Life update and space filler

Thought I'd squeeze in a post while I have some spare moments.

There's a lot going on these days! There's my life, with 3 classes and my job as a T.A. for a huge intro. to American politics class. Basically, I'm struggling to keep up, but they haven't kicked me out yet, so I guess I'm ok for now.

Then there's my love life, which is as thrilling as ever (as thrilling as, say, an empty cardboard box).

I have revived my weekly jam sessions, which are going pretty well. My songwriting has been in a long slump, though. I've started like 10 songs, but i haven't finished one for a long time.

There's a lot going on in the world of politics and policy. The election and the financial sector collapse, both pretty interesting. Indiana's in play in this election for the first time in at least my lifetime. Nationally, Obama seems to be pulling ahead. Last I checked, he had 260 electoral votes that were either strong dem or leaning dem. Whoever wins is gonna find their platform pretty squeezed by the stagnant economy.

On the bailout, I'm not going to attempt any armchair quarterbacking right now (perhaps later). If you sift through the extraneous crap, the rationale seems to be that, by taking on a bunch of bad debts, we simplified financial companies' balance sheets, which will restore their ability to assess each other's risk, which will allow them to lend each other money, which will ameliorate the increasingly tight access to credit (particularly short-term credit) to small businesses.

For now, I'll just note the interesting fact that the U.S. Treasury Dept. will soon be buying houses en masse. Granted, those houses have been sliced up and repackaged with other houses, but still, the taxpayers now own a shitload of houses. Who knows? Maybe we'll flip those fuckers and make bank!

Oh, also, just wanted to congratulate my two home-slices who just passed the bar! Nice job, guys!