Virtually Home

Yesterday I took my last final, and today I was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. I'm waiting to see what grade I get in Animal Development, but otherwise my grades are final and I'm all set to graduate tomorrow. I'll walk across a stage -- twice -- and shake some hands and then I'll officially be an educated adult. I'm not sure how that's remotely possible. I know if I could meet me from five years ago, I'd probably notice a difference, but whatever change higher education has wrought has been unnoticeable to me. Next week I'm moving away from Oklahoma for the first time. I feel more melancholy about that than I thought I would. Not that there's anything inherently good about this place or its people, it's just that I've been working very hard for the last almost-23 years to find all the best people that live here, and now I have to start all over again, and what I have made here can never be the same, and the tyranny of distance makes all rel...

I went to bed last night feeling depressed about North Carolina's Amendment One. Today, the President restored some of my faith in humanity by coming out (of the closet) in favor of same-sex marriage, the first sitting President ever to do so. It's a poorly-guarded secret that he has been on our side all along, but to say it directly this close to his re-election is a brave move. Republicans are going to call it flip-flopping and a moral outrage. Black voters consistently demonstrate that they are opposed, and obviously are a major part of Obama's constituency. North Carolina is a key swing state, as demonstrated by the Democrats' decision to host their National Convention there this summer, and this probably won't go over so well there. All in all, though, I think this will do more political good than harm. Obama needed to energize young people, and give them back some of the hope for change they bought into in the months leading up to the 2008 election. He needed ...

North Carolina passed a terrible Constitutional amendment today, banning gay marriages and imposing a bunch of restrictions on unmarried couples, regardless of orientation. In a stroke, they discriminated against homosexuals and anyone who chooses not to marry, revoking hospital visitation rights, parental privileges, and preexisting restraining orders against abusive partners.      I have a lot of friends in North Carolina, since attending Duke TIP camps in Durham and the relocation of some Oklahoma contacts to the Carolinas. I've always found it a friendly place to visit, retaining all the hospitality and openness of the South, with little of the backwards tendencies native to my own home state. Apparently, I was misled by the atypical political climate of Raleigh-Durham. Some of my friends in North Carolina identify as GLBT, and their futures are a little less promising because of tonight's result. One friend has same-sex parents, and finds her parents' relations...

It's funny how impending change makes me take a harder look at my surroundings. I've been appreciating a lot of things I've taken for granted, lately. Just yesterday I walked into Richards Hall, which is one of two Zoology buildings on campus, and noticed some stonework invertebrates carved above the door. A beetle, a crayfish, a horseshoe crab. A grasshopper, I think. I should really have paid more attention for the last five years. Hell, for the last 22.

On my recent flight from Oklahoma City to St. Louis, an airline employee took the microphone to make an unusual announcement. The aircraft was transporting the remains of a United States servicemember home for burial in Missouri. I was surprised, to say the least. I feel completely disconnected from the war our country has been waging for the last decade, and I think that's not abnormal.  I tend to think of the military as something utterly separate from my peaceful civilian life. That commercial airliners are transporting the mortal remains of soldiers killed in action never occurred to me, but now that it has, it seems inherently wrong, and unsettling in a visceral and inexplicable way. It seems that their comrades in arms should carry them home on military aircraft, and that the horror of war shouldn't intrude on domestic travel arrangements. I can't say why I feel that way. Perhaps if war intruded more on our daily lives, we'd be more inclined to stop it. Maybe ...

This New Year's Eve I attended the fifth annual Flaming Lips New Year's Eve Freakout in Oklahoma City. I've been wanting to attend since the first year, but have spent none of my last four New Year's Eves in Oklahoma. While southern California, Paris, Paris and Belize was a fantastic NYE run, I was kind of psyched about getting to participate. The venue was done up in true Flaming Lips fashion, and I admired the lights and balloons and enormous mirror ball as vast improvements to the vacuous, concrete space that is the Coca-Cola Events Center in Bricktown. The opener was Phantogram, a three-piece band with a drummer, a guitar and a synthesizer, whose dance music was so bass-y that my esophagus must have thought it was experiencing an extended earthquake. No one really danced, which might have been because it was early or because the music was so out of line with what we expected to see next. They seemed genuinely psyched to be there, and having come from New York Ci...

Procrastinate Less. Corollary: If you're going to procrastinate, don't feel bad about it. Do something you want to do: Play more guitar. Read more for fun. Play more video games.