Well, first, for all three of you still checking this site, I ought to mention the biggest change to it: I’m writing again. If possible, once a day till New Years. We’ll see after that.
I ought to also mention the second biggest change on the site: I bought my first domain name, brisite.org. Update your links/RSS feeds/homepages, etc if you haven’t already.
Thirdly, despite all the massively important things going on in the state, country, world and my life, I’m only really writing here as a break from working on papers that will move me closer to completing my incompletes, thus completing my degree. As such, I thought I’d do the classic blog questionnaire I found on a brown alum xanga blog. Here goes:
1. Who is the last person you held hands with?
E
2. If you were drafted into a war, would you survive?
Yes. Is this question supposed to ask if I would serve rather than survive? That’d be more interesting, not to mention more predictable.
3. Where were you 30 min ago?
The Rockefeller Library. Just like now.
4. Do you drink milk out of the carton?
No. Never have. But I have been drinking more milk lately.
5. Have you ever won a spelling bee?
Yup. [Insert "Glory Days" by Bruce Springsteen here.] The more interesting part is that, the year after I placed 2nd in the City of Providence, I got out on the word “only.” I spelt it “olny.” To this day I swear that everyone in the room misheard me. And, it should be noted, to this day Sean McHugh has never let me forget this event.
6. Were your parents cool in high school?
Hard to tell.
7. How fast can you type?
Faster than most people, I think.
8. Are you afraid of the dark?
Only after I watch Predator II, with Danny Glover, not Ah-nuld. Cuz this time he’s in a city, not some remote jungle, and he’s pissed.
9. Eye color?
Blue. Quite blue, I’m told.
10. How old are you?
Twenty three. Or, according to the Birthday calculator: I am 23 years old. I am 285 months old. I am 1,238 weeks old. I am 8,664 days old. I am 207,958 hours old. I am 12,477,480 minutes old. I am 748,648,827 seconds old.
11. When is the last time you chose a bath over a shower?
I honestly can’t remember. Too long ago, then, I guess.
12. What’s your deepest, darkest fear?
That 1000 years from now, all traces of my existence will be gone and forgotten and that I will be marked on God’s great ledger as someone who didn’t end up mattering all that much.
13. Are you drinking anything right now! ?
No, but I’m jonesing for either a Red Bull or a Jack Daniel’s, depending on which direction this night is going.
14. Are you single right now?
No.
15. Can you hula hoop?
On a short enough timeline, absolutely. If it involves doing it for more than maybe 5 seconds, then no.
16. Are you good at keeping secrets..?
Yes. Most of the time for some things, and all of the time for others.
17. What do you want for Christmas?
A Nikon D50 or D80 and Aperture.
18. Do you know the Muffin Man?
No.
19. Do you talk in your sleep?
I’m told I have.
20. Who wrote the book of love?
Jesus, right? Right? Isn’t it, guys? Guys? Guys. Where are you going? Ok, how ’bout Erich Segal?
21. Have you ever flown a kite?
Yes, indeed. The first time was with Katie McCullough (now happily married, I’m told) when I maybe three years old. The Elmhurst Arboretum, the little development where I grew up, had a curved center section which produced the effect of there being something like one big huge backyard for the houses across the street from me. (Google Map – it’s the L-shaped thing behind all the houses.) Katie lived in a house on that center section (it faced the Wyndham side) and we used to run around in the “big backyard” and do things like fly kites and play tag. The first kite I remember flying was a really crappy free one that you got with a Happy Meal at McDonald’s. It only worked a) in a high wind, or b) if you were running flat out. I cannot tell you how long it’s been since I thought of this.
22. Are your parents divorced?
Not from each other, but previously from people they probably never should have been with in the first place. Dad calls those marriages the “Mulligan Round.” I think that’s as good a name for it as any.
23. Do you consider yourself successful?
Uh, no, not currently, but ask me in a month or so and the answer may be different.
24. How many people are on your contact list on your cell?
A few hundred. Thank God I have a Treo. I don’t delete numbers. Ever. I still have Lenehan’s cell phone number from Australia, and he got back in, what, June of last year? I still have the phone number of my legendary Little League baseball coach Charlie Ashton in my cell phone. You never know. You just never know.
25. Current hair color?
Uh, brown tending blondish.
26. Plans for tomorrow?
Back to the Rock. Then perhaps a little Constitutional! at Perishable Theatre.
27. When was the last time you said “I love you” and to who?
This afternoon, to my mom, as I was leaving the house.
28. How do you feel today?
Productive, which is a novel feeling.
29. Are you loved?
Definitely.
30. What color is the sky?
Looks blackish, with a hint of sickly-urban-streetlight-orange.
31. Are you a romantic?
Yes. To an embarrassing extent.
32. Are you black?
Though some people consider me an honorary black man, which I consider a high honor, but in truth I’m undeserving of the label.
33. Have you ever been suspended or expelled from school?
Nearly suspended in high school for visibly annoying the Bishop/yelling at Father Kenney. The Deal: I rather loudly criticized the Bishop during a Catholic Youth Leadership Mass. He had the gall to say that we did a lot to help the poor, the needy and the hungry, but that we should be ashamed that we haven’t done more. Us. The youth. People ineligible to vote and with no real income of which to speak were being reprimanded by a man who owned a cathedral and all its entrapments. So I starting mumbling, louder and louder, to Vuré Kpea, who was sitting next to me and getting more and more freaked out as I went on, about how he should sell every fleck of gold paint from the Cathedral to be melted down before he came here and berated some school kids. I said he should sell every pipe in the organ for scrap metal and open up the cathedral as a homeless shelter on the other six days of the week. At the very least, I said, he should seriously reevaluate the budget priorities of the Diocese. I found his whole thing offensive and disrespectful, much like the building it took place in, and continued to say so after we got back from school. Brother Michael reamed me out first, in that calm and powerful way he has but I’d never seen till right then. He didn’t care what argument I was making, he just thought it had reflected badly upon the school when their senior student leadership (me) wouldn’t shut up. He took me from feeling a righteous anger at the Bishop to that sickening sensation you get when you know you’ve screwed up in under five minutes. Per his instructions, I left his office without saying a word. Father Kenney, on the other hand, when he finally got to me, was all fire and brimstone. He threatened to have me suspended for showing such disrespect to a “Holy Man” in a “House of God.” He was livid and irrational and swore! I couldn’t believe he swore! but I plowed on and demolished every argument he gave to me. I was back in the zone. He ended up walking away saying, “Well, you’re still a little jerk and you should be suspended.” I couldn’t help but think that, despite the fact that Father Kenney is a really nice guy, if this were back in the 50′s and 60′s when it was fashionable to hit kids in school, he probably would have done it.
The next day Father Kenney had calmed down. He found me in the lunch room and took me outside to the hallway (my table made ominous and hilarious sounding music as I left to follow him–apparently it was common knowledge that I had almost or would still be suspended). He very calmly said, “Brian, you had a point yesterday. I thought about it all night, and I concluded that, to a certain extent, I agree with you. I agree that the ornamentation of that building can take away from the message and mission of the church. I even agree that the phrasing of the Bishop’s speech could have been better, since I refuse to believe he actually wanted anyone to feel bad about themselves. So there’s that.” I said, “Well, thanks.” He continued, “But I think you’ll agree that you were disrespectful and reflected badly upon LaSalle in a situation in which you were an explicit envoy of the school.” I paused a second, because I had thought about that fact all night after the Brother Michael encounter. “You’re right, and I’m sorry. There was a more appropriate venue to say the things I was saying and I should have used it. I’m sorry.”
This was a valuable lesson for when we started debating the contextuality of and inherent limitations on Free Speech in one of Professor Brettschneider’s Political Theory classes. Brown Professor Alexander Miekeljohn, during testimony before Congress and in his seminal work Free Speech and its relation to Self-Government, brilliantly analyzed the nature of Free Speech along these lines. He argued in favor of the teaching of the works of Marx in universities, which Congress was considering outlawing in his day, but in a larger context argued against a view of free speech that thought that anytime someone was told to shut up that rights were being violated. In his “nutshell”, town hall example, if a citizen walks into a city council meeting while the council is discussing a parking ordinance and starts shouting about how much he pays in property tax, the council is fully within its rights and the bounds of the Constitution for telling him to or making him shut up. The council would be violating the constitution if the citizen’s grievances were never heard, but they’re perfectly right to designate a proper time and place to hear them. It is a practical necessity for the maintenance of Free Speech, but an inherent limitation upon it as well. Thus we enter the fascinating universe of “what if?” Free Speech questions, but it’s a strength of our Constitution in the first place that such habitable and rich ecosystems of legal and philosophical thought can be contained within it.
So, to answer your question, no I haven’t been suspended or expelled.
34. What are you looking forward to?
Being done with Brown.
35. Have you ever crawled through a window?
I used to forget my key at home a lot in 6th, 7th and 8th grades. Luckily, at the time, there was an emminently climable pine tree that ran up next to the roof that was outside my window. Knowing I frequently forgot my key, I at least had the presence of mind to leave one of the windows in my room open just enough to push it up and get in the house. I always felt a bit like a ninja, albeit a slightly husky, slow,
36. Ever snuck out of your house?
Yes. Via the same tree and window as #35. Much easier than trying to sneak down our hundred-year-old, creaky stairs without being noticed.
37. Have you ever eaten dog food?
No.
38. Can you handle the truth?
Yes, but I can only take it with water.
39. Do you like green eggs and ham?
Already, display-of-ignorance time. I’ve always wanted to know: are green eggs a real thing? Is that done? Is it some obscure element of like Liechtensteinian cuisine that Dr. Seuss plucked out of obscurity? Or is it just something he needed as a block around which things would rhyme? Regardless, I like eggs. I like ham if it’s Easter and my mother made it.
40. What 2 things do you almost always bring w/you to places?
Cell phone, wallet.
41. Any cool scars?
Well, there’s the one from the tiger attack on my chin. (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge to any of my Indian buddies that remembers that.) All the other ones are really uncool. Especially the most recent ones.
42. Do you like or have a crush on anyone?
Oh, god, lots of people. E knows this, thankfully, and has some crushes of her own, so it’s all good. 
Who is this quiz designed for, anyway?
43. How many kids do you plan on having?
Jesus. I don’t know. Two at a minimum. But then again, to be perfectly accurate, I don’t plan on having any kids. Yet another good reason to be a guy.
45. Have you ever been in love?
Yes.
46. Do you talk to yourself?
Not out loud or anything. But there’s an Aaron Sorkin-esque inner monologue going on here. Know who does, though? This guy. All the time. You tune it out after a while.
47. Is there something you want that you can’t have?
Of course.
48. Personality, looks, or nice watermelons?
Um, I just realized this quiz was written for teenagers, most probably younger, female ones. Yeesh. But I’ve dedicated enough time to it now that I might as well finish. And, for the record, personality always wins but that doesn’t mean the other two were never in the race.
49.What are you thinking about right now?
Ukrainian economic reform and the Bush Doctrine.
50. Who did you last hug?
Murphy the wonder dog.
51. Where is your cell phone?
Dead in my bag. Taunting me with all those imagined missed calls…
52. What was the last thing you ate?
Slice of legendary LaSalle Bakery deli pizza.
53. What does your last text message say?
That my lovely cousin Leah wants me to come to Kansas after Christmas or for New Years or something. The phone is currently quite acutely dead.
54. Favorite color(s)?
Iceberg blue.
55. Last movie watched?
Sadly, Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj. Which was terrible, but redeemable if for only one reason.
56. What song do you currently hear?
Nothing. I forgot my headphonse.
57. What do you want?
Peace, prosperity and fulfillment for every human being on Earth.
58. Have you ever dated anyone on your top friends list?
Quite a few of them, actually, but none of the dudes.
There, now wasn’t that illuminating and refreshing? Right, well, out of the three of you who still check this site frequently despite its atrocious lack of recently updated content, thanks very much to you, the only one that made it down to the bottom of my “Quick Break” blogging that actually took me 3 separate “quick breaks” to finish. See, I’m so confident no one read all of the above that I’ve got no problem posting an egregious run-on sentence like that last one.
Now it’s back to work. Ukrainian economic reform, here I come.
See you tomorrow.
