Sexually Explicit

Like most of the e-mail using world, I get spam. For reasons unknown to me, my Gmail account tends to get spam only of a pornographic nature and my AOL account tends to all the other types (home mortgage, "bad credit?", perscription drugs, etc.) This bifurcation caused me to take interest in a recent report issued by the Pew Internet and American Life Project regarding a survey on spam:

Among other things, the survey found that people were getting less porn spam.... While 63% of email users now say they have received porn spam, down 8 percentage points from a year ago, 29% of those email users say they are now getting less porn spam, compared to 16% who said they are getting more.

I suspect that this drop primarily reflects two things: (1) spam filters are getting better on a whole and (2) many Americans are either unaware of their spam filters or they just don't check their spam folders. I'm doubtful that this poll reflects an actual drop in porn spam.

In truth, I haven't been been checking my spam folders that often either. As I move away from AOL, whose filters are less than impressive (I'd say they get it right about two-thrids of the time), to Gmail, whose handling of my unwanted email has been nothing short of amazing, I feel less pressed to keep a carefule watch on the spam. Nearly all of my unwanted messages are automatically sorted into the spam folder, and it is unusual for legitimate messages to end up there by accident. To make life even easier Gmail automatically labels messages with pornographic content with the all capital label "SEXUALLY EXPLICIT." This makes messages that are mistakenly sorted (either spam in the inbox or good mail in the spam folder) stand out like a sore thumb.

As a result, I almost never read even the subject lines of my spam, but today I read a few when I was retrieving a message I had marked as spam by mistake. Most were of the subject lines were typical ('webcam,' 'hot,' 'co-eds,' and other such buzzwords were a dime a dozen), but one subject line really just cracked me up:

Naughty Doctor Fucks Pretty Whore In Cute Anus

As if having a subject written like a New York Times headline wasn't humorous enough, I can't but help laugh at the choice of adjectives.

An Odyssey Completed

I finished Ulysses this afternoon. I enjoyed it greatly, and I'm looking forward to reading it again. I might have to settle with the 1961 version of the text however, since my Gabler Edition is in unimpressive condition, partially due to standard wear and tear, mostly due the poor binding, which I've had to glue in numerous places throughout the semester.

I read much of the final episode of the book yesterday afternoon up on the sundeck with Sarah. It was an excellent day for such a pastime, and the experience was further enhanced by our trip to Jamba Juice beforehand. Jamba is introducing a new line of naturally caffeinated drinks, and we both received coupons for free drinks. I had the Matcha Green Tea Blast.

Matcha green tea powder enticingly blended with soymilk, nonfat frozen yogurt, sorbet and ice for a cool and creamy burst of energy! High in protein, calcium, phosphorus, and vitamin D. The power of Matcha, with antioxidants, theophylline and caffeine, makes this a blast.

Bad punctuation aside, the description proved accurate. The flavor reminded me of green tea icecream, but the texture was far superior.

Update

This post refers to the 27 March 2005 post "Back In the Madtown / Out."

I just received the following memo from the Highlander staff:

Topic: THEFT

Dear Highlander Resident:

We regret to inform you that in the recent weeks there have been a number of theft incidences within the building. iPods, various CDs and (pathetically enough) beverages are a few of the things that have been targeted by the thieves....

I'm quite proud of my 'pathetically enough.'

I also got the pleasant news (as a result of the post) that the professor who I believe to be in South America actually made a relatively small mistake. His "relationship" seems to have been a single phone call that he made after much pressuring on the student's part. Professor Cohen, however, remains very much in trouble.

Like pistons fans, but with style

Fans throw flares, soccer match ends early

By The Associated Press and Bloomberg News

MILAN, Italy - AC Milan goalkeeper Dida was hit by a flare thrown from the stands, and yesterday's UEFA Champions League quarterfinal match against crosstown rival Internazionale was halted with about 15 minutes to play.

AC Milan was ahead 1-0 in the match and set to advance to the semifinals on a 3-0 aggregate score when Dida was struck on his left shoulder by the flare in the 73rd minute.

The match was stopped. As many as 20 flares were burning in the penalty area.

When referee Markus Merk tried to restart play 10 minutes later, more bottles and lighted flares were thrown. Merk abandoned the match in the 75th minute.

"Tonight's episode doesn't just hurt Inter, but the entire city of Milan," AC Milan manager Carlo Ancelotti said. "The reaction of the Inter fans was surprising. I've played and coached in Milan for 10 years and I've never seen anything like it."

Inter fans in the crowd of about 80,000 were upset that when Esteban Cambiasso put the ball in the net in the 71st minute, the goal was disallowed because of a foul.

"After the goal was annulled, the fans' anger was understandable, although the reaction of throwing objects onto the field is not justified," Inter defender Ivan Cordoba said.

Curiosity To Become Enemy No. 2?

We spent about ten minutes of our environmental Conservation discussion talking about the proposal to list feral cats as an unprotected species is Wisconsin. I'm for it, but I'm against the rider on the bill that allows for trapping of large cats (mostly as a gut reaction since I don't have any real facts on the matter).

Apparently the issue is getting national attention despite similar laws in a number of neighboring states including Illinois and good ol' Minnesota. I just stumbled across CNN's story about it on their main page.

A Step Up From The 486 DX

I placed an order for an Alienware MJ-12m 7700 this afternoon. For those of you unfamiliar with Alienware, they're a Florida-based company that sells customized PCs via the internet. In many respects they are a Dell for people who want or need better hardware or service. They hype their gaming computers first and foremost, but unlike their primary competitors Falcon Northwest and Voodoo, Alienware offers professionals some more serious computers that have a little less styling and a little more bang for their buck. The MJ-12m 7700 is the current highend "portable workstation." The key specs of the system I selected are below; take a look if this kind of this thing interest you.

This is my second computer (I'm still getting along just fine with my 2001 Dell Inspiron 8000), but the fifth computer on which I've been a regular user. Our family got its first PC in 1993. It was a 486 DX (not one of those sorry SXs), although I was quickly frustrated that we had VGA graphics instead of VGA+ like my cousins did. (It actually did limit our software options substantially.) Perhaps the coolest feature our computer had this thing called a "cee dee rom" that the salesperson thought was likely to be quite important in the coming years. (He was correct, and we actually upgraded to a double-speed CD-ROM eventually.) It's funny thinking about how many copies of that computer would be needed to match this new laptop I'm getting. Probably it's only slightly less funny than thinking in the year 2017 how many copies of my 2005 laptop would equate to my new handheld.

Case Alienware® MJ12m 7700 Case with 17" WideSXGA+ 1680 x 1050 LCD Display with Built-in Camera
Motherboard Intel® 915P Chipset Supporting PCI-Express
Processor Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 530J w/ HT Technology 3.0GHz 1MB Cache
Memory 1GB Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 533MHz - 2 x 512MB
Graphics Accelerator Alienware® MJ12m 7700 NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Go with 256MB of DDR3 memory
Hard Drive RAID 0 - 160GB (80GB x 2) 5400 RPM ATA100
Primary Optical Drive 8X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW / 24X CD-RW Combo w/Software
Wireless Network Internal Wireless 802.11a/b/g miniPCI Card

Over and out

The much anticipated letter from Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation was waiting for me on my desk when I returned from Milwaukee. I had Sarah look for me, and although she recited Psalm 4 and said three Hail Marys for me before she opened the envelope, the answer was, sadly and expectedly, 'no.' She took me out for a nice long walk around the capitol, and I felt better.

I'm going to be an Orangeman. Knowing is nice.

The Sound Of Milwaukee

I spent today in the Cream City with my friend Vladislav Ivankovich; I met Vlad when we were living on the seventh floor of the Langdon last year, and I tutored him in mathematics this past fall. He picked me up from my bus stop, bought me lunch, and then we stopped at his aunt and uncle's house, where I met his maternal grandparents and his two cousins Kat and Tina, who I must say were two of the most quickwitted high school students I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Both of the girls were busy, so Vlad and I headed downtown by ourselves. Our first stop was the Milwaukee Public Museum. It was a mixed bag; the place was clearly intended for much younger visitors, but I had a great time in the butterfly room. I had insects swirling about me almost constantly, and I got to watch some of them feed from up close. Afterwards we stopped at a huge (but somewhat smelly) used book store and a Starbucks, where I had a Chocofino and the necessary accompanying glass of water.

We proceeded to the main event of the day, which was the play Bach at Leipzig by Itamar Moses at Milwaukee Repertory Theater. This new play proved to be quite hilarious, and I'm looking forward to seeing another work from this young playwrite. The play is set in Leipzig in 1722, and features a cast of seven organist/composers, all of whom are named either Johann or Georg. I was particularly delighted to find actor Mark Corkins playing the role of Georg Friedrich Kaufmann, for I had seen and enjoyed him in the role of Sir Andrew Aguechee in Twelfth Night last October.

The play ran longer than Vlad expected, and we most unfortunately had to forgo dinner with the family so that I could catch my bus back to Madison.

April Fools!

Well, the Life and Times is alive and well, despite the April Fools message that was displayed here thoughout the day. (Visitors, instead of seeing the usual blog, found the message "This blog has been deleted.") I can't be too proud of my simple little prank, however, while I'm busy getting the news from PNN.com (the Potter News Network) or drinking Google Gulp. Some people clearly put a lot more effort into their annual gag.

Rouge

I think I've spent a good ten minutes today with my face in various shades of crimson.

First, in James Joyce, we were examining the episode "Oxen of the Sun," and pulling apart some of the text that was written in a rather antiquated style. The chapter takes place at a maternity hospital, and is chockfull of offcolor references.

Christ's rood made she on breastbone and him drew that he would rathe infare under her thatch.

Professor Begam mentioned that there is, of course, a pun in this last word. I (true to form) must have had an amused look on my face, for he turned to me and asked me what the joke was. Decidedly less amused, I tried quickly to think of how to answer the question. It's playing at a reference to her pubic hair, isn't it? What was the word Joyce used back in "Lotus-Eaters" during the bath?

Enjoy a bath now: clean trough of water, cool enamel, the gentle tepid stream This is my body.

He foresaw he pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved. He saw his trunk and limbs riprippled over and sustained, buoyed lightly upward, lemonyellow: his navel, bud of flesh: and saw the dark tangled curls of his bush floating, floating hair of the stream around the limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower.

'Bush.' That's it, as the passage came to me.
"It referring to her bush," I answered, which I figured would be perhaps slightly amusing, but not overly so, since I've made a habit of using Joyce's wordchoice whenever possible ('waistcoateers' for 'prostitutes' and 'the BMV' for 'the Blessed Virgin Mary'). What I hadn't counted on was being just a little bit wrong. Apparently 'thatch' was the female genitalia, and not the surrounding hair. The professor corrected me, and everyone laughed. I blushed for a good long while.

Then, in the Rise of American Post-Colonial Architecture, Narciso suddenly turned to me and commanded, "without blushing, define for me an 'erotic impulse.'"
By this time I was half tempted to look for the candid camera.
"Can I pass? I've already had a sufficiently similar experience today," I replied.
"Oh, do tell," said Narciso.
"You want my story?" I asked in fear.
"I'd rather have a definition for an 'erotic impulse." I paused and thought.
"Well, now I am blushing, but how about a sudden desire for a sexual experience?" I ventured hesitantly.
"Sexual experience?" Narciso asked.
"An experience," I emphasized.
"I don't like this word 'experience.'" he said. He suggest a desire for copulation would be better, and asked me if I was convinced.
"Not entirely," I answered.
"What don't you like?"
"I don't like 'copulation.' I think that many people desire some sort of other sexual act," I said as thoughts of my gay and lesbian friends and my pedophilic professors flitted through my head.
Narciso consented and went on to discuss a famous (but impotent) nineteenth century critic of architecture. I continued to blush for a good long while.

I can't remember a day like this since eighth grade health class. The day I recall took place during our sexual health unit. It was, of course, very uncool to laugh at anything of that type by the time we were in eighth grade. Come of think of it, I think it might have been uncool to laugh at anything. Anyhow, I sat right behind this fat kid named Brent. Brent was not cool, either by the eighth grade definition or my current definition. Brent would laugh at anything and everything in the sexual health class, even the most unfunny words imaginable like 'urethra.' Being as fat as he was, ol' Brent'd jiggle all over like a bowl full of jelly. And while I didn't see much to laugh about in 'vas deferens,' I did find much to laugh about in seeing waves of fat cruise up and down Brent's body every time Ms. Hegadus said 'vas deferens.' So I laughed, and no one knew the real cause for my mirth, and I blushed for a good long while.

Nighttown

Walking down State Street I had a brief experience that seemed as if it came right out of the "Circe" episode of Ulysses, which is a rather long series of nighttime encounters and hallucinations in "Nighttown," the red light district of Dublin more commonly known as Monto.

BUM
Can you spare any change?

JAMES
Sorry.

BUM
(in an entirely serious tone) Don't apologize!

Back in the Madtown / Out

Sarah and I had a smooth return trip to Madison, watching Friday Night Lights (which required more empathy for football fanatics than I could give) and the first two-thirds of the excellent film Collateral. Sarah informed be on the bus that my suite was one of many that had been illegally entered over the break. My losses seem to have been light at only three sodas and a can of Guinness. I'll look into reporting the theft of the sodas tomorrow, since the guilty parties are known. I also learned on the bus that one of my former professors was arrested for sending nude photos of himself to a 14-year old boy. Keith Cohen, who has admitted to having done this, was my comparative literature professor last spring. I liked him very much, and even paid him a visit this fall to tell him about the New York Clasical Theatre production I saw in Central Park on my last night in the City, since we had read a book by the playwrite, Aphra Behn. I had briefly considered him for letters of recommendation, which is somewhat ironic since one of my previous recommenders reportedly left for South America after a relationship with a student became public. It irks me to see nice, intelligent, creative people make stupid choices.

I arrived to find more bad news: Yale and Harvard both offered me their regrets. This saddens me some, but I increasingly like the looks of Syracuse as I read more about its master of architecture program, and it is certainly the most affordable of the lot. It might be a difficult choice if I do get into Columbia, which has been my favorite since attending classes there this past summer. Both schools are very good; Syracuse has the right price, and Columbia has the right location.

On the upside, I made my first ever visit to Qdoba this evening. I had a delicious chicken burrito. Perhaps I need to check out their competitors, Chipotle, and do a taste test.

[Please see also the 13 April update to this post.]

The Week In Review

It was a rather leisurely spring break. I didn't accomplish quite as much as I wanted, but probably as much as I expected. Unlike last year's Spring Break, I didn't make a single trip to the cinema, and watched only a few movies at home. I enjoyed Finding Neverland and the French film Bon Voyage greatly, and I found Fahrenheit 9/11 to be well made, but aimed at a significantly less-informed audience than myself. I enjoyed Garden State, but it didn't live up to the hype that it's generated among college students. I did attend the theatre, however: my family, Claire, and myself visited the Guthrie for a rather energetic performance of Shakespeare's As You Like It. The production had a strong flavor of the late 1960s. Jaques had a bandana 'round his head and Touchstone wore patchwork trousers with suede jacket. I enjoyed it, although I thought some of the songs (most notably "It was a lover and his lass...") were lost in the rock 'n' roll.

After the play we visited Solera, a tapas bar in Minneapolis that has been earning quite a bit of attention in the food world. It was, in fact, the finest meal of the week. As a group we tried roast rabbit, dates stuffed with sausage, kikos is Moorish spices, fried goat cheese, and numerous other dishes. And when I say that this was the finest meal of the week, I'm comparing it to several other very good meals from P.F. Chang's, California Pizza Kitchen, Green Mill, and, of course, the wonders my dad makes in our own kitchen.

There's No Place Like It

After seven hours on a bus traveling through blizzard conditions, I made it back safe and sound to the Twin Cities last night. I was up at 5:30 to shower and eat a bowl of cereal before attending a lifeguard in-service training session. I was back at the pool this evening for a shift. I'm going to need a break from this break if it keeps up like this.

Where There's Smoke

For the past week or so, my suitemate Mike has had problems with our floor's Ethernet hub which is located in the upper corner of his closet. It functions well, but the fans that keep it cool have taken to whining quite loudly at times, and PRH tech services have been characteristically slow to respond. This morning when I awoke around 3:00 to a loud buzzing sound, I thought the problem had gotten truly out of hand. I went over to see it Mike was going to smash the whole thing (I had given the plan my blessing days ago), but I found that the noise was instead coming from the firealarms in the hall. We took a moment to decide whether or not we ought to stay or leave, considering the likelihood that this was a heavy drinker's idea of St. Paddy's Day fun. An inspection of the hall revealed acrid smoke and people shouting to each other, "It's a real fire! It's a real fire!" Thus we concluded that a prompt exit would be prudent.

I hurried back to my room to put on some shoes, and I recall that as I tied my laces in a half-asleep state I looked for my paperback copy of Ulysses but was unsuccessful. My friend Claire is right: I am obsessed with that book. Anyway, bookless but shod I joined the file in the back stairway. Leah, one of the RAs, was waiting at the third floor, shouting at us to use emergency exit instead of cutting through the building to the main door, but I had to reshout the order once we reached the critical juncture since the people ahead of me we still mostly asleep. We found ourselves waiting for about a quarter of an hour in the freshfallen snow across the street. I took lots of jabs about looking like Hugh Hefner in my blue Bill Blass bathrobe, and word got around that the culprit behind our interrupted slumber was our unreliable elevator (which I've always hated and avoided as much as possible). Upon returning I opened my window all the way and tried to get the party started again with a cry for an early-morning Guinness, but I had no takers.

Taste o' Dublin

It was a busy day: I had three power-lectures, a two-hour exam, and a productive trip to the library. When I returned from all this, I found a friendly little St. Patrick's Day party in my suite, and Mike welcomed me back with a double Baileys on the rocks. I followed that with a can of Guinness stout and the very last shot of John Jameson Irish whiskey in the house. We had ten guests throughout the course of the evening, if you count me as a host despite my limited role. The party was deemed a success, and we did it without a single drop of green beer.

49-51

I was sorry to see that Senator Cantwell's Amendment No. 168 to Resolution No. 18 (which is the current appropriations resolution) was rejected yesterday. The amendment was "to strike section 201(a)(4) relative to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge." Simply put, it would have taken drilling in ANWR off the table while leaving the rest of the bill intact. I was quite pleased, however, to see my own Republican senator was one of only seven to break with his party and vote sensibly on this issue. I still don't have the same respect for Norm Collman that I do for Arizona's John McCain or Maine's Olympia J. Snowe, two of the other Republican Senators who voted 'yea,' but I like Stormin' Norm more than I did a week ago. And I think its safe to say I like him way more than Mike Crapo of Idaho, who voted against the amendment. But what else can you expect from a guy named Mike Crapo?

The R-Word

Last year actress Lindsey Lohan was in the habit of using the word 'retarded' whenever she meant 'stupid,' 'silly,' 'baseless,' or any of a number of other more appropriate words. Lorriane Sheehan, president of Arc Of The United States, reprimanded her saying that "there are few more deeply wounding words than these, which are painful reminders that people with disabilities are still not fully welcome in our society." I like to think that I'm more sophisticated with my vocabulary than Ms. Lohan, but every now and then I use 'retarded' lightly, although more often than not I keep it in my head.

This evening I was eating dinner at the Towers, and I was sitting close to a table of a half-dozen guys who were discussing blackjack, baseball, pizza, beer - all things I enjoy, but not things to which I devote a lot of discussion. Apparently they had received some sort of free pizza deal through some situation I couldn't fully grasp from their conversation. One guy who had been thinking deeply suddenly exclaimed Wait guys! Just listen to this. We still tipped the delivery guy for those pizzas, right? Someone said, yeah, they had all chipped in a buck. So that's like twelve bucks, our thinker continued. That's not free pizza. That's just a discount or something! At this point I muttered to myself, "What is this guy? Retarded?" Just then our thinker asked his tablemates What do they think we are? Retarded?

Grasshopper grasshopper scoot!

Happy St. Urho's Day! St. Urho, of course, was that heroic Finlander who drove away the locusts with his pitchfork while shouting, "Heinasirkka, heinasirkka, menetaalta hiiten." But perhaps you haven't heard of him. That's understandable; there are many naysayers who claim that Minnesota Finns cooked up this character just so they could tap into the green beer a day before the Irish. As one who considers himself to be more of a Minnesota Finn than anything else, I'll take pride in either version.

Half Of A Swedish Pop Group

I got two exams back today, and I was quite surprised to find that I had done better than expected in both of them. I got a 98% (an A) on the cryptography exam and a 87% (a high B) on the James Joyce exam. An 'A' in math and a 'B' in English: that certainly sounds like me, even as far back as Cedar Island Elementary School.

Out

I learned of my acceptance to Syracuse ten days ago, and since then I've talked to a number of people about the school and the others to which I applied. People frequently ask me if I'm interested in going to Syracuse, which is an understandable question, since many people apply to schools in which they have little interest. I'm not one of those people. I've been telling those politely curious people that the only school to which I applied about which I'm not actually enthusiastic is Princeton. It is a good school, and I've heard they have some of the best scholarships, but it never felt right. My two major issues with Princeton have been that [1] I think their elitist mentality surpasses both Harvard and Yale and [2] I really don't want to live in New Jersey. Given this, I'm not too distraught by the "bad" news I received a few minutes ago.

"I regret that you will not be joining us at Princeton," Dean William B. Russell told me in an email. They would, however "be more than pleased to provide a properly formatted" paper-and-ink letter of rejection; I need only call and request it. I refer you to reason [1].

Since 1985

Happy twentieth, Jenny!

Since 1985

Sarah began her third decade today, and her parents came to town to celebrate. They were kind enough to include me in the major event of the day which was lunch at Hawk's Bar & Grill. I had a Reuben and honey onion soup. The sandwich was quite good, and, while I don't think it will ever replace French onion, the soup was tasty too. I had met Sarah's mother briefly on my own birthday, but this was my first chance to get to talk to either one of them at any length. They seem to be very different people, and I think Sarah falls halfway in between them. I gave Sarah a copy of Bubba Ho-Tep to celebrate the occasion. I told her I'd be happy to swap it for something safer if she doesn't care to keep it, but I'm hoping that her love of both the grotesque and the underappreciated will allow her to enjoy this bizarre little film as much as I did.

Gold and silver and bronze by gold

I met Jenny this morning for tea and mint hot chocolate. It occurred to me that I've now been friends with Jenny (whom I met in Ms. Braun's seventh-grade high performance English class) for over one-third of my life. It's an odd thought, if only because it makes my junior high days seem so distant. It's also a very comforting thought to know I have a friend of over seven years.

I met Sarah, a much more recent acquaintance (six months to the day by one definition), for lunch and an early-afternoon stroll. She took me to the Monona Terrace, which I had previously neglected to visit. As much as I dislike Frank Lloyd Wright in many respects (most notably what I view as pride of the inefficiency of his architecture), I have to concede that he was a genius. Sarah and I were the only two people of our age that we saw, and I was one of only three or four males. Sarah poked her head into one of the auditoriums and found that there was a workshop on wedding-related arts and crafts in progress.

This evening I read the eleventh episode of Ulysses, which is generally known as "Sirens." It was one of the more difficult episodes I've encountered thus far since the structure emulates music (which, of course, is central to the sirens' powers). The chapter begins with an "overture" of sorts which, using fragments of text, maps out the entire chapter. The sirens in this book have no magic, however; they are regular barmaidens (one brunette and one blond). I suppose, though, that many men would consider the effects of alcohol to be sufficiently enchanting.

Prudence

Nat and I went to see the Bernard Shaw play Misalliance this evening. The first half was slow, but it proved to be a good setup for the second half, which was quite entertaining. We were both surprised by the presence of some rather modern-sounding femenist ideas in this pre-World War work. There was also a bit about socialism that certainly came before Red October. Nat recognized one of the actresses as a former TA of his, and I saw a student from my James Joyce class in the row ahead of me. We went back to his place afterward to sip wine and and discuss art, women, and religion (seperately and in certain combinations). After what I suspect came to about three glasses I was far more prepared for bed than debate, so we called it a night, disagreeing on friendly terms.

Since 1986

Happy nineteenth, Miranda!

Since 1985

Happy twentieth, Kyle!

Yay for venus

Happy International Women's Day. I'm sorry we need such a thing.

Nickel-And-Diming For Peanuts

I have been an infrequent customer of the vending machine in the lounge this year. I've probably averaged one candybar each month, getting a Snickers about half the time and a Pearson's Salted Nut Roll the other half. Tonight I say "no more!" I went down and found that every 65¢ label has been carelessly covered with a 75¢ label. Considering the fact that the machine uses no electricity except when it is actually dispensing something and the amount of human labor required to keep it stocked is almost nothing compared to the amount of labor required to man the register at Walgreens, I see no good reason for Wright Vending to charge more than the corner drugstore. Obviously they think people will be willing to pay the extra 10¢; I'm going to do my part to prove them wrong.

Non Serviem

In the course of my campus wanderings I encountered a young lady wearing a sandwich-board sign with a picture on which was drawn a pineapple drawn in magic marker. She had a clipboard and a pad of paper with the words 'WHOLE FOODS' at the top. She asked me if I would like to sign a petition to get organic and non-genetically modified foods labeled as such.

Organic foods actually are labeled, but the criteria is questionable, so I assumed that's what she meant. As far as GMOs are concerned, there is actually government pressure not to label, and personally I would like to see that change. My reason for this is primarily that I believe consumer knowledge to be one of the basic elements of a healthy market economy. I am quite comfortable with some of the genetic modifications about which I've read, and I'm quite wary of others, and I'd like the chance to speak with my wallet. Still, I like to know what it is on which I'm putting my signature.

"Who or what are 'Whole Foods?'" I asked.

She replied that it's just another name for organic, non-engineered foods, and she started telling me some basic propaganda that I've long known, so I jumped in and asked her who she was petitioning.

She responded, "Whole Foods."

Confused, I asked if that was some sort of food wholesaler, and she started repeating her definition. So I asked who it was that would be receiving the signatures.

She paused and said, "that's a good question."

I walked away without signing telling her, "I'll be coming back this way later," but she was gone when I returned.

Do I Contradict Myself?

STOPzilla! is a program designed to block pop-up advertisements and spyware. I was hit by an ad for it while checking my usual morning comics (Get Fuzzy and Pearls Before Swine). It wasn't technically a pop-up, but I was required to click once to get past the advertisement. I usually have little patience for these types of ads and even less patience for anything that makes noise or worse, loads a video. STOPzilla! did all these with a single QuickTime video. And I didn't care. Their video was actually funny. You can see it here. I guess if you're going sell net-ad blocking software with a net-ad that is designed to get past blocking software you've got to knock the socks off your audience if you want to win them over.

In

Today was a day of good news.

I've been accepted to the Syracuse University School of Architecture. I've joked with people, that Syracuse has been my "safety school," and truthfully I have considered it to be my best chance, but I'm still extraordinarily happy. It's a fine school, and I'll be quite satisfied if I do end up there.

Also, I managed to snag one ticket to the Nine Inch Nails show in Chicago on 6 May. (I had been trying for two tickets so that I could go with Eric Rogers, who's kindly agreed to put me up for the night, but the competition on Ticketmaster.com proved too fierce. Perhaps we can find a ticket for him that night, since he only risks a forty-minute trip instead of a four-hour busride.) I'm quite excited about this show; I've heard NIN shows are quite spectacular, and I'm almost as excited about the support act, the Dresden Dolls, who have been earning quite a bit of attention in music circles lately. The ticket price was only $30.00, but I ultimately paid $45.58 after all the fees. I was hesitant about spending the money with grad school just around the corner, but I strongly suspect that I'll view this as money well spent twenty years from now, and I can't imagine a more tempting concert than this.

Almost Infamous

Dear readers, please let me introduce to you Mr. Gary Arthur Medrow through these two extracts from Chuck Shepherd's weekly column "News of the Weird."

From a 2004 "best of" column:

In Milwaukee in 1997, Gary Arthur Medrow, 53, was charged with 24 counts of impersonating a police officer in connection with his unique obsession. What Medrow does, according to police (who have arrested him various times over the last 30 years for the same thing), is telephone a woman and try to convince her to lift another person in the room and carry her or him a short distance, sometimes telling the woman that he's a police officer and that it's an official request. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10-7-97]

From a November 2004 column:

UPDATE
Gary Arthur Medrow, 60, first made News of the Weird in our inaugural year, 1988, but his criminal record (mostly for impersonating police officers) goes back at least 10 years before that. Medrow's preferred scene is to call someone (usually a woman) on the telephone, pretend to be a police officer on an investigation, and ask her to try to lift up another person in the room and carry him or her into another room. He was charged again in New Berlin, Wis., in September. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 9-20-04]

Now let me recall for you from my 15 February post this photo of my friend Sarah Linwick that appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:



It seems that Mr. Medrow saw this picture and was intrigued. In the past week, he called Mr. and Mrs. Linwick, impersonated an officer, and told the couple a story involving Sarah and a carcrash. Apparently the story he told wasn't sufficiently convincing and he never got to his usual request. I suppose he's been unsuccessful many times before, and he'll probably be unsuccessful many times again. Poor guy.

Now that we can be reasonably certain that no one is in danger I must say that I'm tickled to no end that I managed to, in some small way, interact with this man with whom I have been most amused for many a year.

East and west, north and south, and the far east

I found myself moving back and forth between campus and the Highlander with greater than average frequency today. I skipped math class to study for my James Joyce exam, which accounted for my first westward trip at 10:45 this morning. I stopped on my return trip for my weekly lunch at the Towers with Langdon Resident Director Ben Moss. I found myself westbound a couple hours later for my Post-Colonial Architecture lecture, then eastbound to call Ben to solidify our evening plans. Then I headed back west for a lecture of U.S./Cuba relations. The line for food after the lecture looked unpleasant and not at all worth the paltry offerings, so I popped across State Street to the Humanities building, where the Honors Student Organization was having pizza and a "movie," which turned out to be Seinfeld episodes. I ate quickly and bailed before the show could start, sped home, showered, met up with Ben at the Langdon, then headed west to Memorial Union where we saw Zatôichi, a Japanese flick that had almost as many non sequiturs as Shaolin Soccer. It was amazingly violent, utterly perplexing, and thoroughly entertaining. A final eastward trip brought me home to Highlander, where I've eaten more pizza. I will sleep well tonight.

Since 1986

Happy nineteenth, Danielle!

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.

Lutherans and Sexuality

Don't, unless you do

Garrison Keillor, Star Tribune

The ELCA had the good sense to issue its report on sexuality the week before a major snowstorm and so the church's new guidelines on blessing same-sex relationships and ordaining people in an SSR didn't arouse the storm and fury one might have expected. People were thinking about shoveling their sidewalks, a life-and-death issue for those of us in the coronary stage of life. And when you imagine toppling over into a snowbank with chest pains and your last thought before expiring is "Boy, she was right, I shouldn't have," then the whole issue of whether Pastor Sandvik should bless the union of Bruce and Kent -- it's just not that big a deal. Up in Stearns County, you've got Catholic priests blessing snowmobiles, for crying out loud, and on the Feast Day of St. Francis the Episcopalians are bringing cats and dogs and hamsters and newts and amoeba in to be blessed, so what's the harm in blessing two young guys, even if maybe they do fuss over their hair more than a person should?

The report was a lovely example of muddling through, which Lutherans are good at. They are people of great modesty and even greater compassion. And also bravery. The question of SSRs is one that firebrands on both sides are up in arms about and ready to burn villages and blow up bridges. The Task Force was given the assignment three years ago, long before the wave of gay marriages, and it proceeded to hold hundreds of elaborately patient and painfully respectful meetings and discuss the thing to (yawn) death and finally write a report that restated the question in terms you wouldn't understand and took 40 pages to avoid answering it and affirm a policy of Don't ask, don't tell, never mind.

In 1996, the church had said, "Marriage is a lifelong covenant of faithfulness between a man and a woman." It was willing to ordain gay people who were in a chaste, or unconsummated, relationship, a USSR, but not in a sexy one. After due study, the Task Force acknowledged the deep divisions over the whole SSR question, reaffirmed the 1996 position while accepting that people in good conscience might choose to challenge it and asking them to be careful if they do and not make a big show of it but saying that if they do do what they will, probably nobody would give them a hard time about it.

In other words: Nothing has changed essentially, we don't approve, though in a sense we do but probably not, but if you go ahead and do it, don't feel bad about it, we understand.

This is the beauty of bureaucracy. It absorbs and deflects violence and anger by causing confusion and annoyance and writing a lovely amorphous mishmash of sentences like extruded marshmallows and thus the peace is kept. Militants on either side are outraged, but they enjoy outrage, that is their art form. The rest of us are grateful to be spared the sound and the fury and to be able to attend church on Sunday morning without having to wear a badge. As important as sexuality may be, it surely isn't any more important than snow, and if you feel, in good conscience, that God didn't intend snow to be part of your life, then you may want to head for Arizona, which is OK, though we will miss you and I do beseech you to return my shovel before you go, it is hanging in your garage, not that I want to go ask you for it, I don't want to put you on the spot and make you feel bad, though it's hard to understand how you could forget about a thing like that but if you do and you go off to Phoenix, don't beat yourself up over it, we will get along somehow as best we can. This is the Lutheran way.

Trois

I finished Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers yesterday. My first reaction was that it isn't half the book that The Count of Monte Cristo is, and I'm not talking about page count (although that's true too). After sleeping on it, I've decided that my reaction is justified, for I have two significant problems with Musketeers that prevent me from enjoying it as much as I expected to at the onset. First, the three musketeers and D'Artagnan are too easy going; they drink too much and gamble too much. While one might argue this is the source of their charm, it is unacceptable in light of how many good-guys are murdered through the course of the story. If their losses were none, then I could forgive them their indulgences, but as it is, I feel like they fail to do enough. Second, the four heroes sometime seem a powerless as a result of the book being set in an historical context and including major players of French history. Cardinal Richelieu in particular seems untouchable, not in the way that Sauron of The Lord of the Rings is untouchable, but simply because the fictional swordsmen can't be allowed to interact significantly with the real-life churchman. I don't think I'll be reading either of the sequels anytime soon; I've had my fill of Monsieur D'Artagnan.

Double Take

Something about my list of required books has been bothering me. I couldn't put my finger on it, but somewhere in the dark recesses of my mind I knew that there was something odd about the collection of books I've purchased this semester. In the past couple days I began to realize that something seemed slightly familiar about the name of the James Joyce expert who is often sited in my copy of Dubliners. And when I received my copy of Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce's Ulysses in the mail today, I understood why. That same well-known Joyce scholar also happened to edit a little book called The Literature of Architecture: The Evolution of Architectural Theory and Practice in Nineteenth Century America, which has been assigned to me for my course in American post-colonial architecture. The book of annotations for Ulysses is newer, and it simply says:

Don Gifford was Emeritus Professor of English at Williams College at his death in 2000.

The architecture book, on the other hand, was published in 1966 and is far more interesting:

DON GIFFORD is a Professor of English at Williams College, where he has taught for the past fifteen years. He was educated at The Principia College in Illinois, at Cambidge University, and at Harvard University. During World War II he drove an ambulance in the American Field Service before serving in the Army of the United States. After the war Mr. Gifford tried his hand at writing novels and working on commercial films before he settled down to teach, first at Mills College of Education in New York and subsequently at Williams. His teaching career has occasionally been interrupted by periods of work as a consultant to various industries on the process of invention.

I wish I could have had taken a course with him. I certaintly wouldn't have minded spending sometime in Williamstown, Massachusetts. I enjoyed my one brief visit in October 2002, and I've wished for some time to have a chance to vistit the Clark Art Institute, which has an impressive collection.

Downward

I looked at my AIM Buddy List this evening; 36 of my buddies were on, and all 36 of them were away. I continued my reading of The Three Musketeers, but instead of more swashbuckling action I got a tragic account of the brainwashing of an innocent young man by a most evil woman. Everyone I expected to see around the dorm this evening showed up late and showed up drunk. When I hit the Play/Pause button on my keyboard I got "The Downward Spiral" from the Nine Inch Nails album with the same title. I'm not done with the book yet; the bad-guys are still winning, but I'm too tired to continue. I'm going to bed; I'm sure things will seem cheerier in the morning.

My neck of the woods

Ryan, the instructor of my Environmental Conservation course, seems to be a full out Mac-geek, and before class today I had developed a theory that his favorite toy is the 360°-panorama feature of Quicktime. He'd started two of the first three lectures by spinning us around a photographed landscape, and the trend continued today. This time we got the exciting opportunity to look around a farm in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, the suburb directly east of my hometown of Maple Grove. Ryan told us that it was an example of "regulation of landscape." I asked him why he had chosen Brookly Park of all places. He answered that there were only a limited number of sites that have been recorded in a panorama. I think my theory holds.

KO'd

Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings have established themselves as sleepy-time. I have two fifty-minute lectures back to back. This first one (Environmental Conservation) moves very slowly and puts me in a state of drowsiness. The second one (Ancient and Medieval Art) is reasonably interesting but takes place in a dark room with padded chairs, which thus far has made sleep unavoidable. I do not want to sleep through Art History; I want to learn the material. I'm considering two option to amend the present situation. I can start drinking a glass with Mountain Dew with breakfast, hoping that the caffeine will keep me awake without making me to antsy to focus. I'm not keen on this idea, since caffeine sometimes makes me feel irrationally trapped. The other option that readily presents itself is to start skipping the first class some days, and just reading the lecture outlines off of the website. I'm not thrilled with this plan either, since I don't like to miss lectures, but I have to say that today's class encouraged me to go in this direction.

The instructor's prepared lecture ended when we still had ten minutes remaining. He managed to start up a loose discussion among the students about Native American's effect on the land and whether European travelers were coming to a largely natural or a substantially cultivated landscape. The lecture had covered shifting agriculture, controlled burns, irrigation and other methods employed by the indigenous peoples, and the following discussion revolved around how invasive or how "natural" the techniques were. Opinions varied widely. One male student argued that it's better to compare Native Americans to river-damming beavers that to the Europeans that invaded the continent. One female student said that the excessive hunting of beavers by natives during the fur trading era proves that Native Americans never had any more respect for the land than Europeans. I tend to fall in between these two views, for I feel that both have merit. But I was annoyed when one girl said she wondered what "the Native American perspective on the matter" was. Our instructor (I won't call him a professor because he had yet to earn is PhD) said that she presented an interesting question, and then he asked if anyone in the room was of Native American heritage. I didn't like where this was heading, so I interrupted, "I'd like to point out that the various nations and tribes of North America would likely have widely varying views on this matter. I've been researching the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; there are two groups of people living there, the Gwich'in and the Iñupiat. The the Iñupiat are the poster tribe of Big Oil and firmly support drilling in the area, and the Gwich'in are fighting tooth and nail to preserve the land. I think it's too simple to think of there being a single 'Native American perspective.'" The instructor said that I had an excellent point. He continued on that his own wife was one-eighth Native American, and that she had been surprised to learn that her ancestors had employed substantial landscape-altering techniques, so we shouldn't assume there is a single view. I didn't try to participate after that.

Limited Visibility

I may not get to be in NYC for their snow this weekend, but we're getting a nice little fall of our own here in Madison. I took a short stroll with Sarah and Evan; I wish more of the people with whom we were sharing the sidewalks had been sufficiently sober to appreciate the beauty of it.

Unclear

I popped into The University Bookstore this morning on my way to class to pick up a new notebook for my MWF classes and a couple of cards for some birthdays that are coming up in the next couple of months. I couldn't find a birthday card I liked (all that had fun covers had irritating attempts at humor within), so I reverted to my usual plan B and tried to find a quirky blank card. I think I succeeded, and grabbed a pair of the same design (which I won't describe beyond saying that they're a touch on the fuzzy side). I went to pay, and the check-out woman praised me for what great cards I had chosen. While I felt 'great' was too strong a word, I simply said that I hoped that the recipients would agree with her. She looked at me with a puzzled expression and asked me who was sick. I assumed she had misheard me (the 'si' sound is in both words), so I said, "oh, no, I said recipients." But that didn't seem to do if for her. "Recipients:" I continued hesitantly, "the people who will be receiving the cards." This was apparently what was needed to clear things up, for she smiled and gave me a good natured "oh, I see!"

Joe Ienuso, Chair of the Emergency Management Operations Team and Acting Vice President of Facilities Management at Columbia University emailed me just a few minutes ago and warned me that New York City may be getting up to a foot of snow this weekend. I wish I could be there to go walking through Central Park early one of these snowy mornings.

Spring 2005 / Ywimpled

Today marked the first day of classes in what is presumably my last semester here at Madison. I'm taking seventeen credits, and my course list is as follows:

Introduction to Cryptography
James Joyce
Environmental Conservation
Art History: Ancient and Medieval
The Rise of American Post Colonial Architecture

I started the first two classes this morning. The math course went as expected, although I had the distinct impression that there are few math majors in there besides the professor and myself; most of the pasty male-dominated class seemed to be from the computer science department or the engineering school. James Joyce was another matter entirely. We took attendance, and then our professor sighed and said that it was time for him to try to dissuade us from taking the class. He spoke at length about the tediousness and difficulty of reading Ulysses and quoted criticism from a few of the novel's more esteemed detractors. He suggested we read one of particular episode of the book tonight so that we can see if we really want to continue. (The episode he recommended is generally known as "Oxen of the Sun," a name given to it by Joyce himself, although never within the pages of Ulysses.)

I've finished Thursday's actual assigned reading, so I've been "reading" the section. In truth, I've found it to be impenetrable thus far, but intriguing nonetheless. Heck, just a title like "Oxen of the Sun" has me interested. Still, sentences such as 'Before born babe bliss had.' are quite challenging. Even individual words give me a run for my money. This is almost certainly the first time I've ever encountered "ywimpled." For this word, I did a quick Google search. jheem on Wordsmith.org says "The y- prefix is from the earlier Old English ge- prefix, which like its cognate in German, is one of the signs of the past participle in Old and Middle English...A wimple is a nun's hood which covers the nun's head and hair. It's sort of like a Christian burqa, but different from a snood. So, ywimpled would mean wearing a wimple or being a nun."

I think this class has the potential to be one of the most highly educational of my college career.

Back In The Madtown

My last week or so in Minnesota was quite cold, and today I confirmed that the phenomenon extends at least as far eastward as Madison. As a result, I've been constantly wearing the scarf that my dearest friend Claire made for my twentieth birthday. It's a beautiful thing, crocheted in long stripes of white, green, and charcoal yarn; with the fringe at both ends included its about two meters in length. I think fringe looks right on a scarf, but so far it's been quite a neuscence (and will be for couple more weeks, Claire warned me). Lint from the fringe has been getting everywhere. I was in the shower a couple mornings ago, having not touched the scarf for about ten hours. My hair was shampooed and I was soaping up when I felt somethng on my tongue in my closed mouth. What did I find? Some of the green. Later that day I was guarding at the pool and I felt something on my eyelashes. What did I find? Some of the white. Today looked down at my Cheerios. What did I find? Some of the charcoal.

Back In Action

We bought a copy of DOOM 3 for my Dad when Best Buy sold it for thirty dollars as an after-Christmas special, but it ended up sitting unopened until I completed the last of my graduate school applications. I haven't played it for more than 100 minutes or so, but I'm already very impressed. The atmosphere is chilling, and the simplicity of the weapons is refreshing. There are no alternate fire modes, which makes the gameplay manageable for my dad and sister haven't done too much gaming since DOOM II, which didn't involve looking up and down, but only left and right. I've played a few other games (primarily Counter-Strike and Jedi Knight II), so the three-dimensional environment is nothing unusual, but I'm appreciating having a single fire-mode since it allow me to focus on the more important process of switching back and forth between a gun and the oh-so-helpful flashlight. If you like computer games, I'm already sufficiently impressed with this one to recommend it, although I'd suggest waiting for a good deal.

All Good Things

I finished Stephen King's The Dark Tower series today. I've been reading the quest of the gunslinger Roland Deschain for...how many years now? Five, I suppose. That's not nearly so long as the journey has been for many readers, but it's long enough that I'm sad to have no more ahead of me. It was well-written and engrossing throughout, and I was left with no doubt that King earned his Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003. He is a gifted storyteller, and The Dark Tower captures his ability to bend language, creating new words that by the end of a story seem as familiar as any we can find in the Oxford English Dictionary.

tuO 'nippirT

?tey elgooG htiw dehcraes uoy evaH

The Haul

Christmas is about family, love, togetherness, peace, and good will toward all. That said, here's some of the cool stuff I got:

Pink Floyd: The Dark Side of the Moon
Blue Man Group: Audio
[The] Flaming Lips: Zaireeka
Hero
The Royal Tenenbaums Original Soundtrack
an awesome NYC panoramic 2005 calendar

I went to see The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou at the AMC with fellow Highlander resident Sarah Linwick. I enjoyed it, but it was a letdown after Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. I think Sarah had similar toughts about the film.

It was, in fact, a merry Christmas for me, in part because of new material possesions but mostly because of family and good friends. I hope everyone reading this was as fortunate.

Grey

I just finished my last final. I was doing terribly for the first hour and a half, and then I had a bunch of breakthroughs in the last 30 minutes. I finished a minute past the official end time, five minutes before he actually gave the last call, and I felt great. Then I talked to other people about the test, and I found out that I had made an incorrect (although logical) assumption about what was meant by an ambiguous problem. I have no idea what grade I will receive on that test and in that class; it's a big question mark.

We had our first real snow last night, although it wasn't even a quarter inch. Still, it made me enjoy my walk to the exam, and brightened up an otherwise dreary day. I'm headed home tomorrow, and posts will become infrequent as usual. I expect I'll be back full-time when the next semester begins in late January.

Press Conference Question

Since President Bush and President Putin are such good friends, shouldn't George be able to say Vladimir's name correctly? (That would be "vla-DEEM-er" instead of "VLAD-i-MEER.")

Intriguing Product

At this time of year we hear "Jingle Bells" and "Winter Wonderland" on the radio, in malls, in restaurants, or just about anywhere that isn't a synagogue or a Moslem temple, and we think of the merry ringing of little bells as we are wisked over a snowy landscape. But are your sleigh-pulling horses properly bedecked? If you're not nodding an emphatic yes, sir and you don't want your neighbors to think you're a total Scrooge, you'd best get your act together!

The sixth intriguing product is Forgedale Sleigh Bells, available through Oley Sled Works.

Blog Ecology: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

This great blogosphere of ours is a place where two of the three Rs of waste management are taken quite seriously but the other is ignored completely. There is really no incentive to Reduce since posting is both easy and generally free. Reusing and Recycling are themselves quite easy; in fact, it is usually easier than coming up with something completely new. Most of the Reused material one encounters is not the result of copying but rather just the fact that very few bloggers live particularity interesting lives or are experts on interesting subjects. Most of us just live normal lives and have our gripes, our good days, and our strange experiences on this crazy ol' Internet. As for good material that gets passed around - well, I think that may be what the blogosphere has going for it. Information is being spread in a totally new way, and it will be a while before we learn all of the advantages and disadvantages of the system.

But most of the stuff out there isn't particularity good. I certainly don't recommend reading this blog unless you know who I am and care at least a little bit about me. You won't find any great literature, philosophy, or treatises here. But I do try to maintain some standards. I try to limit posts as long as this one to three a month. I try to keep my ellipses in check. (Haven't we all seen blogs that look like this?...yeah...I think we have...but you know...I guess this is just easier that selecting proper punctuation...) I try to keep my gripes to a minimum. And I try not to use completely generic content, like the results of internet quizzes.

My suitemate Mike vented his frustration about this matter earlier this month. In a post on The Glog, he proposed some biting replies to heavily Recycled material encountered on other people's blogs. For example he suggested:

When someone posts their results of some stupid quiz

"Awesome! I always wondered what sort of (19th century Peruvian peasant) you would be. Now that I know, I'm a more complete human being and no longer have that tremendous void in my life."

And Mike is right to be irritated. Most quizzes are ridiculously stupid, and most of them have no more than, say, six possible outcomes. But even tired old material can be entertaining if its well done. Shakespeare borrowed and plagiarized more than anyone, but the way he combined worn out genres in new ways and generally did everything better than his contemporaries and predecessor allowed him to create works that were immensely popular during his own time and were able to remain popular over the past four centuries.

I'm not sure if we'll ever encounter a Shakespeare of the blogosphere, but there are certainly people out there who do better the same things everyone else does. There are even a handful of good quizzes out there. I found "The Country Quiz," which makes some sense, since countries tend to have behavioral characteristics analogous to those in people. The quiz isn't tedious (there are only six questions), but it yields 64 different results, which all seem to have a mix of admirable and not-so-admirable traits. Here's what it told me:

YOU'RE FRANCE!



Most people think you're snobby, but it's really just that you're better than everyone else.  At least you're more loyal to the real language, the fine arts, and the fine wines than anyone else.  You aren't worth beans in a fight, unless you're really short, but you're so good at other things that it usually doesn't matter.  Some of your finest works were intended to be short-term projects.

I this is a reasonable three-sentence summary of me if you take it with a wry smile. And I can't complain about being compared with a country like France, which, for better or worse, has never blended in to the European landscape. If you're interested in seeing your own results you can take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Octopus Cannon Hits McDonalds

Sete, France - Armed with a high-pressure hose and a bucket of octopi, hundreds of protestors in this Mediterranean town on Saturday pelted a McDonalds restaurant due to open this week with the slimy seafood.

Up to 500 people gathered on the banks of the Sete canal, across from the fast-food outlet, playing music and yelling anti-junk-food slogans across the water, as police barred them from reaching the restaurant itself.

Aiming the hose across the water, they catapulted fresh octopi - a local delicacy, known here as the "pouffre" - towards the town's first McDonalds, which had been set to open on Saturday.

The crowd held up slogans slamming junk food, dubbed "malbouffe" in French, as well as work conditions in the fast-food industry.

Driving home their point, the protestors were serving up traditional Setois dishes - one of which is the tielle, a fragrant octopus, tomato and onion pie prized by locals and tourists alike.

The demonstration caused the opening of the restaurant, the first fast-food outlet in the port town following years of resistance by the former communist mayor, to be put off until next week.

A group led by French militant farmer Jose Bove pulled down a McDonalds outlet that was under construction in the southern town of Millau in 1999, earning Bove a jail sentence, although the restaurant was later rebuilt.

Since 1985

Happy nineteenth, Mike!

I don't know what windex tastes like...

...but I have to guess that it tastes like Coca-Cola's new energy drink Full Throttle. The Coke product, which comes in a black 16-ounce can, gets points for having a distinct flavor (Rockstar tastes almost exactly like Red Bull), but it loses them all for tasting really, really bad. I bought all three of these drinks at Walgreens on my was back from my Shakespearean Drama exam so that I would be able to crank out book reports to be turned in tomorrow morning (which is now this morning) at my Russian History review session. I didn't buy anything else, so when I plopped these three over-priced energy drinks on the counter to pay for them, I commented with smile to the check-out girl, "I guess you haven't been selling too many of these this week." She replied matter-of-factly, "Oh, no, we have."

Publication

I have sent my portfolio to the publishers to be printed; I should have the hard copies back before Christmas. In the meantime, you can view a PDF version of the book here. If you catch any errors, feel free to let me know; I'll be happy to work out additional kinks in case I ever do a second printing.

On the downside of publication news, I didn't get the job at The Badger Herald. I wasn't rejected outright, though. Apparently some of their current or past page designers unexpectedly became available for next semester, and they're already trained in, so they're preferred. I guess I'll have to look for a job elsewhere if I want any income next spring. I wonder if The Daily Cardinal is hiring...