ISleepInADrawer.com

Sacrifice

Me: "As a Catholic, what are you giving up for Lent?"
Zach: "Men."
Me: "Darn it."
Zach: "As a non-Catholic, what are you giving up for Lent?"
Me: "Times New Roman, the world's worst font."
Zach: "I don't think it works like that."
Me: "Don't rain on my parade."

Favor the Foolish

I came home Tuesday to find that someone had foolishly tried to shove a pipe through my below-ground kitchen wall using a van. Perhaps the act was some new fad in plumbing, as I soon found out that the person responsible for this spontaneous redecoration was my apartment building's unofficial handyman. His repairs are underway, though I currently have this hole in my kitchen wall that is waiting to be patched up.

On the plus side, I sat up last night to reread Edgar Alan Poe's "The Cask of Amontillado."

Made of Radiation

A quiz in honor of Presidents' Day:

1. Name three of the five Presidents who were never elected to the the Presidency.

2. How many Electoral College votes are required to win the Presidency?

3. Name two of the four Presidents who, while winning a majority of Electoral College votes, failed to win a plurality of the popular vote.

4. Eight Presidents have died while in office. Four were assassinated, and four died of natural causes.
a. Name three Presidents who were assassinated.
b. Name two Presidents who died of natural causes.

5. George W. Bush is our 43rd President, yet he is the 42nd man to serve as President. Explain this discrepancy.

6. One President and two Vice Presidents have resigned their respective offices. Name the President and one of the Vice Presidents.

7. Name one of the two Presidents to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

8. Name the President who, following his term in office, became Chief Justice of the United States.

9. In the event of the death, incapacitation, resignation, or removal from office of the President, the Federal Constitution (Article II, 20th Amendment, and 25th Amendment), the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, and the U.S.A. Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 specify the order by which holders of eighteen federal offices would accede to the Presidency.
a. Name the first two people, and their current offices, on that list.
b. Name at least one other woman (and her current office) on that list.
c. Though there are eighteen offices on that list, only sixteen people are currently listed on the Presidential line of succession. Why? (Note: all eighteen offices are currently filled.)

10. Name the first American President born after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Answers!

1. Name three of the five Presidents who were never elected to the the Presidency.
John Tyler, William Henry Harrison’s VP
Millard Fillmore, Zachary Taylor’s VP
Andrew Johnson, Abraham Lincoln’s VP
Chester A. Arthur, James Garfield’s VP
Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon’s second VP

2. How many Electoral College votes are required to win the Presidency?
A majority, 270 or greater.

3. Name two of the four Presidents who, while winning a majority of Electoral College votes, failed to win a plurality of the popular vote.
John Quincy Adams
Rutherford B. Hayes
Benjamin Harrison
George W. Bush (1st term)

4. Eight Presidents have died while in office. Four were assassinated, and four died of natural causes.
a. Name three Presidents who were assassinated.
Abraham Lincoln
James Garfield
William McKinley
John F. Kennedy
b. Name two Presidents who died of natural causes.
William Henry Harrison
Zachary Taylor
Warren G. Harding
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

5. George W. Bush is our 43rd President, yet he is the 42nd man to serve as President. Explain this discrepancy.
Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as President. Thus, he is considered both the 22nd and 24th President.

6. One President and two Vice Presidents have resigned their respective offices. Name the President and one of the Vice Presidents.
President Richard Nixon
Vice President John Calhoun (1st Jackson Administration)
Vice President Spiro Agnew (Nixon’s first VP)

7. Name one of the two Presidents to be impeached by the House of Representatives.
Andrew Johnson
Bill Clinton

8. Name the President who, following his term in office, became Chief Justice of the United States.
William Howard Taft

9. In the event of the death, incapacitation, resignation, or removal from office of the President, the Federal Constitution (Article II, 20th Amendment, and 25th Amendment), the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, and the U.S.A. Patriot Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 specify the order by which holders of eighteen federal offices would accede to the Presidency.
a. Name the first two people, and their current offices, on that list.
Dick Cheney, Vice President
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House
b. Name at least one other woman (and her current office) on that list.
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State
Mary Peters, Secretary of Transportation
Margaret Spellings, Secretary of Education
c. Though there are eighteen offices on that list, only sixteen people are currently listed on the Presidential line of succession. Why? (Note: all eighteen offices are currently filled.)
Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez (born in Havana, Cuba) and Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao (born in Taipei, Taiwan) are ineligible since they are not natural-born citizens.

10. Name the first American President born after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
Martin Van Buren

My Space

With Zach now out of town approximately five days each week until April, our weekends together have become anything but ordinary. I've approached them lately with a sense of urgency, concerned that his hectic schedule isn't further stressed by any "nagging" on my part. I've tried (and, I regret, largely failed) to keep the oddities to a bare minimum - to make his time at home as smooth and relaxing as possible.

Unfortunately, one noticable rift has ruptured during our weekends together in the past month... a rift that will no doubt widen. In the bedroom, you see, he's not at all happy.

Over three years ago, about a month before Zach and I started dating, I bought a bed. I really needed to because, at the time, I had no bed and, rather than sleeping in a drawer, I'd taken to sleeping on the floor. Unfortunately, I'd been too spoiled by nearly twenty-three years of creature comforts, and after a few days (and a stiff back) decided to buy a bed.

While the bedframe itself was a relatively simple design to fall in love with, I made a rash decision in regards to size: full. At the time, I recall a small, yet persistent, bitter taste in the back of my throat. I'd never had much luck with dating in college, and my recent move to Seattle had been just as fruitless. And, on the subject of beds and bedrooms, that distasteful topic had suddenly been thrust to the front of the line. Looking at the prices for full, queen, and king size bedframes and mattresses, I furrowed my brow and made a decision based entirely on the assumption that my love life would be nothing but a barren, chaste, and futile exercise. Why spend money on a larger bedframe, after all, when I'm going to be the only person in it?

Some time later, we started fitting two people into my full sized bed. Initially, it worked out just fine. Zach and I negotiated sides of the bed quite peacefully... or, at least, any complaints he had early on were stuffed deep into his subconscious mind, only bubbling up to the surface in the phrase, "James, I think I'm going to sleep over at my place tonight."

Last summer, we moved in together. I don't really recall the negotiation process, or how we ultimately chose my bed over his -- but, about a year ago, we both slowly began to regret it.

Perhaps, as we age, we become more sensitive and restless sleepers. Perhaps we've gained weight. Perhaps our bed has shrunk. Whatever the reason, in the last year, and particularly in the last month, we've both grown increasingly dissatisfied with our bed.

Some complaints are part of the usual war-between-the-sheets. I like lots of blankets, while Zach doesn't enjoy being suffocated. He claims I steal the covers, while I claim he thrashes about so violently that the covers are thrown unceremoniously on top of me. The list goes on and on, and for the most part we've been able to negotiate, UN-style, a workable division of the bed. Seattle's mild summer nights have also helped tremendously, keeping the "temperature issue" largely sequestered to the darkest months of winter.

Unfortunately, here we are in the darkest months of winter (though, thanks to El Nino, these weeks have been anything but dark). I thought we'd get through winter just fine in the bedroom, what with Zach sleeping five days a week now in another bed. But, this taste of freedom for both him and me has merely accelerated the descent. Before Christmas, Zach would drop subtle (or blatant) hints that a new bed is definitely needed by spring, while I would bemoan the investment I'd made three years prior when I bought the bedframe, and how I haven't yet squeezed my money's worth from that cramped design. Just after the New Year, however, I found myself abandoning that position and, instead, have silently agreed that - yes - it is time to upgrade to a queen, at the very least. Since most of my days (weekday or weekend) are filled with teaching responsibilities, however, I have not yet had the time to go search for one with Zach.

Thus, for now, our weekends have been exercises in coping and biding our time. We whine and thrash about, each collecting small basketfuls of insomnia and, in the morning, forgiving each other for the night's transgressions... each secretly harboring desire for the new week when, again, we each have a bed to ourselves. Granted, we miss one another, but we do tend to sleep well Monday through Friday.

We will get a new bed... a bigger bed... soon.

Me: "Do you know what I find most ridiculous about our situation with this bed?"
Zach: "What?"
Me: "Remember how once, about two years ago, after that party, you and I and [name of female friend] were all able to fit in it just fine?"
Zach: "Yeah."
pause
Me: "And doesn't it strike you now as strange that you and I can't seem to negotiate a space in this bed at all?"
Zach: "Well, yeah."
Me: "Then again, both [name of female friend] and I were horrifically drunk and immediately lost consciousness."
Zach: "Yeah, that did help, actually."

It always does.

Northern Ireland

This morning, my daily dose of NPR's Morning Edition nearly ended in personal disaster. I nearly choked on my Americano and scone when I heard Mike Shuster begin a special series of reports entitled "The Partisans of Ali: the Origins of the Shia-Sunni Split." My near-choking was triggered not by the report itself, but the announcement preceding it, which is best paraphrased thus: "since we [Americans] don't know much about the most basic differences between Sunni and Shia Islam, it's about time we started learning."

My jaw dropped. "You've got to be kidding me."

I wasn't speaking to anyone directly, particularly since the room was empty. I hope you, the reader, doesn't find me too naïve at this point... but, I was honestly surprised because, as far as I knew, Americans by and large did know the most basic differences between Sunni and Shia Islam.

Of course, I knew already that several key political figures in our government were caught thinking inaccurately that the split came down to geographic partitions or, worse yet, were completely unaware of the split at all. These facts, depressing though they might be, I knew, acknowledged, and accepted.

But, though concerned by the apparent lack of even basic Sunni-Shia knowledge among some goverment officials, I had not yet given up hope and resolved to change my name and move to to Tristan da Cunha. "Even if [those in government] choose to remain ignorant," I said to myself, "the people still know, and that's what matters." My reliance in the knowledge of "the people" (that is, my 300 million fellow Americans) is based largely on my own (admittedly unorthodox) views of democracy: that, though "we, the people" secede much of our power to the republican style of government (through the various representatives and leaders we elect, and the Constitution through which all our laws and statutes are based), "the people" still retain sovereignty and assume responsibility, either directly or indirectly, for all the republic does. Thus, though I weep for the ignorance of government, I reserve real despair for any ignorance of the people.

Of course, this has happened. It wasn't even a year ago when I discovered that most of my fellow Americans don't know much about geography, and don't think they need to know anything about geography. I wailed and tore my clothes and hair back then -- and I still bitterly confront anyone who dares to assert that it is not important to know even the basic locations of Louisiana and New York, or Iraq and Israel. But, after my rage cooled to a more measured, tepid indignation, I tried to sympathize. The world, after all, is large and complex, with many countries. Granted, as I believed then and still assert today, I'm not smart, and yet I could ace a basic geography quiz ("And if I can do it, anyone can do it."). Still, I acknowledge that we're all busy with different interests, jobs, and lives to lead. Thus, perhaps my expectations of geographic knowledge are a bit too harsh.

But, there can be no excuse for ignorance of even the most basic knowledge of the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam. While I'd been willing to tolerate news of such prideful ignorance among goverment officials, it is repugnant to learn that most Americans ("the people") have either discarded, or never bothered to learn, such a fundamental division within a world religion. You, the reader, at this point might be wondering where my information regarding "the people's" knowledge (or lack thereof) of Islam is coming from; here's the most brittle part of my argument, the weak foundation of my house of cards. I've been listening to NPR most of my life (early on through my folks, and in high school and college on my own). I feel pretty confident that NPR, of all the news agencies out there, gives the least amount of background in their news reporting; that is, they assume their listeners are at least vaguely familiar with a topic before diving in, and keep basic background to a minimum. Thus, if NPR suddenly feels the need to define "Shia Islam" and "Sunni Islam" for their listeners, it's a pretty safe bet that MOST of "the people" chose to remain blissfully unaware that such a division even existed, let alone rests at the core of the current conflict "the people" permitted their republic to undertake.

If NPR has to spell it out, then "we, the people" were woefully ignorant, and thus I begin to despair and flagellate myself for incorrectly assuming that most of my fellow Americans knew some basic facts of Shia and Sunni Islam... such as the four countries with Shia majorities, or President Ahmadinejad's frequent references to "the hidden imam," or whether Hezbollah was Sunni or Shia...

As before, my own failure here rests with my immovable self perception: I am not particularly bright. The vast majority of you could easily know what I know by only expending a fraction of the energy it took me to conquer such knowledge. Thus, if I'd learned the basics of the Shia-Sunni split at the age of ten during the Gulf War (as I'd assumed most of my generation of Americans learned it), then surely, then surely the rest of you could learn it (and had learned it) at a fraction of the effort.

And, more importantly, I'd assumed that all of "the people" had realized the obvious importance of knowing and understanding such a fundamental split before beginning a war in a country with such a fractious Sunni-Shia mix.

Imagine, as several of the above linked articles suggest, an outside party (How about Saudi Arabia?) intervening in Northern Ireland without knowing a solitary bit about the Catholic-Protestant split?

Belfast would never know such madness.

Shame on us. All of us.

Children of Men

Well, I certainly can't fault them for a lack of creativity.

His Way

friend: "Hey James! Are you all pumped up for the Superbowl this weekend?!"
uncomfortable silence
me: "Oh, yeah. I'm totally on the edge of my seat! I hope they hit some home runs to the goalie!"
friend: "You know, you could just say, 'No. I don't like football.'"
me: "Yeah. But, my way's more fun."

Actually, I'm all pumped up for a weekend of excitement. The same flavor of juicy, heart-stopping, mind-blowing merriment that has defined my week (and kept me away from my precious website) will also define my weekend...

Yes, I'm referring to that time-honored aftereffect of teaching... that cherished antidote for the doldrums... grading!...

you (the reader): "You know, you could just say, 'I've been busy grading assignments, and will be for several more days, at least.'"
me: "Yeah. But, my way's more fun."