civic duties

today, i spent the morning devoting time to a variety of (neglected) civic duties.

first, there was a peace rally in uptown Oxford today, which i missed b/c of the cold n wet weather, so that was a bust.

then, i realized i had forgotten to file my taxes. which is ironic, considering that i've spent every Saturday morning for the past 2.5 months helping other people with their's. so, after rummaging thru stacks n stacks of various papers and forms tucked away in the drawers of my desk, i finally salvaged the 1040EZ instructions i'd gotten from my library at home many months ago (ha – i must've thot i'd get an early start on this...)

only to discover i'd failed to get the actual form.

i was close to giving up at this point, but thinking i should probly do at least one civically responsible thing today, i pushed on and am now typing out my tax forms on Adobe (the whole situation was considerably improved by listening to French poetry podcasts. "Le pont Mirabeau, qui coule la Seine...")

anyway, the point of writing all this: i found it quite an absurd juxtaposition of civic duties: protesting (to exercise freedom of speech, to be critical of the government, thus to be a responsible citizine) & taxes (to pay give some hard-earned $ back to the state so they can spend it on the war i'm protesting and not put it into educational reform or healthcare or ...)

it's also raining cold wind this morning, with no sign of sunny warmth in the near future. is this really April?

confused.
-stephan!e

laughing at life's absurdities

in coming back to school with the intentions of taking as few classes as possible, i somehow ended up taking 26 credit hours worth (twice what i had intended!) b/c i am trying to add grad-level classes, i have had to go to all my classes, both ones i've signed up for and those for which i am awaiting approval. but in running back and forth between classes, i have also managed to miss parts of most of my undergrad classes, causing me to need to drop them. so, in trying to take 26 credit hours, i may now be reduced to none at all. that's how yesterday's math makes sense.

---

in other news, i got an email from my school today announcing fellowships from the department of homeland security! obviously, i was all a-flutter with unspeakable joy and wonderment! how my heart doth beat with anticipation...

but i was all agape with disappointment when i looked only a little deeper into the situation:


the department of homeland security's fellowships are only offered to science and technology students who can help develop and implement "innovations that can be applied to the DHS mission." what mission you ask? well, this one of course:

let's take a closer look:

mmm, ok, yeah. i'm glad the department of homeland security could help me discern what it is they actually do. it's all so clear to me now!

and of course, i'm glad to see the security of our homeland is in the hands of such conscientious and non-colorblind individuals.
i was glad, as you should be, to note that our nation's level of security can be defined so succinctly, so poignantly, so colorfully. it gives a whole new meaning to terror when i can see it on a sliding scale of high energy visible light.

so when speaking with visitors to our strange homeland, and the question of national security comes up (as it inevitably will) in conversation, you can reply coolly and knowingly, "why, dear sir/madam, it is currently ORANGE. you're lucky: a few years ago, we were in a horrible state of an utterly unflattering, unappetizing, unwelcoming MUSTARD YELLOW. welcome to America!"

clever people. always thinking...
-stephan!e