword.

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Instances of Apology to the “Younger Generation”

Posted on May 31, 2012 by | Leave a comment

One thing that’s striking me lately is the attitude of the older generation – Baby Boomers and even Gen Xers – towards the plight of the current young adult population. Take David Simon’s commencement speech to Georgetown, for example.

You did the work, you got the grades. Your parents are out there with you, prouder than hell. This is your day. And theirs. And who the hell is this lumpy white guy to come here and drip doom and despair all over the lawn in front of the Healy building? For the love of God, he’s sucking the life out of the big moment.

This is part of a trend, I think – there seems to be a handful of apologies from the old to the young being passed around. I keep expecting them to pull out a phrase like “the headlines these days”:

And every day, it seems, the headlines offer fresh examples of the greed and selfishness with which my generation has laid waste to its own possibilities.

I want to issue a sincere apology from the Baby Boomer generation to the younger generations. We have failed you profoundly. With a quick look at headlines, no one can escape the conclusion that some of you were raised without an ethical foundation.
– Pamela Wright on SpinSucks

We had contempt for our parents believing that “Father Knows Best” and “Leave It to Beaver” and “Superman” — with the show’s motto of “truth, justice, and the American way” — were good things for young people to be exposed to. So we replaced these shows with MTV’s mind-numbing parade of three-second images and sex-drenched shows for teenagers. Sorry.
– Dennis Prager on creators.com

There’s a lot of mention of MTV. One guy apologizes “for using sexual attractiveness as a substitute for all other forms of acting talent,” though his was not at all the first generation to do that, and some 25-year-old reply-apologizes for the types of music that he doesn’t like (including “3-chord pop rock songs,” which largely predate 25-year-olds).

This isn’t really much – I’m just thinking about the relationship between the older generations and the younger as time moves on. Is every era like this? Will we some day lament our failings to the younger generation, or is this just the new-ish self-deprecating-self-consciousness thing playing out in old age?

I have no good thoughts. It seems a little self-serving to use an apology to the younger generation to criticize the actions of your “generation” (ie, whoever was president while you were 30). David Simon’s commencement speech is pretty transparently anti-conservative:

Even during wartime, with our armies afield, we whine about paying taxes, though our tax rates are the lowest in modern American history. Meanwhile, though less prone to overt racism, we have nonetheless abandoned the precepts of upward mobility for all Americans, conceding the very idea of public education, of equality of opportunity. And as our society further stratifies, as the rich get richer and the poor become less and less necessary to our de-industrialized economy, we wage a war against our underclass under the guise of drug prohibition, turning America into the jailingest society on the face of the earth.

Whatever the intentions are, these apologies do little more than boast of the speaker’s political regrets, and are often just a “told-you-so” directed at whatever party happened to make a bad decision last, or just a frustrated “you suck” to the corruption in the political system in general. But do these things help? No. Did David Simon’s self-referential commencement speech give energy to the generation of students listening to it? Maybe in the last two sentences – he should’ve stretched these out and made the rest of it shorter:

But tomorrow’s task is to make this moment matter to your communities, to your country, to the world. And to make sure that at the end of your run, you leave that world better than you found it.

That’s what we need. We don’t need to be apologized to – we need to be inspired. We need unselfconscious enthusiasm, not snobbish jadedness. We need someone to tell us to pick ourselves up by whatever straps there are on our footwear, if the economy is going to be rebuilt. Well, actually, I’ve heard that we need the Euro to stay constant and fiscal policy reform, but the bootstrap advice is necessary too.

And as this is a quotey post, I leave you with the immutable words of Woody Allen:

More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

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Summer Update Schedule

Posted on May 30, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Tomorrow afternoon I leave for northern Ontario, the highest in latitude that I have ever been in my life. I will be working at a camp for the next two months, and during that time will only have internet access every weekend.

While I am gone updates will still go up on Tuesdays by my friend trotskyite, whose blog appears in the sidebar to the right. He will, in all likelihood, write about topics relating to government, social justice, et cetera. I hope you look forward to it as much as I do.

Elisa will continue updating on Fridays. She apologies for the past two weeks, but has been looking for a place to live in Washington DC. Good news everyone, a lease has been signed! She will have a post up this Friday per usual.

Elisa’s Addendum: I am now no longer homeless and will therefore cease to be a delinquent. All applaud Evan for being a good and patient person.

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