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The need for a subtitle, a la "or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb", which oddly enough came up in political conversation, family banter, and the thanksgiving festivities last night, suddenly presents itself. The need that is, in case you forgot within mhy first of what will probably be many rambling run-on sentences. After all, although most will understand, I'm sure I can probably name at least one person who won't get the title.

Tuesday, a day which was to be a day of merriment, was supposed to include the first trip to Software Design class in which I was actually happy to go. The President Has Been Kidnapped By Ninja's finaly got to give their(our) progress report for the GBA development progress I've been busting my ass over for the past few weeks. We all figured that, since we've actually done work, unlike other groups, we should be a shoe in for favorites in the competition of outdoing other groups. Little did I know that our process would also be touted, and I think we might have introduced the wiki to the program.

But I didn't go to the presentation. Probably unarguably the 2nd most dedicated and as of yet productive person in the group, I didn't make our first presentation. I stopped to talk to Komitee about politics and ended up enduring the cold to find out we agreed on almost everything. It took us about an hour to get to this point, and when we reached the house in search of warmth, we decided (along with wei, who informed me of the presentation's success) to hit up Arthur's for some blackened scrod as a pre-Thanksgiving Feast.

As most of you might already know, I was a participant in the inflation of the balloons for the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City. I was on the vehicle team, which basically meant that I was a more valuable human than most of the other people there. Of course, after being part of a hose/valve duo that popped a chamber and dropping my valve to help out Krupnick, one could easily argue that I was actually just another second class citizen in an orange suit. Regardless, the parade was (as always) extremely fun to do, and you can take in my vantage point in all its glory somewhere in this mess.

After the parade, it was a mad dash to Grand Central Station, which ended in varied success. I missed the 11:53 express, as was to be expected, but I was able to both purchase a book and catch a local train that allowed me to read it at length. In one of the oddest coincidences of the past year, a young (attractive) woman who asked if she could sit in the seat next to me (and consequently did) was also reading the new Al Franken book.

After reading so much Chomsky, which, were it not for the devastating amount of evidence in its favor could be boiled down to conspiracy theory, the Franken book was actually a bit too right on the political spectrum for me. While it acknowledged quite happily that, say, Ann Coulter is a piece of shit, it made no mention that the media, which Franken seems to believe is mostly conservative, but liberal on social issues, is actually a massive power structure to keep people in check. Of course, I've challenged Chomsky's model internally many times (as it is rather outrageous and some what outlandish to believe at first glance), and from what I've gathered, it takes incredible insight to ask the right questions.

And sometimes, I see the questions to ask; usually when I hear the beginnings of them (or them in their entirety) elsewhere. And sometimes, I don't know the questions to ask. Chomsky makes it seem all too easy to ask questions outside the box, but I do not readily accept that it is. It either seems that Franken has not bought into the whole agenda as I have, or that he knows something I don't. It's crossed my mind more than once that, rather than something, he knows people and thus has personal connections constrict his view to something more elementary and perhaps more real than Chomsky's Orwellian view of the "big picture". Or maybe there is no one at the top, and the system's design is at the heart of the issue; that some dexterous hand set a direction so ingeniously that even those who followed did not realize it.