well, i finally did it. i submitted my first graduate school application. i should be whooping it up and hollering that it's one down and two to go, but instead i basically feel like throwing up. now that my application is in their hands and beyond mine, i'm terrified that i utterly fucked it up somehow. what if, in my statement of purpose, i wrote another school's name instead of theirs? what if i wrote utter bullshit? what if my GRE scores never got there and they're never going to tell me they didn't get there until one day before the deadline and then it'll be too late and oh god i'll never get in or have a successful life or have a corner office or be able to afford any more gingerbread lattes and i'm going to die in a cardboard box and now i want my mommy.

whatever. i'm over it.

so anyway, i got the easiest application out of the way - the two remaining schools are big time big deal schools who will never accept me, but i'm going to try valiantly anyway, by george. one of them is almost ready to send off, but i'm having a hard time picking the three writing samples they request. i've got two i've chosen, but the third one is this article i wrote about the italian town of matera (not that blog entry, though) - i like the article on its own, but was wondering if i should try to turn it into a web/photo essay in order to show my internet savvy, y'all. but then, that's a lot of trouble, and the application is due in like a week. soooooo, eh. i don't know.

then the third application doesn't require writing samples, but actually requires me to write a brand new essay. biznatches. here are the topics i have to choose from:

1. One of the distinctive aspects of long-form magazine journalism is that it not only offers the facts of the story but also includes an interpretation of the facts - an interpretation often shaped by the personality, tone and worldview of the individual publication. Choose five of the following magazines to analyze, and then write a one-paragraph description of each one's possible unique take on either "family versus career" or "the events of 9/11/01": The Economist, Essence, Glamour, Maxim, Ms., The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair.

2. Former network correspondent Bernard Goldberg argues in his book Bias: A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News that the media are biased in favor of liberal causes and issues. Do you agree with him? Are some media outlets biased in favor of conservative causes and issues? Describe what you would do if your news director, producer or assignment editor tried to steer you in a direction you felt was wrong or unfair when covering controversial issues such as abortion, stem-cell research, gender discrimination or U.S. policy in the Middle East.

3. In January 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered most judicial proceedings related to the Sept. 11 attacks closed to news reporters on national security grounds. The Justice Department says that Al Qaeda might receive valuable information about the government's investigative methods from public hearings of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Indeed, it is widely believed that news reports about the trial of four men accused of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade towers gave Al Qaeda information that helped it carry out the Sept. 11 attacks. Several news organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union have sued to compel the INS to keep its hearings open to the press and the public, citing the risk to the First Amendment and civil liberties. Do you think the hearings should be open or closed, and why?

now, it's true that i go into unstoppable muscular spasms after reading these topics and realizing that i have to write an excellent, thoughtful 800-word essay on of them. but i think i can handle it. i just can't do number one, because the only magazines i read are US weekly and instyle. and lucky, occasionally. oh, and i can't do number two, because my raging liberalism will shine through, and how can i ever be a journalist if i'm a raging liberal, huh? that NEVER happens. and, um, i can't do number three, because um that's hard and i be dumb and brain cannot answer difficult questions with contemplative, interesting answers.

crap. i am so screwed. can't i just write these schools a statement that says, "please teach me how to get paid to blog"?

Be sure to check out this post over at DailyKos. The Pentagon Defense Science Board's new report shows that we're making Arab opinion of the US worse. Nobody's buying our self-serving democratization rhetoric.

The expected reaction from hawks is that we're not trying to make friends, we're trying to win a war. Well, fine. But if you grant that the threat we face is a function of the hatred felt toward our nation, then our only remedies are elminating the threats militarily, or eliminating the hatred -- it's all a question of where you can most effectively cut the causal chain that ends with dead Americans.

Isn't it clear by now that our military isn't large enough to pacify even Iraq? If the military option isn't really an option, will we ever be able to swallow our pride and pursue a realistic strategy?

(I bet you thought the election had cured us of the preachy political posts.)