DAY 64

Appleton, Wisconsin
June 16, 2009
Tue 9:52 PM

i am the deputy chief of staff, that is me. i'm josh lyman of, well, i probably can't say and shouldn't. sometime in the future i will, but right now i can't. but, my deputy chief of staff duties today required me to get a key out of a locked house and feed fish. i was successful in both, with the aid of a cellphone and a locksmith.

if you're reading this you probably wonder what the heck the above paragraph was all about. i would too if i hadn't lived the events of today, but, regardless, this blog serves to be an online personal diary as much as an outlet for me to make witty comments on things i deam worth discussing.

like iran, not easy to make jokes about that powderkeg of a country. i hope another revolution breaks out and they make real progess. not that violence is a good thing, it's not, but that country needs change now. two of my favorite professors were persian and of course they lived here because they were academics. dr. nasr is probably the smartest guy i've ever been in a room with, let alone had the pleasure of listening to a lecture by. and i mean that, the course i took on islam was one of my favorite courses. i've always enjoyed the social studies... history, geography, all that stuff. but, i got my degree in business because what can you do with social studies except study it and teach it. it's a circle major, learn it, teach it to others who study it and teach it... no where to go. business has more opportunites, but i always say that if i could study and pick a major for fun that would be interesting it would be religious studies. nothing is as fascinating to me than learning about the varying faiths and religions of the world. i took a course on it in high school, and i had the chance to take two, well, three kinda in college. a course on islam, a course on confucianism, and a course in hebrew literature. and i loved them, because they were taught by men who were absolutely experts in these areas in every sense of the world. dr. nasr, who taught the islam course i took at gw, is the preeminent expert on islam in the western world, hearing him talk is like opening up an encyclopedia. he knows everything and is an incredibly learned guy, i think he went to m.i.t. and studied physics as well. brilliant, brilliant man. and a good class to take, islam being the religion of over a billion people and the second largest after only christianity, and i'd like to think i have that one down pretty good. the confucianism class was also amazing, my professor lived in china for many years and interpretted the analects in a way contrary to many others. it's amazing how confucianism influnced not only the largest country in the world (population wise) but almost all of east asia. and the hebrew literature class was awesome because it required reading the books of the old testament as literature and not religious texts. and it was great to have a professor who could read hebrew and would comment on when the translation was wrong. this guy wasn't just an expert in all things hebrew and israeli, he was a former israeli paratrooper... those guys are up there with the u.s. navy seals, british marine commandos, and select others as being among the most badass guys in the world. he reigned down destruction from the sky and here he is discussing ancient hebrew texts and israeli poetry. wonderful, wonderful class.

hmm, i meant to write about iran and i got sidetracked onto college, amazing how easily that happens. anyway, iran needs change, it's a unique country that is bogged down by crazy leaders. it's a shiite persian country in the neighborhood of a bunch of sunni arab countries. not to mention it's also a neighbor to afghanistan, which is about as stable as the 20 dollar desk i bought at wal-mart. iran could be a leader in the region, instead it's the crazy uncle who gets your attention just because you want to make sure he doesn't do anything stupid. and you're kinda always worried he might. i'm fortunate to not have any crazy uncles, and maybe i'm trying to make sense of a country, a region, that i couldn't possibly understand anything about. but i make the attempt nonetheless, try to make witty comments. they're probably just lame comments, but in my head they're witty. but i hope iran becomes stable in my lifetime. the persians are a good people and they deserve it, from my brilliant professors, to the lady who owns the persian restaurant i frequent. they're good people, and i think iran is full of good people who can't realize the potential they could if things weren't so crazy. from fixed elections to ayatollahs who have all the power. i'm glad i don't live in iran. i'm pretty sure i couldn't write this blog like i do, or i could but with more hesitation. but, apparently the spurned electorate is taking to the information superhighway streets of twitter... so much so that the u.s. state department asked twitter to delay scheduled site maitanence so that iranians could continue to send messages, which of course the state department was monitoring. amazing, who needs spies when you have internet networking sites... and i mean, twitter? seriously, twitter? but, fortunately i don't have to worry about fixed elections, only elections with which i disagree with the outcome. and that has yet to happen in my adult, voting career. and, i'm guessing if i lived in iran that i couldn't wear my present attire, which consists of no shoes, black hurley boardshorts, and a white ufc fight club t-shirt. i don't think any of that would fall under iran's dress code.

and i just gotta say, i love these boardshorts. love them, they're so comfortable and yet stylish. well, i think they're stylish. they fit my own personal style, and that's all that matters. i bought two pairs of hurley boardshorts before i went to san diego, because you can't lie on the beach in jeans, and that's all i had in my wardrobe. i'm glad i have shorts for this summer, boardshorts. so comfortable, i love them. they have this little elastic loop on the right by the pocket, i wonder what's that for? maybe you loop your keys on them or something, so that when surfing your keys stay in your pocket. that's not a concern of mine, as long as my cellphone stays in my pocket while i drive i'm all set.

i should really get to sleep now. it was my intent to get to sleep earlier than normal tonight so i could get up earlier and clean my room. still haven't done that yet. i was gonna today, but my deputy chief of staff duties got in the way. tomorrow, i want to get it done. it's just a matter of getting the stuff out of my room that doesn't need to be there anymore. but, watching the west wing, i could watch this all night. i was gonna talk about the three athlete boneheads from last week, marian hossa, milton bradley, and the met who dropped the what would have been the final out and instead dropped it leading to a loss to the yankees. hopefully, i'll write about them tomorrow. i wrote it here so that i might remember to mention it tomorrow. i'll finish up this west wing episode and then go to bed.

salbrent