So I finished Harry Potter 6 today...an excellent and refreshing read. Just when I thought the books were getting repetitive, this one was told in a rather different way, with numerous revelations and a ton of questions you're left to chew on. I think it's my second favorite, right behind #3, Prisoner of Azkaban. Ah, there are so many speculative theories bouncing around my head...please, J.K., bring on Book 7 asap!

The future of energy
Today's Thomas Friedman column derides Congress' newest energy bill and insightfully outlines some possible alternatives, with Brazil as a comparison case.

Says Friedman:
It seems as though only a big crisis will force our country to override all the cynical lobbies and change our energy usage. I thought 9/11 was that crisis. It sure was for me, but not, it seems, for this White House, Congress or many Americans. Do we really have to wait for something bigger in order to get smarter?

Couldn't have said it better myself. Although I personally can only muster up enough energy to sit on the couch and read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Ah, summer.

Back in the USA
Ahhh...I've been back for three days and still can't properly talk about my amazing time in Peru. So this is pretty much the gushing synopsis I emailed to my college friends. Along with the eight students from the US, there were students from Peru, Spain, and France living, working, and partying with us. We lived in a crowded house in Chepen, a small town on the north coast of Peru about 10 hours north of Lima and 20 minutes from our site of San Jose de Moro. Our site was simply amazing. It was a mortuary and ceremonial center from about 200 to 1100 AD, and although my professor has been digging it since the 80s, new stuff keeps turning up every year. By "stuff"; I do not mean stone tools like I dug in Colorado last year; this site was so much bigger and more complex. I got to excavate skeletons that were buried with gorgeous ceramics, in addition to some metal, shell, and remnants of textiles. One of the skeletons was so well preserved that there was still hair on it. This is due to the incredibly dry, desert nature of the North Coast. Even though it was winter there, it was still hot in the middle of the day. On weekends we took bus trips to other sites and museums or visited the beautiful beaches. It was eye-opening to live among so much poverty, but all the people seemed incredibly friendly. The last few days of the program fell on Peru's independence day weekend, so we celebrated for three days straight. Both my Spanish and my salsa dancing are much improved since I left home, but then again, that's not saying much. It was such a wonderful experience, and I can't wait to go back to Peru to visit the highlands. Next summer I want top study Spanish in Cusco. The only things I really missed about home while I was south of the border were salads and my dog.

I'm flying back on the 15th to prep for leading a 4-day AT backpack. I'm secretly hoping the girl from The Scholar will be in my FOOT group. And my course catalogue came today and I've been planning my entire life, as ususal. Good times!

Oh, and to keep it blogworthy, this is the first time I've gone for a month without interacting with a single person who liked George W. Bush. In fact, I didn't see that unelected fraud's face or hear his self-congratualtory drawl the entire time. Yay! Unfotunately I did hear through the Internet about the worldwide terror attacks, O'Connor, Bolton...egh. Oh well, nothing lasts forever. And it doesn't help that I came home to find my parents following Big Brother 6.

Butto speak of more intelligent entertainment, I saw March of the Penguins today...a beautiful film both visually and emotionally. What amazing creatures. I want to visit every continent before I die, including Antarctica. Three down...

Hola de Peru!
Chilling in Chepen...Having so much fun! No time to hablar. Blisters on my fingers! I love getting dirty with sharp pointed objects. ;)

Adios!

Adios Amigos!
Mood:  happy
This is it! I'm off to Peru in a matter of hours. I'm going to be digging Moche tombs in San Jose de Moro, near Chepen. It's winter there. That's not really fair...someone owes me a month of summer! I think it'll do me good to get out of the country for a while.

Speaking of the country, I take back what I said about campaigning for John McCain in 2008. I TAKE IT BACK! I just can't do it after hearing him praise Bush's Iraq speech on Larry King Live. McCain is no Dick Cheney, but I just can't support someone who is so pro-war and unwilling to speak out against the lies and selfish policies that have gotten us into this mess. No way am I going to change my party registration (um, wtf?!?!) to vote for that poor misguided soul. No. Way. I'm blue, da ba dee da ba die...Better to just go down with the ship than try to jump back and forth between them. It's called integrity, people. So all you who thought my "brilliant" plan for temporary GOPdom was completely nuts, you win. Got that, you win! It was a bad idea.

Does this mean I'm a flip-flopper?

Maybe I should just stay in Peru :)

Have a wonderful July!

Officially Summer...
I'm tired of writing about the real world...there's nothing I want to say anymore that isn't being said with much more wit on The Daily Show

My, where has June gone? How do I spend my time these days? I'm not really sure. Finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo.I should have read it in French, though it probably would have taken me all summer. Still pondering my next summer reading venture...got a long plane ride ahead of me. I'm trying to learn Spanish before I go to Peru, but I'm being embarassingly lazy about it. On Father's Day (beautiful irony, people) I saw Revenge of the Sith again and loved it even more. Speaking of which, in honor of my Star Wars-themed post during the Vice Presidential debates, I now belatedly present this little Father's Day gem.

I had a magnificent, cleansing three days in the Grand Canyon. It was just what I needed. I can see why the wholistic guru Steve Ilg moved to Flagstaff. There's really nothing like the American West. I thought I would grow so attached to the northeast, but I was wrong. I love it out here so much where it's brightopen new...

I am looking forward immensely to Peru, though I just realized I only really have three more weeks at home this summer!
I will have a hard time maintaining my fitness routine there, so I'll focus on internal fitness. And fun, lots of that! Today I realized that going to a third world country is kind of like going back to the 1970s. Whee! :) I'm probably not going to bring my computer so expect another long, blogless hiatus. Sorry to break it to you; I know you just can't get enough rambles.

The Big News Nobody's Heard About, Part II
Last night I finally saw something on CNN about the Downing Street Memo. Unfortunately they did everything they could to downplay its significance. In a belittling tone, Aaron Brown tried to answer "why it hasn't gotten the attention some -- some -- think it deserves" in America comared to the furor in Britain. His conclusion? The memo surfaced right before the British election, whereas the U.S. election had been over for months. Um...no? It think it's because the press in the U.S. is being censored. CNN questioned the relevance of the memo given that wht matters now is not the conditions leading up to war in Iraq, but what we should do now that we're there. Well I'm sorry, but if the President lied to us an manipulated facts, even if there's nothing we can do to fix the resulting disaster, we need to make him explain himself. Tellingly, CNN skirted the issue of Bush's deception, brushing it aside by airing a clip of Blair and Bush denying they fixed the facts. Oh see, they say they told the truth. Now we believe them. Good job, CNN.

I wrote them an angrygram. :D

Quote of the Week



Republican politicians have come a long way since the 1950s. Check out this Eisenhower quote (no I'm not going to find a legit link. It's all over the net):

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."

If only that were stll the case.

Cry, the beloved country.

What to Say?
Grr.

I've been having trouble finding compelling things to write about, and yet I'm more disgusted than ever with the state of our nation and planet. I just feel like everything in the news is bad, so there's not much point in singling anything out. I'm just not surprised anymore.

Apparently Bush doesn't know where Wales is. Unsurprised.

According to the NYT, a White House official repeatedly edited climate reports in ways that play down links between emissions and global warming. Guess what? He used to be a lobbyist for the American Petroleum Institute. Unsurprised.

More Iraq carnage. Unsurprised.

Some people have been giving newly-unmasked "Deep Throat" Mark Felt a hard time. And by "people" I speak very loosely, as I am including Robert Novak. Oh, and G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan...what's wrong with this picture?

Sigh. There's so much more but frankly I just don't have the energy. Guess I'll go back to rambling about my personal life. As if I do anything in the summer! I am going to the Grand Canyon next week for those of you who don't know. Yay.

I'm just hoping that this is the worst it's going to get. We could do without, say, a war in Iran. But you never know -- badness tends to grow exponentially. I'm still optimistic about the long, long term. These guys just might do themselves in with their own scheming, and if the American people finally wake up, it could be hard for the Republican Party to recover. As Gandalf said, "Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes."

I can only repeat my November 7 entry:

It is starting to be better. In church today, we were told that no story, either of victory or defeat, is final. That despite our frustration, our path still lies before us, unaltered, and we are never done. That victory often breeds hate, because the losers dwell in bitterness, but that we must cling to love, though it be unfashionable. That we can learn to look at those who disagree with us, even those who would hurt us, and see the same human hearts, beating, the same wind filling all our lungs.

"The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Those were the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Before him, they belonged to Theodore Parker, a Unitarian minister. He was speaking in hope of the abolition of slavery. Thinking on those times, how can we not see the truth of those words? How can we not see that the liberal voices of the world are the ones that still echo the truths of history?


If real life were like Star Wars, I'd like to think that we're still mid-saga, with a few more Episodes to go to set things right. Then again, if life were like Star Wars...well I won't get into that.

Keep hope alive!

I Know It's Early, But...
Like 49% of the country (at least) and most of the world, I can't wait until the 2008 presidential election. Assuming the BushAdmin doesn't claim "wartime emergency powers" to allow for a third term (who knows, maybe they're still trying to get back at FDR), then November 2008 will finally free us from everyone's favorite self-righteous, fluffbrained marionette who thinks "disassemble" means "not tell the truth." But far more disturbing than Bush is the neocon network behind him -- a group that has demonstrated its contempt for the democracy it claims to promote. If you don't believe Bush stole the election from Kerry, that's fine, but so much evidence has accumulated towards that conclusion that it's starting to be more than just a crackpot theory.

So in 2008, the Bush crowd is going to need a new figurehead. Will it be Bill "Nuclear" Frist? Eh, too wimpy. Dick "Fuck Yourself" Cheney? Maybe, if he trained in the ancient art of smiling. The less probable options are even worse, including the likes of Rick Santorum and Jeb Bush. In a normal country, none of these guys could get democratically elected. Unfortunately, they don't seem to care about that. I have a feeling that elections will be manipulated in order to assure the ascension of a member of the neocon in-crowd.

Unless, of course, the neocons don't get the party nomination. There are decent Republicans out there who are very popular and stand a chance at unseating this bunch of frauds. This is why I will be (gulp) on the campaign trail for John McCain in the GOP primary.

I am of the opinion that no matter who the Democrats put up, the Republicans will win. A weak neocon will fix the election and a strong moderate like McCain (or his biggest competition, Rudy Giuliani) would win fair and square. I'd rather lose an honest election to a decent Republican than lose a stolen election to a right-wing whacko. So I'm going to spend the next few years urging Democrats to work for -- and, yes, switch their affiliation to vote for -- McCain in the primary. Once he's in, of course, we can all switch back, bring out the Hillary gear and fight the good fight, knowing we will be spared another Bush-like administration.

Sounds crazy, I know. But the Bush Club doesn't want McCain to be nominated. They'd rather have Giuliani, a puppet they can manipulate, if they can't find a strong voice in their own ranks. And McCain, conservative as he is, posesses enough toughness, integrity and knowledge not to bow to the neocons' will.

This just might work. I can't believe I'm doing this, but I think it's the only way to get our country -- slowly but surely -- back on track.