Things I'm proud of.

My newspaper stories, the ones I'm proud of anyway.

I'm very happy with the way this one turned out today. It really wrote itself. A funny thing about it is that the copy editor was forced to write one of the worst headlines ever because the column we ran the printed version in was too narrow for the name "Ciaramella" or the word "Commentator."

This article won the award for best news story of the week and hurt the student body president's feelings so badly he refused to talk to me for a week. But I thought that this one about the same issue was much better.

I actually found my coverage of Campus Recycling very frustrating for reasons I don't quite understand. Probably, it was because I hate it when people ask "what do you think" and I got that a lot while working on this issue. I liked the way this story turned out, although once again, another one won the award.

Old Scotts

The whitehairs in this picture are my ancestors. I thought that was pretty cool.

I try new style

Me big man. Three jobs. Many words. Many commas. Few dollars. Make tired. Want blog. Need rest. Compromise: posts spare now. No think. No talk about self. No talk right. Easy words. Like caveman.

This make me mad. What Clinton do for me? Nothing. Barack jump shark. Not own man. Too savvy. No heart.

New Man Crush

Move over Brando

Dimitar Berbatov

Would put it inside of him

Here's why

I'm a pro writer now.

I have, as I've mentioned, Job Two now. I am the Campus and Federal Politics reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald. My first two stories were published Friday. Here they are: a meeting recap and a a story about basketball.

Unexciting.

These stories are dry. They're the kind of stories that were being run when I first got the job, except worse because I was really confused at the time and because my writer's voice conflicts with the editor's voice. There's no tension, no real human interest. I want to fix that. Campus and Federal Politics are meaningless if your vision is only as wide as the boardroom. I need to talk to people who are being affected by campus politics. Then maybe people will read my stories.

Facts and falsehoods of November 6, 2008

Facts

• cold
  
• I also have a cold
• New job--two articles I wrote coming out today
• autumn is the prettiest season in Oregon

Falsehoods

• I got more than enough sleep last night
• cigarettes are good for a cold
• cigarettes are also good for a cod, which is what my hands wanted me to type

Truths and falsehoods about November 4, 2008 or "soccer seemingly trumps politics"

Facts:

• I got my absentee ballot in the mail fourteen hours before it was due.
• It would have cost me $239 to get it back to Hawaii on time.
• Now I can assign a dollar figure to how much my vote actually means to me
• That figure is $52.42.
• Not $239.
  
• So I didn't vote.
• Nevertheless, I was pretty relieved that Barack Obama was elected.

Falsehoods:

• Barack Obama will solve all or at least more than two of the nation's fundamental problems: poster child complex, national debt, negative interventionist tendencies, the imminent failure of the Social Security system, environmental negligence, corporate power, technocratic identity, the popularity of The Eagles.
• This call at the end of a game between two teams I don't even like was excellent and not so terrible that it ruined an otherwise excellent day.