aleatory contract

2009-04-27T14:11:00.001-06:00

So my powerbook is dying. I can’t complain; it’s five years old now. I’ve had it for four of those years, and I haven’t been easy on it. It’s been eaten over, spilled on, dented, knocked over, scratched, dropped, shed upon and clawed by malevolent cats. I’ve taken it into the bathtub with me, used it in the rain. It’s been the novel I curl up in bed with. It’s been my boombox. It’s been my shop manual. It’s been my cookbook, which is a particularly bad idea when baking, since sifted flour and electronics don’t really get along. It’s had a hard life, and the battery is gone, the screen has been going for a year or so, the fan’s been dicky since last fall. In the past few days, I’ve been getting more and more beachballs, and even Firefox is a challenge to run. So it’s time to think about replacing it. My little powerbook has been good to me, and I’ve been happy to own it. Never gave me a moment’s trouble in its long life.

The thing is, I don’t particularly like any of the current configurations Apple is offering. The macbook is pretty, but expensive, and it seems underpowered. $1200 is a lot to spend. The white macbook seems like just as much power, for less, which is closer to my price range, but even at $1000, it’s a bit spendy, and it seems like the macbook line has had more than its share of problems, everything from hinges to chipsets, and the thing I liked most about my old mac was its indestructibility.

Speed and power aren’t immediately important to me, although I do want something fast enough to stay useful for a few years. I’ve switched jobs, so I don’t need to run design software, and while I might want something for music editing and mixing, I’m not likely to need that any time soon, and can probably borrow what I do need. For the next two years, and probably past that, I’ll be using internet apps and a word processor and probably iTunes, and that’s about it. A netbook, then, is looking pretty attractive. I prefer OSX to Windows, but I am given to understand a netbook could be made to run OSX. There’s also linux, but my limited experience with it (using scott's partitioned machine) has been a bit off-putting; it seems like there's always a driver missing, or some damn thing. Customisability would be a fun diversion, but it's not something I particularly need. Mostly I just want something that will work whenever I turn it on.

It's a choice, then, I think, between dropping $1000 on a white macbook, or dropping $400 on a netbook, probably the Asus eee 1000H. Thoughts?

2009-01-21T18:31:00.002-07:00

this, among other things for which i presently lack the time.

2008-08-18T11:54:00.002-06:00

though i'm going to be out of town during the convention -- and, indeed, will be going in quite the opposite direction from denver -- i'm probably more likely to watch parts of it, since i will be in a hotel room which will probably have a TV. i wouldn't have watched otherwise. i have a feeling i'll try to avoid watching, if i can.

but seriously, though. biden? BIDEN? mr joe my-life's-work-fucked-up-the-lending-sector-and-the-US-economy-just-for-some-constituents biden?

i've refrained from talking much on my blog at all, and i've tried to refrain from talking politics. i know most everyone who reads this is at least sorta-kinda pro-obama. i'm wondering, though, if people are still so into him. you don't have to respond, of course. but i'd be curious, either way.

2008-07-17T21:21:00.002-06:00

so i got a tattoo.

on my forearm.

it's odd, but i'm actually thinking the possibility of employment difficulties may actually be a net benefit. plus it looks really good. like, really good.

i've wanted a tattoo for more than a decade now. now that i have one, though, i feel like i may want more. i designed this one myself. it's quite simple and fairly small. i think i might design a bigger one for the future. the artist i had was quite sweet, and if (or when) i do get another, i'd definitely go to him again.

i'm tired of these motherfucking obama emails in my motherfucking mailbox!

2008-07-14T08:04:00.003-06:00

seriously, it shouldn't take three fucking attempts to unsubscribe to a mailing list that i never asked to join in the first place. i realise that my email's collected every time i try to contact the obama campaign. i realise that they've got my email and my contact information from the clinton campaign, and that they've got greg's contact information from the DNC, but jesus! stop with the fucking emails already, or at least make it opt-in! this is the third time since i contacted them about FISA that i've tried, unsuccessfully, to unsubscribe.

at least they don't have my phone number anymore, since i changed it when we switched to CREDO. i changed numbers mostly because someone in town's been using my old one as a fake to pass out to dudes at bars, at least going by the voicemails i get. the digits were also just slightly off those of an opthamologist's office, and i was at the point where i recieved more calls for a dr. isaac than i did for myself. so far, reception seems pretty decent, they're like twenty bucks cheaper for the same plan, and in a week or so we'll get to vote for the organisations they'll be donating to.

i will miss the slightly scandalised reactions i'd been getting from obama callers, though. declining rally invitations, even politely, seems to be somewhere past loudly farting at a dinner party on the scale of Things One Just Does Not Do.

good thing nobody listened

2008-07-04T09:34:00.002-06:00

told you so.

told you so.

ahem.

will probably get to say"told you so".

happy damn fourth.

2008-07-01T16:24:00.002-06:00

so tell me about Realities of misty eras past. what were your favourite themes? what themes sucked hard? i want to hear stories.

because verizon sucks anyway

2008-06-21T12:29:00.003-06:00

does anyone have (or know someone who has) CREDO mobile?

2008-06-20T22:55:00.003-06:00

it's hard to feel empowered for change when contacting the obama campaign nets me nothing but a form letter from a mailbot, the text of which hasn't been updated since february and consists mostly of appeals for money and/or volunteer work.

(and yes, i was polite, and i didn't say 'fuck' or 'damn' or anything remotely curse-like, not even once!)

2008-06-20T18:23:00.003-06:00

it's a bit weird for me to consider my switch to an iBook G4 an upgrade, i guess, but this one's seen much less abuse than my PowerBook G4, and is much less broken. it has a functional screen AND a functional keyboard! plus, although both of them have wonky batteries, at least this one can have its battery swapped for a working one. the PowerBook's so banged up that i can't remove the battery cover anymore.

i didn't think i'd like iBooks, and i was dreading the day i'd have to say goodbye to my aluminium. i just thought the plastic would feel cheap and horrible. it's not so bad, though: the keyboard feels pretty good, and the plastic case feels somehow sturdier than the metal. it also seems to run a bit cooler, though that could be due to the fact that the PowerBook is a bit more fried, and i think still has the prone-to-explode battery model.

at least i'll feel better about switching to plastic when the time for a MacBook comes, though i think that time is quite some distance in the future. alas.

transformative!

2008-06-20T17:00:00.004-06:00

Change We Can Believe In. somehow i didn't think The New Politics would look quite so much like the old politics. i guess that's where the hope part of 'hope and change' comes in? you hope the change materialises?

2008-06-15T21:05:00.001-06:00

hey, is it possible to check out the search terms that have caused hits on a given blog in blogger?

inspired by liz

2008-06-15T11:06:00.003-06:00

i was born and raised in the democratic party. my great-grandmother worked for the party before she even had the vote, and continued working for it through the roosevelt years*. i remember my grandmother weeping for joy when clinton was elected back in 1992, because she'd lived through the hell of reagan and didn't know if she'd live to see the causes of the democrats ever recover. on my birthday that year following, which always falls on inauguration day, she gave me a teddy bear she'd named billy, and told me that 'something very important is happening, something you shouldn't ever forget'.

i didn't fully understand what that 'something' was, yet, but i remembered the election of 1988. i remember my elementary school holding a mock-election, after showing us the debates and having us study the platforms -- all of us, from the kindergarteners up. i remember that we elected dukakis in a landslide, and i remember how disturbed we were to learn that in the real election, the one that counted, reagan won.

that mock election, of course, had no bearing on the outcome of the actual election, but i remember how miserable i felt afterward, when i learned that. i hadn't quite grasped, i don't think, that our election was just a mock-election, and the feeling of disenfranchisement was strong. i remember students asking, the day after the real election, 'but didn't they count our votes?'

i was paying attention, even back in 1988. i remember coming home from daycare every night and watching McNeil/Leher News Hour as my mother made dinner. to this day, i get hungry every time i hear that intro music. i watched with her as iran-contra played out, as the anita hill scandal played out, as we went to war with iraq. i wasn't quite understanding yet what i was watching, but i remembered being upset about them, particularly about clarence thomas, and i knew that my grandmother was speaking about those things when she told me to remember.

i've been paying attention to primaries all my life. i've watched every convention for the past twenty years, and i've gone from colouring pictures of flags and donkeys during the speeches to yelling at the TV in frustration. i've read, and i've listened, and i've watched. i know what the democratic party has tried to do, and what it has failed to do, and what it doesn't care to do. i've watched it fail to live up to its promises.

i have a little donkey pin, given to me by my mother years ago. it lived in my little box of treasures all the years i was growing up. it's quite old. it may have been my grandmother's, or even my great-grandmother's. i have no desire to wear it anymore. the party has an ugly history, but i feel like the party itself has forgotten that history, and has made too many mistakes to be trusted.

i understand what it is to be a democrat. i've been one all my life. i, too, am tired of those who've only just started paying attention trying to explain to me what it means to be A Good Democrat, and i know very well that it doesn't mean 'doing whatever we tell you to do'. i've wanted to stay and fight, to try to help the party change from the inside, but my voice has less value, i think, than these newborn democrats who've wandered in and started telling me to remember my place, to make the coffee and earn the money and get out the vote while they do all the Big Important Idea Stuff. i'm tired of my own party telling me to shut up. i'm tired of being bullied by the very people who, in the same breath, insist that they're the only ones who care enough to protect me.

that's why i'm not voting for obama. that's why i'm changing my party registration, after being a D all my voting days. that's why my vote is going to mckinney, provided she gets the green nomination next month. i know that a third party can't really thrive in our political system, but i can't support the democrats any more, and they're not getting a dime from me until they bother to acknowledge my existence. if the democratic party has decided that courting moderates and conservatives while threatening everyone else is the way they want to go, fine. they can do it without me. since the democrats have stood by while roe's been rendered largely moot, and since they stood by as republicans appointed the raging crazies who sit on the Supreme Court today, i'm not likely to break down under repeated beatings with the 'OMG BUT BUT SCOTUS!' stick. please do not even try. please extend that courtesy to those who might still, or will still, vote obama.

i've also come to realise, through this process, what an outrageous jerk i was to those who didn't vote for gore in 2000. to those i might have blamed in any way for gore's loss, i offer my apology. it wasn't your duty to blindly vote for gore, and if he didn't earn your vote, he didn't deserve it. i sure as hell do blame the media, for making it unduly difficult for people to trust gore; if their presentation of his character and history influenced the votes of those who didn't support him, i'd be disappointed, but not surprised. i blame the media, in large part, for where we are today, too. the media isn't the one driving me out of the party, though. the party itself's done that.

(*and she lived in pittsburgh, and she was part of that famed machine. i know the history well. frankly, i wish we had a bit more of that populism-driven machine today.)

2008-06-14T12:01:00.003-06:00

i am getting just fucking murdered by pollen. i've never had summer allergies before, but they're worse than the ones i had through spring. my new juniper allergies now kick in when i have a gin and tonic. in addition, i'm apparently developing an allergy to sagebrush. given how much damn sagebrush i'm surrounded by, this is not good, but also not very surprising. agh.

attention 1337 haxx0rz

2008-06-13T09:25:00.001-06:00

exercise your skillz! how often do the googlebots crawl over the SJC website?

2008-06-12T12:10:00.003-06:00

so i have a hardcore geek-crush on the college nurse praticioner. i just stopped by her office to beg some antihistamine samples, and got them (a whole fistful, along with decongestants and ibuprofen enough for a week), but also got both an explanation for my sudden allergy flareup (she tracks regional pollen counts, and today saw an unexpected spike in tree pollens, particularly scrub oak) and a side-by-side comparison of different OTC eyedrop formulations, focussing on mast cell inhibition and vasoconstriction. she is so awesome. if i didn't feel like someone had stuck a caulking gun into my right sinus cavity, i would totally have stayed for more pharmocogeekery. every time i go in, i learn something new, and usually she prints me out abstracts from journals to take and read at leisure if i'm interested.

bear in mind that i also like peanut chews

2008-06-11T23:34:00.001-06:00

Bit O Honey: great candy, or greatest candy?

2008-06-07T10:58:00.000-06:00

still ain't feelin' the unity. and sure as hell ain't giving the obama campaign my email.

2008-06-06T10:51:00.002-06:00

further job-hate: next month, i have to tend bar at a function being held at pat oliphant's house. pat oliphant is the dude who drew this, which appeared in the washington post last february. it's fairly reflective of the rest of his work, i'd say, in that he trades heavily in gender jokes, gaybashing, and the occasional racist caricature.

maybe i can do something unpleasant to his glass of chardonnay.

how to make your graphic designer cry

2008-06-06T09:21:00.002-06:00

they're making me work in MS OFFICE. it's too cruel. i've been expressly forbidden from doing anything in adobe! and i'm doing layout! not only am i having to use Paint... it's the paint inside of Word.

wah.

2008-06-05T12:37:00.002-06:00

if i weren't in a closed primary state, i think i'd shift my registration. i may well shift it anyway.

2008-06-04T18:03:00.001-06:00

well.

so much for that little dream.

2008-06-04T12:37:00.003-06:00

i don't have energy or time for a post at the moment, but while i work on something to say:

i am glad clinton did not concede yesterday. i watched her speech in a hotel conference room full of democrats, a watch-party for our local primary we'd been invited to after volunteering for a campaign, and i stood in a room, and heard people i'd stupidly considered allies say some of the foulest, most sexist, most classist, most bigoted bullshit i've heard come out of peoples' mouths in person. and i listened to her speech, all the way through to the end, and at the end of it, i applauded. just quietly, just a few claps. i was the only one. but, goddamnit, i felt inspired to clap, and fuck all the "creative class" haters who gave me snotty glares, i clapped. and i want her to take it to denver. i want her to make the shortsighted dipshits currently making a trainwreck of a party i once considered mine to make her fucking leave. with force, if they're so damn keen to make her leave. fucking take her down, you bastards. try. and i want her to use that refusal to concede as leverage, to force the party and its shiny new candidate, obama, to adopt a platform that is actually progressive. a platform that features real healthcare reform, healthcare reform that will do people like me any good at all - which, hey, obama's sure as fuck doesn't. and while she's making demands, i want her to demand economic policy that doesn't rely on fucking Chicago School thinking, and non-right-wing framing of social security's "crisis", and domestic policy which recognises that net wealth is not a defining factor of citizenship, and does more than pay lip service to the rights of EVERYONE (yes, even women).

you know, a democratic platform that's actually progressive. what a fucking concept.

and if she can do all that, or even just a little of that, i will know that she's won. won in perhaps the only way she could. won a victory more important than a presidential race: bringing the dead soul of her party back to life. if she can even start trying to do that, i'll think about calling the democratic party my own, again. and if she can do any of that, i'll consider voting for obama - and that's a damn sight more than i was willing to consider before last night. but he has a lot of fucking work to do before november, and so do his more thuggish supporters.

2008-06-04T12:26:00.003-06:00

i built a little empire out of
some crazy garbage called
the blood of the exploited working class
but they've overcome their shyness
now they're calling me 'Your Highness'
and a world screams, 'kiss me, Son of God!'

2008-05-22T17:07:00.000-06:00

unexpected adventure time! what are some things to do in denver when you're not dead?

things i meant to say in my don rag but forgot to

2008-05-21T13:38:00.002-06:00

okay, yes, i DID set the apparatus on fire but there were TOTALLY extenuating circumstances!

i was only being 'polemical' because of the dude who came to every class stoned and kept complaining that the scientific method was stupid.

this school has some serious problems. but its weakensses are also its strengths, sometimes. i'm still working on a way to understand that. you guys have any ideas?

HA SEE I KNEW I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THAT POU! SEE MR CAREY JUST SAID SO

mr harrison is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being i have ever known.

i promise i will do better in math next year, because next year hasn't got any euclid in it and i don't like euclid. ptolemy, however, is rad. so is apollonius.

i'm not an angry person, i'm just exciteable, and if i yell about something, it's probably because i'm intrigued by it.

i don't think i want the year to be over yet. i was having fun.

in my mailbox

2008-05-21T01:21:00.002-06:00

MEMO

TO: Students, Faculty and Staff
FROM: Safety and Security Office
RE: Bears

...and they wonder what keeps happening to the koi in the fishpond...

2008-05-16T10:06:00.001-06:00

the more i think about it, actually, the more pissed-off i am that i paid them dues. playing cowboys and "indians" is not cool. it is not cool at all. and yes, i get where the joke was going, but it really is not funny.

2008-05-16T10:04:00.002-06:00

that was an unfortunate choice for a Reality theme, i must say.

2008-05-12T12:16:00.002-06:00

DONE DONE DONE DONE DEAR LORD IT IS FINALLY DONE

MY PAPER

I HAVE DONE IT

and it sucks. and i hate it. but, you know, it's six pages with ink on them and i talk about atoms and stuff and i think it'll do. i've found writing this paper ridiculously stressful. i don't know why, but it's been the hardest one to write. at last it is done, though. now i can start fretting over my oral, which starts three hours from now, and then cope with having seminar three days in a row, and then skid my way through the last day of classes! whee!

might want to change your tagline. dick.

2008-05-11T20:03:00.004-06:00

wil wheaton: sexist douchebag. if only i were an educated member of the Creative Class, i'd understand how making a sexist joke and then peevishly stamping my foot and saying "that's a stupid straw man I AM NOT A SEXIST" somehow magically negates actually saying something sexist. but i better shut my mouth, before wesley fucking crusher points and laughs at me. my fragile girl-ego can't take rejection, after all. and i am sure to either cry hysterically or become completely unhinged and desperate to win back his respect.

come to think of it, wil, you better be careful. i'm an unstable female, after all. clingy. mad with the need of male approval. if you do something to hurt me, i might just snap. like glenn close. and do something just terrible. us bitches is crazy that way.

it's a molecule, and it's here with us!

2008-05-09T10:16:00.003-06:00

i always forget what a fun band Troubled Hubble is, and then something from Making Beds in a Burning House comes on my iPod and i remember. and then i hit repeat several times, and spend the next hour or so bopping along happily. and then i feel all nostalgic for summertime shows at the Black Cat. sigh.

at least *someone* can see molecules, though. stupid atomic theory paper.

also sudoku on the back page!

2008-05-05T20:17:00.003-06:00

hey, an issue of PreMed Today appeared randomly in my mailbox today. is it a cosmic sign? it is, at the very least, a sign that Career Services actually did something with those surveys we filled out early in the year.

it's got mini-quizzes in it! it's fun! and it's distracting me from working on this horrid atomic theory paper, which means i should put it away until i've written something substantial. GRAGH WHY MUST PAPER ASSIGNMENTS BE SO MADDENINGLY VAGUE AGGHRRGH "four pages on atoms" IS NOT A PAPER TOPIC

rarrr.

it's not arson, it's SCIENCE!

2008-05-03T11:21:00.005-06:00

delight of the week: mr franks got himself up in an ill-fitting frock coat and a powdered wig to deliver faraday's Chemical History of a Candle in character. many things were set on fire (with mr donahue standing by, armed with a fire extinguisher) and a delightful time was had by all, and i want to get my hands on some copper oxide, because it's AWESOME.

when i was in middle school, i wanted very much to go into the sciences; physics was my main area of interest. when i was in eighth grade, though, i was told that i'd never manage it, because i wasn't good enough at math.

i changed schools between seventh and eighth grades, and was put into pre-algebra. i didn't do terribly well at it, but at the time i wasn't doing terribly well at any subject. i'd transferred on the advice of a psychologist after an academic assessment, who for some reason thought that public schooling would offer me more freedom and flexibility than i'd been able to find in public school. "more heterogenous learning environment", i think she called it. that was some shaky fucking logic, but i was 12 at the time, and learning that gym was not a required class at the public middle school played a big part in my agreeing to transfer. (naturally, of course, the only real difference between the schools was scale: there were just as many bullies, proportionally, even though they had more targets.)

so anyway, toward the end of the school year, we were filling out our schedules for our freshman year of high school. we were encouraged to think about what subjects we'd like to focus on through all four years, and i decided i liked science best, and found physics intriguing.

the high school advisors sent over to meet with us, however, informed me that i would not be taking the classes that i wanted to take. i had been tracked into pre-algebra, which meant i'd be taking algebra I as a freshman. which meant that i'd be taking geometry as a sophomore, and algebra II as a junior, and pre-calc as a senior. which meant i would never get to calculus, let alone AP calculus. which meant i would not be majoring in physics. ever.

they laid all this out for me, right then and there. i had just written my big end-of-year research paper on quantum mechanics. i was obsessed with carl sagan. i was already looking at colleges, looking specifically at their physics and astronomy programs. i read every pop-science book i could get my hands on, and pestered my mother into subscribing to Popular Mechanics for me. i dreamed of going to a real school, studying things i loved. that was how i got through every day. i was thirteen. and they told me that i'd never be a physicist, ever. because i hadn't taken the right math class in eighth grade, and besides, my grades were too low anyway.

i cried through the entirety of my lunch period, that day. and i gave up. on school in general, really. i had no incentive to apply myself more to my studies. i'd apparently already failed.

i'm only just starting to realise that i can do science. and not only that i can do it, but that it's fun. and not only that i can do it, and that it's fun, but that i'm good at it. that i like it more than literature and more than philosophy and more than art and more than communications and more than all the other things i've ever thought about doing when i grew up. and i'm remembering that i've felt that way for a long, long time.

so when i get out of undergrad, that's what i'm going to do. fuck you, Mrs. Gionowitz, wherever you are, and fuck all your colleagues as well. i'm twenty-six years old now, and no one gives a shit what classes i took when i was thirteen. no one ever fucking did.

attack of the 50 ft berzelius

2008-05-01T15:09:00.003-06:00

i was good. i did not dismember the party kids. i merely pointed out to them that they'd spelled 'debauchery' wrong on the sign they'd put up pleading for donations, and then i was on my way. i heard the two bickering as i walked off: "i TOLD you it had an A!" "what? whatever. wait. it has an A? where?"

(my frustration did break loose in lab, though, after an hour-long derail from the kid who hasn't come to class sober since september. but even there, all i did was point out that his argument basically boiled down to "wah! but there are so many books in the world and they're hard to read, and i can't bullshit with science like i can with philosophy!"

which it did. sadly.)

in my mailbox this morning

2008-05-01T10:40:00.003-06:00

Dear Freshman Class:
We all remember the events of Symposium and the ensuing debacle with the administration, and we are unfortunately still dealing with the consequences. As members of the college community and dorm residents, we collectively miss the Upper Common Room that used to be our home. In order to repair the damage done to that room, we must as a class raise $600. It is easy to ignore a letter such as this one asking for money, however keep in mind, that this is your school, your community and at least partially your responsibility. In many respects, the freshman class has made a bad impression on the college administration. Let us unify and show the administration that we can fix the damage we have caused. Essentially, all that is needed is $5 from each freshman. Members of your class will be collecting money outside the dining hall during lunch periods on Thursday and Friday of this week, as well Monday and Tuesday of next. We would appreciate any donations that you are able to contribute.

Thank you,
Fellow Members of the Freshman Class

what do you mean "we", kemosabe?

some backround:

Symposium is, thankfully, a tradition exclusive to santa fe. back in the day, when drinking ages were lower and class sizes smaller, some tutors began the practice of bringing a bottle of wine to the second seminar on the symposium. the tutors and students would share a glass of wine or two, sometimes during the seminar itself, but generally as part of a small gathering after the seminar concluded. when the drinking age went up, this practise ended.

sometime in the late eighties/early nineties, students decided to revive this tradition, holding a small gathering after the second symposium seminar and inviting freshmen. conveniently, the second symposium seminar always falls on a thursday on or near valentine's day (also the thursday before a long weekend) so this small gathering eventually grew into a party. because it was a party involving freshmen, it inevitably metastisised into an excuse for upperclassmen to get freshmen girls drunk and try to sleep with them. each year it got larger and rowdier, and the whole "small gathering to discuss the idea of Love" got thrown aside in favour of "let's get shitfaced on Two Buck Chuck and break shit!"

last year's Symposium evidently featured a wine fountain, and led to small fires and general destruction of Lowers Commons. since the party, by dint of timing, always takes place during the last weekend of Senior Writing Period, there were also lots and lots of noise complaints from irate seniors trying to finish their papers. after that incident, the administration decided to end Symposium, and the commons were closed for most of the rest of the year. they'd just been refurbished, so the administration was understandably less-than-thrilled by the wine stains and cigarette burns and broken chairs.

but, of course, Symposium is now part of some great Party Tradition as handed down to entering freshmen, and the partiers among our class were not about to let a little thing like the administration ruin their fun. our class already had several black marks against it; one incident in particular, still unresolved, involved the vandalisation of multiple cars parked in France only two weeks into the semester. (they got fucked up on cocaine and thought playing hopscotch on car hoods would be a good idea, apparently. they have yet to pay damages. they were not penalised. one sophomore lab ass did get kicked out afterward, but it was for a separate incident. i am sure, though, that his being caught by Security while fucking one of the freshmen on the hood of someone's car did not help his case, though.) broadly speaking, our class sucks, although the other classes suck too.

but so anyway, the substance-abusing asshat contingent of Uppers decided they were going to have a Symposium. at first, they went about this in the proper way, seeking a party permit. a party permit would have notified Security about the party, and would have ensured that people were supervising the party, that alcohol was being distributed responsibly, and that the party ended at a reasonable hour. of course, after the events of last year, the administration had already decided against permitting a Symposium, and the party permit was denied. and, of course, a little thing like a lack of a permit was not going to stand in the way of my fellow jackholes. so they threw a party anyhow.

two people wound up in hospital with alcohol poisoning. a lot of shit got broken. the quad was described as "covered with vomit", and the hallways and bathrooms were even worse.

the party planners tried to explain that they HAD TOO been responsible, because they'd called ambulances when they found people bleeding and passed out in pools of their own vomit, hadn't they? see? RESPONSIBLE! and they had NO IDEA that the laundry room had been filled with cartons of box wine! how were they supposed to know? they were too busy being RESPONSIBLE!

at any rate, i was given to understand that the administration was refraining from punishing those responsible for holding the party, on the condition that they would raise money to pay for the damage done to the common room. this was supposed to be a good-will gesture to the community as a whole. this course of action was decided upon in february.

only now have the parties responsible gotten around to trying to raise funds. and they've decided to do it by fobbing the responsibility off on the rest of us.

this is not in any way my "responsibility". no, not even "partially". i chose to abide by the administration's decision. i did not agitate for a party, i took no part in planning it, and i did not attend. except for Prank and Faust, both college-sponsored events, i have attended no campus parties at all. Uppers Commons is not "our collective home". the ones missing it most are the ones who live in Uppers -- the ones who planned this stupid fucking party in the first place. they are the ones who set up a band in Uppers, with amps, during Writing Period. they are the ones who set up the laundry room in Uppers as a speakeasy. they are the ones who spilled red wine all over the carpet and all over the table. they are the ones who broke the chairs and burned the floor. they are the ones who got so drunk they puked all over the quad. (the juniors and sophomores had some role to play in that as well, mind; the two who ended up in hospital were sophomores. a lot of freshmen, at least half the class, didn't even attend.)

"we as a class" do not need to raise $600. the shit-for-brains entitled little twats who were responsible for the damage need to raise $600. this was THEIR PUNISHMENT FOR IRRESPONSIBLY THROWING AN UNAPPROVED PARTY. it is not my responsibility to save them from the penalties for their own fuckheaded actions. hell, the amount the two ringleaders of this debacle have blown on nose-candy this semester alone would cover damages and then some. in addition, the twenty little snots who signed a petition back in february to protest... something, i'm not sure what, could also put money where their whining little mouths are. so i find myself less-than-sympathetic to this letter. i am not going to ignore that letter; far from it. i am going to walk up to these addlepated jackholes at lunch and explain to them how ridiculously insulting this letter is.

i'll be damned if i'm going to "unify" with those snotnosed little bastards. one of them still owes a friend of mine $3000 in damages to his car. did she pay it? no. will she ever? probably not. can she afford it? judging by her coke habit, i would guess her parents probably can.

and in a way, this is the responsibility of the college administration, too. they need to start kicking some of these motherfuckers to the curb. i don't care how many of them start ranting about the freedoms of our founding fathers and threatening to call the ACLU and/or their stupidly wealthy parents. (seriously, one of my "fellow freshmen" thought he could go up against the dean when he felt he had been wronged by an unlawful! and unfair! search of his room.)

i understand that the college can't function without money. i understand that at least some of the idiot rich must be kept on, in order to subsidise the less-rich. i just wish so many of them didn't have to be in my class, and i really, really wish that the privileged little motherfuckers didn't start looking to ME for money when they find themselves in trouble. surely there must be some solution to shore up college finances other than admitting an assload of moron trustafarians.

2008-04-29T12:48:00.002-06:00

there are days where i'm pretty well convinced that my spirit animal is psyduck.

2008-04-27T09:25:00.004-06:00

i'm pretty sure the Universe is trying to tell me to stop wasting time on the internet. i think the message finally got through. kind of sucks that i've had to be hounded off damn near every blog on the internet, save shakesville before the message got through, but there you are. if it's not obama vs clinton, it's the AM/seal press affair, and i'm sick of all the bullshit on both fucking sides and i am done. i'ma go read comic books. (not the Golden Age kind, i should specify.)

weirdly, though, the latter fight has made me understand a bit more clearly what people who don't yet understand how to see certain coded types of bullshit go through. it's also made me understand what it can be like to think you're having a discussion in good faith and then feel like you've just been pissed on. and it's made me understand why some people, rightly or wrongly, whether or not that pissing was in some sense deserved, just decide not to engage in the first place. and i'm disengaging. i will cede the feministe comments to the feminists who have decided they don't want to be feminists anymore, so they can remind each other of all the reasons to hate the inevitably racist white women while they moon over the inscrutable wisdom of those wise orientals. shrug.

2008-04-24T15:52:00.002-06:00

the seniors this year are either extraordinarily crafty or extraordinarily incompetent. if it's the latter, which it probably is, prank's tonight.

2008-04-23T17:54:00.002-06:00

nothing quite like a doctor's visit which involves being told 'hey, cheer up, at least it's not cancer!'

although he did have a point: it isn't cancer. so i will cheer up.

sigh

2008-04-21T17:24:00.003-06:00

compare and contrast.

one thing this election season has done, at least, is finally knock out of my stupid head any desire i might have ever had to enter politics. or the media. or the field of social justice. because there's just no fucking point. can't be made better. not going to try. i'll find something else to do with my time.

we do what we must. because we can.

2008-04-20T00:25:00.002-06:00

but there's no sense crying over every mistake
you just keep on trying til you run out of cake
and the Science gets done
and you make a neat gun
for the people who are still alive...

2008-04-17T15:54:00.004-06:00

in other political news, a former aide to henry hyde is apparently now the one in charge of determining which politicians may legitimately have a D next to their names. guess i better correct my voter registration, because clearly i am Doing It Wrong. and so is around half of the democratic party, it would appear. except we aren't actually democrats now, so that doesn't count.

2008-04-17T15:32:00.000-06:00

Tussle With Nusslel!

2008-04-16T19:01:00.003-06:00

i knew what i was expecting when i opened the atrios comment thread. why did i open the atrios comment thread? because i am a stupid motherfucker, apparently.

i'm done, i think. if anyone wants a first-hand look at why i'm fucking sick of a certain species of obama supporter, those threads are a pretty good place to start. and, sadly, pretty typical.

so here it is then. (now i'm wearing my boots, which always guarantees a good showing.)

2008-04-15T20:16:00.002-06:00

before i wrote the post appearing below this one, i was working on a response to martin and to nate, who left comments in the third post down. i had not said much in that post; mostly it was a link to a youtube video made in support of hillary clinton. i posted that video because, in a clumsy, heavy-handed, not-so-well-edited sort of way, it expressed some strange and hard-to-name feelings i've been having lately, watching the primaries play out. i didn't add much text to the link, in part because i still wasn't quite sure how to say what i wanted to say. what i did say, i suspect, was not very clear.

fortunately, an article has appeared in salon which does an excellent job of articulating that feeling, probably a better job than the video does, and certainly a better job than i did. if anyone's interested (and, again, particularly if they support obama), i'd recommend taking a look. this should not be read as some sort of condemnation of obama supporters. i am not an obama supporter, that's true. still, it is a critique of the campaign which i feel is valid, and since i do not want to see mccain elected, i humbly ask that interested parties read it.

i did not write the post which sparked the flame-war as a direct response to nate and martin, although timing (and my own word choice) likely made it appear that way, i see now, and i was so angry at the time that i'm not certain i made a clear distinction in my own head, myself. i was working on the actual response (which i invite both martin and nate to read, and to respond to, if they like, as it's posted now) in my head over the weekend, sorting out what i wanted to say, and when i sat down at a computer monday morning to write it, the first thing i happened across was the article i linked in that post. i was pissed, and i was scared, and i felt betrayed, both by obama himself and, following from that, his supporters.

i do think there is a link between the hard-to-explain feeling of sexist backlash and the remarks made at the Compassion Forum. i think, in a way, they come from the same place, and i will try to explain what i mean -- possibly after dinner tonight, but possibly not until after Writing Period. it was sloppy and careless of me to say, in the opening of the post, that what disturbed me about obama's comments at the forum was precisely the same thing that was disturbing me about the campaign, and it wasn't what i wanted to say, but i was, in fact, really really fucking damn angry at the time, and i did not stop to choose my words with care. i will try to be more precise in my phrasing the next time, and to keep separate topics which should be kept separate.

that said, i do still stand by the comments i've made. i think it would be helpful to talk about such things, and i think mike's proposal (in comments below) to move the conversation to neutral territory is a good one. i don't want the topic at hand to get lost in that separate conversation, though, and i am still interested in talking about the weird mechanics involved in this campaign, if others are too. i will try to post about what i mean, but rebecca traitster's article is probably a better one than i could write.

"compassion", they're calling it

2008-04-14T11:08:00.003-06:00

here is what sexism has to do with supporting obama, kids. since apparently it's that fucking hard to understand. since apparently it's more important to court conservatives than to support liberals, when you're running as a democratic condender for the presidency. since apparently it's more important to assert the rights of the religious over the rights of ALL humans. since apparently women just aren't human yet. since apparently we can't call rape "rape", but must instead call it "certain situations [in which women] may not be able to protect themselves from having unprotected sex", because, i guess, actually calling a rape a rape would be divisive or something. since, apparently, under an obama administration, i would be expected to make health decisions with the assistance of "clergy". since, apparently, it's so important to affirm the "sacredness of sexuality" that people should expect to die for it.

you don't have to "turn over a rock" to find sexism and racism. it's crawling out in the open for all to see. always has been. i'm beginning to fear it always will be.

but fine. trample over progressive values on your Super Awesome Rainbow Funtime Jesus Unicorn Pony Ride to Unity. have an awesome goddamn time. be sure to blame the iraq war on me while you're at it. you should also probably assert i'm a racist, even though i'm not the one explaining that AIDS is a problem in kenya because of "certain behaviors", including that all-time favourite dogwhistle, "promiscuity". certainly it's not a crumbling, strife-torn social structure. certainly it's not a lack of access to condoms, caused in part by religious pearl-clutching over any health programme that doesn't stay abstinence-only. no, the problem is those kenyans are just too promiscuous, that's all!

2008-04-11T19:09:00.002-06:00

i invite obama supporters to watch this. particularly the ones who tell me i only care about "identity politics".

COVERED IN BEES

2008-04-04T13:06:00.000-06:00

oh hey so guess who has tickets to see eddie izzard tonight?

2008-03-28T18:24:00.002-06:00

if i were to give up on St John's, where else could i go? the making-my-way-with-no-degree thing pretty clearly did not work out, so it looks like i'll need to get a BA somewhere, but i have no patience for the typical college structure. unfortunately, i also have no patience for the typical college student. what should i do?

2008-03-20T16:04:00.001-06:00

i almost want to become a professor of business, just so that, in classes, i could use LiveJournal as a case study in How To Fail.

2008-03-17T15:55:00.001-06:00

i'm in love.

2008-03-13T22:52:00.002-06:00

i love the fact that our now-nearly-two-year-old kitten still hasn't tired of chasing her own tail. she is sitting on the laundry hamper, spinning in dizzy circles, stopping every so often to wave her paws menacingly and then to attack with a THWAP THWAP THWAP.

even after two years, that tail always seems to outsmart her.

an apology from Li'l Debbie

2008-03-09T11:25:00.003-06:00

if this truly is how the process went down, though, it's quite breathtaking. the editor who accepted and ran allen's piece is still claiming that all those women who read it online (which, apparently, wasn't the *real* version of the piece, but an unedited one) "either missed or overlooked the humor". apparently, the "extensive editing" of the print version edited some humour into it.

i wonder if the claim of "non-PC" will ever be understood for what it is: a last resort for those who want to enjoy all the fun of bigotry without getting called bigots.

2008-03-08T12:08:00.002-07:00

belated new year's resolution: nobility. i pledge, here and now, to be the noblest motherfucker i can possibly manage to be. this course of action is nearly certain to earn me nothing more than the petulant wrath of the freshman class, but that is okay. aristotle is telling me to expect as much.

related: it's a shame they don't have sophocles Ajax on the reading list in annapolis.

2008-03-06T16:27:00.001-07:00

called it. called the fucking hell out of it, if i may say so.

it had badly-drawn pictures to match

2008-03-02T11:08:00.004-07:00

it's this sort of thing that reminds me just how fucking useless any attempts i might make to remedy the sexism and bigotry of campus magazine articles would be. although at the Washington Post doesn't have badly-written "erotica" about law firm partners sexually harassing their interns, at least, the ultimate argument is always still Women Are Dumb (and basically just here so you can have sex with them).

funny thing: the Post's been wondering lately why it has so few female readers, particularly in the desirable young-college-educated-with-babies bracket. can't think why that should be the case, can you? perhaps any young, college educated mothers who happen to bother to read this dreck can set them straight, but since it's really not an unusual article in today's media, most probably won't bother. the Moon, of course, doesn't care about circulation, so whenever i go to them to complain i'm just told to fuck off and stop being "so sensitive".

2008-02-19T13:56:00.000-07:00

OMGOMGOMG

SCOTT

teh w1nnar si yu0!

but the plain fact is that we owe them eight grand

2008-02-17T19:03:00.002-07:00

it is a lot of money, and we could use it. but soon, instead of the eight thousand dollars, we will have... A NEW CAAAAAAR! without having set foot in a dealership. the transaction was conducted online and over the phone, because CarMax is awesome. we will eventually have to actually go there in person, but not until the car, which is presently in florida, comes out here. it's surprisingly difficult to find manual transmissions these days.

soon we will be losing poor bukowski, who, at 227,500 miles, is not going to make it much longer without a new timing belt -- and, at this point, the timing belt would cost more than bukowski does himself. i am going to miss his power windows. i am also going to miss his rusted and discoloured hood, which always made him so easy to find in a crowded parking lot.

2008-02-13T06:14:00.001-07:00

apparently, i am THE CANCER THAT IS KILLING ST. JOHN'S.

let them blow, let them blow, let them blow (me)

2008-02-04T06:44:00.000-07:00

there is something fucked up when every single school and college in town -- including a school literally within sight of campus -- is on delay, except yours. half of the students live off-campus, and nearly all the tutors do, and the city employees are on delay, meaning the buses aren't running, and the campus is on the freakin' side of a mountain, meaning it gets more snow than town gets, and the plows don't actually go up there, but hey, my 9am's sure to be going on as-scheduled.

this was especially fun when it snowed time-before-last, and greg's car skidded out when he came to pick me up. although it was also fun last time it snowed, when i waited for a bus for an hour and a half before it was clear no buses would be coming.

it's a perverse point of pride with the school, i think. it certainly is with my language tutor, who went to annapolis for undergrad, who used to be dean and who, when i point out the shortsightedness of this no-snow-days policy, launches into a recitation of the motto of the US postal service, despite the fact that even they don't deliver when the weather is too bad. unfortunately, my 9am is my language class. i think it would take a student or tutor dying in a wreck to get them to change their minds, and they might not, even then, choosing instead to recount the tale of the time it snowed two feet and the power went out and they had seminar anyway by candlelight, or whatever.

and i know annapolis is the same way, but annapolis is not on the side of a goddamned mountain. more students and tutors are able to walk to school -- here, with the cost and scarcity of housing close to campus, everyone's at least a few miles away, often more, and again, to get there, you're going up the side of the goddamned mountain. this is not easy on a bike even on a good day. plus, the state of maryland actually owns and operates snowplows. the state of new mexico, not so much. santa fe has a grand total of two snowplows, and those are usually employed in the plowing of the state highway. major public thoroughfares never get plowed, let alone the backstreets.

this doesn't even touch on the unfairness of dragging campus staff to work, either. some of them can choose to come in late, of course, but i'm sure the maintainance and food service staff don't get the option, and i know some of them take the bus, because they ride up with me every morning. so they're stuck out in the snow, as surely as i am. (and yes, because there are students living on-campus, food service staff is rather essential, but other essential employees often have workplace-organised carpools for these occasions. hell, even at trader joe's, such things were worked out, because god forbid the yuppie horde should face down a blizzard with an insufficient supply of shitty chardonnay and seaweed pretzel nibbles because the store had closed.

i'm still feeling unwell, so i may just miss greek. i missed the math meeting yesterday, which i think was probably the best choice, even though quite a bit of ground was covered, and i'm behind now. (and even though i caught this cold/flu from my classmates, six of whom came to class on tuesday suffering from it.)

2008-02-03T11:08:00.000-07:00

what's your cutoff for Too-Sick-For-School/Work? do you factor in thoughts of your contageousness? do you feel guilty anyway?

plague, tularemia, hantavirus, and now...

2008-02-01T07:45:00.001-07:00

OBAMA FEVER! he is, evidently, speaking tonight, about two blocks from my house, at the College of Santa Fe. so i'm going. since the people i know in real life who have fallen in love with him always cite his speechmaking and his personality, i will go and evaluate him on the terms everyone else is using, i guess. a conversation about policies he actually supports seems to be rather beyond most of my classmates, which is, i suppose, not surprising, but is rather depressing. so since they're only willing to judge him on style, i will go and check out this much-vaunted style.

let's bring out the big guns -- the modified israeli ones

2008-01-31T10:50:00.000-07:00

though i am not convinced by mr carl's assessment of the john darnielle vs franklin bruno debate, i will say this: nearly everything the extra glenns ever did is as good as the very best of the mountain goats. the best extra glenns songs are even better than the best mountain goats songs. if you dig the mountain goats and haven't heard any extra glenns, your sad state requires immediate remedy.

i wonder if i could ever write a song this good. not the music parts, but just the lyrics even.

oh fine

2008-01-30T23:19:00.001-07:00

1. say goodbye to telephone sex!

2. i’m making a map from all the flowers i’m collecting

3. ~~oh, i didn't realise that you wrote poetry. i didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry.~~ a tim and trixie joint.

4. i think i fucked your girlfriend once. maybe twice, i don't remember. and then i fucked all your friends' girlfriends. now they hate you.

5. it's time to murder everyone who's never heard of apollonaire. send them all to hell, it's only fair.

6. you didn't have the decency to change the sheets.

7. she's a bog-cuttin' scarlet-struttin' leather-chested gal!

8. well, i don't know how to tell the weight of the sun, and of mathematics, well, i want none

9. ~~i hope you die. i hope we both die.~~ this one's all katherine!

10. and sherlock holmes is my good friend, i have a trust fund i can spend, and i am ready to defend my immorality to anyone

....man, itunes is in a weird mood thisevening.

hope is not a plan

2008-01-25T15:27:00.000-07:00

...and neither, evidently, is bipartisanship.

we also set the fume hood on fire, but it's okay, we put it out

2008-01-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

what happens when the Englishman Practicum is led by an actual Englishman:

"you mean you actually DO heat up the mug first?"
"that can't make any difference."
"oh, but it absolutely does."
"and the milk?"
"oh yes. although, to be honest, i don't expect it makes much difference with your american tea. why do you put staples in the bags?"
"so they don't fall apart."
"but what do the bags do?"
...

"what is a crumpet?"
"and what is a scone?"
"you can have them both for tea. a crumpet is also... well... a sort of euphamism."
"a euphamism for what?"
"for, er, a woman. that you're, er, interested. in."
"...'interested in' like in an unwholesome way?"
"er, no. no, in a perfectly wholesome way. wholesome and... buttery."
"so, like, someone you'd want to have over for tea and crumpets?"
"well, that sounds not quite as wholesome..."

2008-01-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

learning that jonah goldberg actually graduated from goucher college made me downright proud that they kicked me out, i must say. (even if he only did get in as a legacy. and how hard up you must be to go to goucher as a legacy, well...)

DO NOT WANT

2008-01-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

"I don't want to present myself as some sort of singular figure. I think part of what's different are the times. I do think that for example the 1980 was different. I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not. He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity, we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing."

this has been another installment of Why Obama Creeps Me Out.

not even just a little class war? a class skirmish?

2008-01-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

REJOICE IN YOUR LIBERATION!1!!!!1!

2008-01-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

in your experience, were grades at st. john's determined more by a student's technical prowess in a given subject, or by the amount of work and effort put in by the student? do you think, generally, the grades you got were an accurate reflection of your class performance? did you feel like the grades given were lower, or higher, than those you'd receive for a comparable performance at another school?

or: why my classmates think blackface is funny

2008-01-13T12:26:00.000-07:00

this post is true. every fucking word of it. and if it doesn't depress the hell out of you, it should. and if you understand why it's true, you should be proud of yourself, because our media and our culture has done its damnednest to keep you from doing so.

h/t pandagon

2008-01-12T14:57:00.001-07:00

what should i make for dinner?

Mark As Spam

2008-01-11T09:35:00.000-07:00

so back in 2004, after dean dropped out, i signed up as a volunteer for the kerry campaign. in the process, naturally, i provided them with my email.

they have now, four years later, given that email to the obama campaign.

i guess this is not technically wrong, but it just feels kind of shitty. i do not want more of your goddamn video, obama, i already can't hardly read your platform on your website, you have so much freaking embedded video on it, and now you're jamming more of it into my inbox. without asking.

and i already had the boy

2008-01-10T08:53:00.000-07:00

finally, finally, i have been able to re-perfect my macaroni and cheese. i used to just follow the recipe on the back of the san giorgio box, with some minor tweaks, but san giorgio isn't available west of the mississippi, evidently, and while i remembered my tweaks, i didn't remember the base. but i think i have it back, now. it now makes slightly more than my casserole dish will hold -- about an extra bowlful. this turns out to be a feature, not a bug, because inevitably somebody (and i won't say who) is too hungry to wait for baking to transform the macaroni and cheese into a delicious melty casserole of cheesy goodness, and since it is cooked, the leftovers give this nameless hungry person something to do while the casserole is baking.

now if i could just figure out how to make rice at altitude, i'd be set.

well, more like "buses not running day!", really

2008-01-07T11:33:00.000-07:00

SNOW DAY!

2008-01-04T09:56:00.000-07:00

if this all comes down to obama vs huckabee i may in fact kill myself.

2007-12-21T07:34:00.000-07:00

apparently it was all just a big wacky misunderstanding!

....or something.

i doubt i'll be able to actually find out what ever happened, and the reasons behind it. the likelihood of collusion and lying to the administration rises and falls depending upon how charitably i feel like considering the situation at the moment. even if they didn't try to get me thrown out of the seminar behind my back, they really did break my trust. if you think your student is unhappy, instead of relying on gossip or rumour or figuring out how many times i've stopped into an administrative office in the past few months, maybe you should, you know, ASK YOUR STUDENT.

voted off the island

2007-12-19T14:18:00.001-07:00

so van boxel and poppele have kicked me out of their seminar. tomorrow will be my last one with them. i'd have thought they'd at least have mentioned their evident displeasure with me at the don rag. this comes as something of a surprise.

i'm being transferred to carey/ames, instead. i didn't really want to leave, but it doesn't seem as though i get a choice in the matter. i didn't even really get an explanation, though i was told i could discuss the matter with them. i'm not sure what purpose this discussion will serve, since, you know, i've already been removed from the seminar and all

the golden compass

2007-12-08T22:23:00.000-07:00

well, it could have been worse. i will reserve my complaints to keep them from being spoilers, but a few things struck me:

"ice bears". wtf?

the whole point of spelling "daemon" all funny like that is because you don't pronounce it "demon". yes, it also makes it look cooler, but really now.

WITCHES WEAR BLACK, DAMNIT. AND THEY FLY ON CLOUD-PINE BRANCHES. THEY DON'T JUST FLITTER ABOUT THITHER AND YON, MATERIALISING AT WILL.

i know the makeup people probably have a bunch of leftover eyeliner from the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, but that doesn't mean you have to douse all the gyptians in it.

2007-12-03T12:20:00.001-07:00

omg lj wtf? srsly wtffff?

w.t.f.

.

a reassessment

2007-11-29T22:31:00.001-07:00

so i did the daemon sorter again, out of curiosity:

http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?487296

i think i'm a bit more argumentative than i was just a few months ago. it's fun.

2007-11-28T12:34:00.000-07:00

so should i move on-campus? it would be hard, and possibly unaffordable, but i wonder.

we can has band nao?

2007-11-25T00:22:00.000-07:00

Whiskey Throwin' Crack-teeth Piedmont is recording its first single in our spare bedroom right now. working title: Steven's Goin' To Jail, Dudes.

we are going to be bigger than Thee Iran Contras. watch out, peter hynaman.

Irony-Impairment Theatre Presents

2007-11-19T10:27:00.000-07:00

The Huckabee Presidential Campaign.

2007-11-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

oh and gee, it gets better:

i messaged mr kolock through facebook. i was perhaps unnecessarily hostile. i received a response from him which was equally hostile. after receiving the response, i found i was able to look at his facebook account, including his photos. i think i recognise him.

i believe mr kolock, along with a friend of his, were the pair i saw dressed up for halloween this year, during the day. they had matching costumes: nearly-sheer black dance tights, black slippers, no shirts, and brightly-coloured fairy wings. they spent the whole day talking with exaggerated lisps, prancing about the quad with greatly exaggerated butt-wiggling, cocking their wrists, and basically aping every gay stereotype known to mankind.

mr kolock was also carrying a baseball bat.

i leave the interpretation of this as an exercise to the reader.

for nate

2007-11-16T15:16:00.000-07:00

the following is an original work of Mr Steve Kolock, SF08. everything [sic].

"Sing to me, O muse, of the rage of the Womenfolk"

Somewhere between being picketed by angry women, shunned by angry women, and waiting for the bomb squad to arrive and defuse letter bombs sent to me by angry women, I had an epiphany: parts of my articles might somehow be making women angry. But why this was so I simply could not understand, however hard I tried; and I tried everything.

For weeks on end I stayed up late meditating on this anger whilst absorbed in hookers and booze -- yet to no avail. I reread my articles shod in women's lingerie trying to get into their minds through their pants -- and I was left even more confused than before.

No matter how revealing that teddy might be I simply couldn't see through to the body of this female anger. And I know it wasn't because the teddy didn't work on me. It looked sexy as hell against my ample bosom and supple skin, but there was just something essential lacking... it didn't quite bring out my eyes the way I'd expected.

After finally accepting (after much crying, weeping, sobbing, and questioning the existence of God in a world so cruel) that I would never find any lingerie that brought out my eyes properly, I decided I needed to take some 'me time' in order to recover. Usually this would have resulted in me watching a Gossip Girls marathon, but today was different. Today I was on a mission to discover the origin of this mysterious emotional response sent to me by women.

By the time I'd taken off the push up bra, wig, fishnet stockings, six inch heels, and crotchless panties (the sense of freedom you get in those is amazing), I'd begun to feel calmer and more in control of myself. I knew exactly what would help me understand this confounding isse of female anger; a nice walk in the plaza amidst the tourists I so dearly love.

As I neared the plaza, I could clearly see that the hustle and bustle of Santa Fe life before 5 pm was in full swing. Cars were driving poorly and threatening the safety of all; people were walking in the middle of the street oblivious to my car (aptly named Natural Selection) bearing down on them rapidly; and I was singing along to my favorite song: all was right in the world. "Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me..." I bellowed to the scattering pedestrians in a bass voice that could only find its genesis in the depths of my soul. Already, in the midst of driving to my walk, I could feel insight pouring over me like that tender smell of chamisa on a sultry spring day.
Believing the drive to my walk to be exactly what I wished, I almost decided to turn around and go home to treat myself to a nice, hot bath surrounded by candles, enveloped in the harmony of Destiny's Child, and immersed in dark chocolate as God intended me. But alas, although this was a 'me day', it was a me day on a deeper level and I knew that deep inside my soul (in roughly the same area from which it sings bass) I needed to resolve this concern that plagued me so. So I told my shallow self, "I can't always cater to you," and soon sought a parking spot amidst the throngs of appalled witnesses to the process of evolution which Natural Selection and I had just affected.

Hearing the sirens swiftly weaving through traffic, I thought to start my walk with a brisk jog away from "the crime scene" (as the evening news that night so unfeelingly proclaimed it). Finally reaching the main plaza area I felt safe from the crazy drunk bastard we call Justice.

At this point all would have been exactly as I'd hoped had not intervention far from divine occurred. It was but a few minutes that I'd been walking along the plaza before I heard the familiar catcalls... cries of, "Hey cowboy, lookin' for a ride?" and "Is that a massive, Florida-shaped lump of steel in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" filled the air around me. "Damn this cowboy hat, these cowboy jeans, and this sweet Polish ass!" I thought to myself, "Will I never be able to walk in public without feeling I need to hide my precisely hourglass shaped figure from the world?" Those women were looking at me like I was just some sexually gifted manwhore and I knew it. And sure, they were completely and absolutely right; of course my sweet Polish ass is irresistible; of course I have a come-hither stare that can cause seizures in those uninitiated into the Mysteries of Steve; and of course in bed I have perfectly combined the tenderness of a dove and the raw power of a full grown T-Rex on PCP, but damnit if I didn't for once just want a little peace instead of a little piece.

...As I walked back to my car I hung my head, tears streaming down my face. I wasn't sad. I was angry. Angry at those pedestrians for not getting out of my way in time and angry at those women for not viewing me in any other light than that which provided the best illumination of my award winning ass. "How could they be so hurtfully blind," I asked myself, "as to not even have thought about exploring my mind before my body, and to not even have looked in my eyes before undressing me with theirs?"
For just a moment I wondered if I'd come upon an answer to the question that drove me. Were the women who were threatening my life angry because they thought I'd been lacking the requisite respect for them? This realization hit me like Natural Selection.

Perhaps I'd been selling women short; perhaps I'd been treating them as a nameless, faceless people without a rational faculty or even a soul. But to those who would say this I ask; isn't imitation the sincerest form of flattery? And don't I look damn good in that teddy? I leave it to you to decide....

[there were three cheesecake shots of a mincing Kolock clad in the aforementioned teddy and a cowboy hat. i'm not scanning them.]

2007-11-16T12:17:00.001-07:00

thank you, freshman math class, for destroying any hope i had for the basic decency of humanity. special thanks to the tutor, who explained that, actually, that senior columnist who ranted about how bitches is crazy actually is eloquent, brilliant and exceptionally talented, and told me i should talk with him sometime.

don't you hate those clever people at those clever-people-parties

2007-11-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

i spoke with the dean. it was interesting. at least some of my frustration was eased by a long talk last night with greg, but the dean was able to give a name to the attitude of my class which i'm finding so problematic. i realised, too, that i was conflating lots and lots of issues with the school under one name, and doing so made the problem seem completely unmanageable. it's probably at least a little bit manageable.

i am relieved to know that freshman seminars aren't supposed to be ridiculously politicised, and that the administration has spoken to the tutor responsible for that; the climate of the seminar has improved since then, and their awareness of the situation is probably the reason that happened. i didn't speak to the administration about it, but i had voiced my frustration to the writing archon, and i have a feeling he passed my concerns along. i hadn't said anything, because i didn't know how and i didn't think it would help anyway. apparently, complaining about things can in fact improve a situation. this is a valuable lesson.

i am also relieved to learn that the administration is aware that a small group of freshmen are doing way the hell too many hard drugs way too often, and that they're trying to address the situation. offering treatment comes before kicking the kids out, but at least they know, and they're doing what they can. i think, to some extent, that the self-policing element of the community is broken, and though i don't live on-campus and i don't want to narc out people on the basis of rumour, i am going to go to the administration to complain about people who come to class high, or who constantly come to class hungover and unprepared and spend the whole tutorial whispering stories about how fucked up they were last night. because it's fucking tiresome. being made aware that i can do that, and be taken seriously, is also a valuable thing to know.

so i'll hang on til next semester and see if the behaviour of the freshman class is improved by don rags. the endless partying might be considerably reduced by a few threats, and if people actually buckle down and do their freaking readings, classes actually might not suck.

maybe.

once people start taking their studies seriously, they might start taking discussions seriously, as well. which might provide an opportunity to start having actual conversations with people, and to get them to gain even a glimmer of insight into themselves and the world in which they live. ms mora pointed out that these kids -- many of them, anyway -- grew up with that common and pernicious belief that racism and sexism and bigotry had all somehow been magically fixed, and didn't exist anymore, which meant that making racist and sexist jokes wasn't racist or sexist, but "edgy". that's a problem in the country as a whole, so of course it's going to be a problem here, too. if my classmates sober up enough, maybe we can talk about this. maybe by talking about it, we can work on it. when i was 18, i was perhaps not quite that naive, but it did take me a while to realise just how deeply society was still mired in hateful bullshit. i had to experience the bullshit firsthand to really figure it out. if the kids here don't get that experience -- and they might not -- they're probably not going to learn about it themselves. trying to help them notice the bullshit is better than being angry at them for not noticing the bullshit, and certainly more productive.

i'm going to write a response to some of the more egregious shit and submit it to The Moon. if i have enough time to work on The Moon and do the rest of my work, i think i might try. it's such a sorry-assed excuse for a student paper that i didn't even want to try getting involved with it, but despite being perpetually moribund, it's unlikely to die any time soon. as long as it's run by subliterate jackholes, it's going to be a wasteland of clever-kid cynicism and jokes about TEH OMG GHEY, so i might as well try to make it a bit less vile. it's better than seething with rage every time a new issue comes out.

i really don't know where to start, since we're already at a point where a privileged white kid attending a school for privileged white kids dresses up in blackface for halloween (as part of his Post-Assassination-MLK jr costume) and a bunch of other privileged white kids at same privileged-white-kid school write approvingly about it in their school paper, but all i can do is try. i can at least take down the sexist asshat who wasted a page-and-a-half of ink on an incomprehensible sexist rant, even if he is the senior editor.

2007-11-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

i cannot believe the unmitigated racist, misogynistic, homophobic bullshit i am being asked to deal with at st. john's. i cannot believe the level of drug abuse that is tolerated at st. john's. i cannot believe any of it. i am going to the dean tomorrow, and i am going to talk to her, but i don't know how much good it's going to do. i don't know if i should even stay.

2007-11-09T08:48:00.000-07:00

oh. that's what a Form is.

2007-11-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

personal challenge: work the title of a Mountain Goats song into every title of every seminar essay.

so far, i am 1 for 1.

2007-10-30T18:02:00.000-06:00

and yet. and yet i am more likely to get kicked out than the stoner kid, evidently, because i suck too hard at euclid.

i don't know what to do, really. i am supposed to meet with my math tutor on friday, and i am supposed to "think creatively" until then. i am supposed to find a way to make euclid have meaning for me, because i am clearly not enjoying myself and every prop i present is a fucking trainwreck. i am supposed somehow to square this with his simultaneous advice that i approach euclid by memorising every step of every proposition, since i can't manage to demonstrate them any other way. everyone else has been counselled to step away from this approach and to view the the study of geometry more broadly. my only hope is to work my ass off in an attempt to get where everyone else started, and i fucking hate being there.

2007-10-27T11:28:00.000-06:00

i am looking forward to my don rag. i am excited, and it is going to be fun, and i would be willing to hand in my seminar paper early if i could have my don rag earlier by doing so. apparently, i am an absolute freak and entirely alone in this. sigh.

a less-than-charitable part of me is also excited for Certain Other People's don rags, because i am hoping that, during the course of the don rag, they will see sense and begin conducting themselves in an appropriate fashion -- or at least not coming to class high every goddamn day. i was discussing this with a sophomore of my acquaintance at lunch yesterday, and while i largely avoided naming names, i did name one. i did so quietly, in a quiet conversation, at a nearly-deserted table in a cafeteria occupied primarily by middle-school kids on a campus visit. no other freshmen were present, and to my knowledge, no other people who knew this freshman were present. the name was mentioned only once, in an undertone, although i confess i did relate some of this freshman's utterly ridiculous exploits in seminar.

toward the end of our conversation, someone sitting several seats away gathered up her things, turned to me, glared at me, and said:

"[X] is a friend of mine. You shouldn't talk shit about [X] like that. That is really not cool, and you are really mean for doing that. You're an asshole."

before i could respond, she left.

i was ashamed at first, but after thinking about it more, i'm angry, instead of ashamed. i'm angry at myself, because some of the comments i made were perhaps unkind and should not have been made in a public place, even if this kid has been a complete fuckwit on a regular basis. but i'm also angry at this stranger, this self-identified Friend Of Freshman [X]. if she truly is his friend, she must have some idea that he's got a drug problem. she may not want to admit it to herself. she may be immature still, even if she is a junior, and still have some idea of the awesomeness of the Dionisean, or whatever. she may actually not know him that well, but still consider him a friend. she may only see him at week-ends, and since she doesn't have class with him, she might not know how the extent to which his drug use affects his class performance.

but if she knows this friend of hers at all, she knows he smokes pot. a lot of pot. every day. she knows he's doing coke as well, and probably other shit. she may not know that he frequently comes too class too high to speak -- or, sometimes, to stay conscious -- but she's probably seen him in that state at other times. a few weeks ago, i was really worried that he needed immediate medical attention, and this was in a class, so it's hard for me to believe that he hasn't been equally fucked up outside of class.

if she's actually his friend, she knows he has a drug problem. i may have been wrong in making fun of him, but that mockery was prefaced by concern for his wellbeing, and combined with frustration at having to deal with him in class. i am not this kid's friend. i don't know him well at all. i'm still worried about him, and i think he needs treatment. if she was listening in to what i was saying, she heard me say as much, and i said it sincerely. it might hurt to hear that about a friend of yours, but really, if you stand by while someone develops a drug problem, you're not really their friend.

and i wish i'd been able to say that to her. and i'm angry at myself, because i didn't.

i'm also frustrated because some of the reaction i've had, from friends to whom i've related this story, is of the "well, yeah, you were an asshole, and you can't say those sorts of things" variety. why the hell can't i?

neither snow nor sleep nor dark of approaching donrags

2007-10-20T11:49:00.000-06:00

hey everybody, it's Long Weekend! and am i writing the seminar paper due in two weeks? am i revising my math paper? am i learning the aorist?

NO!

i am doing 24-Hour-Comic Day! (with the assistance of free bad coffee and leftover currywurst from last night's Sausage Party.)

MIRABAI!

2007-10-06T23:17:00.001-06:00

did you know thee Iran Contras wrote a song about you? because they totally did.

2007-09-27T10:54:00.000-06:00

sargon!
hammurabi!
ashurarranipal!
gilgamesh!

2007-09-26T22:58:00.001-06:00

maybe i should have gone to shimer after all.

at least it wasn't a tabby

2007-09-24T16:44:00.000-06:00

investigating cat skeletons: fun.

investigating cat skeletons with cat still attached: less fun, particularly at seven o'clock in the morning in a crowded room with the windows shut and said cat lying in an inch-deep pool of reeking preservative.

some of the cats have apparently gone missing from the Big Box O' Cats kept in the lab. i shudder to think where they might end up.

2007-09-22T13:06:00.000-06:00

are seminars on homer supposed to turn into proto-straussian lynch mobs?