“John McCain can Twitter. I know, it surprised me too. But I suppose we should know better by now-after all, even the brilliant Diane Ream in her slow, exhausting drone emits the phrase every so often. Newspapers around the country were thrilled when he tweeted up a storm about the spending bill on Monday, often adding his own comments afterwards.”
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John McCain can Twitter.

I know, it surprised me too. But I suppose we should know better by now-after all, even the brilliant Diane Ream in her slow, exhausting drone emits the phrase every so often.

Newspapers around the country were thrilled when he tweeted up a storm about the spending bill on Monday, often adding his own comments afterwards. Surprisingly, they weren’t bad-even a little funny sometimes.

$150,000 for lobster research – similar to lobster managment? he tweeted on Wednesday. It’s a pity he can’t spell.

Or how about, $143,000 for Nevada Humanities to develop and expand an online encyclopedia – Anyone heard of Wikipedia?

If this was his primary resource during the campaign, well, that explains a lot.

Now for my favorite. $2 million ‘for the promotion of astronomy’ in Hawaii – because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy.

I have no words. He was alive in the 60s, yes?

But despite my smiling face on the night of Nov. 4, Captain Maverick (man, it’s good to say that word again) might have a point.

Thanks to our federalist government, the states are looking out for themselves now. Everyone wants something-but to the rest of the world, it looks like, well, crap. I don’t care about Mormon Cricket Removal in Utah. Do you?

So we write these off, laugh about them with our friends and complain that we’re taking the hit for it. What we don’t realize is that it’s happening much closer to home-at the University of Akron, to be exact.

Maybe I should start twittering things that the University of Akron does.

We have a giant sculpture in front of the Polymer Science Building that’s worth hundreds of scholarships. Exciting news-it looks edible!

There’s a new tent that will house all the homeless people in Akron. Wait-they’re hanging it on the Rec center now.

There’s a Special Projects Director and an Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Engagement. Maybe it’s just me, but I would think that a strategic initiative would qualify as a special project. How about paying the parking attendants all that money to make us pay more? Lose-lose situation. I was excited about the labyrinth until I found out it wasn’t actually a labyrinth-just a bit of decoration.

And is it really absolutely necessary to put in a new stadium when we’re in an economic crisis?

Now, let’s take a step back and go back to old John McCain, railing on the Senate floor. If he uses technology, so can we.

Google Lobster research initiative and you find that they are studying a shell disease that causes lobsters to become inedible. If you’re a New England fisherman, this is probably a big deal for you. More edible lobsters equals more profits, which equals more jobs, and so on down the economic scale. Perhaps we should let the lobsters go.

Higher education is a big deal for the Obama administration, and if a real, free online encyclopedia exists, that may not be so bad. I’d love to be able to reference a good online encyclopedia without wondering if Shane Hague really did win an Olympic medal in 1994.

Even Mormon Cricket removal could at least create jobs. But I wouldn’t be able to tell you this unless I did some research and found an adequate explanation.

Much more adequate than the Feb. 26 post of, YEs!! I am twittering on my blackberry but not without a little help, anyway.

The University of Akron is not giving us an adequate explanation for spending our tuition money in certain ways. While some things may be able to be explained to an understandable level, such as the stadium or the many different administrative departments, there are other areas like the rock candy sculpture that, well, may never make sense.

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