Study: 38 Percent Of People Not Actually Entitled To Their Opinion

CHICAGO—In a surprising refutation of the conventional wisdom on opinion entitlement, a study conducted by the University of Chicago's...

JoelNotes

As suggested by this NYT article
if I had to list all of the novels that I thought were too long -

The Scarlet Letter - whole thing in one headline: PURITAN SLEEPS WITH REVEREND, BORES 11TH GRADERS FOR YEARS TO COME
A Tale of Two Cities - Dickens was paid by the installment (chapter)...and it shows.
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Enjoyed most of the book, but could have done without the last two decades.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - did Hermione really have to campaign for house elves' rights? How would that help fight Voldemort?
The DaVinci Code - Monty Python's search for the Holy Grail is better.
Ayn Rand - anything she's written. Why did I have so many copies of the Fountainhead as a 1st year?
The March - As long as the Civil War.
Finnegan's Wake - I still haven't finished reading it...

Can't sleep, clown'll eat me.

Just for exposition's sake, I was staying over at my cousin's house over the weekend and slept in their basement, which was also their kids' playroom. Both their kids being boys and under the age of five, the playroom was naturally littered with toys.

Ok, so the real story begins when I was getting ready to sleep when I heard this horrible, mechanical noise out in the darkness. Being groggy and having drank a fifth of bourbon earlier, I thought it was my imagination, so I went back to closing my eyes.

Like twenty minutes later, I heard the same mechanical, scratchy noise again, and could distinguish that it sounded like laughter. Another 10-15 minutes later, the same horrendous laughter again. I finally got up, trying to look for what this shit was, turned out the basement lights, and looked around. What grabbed my attention the most was this clown doll of my nephew's was lying on its side on the floor, but when
you pressed the button on its back, it made the same piercing laughter I had heard. Having seen horror movies about toys killing people, I threw the toy into a toy chest and slept in the family room under the pretense it was cold in the basement.

Now, I hadn't heard the clown toy before that night, so it couldn't have been a sound I would remember which leads me to wonder -
was it a) just my imagination and my psychosis playing tricks on me?
b) a mechanical failure of the toy?
c) the beginning of that creepy Stephen King novel?

So, yeah, to sum up this entry, Spring finals are done and possessed toys are haunting me.

Political Side: Don't agree with giving total amnesty in new immigration bill, but at least it takes care of better enforcement policies.
Personal Side: Congratulate my friend V for giving me further incentive to visit Chicago again.

Party Like Its 2008

Anyone else tired of the 2008 Election already? I dug up this old article of mine from three years back about the problems of the primary system today. What did most states do? Try to move up their primaries to earlier dates. My only mistake - what crack was I smoking when I picked Dick Gephardt?
"Primary system fails America"
http://maroon.uchicago.edu/viewpoints/articles/2004/01/20/primary_system_fails.php

If only U.S. presidential elections were chosen by the candidate who got the most items on a Scav Hunt list...one can dream.