| (no subject) |
[Sep. 17th, 2004|02:45 pm] |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) johnmonkey, this is for you! What a news whore am I. Yeah, I'm a democrat, but
*yay for pyjama journalism!*
anyhow.
Blogs, anyone?
My War
Aw, there are no other good ones today so I'll leave it there.
Jennifer Government! woo hoo.
I finally finished The Castle of Otranto. I think it's put me off literature.
I've made that threat before, haven't I?
Not trying to be gross or anything, but I was walking by the railroad tracks today and I fell in the mud while stepping to avoid a dead rabbit. Then when I was wiping the mud off my shoe on Regent I tripped and put my other shoe in the mud. pfft.
I finished knitting myself a loooooooong scarf today. I hope they're still in style this year, because it took me a year just to knit the damn thing.
I found a recipe for something called "potica" on a notecard in a book in the library freebox. It looks good, kinda like figgyhobbin? (Welsh food is my favorite! Besides pierogies! I think I will start a pierogi chain letter so I can have sacks of pierogies delivered to my home daily. Isn't that a brill idea? You can use that. ehheh)
I want to write a long paean to Mark Knopfler's career.
The coleus is flowering.
You can access pdf's of the London Times back to 1785 online. Damn if I'm not taking it as a personal challenge to find a use for that shit.
That is all..........continue! |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 13th, 2004|12:26 pm] |
AL Daily had some good articles today about academicians not selling their souls for corporate interest, but nobody cares. And there was a good piece in the Guardian. La di da.
Our prof killed a wasp. He is now the girls' hero. We were all hugged up on eachother like sweet merciful Christ, an insect!
That's the only bug I ever got stung by, a wasp.
I got assigned to research newspapers for history. That means microfiche, baby. I love research, because sometimes you go for ten hours and you get nothing and then you know it's all worth it. Negative possibility. I feel like Tommy Lee Jones... got every townhouse, shithouse, and Waffle House covered...
The dean will write a letter of rec for me. He emails me back and said he'll get right on it if I know who it goes to. Shite, I thought he knew. I am bad at dealing with the Administration, if you can't tell.
Spent an hour making copies of French exercises (on my own dime) for the new student. Now I'm hungry and crabby, but at least I've got that saint complex taken care of!
Happier tomorrows! |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 12th, 2004|03:39 pm] |
I truly believe that a responsible person will always do as little as possible in the workplace. Doing things "without being asked" will only create a bad precedent for customers and employers, who will then expect everyone they come into contact with in the work setting to be a culturally similar sycophant with mind-reading ability, and work quotas will then be raised in accordance with this artificial standard to reflect the best possible scenario forty hours per week with zero turnaround time, for the entire career of a worker. Let's not forget that people age, get sick and differ in the number of monkey tasks they are able to perform, and management usually is in charge of the necessary materials and will save their own time rather than rethink and streamline their processes, pointing to a small number of phenominal workers and butt-kissers as evidence that nothing at all needs to be done except *making more money*. That is why I am recommending this book.
All I want to do today is find my keys so my car won't get towed tomorrow. ****sigh****
Hey there's funny photography hanging in Ancora. Looks like someone took a photo of the Loreal(?) cosmetics counter at Hilldale and developed it on skinny paper, then stick-glued it to a background. Velly interesting strategy. |
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| Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win. |
[Sep. 11th, 2004|03:01 pm] |
I am trying to get through The Castle of Otranto by Monday. It is so boring. Just to avoid it I am reading every other book on the shelf. And last night the car got towed with the book (thankfully) in it, so this morning I had nothing to do and I was reading The Price of My Soul, the masterfully ghostwritten autobiography of Bernadette Devlin. If you do not know who she is, suffice it to say she was barred entry into the US last year (don't know how that turned out). In the book she had a quote about moving home after her mother died and commuting to school. That it was impossible to have any sort of campus life and when she got home she didn't have any social life either because she had to study. Here the ghostwriter has hit on the truth of commuting! It's crazy how much it messes up your life. However, the ghostwriter goes on to say that it did make her very responsible and disciplined and her professors took her very seriously. So that would be the upside. :)
I had a dream that I and one of my friends from high school, who just happens to be the only openly gay person I know from my town, were on a long road trip. After scrounging for change to get 3/$1 cookies at Kwik Trip, we retired to our hunter's lodge (hello, Nabokov?), popped some weird pills, retired to our twin beds, then I started dreaming that I was dreaming (is that meta or what?)about a drawing of a boy's face, which someone then takes chalk and alters into an old man's face. Then the scene gets larger and you can see that the picture is being drawn by Sigmund Freud. This is a tv special, and He is being interviewed by Bill Moyers, facing a blackboard with a bumper sticker above it that said WOW JOY OF LIFE, wearing women's clothes (backless black dress, tweed beret, sweater draped on one shoulder) and weeping. He says that when he was formulating his theories, he forgot what the French feminist critics call "jouissance", and what he calls "the wow joy of life." He says he should have known better, how could he have left out joy? So he is crying and Bill Moyers has to come put his sweater over his other shoulder and hug him.
So that was weird. I think it comes from watching lengthy silent movies and eating German potato salad pizza before bed.
They are filming a version of Breakfast On Pluto. Neil Jordan adapted it. I'm sure I've heard this before, but wow anyway.
And for Irish language fans, here's an Irish newspaper online.
For more fun Irish stuff you can go to Searc's web guide.
Or read The Castle of Otranto and tell me how it was. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 10th, 2004|12:59 pm] |
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The elephants of the Thai Elephant Orchestra have a new cd out called "Elephonic Rhapsodies". It looks like this is their label. I still can't figure out if they stole the elephants from the wild or if they are really orphans, and if the money goes to the elephant sanctuary or what. Maybe if you listen to their music you can hear their sounds of longing or something? Well, in any case, elephants are abundantly cool. I heard that the elephant at the Anchorage zoo does watercolors. |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 9th, 2004|08:59 pm] |
I asked my English prof for a letter of rec. He's going to write it jointly with another one of my profs. He said if Madison doesn't take me, they're nuts.
I told him I've got a piece of paper at home that says they're nuts.
Needless to say, that was the best anecdote I have accrued in the twenty-four years of my life so far *hears Chariots of Fire playing in the background*
Has anyone read Fight Club? What do you think was the single best line? Whether you could even stand the book there are some good lines in that. Not one line of that book is a mistake on several narrative levels, imho. I just love (paraphrase alert!) when he says "At least I've got that sofa thing covered." :)) |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 8th, 2004|08:51 pm] |
LJ has been really slow for me lately, that's why I haven't been around...
Taking a compressed video class is really annoying. Every once in a while the instructor will appear to burst into multicolored psychadelic flames. This apparently is a satellite problem. Plus our prof is stuck in Cameroon so we have a cool but inexperienced new person teaching us.
I am working on my second app to UW Madison. I still have information saved on it from a year ago. Why must they be such heartless bastiches? I know, there are a lot of smart people in the world who are also younger and brighter and make a lot of money with their education so why do I think I deserve a place at a decent school? (Sorry, I have a hard time finishing a sentence in a sincere and upbeat way after I've been filling out my 1,000th form on my grades, test scores, residency and pedigree. Why don't they just put a microchip in me that will remember all these numbers?)
Wil Wheaton's blog was actually kind of interesting today, in a je ne sais quoi way. Felt you should know. From there I found a link to cool Mac products I can't afford. Today's Must-Have: Wildeepz!!!
Today I was reading this book by Dominique de Villepin. I thought it would suck but it's actually pretty good. The surprising thing is that he comes across as a neoconservative, ideologically, though his policy decisions are different from what the typical American sees as neoconservative. Maybe because of the fact that there is a sort of "our country, right or wrong" vibe, and he's from another country. It really makes you marvel at the perceived lack of understanding between the US and France.
You can find some more interesting (apolitical) books here. No, I am not getting money for this. haha.
My fingernails are getting really long. I think I am going to grow them until they look all funky and hang off my hand like that Guiness guy and wear Chinese fingernail covers with turquoise toads on them. Oooh, trend alert! Watch for that in next month's InStyle! |
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 4th, 2004|12:46 pm] |
Today's post is brought to you by my other spirit animal, the loach. He's the coolest guy in the aquarium. He gets the whole bottom to himself, where he can relax on the rocks, do some bottom feeding, and gloat to the sounds of French accordion music coming from without. yay loach! If I had to go to a psychiatrist and they asked me what animal I most want to be, it would surely be the loach.
And by the international Rock Paper Scissors championships in Toronto!
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| (no subject) |
[Sep. 3rd, 2004|02:45 pm] |
I have 20 minutes left on my battery :( Our first assigned story was "The Lovely House" by Shirley Jackson, a story that makes no sense at all, by my yardstick. I have two Poe stories to read for next week too.
There is an Indian(national)-looking family sitting in Michaelangelo's. The daughter is having coffee with the parents (very traditional looking) and the son-in-law is entertaining the baby by announcing the fish in the fish tank. The baby, for his part, likes to scream and point at the tiny white shark, which is five times bigger than all the other ones.
The Grandpa keeps saying "Fish! Fish!" Which is about as much attention as he seems to be comfortable giving the baby.
People always come in and either park their kids at the fishtank, or stare at it themselves.
Once there was this really weird guy who was acting stoned and did the thumb-and-pinkie telephone and mouthed "CALL ME" and pointed at the fish. It was great. |
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| my real name is in this post somewhere ..ooooooh |
[Sep. 2nd, 2004|01:37 pm] |
I should do a meme. Should I do a meme? Yawn. I'm more interested in reading other people's than writing about myself.
Must remember Cinematheque tomorrow.
Let's see if their site works. Yep! Cinematheque
First day of school. We went to the videoconferencing room for French class and the Prof didn't show up. We had to introduce ourselves using the little gameshow buzzers then we got to leave.
Renat is in my French class. I couldn't remember his name all morning so I didn't hardly talk to him. Renat! Renat!
Renat!
He's already in love with the exchange student at Fox Valley who is from Turkmenistan. He expressed a desire to see if we have any good exchange students here at Baraboo.
(I love this guy!)
This is embarrassing, but I found out my friend's email doesn't work and that's why I didn't hear from her all summer. :( Oops! She graduated last year and I wish I would have got hold of her now.
We played Scruples in Ethics. I kept getting all the sex questions. Oh well, that kept me from getting the eerie feeling that the day was going off without a hitch. It turns out they did screw up the books for Philosophy so now I have to go buy mine. Hope they're open Monday.
Now I have to go to my Gothic/Horror lit class. As Tinky Winky so eloquently put it, "Buh bye!"
PS I shall post a link to my new role-playing nation when I get a chance. I'm quite fond of Ellynfrance! (Not the actual name, but I like to refer to it as that). |
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| stuff i do when i'm avoiding responsibility |
[Sep. 1st, 2004|01:37 pm] |
Ever wanted your own nation? Check out this game. I can't believe I have never heard of this before. It looks cool.
And while I was trying to look up Latin grammar (I wanted to know what case "hoc" is in, in the phrase "post hoc ergo propter hoc". I thought for sure it was genitive, but noooo. Noooooo. B insists that it is accusative. Perhaps that is because there is no genitive case in Latin. Is there?) I found a wonderful game called Grammar Gorillas.
I got Photobucket! Yay. So now if I ever get a camera/have some pictures. Don't want to make any more promises.
As per the advice, it looks like 2/3 of my sample (thanks for offering your heart-felt advice) are specifically against my going negative, and since I do tend to make an ass out of myself (Grammar Ass?) the evidence is that much more compelling.
Has anyone used or gotten an Evite? Do you think it's corny?
I am working on a banner for ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif) ethnography_usa. I have this picture of the class in Welcome Back Kotter and I put a speech balloon over Vinnie Barbarino and I want him to say something (anything, as long as it's funny! What should he say?) But I can't seem to insert any text except in a paint program, which means it might blur.... oh, excitement.
And on the bottom I want it to say "ethnography_usa: Up your nose with knowledge!"
Okay, maybe not.
I made a bunch of banners and a colorbar yesterday. I have a few things on my site, but not the bestest ones.
School tomorrow! How am I ever going to get up at 7:30? Grr. I think I have Fridays free, so this is a 1-day week. That's annoying. |
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| i'll give you kisses if you play my game |
[Aug. 27th, 2004|02:51 pm] |
Today I went to pick up my books at the post office and the postal worker was like "You like books? I'm not much of a book person, but my wife is a huge book person."
Now, I love low-level bureaucrats to pieces, my dad and my grandma both gave the best years of their lives to state agencies, but even so, to me that is like saying "Yeah, I don't think much, but I sleep with someone who does."
Any time you use the word "book" in a sentence in such a way that it could be replaced with "Apple Jacks" or "Texas hold'em" or "John Kerry" or some other simulacrity that people enjoy paying money for in order to enforce their identities, you're headed for a painful personal epiphany if you choose English as a major. The End. :))
I am taking Gothic and Horror literature with Grant. He's great. Mostly because he says things like "How can you eat like that and still be so skinny? It drives me nuts!" and "You slapped that test and made it cry!" etc. etc.
Let's face it, I need my self-esteem crutches :)
TRIVIA:
Which book am I not reading this semester?
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Three Gothic Novels
Dracula
Northanger Abbey
The Crime of Sylvester Bonnard
The Haunting of Hill House
Frankenstein
The Monk
Penguin American Gothic Tales ed. by JC Oates (who no doubt knows a lot of things about penguin-Americans, oh mercy what is wrong with me?) |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 25th, 2004|09:19 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
Hey there. I just attended a meeting on the Chavez referendum with people that observed the election in Venezuela, from which I learned that
chavez may or may not be preparing to be a dictator
there may or may not have been large-scale election fraud
the rest of South and Central America may or may not support Chavez.
Time to watch some Simpsons.
I got my books for my gothic literature class today (yay, dork nirvana). I like Shirley Jackson. She writes like a non-Easterner, especially the scenes that involve driving large expanses of highway. I don't think New Englanders get that. hehe
Today they had a guy from Chicago on NPR. It was funny because NPR (which I tend to bad mouth, sorry if you like it) always reports on stuff in NY as if it were in your backyard, but the Chicago guy had to explain very elementary stuff like "the Cubs stadium is north of town" and my personal favorite "you know, Mayor Daly doesn't like the press much"... sounds like one for my ethnography community. Haven't posted there in a while...
Have a wonderful evening/night/wee hours (trying to get everybody's time zone, hehe)!! |
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| mmm...them are crunchy |
[Aug. 23rd, 2004|01:15 pm] |
Hi there... my friend's page was really interesting today. I guess I picked a bunch of interesting and intelligent people to be my friends (or they picked me)... I want to kiss you all *mwa*x14 (By they way I do try to read everything that you guys post but don't always comment because of time restrictions and stuff. Soweee ))
I got my 4.0 dean's list letter that says "congratulations, you're one of [community college]'s best". haha. and it says "You and the people in your life who made this possible can be proud."
Which is totally appropriate because certain distracting people I used to live with used to hold me back ever so slightly, and after all, no one is truly self-made :))
I saw "The Corporation" and it was good. Gave me lots of new ideas for various things, and it also has a really interesting testimonial by a guy who orchestrates real-life "product placements".
At the biochem library book exchange I picked up "The History of Danish Dreams" previously owned by Professor Nelson. Why he/she gave it away I don't know, I thought Peter Hoeg was a good author but maybe the book was not in his taste or he wanted to donate it.
I really want to sell books on Amazon but those dorks won't let me have an account. Just because I lie when they ask for unnecessary personal info. That's okay though, because now I can enjoy my fun posting fake product reviews ("Yes, I enjoyed Hegemony Farm's Chocolate Covered Pork Rhinds, but they're not as good as the porc chocs grandpa used to make. The crunch isn't there, you know?") |
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| (no subject) |
[Aug. 21st, 2004|05:54 pm] |
Last night I went to Frida Kahlo's theme restaurant on State St. It's named after her and has murals and everything. I wonder how she would feel about it? I made the joke that she probably wouldn't tip because she was a communist (lame, I know). It was pretty authentic they had salads with cabbage and huachinango veracruzano. I had chipotle chicken with a real honest-to-goodness quesadilla.
Afterwards we went to the Bukowski movie. His life was really depressing. Thank god Bono was in there. Like a little ray of hope. I love Bono.
I really am going to have to think more about the crap that I watch.
Hope everyone's weekend is going chill. |
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| A funny thing happened to me on the way to the unemployment office |
[Aug. 19th, 2004|03:59 pm] |
Had a funny run-in with the guy at Core Weekly. I told him I liked his paper and he accused me of lying in my cover letter because it's not on the stands yet. I emailed him and told him I swear to Christandeverythingholy I have seen this paper at Michaelangelo's, it's the skinny one trying to be the Isthmus with the exceptionally easy crossword. He emailed me back like 'sallgood, that's not our paper but ours is good too, now send samples.
Which I now have to write ::sigh:: suddenly so hard to think.
I tried to sell on Amazon but they won't let me. (That's because I lie when they ask me for unnecessary personal information, I suppose). Does anyone want a copy of Deadman's Manual of Acupuncture for $90?
And I didn't get my apartment. Oh well. Life is shit, followed by more shit, with occasional shit interludes.
I am going to write a review of Control Room now. |
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| Dork By Choice (and probably chance, too) |
[Aug. 18th, 2004|08:48 pm] |
Hello there. I just grabbed a bunch of new music that I really like. I truly appreciate Atari Teenage Riot and Boris the Sprinkler these days, as well as Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison/San Quentin double album. Yay. What else did I get? Hmm, Faghat, Massive Attack, Loudermilk. Faghat is my friend Justin's band. I think it's supposed to be like Foghat but not? Anyhow, they sound like the Velvets. I have a great memory of going to see them at Nottingham coop.... but no one wants to hear that...
I am looking for a place to write down my appointments to go look at places, and oh, is it, could it be, time for a new planner? An excuse to go shopping for one? Could this be DORK HEAVEN??? (I want one with Care Bears!!)
Happy day, second or third day (haven't been around in a while) that Chavez is still president of Venezuela....
Oprah's doing jury duty! That's crazy. At least she has a good attitude about it. I wonder if it's going to interfere with her show? She'll probably lose like 13 million dollars by the time the trial's over. It's a murder trial. I don't know why they picked her, since she'll probably influence the rest of the jury like mad. Probably the lawyers have seen her on tv and think she'll show good judgment? Ha ha, yeah, right. Usually if they think you're smart at all they'll boot you from jury duty (too much education). My middle school history teacher (the one that was not interested in trivial things such as pants) served twice. |
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| All right, who hacked me? |
[Aug. 15th, 2004|03:40 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blank | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Morrissey: The World is Full of Crashing Bores | ] |
S'pose I should do something with myself. Today I just wore cargo capris and one of those obnoxious polo shirts you can get for $9 downtown... I wanted to wear my giraffe socks but I wore flipflops, so :( 2 large mammals on socks are outtaluck today. Since I haven't combed my hair since 1967 and I have one of those leftover grownout pageboy things, and the traditional Chinese tattoos that were so much fun in the early 90's, I guess that means I have sort of a non-look look going.
Two nights ago I went to see "Control Room". For a person who is not shocked by anything, I can tell you that that movie had some shocks in it. I was sitting there thinking, "Wow, when was the last time I felt this outraged?" Seeing it was a good cure for all the media fatigue that one experiences during a war. Okay, I don't mean "Go see this movie so you can feel like cat s&*#", I do mean to say that it's really interesting and it's not going to make you feel any worse for going, but possibly better for actually having an emotion for all the aggro that's going on over there.
I watered my plants, finally. The tomatillos are looking a little peaked. Rosemary is doing well, thyme is great, artemisia is perking up. Moroccan mint is going feffing crazy. I think it's a seasonal thing. I have shiso leaves coming up that are as big as yr head.
I want to go see "Bukowski". In the trailer they showed Bono reading a great bit by CB. Wherever pozitive stuff is happening, you'll see Bono. That guy's like a human energy crystal. Whatever happened to the Eleanor Roosevelt School of Pop-Stardom? I wanna see mammyfucking Ashley Simpson go to Africa.
Ths morning the garbage truck was decorated with beads and red-and-white pompoms. Must have been leftover from yesterday. Only time I follow sports stuff is when somebody's cousin is being played or something.. ((You know you're from Wisconsin when.... you don't give a f. about the Badgers unless someone you know is playing....))
Freshmen are moving in again. I love to see some random kid and his parents unloading plastic crates of Gundam crap out on the middle of University Ave during rush hour. Makes you realize the investment ppl are willing to make in their kids, I guess. Hah not really...
Random: When I was a kid and somebody gave me a new set of paints I would always immediately take red and black and mix them together on the lid. I think red-black is still my favrorite color. Good thing it's "in" every year, at least at Hot Topic. Hehe. From now on, when quizzes ask for my favorite color, I'm going to say black-red.
New communities I want to start on lj:
dyoucatchthesex
this community would be about 19th century novels, 50's television, and any other shit where you know that sex is being implied without actually spoken of. also commercials, ads, Olson twin movies, etc. where you know something is being insinuated.
uncool80s
A place to discuss Spandeau Ballet, Scritti Politti, and all the doomed-before-the-start phenomena that make retro so selfcasticsemiwittingly great. it would be such an 867-5309 kind of place! (yeah, I stole that joke from Margaret Cho, don't hate) |
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