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January 31, 2004
Metacognition Week: The (Heavily Drinkies) Semiotic Domain of Graduate Students
This is what I'm finally learning this semester:
I didn't actually finish the one centimeter of Glenlivet which Jamie poured me that night -- good lord scotch is awful -- but I've finished some stuff since. Not bloody much. I started on Cape Cods. I can't understand why anyone would want to ruin cranberry juice with a rubbing-alcohol aftertaste.
I don't know if it's because I'm older and trying this under controlled circumstances or whether everyone goes through this, but I'm finding that how I regulate myself changes in ways that I didn't expect while drinking. I have always said I didn't want to drink because I like being in control of my body. In fact, I find I tend to attempt to control myself more actively and censor what I'm saying even more heavily than usual while I'm drinking, just because I'm aware I'm not functioning at peak capacity.
I got really irritated by the effects of the two thingies of Bailey's I had tonight. Mostly it just makes me sleepy, a state which I'm generally in anyway on a grad school schedule. When I first felt my limbs go leaden, drinking with Kellan, Robert, Jen, and Nat in Seattle, I said, "Oh, this is just like being on Valium, or muscle relaxants!" leading Kellan to quip, "Gus, the rest of us aren't addicts." (I've been prescribed both at one time or another. Seriously.)
* * *
In other visual displays of graduate school:
that's what Frank's class looked like, more or less.
Posted by me at 1:41 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 29, 2004
More grafitti robots
Slashdot ran a piece today about a new grafitti-writing robot, which in this case (unlike GrafittiWriter) works on walls. Imagine Ruckus trying this baby out... maybe with glow-in-the-dark paint, to avoid immediate notice?
Posted by me at 3:08 PM | Comments (1)
Meta-metacognition Week: The Semiotic Domain of Cognitive Science
Started reading Dana's lit review for her dissertation the other day. It's always exciting to be handed a piece of reading which is so useful, telling you all sorts of things you barely knew yet that you wanted to know. I'm trying to hack out an independent study this semester and now I've got a lot to add to my reading list. Much to my excitement, a lot of the literature on media and technology literacies seems to be tied into sociological work! I expected it to be more cognitive or psychological. Yay!
My understanding of cognitive science, based on my observations of departmental politics at Hampshire, was that it was anathema to social scientists. Happily for me, as I always felt myself straddling the gap between the cog sci professors in Adele Simmons Hall and the social scientists in Franklin Patterson Hall, the stuff that I am reading so far suggests that not only are the two fields cohabiting somewhat peacefully, there is much to be done in exploring their overlap.
In light of this discovery I find myself wondering why the anthropologist who was my mentor at Hampshire seemed a little leery of the cog sci department. I could be confusing his unfamiliarity with cognitive science with his disdain for the cultural studies faculty (who at the time were in the same department as cognitive scientists, train wreck that it was) as "armchair" anthropologists. Or I guess it could have been some personal belief unrepresentative of his field. Then again, he might have been reacting to cog sci's roots in behavioralism, which I guess is no longer central to the field?
Posted by me at 10:36 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 28, 2004
Metacognition Week: Computer-Assisted
11-2-03
What I know about a book includes physical and visual cues. Where on the page an idea appears. A feel for approximately how many pages there are in one hand and in the other hand if I am holding the book open with both. Things I remember later so I can find my way back to an idea with a minimum of effort. And then there are my own marks, stars and boxes, hatches and underlines of varying weights for subtle cues, all of which I have perfected over time. To read without these, even if the reading is enriched by links and commentary, is reading handicapped. These are not the aesthetic luxuries some writers go on about in New Yorker essays, not the usual "writing just isn't the same without the $100 fountain pen!" wimpery -- these are genuine holes in a system of organizing knowledge. Computer text-provision systems need to take into account that people accustomed to reading books have methods like these, and should provide similar resources.
I don't know if the next generation of computer users will have the same needs -- maybe they will have other ways of managing knowledge. And surely everyone's methods are different, so systems should be flexible.
* * *
1/25/04
New strategy this semester: in reading materials on the computer, I am using Word's text highlighting and "comment" abilities. Of course I hate relying on the Evil Empire, but these functions have a relatively simple interface, and I have high hopes that the highlighting will help cue me to remember which parts of an e-text are important better than leaving a blank text behind. I like that the comments pop up when you mouse over; it's almost as good as having margins. However, there are still questions about whether underlining and highlighting help me at all! I have found that margin comments help -- I have near-photographic memory, over the course of a few days at least, of where on a bicameral page I have left a star or note. And of course, this is something that is not too doable on a scrolling page of text; so much for that tool...
Posted by me at 1:03 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 27, 2004
hideous things
Hey, some of my friends are hideous half-formed things! --JamiePosted by me at 11:22 PM
Keep CBS From Censoring MoveOn's Ad
Though enough money has been raised to get Super Bowl airtime for MoveOn.org's ad about the debt the Bush Administration will pass on to future generations,, CBS is refusing to air the ad. It's a shame -- it really is a simple ad which I think would appeal to people of many political and apolitical persuasions. You can sign a petition to CBS about it. An ad from PETA is also facing censorship, and it even includes naked ladies! During the Super Bowl, can you imagine?
Posted by me at 9:47 PM | Comments (0)
Unionize Everyone Now!
The New York Times ran an article Sunday about attempts to unionize reality TV show participants, and even people involved with the production of documentaries. I'm getting a little soft on my understanding of labor tactics, but can't help but think this presents some sort of opportunity. Why not just unionize the whole country? I mean anyone could end up being the subject of a reality TV show... and you can't exactly ask that suspect you're chasing down on Cops for his SAG card on the fly. Imagine the possibilities! Universal slowdown! Nationwide strikes! Take that, Taft-Hartley Act!
Posted by me at 2:29 PM | Comments (0)
Metacognition Week: Study Strategies
Yes, this is a Thing -- this week I am gonna post every day, because I have a lot of stuff that I never quite finished last semester. And most of it fits together! Probably I should save it up and mete it out over the semester, so I don't have eons of dead air and lose you all to Marlys Magazine (on which Lynda Barry is posting her own comics now instead of just Salon, since I don't know when? With some frequency!) but I hate having a backlog of unfinished ideas -- tends to put a damper on new developments. So enjoy Metacognition Week -- the theme week which is probably misnamed, since I don't know much about cognitive science yet!
* * *
The Hamster Technique
Last semester I developed a new technique for writing response papers. I call it the Hamster Technique.
The first paper I wrote using the Hamster Technique was for a professor who I loved dearly, but happened to give the class a prompt that was so full of faulty assumptions that I had to completely disassemble it in order to begin to talk about the reading in question. That's the Hamster Technique: chew the topic into tiny pieces and make a nest out of it. I felt scandalously irreverant doing it. The professor wasn't insulted, though; he ate it up. So I kept doing it.
I rather like this technique. I don't quite understand why I never did it at Hampshire. My guess is because I got to define most of my paper topics myself, and so often professors had few guiding comments before the writing or after that I never had to pick anything apart. I swear to god, faculty input at Hampshire was often about as pressureful as hippie toilet training.
* * *
A Person Outside of Homework
Last semester I started to realize how useful the past four years were in thinking of myself as a Person Outside of Homework. I didn't come up with that conception of myself until I started practicing not doing my homework intentionally, just to see what it felt like.
It was really good to not have homework. Until I stopped having homework I was unable to distinguish between the impact of factors like "organization" and "tiredness" and "intellectual boredom" and "distractions" on my performance. There was me not doing all my homework and thus being a bad person, and then there was me doing my homework and being a good person.
This was highly detrimental to my sense of well-being. Frequently there was some amount of reading I left undone; as it built up, I felt like a worse and worse person. By the end of Hampshire I was convinced I'd never amount to anything academically. I was still caught up in the nagging idea I used to have that everything a teacher assigned must be indispensable to my understanding of her field, because obviously she was an expert in it, right?
* * *
Your Own Personal Syllabus
Apologies, this part of the post is being temporarily suppressed for political reasons. Please look for it later!
Posted by me at 12:27 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
January 26, 2004
Books and Cats: Go Together Like Coffee and Pie
If you will be making an attempt, on your next vacation, to make pilgrimages to things most people don't plan to see, may I suggest you check out this exhaustive list of cats who live in libraries? (Sushi, was Booklet Wallenda the reason you want pets named after typefaces?) When in Seattle, I suggest meeting the cats at Twice Sold Tales.
Posted by me at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)
Metacognition Week: Reading
written 12/28/03 -- "this semester" is Fall '03
Earlier this semester, in trying to explain myself and my goals to a professor, I wrote something about books being my friends and instantly knew it was a lie calculated to impress him. The truth is that books used to be my friends. Now I'm scared of them, even hate some of them, and have spent time over the past few years avoiding them.
There's a lot of reasons, but conditioning is foremost. I almost want to say, How could anyone come from a high-pressure academic background and not hate books?, but I know a lot of people who don't think that way. In my case I know it's had a bad effect, though. I was the kid who routinely maxed out her library card in elementary school. When school started enforcing ways to read, what I read, and how I needed to respond to it, I lost the joy of reading. The books I read in school are neurotic bristles of underlining and marginal notes. No, that's not true. Starting in high school, when a teacher told me I was a good writer, novels and poetry have joyous marginal notes, and were deconstructed with relish. I think the joy returned as I regained a sense that I would join these people and write books someday myself; reading was part of a community of developing meaning, and I loved that.
The real neurosis set in with analysis and memorization of facts. I learned to read to find what someone else wanted me to find in the text. I was never really sure I was doing it right when I was reading literature, though there was more room for me to develop my own meaning there.
History readings were a real problem. Whole pages of my old history books are highlighted or underlined solid. Classmates used to look with concern on my books, asking me what the hell I was trying to do. I think I was trying to underline the important parts. But unless I was writing research papers, and until I started having teachers who taught social history, the idea of what was important was completely external to me. I underlined what I thought I was supposed to memorize for tests, and I had a very hard time distinguishing which parts might be important to the teacher. None of it was important to me. I can't even begin to identify all of the bad habits of thought and organization this fostered.
Different teachers had different suggestions and demands for how you organized knowledge. Some of them wanted you to keep journals; in junior high, the age when diaries were a popular phenomenon, the idea of what you might put in a journal was conflicted and tinged with a sense of invasion of privacy.
Dr. Feldmeth in high school wanted us to keep notes on our history readings and lectures, and then turn them in. Looking at this practice as a teacher, it sounds like great pedagogy – it gives you a sense of how the kid is using distributed intelligence, is perhaps a more accurate "understanding performance" than a high-pressure test, and allows you room to correct areas where a student is misconceiving of the ideas presented.
As a student, though, understanding why this man wanted to see your notes was a matter of black-boxing. I'm not sure if he explained the educational goals of turning in notebooks. They seemed pretty arbitrary to me at the time; I think I resisted the activity. If he did explain it, I guess the explanation must not have made sense.
It was only this semester – my first semester of graduate school, at the age of 26 -- that I developed a method of reading which has started to make sense. I've thrown any sense of underlining for "what's important" to the winds. A lot of the stuff I've been reading this semester has seemed obvious to me, and so what I underline ends up being ideas which are striking or new, instead. I'm still fine-tuning this strategy; I'm not even sure that it works. Dana was telling us that we should be keeping notes to… what was it, defend our dissertation, or was it to help build a literature review? See, I don't even know which questions I want to answer yet, so that's likely to leave me with as few useful notes as my high school strategy… man… I'm going to get myself voted "Most Likely To Go ABD" any day now…
Posted by me at 12:15 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
January 25, 2004
hall booty
I think that if at all possible, we should go to Saga and pretend not to notice each other standing in line for vegan lasagna --phPosted by me at 9:45 PM
Biting The Alma Mater That Feeds Me
Hee hee... I have committed an ultimately petty and rather pointless reality check on the image of Polytechnic School (you have to be on Friendster's network to see it) in a forum from which Poly is likely to disappear anyway, but at least I'm smugly satisfied for the moment. And I am happy that whichever kid is meat-puppeting the Poly avatar saw fit to approve my testimonial -- I do often have concerns for the corporate souls of my fellow alumni.
Posted by me at 8:52 PM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2004
Bacon!
is for connoisseurs. The Times says so.
Posted by me at 2:41 PM | Comments (1)
January 21, 2004
The Last Temptations of the Albatross
Originally published 12/04/03, updated 12/05, naively titled "The Parables of the Albatross." Written from the bowels of the Albatross, parked on a Washington Heights street.
The Parable of the Gluttonous Albatross and the Very Expensive Parking Tickets
When the Albatross awoke from its refreshing two-day nap, it discovered, to the delight of its discriminating palate and expensive taste, that it had been decorated with two more parking tickets. One for having an emissions inspection ticket which had lapsed by eight days while it was in Vermont; another for being liberated of its front license plate by the friend who borrowed it. The Albatross shimmied in delight.
I, as you might guess, was less than thrilled. I kicked the bumpers and howled for a good fifteen minutes.
Nevertheless it was Tuesday and I was in a Tuesday zone, and being loathe to amass any more tickets I drove the Albatross around Washington Heights looking for a new parking space. It was 10:00 in the morning.
A minor blizzard began. Snow flew sideways.
Up Cabrini. Down Fort Washington. Across 181st. Down Bennett. Past the Cloisters.
There are no goddamn parking spaces in Washington Heights.
I drove down to Morningside Heights, to Columbia. It was 10:30 in the morning. I was becoming late for work.
* * *
In Which The Albatross Is Bathed In The Radiance of Sublime Grace
I had been warned about the parking situation in Morningside Heights, but oh, the carnage! Fire hydrants parked three trucks in! Vespas parked on top of Minis parked on top of Lincoln Towncars! Ford Explorers in flames! Yuppies using them as barricades, hurling clots of dung at the approaching metermaids!
ok, so it wasn't that bad. but every street was parked two deep on a side, and there was still no place to park. It was 11:00 a.m.
I became resigned to parking on the illegal side of the street and awaiting my fate. The moment I came to rest a sweeper rounded the corner and, like a common city pigeon, I was forced to take flight.
I pulled into a line of cars parked on the wrong side of a street, attended by drivers in cold-weather gear. One guy looked old and Irish, so I figured he knew the routine.
Here's how it works, he told me, blowing on his hands. The sweeper comes by, you pull out. You have to stay with your car until 1:00.
I was already late to work.
A metermaid came by and eyed the drivers. I turned on my engine. She left.
The sweeper trundled into the scope of my rearview. I began to panic – I was more or less parked in. Why was nobody moving?
The sweeper passed us.
It was now 12:30. I read fitfully, unable to keep from searching for the metermaid in the rearview window.
And then -- then – I was witness to the most unearthly automotive choreography . The sweeper pulled into the street again and got behind the car at the opposite end of the block. Around me the whole line of cars started their engines. As the sweeper made its processional up the block, each car in turn pulled out into the opposite lane of traffic, matched in a wave of Busby Berkeley arcs.
I confess – I was not ready for the sublime grace. I backed and filled. I tried to make for the next intersection, but a woman in a white Lexus was in my way. Where? I gestured to her. What next? Where do I go?
The woman in the white Lexus gave me a thumbs up sign, and as the sweeper passed, every car in the row pulled back in its arc and glided to a stop at the exact same place at the curb. And I did also. In another half an hour I was blessed with the gift of a legal parking space.
* * *
The Temptation of the False Parking Space
The fate of the Albatross is to never roost for more than three days at a time, for that is how often the sweeper comes, so again tonight it was an hour of cruising Washington Heights. Up Fort Washington. Down Bennett. Over to Audubon and back again. Countless numbered streets.
The streets of Washington Heights are mysterious with cul-de-sacs and traffic circles. Holy holy holy. And out on the riverfront, where the apartments have a killer view of the GeorgeWashington Bridge and are surely more expensive than I can ever afford, there is a parking space between two SUVs on the secret street called Chittenden. It is a deceitful parking space. There are signs up which say No Standing on either side, and yet here are the SUVs. Surely they must know something! Surely this is the forbidden fruit of the yuppie, the knowledge of the Place Where Cops Never Ticket!
I take the space and get out to confirm that what I am seeing is true. Yes, there are No Standing signs and they mean Not You, Right Here. So what's with the SUVs?
The first one has a red dashboard light and a card that says NYC Housing Authority. The second has a sign that says Fire Marshal Reserve. The third has another Housing Authority card and a light. The fourth car has a handicapped plate and a Club through the steering wheel.
I lay tracks out of that den of deceit, you better believe. Eventually some nice security guard tells me I can have his parking space in half an hour. I hover in front of a hydrant and wait.
* * *
The Morals of the Parables of the Albatross
Do you know what this is?! Do you understand the terrible sublime moral of the parables of the failures of the Albatross?! It is that New York City sees you! It sees you in your fossil-fuel consuming wickedness! New York City is ready to punish all of us for what we have done! It will grind away at our fat undersides with potholes! It will mar the tawdry glory of our paint job with a green sign that says "THIS VEHICLE IS PREVENTING NEW YORK FROM BEING CLEAN!" New York City knows that it is not Gomorrah, it is the rest of the gas-guzzling country that is filled with sin! New York City knows, and New York City will have vengeance!
* * *
Postscript: ... and New York Taketh Away
At approximately 11:15 this morning the vengeful hand of New York rose up and brutally crushed the Albatross into a wall on I-95. Totalled. Free at last. Hallelujah.
Posted by me at 11:55 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
interpretive dance
hooray! interpretive dance free period!! --glyph, on my seminar in which the professor turned the development of the syllabus over to the classPosted by me at 6:47 PM
System Update
FYI, the twistedmatrix address has not been not working over the past few days and will likely not be for another two or three -- no need to change your addressbook, but if you need to get in touch with me before then please do it via the Columbia (gba2101) or protest.net addresses.
Posted by me at 12:44 AM | Comments (2)
January 18, 2004
Fries and Propaganda: F-R-A-U-G-H-T
The Canterbury Inn, Seattle
J and G are joined by Natty Bumppo
N: In two places it says two cheese -- on the grilled cheese and the omelette. That's perplexing.
J: Now I want an omelette.
N: Does it say what the cheeses are anywhere? (searches menu diligently)
Waitress: Do you have any questions?
N: What are the two cheeses?
Waitress: Swiss and cheddar, but we could do swiss and mozzarella if you like.
Nat orders a bacon, blue cheese and cheddar omelette.
J: Heart attack on a plate. Two heart attacks on a plate.
N: I only have one heart.
G: (cringes instead of making a mean joke)
J: I think I'm gonna drop that class with the 2,000 page course packet.
N: But it'll make your brain big!
G: (stage whisper) He's a zombie! He only wants you for your brain!
N: A brain can be exchanged for goods and services. (looks at G writing) I don't think we need a stenographer here.
G: Look, who's the principal investigator on this project? I am!
J: What project?!
G: The interest of science!
N: (to J) She just wants your brain.
* * *
hi fi plays Tell Me Something Good
G: Let's all get drunk.
J: (laughs)
* * *
The waitress inexplicably brings a carrier of individual-serving jams along with the fries.
G: This has the searing heat.
J: Yes, we all know that is your turnoff.
G: That is included among my turnoffs.
J: That is your only turnoff.
Everyone boggles at an astoundingly stretchy bit of cheese which reaches almost all the way from tray to mouth. Jen puts the raw onions from her burger on the fries.
G: I don't really like raw onion, except as a prophylactic.
N: Why do you say that?
J: It's like with garlic. It makes your breath stinky.
G: These fries are nicely salty. They really don't care about our health. I like it. (tries the onion) It's sweet!
J: What?
G: (oniony flavor hits hard and she winces mightily) Moth'(er of) gaw(d)!
N: (disdainfully) That's what happens when you eat an onion!
J: Onion hater!
Waitress: Is it a good science project?
G: Excellent!
J: She appreciates the seriousness of this endeavor.
G: Of course! She has a nose ring!
J: You're implying everyone in Seattle understands what we're doing.
* * *
G chews a cinnamon stick from her hot cider throughout.
N: She's doing Hunter S. Thompson.
J: With a CINNAMON STICK?! Sure, Hunter Thompson LIGHT!
G: Hunter Thompson is rolling in his grave.
J and N: Hunter Thompson is NOT DEAD.
* * *
N delivers another classic line, and G arches an eyebrow at J
J: Why are you giving me the stink-eye? Can't we all just get along?
G: I didn't say nothin'!
N: This is good toast. Well-buttered.
J: (to N) Is this your first cheese fry experience?
N: We had some at Johnny Rocket's.
J: But there was no Gus there. No notes.
N: Cheese fries are cheese fries. I don't really see why they're worth eating.
J: (fraught look to G)
G: (writing on J's forehead with a finger) F-R-A-U-G-H-T.
J: (to N) I don't know you anymore. If I ever did.
G: (back to the remaining fries, which are cheeseless) We have a layering problem, here. And there's a huge mine of salt on this side of the plate. They seem to be making up for a lack of cheese with salt.
J: Shady!
G: I think that's margarita salt.
J: Kosher salt.
Despite her earlier big talk, G is not up for drinking tonight, leaving J alone to advocate getting margaritas.
J: Well then, I guess I'll just have a Pabst Blue Ribbon.
N: That's like the over-21 version of "guess I'll go eat worms."
J: (singing) Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go drink Pabst Blue Ribbon...
Posted by me at 1:06 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 17, 2004
A Photographic Update On The Past Month
Having improved the speed (but not the quality) of my photo processing with a card reader and iPhoto, I can now post whole albums with alacrity! I've uploaded pictures from the holidays in SoCal and vacation in Seattle; also the pictures of the cats you've been clamoring to see.
Posted by me at 5:02 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2004
Jewish Dub And Reggae Are Alive and Well and Kicking Out The Jams in Brooklyn
just in case you missed it.
Posted by me at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)
jews for jesus equals happy hour
(you going to happy hour is) like jews for jesus! everywhere is happy for for you. every hour is happy hour. youb can go to a coke maching, buy a coke and say, " i love happy hour!" --whePosted by me at 5:03 PM
January 13, 2004
panty guru
I dunno, perhaps I have a reputation as a panty guru. -- kbsPosted by me at 11:38 PM
german child
Would you like a smiling German child stick? (pointing to magazine cover) See, this is why he is the Last German Child. They make them all into tasty sticks. --RobertPosted by me at 11:36 PM
sponges
these sponges are not for washing, they are for admiring --fuzPosted by me at 4:00 PM
January 12, 2004
pus free milk
J: And of course we're poor students, and that's what our money goes to: pus-free milk and books! Oh, we're all going to die. G: I'm going to wet my pants first.Posted by me at 1:57 AM
January 10, 2004
Support the Nauru Detainees
The natural resources of the Pacific island of Nauru have been exploited until it has basically been worn away. (I first heard about it on This American Life -- look for the episode titled "The Middle of Nowhere." Compelling listening.) Its story, in a nutshell, describes the effects of colonialism and the transition into global capitalism. Now it's being used as a detention camp for refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan who were turned away by Australia. Some of those refugees, on hunger strike, have promised to sew their eyelids as well as their lips shut if the Australian government does not address the inhumane conditions in which they are being kept. Solutions being bandied about are requests for visas to Nauru for doctors, lawyers, and social workers, and petitioning Amnesty and Medecins Sans Frontieres to pay greater attention to the issue...
Posted by me at 7:22 PM | Comments (0)
Bus Blog
Dear woman on the bus,
Bacon and I found this and we were pretty sure it was a blog post. Sure, you wrote it on a seatback on the bus, but it just sounded like a blog post. So I've posted it for you.
regards,
gus.
Posted by me at 3:41 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 8, 2004
Fries and Propaganda: Return to Diane's
Linda's
Capitol Hill, Seattle
First post written on a laptop in realtime! Linda's (which I always end up calling Diane's, because I forget) is where Kurt Cobain was last seen before he bit the rifle. It is also where I was first kissed by a woman, but I won't go into that here. It was under highly unpleasant circumstances.
NEW! Read the Fries and Propaganda Archives!
Jen: Breakfast here is truly incredible. I came here with Grandma the other day. Good tofu scramble.
(waitress returns to take order)
G: We'll have cheese fries.
J: Cheddar if you have it.
W: Will that be it?
G: For now.
W: I'll leave one menu.
G: Was she being snarky?
J: Yeah. She's a girl hater. She's all solicitious with the guys. (tries beer) Hoy, this is bad today.
G: The beer?
J: Yeah, it's flat. And meh.
G: (spills tea, tries to wipe it up with napkin) Napkins that don't absorb things!
J: It's a bar, nothing works in a bar.
G: (casting gaze across the room, where there are many mens) So you are going to introduce me to the mens, yes?
J: The mens here?
G: Yeah. What do they do? Who are they?
J: They're all unemployed. Or else they work in a music store.
G: (inspects the fry basket) Checkered liner! big plus!
J: That's a big plus? How come?
G: Camp!
J: Not satisfying for a large order, though. They skimped on cheese.
G: No, there's just a lake in the middle. Good potato.
J: Yes, good potato. The cheese isn't sharp enough. (as Gus digs fingers into the lake of cheese) I fear what you're going to do to your napkin.
G: I have to! Because of the laptop.
J: It's going to be even worse because of the laptop. She's going to think were reviewing this for the most third rate publication ever. Which we kind of are.
... important conversations about saving the world from itself and about people without ambition...
G: I have cheese. Under. My fingernails. I think this is more of a personal problem, seeing as I didn't use a fork to scrape it up. But this cheese on the liner thing is a problem.
J: You vegetarians and your lack of protein.
Posted by me at 4:12 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
Our Best Chance To Make The TeeVee Say "Drop Bush, Not Bombs!"
If you haven't already gone over to MoveOn.org's Bush in 30 Seconds site, you should do so. MoveOn fielded these ads from the public, held a vote on which were the best, and they're amassing funding to run these ads in swing states. This is one of the best activist uses of media I've seen in a while, and I'm convinced it has a chance to work. I had some trouble getting to the first round of voting because of website issues, so I missed voting on the fifteen finalists -- which are now apparently subject to vote by a panel including Michael Moore, Gus Van Sant, Margaret Cho, Janeane Garofalo, and others -- but we can all still vote on the funniest ad, best youth market ad, and best animated ad. Good stuff!
Posted by me at 2:43 PM | Comments (0)
January 3, 2004
Chengwins of Fire
New York offers many cultural events which never hit the average person's radar-- even the average person in the city itself. Thankfully, ol' Hampshire buddy Rob Domingo is not average, so I get all the good stuff. Early last year Rob and I participated in the Chengwin and Chunk half-mile marathon. (These pictures have probably been up for a while but Rob just brought them to my attention.) Chengwin and Chunk are people dressed up in giant chickenlike costumes who basically enact battles between good and evil. This time it was in abbreviated marathon form. Basically it was a great excuse to leave passing tourbus guides completely speechless as they tried to fit the unexpected takeover of Houston Street by cheering boho nerds led by giant chickens into their usual patter. Rob swears he can see us in the pictures but I think he trippin. What you can't see in the pictures was that at the fraction milemarkers they had, someone was passing out Vaseline and Red Bull instead of water. New York Ceeeeety!
Posted by me at 1:42 AM | Comments (0)