An overwhelming malaise. I've got a lot of work to do, for school and otherwise, and I've got no motivation to do it.

It's really just the necessity of considering my future that's got me down, I think. For the first time, I have no readymade narrative, no overriding dream like the quixotic authorship thing that led me to college in the first place.

Instead, I have two equally interesting and pressing alternatives: grad school and an eventual professorship, or a career in copy-editing, something I've never studied formally.

And there's also the peripheral (at least, right now) future stuff: the where and what and who. I don't have those answers yet either. God.

Went to the V.R. tonight for the weekly Monday night "study session." That was somewhat enjoyable. Otherwise? My roommates are just as busy as I should be, I've seen all the various episodes on my computer to death, and most everyone who plays Halo 2 on this campus is an ass. Though that could just be a side effect of those Xbox headsets.

It's always the Thanksgiving drive that causes the most headaches. The drive back today was fine (I took the 94-29-47 route suggested by the Politician, which seems to be quite a bit faster than my usual 94-29-51-10 route) but the drive to Minnesota on Wednesday took forever.

I got an oil change before I left, but there was a bit of a sulfur smell everytime I stopped or slowed down. I told Celine — a sophomore who needed a ride to her dad's place in Minneapolis — what Jubb had told me that someone had told him: the smell was caused by the brake system, but wasn't harmful.

The battery finally died a few hours into the trip. I'd known that my battery was sketchy, but it hadn't given me any trouble for a week or two so I hadn't bothered to get it replaced. The whole car reeked from the sulfuric acid at that point, and when the mechanic (I fortuitously stalled at a gas station that abutted a service station) opened the hood I noticed that the battery was steaming.

He sold me a gently-used battery for $20 and we were on our otherwise-uneventful way.

Back in Brainerd, I foolishly turned down Graham's invitation to Zorba's and stayed at home with my family. I actually spent most of the night reading After Many A Summer Dies The Swan, a spotty book by Aldous Huxley.

I liked it, but I would have liked it much more — and it would have been a more effective satire, if that's what Huxley was going for — if the character known as Propter hadn't been there. With encouragement from convenient naif named Pete Boone, the Propter-Object expounds on a variety of topics, serving as a obvious conduit for Huxley's own opinions and beliefs. Luckily there're plenty of scenes without Propter, and the other characters are great.

Matt killed another flying squirrel that night. Apparently our house is infested with them; they come in through the attic and find their way into the rest of the building. What I don't understand is where they came from originally. None of us has ever seen one in the yard.

In fact, I'd only seen them in zoos until Matt plugged one he found stuck in a sticky trap Wednesday night. There's an unspoken consensus that the pests would just find their way back in if we let them go outside.

That's five so far. A sixth remains at large.

Thanksgiving dinner was fine. We always have ours at my uncle's farm, after the men (sans Our Bold Hero) have finished their annual pheasant hunt. No birds this year. After dinner I ended playing and winning a huge Polish Penuckle game with my brothers and two of my cousins. We went up to ten and back, which took forever.

Quiet night on Thursday; Graham and Manney had gone back home already. On Friday, Josh and I visited Adam, my only friend who was still in town at that point. We ended up playing Halo 2 until the wee hours of the night.

More reading on Saturday. I discovered a bunch of copy-editor's blogs: A Capital Idea, Blogslot, and Verbal Energy being the best. Language Log and Evolving English, two more lexigraphically-oriented blogs, also proved interesting.

I especially liked the concept of "dwimming." Inspirational.

And I finished After Many A Summer with mixed feelings. Finally, I settled down to watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which I didn't enjoy quite as much the second time around, but still found unexpectedly moving. See it.

Of course I got back to find that everyone wanted to see just that particular film. The three of us watched Garden State instead while Jonas built a CD rack in the other room. That was just a "decent" movie. Well-composed and often interesting, if perhaps lacking in focus and relevance. Like a book by Delillo. I'd recommend both, once.

After the movie: many horrible conversations. Some crossing of the line and — as you'd expect at Lawrence — a good deal of toeing it. Somehow it's good to be back.

Forgot about the GRE Subject Tests. All I could remember was that the correlation between Subject scores and graduate school performance was low low low. But that doesn't mean that most respectable universities don't require those scores… and now it's too late to sign up for a test before the early December application deadlines.

However unwittingly, I seem to have made a decision about next year. Procrastination finally bites me in the ass.

I'll keep looking.

Dintenfass said that it shouldn't hurt me to take a year off after college, so that's probably the best option if this eleventh-hour application nonsense doesn't fly. Looks like it's copy-editing or Rotary.

Cleaned our bedroom, to which I have some sort of psychic connection. Looking around and not seeing piles of dirty clothes and old candy wrappers and crumpled-up handouts — well, it actually puts me in a good mood.

And we've conceptualized the room so that it can't get that messy again. Hope with me.

Lots of loose ends still lying about. A bit of homework here, a week-old tutoring session log to write there — not to mention what promises to be a rambling and unproductive meeting with my adviser tomorrow.

A good night for tea. I took a few packets of green tea from Downer tonight and I'm wishing I had something interesting to read. Also new at Downer: delicious malt powder.

I finished Facial Justice yesterday; that was enjoyable. It's a dystopian satire from the late '50s about a society where Envy is considered the greatest evil and Equality the greatest good. Mediocrity (even in looks) is encouraged and enforced.

Fun fact: one of the dozen people who'd checked this book out since the library got a copy in the early '60s was Campbell Scott, semi-famous actor and Lawrence alum. He played Roger in Roger Dodger.

I was reading on Saturday. You can take that to mean that my weekend was low-key. Alan and I spent most of the night hanging around here doing absolutely nothing, and some quick reconnaissance proved that we weren't missing much. Fourth floor Hiett — our first stop — looked alternately like a war zone and a rave.

The "Old People" party on Friday was also low-key, and as ill-attended as we could have hoped. Jonas and I told our burly roommate about the shindig less than 12 hours beforehand, to avoid the ubiquitous "Jubb parties" for which our room will soon be notorious.

Though I have to admit that it was a little too slow, even for my taste. We had a good time, but I just never got into it. My bedroom wasn't clean then, maybe that was it. Or maybe our room really can't host small parties, a few rousing drinking games notwithstanding? Well, whatever.

The weekend was "pleasant." That's the right word. But a little slow. I'm looking forward to a less-than-low-key Pilgrims/First Thanksgiving party Tuesday night, after this cruel two-day week is over.

A lost post. That takes me back. Always when I'm blogging about my feelings… I think Blogger is trying to tell me something.

So Halo 2 owns me, having purchased a controlling interest from the Trivia webpage sometime last week. I've been playing too often and too much, but since I don't seem to have much homework (just a whole lot of nagging life-altering projects) I can spare a few hours a day.

This weekend? Yes, Halo 2. But I also went to the L.I. Formal on Friday. There was a pre-party at Meg(h)an and Rachel's, and I got pretty drunk on that and some bad-tasting rum that Alan was so kind as to give me as part of our pre-pre-party preparations.

But I didn't throw up, which makes this the best L.I. Formal ever. I ran into the roommate of the girl whose hair I accidentally befouled on the busride home last year, and said roommate was anxious to hear my side of the story. I'm going to call that closure.

Bringing a flask of rum turned out to be the most genius idea ever, as the bar was gouging us even more than at last year's formal. The average drink cost between $4 and $5. But a coke cost $1.50: I had Celine buy it for me, figuring that my 21+ wristband might arouse suspicion.

Worse than the bar (as long as I'm complaining) was the music. All the songs sounded the same and the D.J. ignored Jubb's friend's repeated requests for a slow song, just one slow song.

Got funky just the same, though I did leave the dance hall now and then to mingle by the bar. Op/Ed from the paper was there with the Managing Editor. He seemed even more rational and analytical when drunk, and spouted some polysyllabic nonsense to explain that paradox. It was endearing and scarily familiar.

Looking around, I noticed that most guys (and almost all the girls) had played it straight this year. Figuring that I might as well put it to good use, I had donned the red checkered suitcoat that was to be part of my Halloween costume and accepted a bowtie from the guy I called Jubb's friend a moment ago, which pushed my outfit across that all-important line between tragic and comedic.

Why Alex had an extra bowtie on him at the pre-party I still don't know. I'm jealous of Meg(h)an and Rachel's room, with its ability to host intimate gatherings. Almost all of our parties have been what we call "Jubb parties," fun but massively attended events. It's mildly ironic that Jubb is usually the first roommate to leave a given Jubb party, so that he can spend some alone-time with the river.

Not that we can't have less than a dozen people over for something. Katy goaded us into watching Benny and Joon here with her and Celine on Saturday night. And do four-person multiplayer games count as a social activity?

If I can be trite for a moment, our small gatherings are more "pizza and beer," their room's are more "wine and cheese." Whatever that means.

OK, just checking in, after all. I'm sure to resurface later this week.

Went to a trivia retreat this weekend at our college's estate in Door County. I'd visited Bjorklunden once before, as a sophomore on the Ormsby Hall retreat, and once again I was impressed by the well-appointed lodge, the excellent food, and the near-total lack of things to do.

I should've brought more homework up with me; as is, I finished reading Penguin Island (meh) and listened to way too much Modest Mouse. Only five hundred pages of The Tin Drum to go for Tuesday.

The percussionists and our student programming organization were also up this weekend. The SOUP people — mostly straight-toothed girls and a few suspiciously effeminate guys — were uninteresting but useful. They organized a campfire and a gunnysack race (the Trivia Masters won, naturally), and seem to have set up most of our meals. The drummers were more conspicuous.

They took over the main room in the lodge, and to escape the noise we retreated to a cabin for our first trivia meeting. Afterwards, the eight of us stole the lodge's only classroom from SOUP and had the rest of our meetings in there.

All in all, I contributed very little this weekend. Most of the few comments I made would have come up anyways, and many were better left unsaid. And — even though the Grand Master placed an odd emphasis on it in his "Minutes" email today — our discussion of the webpage I'm making lasted about ten minutes, once you omit the digressions.

(I am glad I'm the one doing it though, and I was even more glad when some of the other masters started urging me to use LiveJournal for our group blog. No thanks, I power Blogger. It's a testament to his ignorance that one fellow trivia master wanted to seek Google as a sponsor but didn't seem to know/care about the fine folks at that Google-owned company.)

We got everything done though, and I'm even excited about a few things in which I play only a marginal role. Obviously I can't tell you everything, sorry.

Bjorklunden has very few permanent staff members: students volunteer for chores when they arrive. I ended up in a room with Representative Man and two drummers who neither of us really talked to, and foolishly volunteered us all for two lunch clean-up duties.

It goes without saying that it took forever to wash the dishes, even with Representative Man doing all the drying. But I really enjoyed it. Washing dishes took me back to Giovanni's, where I did all my best thinking in front of the sink.

Socially, there seemed to be a lot going on, but nothing non-burlap that I could get excited about. We watched Rocky IV but half the masters left before it was over. We played Trivial Pursuit, old masters versus new ones, only to be righteously thwomped.

In the background there was some drinking (apparently the percussionists are notorious for drinking at Bjorklunden, though one SOUP member assured us that everyone drinks up there, "second rule" notwithstanding) but the partiers had as little interest in me as I had in them. I ventured out to the campfire for a little while both nights, but mostly I was content to go to bed early and let the extroverts do their thing.

I'm nearing the point when "extrovert" becomes a bald invective. Or possibly meaningless, as I think I've applied it to almost everyone at this point.

Obviously a bit annoyed that the two trivia masters I know well, Jonas and Jinx, were both out of the country this weekend.

But it was an OK weekend. The path to January is clear.

Watched the election coverage in the VR with a large group, then in the bowels of Briggs with the Politician and Alan until about two in the morning: a satisfying night.

Well, what can I say.

Unsurprisingly, there was a palpable malaise at Lawrence today. For the most part, this malaise manifested itself in a general lack of energy, but I also heard some rather melodramatic moaning from a few Madison liberals and a rumor (true, as it turns out) that one histrionic art professor cancelled class because of the election results.

Other professors seemed mildly upset. Bo-Fo, our "Intro to Ethics" professor, apologized in advance for his lack of enthusiasm. And I'm told that Goldgar shuffled through Main Hall, spreading the grim news. That man needs a bell.

Everyone seems to have perked up after dinner, though some didn't need perking up.

Jubb and the Politician, for example, were pleased with the election results, though the policies each expects from a lame-duck Bush seem diametrically opposed.

On the other side of the spectrum: Alan, a fan of politics and punditry, was too interested in the drama to care much that his candidate lost — he predicted as much long ago, in fact.

For my part, I didn't vote for the guy who won, but I wasn't too upset at the results.

Well, I am worried that the political center has moved further to the right — in Ohio, white anti-evolutionist evangelicals proved more important and more reliable than young, newly-registered liberals — and that our president could get away with a bunch of theocratic nonsense now that he's more sure of congressional support…

But that's all academic. Who's president doesn't affect my life in any material way, and I tend to think of politics at this point merely as intellectually stimulating entertainment.

That the election could have been more interesting, I'm utterly convinced (read: electoral tie makes McCain president); but it could have certainly been more annoying too, and I'm thankful for that much at least.

Voted, which somehow makes me better than you.

Actually, I've been quite impressed with the few articles on principled nonvoting I've read recently. There's something in the NYT, of course.

But the main proponent of principled nonvoting — an idea not to be confused with the nonvoting of the already blissfully ignorant or the quixotically principled voting of third party candidate supporters — seems to be Brian Doherty at Reason.

Read his latest pro-no-vote article here, or go here for an in-depth essay.

As you could guess, the "principled nonvoting" stance pisses not a few people off. But I find his arguments strangely compelling, and if my time weren't completely useless I might not have wasted half an hour voting.

But I did, and now I want to sit back and watch the results. We'd been half-heartedly planning an Election Day party for a week or so now, even going so far as to consider reserving the second-floor lounge. But everyone flaked out: midterms tomorrow.

So it's just me and perhaps a handful of mostly sober others tonight. Which is too bad, as I had some cool drinking game ideas: shots each time a network calls the election or retracts its statement, red drinks and blue drinks, the obligatory sending of drinks when you guess a swing state correctly…

My CDs and CD player seem to be missing and were possibly stolen. I ripped the CDs to my computer months ago, but buying a new CD player still kinda sucks.

It's possible the side door wasn't locked (it doesn't like me, for some reason), but why someone would break into the Deathtrap, of all cars, I don't quite know. I'm still hoping that my stuff will turn up in the room, buried under my dirty clothes or something.

Completely unmotivated, Election Day notwithstanding. Not quite sure why. Midterm malaise?