micah makes photography : debt and taxes

debt and taxes

Thursday, February 07 2008

what a very long day today was. coming in to school today, caroline and i discussed that we could not avoid our senior project just because we were again freaking out. nicole was in class, so she and i started talking. about keeping things simple, paring it down, and staying true to our original motives. then we were reminded that it was senior lunch day, where an in n out truck comes (in n out is a burger place that is only in los angeles, i think) and gives us free lunch, just for being seniors. just kidding, it’s so that they can collect our contact information for the alumni offices, but still, the lunch is free. so we went down, got our lunch and ate it. they set up picnic tables outside, and the tables were relatively segregated according to major. this school is pretty cliquey sometimes. during the waiting in line, there was some conversing with other students, but eating of the meal, caroline and i sat at a table with a bunch of kids we didnt know, so the kids we did know sat somewhere else. we ate, and i wasnt having any of that, so i came over to the digital media table just to visit. i ended up sitting for a while and joking around with some cool kids.

honestly, i dont think the lack of relationships is on my part or theirs, i think it’s just that most of the digital media kids don’t know where i stand, and so they’re just not sure how to be friends with me. i came to this school junior year, after most the kids had groups that they stuck to day and night. thats two notches i’m swimming against. then i work in the lab, and i take a ton of classes in the graphic design department, they start thinking, “he doesn’t seem to want to be in one of our tight groups, maybe he doesn’t want to be friends with us.” but then i’m nice to them, and occasionally ask to do things with them. i think they just don’t know where to file me. which is partially my fault, i guess, but i’m not interested in being friends with less than a bunch of groups. it also doesn’t help that everyone likes working in the senior lab, my groupmates like working in the main lab, and i prefer to work in the big open space that isn’t a real room. it’s all very silly, to be honest with you. but the fact is, sometimes i feel like friends wit them, and sometimes i do not. the free lunch today was a mix of both.

in any case, after lunch, we got back to brainstorming. we started thinking of ways to change people’s perceptions about the value of kindness over the value of money. i went on a big long tirade about how money only has value because everyone thinks it does, and how awesome it’d be to have a holiday where everyone just takes a handful of bills and throws them away. and i started talking about communism, and the whole thing was a trip back to middle school, with shane around the campfire at my house, burning papers and writing the communist educational manifesto.

i came down from my cloud eventually. i felt better, less stressed, and more passionate about doing something again. nicole came. we stripped down our problem again to a different, tiny, black and white question. and then i came up with an idea, which may or may not be a fantastic one. we’re stressed out because what we’ve come up with so far is all so big, that no matter how great the idea is, we’re not sure we can accomplish it in time to not fail the class (and not get a degree). but this idea is simple and doable and captures our original goals, i think. but because we have a habit of running with good ideas that are impractical, i suggested we sit on it until sunday when we meet again.

then i went to film class. watched strangers on a train.

and after was work, where i did mostly nothing all night long. i watched a bunch of political debates and interviews, because it occurred to me that i know next to nothing about all the presidential candidates. it made me sad to hear that kicinich is no longer in the race, because i always thought his stance on healthcare was pretty cool.

i started watching these videos because i read an article from a blog i read a lot called natural news on hillary clinton, and how she plans on not only promoting, but essentially mandating private, for-market healthcare. healthcare, despite my generally decent health, is something i care about a lot. hearing about all the benefits eastern european countries provide for their citizens, and comparing it to the kind of provisions we get here makes me angry. i’m fairly sure that we need to implement a system where healthcare is provided to us for no cost. how that works, i’m not positive, and that’s why i say i’m fairly sure.

so i ran into some information about this guy named ron paul. he’s a republican, and i’m a registered democrat. no matter, i’ll listen if you have something to say, and boy does he have things to say. he’s so flippin’ honest, and he says shit that i agree with a lot. his stance is essentially that of the traditional republican party, in that we need to be laissez-faire. we need to get out of iraq now, and apologize to the world for fucking shit up. he said that the attacks on 9/11 are a fairly direct response to all the bullshit our previous few administrations have been throwing at the middle east for the last ten years. rudy got pretty pissed in a debate when he said that, and he didn’t stand down, he had an opinion and stuck with it. the most attractive thing i think he’s been saying is that we need get rid of departments in the executive branch. no more department of home security, or education, or energy. his biggest deal is that the government is too involved in too many things that out to be left up to the people, or at least the states. there’s so much bureaucracy in our system, he thinks we need to cut it off at the knees. that is something i agree with. he suggests that we should trust the marketplace instead of the government, that turning things like healthcare, drugs, and energy over to the cut throat competition of a capitalist system. and while i’m not especially fond of capitalism, the point is choice. he suggests that by giving a citizen a choice in these areas, it forces the providers to try to earn our business, and inflated prices will have no choice but to become more reasonable. he basically is saying, “the government is all f’ed up. i’ll cut it down to something manageable, if you guys can start taking care of yourselves.” he talks to us like responsible adults, and i appreciate that. he keeps referring back to the constitution, and quoting ben franklin. “The Constitution was written to restrain the government, never to restrain the people.”

i’ve got to get ready for tomorrow, but those are my thoughts for the evening.

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