Yesterday I went to the big supermarket, Shaw's, to replenish my mini-fridge. I hadn't been there for a month or so, since I have a meal plan and only sporadically need groceries. In the meantime, Shaw's had made an improvement to the checkout aisle: televisions. Not screens to help us review our purchases, not even monitors telling shoppers about in-store deals they may have missed. No, neither of those things. At the checkout aisles there were flat-screen televisions showing commercials.

I don't understand this. I was already in line, having chosen to be a consumer in their store. And while waiting to make a purchase, having already chosen to be a consumer in their store, I had to watch a commercial for Comcast Cable, which isn't sold in the grocery store -- there wasn't even the pretense that I was being informed rather than solicited.

I find this intolerable on two levels. First, why am I, in a grocery store, being hailed as a marketing target rather than a customer? And second, what does this media activity do to the interactions at the checkout line, where people are known to have actual conversations with one another? "Oh, pay no attention to the person in front of you -- watch this ad, instead!"

I'm writing a letter to the manager and to every customer service representative whose name and address I can find. That's right, VP -- I'm coming after you.

To all others who will find themselves in grocery stores this week: Happy Thanksgiving!

Writing papers is even less fun than I remembered.

For The Class in Which I Struggle Constantly, I'm writing my final paper on Evita, the musical film based on the life of Argentine first lady Eva Perón. I've had to start from scratch, since everything I know about Latin America I've learned since I started this class, and as we know, that learning has been a little spotty. I hadn't even seen Evita when I chose it as a topic; I just knew that there was controversy around the film in Argentina, and that it's a musical, and I know I can write at least 15 pages on a musical, since I've done it. More than once.

Starting from scratch, I lack the basic understandings from which powerful conclusions are possible. I've never been to Argentina, so I don't have any first-person impressions from which to try to figure this stuff out. So I contacted my sister, who spent her year abroad in Buenos Aires, just to have some place to start. I asked her what she'd heard about the Peróns, what she'd heard people say about Evita, etc.

Now, as I'm trying to write, I'm running into issues with scholarly conventions around supporting evidence. I have other sources corroborating the fact that Juan and Eva Perón were -- and remain -- massively popular, but the best encapsulation of how a significant population of Argentinians feel about Juan Perón, in particular, was my sister's clear and succint summarization: "Look --" she told me, "sun shines out that guy's butt, okay?"

I cannot figure out how to cite that.

My iPod/iTunes are not working properly, and boy is it frustrating. But not frustrating enough to pull me down from ten feet off the ground, where' I'm still at. I didn't go to bed until 3am last night -- I wasn't working, I just didn't want to lie down and go to sleep, because what if I didn't still feel like this when I woke up?

And I woke up, and it still felt like this.

I feel absolutely transcendental today.

I caught what I thought was a reference to a Sam Cooke song in Barack Obama's acceptance speech last night. It's called "A Change Is Gonna Come," and if you've never heard it, it's a beautiful song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUT1WgHat6I.

Happy Election Day!

I'm getting nervouser and nervouser as the day goes on --for the past month, especially, I've been trying not to think about the election too much -- certainly haven't been reading polls and projections and all that guesswork -- so my anxiety has been kept at bay. But it's just not possible today. This day is going to change America forever. It just will. Maybe not in ways we hope or expect, but however this thing turns out, I know that we will look back on this day and say that this day is when we knew things were going to be different. And that's going to be true no matter what else is true tomorrow.

Here's what I believe, though: Can we? Yes, we can.