No pictures this time. Just words. Red, Gold. I told. Never stand too close.

I must be the luckiest motherfucker on the planet.


Can I just say how grateful I am to live in room 2? Every time the Red Bull girls roll through the RMIT village they park their little modified mini cooper right in front of my patio. This most recent time I convinced a really cute brunette girl to come up to my balcony and hand me a Red Bull. I might have a tiny crush on her, but its likely just Springtime lust that will never become anything more than a silly chase. Still, next time she comes to my balcony if she remembers my name I'm asking for her number. I have a month and two weeks left in Melbourne, gotta live it up. Not to mention my patio has inadvertently become the social hub for my friends and myself. A roommate that is gone during weekends, sick speaker system, and a great location for assembling large crews of cool kids also helps.


Last weekend I went bowling and kicked it Friday night. Then Saturday I meant to only play a few games of goon pong and keep it real so I could study hard Sunday, like I had Saturday and Friday. My downfall began right around when the spirits entered my life. Somehow I blacked out, lost to a team of girls in goon pong, got completely shut out and had to run the naked lap around the RMIT, made it home and threw up and scattered bread all over my floor, which gave quite the charming wake up the following morning. God that was funny.


For now I'm going to keep my romantic life slightly more secretive-more people than I expected to seem to read this and I think it will keep things better grounded in reality if I'm slightly more personal about them. If you like, mom, I'll fill you in later. Speaking of, I know you might already be in Seattle with dad but I sent you an email and asked a friend of what you should do while in Seattle. Seems like you have a friend there from what you told me on the phone but let's face it; my friends are cooler than yours.


On another note I think my Global Movements class test went extremely well. I ran out of time with my second essay, but was able to tack on a three sentence conclusion at the end that might have saved it. Keep those H1's coming. By the way, I'm going to show dad the paper I wrote for my Terrorism class. My tutor really liked it and as a member of the US Department of Energy super duper official and important I think you might enjoy some of the stuff I said. I had to assume a new perspective and do my best to shed my American bias-instead of speaking in terms of American National Security suddenly I'm speaking in terms of Freud's death drive, identity politics, biopolitical consciousness, and other strange theories discussed in the course. I got a high mark on it, and really had a lot of fun writing it.


Tonight I had a really great political debate with my Pakistani friend Aized. He has a completely different world perspective and system of beliefs, and its really good to get the other side of the story. He would accuse America of imperialistic tendencies, fighting too many wars, and other issues, and I would do my best to explain why America needs to continue to fight wars. Simply put, look at the Macro Economy. C+I+G+N=GDP. That is, consumption (small ticket items-you buy a sandwich)+Investment (large ticket items-houses, cars, etc)+Government Spending (self explanatory)+Net Exports-Net Imports=GDP. From World War II on America has relied on large government spending and funding of operations abroad, development of new technologies, fighting internal wars such as the war on drugs-which is a sheer act of folly and entirely different issue, in order to keep its Macro Economy going. Throw in outsourcing and the Neoliberal movement hurting the domestic workforce and its no wonder we still need to fight an extraordinarily expensive War on Terrorism. Starting in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq the US spent 380 billion dollars alone on the war effort. That matches the expenditures of the 14 other highest countries on military affairs for that same year.


This last push through finals has awakened my academic mind from a deep slumber. I'm thinking in terms of NGOs and global movements that transcend the traditional nation-state framework.

God I can't wait to get back into a Biology classroom.


After my presentation tomorrow I'm celebrating by going to Eurotrash.