I agree that it's nice to have the rhythm of things slow down once in a while. And I certainly see the social, cultural, and economic good of national holidays. Perhaps I am grumpy because I don't like having flags, etc. waved in my face. And I have no job to have off from; in fact, my wife not being able to work today means we simply lose money
For the record, I don't watch much TV and I couldn't care less if it went dead for a day.
I agree about the principles. Holidays, I will grant you, have nothing to do with principles but public memory and display.
There are of course emergent cultures that position themselves in opposition to the dominant one, but these are typically (as you suggest w/ the Machiavelli example) already within a very containable frame. At best, they are liberal, which is not quite enough, right? A lot of people who want reform rather than change.
But there are subcultures - they are just very very small. While I don't like to lionize the counterculture in the 60s/70s, there was at least a broad spectrum of revision and rethinking. Now, I fear that mainstream radicals still just want their MTV.
If I let it, the internet could easily destroy my dissertation. I mean, it practically already does....
I'm actually a big myspace fan. I like how I no longer have to keep track of thing like email addresses and stuff. It just makes life much, much easier.
Re: Dana Delaney. She is SO hot. When I was a kid, I used to watch China Beach (which also had Marg Helgenberger!) - and that might have been the pinnacle of Dana Delaney's hotness.
I have too many days where I sit down to do a lot of good work, and get sidetracked by little things and the internet. I generally try to write and edit in the morning. Then, fucking around in the afternoon feels less terrible.
You're so right - this dissertation is the hardest thing I've ever written. It's a lot of "back and forth" for me. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I want to say, but I can't really say it b/c I haven't done enough research - but organizing a research/reading program is hard when you don't have a real point. The whole exercise is just inherently frustrating.
I actually need to buckle down and start doing some writing. I had a good email exchange with my advisor the other day, and I've been doing some data work that's about ready for analysis - but I need to get down to producing pages. I sort of count "data work' as the same as "writing" - they're not *exactly* the same. But data work is more like writing than reading, so I give myself a pass.
