Well... We'll Just See, I Guess.

Hugo Chavez is worrying the shit out of me. For those of you who haven't heard, Chavez, the President of Venezuela, was given by the Venezuelan National Assembly special powers that make him nearly a dictator for 18 months, which he plans to use to advance a socialist agenda in Venezuela. Normally, I'd be singing the praises of anyone who intends to advance a socialist agenda anywhere, but the way in which Chavez is choosing to go about doing so is a serious cause for concern.

It basically comes down to the question of what kind of man Hugo Chavez is. On the one hand he may be the type of man who will use these powers responsibly and only to achieve the goals he set forward that convinced the National Assembly to grant them to him. If so, he will, at the end of the 18 months, gracefully return power legislature after making some of greatest strides for socialism in recent history. However, he may simply be another power-mad dictator who has used socialism as a means for personal gain, in which case the cause of socialism will have been dealt a serious, catastrophic blow.

A central goal of socialism is self-determination by the vast majority, which President Chavez's actions do not reflect. Regardless of how this all turns out, my opinion of Chavez has been diminished. Perhaps I'm just a pessimist, but it occurs to me that someone who is truly committed to a socialism would never even think to ask for such powers as Chavez has. However, I'm not going to write him off completely. Like I said, this may have many positive results for Venezuela. I just wonder if the ends truly justify the means, if those means are so contrary to the spirit of the ends.

Let's just hope Chavez doesn't use his special powers to get his country embroiled in a hopeless war under false pretenses that is clearly not in the best interests of his people. That really would be a dictatorship! ...oh

Introducing: CREEPSVILLE

My friend Bill's company, Petite Monster, has just finished developing a new animated TV show called Creepsville. Here's Bill's description:

It's called Creepsville, and is about a group of outcasts in high school who all live in a town where B-Movies and 1950s comic books are real. The one thing that brings them all together is working on the high school paper -- but that doesn't mean they actually like one another.

Tommy is a Richie Cunningham-like Zombie who is squeamish and is afraid of everything. Sunny-May is the rootin-tootin' cowgirl from Gunslinger Junction who intimidates all the boys with her tom boy attitude. Hoshi is a 10 year old high school junior, and is skeptical of anything supernatural, and Glub-Glub is a stuck up, aristocratic, foreign exchange student from the next town over from where H.P. Lovecraft's Deep Ones reside.

This is FUNNY. ADVENTUROUS, MYSTERIOUS, and SCARY! And has a lot of intended cameos by some very famous punk, rockabilly and psychobilly musicians. Exactly the people who love this kind of stuff.

If you like how this sounds, please help spread the word! Send the poster (above) to all your friends, post it on your blogs, and eventually watch it when it finally arrives on your picture box. I'll post more information about it as that becomes available.

As The Reverend Says...

Between Utopia and Heroes.

I was kinda thinking that I'd make a different blog now that I'm back in the States, but I'm too lazy to pick a new template and come up with a new name. So, I'm just gonna keep posting on this one.

Right now I'm sitting in the Student Center at DePaul, having just gotten out of my Utopia class, waiting for my Hero and Anti-Hero class to start. The chick sitting at the computer next to me is listening Aerosmith and thus so am I. If I had any input in the matter I probably wouldn't have gone for Aerosmith (it's Dude Looks Like a Lady, fyi) but whatever.

The biggest news of the last week was that my dog Ted had to be put down last Friday. We're not exactly sure what was wrong with him, although my parents have formed their own professional opinions on the matter. We'll hear the results of the autopsy in... a week and a half? You may think it strange that a dog is getting an autopsy, but let me remind those of you who knew him that he had a regular vet, a dermatologist, an allergist, and a behaviorist. He received shots every ten days for allergies and was getting a daily dose of prozac (yes, prozac) along with kidney medicaton and eardrops. Getting an autopsy is hardly an surprizing step. Anyway, that had me pretty bummed out for most of the weekend, btu I'm feeling much better now. Having homework to do and classes is a good distraction. I have some very cute pictures of him that I'll post later, so you can all be like, "Aw, what a cutie."

Listen, I have to go to class now or else I'll be late and my teacher HATES it when people are late. It's almost to the point that I'd say if you're late, just don't go at all, except for the fact that he's been known to call people at home to ask them why they didn't feel that coming to class was necessary. How awkward is that?

Newt Gingrich: Constitution-Shmonstitution

Newt's lost it. In addition to just being a bad person, now he wants the US to reexamine freedom of speech in light of the threat of terrorism. I'm not going to go on and on about this because I can't think of anyone off the top of my head that would think this is a good idea (other than Hitler, Stalin, and Kim Jong Il), so to belabor the point would be a waste of time. However, I will say that I would rather live in as a free man in a dangerous world than a slave in a safe one.

We should all run out and pick-up copies of Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451 while they are still works of fiction.

Read more about Herr Gingrich here.

Almost the home stretch.

It's gonna be a busy couple of weeks. I have three papers all due on Dec 1 and a report for Feargal due as soon as possible. In between the 1st and now I'm going to a fancy hotel (paid for by the program!) for Thanksgiving and then going to Amsterdam for a couple of days. So far I have one paper done, one paper started, one paper in limbo, and the Feargal's thing is sluggishly plodding along. I'm sorta wishing I haddened planned this Amsterdam trip as it takes up the only weekend I have to work on stuff, but there's nothing to be done about it now. And it's not like it isn't going to be fun. Once the papers are all done and turned in all that's left to do is finish out the internships and study for finals!

One of the other students in the program mentioned that there's only, like, 25 days left until we go home. This semester is flying by really fast.

Connemara and The Ring of Kerry

My mom says that she prefers pictures to my writing, so, in honor of her, this post will be very picture heavy, very text light. The following photos are from my trips to the Connemara and The Ring of Kerry.

This first one is of some canons outside Bunratty Castle.


The Cliffs of Moher.


Connemara–maybe the prettiest place on earth.


Again, Connemara = really pretty.


Seriously, it's just common courtesy.


This is a deep lake that connects to the ocean. It is also pretty, which is the theme of this post.


Kylemore Abbey. (fyi–I'm not checking the spelling on these place names. Laziness.)


The "neo-Gothic" church near Kylemore Abbey.


Parts of the Connemara are called the Gaeltacht. In these areas they speak Irish as their first language. (They have houses with roofs too, I just thought these were more interesting.)


A patriot goat in the Ring of Kerry. Apparently, his name is Puck.


Pretty river in the Ring of Kerry.


I just liked this one, so you get to look at it.


This is a neato village in which we stopped.


This is the view form what I believe was called Lady's Lookout. Queen Victoria liked the view, or something, and that's how it got it's name.


Same thing looking the other way.

Okay, that should satisfy your photo-hunger for a while. It was a really good tour. I definitely recommend it.

Chance to Dems and Bill Maher: "How 'bout we not do the witch-hunt thing"

Ever since the Mark Foley scandal there has been a lot of talk about who else might be gay on Capitol Hill. Last night on Larry King, Bill Maher outed RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman or at least said that everyone thinks he's gay and he's never denied it. While it is, admittedly, pretty damn funny that all the people who have fought against gay rights are, in fact, gay, I would warn the Democrats and folks like Bill Maher that they are treading dangerously close to starting a witch-hunt for gays on the Hill. The focus of our message should be on their hypocrisy, not their sexual preference. As the party that passes as the liberal wing of American politics, we should be encouraging people from all walks of life to become involved in government. The last thing we should be doing is outing every homosexual on the Hill because we are pissed about the last six years and want revenge. Let's take our revenge by over-turning every laissez-faire, bigoted, big-business favoring, labor crushing piece of legislation they've passed since they took control of Congress, while pointing out their hypocrisy and corruption that is so repugnant to the public trust.

The Stations of the Cross

My roommate, Preston, turned 21 last weekend. To celebrate, we decided to do a pub crawl that we had heard about from a few people. This pub crawl is called the Stations of the Cross, which consists of 14 pubs around Trinity College in Dublin. At ewach pub you're supposed to have a drink. 14 pubs, 14 drinks, and all in one night.

From what I remember, we had a good time.

The thing that stuck in my memory was actually our journey home, not the pubs themselves. All the mass transit in Dublin closes down at 11:30 at night. After that, the only way to get home is on the Night Bus. So, being that it was about 2:30 or 3 by the time we finished our 14th drink (I, actually, only did 13 because I was getting way too drunk) we boarded the Night Bus back to Dun Laoghaire. The double-decker bus was PACKED with people. We were lucky enough to get seats on the second level. As we were pulling out from the stop, the woman sitting next to be starts singing Don McClean's "American Pie" and, to my utter joy and suprise, the WHOLE BUS joined in. We sang every word of "American Pie" and then Preston starts humming Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" to himself, which the woman hears and instantly begins to sing. Before I knew what was going on, the whole bus is singing the damn song, including guitar solos. It was maybe the coolest thing I have ever seen. No. Not maybe. It was DEFINITELY the coolest thing I have ever seen.

London

So week before last was our midterm break, which gave me the opportunity to do some traveling. The first stop was in London with my roommate Preston. We spent about four days there bumming around and checking out all the tourist traps. The first full day we were there we decided to walk from Westminster to the Tower Bridge, stopping at the Tate Modern along the way. Turns out, that's a lot farther than it looks on the map. We made it through the Tate remarkably fast. It didn't really have as much cool stuff as I thought it would and it was really packed. However, there were some pretty cool things there, like three HUGE slides that go from different levels of the museum to the lobby. I kinda wanted to try them out, but the lines were a bit too long and we still had plenty things to get done that day. After that we made our way to the Tower Bridge and took a tour of the inside of it. From the walkways above the bridge you can get some killer views of the city. By the time we got out of there it was getting close to dinner time so we decided to move back into the center of the city and get some food. For dinner I had a wonderful bacon cheese burger, but Preston's meal was really the star of the show. He ordered the Giant Burger, which is a includes a regular burger patty, a chicken breast, bacon, and fried onion rings. Then Preston had a heart attack and died. After that Preston's corpse and I had drinks at a pub called Shakespear's Head. It was a good night.

In the morning Preston was resurrected and we took some bus tours similar to the tours we took in Dublin. I should say to anyone who is going to a major European city that these bus tours rule. They take you to all the major stops where you can get off, spend as much time as you want, and then catch another tour bus. It's aweosme. One of the highlights of that day was seeing Buckingham Palace. It's a nice house. Also, we went into Westminster Abbey and all the other blah, blah, blah tourist stops. Not the London Eye, though. That thing's a waste of time.

The day after that, we thought we were going to go to Trafalgar Square to see a parade, but we totally missed it. While we were hanging out in Trafalgar Square trying to figure out how to spend the day, we saw a HUGE crowd of pigeons and a woman who very possibly spends most of her time feeding them. I hate pigeons. Preston, however, thought it was great so we we ended up spending some time there. Then we hit the National Gallery and the British Museum. both were packed to the gills, but still pretty cool.

The next day we flew back to Dublin. There are pictures with no titles or decriptions on my flickr page if you want to look at 'em. Find there here.
I'll post about the rest of midterm break later... the tea room is closing so I have to bail.