Relative pronoun happy

I have been observing Spanish's effect on me.

I can read advertisements and signs written in Spanish and carry on conversations with a Spanish speaker. Lately it's been wreaking havoc with my written English.

I've become a bit that-happy.

I mean that as in "that girl," "perhaps that," stuff like that.

The Spanish equivalent of the word "that" is the word "que". Not "qué" (with the accent) mind you, that's "what".

"That" is a relative pronoun, as is "que".

As you, my readers, English speakers (most of you), may consciously or unconsciously know, you can leave "that" out of a lot of sentences.

Just look at these two sentences, logic problems aside:

I hope GWB becomes emperor.
I hope that GWB becomes emperor.

If you didn't spit your coffee onto your keyboard and monitor, both sentences read pretty much the same to you, right? Apparently the omission of "that" is celebrated in some circles, and my written works come back with red ink all over the thats.

Espero que GWB se llega a ser emperador.
Espero GWB se llega a ser emperador.

The second sentence is wrong, wrong, wrong according to about.com and the Spanish Academy people who make all rules about Spanish and enforce them with scythes. I haven't decided if this that-dropping ability that English has is cool or not. Are we just lazy motherfuckers who can be bothered to include a one syllable word in our language? Or are we so smart that we want to avoid being Captain Obvii (or Obviouses if you prefer).

I don't know.

If you weren't an English major that's probably the most extensive grammar lesson you've had since 7th grade. I do apologize. I just had to express the extent of my that-troubles. I'll end this by saying I love apostrophes.

Regulation

I'm still alive.

I've just been kicking my own ass to get the medical school application in. Times a tickin' and I think I've finally finished all of my drafts. I've just sent it to a few special people to proofread, and hopefully they'll get back to me, and I can fire this baby away and truly relax.

Approximately 4,000 words written about myself. Not a novel, maybe a long column. And if any of the schools like me there will be plenty more to write, but that'd be great. That'd be a good problem to have.

Besides that, I've been clubbing, researching, museuming, bar-hopping, reading Tristram Shandy and dancing.

Stories shall be told?

Cream like

In the United States, if you're of mixed heritage, you are seen as black. The question of whether this is a good thing or bad thing is a dumb one.

Everyday that I see a book about race relations, or some soft scientific study about racial "tendencies" I tense up a little bit. I hope with all of my heart that the field of sociology that discusses race goes the way of phrenology, or of alchemy. Like everyone, I want everyone to be 100% color blind, but it's difficult in a society that has and still does place such a tremendous importance on it.

Since 1967, when LBJ mandated affirmative action, he propagated a lame ideology -- the ideology that something has to do anything with race. Now that we've flipped racism over on its backside and punish people with light skin for their past with racist policies, it is difficult to let it go. Why do newscasters feel it important to include race when reporting the identity of juveniles who were arrested for vandalism? Why do we as a society feel obligated to point out who the first latino, first black, or first asian to do something was? I am sure it was a much more difficult accomplishment then than it would be now, but it's bad for us. We need to stop focusing so much on race, and look more at poverty.

It seems like the only way for us to forget about race will to take the words out of the dictionary, we need lose the ability to articulate race, we will only become more intelligent from doing that. Even if those are impossibly drastic measures, I'd like everyone to try a little bit harder to look at their everyday life, start stereotyping less, and do more to try and find out about the people around you more. I've kind of already broken my code by writing this whole post. Forget about it if you don't know what race is, you're doing a good job.

They decide to kill

With Israel and Hezbollah currently embroiled in some ugliness, I am finding it difficult to agree with either side. Israel is destroying Lebanon's economy, and Hezbollah kidnapped some soldiers in an attempt to get Palestinian and Lebanese detainees released. Even if this doesn't turn into WWIII, this will just provide justification for seventy years of fighting. I fully expect these people to still be at it in 2106.

I've always had a certain fascination with obituaries, it's not a macabre interest, I am pretty much just interested in how people lived their lives, however short, and however long. Most western newspapers focus on Israel's own death toll and the details of each death, and gloss over the deaths in Lebanon, and they've long been glossing over the deaths in Iraq. Perhaps because there are so many more. But we can try harder.

I can understand not giving the terrorists a platform, but I would like for American newspapers to place obituaries of those killed in bombings in their papers; sectarian, insurgent or otherwise. Obituaries may be too big, but at least give them the victims the dignity of a name and an age. Make the American public realize these people are more than just statistics.

Los de Minneapolis

Continuing my theme of falling in love with politically defined spaces of earth, I hereby declare my love for Minneapolis, Minnesota. I will have to give serious thought to raising my children here, however far away that notion is. I have been thinking about that a lot lately (whether outright or subliminally), especially since everyone that I am working with here possesses the marital status engaged or married, and all of them possess 1.3 children.

While I've been here, I've done my best to put as much stress on my ankles as possible, walking in concentric circles, losing myself in the metropolitan maze that is the grid of a city. The activity of the Minneapolis scene is simply contagious. I've been feeling pangs of guilt with regard to Washington D.C., most of the guilt is wondering if D.C. is as magnificent as Minneapolis/St. Paul, and I simply ignore it because it is not a foreign entity to me. I'm making a promise to myself to exhaust any D.C. novelties that I have failed to exhaust. Here, I'll even list three things that I would like to do before October, when I'll feel especially weighed down with my 7th semester of college.

1. Visit the Roberts Supreme Court.
2. Visit the Capitol.
3. The Lincoln Memorial too.

I've done 2 and 3, just when I was too young to truly appreciate it. Right now what I am appreciating is the bizarre thought of planning things to do in D.C. while I am still elsewhere -- the city of my dreams. Part of the non-nostalgia guilt is also being disconnected from the klitsch of the politics world. Minnesota is political, but it feels like the president is more of a mythical force, instead of someone being close enough for you to go outside of his nice house in an okay neighboorhood, and scream obscenities at him. He can't hear you, but the feeling that he can is unbelievably real.

Oh, and the first beer that I have legally consumed in the United States was a Modelo, purchased today at Panchero's Mexican Grill in a downtown Minneapolis mall. He asked for my identification, and with two parts joy and one part consternation I ripped that baby out. The joy came from officially being a 95% free adult, and the consternation came from looking over to my left and seeing a father (not much older than me) and his son (probably born in 2003). Un abrazo.

Wanker

I feel bad for a lot of people. The homeless, people without medical insurance, bigots, people who have no where else to turn, widows and widowers. All of them pull some strings on this big heart of mine.

So someone different got to me today. I've been fortunate enough to get through life being able to avoid an enormous number of anti-social assholes, but every once in awhile you're some are thrust into your face in outstanding form. Now, I am not talking about people with personality disorders whose brains lack certain chemicals, I am talking about people with personality problems because their views of the world are by choice fucked up.

His father is the same way, so what choice does he have but to become equally as grating? It's either genetics -- or the father passed on his fuckedupedness by continually being a fucked up person to his son. There needs to be a book written that explains proper comportment to these crazies. I feel bad for him because he drives me, a self-described unangry guy to dreaming of performing dangerously flawed wrestling maneuvers on him.

As the reader can guess, this was a bad first impression.

Unfortunately, the personality that he possesses will carry him far in life (academia), and I am sure that in a few years he will be quite the successful person. People like him make the America need therapy.

G. gallus

Today is my birthday. The first beer that I buy I'll let you know when I take a picture of it.

As far as age goes, I like the odd number ones better than I like the even ones. I feel sharper as an odd number age. Odd number ages feel real whereas the even ones feel like stops on the way to odd numbers. I cannot articulate that feeling further, but I am glad to advance a year.

As far as feeling old goes, I do. I know I am far from being wise-ancient. Half of me wants time to pass so that some wisdom does accumulate, but the other half wants to freeze time and keep things as they are. Change is inevitable and I can only hope that sum of of the changes are positive.

Have I changed substantially within the last year? I think I am better at doing what I want to do. Situations that I am in are more or less of my choosing. That is probably the consequence of being further removed from a relationship where obligations run so rampant. My comfort zone hasn't changed, I think I have just been making smarter decisions. Hopefully that's a permanent upgrade.

A iluminación

I've convinced myself that television shows like CSI and all of its varying offspring and Law & Order (offspring as well) contribute to the insanity of America. In this post, America's insanity shall be defined as the continuing lust for homicide in all forms.

The television show producers' primary ambition is to entertain us with the mystery of a twisted but protoypical heinous crime. This is not just a modern concept, mysteries have been long popular in dramatic literature. Middle English has mysteries -- suspense is an incredibly powerful grab. The problem is that television is beautiful. Producers can make death look great, and they can do this episode after episode.

Their secondary ambition is to warn us to not to try and break the law, because we'll be caught by the meddling detectives, no matter what we do -- even if we burn all of the evidence and move to Romania. I am waiting for the day that Congress sanctions these television shows for providing knowledge to criminals because it threatens national security. Hell, they did it to my best friend The New York Times, why not Dick Wolf?

Their third ambition is to attract professionals to the field, which I shake my head and fist at. There should be regular television shows that attract people to the field for actual corrective purposes. Instead of teaching students how to catch the criminals and becoming forensic scientists, they should really be taught to how to do everything they can to rid the local neighborhood of poverty and it's multitude of side effects.

The only good crime drama is the kind that we glean from real life, from something like CourtTV, where they serve to educate ordinary citizens about the legal process and the rights afforded to all participants in the judicial system. There's still a bit of sensationalism there, but due process is something everyone should understand.

In thrall to the sirens of July

Every year, July finds some way to pull me outside for most of the day. No matter where I am, if I am indoors, I look outside jealously at the trees wishing I could be like them. The trees laugh at me and say, "We sure don't wish we were you."

Now this is not a product of sunstroke, but a product of my imagination. Of course I don't really hear the trees speaking to me.

My accommodations given to me while I am staying here in Minnesota are great, and I have been loaned a bike to fully immerse myself in the Minnesotan experience. So today I biked a whole hell of a lot. I avoided looking at my huge scar from a bad, bad fall of a bike in April 2000. I think of scars as little wisdom marks. There's a fine line of course, too many and you're just clumsy.

The one thing I love about language are accents. I love almost every variation of English that I hear. And the Minnesotan accent is one that I enjoy hearing. It's mostly a rural thing, so not everyone has it. Disappointing if you ask me. I try to start conversations with people that I have identified as carriers of the accent so that I can bask in the differences blessed upon us by geography. The Minnesotan accent sounds like -- at least to me a Marylander, like they take great care with each vowel that they come across -- so careful that the word itself becomes mainly vowel, and they rush through consonants. It's a stellar experience. Watch Fargo for extreme versions of this accent.

Grist

Today I played the role of scientist, commuter, and tourist.

As I mentioned at the tail end of my previous post, I am in the great state of Minnesota. I'll try to give you a little more than the wikipedia article.

I am a guest researcher in a research lab on the Twin Cities campus. Even coming from Maryland, which ain't so bad, I feel like I have stepped into the ultimate form of America. The ultimate form of America can be described as having every nuclear family outdoors most of the day, all of them riding their bikes down the plentiful bike paths, caring for their incredibly well manicured lawns, barbecuing their veggie burgers as frequently as possible, helping their neighbors, blaring NPR from all orifices of the home, and all of this occurring while it's being 77 degrees outside. Quite possibly the definition of heaven on earth.

There is a co-op craze here that can only be chalked up to the beautifully progessive nature of the state (or at least the Minneapolis metropolitan area). I felt somewhat hickish telling my colleague that I did not care whether my food was organic or whether it came straight from the beaker of PepsiCo. But everyone knows where at least three co-ops are. I am sure by the time I leave will have been completely pushed to the extreme left of the political spectrum.

On a semi-related note, I have become a vegetarian -- but I've known that I was going to become one since February, but that is another post.

I traveled over to Minneapolis campus today --taking in the massive massiveness of it all. St. Paul and Minneapolis are called the twin cities because they are right next to each other, and the Mississippi River splits them in half. Minnesota is such a cool state, that it built a transitway -- on which only buses and bikes are allowed on, between the two campuses. One can easily commute between the two campuses. The two campuses together are home to 60,000 students. The Minneapolis campus is where most of the students are educated, and as you can guess, things are built upward. The new buildings are impressive. The old buildings are impressive. This place is just impressive.

As you can tell I am impressed. But by many more things.

Internal Standard

The medical school application process continues.

There are two excruciating parts about the actual application. One is something everyone applying anywhere goes through, which is the personal statement. The personal statement is how the medical schools figure out how you tick, what makes you you.

So that's not too bad, I think I can tell someone who I am. I hope.

The most difficult part of the application is describing up to fifteen life experiences to the medical school. It feels incredibly unnatural. It is essentially forced boasting about the things you have done, the places you've seen, and what you've gleaned from that. I am trying to walk the fine line of too much detail and poor summary.

Oh and I'm in Minnesota right now, which is pretty close to heaven on earth. More later.