East Coast's A Callin'

I need to get out of the Midwest if only to have company at dinner if I choose to eat after 5:30 pm. I grew up among these people, but I still don't understand their ways.

Hilarity

I just watched Chris Rock's opening speech for the 77th Academy Awards. Apparently he's extremely funny even when he doesn't use words such as ****** or **** or ************. I laughed until tears came to my eyes.

Also funny, now that I'm looking back on it, was today's close encounter with a Statesider Resident. For those not in the know, the Statesider is the most expensive of the PRH dorms. It's full of the snottiest people you will ever encounter outside the Upper East Side of Manhattan (and, in fact, a lot of the kids there come from the Upper East Side of Manhattan). My suitemate Mike all but refuses to set foot in there, simply because the population is so unbearable. Let me illustrate:

Today they offered with brunch fresh bagels. For slicing purposes they had one of those V-blade bagel-cutters as well as a small serrated knife. I used the knife to great effect on my first bagel and decided to take the same approach to the second one. It turned out to be a little tougher, and getting started was a bit slow, but it came out just fine. While I was sawing into it, however, a rather typical Statesider male resident said to me that there was a bagel-cutter to my left, and I thanked him but also said that I thought the knife works a bit better. He scoffed and said "I doubt that!" I looked down at his plate, and he had sliced bagel but it was an absolutely mangled mess. I was, needless to say, nonplussed.

Questionable Quotations

From the past thirty-six hours:

My Environmental Conservation instructor on the element lead:
"...it's not radio active, so it's not giving off neurons."
My Ancient and Medieval Art professor on Alexander the Great:
"...he travels - [trailing off] How far does he travel? [long pause] Thousands of miles!"
One crazy guy to another crazy guy on the other side of State Street:
"Hey Gino! Where are my tendermeats? You know I cans tough."
The "small print" description on the plastic canister of Tang mix:
"NATURAL FLAVOR WITH OTHER NATURAL FLAVOR"

Where Is Bill O'Reilly When You Need Him?

For the past couple of weeks, I've been frustrated by the amount and volume of talking among student during two of my lectures. In my Ancient and Medieval Art class, the problem stems from two distinct groups of people: freshmen girls and middle-aged women who are auditing the course, I suspect in order to plan some sort of Eurasian vacation. The women tend to sit far forward if they can, so they're not close enough to hear usually. A group of four freshman girls, however has been sitting only twenty feet away from me, and they've been easily heard. In my Cryptography course the culprits are computer science students, who, like many computer science students, are pasty males with little skill at detecting inappropriate behavior on their part.

In past weeks I've talked to the guys in my math class about piping down, and I've shot the girls in the art history class some sharp looks, but without progress in both cases. On Monday I found the girls talking louder than ever. As a temporary fix to the problem that could be implemented immediately, I threw a ball of paper at the group, but in curved too much and landed in the empty seats in front of them, ultimately having no effect. As a more lasting solution, I went over and talked to them after class, getting myself scowls from two of the girls and gratitude from numerous students who had been equally bothered and less courageous. Sarah disapproved of my paper-throwing, and told me that I should have involved the professor, so I decided to take her advice in my math class. When I went to office hours that afternoon to ask a question, I mentioned that there had been much talking in his class, and he seemed genuinely surprised. Today, when things got bad enough that I couldn't hear him, I stood up and moved closer to the front. Professor Brualdi saw this, kindly waited for about fifteen minutes, and then reprimanded the students in the back. Hopefully things will be better in the coming weeks.

Back On Track

Life's been a bit hectic lately; I've had more than the usual number of assignments due this week, and recent trips to the library have left me with a stack of books half a meter high. Fortunately recovery from my cold seems all but complete now, and I've had the energy to tackle this week sans afternoon naps and even get back on the treadmill for a few minutes each night. (After three consecutive nights I'm caught up to where I was when I left off as the cold began.)

Slush, Stations, and Seats

We've received a fair bit of snow this morning. As best I can tell the sidewalks are still a bit above freezing, but the snow has come down so fast that it didn't melt completely, thus leaving us with a half-inch of slush. I walked through the stuff on my way to and from the Kohler Art Library in the Elvehjem. I'm gearing up for the paper that will determine the bulk of my grade in Post-Colonial Architecture. The topic I've chosen is railway stations. I'm currently planning an emphasis on Grand Central and Union Stations (in New York and Washington, respectively). I'm not sure what my thesis will be quite yet, but I'm thinking that it will have something to do with a change in design I expect to find that corresponds to the decrease of importance in Westward Expansion. I had fun this morning looking at some architectural journals from around 1910. I got a kick out of some of the advertisements. My favorite was for the Never Split Seat Company, an Evansville, Indiana manufacturer of toilet seats.

Since 1959

I popped over to say 'hi' to Nat this evening. Being the overly generous friend he always is, he didn't let me out the door until I had had a beer - Harp Lager - and icecream - Ben & Jerry's Fossil Fuel ("Sweet Cream Ice Cream with Chocolate Cookie Pieces, Fudge Dinosaurs and a Fudge Swirl"). We also started watching Welcome to the Dollhouse, but the slow, painful plot wasn't what I needed in my already drowsy state. I'll have to give the movie another shot sometime soon.

Intriguing Product

Every now and then I encounter a small business with a name so clever I suspect they've never consulted a lawyer. I thought New Country Buffet was a fun name for a little Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, but apparently the Old Country Buffet franchise didn't agree. (The small restaurant is now New King Buffet.) I think I may have found a company name that takes the cake in this category.

The seventh intriguing product is the stainless steel equipment of the Royce Rolls Ringer Co.

Of Bibliopegy And Bibliopolery

This semester has created than they usual amount of frustrations in the book-buying process.

First, my James Joyce course uses a specific version of Ulysses that is not the one that I purchased last spring. The version of Ulysses that Prof. Begam has assigned has some very clear advantages over other editions: It includes some five thousand errors; some are simply periods in places of commas, but other amendments include the reintroduction of sentences lost in the typesetting process. Comparing the two texts that I now own, I'm certain that the assigned edition is far superior as far as the text is concerned. As a book, however, "The Gabler Edition" is lacking. It's only available in paperback, and the quality of the binding is abysmal. I had to exchange my first copy after a single week's use. The book also has some major formatting issues that I think are intended to save space (and thus pages), but it's rather frustrating to have such a wonderful text presented in such an inglorious manner.

Second, Narciso assigned for Post-Colonial Architecture books from the middle of the twentieth-century, most of which are long out of print. One of the books was available at a reasonable price and in a very acceptable condition from an Amazon.com zShop. The book came a couple weeks ago, and I was slightly dismayed to find some highlighting inside, but I wasn't sufficiently frustrated to take action. Amazon.com, however, reminded me yesterday to rate my seller. I gave my_favorite_books 3 out of 5 and figured that that would be the end of it. Not so. I received the following email this morning while I was at class:

Concerning your order for the subject book, you posted the following
feedback:

"3 out of 5: Book arrived promptly, but it was in slightly poorer condition than advertised."

Our description of the book was "Firm tight binding, no spine creases. No highlighting or markings. Light shelf & handling wear. Prompt shipment. Satisfaction guaranteed."

We attempt to describe the condition of each book we list for sale as accurately as possible but we are not immune from errors or unintentional omissions. We state "satisfaction guaranteed" for all books that we sell. Your rating and comment indicates that you were not satisfied. Please accept our sincerest apology and advise us as to how the book should have been described and what action we can take to satisfy you.

Sincerely yours,

Mac Black
My Favorite Books
Lake Forest, California

After lunch I explained my discontent:

Dear Mr. Black,

The book I received, contrary to the description given, had extensive highlighting in the final chapters. I can easily imagine how someone thumbing through the pages may have searched the majority of the book but missed the critical pages; it is an understandable error. If you are sincere in your guarantee of satisfaction, I will gladly except a small refund. Perhaps the $3.49 I paid for shipping would be appropriate. I am grateful for and impressed by your concern regarding this matter. This courtesy will not be forgotten.

Sincerely,

James Lucas Hepokoski

I was credited $3.49 by the end of the business day. That's good service. I will be shopping with My Favorite Books again.

Troublemakers

One of the themes of my Environmental Conservation class that I'm hoping we'll investigate more is the rift between the academic elite and the working class that often occurs when the environment is concerned. Based on comments I hear in discussion, I think that many of the students have little grasp of how their proposed environmental policies will appear to those affected. Still, sometimes you just want to side with the academic elite outright. This is an extract from "Fear In The Fields" by Duff Wilson, originally published in the 3 July 1997 edition of the Seattle Times:

[Mayor] Patty Martin is not a popular politician in parts of Grant County these days.

Since she began raising the alarm about the use of toxic waste as fertilizer, she has been threatened with a lawsuit by a local farmer, been verbally attacked in town meetings and seen the City Council - led by a son-in-law of the local manager of the Cenex fertilizer company - pressure her to shut up or quit.

Many farmers in and around Quincy, a town of 4,030, say they're doing very well, thank you, with the fertilizer and the help and advice they've received from Cenex Supply and Marketing, which sells expertise, financing and farm supplies in the West and Midwest.

They call Martin a troublemaker and fear she's fomenting a scare akin to the Alar alarm that nearly ruined Washington's apple industry in 1989.

In that case, the CBS television show "60 Minutes" reported that a substance sprayed on Washington apples to preserve them in packing was dangerous to consumers. CBS later admitted it had made some mistakes in the story, and the Washington apple growers sued the network. But the suit was dismissed, and in the end, Alar was classified by EPA as a carcinogen and banned for all food uses.

"We had a woman starting that one, too, and a lot of people got hurt by it," Bill Weber, an apple and potato farmer, said at one council meeting, bringing nods and laughter.

I suspect that Mr. Weber is one of the many people who believe that women and apples have had troubled history (pretty much right from the start, I mean), but this kind of comment still gets me.

Highly Encrypted

My cryptography professor is an intelligent, kindly, and well-spoken man; perhaps his only failing as a professor of mathematics is that he is too easily convinced by confused students that he has made a mistake. The prime example came today during an example of the Cipher Feedback Mode (CFB) of the Block Cipher. This isn't really a great cipher (it's no longer considered secure), but it's good for the math class. We're doing fine until Prof. Brualdi tried to give us an example. He didn't have one in his notes, so he was working it out as he went. We didn't go more than two steps before a very vocal and moderately ignorate segment of the class had casued him to beleive he had made a mistake when he had not,and the confusiion compounded as we continued. (It didn't help that we were using only 1s and 0s, which become quite confusing because of the inherrent repetion.) After about 10 minutes of struggling with the numbers, Prof. Brualid figured out where the class lead him astray, and righted things. Finally he asked, "does this look right?" One guy in the back row replied, "I don't care anymore."

Almost Famous

This photo accompanied an column written by Sarah in today's edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, properly credited to one James Lucas Hepokoski.

True Love Is Forever

Here's an romantic story for Valentines Day:

Gay penguins won't go straight
Ananova

A German zoo's plans to tempt its gay penguins to go straight by importing more females has been declared a failure.

The female penguins were flown in especially from Sweden in an effort to encourage the Humboldt penguins at the Bremerhaven Zoo to reproduce.

But the six homosexual penguins showed no interest in their new female companions and remained faithful to each other.

Zoo Director Heike Kueck said: "The relationships were apparently too strong."

A keeper confirmed that the male couples had adopted rocks which they were guarding like eggs in their caves.

The zoo has said that it will try again in Spring 2006, because the penguins are an endangered species and need to be encouraged to breed.

I guess I should amend my statement: True love is forever or until your species goes extinct.

Stereotypes In Love

There seem to be a lot of young men with bouquets of flowers wandering about the streets of Madison today. I saw one tall and lanky fellow carrying long-stem roses. I saw one black guy in a Fubu jacket and flashy gold chains carrying three bouquets with three separate cards. I even saw one bookish kid looking rather embarrassed carrying a bouquet down Gilman Street while rehearsing his lines.

If Madison is any indication, retailers of plant reproductive organs seem to have done rather good business this week.

With Science!

My Enviromental Conservation class gave us homework this weekend; we need to bring in a news article on something related to the environment. No written summary or criticism is needed, just the article. While part of me thinks that this is just a step above bringing in a picture we drew of a representative of an endangered species, I have to acknowelege that the project has propted me to discover and explore a really cool website: LiveScience. There's enough here for me to bring in a couple articles; I have a suspicion that there will be a couple students who forget due to the simplicity of the assignment.

End Of A Long Day / Since 1858

All in all, its been a good day since the sun rose at 6:59. I mailed financial aid materials to Columbia University during shortly after the post office opened at 9:00. I then met up with Sarah, and we walked to College Library so that I could return the DVDs I watched last night. Before returning we stopped at Espresso Royal for mint hot chocolate, at the Community Pharmacy for some Tom's of Maine toothpaste (for me), and at a variety of places in a vain search for decorative feathers (for Sarah). This evening, while I was on an unncessary search for a misplaced sock, I got into the elevator with some 9th-floor guys carying four 24-packs of beer. About five minutes, when I was hanging out with Evan and Sarah a beer started to sound really good. I asked Evan if he had any beer, and Evan said he didn't, but that a beer did sound really good, and Sarah agreed. So I wandered down the hall and bargined with one of the kids from the elevator for two Brew City Lagers and a Brew City Ice. Evan was kind enough to buy, saying that my short expedition for the common cause earned me my can. The lager I tried probably was probably worth about the 67 cents Evan paid, but it sure hit the spot. (The City Brewery of La Crosse, Wisconsin was founded in 1858.)

Light

Nine hours and fourty-five minutes of daylight begins now.

Keats 2x

I just finished Marathon Man, and I enjoyed in quite a bit. Interestingly, I noticed that both films I watched this night alluded to Keats. The students in The Last Picture Show were discussing the poet, and one student criticized "The Nightingale." The reference in Marathon Man was much less obvious, and as far as I know (having never read any of Keats's work before tonight) it may have been accidental. One of the signs above the sidewalk of the street with all of the Jewish diamond vendors advertises KEATS COFFEE SHOP with no apostraphe. Once again, it probably is nothing, but it caught my attention nonetheless.

Waiting For The Sandman

I've been sick for the past couple days; it's not the flu (I had my shot), but its one of the harder-hitting colds I've had since starting college. I haven't been able to sleep, and I'm starting to think that I might not be able to do so tonight. I might watch the movie Marathon Man since misery does love company. I already watched The Last Picture Show earlier in the evening (yesterday, I guess). It was well made, and I'm glad I saw it. I probably could have done with something more cheerful given my current state, but I always take some satisfaction in being able to check-off another entry to Roger Ebert's ever-expanding list of Great Movies.

Of A Broken Heart

An ad in the local edition of The Onion:

Cure Your Valentime's Day Blues
[picture of a heart with much decoration (including a torch, ribbons, and a zipper) and at least four crossed-out girl's names]
10% OFF ALL COVER-UPS
at EXOTICA TATTOO
3769 East Washingon

I bet there are probably a decent number of people around here who will be tempted by such an offer. Having been a lifeguard for a number of years and having seen a lot of tattoos that might have looked good a decade ago, I don't think I will ever be in the position to take an advantage of discounted "cover-ups."

White

Sarah and I just returned from the film Nói albínói (which translates to Nói the Albino), an Icelandic film about a delinquent but brilliant young man in a nowhere-town somewhere on the coast of the island. The plot was relatively uneventful but never dragged, in part because of the use of short, to-the-point scenes not unlike those utilized in Napoleon Dynamite. Nói albínói isn't a happy movie, but it is a comic one; I laughed aloud on more than one occasion. At only 93 minutes, the investment in time is small compared to the entertainment and food-for-thought that the film delivers.

Thank Goodness They're Not Convenient

I'm looking at transportation to the Twin Cities for Spring Break. The Mad-Bus advertises that they offer "DIRECT CREDIT CARD PAYMENT - NO NEED TO HASSLE WITH TIMELY PAYPAL REGISTRATIONS." Maybe I should take Better Bus this time. We'll see.

The Classics

Professor Cahill teaches my course in ancient and medieval art. In the interest of getting us well versed in "the classics," he requested that we go see The General, a silent film starring Buster Keaton that was showing at the Overture Center this evening. A vague suggestion that there would be an extra credit question on the upcoming exam regarding the film was enough to convince me. Besides, a three dollars ticket for the film (accompanied by distinguished organist R. Jelani Eddington) plus a vaudeville-type show before hand was too good a deal to pass up. Apparently this evening was one in a series called Duck Soup Cinema (presumably named after the Marx Bros. film), but it's unfortunately the only one of the semester. I say unfortunately because I laughed 'til I cried during the film, and the variety hour before hand wasn't half bad. I took with me Highlander sixth-floor resident Sarah (with whom I attended the Badger football games) since I knew she liked the Marx Bros, and as I predicted, she enjoyed the evening as much as I did. Highlights included a woman going by name Olive with the (supposedly French) last name of d'Lique, a juggler named Truly Remarkable Loon, and just about everything Buster Keaton did.

Exchange

Since we only get two meals on Saturday and Sunday, I often try to squirrel away a couple of cookies on Friday so that I'll have something to fill the gaps in the day. Yesterday, I grabbed a couple chocolate chip cookies and a couple slices of white bread, the store-bought kind that's only one step above Wonder Bread. I stuck the whole stash in a Gladware container so that it wouldn't dry out. Returning to it after my evening run, I found that the bread had dried out anyway, but instead of losing the moisture to the air, it all transfered to the cookies on top of it. The bottom cookie was soggy to the point of falling apart, and the one above it was very much on the damp side. I know that cookies are rather dry things in general, but this discovery still makes me wonder about Wonder Bread. Do they bake it in a sauna or something?

(Mike, Sarah, Nat, and Claire are all away this weekend, so it's just me and the blog. I tried to stick to the common theme of deserts - ice cream, doughnuts, slushies, and cookies - to keep me from posting too often.)

Slushy

Today marked the first of Madison's two-day Kites on Ice festival. I took a short stroll out onto Lake Mendota to get a better look, but the unseasonably warm day made the surface of the lake more like an Icee than an ice cube. Last year's snow was preferable, but the people in boots seemed to be having a great time anyway. I returned after dark to see a short fireworks display ("nighttime fireworks" according to the man on a cell phone standing behind me).

Tonight I'm reading some of The Odyssey in preparation for Ulysses before I go for my brief run on the treadmill. It's strange to see a number of the characters and civilizations from my art history class appearing in this epic poem. It certainly blurs the line between the real world and fiction.

Hot Now

Krispy Kreme seems to garner intense feelings from people: Many people greatly enjoy their doughnuts; others strongly dislike the company for their extreme popularity. If forced into one of these two positions, I would be among the former. I like Krispy Kreme, and I like twenty-five or twenty-six of the thirty-or-so varieties they offer at a given time, so I was quite disappointed when my close encounter with KK doughnuts this morning didn't pan out.

Mike's mom and stepfather were passing near Madison on their way to Chicago, and Mike decided to hitch a ride with them, and his high school buddy Chris decided to tag along. When Mike's mom came up to drop some stuff of for Mike she handed me a half-box of Krispy Kremes which contained three chocolate iced kreme filled, one glazed chocolate cake, and one chocolate iced glazed. I like the latter two flavors, but not the first. But alas! Mike and Chris, who each grabbed a single doughnut on their way out seemed to have similar tastes. I ended up taking the remaining three doughnuts down to the front desk and telling the RA to give them away as she saw fit.

Does anyone really like 'kreme' and custard filled doughnuts? Would anyone miss them if Krispy Kreme mercifully took them out of the line-up?

Did I Catch You In Time?

Today is International Ice Cream For Breakfast Day!

Napoleon's cousin?

For a short while today, I thought I might be sitting with Napoleon Dynamite or maybe a close cousin of that infamous high school outcast. I went to the Honors Student Organization spring kickoff meeting (primarily for the free pizza but also to be the first to hear what sort of activities will be coming up). Nothing sounded outrageously cool except for the possible opportunity to get subsidized tickets to The Producers, but I'm hoping that the regularly occurring events such as the Chicago trip will happen even if they weren't mentioned.

I was one of the first to arrive, and I soon found the chairs around me taken by a couple of bespectacled white guys, both of whom were first years with a lot of advanced standing credits. And one of them sounded just like Napoleon Dynamite. He didn't have Napoleon's temper (I never heard him say "Whatever I feel like I wanna do, gosh!"), but his voice was quite similar, and he had that same unusual but not unpleasant awkwardness. What actually amused me more was that both guys talked a great deal about their advanced standing credits, saying how hard it was to decide if they should call themselves freshmen or juniors. After talking to me about it for about three minutes straight, they confided in me that they just call themselves "first years" so no one thought they were too proud of their standing. I've actually done just that on a number of occasions, so I know what they mean, but I was still amused that they unknowingly tried to impress the one guy in the room who will graduate at a younger age than they will. I think they would have continued to pursue the topic if I hadn't been rescued by the arrival of my buddy Les Chappell.

Like It Is

My James Joyce class is the most enjoyable in my schedule, owing both to the interesting subject matter and the teaching skills of Professor Begam. Some people to whom I've talked about him strongly disliked the man, for both his perceived arrogance and for his daily use of polystyrene cups. I do wish he'd conserve cups, but I like him anyway. If he is arrogant he's smart enough and knowledgeable enough to get away with it, but really he always seems to have a twinkle in his eye that invites us to smile with him and not to be offended when he finds humor. Prof. Begam also says some delightful things. Today he was just tinge annoyed to find that his classroom full of Christian-raised students had no idea why the passion of Christ is called 'the passion.' He rolled his eyes and said, "very well, once again the Jew will teach you about Christianity." At another moment during the course of the lecture/discussion, he said that "if you're in the gasworks in ninetieth century Ireland and you have consumption...you're going to die!" Laughing he added, "That is the unhappy, sad truth."

The Artist As An Old Man

James Joyce, author of Chamber Music, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, would be 123 today were he still alive; he died in Zurich at the age of fifty-eight.

Since 1984

Happy twenty-first, Sameer!

People With No Internal Monologue

When international man of mystery Austin Powers awakens from his cryogenically frozen state he is plagued by two temporary side effects. ONE: He cannot control the volume of his voice. TWO: He has no internal monologue, so every thought that pops into his head is voiced. This made for a single very funny scene before Mike Myers wisely drops the gag and moves on with the story. Unfortunately some people in the real world seem to suffer from a lack of internal monologue chronically. I present two cases that worked their way into my life today:

ONE: I was in Environmental Conservation (again), and the lecture was on Yellowstone National Park. It wasn't a bad lecture today to be honest, but it had a little too much room for audience participation. For some reason, this class prompts more comments than questions. There are about three people who actually have a great deal to offer, and I always enjoy hearing from them. Most of the participants just yammer dribble though. One guy with unkempt hair who sits in the front is particularity irritating due to both the quantity and the quality of his comments. The worst came just as Ryan finished talking about the volcanic nature of the region, mentioning that absolutely enormous eruptions had occurred there at intervals of approximately 6,000 years for the past couple million years, and the last one occurred about 6,000 years ago. Ryan didn't even leave us to draw conclusions ourselves, telling us that the pattern predicts an eruption at any moment. But this kid in the front raised his hand, and when called upon he said with a highly amused voice, "hopefully [that volcano is] not as dependable as some of those geysers." I calculate that since he took fifteen seconds in a lecture of about fifty people he just wasted twelve and a half minutes of our time.

TWO: I was looking at the Harry Potter Automatic News Aggregator just a minute ago. Maybe I should be embarrassed, but com'on, I'm anxious to read book six. I'm entitled to my guilty pleasures, and I do think that Harry Potter has merit. Anyway, the "news" of the day was that J.K. Rowling warned fans against downloading files purporting to be e-books of the forthcoming Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Like most fan sites, HPANA allows user comments after each piece. Most of them are completely useless and amount to "J.K. Rowling is the best" or "I'm the biggest fan." But a fifth-grade math teacher from Texas going by the name Ravenclawgrrr feels that she has something deeper to add:

Isn't it sad what some people will do to scam others out of money?! I think the worst part of it is that most HP fans are kids who are dying for any info on Harry's saga. It's just wrong to scam old people and kids!

I guess it is wrong to scam little kids when its so easy to just take their stuff by force.