Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Uh...

I'm wasting time tonight. By "tonight" I sort of mean "every night," actually, but I'm writing this because tonight's particular time waster was taking five of those "Select Your Candidate" quizzes on the internet.
I've never considered myself particularly interested in politics. Or rather, I am interested in politics, I just don't feel like I'm ever capable of intelligently discussing politics because it's all so HUGE. I can't possibly research enough to learn all of the facets to every issue, or even enough facets to feel that I can make intelligent decisions. I glean what I can from NPR* whenever I'm in the car and I listen to CSPAN radio when I'm getting ready in the morning (but only because it's the only station that my clock radio picks up semi-clearly so it comes on when my alarm goes off, and actually, it sort of makes me angry every morning; you wouldn't BELIEVE the bigoted idiots that call into CSPAN every day). That's about all I have time to do. Obviously, I don't feel like that's enough to take a real stand on any issue other than the few that I am personally invested in and therefore can argue about for emotional reasons. But really, that just makes me another one of those bigoted CSPAN people, ranting away about my beliefs, MY BELIEFS!
I feel the same way about the stock market and investing, actually. I'm very interested in it in theory (and in practice, actually, since I do have my small fund) but I just feel like I can't even begin to comprehend all of the ins and outs and the issues and the lingo and everything else I need to know to make truly intelligent decisions about it. So for now I still let my grandmother make decisions for me and for the most part we just leave the money alone anyway and I guess I hope that before I reach a time when I need to sell my stock, I'll have somehow (through osmosis, maybe?) figured out what the hell I'm doing.
I'm not condoning giving up on something just because it seems too big and overwhelming. But with so much else going on, even when I'm truly interested in something and it's something important, there are just so many hours in the day, you know?
Which leads me back to the fact that I took four of those Select Your Candidate quizzes tonight. I realize that those are mostly just crap and any intelligent person wouldn't actually vote the way Select-A-Candidate told them to, but I still thought I'd see who the quizzes think I should be supporting.
The results?
Two matched me with Giuliani, one matched me with Clinton, one matched me with Edwards, and one matched me with Huckabee. Which I guess just means that the quizzes are even more confused than I am. [Although I did say, "Are you kidding me?" when I got matched with Huckabee. Considering the fact that I strongly support gay marriage, abortion rights, and stem cell research, and that few things turn me off faster than a candidate explaining that all of his decisions are based on his faith, I'm pretty sure that Huckabee is actually a match for the Anti-Me. The only thing I saw on his campaign page that seemed okay to me is that he's a big supporter of funding for the arts, but that wasn't even a question on the stupid quiz. I didn't really look at his stance on tax and budget stuff, so maybe that has something to do with it? Whatever.]
Maybe it skews the results that I'm so liberal socially but pretty conservative fiscally? I mean, obviously there's no such thing as an ideal candidate for me and there never will be, but that just seems like a very wide range to me.
Oh well. I need to quit screwing around and go finish a book.

*Do you think the gene that makes a person want to be a professor is the same gene that makes a person want to listen to NPR? My grandma used to listen to public radio when I was growing up and I always thought it was incredibly boring. But then in the town I lived in while I was getting my MA, most radio stations didn't come in very clearly when I was driving around and NPR was one of the few that did, so I started listening to it a lot. And now that I live within range of two big city's radio stations, I still pretty much only listen to NPR because I like it now. Apparently I skipped turning into my mother and jumped straight to turning into my grandmother. One of the main reasons I listen to it is that I find it soothing for some reason. Plenty of people mock me for listening to public radio. I even mock myself for doing it. It's just so...pretentious, I guess. But I can't tell you how many times a week a prof or another Ph.D. student starts a sentence with, "I heard on NPR..." I just think it's funny.

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