CNN came to campus today. The Iowa presidential caucuses are, of course, on Monday, and a couple of the talking head programs were looking for a pretty place near Des Moines and its airport to talk to Real Iowans about Their Feelings, or something. Apparently, when they couldn't find any such place, the producers just threw up their hands and booked an afternoon at Iowa State. I got out of my Manufacturing lab early--all we did was watch a film about 18th-century gunsmithing--and the crowd was still milling about when I arrived.

Television is very important to the lives of most Americans today. Other forms of recreation have declined in importance next to the box, a comfortable diversion that is always ready and eager to pander to our every desire, even those we weren't aware of. Blah blah blah. Y'know, I had enough polemics today from the guy at the deli who kept going on about gun control, so I'll cut to the chase:

The filming of two brief--but live--remote segments of obscure cable politics shows drew a pretty big crowd! All sorts of kids stopped by to watch television being made, even though it was television most of them would never bother to watch, and even though the production of a television show--even a live one--is in reality a very slow and unexciting business. But people gathered around, quietly straining to hear the hushed tones of the host, who sat in a wooden director's chair and spoke just loud enough to be picked up by the wireless microphone pinned to her vest. Off to the side, behind a wooden police barrier, a group of fifteen or so Students for Kerry stood, bearing six-foot tall visages of their champion pol on posterboard attached to wooden stakes. They were mostly ignored, as were the giant carrot and ear of corn protesting something outside the opposite corner of the student union building.

The point--which I was getting to! I swear--is that with the exception of the annual VEISHEA parade, I have not in three years seen students at this school gather, outside, and mill around as I did at this mundane CNN broadcast today. ... Or I thought I hadn't, but just now I remembered that time in June the swans wandered up Union Drive to the bus stop and hung out, waiting for the bus, and the campus polics--who had nothing better to do, because it was just before sunset and there were no rowdy parties to breal up--came out in obscene force to stand with the sizable crowd of students that had gathered and watch the rookie on the staff prod Lancelot and Elaine back to the lake with a big stick. And I'm sure there were other times I have forgotten--every Thursday night, when the Medieval Combat Society gathers to fight with foam-covered sticks, for instance.

So I suppose my point is just that I have a horrible memory, which is why I need to write things down in my crappy internet gizmo more often. Drat. I had a good rant worked up about recreation "as in olden days," too, and I was going to work in this old picture from this neat website chronicling the university's ill-fated Lake LaVerne and how back "in olden days" prodigal engineers didn't have television, or video games, or the internet, or even their own personal telephones, so for fun they had to read books and play bridge and blow up the dam. Technology has given us so much, but how much more has it taken away? I ask you.

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Here is a list of what I listen to, sometimes. For this technological advance, the button fly and strike-anywhere matches were lost forever.

Programmers don't know a damned thing about haggling.