There are days when you want to crank "Rock Lobster" and there are days when you want to quote Chuck Palahnuik and Bret Easton Ellis.

On a good day, the norms that society seems to agree upon are all well and good, but worth disregarding in the name of good humor. On a bad day I just want to betray those norms so that I can prove that I can. As if any limitation on my own insane free will would indicate that I have no freedom.

If a sane man may not behave like a mad man, lest he be caged like a mad man, which man is the more free? Maddening, isn't it.

Here's what I do when I find a cognitive hole like this one: I blow it up. I tell myself that none of it means shit. Sane? Mad? Freedom? What does any of that really mean in the free world. I can do anything that I want to do, and I'm extra lucky because the vast majority of the things I'll ever want to do won't harm anyone. So rather than bothering myself with thoughts of self-constraining desires, I'm going to go play video games.

See how easy it is to be healthy?

Mahalo.

"It is true what they say--males are from Omicron Perseii VII and females are from Omicron Perseii IX."

So...

We won.

In other news, I'm sleeping again, which is just as great as I thought it'd be.

Peter Goldmark, who's running in WA-05 against Cathy McMorris (eww!!) is as proud to be a Democrat as I am. He's proud of what his party stands for, and proud of its record across the decades.

That said, even the wee D we've got in our tv ads is a bit of a gamble out here.

And this is the point. Peter isn't running to represent Democrats or Republicans. He's running for a position representing everyone in the district. And as much as I like Ned Lamont and as much as I wish Joe Lieberman would just go away I want to make this clear:

Successful politicians, like WA-05's own Speaker of the House Tom Foley, are successful because their electorate's get the perception that these politicians actually represent them.

We keep talking about how different Democrats and Republicans are. Well how's this for different: I'm a proud Democrat, but I wouldn't want anyone to vote for me because of my party affiliation.

<i>Mahalo.</i>

So this Saturday afternoon I fly away from the sun.

I'm off to the Canadian shores of Lake Huron where I will hopefully get some tan, get some laid, and get some relaxed.

I spent two days driving around the northern half of the district delivering 4' by 8' signs. I was undercover, in a giant red Suburban with no radio and no AC. Much of the time I was up in the mountains, though, so that was nice. Kept the heat from being too oppressive.

I wished I'd had my camera when I rolled over Sherman Pass. There was a massive (21,000+ acres) forest fire up there a few decades back, and the area's recovering pretty nicely. Not to mention the incredible view to the east from up there. It really feels like Middle Earth up there. Especially in winter. I felt like I should have been just barely able to sense a lurking fiery evil deep in the bowels of the sealed Dwarfish mines below the bedrock of the mountain's bones.

Speaking of Middle Earthy things, there was also, as I descended into Okanogan Valley, an incredible volume of smoke. I suppose it must really be summer, because eastern Washington's on fire.

I'll have more when there's more to give.

A week ago I returned to this venue in triumph. My victroy cries echoed, like a shout into a coffee can, though.

I got sick. A viral infection in my lungs. I coughed up mucous ranging in texture and color from a thick pale yellow through a chunky dark brown, flecked with red (which may have come from a cinnamon mint candy) before finally returning to a thin, clear mucous. I got better.

I was laid low, thrown out of the office. Now I'm back, sans hubris.

Here in a week I depart for Kincardine, Ontario, Canadia by way of Detroit, by way of Minneapolis/St. Paul, by way of Geiger Field outside Spokane. It's apparently something of an ancestral stomping ground.

I'm going because my grandmother died and no one could show up. It's sad, really. I was in the midst of my thesis, and the rest of the family were hopelessly strewn about the country with various entanglements.

I could have received no better gifts from my grandmother than the kindness she always showed me, the determination she showed in fighting her disease and a week's vacation on Lake Huron in the first week of August. High's will probably be around 30C (close to 90F), muggy, mosquito-infested, even. But it's got to be better than 105F in the shade and 18 hour days.

Thanks, Grandma.

I was dead for a time. I have ruturned, like the Phoenix, rising from the embers of my own creation. Or something.

So... What's new?

The aforemention'd plan has work'd.

I am a political warrior.

I fight because I must win. In victory, there is honor.

In defeat, there is only destruction.

I am samurai.

I have a plan. It's totally insane, but it's a plan.

I'm going to sleep ASAP, and getting up at two. Then I'm getting in my car, and driving to Spokane. Why in the name of all that is good and pure would I do such an asinine thing?

I'm going to meet a man in Spokane about a job. It seems that a guy I have a very very loose connection to is running for Congress in my home district (WA 5 represent!). So I'm going to go and pay his campaign manager a visit. I've already been tentatively offered the title of Press Monkey and Message Masseur. Okay, I made that title up, but you get the picture. I'll also be on the inside track, depending on how things go, on the very real title of Deputy Campaign Manager for Operations, which gives me the chills.

Then I'm coming back, because I have nowhere to stay in the Spokaneasy. Perhaps, when I'm on the other side of tomorrow I'll have another dispatch. Perhaps it will even resemble this bold Plan.

Perhaps not.

Mahalo.

I got out of that ugly T-hole. I actually turned the beast in 3 whole
days early. My Oral Defense is this Thursday at 8 a.m., but that's an
entirely different ballgame.

I party'd. There are certainly photos, likely they will soon be on the
Facebook, but I certainly took none. I considered it blatantly
irresponsible to take such an innocent device into such a Pit of
Debauchery.

It was a seriously awesome weekend. In, like, the biblical sense. Let
me put it like this: I hit a game-winning RBI double in the pooring
rain, got a sunburn, lost my wallet, saw about a thousand people I
wanted to see, saw exactly two people I didn't want to see, gave the
president of my college a champagne-soaked bearhug, spent a very
restful five minutes sober, saw fireworks, hugged everything,
conquered myself, saw Jason Webley, saw a Michael Jackson coverband
that was better than the real thing (and, coincidentally, whiter!),
and climbed onto the back of a giant gull flying above the front lawn.
With no hallucinagens!

I also realized that for the last 8 months or so I've been kind of a
dick to some of the people who matter most to me. I became so
self-centered that I would catch myself thinking about my thesis
rather than paying attention to conversations. Oh sure, my thesis
enabled me to be such an asshole, but I can't blame it. It is a
product of its author, like everything else. I made it my emotional
punching-bag, my crutch, my excuse. I withdrew.

I finally became so solitary that I broke up with my girlfriend. My
ideas, my thoughts were everything, and she kept getting in the way,
occupying my mind. And the nascent issues with our relationship,
rather than being a pleasant challenge to solve, became a threat to my
success. In short, I turned into a villain from a James Bond film.

I told her a long time ago that I had chosen this path through the
swamp, this set of coping mechanisms, and that I needed to see it
through to the end. I chose this. I apologized to her for it. It
wasn't fair to her.

All of this has been a test. A test of myself. A test of my character.
I wanted to know whether I could be an academic. So I established the
patterns that led me to the most successful thesis that I could. I
inscribed a new field of study in the social sciences. I synthesized a
method of rationally tracing intellectual history. And I wrote the
first thorough academic review of one of the most important political
theorists of the next hundred years. I get the sense that I could
probably be pretty good at this stuff. I've also decided that it is
simply not worth it.

Giving everything of myself to my thesis has produced two effeects, we
see: a good thesis and a shitty life. I realized this weekend that I
had been wrong, and, worse, that my experiment had gone completely out
of control. I stopped living a life, and started living a thesis.

I would rather have a life worth living and contribute to society in
other ways. I'm still going to write. In fact, I intend to write a
manuscript on my own political philosophy to be rewritten after law
school. But I will never again give up the people I love.

The girl? What else could I do? I apologized, and asked her to take me
back. She's understandably uncertain.