"Hi my name is Leann Anderson and I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. These are my kids Abbot and Maya. Maya's from China, we adopted her to give her a better life. We never dreamed she could be exposed to lead after leaving China, and now we find trains like this, that are covered with lead, in our home. My question for the candidates are 'what are you going to do to make sure that these kind of toys don't make their way into our homes, and that we have safe toys that are made in America again, and we keep jobs in America.'"


What are you going to do Mr. President? Maya's from China, she needs a better life.

China is cheating on trade and they're using that $200 million dollar trade deficit over the United States to buy ships planes and missiles. They are clearly arming and its in the interest of the United States to stop China's cheating.

Buy American, it might keep your neighbor from losing his job and it might help that young person coming back from Afghanistan or Iraq in uniform to have a job when they get back. Lets buy American this Christmas season!

I had tons of those Thomas the Tank Engine trains when I was little and it sucks that they are covered in lead because they good to play with.

There is no other pill to take

I am the Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria

The noose and the rapist, the fields overseer

The agents of orange, the priest of hiroshima

The cost of my desire


Sleep now in the fire

How bizarre

Destination unknown as we pull in for some gas
Freshly pasted poster reveals a smile from the past
Elephants and acrobats, lions snakes monkey
Pele speaks "righteous" Sister Zina says "funky"

Fleetwood on the stereo, the groove is pretty tight
Zina reaches over turns the volume to the right
Out the window's Meriwether and his buddy Clark
Wandering off to Oregon by the freeway in the dark

Hit the shoulder, four way flash, "hey guys want a ride?"
Hitchhiking's illegal but this time they let it slide
Trekking cross America with the finest buckskin on
William Clark is wide awake but Meriwhether's gone

Get to Oregon finally the rain is coming down
Stereo plays this goofy song 'bout elephants and clowns
Clark remarks that this whole trip feels like '93
Getting patriotic with TJ and John Quincy

"And then the law came"

I just had one of the more bizarre experiences of my life. I was walking home from my friends place at about 10:30 PM, a short walk through the student neighborhood by campus. Eugene is as safe as anywhere in the country, I pretty much feel comfortable walking anywhere at anytime of night. Sometimes you will get hassled by drunk people but I had never experienced anything threatening until tonight. When I was about 3 blocks from my house, some guy started yelling at a girl walking about 20 feet behind me. I just ignored (as always) but he kept yelling and then ran across the street so he was next to her. He was asking her directions to the bus station downtown. He looked pretty sketchy, looked and acted like he was on some sort of drug or just really drunk. Either way he was harassing her to a point where she was obviously uncomfortable. She did her best to ignore him and then said she didn't know where the station was, so he jogged ahead and started asking me where the station was. I told him that it was downtown and that he needed to go about 5 blocks straight and 5 blocks right. Moments later, at the next intersection, the girl turned left (away from the station) and he turned left right behind her, saying he wanted her to show him where the station was. At this point I felt like I couldn't leave her alone with him, since she was obviously pretty sketched out at this point, so I explained to him that "hey man, the bus station's that way" and after a couple of repeats of that he left her alone. Problem was he was now following me and I was still two long blocks away from my house. I kept walking and trying to ignore him; he kept talking constantly like sketchy people always do, talking about how he was coming from Seattle and Portland and how he was a city kid and asking me for beer money and that kind of thing. Then he started harassing a guy and a girl walking the other way, asking for "beer money for me and my buddy" I told them to ignore him and kept walking. Now I was one block from my house and he was a little ways behind me. He was still following me and still yelling about whatever. By now my heart was beating pretty good and I was walking about as fast as I could without breaking into a run. I got my keys out of my pocket and got the one for my door ready. Sometimes our door doesn't unlock on the first try and I was pretty nervous that I would be struggling with the lock while he caught up with me. Fortunately I was able to open the door quickly and locked it right behind me. He was still yelling outside and about 5 or 10 seconds after I was inside he got to the door and started pounding on the glass and yelling. I yelled that I would call the police if he didn't leave right then. He called me a "fag" and "dickface" but after I repeated this he left the door. I could now hear him yelling (aggressively) at other pedestrians passing by so I went upstairs to my room, where I fortunately have a BB gun, looked up the non emergency police number online, and called. By the time I was on the phone I couldn't hear him any more, so I assumed that he had moved on. My heart was still pounding and I was still completely on edge. Talking to the woman on the phone calmed me, she asked me all these questions about his appearance and I felt like I was on CSI or something. Moments like this give me faith in our law enforcement system; its amazingly comforting to know that at any point throughout this whole incident I can call the cops and they are there in 2 minutes to throw this dude in jail and make me feel like some sort of hero. The threat of cops is what made him leave in the first place, being able to say "I'm going to call the cops" is a lot more effective than anything else I could say to this guy. After he left, my heart was still pounding and I called my friend Eric because I wanted to tell somebody what had happened. Abnout 15 or 20 minutes later I heard the doorknob shaking; I said hello and got no response, then I heard the door open and said hello again and it was my roommate Beard. I was so relieved to have the whole incident over with, my heart finally slowed down.

This was the first time I have ever called the cops on someone. There have been times when I thought I should but didn't, probably because I didn't have the number. This makes me realize that its a good idea to have the non emergency line in your phone because situations like this aren't that out of the ordinary, even in Eugene. This is the second time in the past couple weeks where I have been really happy with the police, as long as you are on the right side of the law then they seem like a pretty good idea.

Sketchy people suck, that whole situation was so unnecessary and stressful for all involved. I'm sure there are good reasons why this guy was sketchy, but I don't want to hear them. I don't want to have to think about you in any way at all. You made my night that much more heinous and stressful than it needed to be and I hope you get arrested.

The Big Dog

"Dude Eugene is so boring"
"Class sucks, weather sucks, everyone sucks"
"Lets take the Greyhound Bus across the country"
"Ok"
"Dude I'm serious"
"Yea so am I"
"Lets take spring term off and take the greyhound across the country. We'll write about it and become the next big thing in 21st century literature"
"This is exactly how it feels to be 20 years old in America. Not how we're supposed to feel, but exactly how it is"
"And look at black people"
"Duuuuude, BLACK PEOPLE"
"dude I know"
"and everyone will be poor and we'll just kind of look at them"
"And kick with them"
"and just talk to them and get a feel for them"
"just get a feel for every different place"
"and be like 'whats up, I'm from Oregon, lets kick a little bit'"
"The Mississippi delta is shining like a national guitar"
"and we can see Regina Spektor in Savannah"
"Hell yea"
"And just get a feel for America"
"Cuz America's a pretty chill place when you actually think about it"
"Seriously lets do it"
"Seriously I'm down"



Yea what up America

One Hundred Years of Solitude

For the past year or so, since I've actually started reading and attempting to understand literature, I've wanted to read One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Based on everything I have heard, this is as good as anything written in the past 50 years and among the best 20th century literature. Since I generally agree with the consensus and because Marquez writes in a style that I usually find interesting (although I don't know that much about) I had high expectations.

I finished the book in about a week and a half, which for me is pretty good for a book of that length. Marquez is an incredible writer, he expresses exactly what he thinks through simple, gorgeous imagery that leaves the reader (at least me) stunned by its beauty. When I read a good but not great writer, I am impressed by their ability to express thoughts and emotions I know in ways that I am not capable of, or at least not capable of putting into words. What separates a writer like Marquez (or any other great) from writers like these, who are all talented but essentially interchangeable, is his ability to express thoughts and emotions that I have never had but make sense as if I had felt them all along.

What I mean:

"And Aureliano Segundo dying of solitude in the turmoil of his debauches (378)"

If I had somehow had the ability to write the entire book up until this point word for word as Marquez had, I would have almost certainly said,

"And Aureliano Segundo dying in solitude of the turmoil of his debauches"

Because this is how I would explain describe the death of Aureliano Segundo. And my description is wrong, it misses the point of the character and the entire book. If Marquez had chosen to write the sentence that way, it wouldn't stand out among every other sentence I read everyday. But Marquez switches in solitude and of solitude for the entire book, which is why he won the Nobel Prize and kids like me, along with any other person who has a soul, reads this book and are awestruck. But I could talk about Marquez's writing forever and never explain it, so it is better for everyone that I not try too hard.

Personally, I loved the book but can't quite consider it one of my absolute favorites. When I am reading a book like this for pleasure, I base my opinion of a book and an author on the extent to which the writing hits me; the moments when I am fully engrossed emotionally in the writing. With Marquez, these moments are frequent but interrupted by moments where I find my mind wandering and I need to pull myself back to the book. I can blame myself for a lot of this, since I often was reading at work or when I was really tired, which made it hard to lose myself in the book for long periods of time, where I can be awed by the smallest nuances of a writer's brilliance. However, a lot of the time I was reading in situations where I had no obvious distractions but still found my mind drifting as it usually does, which doesn't happen when I am deeply into a book. While nothing there is nothing that feels unnecessary or inefficient, the book at times felt overly long. Marquez's descriptions (especially of characters) are so lavish and deliberately extravagant that I found myself getting lost in imagery and forgetting what was actually happening. Once again, this is probably more my fault.

I also think that this is a book I should re-read every few years since it deals with so many characters at different stages of their lives. I'm sure that if I read it in a few years I will understand and relate to it differently than now.

Verdict:
This book is as good as advertised, if you are reading it (assuming you are reading this) and get bored STICK WITH IT because the last ten pages will give you goosebumps and the last page will give you tears.