conference nagging

hey folks-

just a reminder to send in your abstracts and bios for the conference by 30 june (sooner always works too (= ). we need to have 'em to put panels together and to publish in the conference program. somebody yelp if we need to send out the cfp again.

thank you muchly!

dog puncher in the yukon

quote from _a dog-puncher in the yukon_, by arthur walden (1928):

"The theaters [in the Yukon during the Gold Rush] were good, bad, and indifferent. We had a troupe that was wintering there, and they gave a series of old plays that were really very well done. Of course 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' had to be given. I had seen this several times in my life, but I never saw the parts of Eliza and Simon Legree so well done. I can't say as much for the pack of bloodhounds. They were represented by a Malamute puppy, drawn across the stage in a sitting position by an invisible wire and yelling his full displeasure to the gods. The ice was represented by newspapers. Eliza acted her part exceptionally well on the newspapers, having seen people actually cross floating ice."

is anchorage the world's most depressing city?

i think yes, if only because it's surrounded by wildly beautiful mountains, yet has negative 14 degrees of charm. to wit:



public "art" outside my red roof inn.



commentary on the sad mixed up state of modern america.



my nightlife options. note: picture taken at 10:30 pm.

i'm off to homer tomorrow. thank GOD.

for everyone who's going to write an m.a. report...

What would be helpful?

Hey y'all. So in the next couple of weeks I'm helping to plan next year's orientation. For those of you coming in, what would you like included in the program? For those of you who went through it last year, what do you wish the department had done differently?

Some ideas:
EndNote training
PCL database overview
Center for American History
HRC
Blanton Art Museum
Hogg Foundation Library
Benson Latin American Center

Obviously, it is not feasible to do all of these things in a day or two, but if there is enough interest, I can probably arrange meetings throughout the first month or so that people are here to get this stuff done.

nerd heaven

from today's nyt mag cover story on the soon-to-be-reality digital universal library:

"Once a book has been integrated into the new expanded library by means of this linking, its text will no longer be separate from the text in other books. For instance, today a serious nonfiction book will usually have a bibliography and some kind of footnotes. When books are deeply linked, you'll be able to click on the title in any bibliography or any footnote and find the actual book referred to in the footnote. The books referenced in that book's bibliography will themselves be available, and so you can hop through the library in the same way we hop through Web links, traveling from footnote to footnote to footnote until you reach the bottom of things."

omigod, omigod, omigod!

Off Home

Hooray I'm nearly done with all of my work and ready to jet back home. I'll be back on the 1st June, so summer shenanigans will ensue.

If anyone wants anything bringing back from the old world, drop me a line.

Last dance

Marvin made a good suggestion in the comment to that last post - we should have happy hour tomorrow (weds) or thurs, so we can see each other before we all disperse. (Well, there's Mark's party, but I think some will already be gone for that.)

Weds is better for me, but I could probably do either in the end. What do you say?

I just passed in my last paper...

and now I am officially ALLOWED to procrastinate. Thus, take a look at this cool site. It's all about book cover art.

suzan-lori parks

I am supposed to be interviewing her next week. Does anybody 1) Have a copy of Top Dog/Underdog for me to borrow? 2) Have any ideas for questions I should ask her?

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo

From today's Times, a story about a 60s Chicano radical which definitely highlights the continuing relevance of said treaty in people's lives...

Koalas: Losers

Via Mannahatta, a very convincing essay about koalas, written by an eighth-grader. Do we think it's a fake? Who cares? It's hilarious. No Joni Mitchell footnotes in this one. Excerpt:

"If a koala goes in the water it won't be able to breathe
with its little short ass. It'd fucking drown soon aas it take
one step into the water. While they at the river trying to get
something to drink a bear could just come to him and snatch its
ass up. It doesn't know protection because they don't have
protection. What they little ass going to do? It can't scratch
him. The bear will beat his fucking ass."

Obviously...

I invited the virgin landers (aka the new cohort) to join us. Welcome.

I am reaching my nadir

So I have just managed to get a footnote about Joni Mitchell into my paper on ruins/stripmalls/parking lots: even paradise was paved in "Big Yellow Taxi".

For any of you wanting a pop culture reference for discussions of Silent Spring look no further than the second verse:

"Hey farmer, farmer
Put away that DDT now
Give me spots on my apples
But LEAVE me the birds and the bees
Please!"

On non-cognates

This just across my desk via the austinist listserv: Lance Armstrong movie being filmed; Matt Damon (?) in the lead. Directed by Frank Marshall, whose other credits include Arachnophobia and Eight Below. It's gonna be very. As somebody on the list pointed out, wouldn't it be awesome if Affleck played Sheryl Crow, and just as visually appropriate?

A favor

Would anyone be able to give me a ride to Mark's house tomorrow? I'll be on campus all morning as I'm at work.

Muchos gracias!

A favor

Would anyone be able to give me a ride to Mark's house tomorrow? I'll be on campus all morning as I'm at work.

Muchos gracias!

Procrastination

If you want a break, check out Steve Colbert at the White House Press Corp Dinner. It is hysterical, how uncomfortable he makes everyone.

peace cat

here's the peace cat picture from coyote corner's site... i meant to add it at the end of the paper for those who had expressed interest in seeing it, but, well, i didn't.

thinking about texas

so, the other day i IMed with that girl who's doing the academic research on what-it's-like-to-be-in-texas (remember, lisa jaskolka sent us her email address?) she's really hoping to interview some more UT grad students, both texan and non-texan. here's her email address: tlsmith at ucdavis dot edu. and here's the address of the blog she started on the topic. in the interest of good journalist karma, i told her i'd post here and see if anybody else wants to talk...

drunk people+crayons+pricey art=blanton opening at 3am

anyone else go to the blanton tonight?

Field Trip

So, I friend of mine just told me about the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health - what does this have to do with us, aside from the mental health counseling we will perhaps all need after end-of-semester paper writing? Apparently they have a library/database/librarians who work on finding people grant money. That's right there is actually a physical space where people are paid to help people like us find some cash.

I thought this would be a great place to take the new cohort as part of their orientation, but I also thought it would be worth testing out (by which I mean, find my own money before sharing the potential bounty with strangers). Anyone up for a little field trip?

partial liberation

anybody want to meet after turning in papers tomorrow & have happy hour? i know i'm not going to feel like going back to work...

has anybody else been totally foiled trying to get to jstor and/or academic search premier from the ut library's website today?

i think the problem has to be with ut, because jstor.org comes up fine (of course, we can't use it because we have to access through ut).

U.S. Grant

It's his birthday. Has anybody ever read his memoirs? Apparently Mark Twain published them, on a subscription basis, and he had ex-Union soldiers go door-to-door in uniform to try to sell people on the idea. Marketing genius! Made tons of money.

Why have I never heard of this/had to read them in class?

This is reinforcing, once again, my perception that I need to be forced—bodily, if necessary—to take a hardcore intro-to-American History seminar.

no der.

really.

Tell me again?

How are we turning our papers in? We're putting a paper copy in Mark's box; Blackboarding to the rest of the class? Email communication has been interpretable multiple ways.

Shameless

Why not just build a secret underground tunnel between Fox News and the White House and be done with it?

RIP Jane Jacobs

She looks a really nice lady, doesn't she?

Invitations

So do y'all think we should invite the new cohort to join Neverending Jeremiad. I think it would be a nice jesture.

Update: Yikes! EndNote has turned against me

So it wasn't Endnote, but Microsoft Word that betrayed me (shaking fist at Bill Gates). For future reference, if undesirable field codes are showing up in your Word document press ALT+F9 and it should go back to the normal view.

My opinion on Chilean movies

If you want it, check out Austinist. I started writing film reviews for them as of today. My first post is like a million pages down, but you can search for my name.

Now I must work again, or Becky will chastise me.

knitting can save the world!

if anyone had any doubts....

knitters are suiting up penguins for oil spill recovery.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/National/Knitters-save-endangered-penguins-lives/2006/04/07/1143916701251.html

13 Ways of Seeing Nature in LA

Well. This is an article I like very much but have not had time to finish. It's by Jennifer Price, who wrote a book called Flight Maps and is a yale history PhD (wm. cronon protege) who ended up deciding to work outside of academia, as a writer.

The piece addresses many of what I see as extremely pertinent questions for those who would be environmentalists and writers/historians: namely, what kind of "nature" is it that we choose to write about? If we really want others to examine/refine their relationship to the environment, shouldn't we talk about/prize the nature that most people see and work with every day, instead of canyons and hawks and dolphins?

Or, as Jennifer Price would put it far better than I just summarized:

"If L.A. symbolizes 'the end of nature' (to use Bill McKibben’s dangerously catchy phrase), it actually has more than enough real fodder for such tales, if you want to write about the sunset on Broad Beach in Malibu or the hawks soaring in Temescal Canyon or the dolphins leaping just offshore or how your heart soars like a hawk or leaps like a dolphin as you watch the sun set offshore from atop the trail in Temescal Canyon.

But there are so many more kinds of nature stories to tell here. I head for L.A.’s wild spots when I can, and delight in hawks, dolphins, and sunsets as much as the next nature lover. I have a special soft spot for ducks. But the anthologies ignore about 90 percent of the nature in L.A. and all the other places we live, as well as most of people’s encounters with nature on Earth. What the crisis of nature writing amounts to, in a few words, is that Thoreau really, really needs to Get on the Bus.

And my own list of favorite representative topics for a more comprehensive, on the bus nature writing in Los Angeles would have to include mango body whips, the social geography of air, Zu-Zu the murdered Chihuahua, and Mapleton Drive near Bel Air. And, of course, the L.A. River, where all the possible kinds of nature stories in L.A. converge."

Dogs and bears and horses

Y'all, please come to the roundtable I'm moderating on Saturday. It's at 1:15 pm, in the Governor's Room, in the TX Union.

Don't miss the opportunity to hear the story of Balto the wonder dog, who appears here lovingly cast in bronze and immortalized in Anchorage! The tale will be told and then deconstructed, ams-style! Frozen men of the North will make multiple appearances, only to be chastised for their paternalistic attitude toward "Esquimeaux"!

Also, two other people from my class are presenting - so you'll also get to hear about grizzly bears and racehorses. What the hell else are you going to do of a Saturday?

Next semester classes

Hey MA-ers,

Anyone know when we're "supposed" to take our 3 credit Master report section? I figured it would be good to know before meeting with Steve tomorrow.

bun run

this sunday is the schlotzky's bun run at auditorium shores.
i'm gonna do it, but it will be more like a bun walk, as the only
running i've been doing lately is to pcl to get some book before
the circulation desk closes.

www.bunrun.com

addendum:
for those with aversion to the word "bun," there is a 5k called the "ashdash" on saturday.

Great Spirit, help me to be strong

At my roommate's gentle prodding, we just got cable TV. My plan is to pretend like we didn't until May 8. Then, y'all have to come over one night so we can sit and watch it for six hours straight.

I think someone wanted to see this, so here it is...

Mack Brown reprazentin' in Norman, OK: 10/31/05.

crazy cat lady

the title links to an article about a local woman who just had 77 cats removed from her backyard.

it's going to take a lot to earn the title "crazy cat lady" after this.

i do like that the statesman named the article file "meow.html"

(and yes, i edited the title... as much as i tried to get over it, both who and whom
bugged me, for their own reasons)

Ruination Day

Oh, it's April 14! It's the anniversary of A. Lincoln's assassination, and of Black Sunday (when a big windstorm hit the Dust Bowl in '35), and of the sinking of the Titanic.

Should we all stay home to forestall disaster? Or to write our papers? Or both?

On the upside, Steinbeck published _The Grapes of Wrath_ on April 14, too, in 1939. And Gillian Welch got what I think are a couple good, melancholy songs out of the events of the date.

But I guess maybe if you don't like her music, that just adds to the disaster for you.

Collyer disease

Not that anybody wants to think of acquiring any more books at this point in the semester, but there's a big used book sale next weekend and the week after. I will probably go, because I am addicted to paper matter and thus doomed to die like those pack rat brothers in New York who were found smothered under the weight of their own hoarded newspapers.

american psycho

On a more sobering note, here's the text of that drunken lacrosse email, which was, indeed, sent post-party...

"Why look at fish?"

You mean besides the fact that they're awesome? Here's that aquarium article from the Believer that John was talking about today in class.

Further information on "Scout's Honor"

Here's an interesting *cough* response.

Boy Scout movie

If you googled that, I bet you'd get something gross. Anybody watch it yet? How long is it?

AMS 394 Final Paper

If anyone has one of the good papers from last year could you tell me approx. how many sources they used? This is probably not how I should approach my research for this paper, but I thought that Mark, when he originally explained the project, implied that it was good to have a lot of sources, but not that many pages.

hi

so, for all who have the time/inclination, let's bring some snacks to class tomorrow. anything is fine, bag of chips, whatever. i have been sitting in the dark and desperately need to go somewhere to purchase a lightbulb, so i will plan to get some trail mix bars while i am at the store.

except for those who have their own strong inclination to do so, we'll skip the mass going to showdown after. perhaps in may....

Frank Hamilton Cushing

The supp. article this week calls him an "oddball," so I googled him. The dude was born in 1857 and was the curator of the ethnological dept at the National Museum in DC by the time he was nineteen. He went on an expedition with John Wesley Powell to New Mexico in 1879 and then just up and moved in with the Zunis. He initially pissed them off because he was so inquisitive, and then they accepted him and made him part of the Priesthood of the Bow. After all that, he died in 1900 after choking on a fishbone in Maine. I love these weirdos!

DVD/VHS request

Afternoon, all.

Does anyone have a copy of Blue Velvet or American Beauty that I could borrow briefly? I'm making sure that my readings of these (for a conference paper) are correct.

Muchos gracias!

Really up in your grill

Per our conversation last night, here is an article about some overzealous prosecutors in washington state who were seeking to rip the grills right off some poor drug dealers' teeth.

Imagine this forehead, only huge - and then, boom! Blackface!

Says Garrison today:

"It was on this day in 1927 that an audience in New York City saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television. At the time, there were several competing versions of television, and this version was a mechanical process that used a metal disc, punched with holes in a spiral pattern, which transformed light into electrical impulses. It had been invented in Europe, and it was called 'Radio Vision.'

Herbert Hoover was speaking in Washington, D.C., to the audience in New York City. The broadcast began with a close-up of Hoover's forehead, because he was sitting too close to the camera. Hoover backed up and delivered his speech, saying, 'It is a matter of just pride to have a part in this historic occasion ... the transmission of sight, for the first time in the world's history.' Hoover's speech was followed by a comedian performing jokes in blackface.

'Radio Vision' never really caught on. Instead, the TV as we know today was an entirely different technology, invented by a high school student in rural Utah named Philo Farnsworth."

Comic relief, part dos

Anybody else read the Mechling yet? Here's a teaser for you. A choice quote from p 202:

"The Treasure Hunt itself is a complex ritual full of anal-erotic symbolism. Jones and Menninger both see 'interest in the discovery of treasure-trove' as a trait that combines several anal-erotic impulses. The size and shape of the cans of Coke [they were the prize at the end of this particular treasure hunt] could be seen as similar to animal droppings, completing the feces = treasure equation. Note, as well, that the treasure is always Coca-Cola ('Coke: It's the Real Thing!'), never Fresca or 7-Up or root beer or even Pepsi. This is not an insignificant detail, given the phonetic pattern common in words associated with feces—for example, cloaca, colon, caca (or kaka), KYBO. In fact, the two favorite beverages of this group—Coke and cocoa—fit this pattern."

Comic Relief

First the beaver, now a croc-fish. I'm waiting for the t-shirt.

fetishizing the west

You got Kathleen Norris, then you got this.

One more reason

why Massachusetts is one of the best states in the Union.

looking forward

Hey, if anybody happens to see that the new class sched. has been posted (either at garrison or on the web), can you post here? I forget to look, but I want to know. I feel so free to choose, now that I know I have 200 more years of classes to look forward to.

ok, so i am feeling guilty on about 7 different levels for bringing up the whole going out after class next week thing. one of those levels is to myself, as i may very well be an anxious lass by that time.

so... here is an alternative. would anyone be interested in our all bringing snacks to share for next week during class? maybe even camp-themed snacks, a la boy scouts?
that way we can be kind of festive, without cutting into outside working time.

Footnote question

Ok, so say I have a quote like this:

“Cohen and Willis (1985) and Willis (1985) have developed one of the most commonly used typologies of social support."

Now when I make the footnote I obviously include the typical bibliographic info, but what do I do about the references within the quote?

Does it go: Bibliographic info. Using Cohen and Willis (1985) their bib. info and Willis (1985) bib info.

Thanks,
Becky

let it be noted:
yesterday i helped build a 6 ft snowman,
and my toes nearly got frostbitten.

edible book fest report

Some notable entries into the Edible Book Festival yesterday. "Spamimal Farm" brought home the grand prize. I got a really cool t-shirt with a dorky information-tech people joke on it. Success.

Who says American Studies Doesn't Pay?

If this academic thing doesn't work out we can always try doing some cultural analysis of the very wealthy working for this guy.

The cartoon to the left, not done by the aforementioned capitalist, is from toothpaste for dinner , a highly entertaining website.

badly titled, but relevant, article

hi

here's an article about an urban park development project plan in atlanta that residents fear may harm/destroy their neighborhoods.

ATLien Invasion

i don't stand by the title.

If only they were all so golden brown

Don't you wish Life and Death of Great Am Cities looked like this?

Also, there's an Edible Book Festival this weekend.

Paging James Clifford

For Jackie, Christina, and Andy: Remember at the James Clifford lecture how he was talking about how Native Americans were still, contrary to popular belief, creating active futures for themselves within their current sovereignties? This is the best thing I've heard in a while: Cecilia Fire Thunder, head of the Oglala Sioux tribe in South Dakota, is opening a Planned Parenthood on her reservation in order to serve the women of SD after the monstrously inhuman abortion ban (no exceptions for rape and incest) that they just passed there goes into effect. So cool.

Too early for '08?

Pete just showed me this great Spike Jonze video from the 2000 election. It's a 15 minute video of Al Gore at home - propaganda to be sure, but interesting to watch. Rumor has it that the video was leaked, because he's planning a run in '08. Clinton v. Gore match up in the primary?

Crowning

This is a statue of naked Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug. Unfortunately, even at the link there's no posterior view, but apparently in the real thing you can see Sean Preston's little head popping out. OH MY GOD. May you all be scarred, as I am.

Caitlin Flanagan drives me crazy

She does! AAAAAARRRGH!

la fiesta de Stephanie

On the birthday tip, let's fete Stephanie this weekend, shall we? Friday night? Who's in? And where should we go? Becky and I were thinking maybe County Line, for bbq and beer, and then maybe we could actually like go out dancing or something? Any bright ideas?

Envirolitists

In case anybody wants to read more about environmentalism's fraught relationship with class and ethnicity, this article got a lot of coverage on various enviro history list servs when it came out a couple of weeks ago: Grist.org. (The pic is of Roosevelt and Muir in Yosemite, 1903.)

long-overdue list

so, i promised this list a long time ago, and i apologize for its delay. but here it is, strategically timed, if you will.


christina 01 january
stephanie 22 march
marvin 26 march
jackie 27 april
andy 02 july
becky 04 august
lisa 20 august
rebecca 25 september
john 16 october


special apologies to christina for not getting it out before january )=

Teaser for bug day

I have two presentations on bugs & insecticides this week! How did this happen? Here is a Dr. Seuss Flit ad, published in the 1920s, to get you in the mood...

Bowling Not-So-Alone

I've been hankering for some lane action this week and was wondering if anyone would be up for some bowling this evening. The Union lanes are open until 3am which should give us ample time to get a few frames in and chat about the impending hell of essay time.

Let me know if you're interested.

Hole in the Wall: Paddy's Day

We're off to the Hole in the Wall for about nine this eveningtude. From there on in it's up in the air, but give me a call if you're around the area.

Aaargh- too much going on...

Spoonalicious

My somewhat exhausting, mostly exhilarating friends & I are going to the Town Lake concert tonight. If anybody wants to meet up, give me a call, m'yeah?

drat. i forgot to beware.

Anyone fancy a pint this evening?

I think it's about time drinks were had. Michelle, my friend from Britain Jim and I are off to San Antonio today but should be back sometime in the evening around 8-9pm. If anyone fancies a few beverages, that would be super. Give me a call or leave a message. If we're back early enough perhaps people could come around here...

Gracias!

My town is famous

My tiny hometown is getting mad publicity around the 50th anniversary of the publication of Peyton Place, which was written by a woman from there, Grace Metalious, and was a thinly veiled account of incestuous doings and scandal. The book naturally proceeded to piss off everybody in town, who proceeded to ostracize Grace in the best Yankee fashion, who in turn proceeded to die at age 39 of cirrhosis and a broken heart. There's an article in Vanity Fair, an AP article, and there's going to be a movie with Sandra Bullock, of all people, playing Grace.

I totally resent the way the AP writer began his stupid article:

"The borders of this Colonial-era town suggest an A-frame house on the brink of toppling over. They form a squarish figure with a triangular extension that appears raised to the right and balanced on one corner, as if a mere push could send it tumbling down to Massachusetts.

For the most part, history has respected Gilmanton to the point of indifference. No wars have been fought here, no gold or oil discovered. There have been no major plagues or natural disasters. No president, movie star or Internet billionaire was born in Gilmanton or uses one of its lakefront residences as a summer home."

We are NOT tumbling down to Taxachusetts, mister. And I'll have you know that we have produced a famous serial killer, Herman Webster Mudgett, aka Henry Holmes. I think I'm going to write and ask for a correction.

Also, nobody interviewed my parents, and they should have.

yeah bitches

in case anybody was waiting with bated breath for the results, the machinists in the garden won their first game tonight, 11-10, with solid contribs from marvin, andy, and becky, and more shaky ones from me. more importantly, it was so, so fun. and we need more women to play, so jackie, christina, are you in? (i know lisa and s'ie have prior commitments...)

Born Losers

Just to prove I didn't make up the thing about the book about failure to make fun of Mark, as he seemed to think I did!, here's a link to its website. It's called "Born Losers: A History of Failure in America." Interestingly, and probably fittingly, it gets a blurb from Arthur Miller.

Killing them with Carnegian kindness

Today on Slate, Jack Schafer describes the owner of the Atl. Monthly thusly:

"If kindness can oppress, then count Atlantic Monthly owner David G. Bradley as one of the great tyrants of our day. A gracious, deferential, generous, self-effacing, patient, and excessively polite man, he may be the first media mogul—he owns the National Journal Group—to practice nonstop goodness.

He doesn't yell. In fact, a lingering throat ailment keeps him from speaking loudly. He has no enemies (whom I can find). Every act of decency—and there are plenty—he commits comes wrapped in an apology, and if he doesn't offer an apology, he extends an equally bizarre request for forgiveness or permission. And then comes the flattery, which he spreads like frosting over cotton candy. Bradley illustrates Clay Felker's observation that formal manners are a marvelous way of fending off people—without offending them."

Rick Perry Wins Republican Nomination

In other news...

Pope declares catholic leanings

Bear admits to preference for woodland defecation

academics in action

hey, so the american literature people are having this process-oriented symposium at the end of april, & are looking for proposals for roundtables and such. does anybody want to propose one with me? i think it might be interesting to have an AMS group there to get a bit of a different perspective. here's the CFP. it's a little vague, is the only thing, & the proposal's due on friday. i could see us talking about the concept or problem of creating a coherent class or cohort out of people who have such wildly divergent interests...not that we have the answer to that in any way shape or form.

Oh, good Lord

This article from the yale daily news makes sweeping comparisons between the players in the Iraq crisis and the characters from "The O.C."

Note at the end there's a line: "This was originally written as an Amstud paper."

Choice excerpt: "The object of America's affection, Iraq, is Marissa Cooper. For a while, Iraq was stable, at least on the surface. But once she was penetrated by America, everything exploded. Now Iraq is a complete whack job, making everyone and everything around her unstable. She feels that her mom, France, didn't do enough to protect her. The only person who has been by her side this whole time is America, although he is fed up with her antics."

This is why people graduate from places like yale thinking they're so g-damn smart, because professors let them get away with cockamamie stuff like this! It's enough to turn me into a campus conservative.

i'm kind of glad now i did not invest any time in watching the academy awards, as brokeback got robbed of best picture.

for anyone else who missed the show, the gory details can be found here...
http://www.oscars.org/78academyawards/nomswins.html

at least walk the line got a tap.

los Oscar

Hey, is anybody going to watch the Big Show tonight? I am up in the air about it. Anyone want to get together & do it? (& by "do it" I mean "search for errant glimpses of Jake Gyllenhaal" and "make fun of everybody's Chiclet teeth"...)

Gladwell gets busy

He's got a blog now. Too bad, Becky - you could have used it as a source!

Saturday Night's Alright (for dinner)

As y'all know I don't really cook and with Pete out of town I'm facing some bleak choices for dinner. Anyone feel like going out later?

Neko Case, hero

Neko Case is coming out with a new album soon. I love her. Here's a great interview.

Eugenics and "morons"

Remember when we were talking in class about the turn of the century eugenicists who wanted to sterilize "feebleminded" females? Salon has a review of a book about the phenomenon, which I shall surely read at my earliest convenience, like maybe in July.

On a lighter note

My friend wrote this funny slideshow about how costume designers hate the Oscars because of their pervasive bias against contemporary costume design. Getting ready for Sunday...

A taste of what's to come

A pregnant woman in VA shot herself in the stomach in order to abort her baby...with all the bad state laws getting passed right now, horrible stuff like this is going to happen more and more often. i'm depressed.

Let's Go Fly a Kite

Anybody want ot go to the Austin Kite Festival in Zilker park with me this Sunday? It looks like it'll be a blast!

Looking for a word

So I'm in the midst of writing my response paper for Mark's class and having massive trouble finding the right adjective for one section. Right now I'm using "informative", but that just doesn't capture the feeling I'm looking for.

What I really want is a word that means: well-meaning, but ultimately unhelpful/destructive input. Any ideas, dear mass of brain power that is our cohort.

McMansion debate

An interesting planning article here: http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2006-03-03/pols_feature2.html

the perils of reproduction

vis a vis our discussion about "commodified" (oh, that word!) history on tues: the ICP in new york is putting on an exhibit about the different uses of che guevara in parody and commerce. too damn bad it's in new york and not here. (of course, if i still lived in new york the odds are good that i would never have gotten my ass around to seeing it, as was my wont. but hey.)

Endnote

In case you want to learn a little about Endnote.

"Library class explains EndNote software. Participants in this library class learn tricks for using the EndNote software with library databases such as the Web of Science. The class, from 1-2:30 p.m. at the Perry-Castañeda Library, Room 1.124, also provides information on other databases, indexes, the online catalog and competing products."

It looks like the library also has a class scheduled for next Monday (March 6th) from 9-10:30 am in the same room (the reference room computer lab?). Here's the official description of the class:

Make Bibliographies with EndNote® (Hands-on)
EndNote’s® publicity says, "Bibliographies made easy!" Come learn the basics of EndNote® and some of our tricks for using this product with library databases such as Web of Science. We'll also touch on how to use EndNote® with library catalogs and other databases such as WorldCat.

If anyone wants to attend, I'm planning to go tomorrow. Let me know, and we can try to meet before the class for lunch(?) or coffee.

Informing the electorate

This is a garden variety koopa. There are also "king" koopas, some of whom can shoot fireballs out of their mouths. Perhaps this is an anti-monarchy statement made by the Mario Bros. nominees. FYI: If you have not seen these guys walk over by FAC tomorrow they have a table. Their moustaches are f'n awesome.

testing a tomato

A link to a link to a great article about scientology.

bedding

As aforementioned, a couple of my friends are coming to visit for spring break. I don't know what they're going to sleep on, or under, or in. Anybody have sleeping bags/mats that they won't be using that week and would be willing to let me borrow? I have 1 sleeping bag - need 1 more, plus 2 mats or something similar.