Since I’m feeling especially emotional this afternoon, can I just go ahead and say that the Sonic guy makes me really, really sad?

Why Sarah, you may ask, who is this Sonic Guy that you speak of?

I will tell you.

For the past couple of months, there’s been a guy standing in front of the Sonic at N.W. 23rd and Santa Fe. He wears long pants, giant shoes and comically oversized white gloves – and is dressed as either as a hot dog or a fountain drink. The Sonic Guy is always there, every evening during rush hour. He dances joyfully and tirelessly, enticing people to stop in to Sonic for some cheesy tots or a refreshing peach smoothie. He’s even out there when it’s 100 degrees or more, his energy and enthusiasm limitless despite the blistering heat.

As I sit in my car, waiting for my turn to get on I-235, I watch the Sonic Guy. My heart breaks for him. How hot he must be. How tired. I look at the strange tan line on his wrist from his oversized white gloves, and hope his hot dog suit is air-conditioned. Sometimes I wave at the Sonic Guy, sometimes I can’t even look at him because to do so would make me weep.

That poor guy doesn’t get paid enough.

…than contemplating your own mortality?

I’m nearing the end of Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, and found, on page 354, the following quote:

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach is to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.

–from Bertrand Russell’s 1925 essay, “What I Believe”

Reading this makes me feel the same way I feel when I hear a song like The Flaming Lips’ “Do You Realize?” or watch a film like The Fountain – happy and sad at the same time (quite possibly my favorite emotion). It makes me want to go home and spend the evening cuddling with Dwight and the dogs (and cat). It makes me want to savor every single damn moment of my life, no matter how boring and trivial that moment may be. Death no longer frightens me; it just makes me sad to think of all of this coming to an end. However, I think we need death to give life meaning. The thought of immortality, while once appealing to me, now somehow seems to cheapen the beauty and value of my few short years on Earth.

Happy Friday – and go, Sooners!

What job would you never want to have?

I have very mixed feelings about this whole Larry Craig scandal. I suppose my initial reaction was one of delighted glee – here was one more example of Right-Wing hypocrisy exposed! Here was one more guy who, after spending years and years railing against homosexuality, gets caught doing something a little bit, well, gay. Once again, we see that those who protest loudest against some sort of perceived “deviant” behavior are usually doing those same “morally repugnant” things themselves. As we used to say back in elementary school, “the smeller’s the feller.”

And I certainly don’t buy the lame excuse that the only reason Craig pleaded guilty is because he was stressed out as a result of his persecution by the media.

Senator, please.

I also have to confess that I did roll on the floor, clutching my side, over that much-played clip of Craig back in the good ole’ Lewinsky days. There he was, calling Bill Clinton in turn a “naughty boy,” a “bad boy,” and even a “nasty, bad, naughty boy.” What an odd choice of words. Like Dwight said, it’s only a matter of time before someone remixes this sound bite with a Lords of Acid sample. I want to hear that.

However, my mirth soon turned to sorrow and pity for the guy, especially after member after member of his own party began turning on him. Tom Delay was on the Today show this morning, blabbering about how we expect United States Senators to live up to a certain standard, blah, blah, blah. What standard is that, Tom? Do you people have to pass a heterosexuality test to get your jobs?

So what if he’s gay? And so what if he tried to pick up some guy in a bathroom? Maybe it’s a little creepy, but they were both adults, and apparently the protocol for restroom hook-ups was followed precisely. No one forced anything on anyone else. So why is this such a big deal? I’m still a little confused as to how it was even really a crime. And even so, I have my doubts that a misdemeanor charge is what has Craig’s conservative colleagues so spittin’ mad.

One whole rotting plank of the Republican Party platform is constructed of intolerance and homophobia. They’ll stand firmly behind one of their own when the charge is one of, say, “criminally conspiring with two political associates to inject illegal corporate contributions into 2002 state elections that helped the Republican Party reorder the congressional map in Texas and cement its control of the House in Washington,” but if it involves homosexuality?

Grabbing their pitchforks and torches, the angry mob takes to the streets.

I’ll never understand how these people can find homosexuality so sinful, yet not even notice their own bigotry and hypocrisy. Apparently, compassion isn’t one of those “family values” they so like to lecture us about.

Oddly enough, one of the topics in my stats class last night was about normative statements and the insertion (intentional or not) of value judgments into research. We discussed how word choice matters a lot, and one of the “loaded words” used as an example was, “fat.”

For once, I actually had to hold myself back from participating. I wanted to tell everyone about that article I just read that very afternoon that was, more or less, about this very thing. My weak self-confidence finally won out though, as I informed myself that I’d probably misstate something or other, and end up looking like a total idiot. Better to just keep quiet for now.

I’m really liking this stats class. This is what I wanted school to be. The atmosphere is very relaxed, and I don’t have the constant tension I have in my Monday night class. No one gets put on the spot in this one. And the teacher is sort of that liberal-intellectual type I’d been hoping for. For the first time in my fledgling grad school career, I found myself relaxed and happy. Which is weird, because stats was the class I was dreading the most.

My dreams last night were filled with experimental treatments and controls. I think I was doing research on the White Stripes and my employer’s Internet usage policy.

Don’t ask me.