So this is Christmas.

I wish you all a very good Christmas!

Graduating from college, a little later in life than usual

At the  wonderful party over at Sweet Water Organics last Wednesday night — the next party/fish auction will be happening on the 30th — I was moved by a conversation with my dear friend (James) Godsil. He encouraged me to share the story of my recent graduation from college.

You see, there’s a trend or a tradition on my father’s side of the family, which I have proudly upheld, of going to college a little later in life, and doing very well at it once it’s been undertaken. While many of my high school classmates promptly went to college and have ostensibly found success in life, I didn’t follow that path. Although I did start college immediately after my high school graduation, the effort I made waas half-baked at best. I was more interested in playing the guitar and chasing girls than going to college, and so after a two semesters with poor attendance, I dropped out.

Today, more than sixteen years later, I turned in my last paper and returned my last library book to UWM. While the commencement ceremony was on Sunday, I didn’t completely finish until today. (Actually, I still owe the bursar’s office forty cents. But I’ll take care of that next week.)

Now, adding sixteen years to when I finished high school places me squarely in my mid-thirties. Olde Godsil asked me to share this story with you, in case you have a child who’s plodding through college or who’s struggling to find their self in life. Give them time, give them room to breathe and grow. With any luck, they’ll get through it when the time is right.

I’ve overcome some pretty huge odds in the past, and got this far. And it all seems very easy now. And hey, I did it! Your daughters and sons can do it too — hopefully a little sooner than I did. And so can you. I’ve reinvented my life a few more times than I can easily count by this point. Didn’t always want to. But I’m glad to be here, in Bay View, trying to help it and our great city of Milwaukee reinvent and renew themselves.

I feel like this should be a cheesy info-mercial at this point: “If Haas can, so can you!“

Senate health bill vote: 8AM Christmas Eve

So sez TPM:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just triggered a sigh of relief among the hallowed population of members, staffers and reporters on Capitol Hill.

“I ask unanimous consent that all post cloture time be expired at 8 am Thursday,” Reid said.

That may sound like gobbledeegook, but in Senate-ese, it means that the final vote on health care will be held at 8 a.m. on Christmas day. You can follow all the action here at TPMDC.

I think that should read “8 a.m. on Christmas Eve,” unless they’ve got some kind of special time-space fluctuation device in the Senate chambers that we are not aware of. I’m sure someone can run with that line….

If the House and Senate can work out a version that’s acceptable to the filibuster-happy senators, this will be a big victory for President Obama. It’s already been significant, considering that he’s gotten this farther than any other president in history. It’s not what I want, but it’s better than nothing. Hopefully it will mean cheaper insurance for many of us.

Also, would you believe that disgraced President Richard Milhous Nixon can be considered the Godfather of the Democrats’ big health care legislation in 2009? Read that article, then with that in mind, ask yourself what will become of the people who were elected in the sweep of 2006. Assuming they stick around that long, ask yourself again in the year 2040. (Gah; I’ll be in my sixties then. Hope I make it that far!)

Update: Senate Passes Health Care Bill 60-39.

Now to reconcile with the House…

MKE Punk lets Milwaukee’s past punk/hardcore/oi scene live again

Holy moly! Look at http://www.mkepunk.com/ for all your Milwaukee punk-metal-hardcore needs.

From the site:

“MKE Punk offers defunct Milwaukee-area bands a way to share their out-of-print music. If you have stuff you’d like to share let us know…

“Any band, that broke up like 10 years ago, and is no longer around, we want to see those bands release their music, preferably under an open license…”

The “oi” category caught my eye, though I have yet to listen to the demo tape by the oi band Einheriar. Also, I’m pretty sure they are unrelated to the synonymous Viking metal band Einheriar. Although both existed at the same time, the former was from Milwaukee, the latter from Norway. And the names of the bandmates don’t match up either.

(If you’re wondering, Einheriar apparently was a term from Norse mythology that “describes the slain warriors that have gone on to Valhalla and joined Odin‘s table.”)

Didn’t this happen already, or was it just a dream?

This is nothing like what a person may want to dream about, but I had dreamt last week about the nefarious “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Makes You Free) sign on the gate to the Auschwitz death camp, specifically that it was stolen. The next week, it was stolen. Its robbers (thieves?) have been apprehended and the three pieces of the sign were found in a forest. The men who took it weren’t neo-Nazis or right-wingers, apparently, but just dumb clucks who thought they’d be cool by taking the sign.

Here’s something I didn’t know. According to The Guardian,

The Arbeit Macht Frei sign was erected by prisoners with metalwork skills on Nazi orders in June 1940, and was a cynical take on the title of an 1873 work by the lexicographer, linguist and novelist Lorenz Diefenbach [link added -- JH] in which gamblers and fraudsters discover the path to virtue through hard work.

Bah. Typical of the Nazis. Grafting their toxic thought onto legitimate culture and social order.

I is a graduate!

Sixteen years in the making, and my college degree is done!

I am now a college graduate who is eligible for a wider variety of unsatisfying and ultimately soul-crushing jobs!

Life is good.

I graduate from college in five days!

…Which explains the low content feed from this blog.

Drink Liberally this Wednesday! (Albeit without me… this time.)

While I could really use a beer to help forget Joe Lieberman’s childish power games, that will have to wait, at least for me this month. I’ve got my last set of final exams in my storied undergraduate career, all in a row, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. As such I can’t join you for out last round of liberal drinking this coming Wednesday, the 16th of December.

What a fine time it would have been to raise a glass: give or take a few weeks, the Decemberist Revolt in Imperial Russia took place some 184 years ago. Russia’s first revolution saw officers from the Imperial Guards stand up to prevent the taking of power by Tsar Nicholas I, great-grandfather of Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia who survived two revolutions, only to be killed after the third. What a life! What a story. And to think, I won’t be able to tell you about it on Wednesday.

That said, I’ll see you in January, when we pick up on 7:00 on Wednesday the 20th, and I can regale you with my stories of my first month as a college graduate.

Apple Talbet video surfaces — is it real?

It appears to be. The video in question surfaced on a French web site, and the tablet in the video looks and acts like something that Apple Inc. would make. It would apparently be used for high-end furniture shopping, as notes The Register, who turned me on to the video. Surely we can think of better uses than serving the needs of the bourgeoisie consumers (hi how’s it going) who would likely consume them en mass?

R.I.P., Editor & Publisher

A sure sign of how the news business is going: Editor & Publisher magazine is shutting down. Here’s the post I saw about it over on TPM:

Just in from Romenesko: Nielsen Business Media has announced that it will close Editor & Publisher, a trade publication that covers the newspaper industry.

Nielsen is also selling several of its publications, including Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, The Clio Awards, Backstage, Billboard, Film Journal International and The Hollywood Reporter. It’s closing both E&P and Kirkus Reviews.

In the announcement, Nielsen president Greg Farrar said “Many of our friends and colleagues within these businesses will be leaving the company or will begin to transition to the new ownership immediately.”

Editor & Publisher had kept an eye on American print media since the 19th century. While Jon Stewart and his crew do a great job of poking holes in TV media, I’m not sure if that’s sufficient to cover the hole left by the absence of E&P. They didn’t often skewer print media, and even when they do, it’s not nearly as entertaining as their jibes at TV media. And despite its good effects, The Daily Show is primarily about entertainment, not professional conduct.

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On a related note, how is the AAN (Association of Alternative Newsweeklies) doing?