AlliStan

Waitress

2007-06-05T21:48:00.000-05:00

I just got back from Waitress, a movie I originally agreed to see for somewhat-less-than-intellectual reasons (namely, if I go see movies that feature Nathan Fillion, Nathan Fillion will continue to make movies, thereby increasing my chances of seeing him without a shirt on). (Hello, Nathan Fillion. I'm pretty sure you are married, but personally, I don't tend to get hung up on archaic notions like monogamy. Just so you know.)

I am not a chick-flick kind of person, so I wasn't expecting to identify with the premise of the movie much. Personally, I think many movies specifically marketed at women are designed to reinforce harmful stereotypes - women who are saved from their vicious, workaday world by the love of a good man; women who, upon being saddled with someone else's children, come to realize that motherhood is their true calling, not the career they had worked so hard at over the past years; women who realize that the best way to fit into society is to look inward and change themselves, rather than look outward and change society. (For more details and/or examples, check out Susan Faludi's Backlash. Actually, even if you don't want details or examples, you should read Backlash.) When asked, a friend described Waitress to me as "the movie where Keri Russell bakes pies and hates her husband", and if there were a single sentence that encompasses the patriarchy better, by God, I don't know what it would say. Women, get back in the kitchen and seethe. It is your rightful place.

To say I was pleasantly surprised would be a gross understatement. The movie is chock-fucking-full of feminism! It's a modern marvel! It should be required viewing for all women! I have used up my daily quota of exclamation points!

Adrienne Shelly includes statements that I did not think one could make in movies and still make money off them. Case in point: at one point, Keri Russell refers to her fetus as a "parasite" - not as a pejorative, per se, because she makes very clear that she intends to keep the baby
- but as a statement of medical fact. No one intervenes to "correct" her on this point; no one argues with her or makes her feel any less for having made a factual statement. And Shelly's point is clear: it is possible for a woman to be pregnant, want to have a baby, want what's best for the baby, and still legitimately regard it as something other than a "snowflake angel", or whatever the new wingnutty term for fetuses is nowadays.

It extends beyond fetuses, the feminism, and into Keri Russell's relationships with the two significant men in her life: the doctor she has an affair with (Nathan Fillion) and her husband (Jeremy Sisto). Sisto's character is a perfect distillation of Nice Guy, never above knocking Russell around a bit for such high crimes as hiding money around the house. At one point, during an argument, a sobbing Sisto tells Russell, "you're the only person who ever belonged to me".

And that's just it. The crux of Russell's unhappiness in the movie is her being forced to play the role of someone who belongs to someone else; her love for Fillion arises from being treated like a person, being listened to. It is an audacious claim for a woman under the patriarchy to make, saying that she deserves to be listened to, and Shelly makes it over and over again.

The irony is, of course, that Shelly was murdered before the movie was released.

Reasons I Should Probably Complain Less About My Job

2007-06-04T21:21:00.000-05:00

1. When I woke up at 8:50 this morning, immediately after realizing that I had forgotten to turn on my alarm the night before, my second thought was not "oh crap, I'm going to be late and I'm so fired", but "oh crap, I'm going to be late and miss all the free donuts".

2. Today, after leaving work, I went to another part of work that has gardens (one of which is mine) and a cow (which is not mine).

3. The last mandatory meeting I went to was held at a bowling lane. The subject: bowling.

4. Sometimes I don't wear shoes to work. Nobody cares.

5. The most stringent criticism I can make of my building's decor is "that gargoyle is not intricate enough".

My Brother's Keeper

2007-05-22T21:15:00.000-05:00

My friend Louie is everyone's brother.

You don't really hear "brother" or "sister" used as a greeting in the United States, or at least not in the parts I've frequented. This probably has to do in part with plain old WASPy emotional awkwardness imported from the Old World - hell, in my family it's hard enough to get us to acknowledge our relationship with the people we're actually related to, let alone adopt strangers from off the street. Brothers? Sisters? People in whom we are supposed to invest a shared sentiment of well-being? Hecks no! We don't do that around here.

The Protestant work ethic is the other part of it, I think. Blood brothers and sisters share our genes. Their biological success is our biological success. So we help them, sometimes to the detriment of our own happiness, because to do so increases the chance of success for the bloodline as a whole. And this nation, to the extent to which it has swallowed Randian capitalism, abhors the thought of helping others to the detriment of our own happiness. We do not name brothers so that we can name opponents, slaves, invaders.

This theory makes my life a little bit easier, because it allows me to blame my initial reaction to Louie on my honkitude rather than my idiocy. Picture it, if you will: me, in my first few weeks of college, full of half-baked theories about my own emotional intelligence, cringing at being called "sister" by the first-floor RA. "I'm not his sister. He doesn't even know my name. Gawwwwwwwd."

But the thing is, as I found out about seven years ago next month, having a brother grows on you pretty quickly. This is especially true when the brother in question greets you every day with a full-arm wave, a hug, and a big grin that pushes his glasses up his nose as he asks "And how are you, Sister Allison?" This is especially true when the brother in question will come into the commons room and talk with you, even when you know he has a paper due that week. This is especially true when you too become an RA, and he takes time to listen as you complain about your job. This is especially true when you are in the middle of a devastating breakup, and he will touch you gently on the shoulder as you pass in the hallway, just to let you know he is there.

This is especially true when he does these things not only for you, but for every other brother and sister he meets. This is especially true when he treats every sister as a sister, and every brother as a brother.

In exchange, I hugged back. In exchange, I allowed him to listen. In exchange, I gave him extra strawberries in his smoothies, because I thought that was what sisters do.

***

I worked a lot in college. It was convenient for me to do so not only because of the money, but because of all the chances it gave me to make excuses not to do things I was too much of a misanthrope to want to participate in. Being at Trinity three or four nights out of the week seriously cut down on my ability to go to parties, demonstrations, panels, speeches, and various other activities my time would probably have been better spent on. Thus, it was a continuation of a pattern of behavior, not any extraordinary assholery in itself, that led me not to go to watch Louie testify about his life that one night during my freshman year. I had to work. I couldn't not go to work, right?

So it was by word of mouth that I heard that my friend Louie had been politically active as a teenager in Haiti. By word of mouth I heard the words of his mouth, broadcast over the radio after the first ouster of Aristide: "Democracy is a form of government in which everyone has the right to speak out. If we do not know what the word means, then we should not use it". By word of mouth I heard that the army had come for him, that he had run from his home, that he had walked for three days and nights until he couldn't go any further, that he had fallen asleep under some trees and woken up to a man with a machete standing over him. By word of mouth I heard that he had gained political asylum in Florida, that he had washed dishes at a Chili's, that he had gone to college and then divinity school on scholarships. I heard these things by word of mouth because, on the night when I could have been a sister to Louie as he had been a brother to me, I went to work.

***

Some guy whose last name I happen to share wrote this post today. It's a pretty good one, and it's about Haiti. I thought of Louie while I was reading it. I hadn't thought of him for a while - he graduated two years before I did, and I haven't seen him since. So I Googled him and found this, and in listening, remembered the things he said I did not listen to.

When we lived face-to-face, I was not Louie's sister. But for five minutes today, I hope I was his keeper, as he named me to be.

Allison's Handy Guide to the Movie "Platoon".

2007-05-20T23:10:00.000-05:00

1. Something is wrong with Tom Berenger's face. Could this be a symbol for some sort of malignancy in his soul? Heavens, no.

2. It doesn't matter how good of a character you cast him as; Willem Dafoe will always look evil. But you can respect him anyway, because he took a crack at Tom Berenger's busted-up face.

3. Everybody dies except for Charlie Sheen. This is sad, because of all the actors in this movie, Charlie Sheen would have been the one I would have picked to kill off.

4. Overwrought string music makes a scene emotional, even if it's just recaps of footage you saw half an hour ago.

5. The end.

Ha!

2007-04-24T20:36:00.000-05:00

I was reading random people's blogs tonight and remembered that Beth had a blogspot, but couldn't remember the exact URL - just that it had the word "violet" in it somewhere. So I Googled "violet beth blog", and this was the second result.

Ok! Where's Kevin Bacon?

Best Salmon Ever

2007-04-03T20:08:00.000-05:00

(adapted from allrecipes)

1 lb salmon fillet

Marinade:

1 clove garlic, minced
2 Tbsp soy sauce
1/4 c maple syrup
1/4 tsp garlic salt (or 1/8 tsp garlic powder and 1/8 tsp salt, if you're unprepared)
1/8 tsp pepper

Directions:

Mix all marinade ingredients in a small bowl. Place salmon, wrapped in tin foil, in a small baking dish. Unwrap tinfoil enough to pour marinade on salmon. Marinate salmon for 30 mins, turning once.

While you're waiting, preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Unwrap salmon from tin foil. Place in oven* and bake for 10 minutes, or until you smell something burning.

Open oven to see that marinade has formed a vile, smoking crust over bottom of baking dish. Check salmon. It will not be done yet.

Grab a spoon and attempt to transfer the most egregiously stinky marinade to the sink.

Fling marinade around room. It's made out of maple syrup. It's not going to transfer anywhere.

Bake salmon for 5 more mins.

Pray.

Remove salmon from oven. Check for doneness. Now check for flavor. See? It is delicious.

*if you actually know how to cook fish, feel free to start following your own directions here.

I Have Forgotten How to Write

2007-03-31T19:20:00.000-05:00

but here is a video of extreme cuteitude!:

and here is another!:

My inability to get a kitten has become the bane of my existence, and I tire of waiting for the animal shelter to get a parakeet I can adopt.

I come home every night and try to write a post for you, but I get tired. Someday I will be less tired and then I will have something to say. Look out for that!

Nota Bene

2007-03-26T19:27:00.000-05:00

I began work at my new job six weeks ago. On my first day, the temperature was 20 degrees below zero.

It is currently 80 degrees out. My air conditioner is on.

Battlestar post later.

Another in a Long Line of Abortive Attempts at Mediocrity

2007-03-25T19:11:00.000-05:00

I have made a great and unprecedented discovery as regards the sociology of these blog-type-things. It seems that the appearance of new entries on a regular basis is dictated primarily by two factors:

1. Regular internet access
2. Having something to talk about

I have based my hypothesis on an analysis of one Allistan, a painfully dull internet web-thing. This particular case showed relatively regular entries from August 2004 until around August 2006, when posting ground to a screeching halt. My research indicates that the two above-listed factors affected posting rates on the following approximate timeline:

August 2006-October 2006: no regular internet access
November 2006-January 2007: nothing to talk about
February 2007-March 2007: no regular internet access

There appears to have been an additional short interlude around November 2007 entitled "searching for work; living in terror of the tyranny of Google". However, additional research seems to indicate that this reason is not widespread enough among the general internet populace to bear inclusion on my list.

My hope is that this ground-breaking research will have widespread implications for the general internet community. More of the populace must be made aware of this terrible problem: those without the internet are not able to blog. Think of all the cat stories we may be missing!

Now go forth and spread my gospel. Get the internet to more people! Learn more about their cats!

Dear Baby Jesus,

2007-03-13T13:26:00.001-05:00

angrybracket
Originally uploaded by magic152.

Why? Why do you hate me? And my car. Why do you also hate my car?

2007-02-09T18:27:00.000-06:00

Monday:

Temperature upon departure for work: -20 degrees
Car: will not start.
will not start.
will not start.
starts.
will not go.
goes.
will not brake.
will not braaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKE!
brakes.
gets to work.

Tuesday:

Temperature upon departure for work: -17 degrees.
Car: starts.
goes.
backs into tow truck.
brakes.
waits for police.
gets to work.

Wednesday:

Temperature upon departure for work: -11 degrees.
Car: starts.
goes.
brakes.
gets to work.
gets parked.
gets a strongly-worded letter under the wiper saying it is not parked in a real spot.
idiot.

Thursday:

Temperature upon departure for work: -7 degrees.
Car: starts.
goes.
brakes.
gets to work.
gets out of work.
flips on CHECK ENGINE light.

Somebody stop the ride, I want to get off.

2007-01-22T19:24:00.000-06:00

This is my life.

Sentences College Has Given Me, Part 1

2006-11-26T13:35:00.000-06:00

The first in a series of sentences that make me sound like an overeducated snob:

"The excessive anthropomorphization of the evolutionary process in this documentary is extremely discomfiting."

You Stay Classy, SportsCenter

2006-11-20T18:17:00.000-06:00

The Bills beat the Texans yesterday afternoon.

For that much-needed victory, JP Losman went 26/38 for 340 yards. On those 340 yards, Losman threw three glorious touchdown passes - two to Lee Evans, at 83 yards apiece, and another 15-yarder to Peerless Price in the last minute of the game.

Now, as much as I love the Bills, I am the first to admit that a Bills/Texans matchup is not exactly a clash of titans. In fact, I could be heard yesterday to comment that the only media coverage at the game would probably be provided by some random guy with a dirty baseball cap and a ham radio. I am further conscious of the fact that JP Losman is not exactly a phenom quarterback. The throwing yardage for this last game almost triples the Bills' weekly average (which, at 139 yards, is anemic).

However, Losman did a solid job this past week. His first two touchdown passes, and Evans' subsequent receptions, were beautiful and out of character for the Bills. And were it not Price's touchdown with 18 seconds left, we would not have won the game; Losman masterfully orchestrated the drive to get to the point where that pass was viable. Losman is not Peyton Manning. But this week he did what a quarterback needs to do, and we won the game because of it.

This is why it made me so angry when I turned on SportsCenter last night and heard the commentators, rather than praising Losman for a job well done, denigrating the Texans' defense. "This is JP Losman we're talking about here - what were the Texans thinking?"

Give credit where credit is due, SportsCenter. The Bills had a good day.

2006-11-18T20:32:00.000-06:00

Dear Life,

It has come to my attention that, as I am a woman out of college, you would like it if I would start wearing dresses. Fine. However, please hold up your end of the bargain by either:

a. making dresses cost less than $100; or

b. getting me a job.

Thank you.

Allison

I Love Teeth

2006-10-30T20:34:00.000-06:00

Personally, I cannot wait until Rick Santorum's man-on-box-turtle nuptial dystopia comes to pass, because when it does, I will be ready and waiting on the steps of City Hall with $20 and this:

I think we all know about my unhealthy obsession with dental hygiene products, but I am exaggerating 0% when I say that I am willing to bind myself in holy matrimony with Reach Dentotape. It's so big and fluffy and thorough - I feel like I'm flossing with a disposable, mint-flavored, plush teddybear.

And nothing is better for marrying than mint teddybears.

Placeholder:

2006-09-11T11:12:00.000-05:00

I went to a wedding this weekend! I will tell you about it...later.

2006-09-04T10:42:00.000-05:00

The Great Toe Gangrenization of '06 seems to have ceased, at least for the time being.

Fact-type update:

1. We still don't have a phone. Yeah, I know. When I get one, you can call me on it.
2. We don't really have a mailing address, but I think you can send stuff to the school? but you should probably FedEx it. I'll get on that.
3. We have cable, but so far no SciFi and no Battlestar.
4. When we get phone we may get internet, and when we get internet I may be able to write. So far I have not, because people are all around. But for when I do get writing, remind me to tell you the vegetarianism story and the lesbian cheese story.

2006-08-28T06:44:00.000-05:00

My toenails are turning black.

2006-08-22T15:10:00.000-05:00

I think I would be able to bear up much better during the next few weeks if someone would promise - I mean for real - to come visit me.

Consider yourself solicited. (coughMOM)

2006-08-22T11:57:00.000-05:00

I feel like I should have something deep and meaningful to say about the fact that, as of this morning, I am a teacher. However, the only emotion floating to the top is terror (yea, it is the cream in the milk of Allison's insecurities). Also, I don't have any time at the computer. So I'm going to go now, safe in my assurance that you all know how freaked out I am.

2006-08-21T09:31:00.000-05:00

Today I have to write up lesson plans for the first month of 7th grade literature, 7th grade history, 6th grade literature, 6th grade history, 6th grade English grammar, 5th grade literature, 5th grade history, and 5th grade English grammar.

I want to die. Please send me a gun.

2006-08-18T13:40:00.000-05:00

Last night I dreamed that I was attempting to escape the pursuing vampire Captains Picard and Sisko via time travel, with Starbuck my only ally against the encroaching threat.

Hello, internet. My name is Allison Clarke, and I am back.

2006-07-20T19:12:00.000-05:00

I don't think I'll be writing for a while. I don't really have the emotional energy to do anything but knit. Leave me alone, please.

Offered Without Comment

2006-07-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

Aaron: "Tonight I've snorted Sweet n Low, dressed in women's clothing, been hooted at by a Walmart employee while in women's clothing, and been punched in the sack. Why is this not a bad night? What is wrong with me?"

Suggestions Welcome

2006-06-29T13:59:00.000-05:00

Cats named (spacing indicates litter-separation):

~~Moonface (long-hair black, bright yellow eyes, adult)~~ deceased

~~Tumbly (orange tabby kitten, smallish)~~ deceased
~~Grumbly (brown tabby kitten, smallish)~~ deceased
~~Rumbly (calico/brown tabby kitten, smallish)~~ deceased
(here they be, my Umblies.)

Cats needing names:

~~Gray long-hair kitten, blue eyes, small, cuddlyface, smelly~~ deceased
~~Black long-hair kitten, blue eyes, small~~ deceased
~~Brown tabby long-hair kitten, blue eyes, small~~ deceased
~~Darker brown tabby long-hair kitten, blue eyes, small~~ deceased

Tito (~~Black long-hair kitten, blue eyes, tiny~~) deceased
Punky (~~Brown tabby long-hair kitten, blue eyes, tiny~~) deceased

I'm Not an Idiot, I Just Play One in Real Life

2006-06-27T17:09:00.000-05:00

Would someone please explain to me why it is that I morph into a gibbering idiot when within a 10-foot range of my advisor?

No, really. Seriously. Because here is the woman who is supposed to be relying on me to read and analyze texts for her, a task which (whoa no way) is pretty much entirely dependent on my ability to not be a moron, and every time we are in the same room I turn into a stuttering sycophant, with the nodding and the mmhmming.

Example 1: Somehow we got on the topic yesterday of how Duke will, from this point onward, never be getting another shiny penny of my money ever again. She asks me why I have come to this decision, and to anyone who has ever been here before it's probably blatantly obvious. So do I say "Duke is a training ground for the elite to learn that rules don't apply to them"? Do I say "Duke has a nasty habit of abnegating any role that involves teaching responsibility"? No, I say "dining and Epworth", because that is the pat answer I'd had memorized for two years, and I could see her give this little sigh of disappointment at my inability to engage in a real discussion, BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT.

Example 2: We were talking about dogs, and I expressed disdain for people who buy purebred dogs rather than going to the animal shelter and getting a mutt, because there are a gazillion available mutts in this world and they need lovin'. She counters that people make most life choices based on aesthetic - clothes and (human) mates included - so to expect people to refrain from judging aesthetic-via-breed when choosing a dog isn't really reasonable. And this is true, but instead of clarifying what I meant*, I nodded and smiled, BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT.

I would blame the internet for the atrophy of my verbal skills, but I hold up pretty well when I'm arguing with Aaron, so the only possible conclusion is that I AM AN IDIOT.

*While you obviously make choices based on what's attractive to you, I'm talking about people who make choices based on what's attractive to others - so, just as I would hope that you are not choosing a boyfriend based solely upon the social status they will confer upon you for being hot, I would hope you're not shelling out $800 for a purebred chihuahua so you can carry it around in your handbag with your iPod and your Razr. Plus, I don't care what breed of dog is your favorite - you WILL be able to find a dog you find attractive at your local animal shelter. If that doesn't happen (I give it 10-to-1 odds), there are specific breed-rescue programs with whom you can get in contact. In short, there is no reason to support the creation of more puppies at this point in time. There are already plenty of puppies.

I HATE YOU, GMAIL

2006-06-25T23:53:00.000-05:00

This was the banner ad in my Gmail box just now:

Hillary 2008 Bracelets - www.hillary2008bracelets.com - 100% silicone white bracelets Show your support for Hillary!

NO, GMAIL. NO. DON'T EVER SEND ME THAT EVER AGAIN, YOU EMAIL-READING SPIES.

Oh, how I hate Hillary Clinton.

All Five of These Are Elements Necessary to Life

2006-06-25T17:31:00.000-05:00

Currently on Allison's desk:

Compy
Coffee
Cider
Chocolate
Cat

Nighttime Vignette

2006-06-24T10:58:00.000-05:00

1:15am - "Ok, this is nice. This is early. I'll be all rested tomorrow."
1:16am - "Hi, cats."
1:17am - "Aw, you want to cuddle with me? Ok, baby. Come on over."
1:18am - "Ok, when I said - I meant maybe not with your weight on my nerve cluster like that. Yeah, your elbow - that's an, um, artery, or - OH GOD GET OFF MY ARM PLEASE."
1:25am - "This is nice. We're comfy. I am communing with the animals."
1:30am - "I need to roll over."
1:31am - "TS, uh, can you just - shift *tug* yourself *tug* a little?"
1:32am - "Don't give me that look, mister. I'm the one in charge here."
1:33am - "Ok, you know what? Fine! I don't need to roll over. I'm fine just like this."
1:45am - "OH MY GOD I CAN'T FALL ASLEEP ON MY SIDE, PLEASE JUST LET ME MOVE."
1:50am - "You know what? to hell with you guys. I'm rolling over whether you like it or not."
1:51am - "There."
1:52am - "Hi, TS."
1:53am - "No, TS, look, when I'm like this there's no room for you to - my arm has to go where you're sitting. You can't sit there."
1:55am - "Or you could just sit on my head. Like you're doing now. Yeah, that's fine. I can breathe through your fur. We're all good here."
2:00am - "Please, God, don't let me die like this."
2:15am - *snnnnxxxxxxxxx* "WHAT?! WHAT DID YOU HEAR? BURGLARS?"
2:16am - "If you didn't hear anything, then why the hell did you launch yourself off my SKULL?"
2:18am - "There is no need for the adrenaline, body, so cut it out. It was just the cat. Repeat: it was just the cat."
2:30am - "Crap."
2:45am - "CRAP."
2:50am - *snnnnnxxxxxx*

4:30am - "WHY IS THERE A TONGUE IN MY EYE SOCKET?!"

7:30am - "I am not getting you breakfast."
7:32am - "I am not getting you breakfast."
7:35am - "GO AWAY."
7:45am - "FINE. FINE. I'm AWAKE. GOD."
7:47am - "Chicken or beef?"

And I wonder why I am tired ALL THE TIME.

Observation

2006-06-23T18:12:00.000-05:00

When watching Lifetime, either of the lines "It looks like everything is really coming together for you" or "Finally, a ____ of our very own" indicate stay tuned! because someone is going to die very soon.

I Rock So Hard

2006-06-23T12:14:00.000-05:00

So I says to myself, "Self, you haven't posted in a real long time. What could snap you out of this heinous writing funk? Also, corollary, what the hell is your problem?"

And myself says back, "Well, Self, we could try a Friday Random Ten. It might be better than nothing. And the problem is that we are BORING."

So here's my first FRT:

"Losing My Religion" - REM
"O statua gentilissima" from Don Giovanni - Mozart
"In the Days of the Caveman" - Crash Test Dummies
"Impromptu for 12 Fingers" - Michael Nyman
"H Kardia mou Apopse Xagrypna" - Elevtheria Arbanitaki
"Piano Sonata No. 13 in B flat major K. 333" - Mozart
"Short Circuit" - Daft Punk
"Thriller" - Michael Jackson
"How Does a Duck Know" - Crash Test Dummies
"Desert Eagle" - Ratatat

What I want to know is how I can have almost 7 days' worth of music in iTunes and still get two Crash Test Dummies songs. Not that they aren't pretty awesome, but still.

(Sidenote: I Pandoraed Crash Test Dummies once and the only suitable matches it could come up with were more Crash Test Dummies. Sigh.)

Again I Turn to You for Advice

2006-06-19T02:08:00.000-05:00

Dear peoples,

It is looking more and more like there will be a period in the middle of July wherein the apartment's rightful owner and I will be sharing a space. As exciting as that concept sounds, it has a fundamental flaw, which is that I have a feeling that my usual schedule (:

Wake up at crack of dusk
Watch Star Trek
Wander around house
Find something to eat
Watch Battlestar
DDR until 3am
Sleep)

won't really work when someone else is in the house. So I need to get out of the house. Does anyone have any suggestions for things to do in the Triangle area that are free? And close, because I can't afford gas? And by free I really mean I can't afford anything, so outside places would probably be best.

Thank you, my sagacious friends. I would post something fun to read but my life is not really that fun to read about right now.

Clarke's Rules of Social Discourse

2006-06-10T18:16:00.000-05:00

1. Nobody cares how funny or ridiculous you are when drunk, with the possible exception of those present at the event at which you saw fit to become inebriated. Any story dependent upon the level of your intoxication should therefore be erased from your portfolio. Please note that this rule does not apply to those stories that are funny anyway. Thus, for example, "when I was drunk I threw an apple through a frat-party window and it exploded" qualifies as legitimate, as the removal of the "drunk" qualifier would not be seriously detrimental to the story's humor value. "When I was drunk I threw up on the subway" does not qualify and never will.

2. The disqualification of another person's argument solely on the basis of their vocabulary is unacceptable. Provided that your opponent has the requisite ability to make their point understood, you are honor-bound to accept and respond to that argument. Thus, refusing to engage in discourse with someone because they curse and you do not is not, as many would like to believe, a mark of your innate superiority. Rather, it is an indication that you are unable to defeat your foe in fair combat - in other words, a cop-out. You are more than welcome to attempt to steer the rhetoric of the debate in any particular direction based on the composition of your answers, but not through outright dismissal or criticism of your opponent. This also counts for typos and l33tspeak, as annoying as I find them.

3. Unless the discussion has specifically to do with religious doctrine or a specific topic for which mainstream society has deemed religious belief relevant (ie. evolution), invoking religion is also a cop-out. Using "well, it'll all work out according what God has decreed anyway" as a retort indicates that you have no idea what you are talking about. This is not to say that there is not necessarily a divine plan, nor does it imply that you don't know what that plan may be (although in my opinion there is not, and thus you don't). It means only that, when discussing earthly problems, one must use a universally-accepted, earthly fact set. Not everyone believes in your god, so you cannot drag your god in. You may use those universally-accepted facts to come to a little-accepted conclusion, though. "Flagellates are too complex to have evolved naturally, thus there must be a God" is an argument that makes me grit my teeth, but it derives from a biological fact about the complexity of flagellates and thus I am honor-bound to respond to it.

I expect to attract some criticism for this rule.

4. Being a jerk is not necessarily being assertive, and to be assertive you do not have to be a jerk. Let me be more clear. I have run into a number of situations lately on the intarnetz in which a commenter will make a statement like, oh, "all people who have children are lazy, fat, and stupid. They live on a diet consisting wholly of government cheese, are a drain on society, and detract from my quality of life. I, having no children, am inherently superior to all those women who have elected to spend their lives as breeders". Then, when the commenter is called out on the fact that her statements are not only incredibly offensive but patently untrue, they will respond with something along the lines of "I see no one here is willing to listen to alternate opinions. You are all fascists". These people fail to grasp the distinction between expressing strong opinions and being offensive. Thus I say to them that it is entirely possible to have concerns without impugning a large group of people. The fact that you have gotten called out for wandering into an argument guns a-blazing does not mean your ideas are unwelcome; it means that you, personally, have made yourself unwelcome. For example, had the original comment been phrased along the lines of "I've chosen not to have kids because I really worry about the impact our current rate of population growth is having on the environment, and I also enjoy having a lot of free time on my hands," the general response might have fomented a useful conversation rather than a slagfest.

Clarke's Rule #4 can boil down to the following: in general, the more secure a person is with their argument, the less energy they need to expend insulting those with whom they disagree.

5. Fishing for compliments is never under any circumstances acceptable. Acceptable self-deprecation is a skill at which one should be practiced in order to avoid the illusion that one is searching for positive feedback about onesself.

6. Comparison of one's opponent to a Nazi, horse, Ann Coulter, or someone's ugly mom indicates the immediate termination of the debate in question, with the win awarded to the opposite party.

7. (internet only) Anonymous commenting immediately negates the argument of the person in question. A pseudonym and legitimate email address, at the minimum, are required to be taken seriously. The obvious reasoning behind this statement is that if you're not willing to put your reputation behind what you say, you do not deserve recognition.

Truly, Television Corrupteth the Youth of Today

2006-06-07T22:33:00.000-05:00

The following are phrases uttered by five intelligent young college students (and recent graduates), of attitudes ranging to the very- to moderately-socially liberal, while watching the runaway Fox hit 24.

"SHOOT HIM!"

"No, you don't need to get information from him, SHOOT HIM!"

"HE'S A FREAKING TERRORIST, JUST SHOOT HIM!"

"Ok, then torture him!"

"Clearly, the more you torture people the more quickly they turn good. This show has found the solution to all our standing problems with national security."

"Doesn't matter that she died; she was old, and the old are a drain on society anyway."

" " " " " " " " crazy " " crazy " " " " " "

"We have learned from this show that the only people to be trusted are white males; everyone else is a terrorist or in league with same."

"Slap her, Jack Bauer."

"Oh, Jack Bauer, call my name; you're so hot."

"Holy CRAP, he just SNAPPED THAT GUY'S NECK. Can you - can we rewind? Rewind, I want to see that again."

"Oh my god, that made me horny."
"You mean when Curtis killed that dude by turning his head around backward?"
"Yes. Yes, that's what I mean."
"You're the kind of person for whom they make crush porn."

"So how are they supposed to find the terrorist in that crowded office building?"
"Racial profiling."
"But that's wrong!"
"Aaron, the dude's first name is Habib and they have no physical description of him. The only way to win this game is by playing 'spot who's brown'."

My name is Allison Clarke! I am a staunch feminist, a pacifist, and a rabid opponent of racial stereotyping! Goodnight!

I Ought to Know This

2006-06-06T16:29:00.000-05:00

One of you out there has to speak Latin, right?

I'm trying to translate a text for one of my professors, but the author done gone and left some of the most seminal parts of the text in their original church Latin, circa 16th c. I can't understand the meaning without the quotes, but I don't speak Latin at all. Can you guys help me? There are two, and here they are:

"Quid ergo dicis de peregrinatibus Romam, Hierusalem, S. Iacobum, Aquisgranum, Treverim, multasque alias regiones et loca causa Indulgentiarum: item in dedicationibus Ecclesiarum? Peregrinationes istae fiunt multis causas; rarissime iustis." (Martin Luther)

"Qui vadit apud sanctum Jacobum et occidit patrem suum non facet mortale peccatum." (uncredited)

They both have to do with pilgrimage, which is what peregrinatibus/peregrinationes mean, I know that much.

Thankee kindly!

Nerd Meme

2006-06-02T16:45:00.000-05:00

I like books!

Bold the titles you've read, italicize the ones you might read, ~~cross out~~ the ones you won't, underline the ones on your book shelf, and place parentheses around the ones you've never even heard of.

The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
The Great Gatsby - Scott F. Fitzgerald
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling
The Life of Pi - Yann Martel
Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
1984 - George Orwell
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (this is a terrible book)
The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
The Secret History - Donna Tartt
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Shadow of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway
The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
Dune - Frank Herbert
Sula by Toni Morrison
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (I'm pretty sure OSC is a Scientologist. Talk about your buzzkills.)

Ways This Day Keeps Getting Better

2006-06-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

9:45AM: Wake up.

9:50AM: Find DDR pad.

9:51AM: Turn on TV; channel is set at 57. Cable. Free cable.

9:52AM: Play DDR.

1:00PM: Free lunch; obtain gainful employment.

5:00PM: Turn on SciFi. BSG is on.

5:15PM: Thunderstorm.

Back, Back, Back Again

2006-06-02T10:40:00.000-05:00

I have returned, triumphantly?, to Durham, where I will be living with roommates for the summer. One of the roommates, when presented with an expanse of open torso, will crawl up onto it and purr as he butts his head up against yours.

It is pleasant.

2006-05-30T19:59:00.000-05:00

Leave it to stupidity to snap me out of a blog funk - CSPI wants to class salt as a "harmful additive".

DAMN IT, CSPI.

Felix Gaeta is Absolutely, Positively a Cylon

2006-05-24T22:55:00.000-05:00

Ok so I have been promising this for a very long time, and I keep putting it off, and so I have forgotten some of my evidence. But believe me! and I will update this as I remember/rewatch the episodes. Also let me note that I have only watched up through episode 2.5 (The Farm), so please don't spoiler anything that comes after that. Ok? Ok!

1. The first piece of evidence is more a logistics issue than anything. The Cylons are obviously very good at this infiltration business; they know exactly where they ought to have particular agents in order to achieve the maximum effect with the invasion, in terms of both emotional stimuli and logistical considerations. By emotional stimuli I mean that they know to send extremely hot, sex-crazed Six for Gaius Baltar, who responds quickly to that combination; cute and smiley Sharon ought to be the one seducing Helo down on Caprica, rather than Six, who's kind of cold and a little crazy when you get right down to it; and Simon, who gives off a warmth to him, is better suited to try to coax Starbuck into staying at the hospital than Leoben or Aaron Doral would be.
And by logistics I mean the obvious: WHY IS THERE ONLY ONE CYLON IN THE COLONIAL FLEET? The Cylons are not stupid. Sharon has access to some stuff, but she's only a Raptor pilot. She has no way of getting to the inner workings of the fleet besides putting her cover at risk (ie. sneaking away to blow up the water tanks). What the Cylons would ideally have is someone who can affect the fleet without ever being noticed - "oops! Hey, we've been boarded!" and such. Gaeta is in the ideal position for that, obviously.

Which leads me to my plot-based evidence.

2. Magical Cylon spy device!
Appears in CIC! And straight-edge, conscientious, hyper-affirmation-seeking Gaeta's response? "Wait, uh, didn't you put that there?" WRONG. This is totally out of character for the kid. Gaeta has his business together (mostly) and seeing Aaron Doral creeping around CIC installing an iSpy would make him freak out. Unless he wasn't there on purpose - or didn't see on purpose - or installed it himself.

3. "I studied bioinformatics before I signed up for the Colonial fleet."
What is a Cylon?
Biological parts +
Computer network
=
bioinformatics.

HUH. HOW ABOUT THAT.

4. Cylon detector.
Adama asks Gaeta to help on the Cylon detector. Do we ever see him do that? In fact, do we ever see him have anything at all to do with the entire detection process, other than letting drop the previous tidbit and not-bragging-really around the poker table? This could be because of Baltar and his total not-knowing-anything, which would be fine, but it seems very off for Gaeta, especially given his "give me more work, sir!" tendencies. Wouldn't you expect him to be all up in Baltar's grill or something?

5. Infamous hand movement.
Right before Sharon shoots Adama, the camera pans down to focus on her left arm meeting Gaeta's right. You don't see anything pass between them, and it's unlikely that he's handing her a sidearm - she has her own - but then we don't know how Sharon is triggered to shoot Adama (it's not conscious, as we can tell by the soundtrack that she's pretty much in a phased state when in happens). Does Gaeta have secret triggery Cylon pheromones, and when he shakes her hand they go poof? I don't know. I don't consider this definitive proof of anything, but it is, er, curious.

6. The entire world explodes after Adama gets shot.
The Cylons are bearing in and the fleet needs to jump. Ok. Who messes up the jump coordinates? Who comes up with a solution that involves networking the computers, the sole way the Cylons can gain comprehensive access to the ship's systems? Who writes the (FAILED) firewalls to try to keep the Cylons out? BING BING! Gaeta. All of these things allow the Cylons to infiltrate the Vipers' perimeter, board the Galactica, and get a bullet's-width away from venting the entire crew of the Galactica into space. Pretty good invasion tactic, especially if you have an inside man messing things up on purpose for you.

7. "I reran the security protocol".
In the episode where the corporeal Six tries to accuse Baltar of treason with the faked photo (Season One, Episode somethin or other), it's looking like Baltar's going to be convicted because everyone believes the photo is of him. The only thing that saves him is Six towering over him, telling him to repent, which he does at the last possible second. Coincidentally, as soon as Baltar repents, the photo is discovered to be a fake. By Gaeta. Who just, mmm, miraculously happened to rerun the security sweep on the photo, like, the SECOND after Baltar gets on his knees and whines to Six. HOW ABOUT THAT?!

8. Silly details.
I just saw this tonight as I was rewatching Colonial Day. During the last scene - the ballroom dance - the producers have everyone ticked off into their respective couples. Lee/Starbuck/Baltar have this weird menage a trois going, Laura dances with Adama, Dee and Billy are rocking out in a corner - and a red-befrocked Sharon is twirling on the arm of our good friend Felix Gaeta. Why would these kids even GO together? There's really been no proof they even know or like each other - they never communicate in any way. Except, of course, if they're both Cylons, in which case they match right up. Hrrrm.

I reserve the right to update this list! because I am a dooooork.

Act II* of Double Entendre Theater

2006-05-23T19:29:00.000-05:00

Allison: *changing channels*

Radio: szzzzzfffffttt...*male voice* "but I call them screamers."

Allison: "Who's talking about screamers!?"

Radio: "I love screamers. They're my business!"

Allison: *choke*

Radio: "I go all over the world, to Belgium, Amsterdam, Switzerland, and anywhere else you can think of, looking for the best screamers on the planet!"

Allison: "Are you in the navy?"

Radio: "...so if you're looking for a diamond that doesn't just sit on your hand, but SCREAMS for attention, come to blahblah jewelers in Schenectady, NY!"

Allison: "That...you...but you said...oh god."

*(click Flea, to the left, for Act I.)

I Am Brevity Itself

2006-05-20T20:57:00.000-05:00

since I have, I figure, about five minutes to write this before the gore on Discovery Health changes to something else and Dad wanders on in here.

NARRATIVE POST!

I've spent the past couple of months in a considerable welter about what I'm gonna be doing this summer. I have to leave in August?ish? and so there were two months stretching out before me, vast, unplannable. The night of graduation I got a plan:

EPWORTTTHHHHH.

I'll be spending this summer catsitting for Dr. Brenda! which means living approximately 10 feet directly above the apartment I moved out of just last week. It also means spending my time with Beth and Audrey and the Fat Man, which is pretty much the sweetest thing ever. So since I'll have a place (and the Batmobile) to myself, I've managed to come up with some goals that I can hopefully abide by during June and July:

1. Take (and spank) the GRE.
My first-ever practice test clocked me in at an anemic 1290, which is pretty much the same as my initial SAT score was when I started taking those practice tests. We all know how that turned out. But, downside, I have no Miss Girvin to help me on the math section with these bad boys.

2. Gain street cred
Via research with the advisor. I still don't know if this is going to work out or not. Deepest secrecy for now.

3. Pet something every day
Catsitting!

4. Refine eating habits
to aim for exclusivity eating free-range meats and locally-grown produce.

5. Do not go bankrupt
see item 5.

6. Make season 2 of Battlestar last all summer
This is a losing battle against my own will.

7. Start jogging outside
because only losers need to pay for gym memberships to keep themselves motivated. And by losers I mean me.

8. Don't break the Batmobile
BATMOBIIIIILE!

2006-05-17T20:53:00.000-05:00

Sorry about the radio silence. In Delaware, we have no compies! and no internets. and no people who know about the existence of this website! teh yay. So off I go, and promises of Cylon Gaeta in the future.

2006-05-13T02:53:00.000-05:00

I've been spending the past week doing irresponsible things to my sleep schedule (note the timestamp) and thus not posting. As a result, it appears that my patronage has mostly deserted me. I don't blame you. But I graduate the day after tomorrow, and so I can promise you the following upcoming posts:

Why Felix Gaeta is a Cylon
What it is like to be a grownup
Maybe one thing that is emo!

I am sure you are all bristling in anticipation.

2006-05-06T20:22:00.000-05:00

This is probably a mistake on their part, so I won't be surprised if they rectify it, but if you go to www.scifi.com/battlestar and click on "Watch the First Season Finale" or whatever button it is that gets that message across, it'll stream you the entire first episode of the show (33).

This makes me squealingly happy, as does the entire BSG franchise, because it's so GOOD.

Aww Jeez

2006-05-05T18:17:00.000-05:00

Barring what would be a characteristic display of stupidity by one of my classes that shall remain nameless but I HATE IT AND THEY KEEP MAKING SURPRISES AND TO HELL WITH THEM, I am done with college.

No more college work. Ever. Just sitting back, waiting for the grades to roll in, and swimming through my closet to find things to pack. No more college. I am done with college.

It'll sink in eventually. Give me a bit.

My Email Inbox is an Interesting Place, to Wit:

2006-05-03T14:07:00.000-05:00

"Before I go any further, I wanted to let you know of an exciting event for SOW. Former President Bill Clinton will be in Austin on May 20^th to take part in a brunch to benefit Students of the World. We would really love for you to come to Austin for the event and for the weekend. If you are interested, please call or email me so we can work out details."

I'VE BEEN INVITED TO BRUNCH WITH BILL CLINTON. Fzzt. Spzzzzt. ZZZZZZZZZZZ KAPLOWIE.

Let's start keeping a list of incredibly awesome things Allison would be able to do if the cost, timing, and logistics weren't prohibitive:

Sing at Carnegie Hall
Have brunch with Bill Clinton

Any other suggestions?

2006-05-02T15:06:00.000-05:00

I am now the proud owner of one black gown, one pointy hat, and one of those bizarre inside-out hoodie things.

This is getting more and more surreal as the week goes on. I am. graduating. from college.

OH GOD THESIS, I HATE YOU

2006-05-01T20:26:00.000-05:00

In the meantime, here is the lacrosse committee report! and it agrees with me (see point 4, wayyyy down at the bottom)! Dancey dancey dance dance.

Help!

2006-05-01T16:47:00.000-05:00

It has come to my attention that I should get a gift for my thesis/independent study advisor. I've had her (in class and independently) for three consecutive semesters, and while we haven't worked all that closely on this paper, that is pretty much entirely due to the fact that I suck and am easily intimidated (and - corollary - she is way too cool for me). Also, there's a possibility that I may end up helping her with her research this summer? so I want to be nice. Bottom line, I don't know her all that well and so I am at a loss re: things to give her that would be personally meaningful.

I know she likes wine. Would a bottle of wine be ok? If so, any suggestions? I don't know anything about wine at all, and my choices are limited to what they stock at Whole Foods, so there's that. I'm willing to spend a bit of money, so cost isn't super-important (ok, maybe $50ish is the upward limit).

2006-04-29T18:44:00.000-05:00

Hi everybody -

I'm glad you're all here to comment, and I appreciate the dialogue that's starting up. However, I ask people not to comment as "Anonymous". Pseudonyms are welcome, even encouraged - but it's impossible to hold a meaningful debate when you can't tell who you're talking to or whether you've already responded to that person.

Thanks, guys.

-Allison

Titles Are So Passe

2006-04-28T20:37:00.000-05:00

So! I have been studiously been avoiding commenting on this whole "Duke in the national news media" thingie. It's hard work to think about this stuff, you know that? I mean, I'm not a total rube and have been near the epicenter of Big Deals before - Barnett Slepian lived not so far away from me - but this is different. As a member of a self-selecting group of individuals who choose to ally their identity with a particular institution, it is - let's say "difficult" - to then see the entirety of that institution slagged all up and down everywhere. I have a hard enough time controlling myself when people start to hate on JJ Redick, and they're just jealous.

It is not lost on me that I have done a fair amount of slagging myself, and I do not pretend to agree wholeheartedly with certain of the school's policies regarding personal responsibility. That said, I love this school and I love the people I know here, and I vehemently defend the administrative response to this crisis. It is my fervent hope that this terribleness will cause the school to think about the issues brought up in my slagfest and, you know, start doing something about them. Because although people are enjoying their ability to hate on the Duke student body for their richness and elitism (which, did you know that Duke guarantees to meet the financial need of every student accepted?), it is just stupid to accuse the administrators and professors taking part in the fallout of same.

At any rate, in an email exchange that took place last week between me and another blogger, some of whose viewpoints differ from mine, it became clear to me that I have a responsibility to re-talk about this stuff. After all, it's been a month since I really posted last, and a lot has happened in that month. So here's my statement:

I no longer believe anything I have heard from anyone.

I was originally swayed to believe that someone was raped that evening. Through an extensive analysis of my own viewpoints, I have come to realize that I held to that belief not because of any intrinsic hatred toward the lacrosse team or Duke, but because I have this nasty habit of trusting authority figures, especially those older than myself. So when Mike Nifong came out and said "there was a rape", I believed that there was a rape.

Now it's become glaringly obvious that Mike Nifong cannot be trusted. He talked too fast about too much and boxed himself into a corner he cannot get out of. If he finds his previous statements to be erroneous, he cannot take them back. He can whine about "wanting back his anonymity", but that just makes him look like a bigger hypocrite. In short, he has no credibility whatsoever. So everything I believed about this case is now moot. I, and everyone else in the country, are left with the following pieces of evidence:

A history of abusive and homophobic behavior on the part of one of the accused
Timestamped photographs that indicate the goings-on at various points during the evening, but seem to have a great big gap right around the time that the rape allegedly happened
Victim IDs that may or may not be reliable (I hang around Aaron enough to know that picking people out of a lineup doesn't always work out, but I don't buy the arguments of the people who say using a Powerpoint to ID, as did the DPD, is inherently flawed)

Bottom line? That's not enough, guys. Until we get a forensic report detailing a doctor's judgement of whether or not she was raped (also, all you people crowing about how "CONSISTENT WITH RAPE DOESN'T MEAN SHE WAS RAPED"? shut up), an indication of what, if any, potentially DNA-bearing evidence was recovered on her body, what happened with the results of that DNA evidence, and some other stuff that I haven't thought about, it's not good enough for me. I am not convinced.

Now, this stuff about the New Black Panthers coming to visit. Let's talk about that. I have gotten an email warning me to be vigilant in the residence halls. Please weigh in, my newfound community of respectfully-disagreeing people whom I appreciate and who can call me Allison, because that is my name, rather than Allistan, which is a sitename.

I Do a Happy Dance, in my Tiny Pants

2006-04-27T19:59:00.000-05:00

After a five-hour, unauthorized, probably counter-to-University-reading-period-guidelines session at video games class today, I am finished with my class time in college.

HEAVY.

All that stands between me and freedom is one impossible paper and one surprise paper! as in, you did a whole other project that you thought you'd finished a month ago, but surprise! you owe us critical analysis now!

I hate school.

A Question of Character

2006-04-20T02:10:00.000-05:00

My first class today was optional. Unfortunately, neither God nor the Fates had conspired to let me know this, so I found myself wandering West at the crack of 10am (trust me - I am in college. this is obscenely early for me). As I stepped into the Perk to buy myself some breakfast, I saw a girl walk by me in a white t-shirt, emblazoned across the front with a single word:

INNOCENT

No, I thought. That cannot mean what I think it means. She cannot be saying that, not this way.

But she was. As I walked around West today, I saw gaggles and gaggles more of people - almost exclusively women - walking around wearing t-shirts lending their support to the lacrosse team. To say it was hard for me to watch is the understatement of the Cenozoic era. I was...it made me sick.

Look, I am not saying that these guys are definitely guilty. I don't know anything more about the evidence than the rest of you, and if they have those timestamped pictures, well, that could be a problem for the prosecution. But, see, the primary basis of these women's claim that these two guys did not rape that girl is this (this too):

"Anybody would be so proud to have them as their sons."

"[Reade is] one of the nicest kids I've ever had the pleasure of representing."

"I think Collin is literally one of the most kind and gentle people I've ever met."

"I know [Seligmann] personally and his girlfriend really well. There is no way that this event even happened if this is the guy that the stripper is '100-percent sure' about."

These are nice boys, officers. Nice boys don't rape people. You must have the wrong gentlemen.

But let's take a little look-see at the rape statistics in the United States, shall we?

First off, fewer than 40% of all rapes are ever reported.

Even so, 17% of all women and 3% of all men report having been raped (thus creating the commonly-cited 1 in 4 women will be raped in their lifetime statistic).

300,000 women and 90,000 men report annually that they have been raped.

80% of all rapes are acquaintance rapes.

64% of women who are raped and 16% of men who are raped are intimately related to their rapist (this means boyfriends, husbands, girlfriends, exes, dates, etc).

So, according to the math, one million people, male and female, are raped every year in this country. 800,000 of these people know their attackers. Almost 530,000 of them are intimate with their attackers.

Those are big numbers, boys and girls.

Those numbers say that over half a million people every year in this country are raped by someone they have CHOSEN to put themselves in a situation with.

Their rapists inspire trust in them - they act kind, they act caring, or funny, or genuine, or maybe they're married or dating. These rapists act like nice guys in every respect but one:

THEY RAPE WOMEN (or men).

In 500,000 cases every year, one person's impression of another is not sufficient protection for them. In 500,000 cases every year, one person puts on an act until a door is closed, or a partner is drunk, or they get really angry. In 500,000 cases every year, someone who is loved and cherished and thought highly of commits rape.

And in 500,000 cases every year, someone who is loved and cherished and thought highly of IS raped. To deny this fact and aver that your impression of someone is sufficient proof they are not a rapist is the epitome of insult to these people, because you imply that they were raped by their own fault, for not seeing or detecting something they should have, because god knows no one who SEEMS good or funny or kind could possibly be a rapist.

Except they are.

So please, use timestamped photos as your evidence these two kids are not rapists. Use receipts or eyewitness testimony or whatever you have on hand to prove your point. But do not use your judgement of their character, because that is not good enough.

Welcome to the Nexus of Unfulfilled Expectations

2006-04-19T11:27:00.000-05:00

So you are probably wondering where I am, seeing as how there have been DNA test results and indictments and protests and campus-wide temperature taking and blaaaaaah. Please trust me when I say that I do have opinions on all of these things - opinions that are probably unpopular at best around this here campus and could be viewed as traitorous at worst.

However, a certain familially-inherited perversity is pushing me to not write about things when they are expected (and I can't find the specific post I'm looking for - you'll just have to trust me that he said it).

Also, there's the matter of the term paper, currently 35 pages long, that I am supposed to be writing. I was deadlocked on it for weeks until yesterday, when I had an epiphany during my yoga class* (we're talking heavenly chorus, descending angels, Monty Python foot-type revelation here) and now see spread in front of me a year's worth of work to do in two weeks. There is no practical way that I will be able to accomplish this, and yet I am going to try. So, in all likelihood, you will not be hearing from me in any substantive way for at least those two weeks.

*Why is it that, immediately upon hearing my yoga teacher tell me to stop thinking about the future and what I have to get done that day, I start thinking about the future and what I have to get done that day? Stupid perversity.

**HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JEANNIE! I love you more than a fat kid loves cake. With frosting. And those tiny candy figurines that go on top.

Art: Not Easy.

2006-04-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

So one of my final projects this semester is making a Flash cartoon. I have always suspected those Flash people to be crazy, and my suspicion is confirmed: this is SO HARD AND IT TAKES FOR EVER. Like, walking? Walking is complex to draw, man. It makes my head hurt, with the movement of the calves and the thighs and the tweening and uuuuuggggh.

In the interests of, er, "honing my craft", I've been wandering around looking at all sorts and manner of Flash movies lately, and so it is with great confidence and a honed palette that I recommend the cartoons at Bitey Castle. The music is fantastic and the animation is really fun.

The farty yellow dude is my favorite.

(You are wondering, Allison, weren't we talking about heavy stuff? We were, but I have to do some work in order to graduate, so...I'll see you guys around, maybe.)

Vindication:

2006-04-06T14:01:00.000-05:00

(vin'di-ka'shun)

1. The act of pre-empting a presidential mandate by a week and a half.

"3. Examination of student judicial process and practices. Questions have been raised within the Duke and Durham communities about the way Duke deals with problems of student behavior and the applicability of our Community Standard to social life. The Executive Committee of the Academic Council has charged the Council's Student Affairs Committee, chaired by Professor Prasad Kasibhatla, to study Duke's existing judicial processes and practices for students and make any recommendations for change to the administration and faculty by June 1.

4. Campus Culture Initiative. Duke traditionally has given its students a great deal of freedom, but at times the exercise of that freedom is not matched with a commensurate sense of responsibility. We must be concerned about issues of campus culture this episode has raised quite apart from the lacrosse team. This is a time for Duke to take a hard look at our institutional practices to assess the extent to which they do, or do not, promote the values we expect students to live by.

I have asked Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Dean of Trinity College Robert Thompson to direct a Campus Culture Initiative involving faculty, students, and staff. The task of the Initiative is to evaluate and suggest improvements in the ways Duke educates students in the values of personal responsibility, consideration for others, and mutual respect in the face of difference and disagreement. The goal of this initiative is not to tell students "what to think" in some simplistic or doctrinaire way. Nevertheless, this is our chance to take the ethical dimension of education much more seriously than heretofore. An important task of the Initiative will be to enlist the faculty more fully in this broader work of education. Since we need to engage the whole of the student population in this process, we will also need to involve all of Duke's overlapping student groups and communities and learn how they can be parts of the solution.

Although the academic year will soon draw to a close, I believe the Initiative's work should begin this spring. We should not lose the chance for education in large and small groups supplied by this moment of heightened sensitivity. Some work can be done over the coming summer, and we are looking to pioneer a period of focused engagement on campus issues for upper class students in the fall. In honesty, some of the Initiative's work will require long-lasting attention and is unsusceptible to any quick fix. This would include promoting a more responsible approach to the culture of campus drinking, a major factor in Duke's recent crisis and the source of much bad college conduct throughout the United States. I have asked Vice Provost Thompson to report on the Initiative's progress at the end of this term and again in the fall."

President Richard Brodhead, Duke University

http://dukenews.duke.edu/2006/04/rhbletter.html

Sports: The Cause of and Solution to All Life's Problems

2006-04-05T23:19:00.000-05:00

"The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton."

--probably not the Duke of Wellington

***

It's been hard for me to understand the range of opinions and emotions the late furor has brought up around campus. It's hard for me to understand the opinions and emotions it's brought up in myself alone - ACLU liberal campaigning for innocence until guilt proven,
feminist screaming to expel and lock away anyone who can be proven to have even been in the house at the time of the rape;
school employee knowing that the policies breed the crime,
loyal student crying weakly that we're not all like that, please believe me, we're not;
devotee of the Right Thing to Do wanting this coverage to keep going and going until we can learn a lesson from it at last,
tired little girl wanting it to all go away, please, because I can't be sad like this for much longer.
And beyond me there's a hurricane of other fears and passions and commitments on campus - those claiming the team is an "easy target" because they're white and rich, those claiming race had nothing to do with what happened, those claiming the woman made it all up and won't we look like fools when the DNA finally comes back and it's proven she's a lying slut?*

Beyond that we have Durham, with another set of opinions entirely.

Then there's the rest of the country,

The rest of the world,

And you, too.

Being at the confluence of so many attentions is exhausting.

***

Within the maelstrom of guilt and blame and recrimination, there is a rock. I think it's safe to say that everyone at Duke and in Durham believes in this one fundamental principle:

Mike Nifong is an idiot.

I sincerely believe that there is not a single living soul left in Durham County who has confidence in the DA. The reasons for this lack of confidence differ, but include the following:

The taking of DNA evidence en masse from team members before charges were filed violates their civil rights (WRONG);
By talking smack about the case all up and down the media Nifong is seriously reducing the probability of anyone getting a fair trial here, plus I think there's something in his job description about not really talking to the press all that much, right?;
Nifong's imminent re-election is of far more importance to him than the ultimate well-being of this woman;
Announcing the results of the DNA evidence would be released this week, no, last week, no, next week, no, this week, isn't helping anyone to cope with any of this in a helpful way;
If he doesn't keep his flipping mouth shut starting yesterday, the Very Expensive Defense Attorneys are going to find something they can latch onto to use against him and the woman will be denied justice for what will happen to her;
and last, YOU'RE GOING TO GET SOMEONE HURT, DUMMY.

Since this whole thing started (I can't even refer to it as "the rape" anymore, or "the lacrosse case" - it is "the thing", the important thing, the only thing), Duke students have received a lot of warnings. Some of them come from the administration, telling us not to go off-campus or near the house in question lest we be caught in a driveby. Some of them come from our bosses and professors, telling us not to talk to the press, just in case, and we don't want to be subpoenaed, do we? Some of them are coming from Durham. One of them, in particular, came when two classmates of mine went to go get a hamburger and were surrounded in the drivethrough by angry people yelling about how they were on NCCU territory and not allowed there. Then someone punched one of the kids in the back of the head.

You won't find me campaigning against NCCU's right to be angry. They have every right to be outraged. If a kid from Central came up to me right now, I would have neither the ability nor the desire to defend Duke to him, because this is an indefensible situation. But what right does Nifong have to keep issuing statements that not only put HIS CASE at risk, but foment local instability and hatred and fear? His job as the District Attorney is to defend the well-being of his constituency, which I would think would include reining in his fat mouth until such a time as he has something of importance to say that will interest someone besides FOXNews.

***

So here we have it, a thundering whirlwind surrounding a rock of rancor. Bodies and neighborhoods are being swept up like swarms of so many gnats, rolling and tumbling until there's no distinguishing how things were before the tornado touched down above us.

Here is what we also had:

We had 70 points to Maryland's 67.
We had less than 10 seconds left in the game.

Here is what the storm had:

The storm had the ball.
The storm had Kristi Tolliver.
The storm roared and crashed as Tolliver hit an impossible three to send the game into overtime.
The storm swept up Jessica Foley's last minute three as we attempted to get ourselves a second overtime.
The storm had the NCAA championship.

So I suppose it shouldn't have been such a surprise to me to find myself sobbing as I heard Marissa Coleman scream as she jumped up and down on the court, ecstatic. After all, this wasn't about giving up a victory to Maryland.

It was giving up a victory to the storm, and the rock is such cold comfort.

*Yes, I have heard all of those things stated. No joke.
**I reserve the right to seriously edit this to make it suck less, and also to make it not equate some things it might now be equating. I'm not used to all this attention, guys. It makes me nervous.

Teehee

2006-03-31T23:48:00.000-06:00

I have found that I am on the blogroll of a site called http://www.whatisliberalism.com, along with a number of people I like, admire, and in one case, love.

1. Um, wow. Thanks, guys! I like the linky linky!

2. If I am thought to encompass the definition of any part of American politics the country is definitely doomed.

3. I am linked under the subcategory called "Academics", right there a couple lines under Bitch, Ph.D.

3a. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHA
3b. AAAAAAAAAAAHAHHAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHHHHAAAAAA
3c. Phew...whoo! Oh god...oh man...HAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAHAHAHAHAHA
3d. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHAHAHAHAHHA
3e. oooooooooh god. Oh, I think I need a cigarette now. Man. Have you...have you ever read anything I've written?* because you need to reclassify me under the "amateurish idiot" section, I think. I mean, I appreciate the compliment, but man.

*For one good thing I have written scroll down two posts or go here. I was considering leaving it up top, but that's what permalinks are for. Please read it, please...and then you could link to it, maybe? I think it's good. Of course, I wrote it, so I'm not exactly impartial, but...I would give you a cookie.**
**Real, not internet.

A Funny Story and a Totally Meaningless Analogy

2006-03-31T21:36:00.000-06:00

So Wednesday I had a spur-of-the-moment job interview. I hadn't really planned on going, but it was one of those things where the confluence of word of mouth and email led to me showing up at the Career Center at the ungodly hour of 8:30am. The night before I had made myself a mental list of things I would have to bring to the interview: transcript, resume, and tissues for my minor but incredibly annoying Californian rhinovirus. I puzzled over which outfit to wear for a while (my normal interview shirt is, como decimos en español, reeky) and went to bed early.

I started out the morning in rare form. I realized only after I had arrived at the West bus stop ten minutes before the interview was to begin that I'd left my transcript on my desk. I didn't have enough time to go back and get it without being late, so I resolved to explain jokingly that I was so! excited! to get here! that I had left it, and would come bring it by later. Then I stopped by ePrint to print out my resume, and accidentally selected the terminal with the paper jam, losing my job in the queue and leaving me without a resume. Ok, I told myself. This is explicable. Just bring it by later with the transcript.

I went into the interview and sat talking to the head honcho, the principal of the school I'd be applying to. It was going all right - she was a little deadpan, but I was answering the questions with a lot of references to PASSION AND CARING ABOUT THE KIDS AND UNDERSTANDING AND RIGOROUS STANDARDS! ala TFA, and I think she was appreciative. Then, all of a sudden, it came upon me - a huge, embarrassing, unstoppable sneeze. I rared up to release it, and here's how that went:

ahhhh-OHCRAPCRAPCRAPTHETISSUES-CHOOOOOOOOO.

So now I'm sitting in a room with the woman who will ultimately decide my employment, my head hidden behind my hand, a monster drip of goo hanging out of my nose, and nothing to wipe it on.

I deadpanned it.

"Excuse me - SNOOOOOORK. So how did you decide you wanted to open a school in the Dominican Republic?"

She spent the rest of the interview staring at me. I can't decide whether it was because she was impressed with the way I handled it or because I had something hanging out of my left nostril. I'm guessing choice b.

***

I have used my extensive 21 years of life experience to form an overarching philosophy about the kinds of people in the world:

PINEAPPLE vs. COCONUT*

The vast majority of people on the planet are, I think, pineapples. They have a hard outer surface, which can prick you if you approach it the wrong way, so you have to use some caution when you go about handling them for the first time. However, when you get to know them, you are granted access to the tasty, tasty interior - and, though the skin is thick, it's really not that difficult to get inside it (a sharp knife helps). Some of this interior is sweet tastiness - goals, plans, inside jokes. Some of it is squishy, sticky juice - fears, insecurities, tiny unpleasantnesses like their penchant to steal all the jelly packets from the restaurant to take them home. Sometimes the juice can be overwhelming, and it makes you all sticky and gross, and you begin to wonder why you even bothered to open the pineapple in the first place.

But even further within the pineapple is the core. The core is a place of inner toughness - it supports the pineapple structurally. So (to go back to the person part of this analogy) after you've gotten to know the person, you can go through some difficulties with them and get juice all over your hands, but you know that even within that juice there is a kind of support that keeps you wanting to know them. It's the thing that makes that person able to crack jokes about themselves even when they're really upset, for instance, or bring you chocolate when you have a bad day even though theirs might have been even worse. This is the essence of that person.

Coconuts are kind of the opposite. The outer shell of a coconut is incredibly hard. You can smack it, punch it, throw it to the ground, hit it with a hammer, drive over it with your car, and there's still no guarantee you'll ever get it open. Sometimes you get discouraged and go back to eating pineapples, because you know they're good and they're not giving you half so much trouble. But sometimes you persevere with the coconut, because you think that if the fruit's this hard to get open there must be something worthwhile inside it.

But when you crack open a coconut, all there is inside is the juice, and it runs all over your hands and clothes, and you're left with nothing at all of substance besides the shell you've already cracked. And you drove over that with your car, so you don't want to eat it now.

I don't really know what I mean to say by making this analogy, but it was just occurring to me that I need more piña in my life and less colada, if you know what I mean. I hate coconuts.**

*Feel free to replace this with PREDATOR vs. ALIEN, if that speaks to you more. ROCHER vs. CADBURY CREME EGG also works.
**I mean, I like REAL coconuts. I just don't like the coconuts in this analogy, which are actually people who use arrogance and unpleasantness to cover their own insecurities. I hope you'd figured that out already.

Class, Privilege, and Rape at Duke

2006-03-28T11:43:00.000-06:00

or For the First Time Ever, Allison Has Chosen a Title that Reflects the Contents of the Post

I spent part of Saturday morning sitting on the floor of the Phoenix airport, attempting to choke down a truly odious chicken caesar salad sandwich while half-listening to the TV behind me. As I fumbled to get the foul tomatoes off the mayonnaise-soaked bread, I heard CNN briefly above the airport noise:

"Duke..."

Then nothing. Then "incident...house off campus...investigation."

Oh well, I thought. Finally one of the off-campus frat boys has committed an act of vandalism stupid enough to get themselves caught by the police, and CNN is running a special on town-gown relations. That must be it.

This is what I continued to believe until I got to work that night, where Beth informed me that 46 members of the lacrosse team have been DNA tested under suspicion of gang-raping, sodomizing, and strangling an exotic dancer they hired for a party.

I want to talk about this, but I don't want to talk about race, even though the victim is black and her attackers are white (46 of the 47 members of the lacrosse team are white, thus the testing number). I'm not qualified to comment on that, and there are people working on race relations at Duke who are far more eloquent, dedicated, and intelligent than I, and it is they who should be consulted on what this means. I read somewhere in the Chronicle that it appears to the rest of the world that we are still fighting Jim Crow down here at Duke, and I am not disinclined to believe that statement. But I'm not smart enough to weigh in on this in any other capacity than that.

I want to talk about Duke. I want to talk about Duke's judicial system. I want to talk about the fact that Duke's judicial system is seriously, dangerously broken, and that brokenness is what leads to incidents like this happening. I want to talk about how I believe that the status of Residence Life is directly responsible for Duke's social culture, and I want to talk about how unfair that is.

***

Every time Duke gets an endowment (which is becoming more and more common), I hear students complaining about how that money isn't invested in what they want to invest it in - housing. Dorms still aren't air conditioned, the water quality is highly suspect throughout campus, and Epworth is slowly sinking into the ground, inch by groaning inch. Why do they not fix housing, people wonder.

What few Duke students understand is that RLHS is an entity with an independent operating budget. No matter how much money is pledged to Duke, RLHS never gets a cut of it. They are totally dependent on rent revenues from the rooms students occupy to maintain their payroll and repairs. This is a large part of the reason why Duke has a mandatory three-year on-campus living clause - without that money, RLHS would be unable to maintain repairs on the dorms, thus encouraging more student flight from sub-standard housing, ultimately leading to a downward spiral in which dorms are closed altogether. Of course, RLHS does not want that, and I am willing to bet that one of the motivating factors behind the imminent Central revamp is RLHS' desire to keep seniors on campus so as to keep getting money from them, rather than having them flee to the Belmont.

***

Here's another thing people don't necessarily understand: Duke's alcohol system and, by extension, our domestic honor system as a whole, is messed up. I would go so far as to say it is irreparable, even.

Duke students will beg to differ with me on this, I am sure. I bet some would even say that there isn't ENOUGH drinking going on on-campus, Duke is trying to kill the school's social scene and that makes Duke the Enemy, and all that claptrap I keep reading in the Chronicle. The students who make this kind of statement are a. stupid and b. allowing their own penchant towards committing various illegal acts to cloud their judgement. The campus-wide amnesia about Raheem Bath's death in 1999 allows Duke students to forget that Duke's social scene will, in turn, kill them if given half a chance.

If they stopped for a minute and thought about what they were saying, Duke students would realize the truth: Duke does not have it out for underage alcoholics on campus. I say this with total certainty.

I would venture the guess that every single solitary resident of Duke's campus has a repeat offender living on their floor with them. Repeat offenders are students who get written up once and are a bit nervous. They go to the RC and receive a dressing-down. Then they drink in their room again, and get written up again, go back to the RC, get a dressing-down. The third time it happens, they may have to write an essay on personal responsibility. But by the fourth or fifth or sixth time it happens, the repeat offender realizes that they will NEVER get in any real trouble for what they have done. I know of residents who have been written up more than ten times without getting booted out of housing (the purported consequence for repeat offenders). I know of residents in Brown, the freshman substance-free dorm with a supposed first-strike-you're-out policy, who have gone on drunken rampages and not suffered anything more than a stern talking-to. And, lest you label me a Puritan, I am not necessarily talking about low-key Coronas and a football game here. I am talking about drinking that leads to destructive behavior, obnoxious behavior, vandalism, and midnight hospital trips.

On the flip side of this coin you have the school administration, which likes to pretend every so often that they're thinking of abolishing fraternity sections to scare them straight. These same administrators then go to tailgate before football games, an event at which I would venture to guess more than 75% of the attendees are underage (but 100% of the attendees are wasted), and hand out water bottles so that no one gets dehydrated. These same administrators then make a big show out of hemming and hawing and fussing about student integrity and the honor code when something like underage drinking busts and other extra-legalities go down, seemingly ignoring the fact that they're FACILITATING THIS KIND OF BEHAVIOR. And no one has ANY plans to change ANY of the standard policies.

Why does this kind of thing happen at Duke, you ask. The answer is two-fold: first, there is an old guard of alumni and trustees that pines for the old days at Duke when beer ran like water down the middle of the quad and are loath to make any strong policies enforcing OBEYING THE FREAKING LAW. These people ignore the fact that although drinking at 18 was legal when the majority of them were here, that is now no longer the case, and they are being idiots. Many of these same people have legacy children who are now Duke students and would yank their donations should daddy's little girl ever be punished for drinking.
Second, because of RLHS' independent operating budget, they will not (ever)(ever)(ever) evict someone from housing. Ever. They need the money, and they can't afford the outrage, and so this complacency has set in that allows everyone in the system to keep violating the rules with no consequences. The only way RLHS can even strike back at these people is if they are members of a fraternity, in which case the fraternity can be (and has been, in two cases) disbanded. But because the individuals do not get kicked off campus, they are free to, oh, rent a house somewhere off East and resume their activities there.

The bottom line is that, despite all its high-flown rhetoric to the contrary, Duke consistently promotes the creation of a society where its residents have no respect for the law or the consequences of their actions on others, because this respect is never forced upon them. So despite the horror of it, the utter evil and heinousness of the acts performed that weekend, no Duke student or official should be able to pretend that this rape is an aberration from the spirit of this school. Regardless of whether alcohol was involved in the rape (though it was), this is about how Duke creates a fundamental culture of disrespect and disregard of the law. Alcohol is just the medium.

And Aaron, upon proofing this post, has driven home the point that not all people who make illegal alcohol-related decisions are rapists. I know that. I drank underage on occasion myself, and I didn't get in trouble for it either, and I am not evil because of it. But Duke's alcohol policy serves to reinforce the pre-existing sense of entitlement some of our students come packaged with, and it's that sense that was in play two weeks ago when this rape happened. If Duke took its mission to create the new giants of this world seriously, it would impress on them that there ARE consequences for transgressive actions.

THIS is what causes the strain in Duke-Durham relations; THIS is what ensures that Duke will never have the undergraduate population of intelligentsia to which it aspires, and will instead continue to play daycare to a bunch of drunken, spoiled brats with the moral intelligence of two-year olds; THIS is the dynamic that creates a subgroup that will go out and drink themselves into oblivion, cheering themselves all the way, just after having been accused of raping a woman who was just putting herself through SCHOOL. And in doing so, the university that seems to pride itself so on creating America's Future Leaders will vomit up a subgroup of young men and women intent only on getting away with whatever it is they happen to have done this time.

RLHS must be allowed access to the university's endowment, and that endowment must be wrested from the hands of the AARP-ready alumni who pine for the old days of Duke. Until this happens, Duke will continue to be segregated between earnest, (mostly) law-abiding, hard-working kids and drunken yahoos. When RLHS and a conscientious administration have the power to curb the irresponsible, destructive behavior that goes on here every year it will be possible to close the Duke-Durham divide and produce a student body of the kind to which a university of this caliber is obligated.

I'm TIRED of it. I'm TIRED of this school, because for every repeat offender it churns out Duke disrespects not only me and every law-abiding, morally-intact member of its population who's just here to get an education, not only Durham and its citizens who are forced to put up with the repeat offender's crap when their sense of entitlement spills over the retaining walls of East onto the streets, but the mission of higher education to which it supposedly adheres so deeply. This is not the school to which I thought I applied.

*I know nothing has been proven, and I know innocent until proven guilty, for anyone who's considering broaching the subject. Just pretend I went through and wrote "alleged" before every instance of the word "rape" (otherwise it messes up the rhetoric). And even if it turns out that this didn't happen, a conclusion at which I am inclined to laugh uproariously, my point stands. Duke has averaged a rape per semester during my time here, along with god knows how many more unreported date rapes. The same principle is in play.*

*Late edit (3-31): I want to make it clear that by "administrators" I don't mean RCs. RCs have the worst, most thankless job at this university, and deserve far more support than they ever get. Hi, Anne.*

*Later edit (4-4): Thanks to Inside Higher Ed for the link. I welcome all through-clickers to comment.*

You Guys Are PATHETIC.

2006-03-26T01:19:00.000-06:00

*sigh*

1. Anime Homestar to anime Strong Bad, Strong Bad email "japanese cartoon"

2. Strong Mad re: waffle with "BUG" written on it in syrup, Strong Bad email "rampage"

3. Strong Bad as Jambi the Genie, 2005 Halloween episode

4. Easter egg, Strong Bad email "kids book"

5. Strong Bad to Viklas, Strong Bad email "little questions"

6. Second easter egg, Strong Bad email "kids book"

7. So-and-So, Teen Girl Squad #5

8a. Strong Bad re: kicking Homestar in the face, Cheat's Crazy Cartoon
b. The Ugly One slapping the King of Town, Strong Bad email "virus"

9. Homestar to no one and apropos of nothing, Strong Bad email "crying"

10. Saddy Dumpington to some girl, toon "A Folky Tale"

a Pre-Interview Jitters Game

2006-03-22T00:39:00.000-06:00

or Name that Homestar Quote!

Below are ten quotes taken somewhere off the Homestar Runner website. Name the character who uttered the quote and the context or skit from which it was taken. Whoever has the most correct answers in the comments by Friday at midnight will get a neat present from me of some kind that I buy in San Francisco somewheres.

1. "Hey, Stink-O-Man! Everybody says you're the guy, but I want to be the guy, too!"

2. "THIS BOOK IS TOO LONG."

3. "Meka leka hi, meka the Cheat throw a TV on him."

4. "Eh, Steve! is not exactly a person."

5. "Oh really? I could never tell that you weren't from around here."

6. "One day his friend, Pom Pom, asked him to enter some sort of eyeless fish-beast. He said ok."

7. "Ow, my hopes of reaching first base!"

8. "I can do it. I can do it nine times." (both instances give extra credit)

9. "Yeah, you stay over there."

10. "I just saw a baby chick choke on a worm. They both died. Isn't that great?"

2006-03-20T15:22:00.000-06:00

Dear Department of Medieval and Renaissance Studies,

I love you! You are such a sweet department. Thank you for letting me keep my minor despite the fact that I blatantly do not deserve to do so. I hope that you continue to have fewer than ten declared majors and minors every year so that you can continue to give them the happy love and kisses that you have given me.

What is that you say? You want more than ten majors and minors? That will get you more funding and allow you to improve as a department?

Oh. Then, uh...go away.

Allison

(non sequitur:
Aaron: fuck the establishment
Aaron: up with ringpops
Allison: hahahha
Allison: down with capitalism
Allison: to each ringpops according to his need)

2006-03-18T01:56:00.000-06:00

Hello! I am not here. I am in California. In my absence, I have asked my friend Mr. Bun to keep you company.

Be sure to tell him you like his hat.

It Might Not Work Because I Don't Really Know How to Tie My Own Shoes

2006-03-07T22:30:00.000-06:00

Wait, why are all these people here? Get off my lawn, you kids! *throws a newspaper at you*

All right! Now that it's just me and Mom again, let's get down to the BIZ-NESS!

I feel like I've done a lot of talking about nothing of real importance for my future, so here's some substantive stuff that's going on:

1. I got an email today and it's looking that I might not end up getting a minor. I'm not really upset about this, per se, because it was an accident anyway and eh, easy come, easy go. Apparently I misread a course requirement ("wait - but the website says you have to take either 114 OR 115 - no wait, that's an AND. Crap.") I'm going to get in touch with the department tomorrow and see if there's some, I don't know, independent study or something I can do to make up for the missed class.

2. The thesis is no longer for honors because HEY! I DON'T CARE ABOUT HONORS ANYMORE! So I will write the paper, and I will have it, and then when grad schools ask me "but can you write?" I will whip it out and say "here is a project I will continue to work on when you let me into your program PLEEEEEEZ". The above two items may sound like a terrible dropping of standards has been going on in AlliStan lately, but it's because

3. I MADE PHI BETA KAPPA* AND I DON'T CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE NOW. Anyway, I'd rather concentrate on the classes I'm in and make sure my GPA stays pretty. Plus I never really wanted to write a thesis anyway - I just wanted distinction on my diploma, and so I chose the thesis topic the night before the due date and I chose it because I knew the advisor would accept me if that's what I wanted to write about. Had I told anybody that before? I don't think I had. So, long story short, I got myself into this mess because I am a terrible status freak and it has taken this long for reality to catch up with me. w00t.

4. I got a letter from the Peace Corps last night saying that they want me to go to an orthopedic physician to have my back evaluated. I am so angry I was about to have force lightning go shoot out my fingers at yoga today. Look, Peace Corps. First, I'm going to be teaching English, not carrying steel tubes across the tundra. My back doesn't matter. Second, if my health was bad enough that I thought I'd need medical care in the next two years, I wouldn't volunteer to have myself shipped out to A YURT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. And what business of yours is it if I'm on birth control?

All of this has me so angry that I'm awfully happy I

5. got an interview with Teach for America! It's on the 22nd. They are now officially my first choice. Yay! Part of the interview is that I have to teach, though, and that's really scary to me. The lesson has to be
a. on a legitimate topic that would be taught to kids K-12 (I get to pick age and subject)
b. only 5 minutes long
c. I have to teach one concept, like, integrally. I can't just get up there and pick up in the middle of the sentence, so
d. There has to be some way for me to evaluate that my "students" have retained what I said.
So you know I can't just get up there, say "synecdoche!", and sit down. I have to have visuals or a song or an acronym or something and, frankly, I'm scared of stuff like that. I'm starting to wonder if I can't just assume I'll be teaching kindergarten and give my evaluators and co-interviewees a refresher on how to tie their shoes.

I don't even remember what I learned in elementary school, let alone how to teach it. I'm sitting here mulling over German prepositions in my head until I realize wait, you don't learn German in grade school. What can I TEACH? I don't KNOW anything!

*I had been making a concerted effort not to talk about this because I didn't want to sound conceited. However, I've come to the conclusion that most people don't know what it is and those that know don't really care. So I'm assuming that you fall into these categories and my mentioning it won't bother you.

It's Like A Puzzle Except It Makes Me Suicidal

2006-03-02T00:11:00.000-06:00

I just spent two hours validating the HTML on the site.

I hate you, site.

Tiny Quiz

2006-02-28T22:57:00.000-06:00

Can you guess what makes me love this song more than it probably deserves?

Here's a hint: chord progression.

Crash Test Dummies, Two Knights and Maidens

Ok, So That Last Was Pretty Much Claptrap? and Now I'm Spouting Some Crap So It'll Go Off The Page Right Quick.

2006-02-23T00:49:00.000-06:00

Tuna casserole should be its own food group.

It's nutritionally complete. Starch, via egg noodles. Vegetables come from the mushrooms in the soup and the peas you stir in. The tuna is protein, and I think there's milk in cream soups, right, so that's dairy. All the nutrients a growing person needs are immediately available. These nutrients may not be in quite the right proportions, but that's not tuna casserole's fault.

But it's only good if it's made properly, so the egg noodles go all crunchy on top. Soggy tuna casseroles should be thrown into tiny black holes and imploded.

Also: turkey bulgur stuff. Discuss!

And

2006-02-20T18:25:00.000-06:00

I walk up the steps to Epworth every day. There are five of them - I've memorized the coffee stains, the leaf bits, the places where the paint is flaking off the railing. Five slabs of granite, then five feet till home.

It was a couple weeks into October when I first saw the tiny slip of paper wedged into the seam between the second and third steps. The size of my pinky nail, on slick white magazine stock, all it said was

and

I smiled the first time I saw it, wondering how I could work it into a metaphor. A canned blog post, I thought. Perfect.

The weeks passed; I couldn't find anything to do with that

and

Neither rain nor wind could touch it - stuck between the steps, under the porch awning, it was protected. I saw it several times a day, and it became the litmus test for my day. It was a cheerful and; a mocking and; an expectant and; an impatient and. Slowly, it began to tease me.

You've turned in your application, and?
You've got a recommendation letter, and?
You've got three papers to write this week, and?
Your boss wants to fire you, and?

You are imperfect

and

your life is incomplete

and

your best efforts are not good enough

and

you are alone now

***

Jeannie came to visit this weekend. Standing behind the counter at work, I heard someone say "hey" and all of a sudden I was trying to hug her around the display case and then we both ran to the door and we were laughing at ourselves and I was thinking how silly, how biologically improbable it is for one second with one person to encompass everything, the whole range of emotion and anticipation that's built over months and months of nothing.

Chameleons can point their eyes in two different directions at once. I try to imagine how they process what they see, and for a heartbeat Saturday night I felt it - one eye knew for sure that nothing had changed, ever, that neither of us had left and the past semester was compressed into a day, a second, a vacation from which we had both just returned. The other eye saw nine months past and 36 hours to come and then who knows, a month or a semester or a year or who knows, who can say, nothing's permanent, new history now on both sides, different people, familiar but changed.

I stepped around the counter and the two visions snapped, clicked into one: everything is different and everything's the same. Love is love; love endures.

***

We came back from the basketball game sweaty and dehydrated, put bids on shower order. I went first, hurried through the hot water, tried to be the gracious host. Jeannie and Brian and Sarah lounged in the living room. Jeannie called to me as I stepped out into the hall with a towel on my head.

"Brian wrote some magnetic poems on your fridge, you should come look."

"Good," I called back. "Glad somebody's using it." My hair was wet, and I bent down to rub it dry.

***

They left this morning. I woke up to say goodbye with hugs all around, then stumbled back to bed. When my alarm went off twenty minutes later, I leapt up - the room smelled like them and I was confused. I plodded into the bathroom. A small black speck lay embedded in the bathmat. I knelt down to pick it up. It was a magnet. The reverse bore a single word:

and

2006-02-20T14:38:00.000-06:00

Last night I watched JJ Redick break Duke's all-time scoring record, previously held by Johnny Dawkins.

Point #1: We had the best seats I have ever had in Cameron, I think.
Point #2: I cried. (shut up.)
Point #3: My voice output will be dramatically reduced for at least the next 24 hours.
Point #4: My legs are really sore. From the bouncing. The incessant bouncing.
Point #5: If JJ doesn't get PoY now I will bust some caps in some people's butts.

I Should Not Be Allowed to Operate Heavy Machinery

2006-02-17T16:52:00.000-06:00

I walk into the laundry room to get a Coke out the vending machine. There is a strange smell.

"Hmm, what is that smell?" I wonder.

"It smells like burning latex, almost."

"What could possibly be in the laundry room that smells like burning laOHOGOD."

I sprint over to the furthest dryer and pull it open. My bathmat is lying limp at the bottom of the drum, its latex no-skid pads seared brown.

I am going to get myself killed one of these days.

Idle Question

2006-02-16T19:12:00.000-06:00

Dick Cheney describes the moment in which his friend hit the ground riddled by buckshot from his gun as "one of the worst days in his life".

This begs the question: if that's only one of the worst days, what's his worst day? What's worse than shooting a dude? in the FACE? What beats that?

Suggestions welcome.

2006-02-13T10:59:00.000-06:00

As a part of the mind-bendingly stupid webpage design class I am taking, we have to design a webpage (HOLY CRAP, NO WAY). I have decided to use my page to taste-test and review chocolate. So if you have any chocolate suggestions, pass em on over (relatively cheap, please).

When Will I Ever Be Interesting Again?

2006-02-10T23:53:00.000-06:00

Today was a day of ritual coffeeshop drudgery. It's a lunch shift, but not so bad. I handle it well, though I had a penny-tucker today and I had to clench my fist under the counter to keep from slapping her.

I was slogging away when a blonde woman walked up to the counter and asked for a tea. She handed me a red travel mug to fill with water - a nice mug, shiny, with that special outer layer of plastic that holds in the heat and a white logo that said - wait, what?

A white logo that said TASTE, with the familiar coil of steam rising from the cup.

I held the mug in my hand for a minute, mulling over what to say to her. I decided to be safe.

"So, Taste...that's gotta be a chain, huh?" I giggled. Stupidly. So I would look stupid.

"No, actually, it's this cafe in this tiny town in New York called East A"

"NO WAY, I LIVE THERE." The look in her eyes indicated that I had scared the crap out of her.

"Oh...really? Actually, my in-laws own the cafe."

"Haha that's so cool! Yeah everyone goes there I mean we used to go to the other place called Exquisite Taste but it was a smaller venue, you know, so it was always crowded but their pastries are really good and it's kind of the place everyone goes when we get back from school to talk and hang out and they have these great couches and...stuff." I think this is where I ran out of breath.

"Uhh, yeah, that's...great." She backed away from the counter nervously, dunking her teabag to make it look like she had an excuse to leave.

"So yeah haha I mean have you ever been there? It's really cute and they have a cow? in the rafters? I mean not really. It's a blowup cow. And it's smaller than a regular cow." I was leaning over the counter to compensate for her backing away.

"No, I haven't. They never want to go when I come visit. Listen, I got a...thing. Ok bye." She ran away.

And that is how I scared the crap out of some poor lady today.

w00t

2006-02-09T14:39:00.000-06:00

We are doing the Allegri Miserere in choir again this semester. I love that song so muchly. The soprano soloist's part goes up to that high C and oooooohhhhhh. (It's not so good in this version because you can hear her reaching, but when Kristen sings it it's like she was born to it)

It's like the soprano Air in Messiah - I think it was I know that my redeemer liveth - when the music only called for the soloist to go up to the E, but instead she floated up to the B, and it was like watching a blue butterfly land on a leafless branch and spread his wings before fluttering away again.

Hit Stats

2006-02-06T20:20:00.000-06:00

As of this moment, this blog has had 13,257 unique views.

10,000 of these have been from people image searching for 3D DDR.

IT DOESN'T EXIST, YOU TOOLS. STOP BOTHERING ME.

(There's also the person from Saudi looking for porn who stumbled on over today, but that's not important right now.)

The Internet Is A Frightening Place, My Friends

2006-02-06T01:05:00.000-06:00

Steps in this realization:

1. In the process of creating my own webpage using HTML - not your stupid fancy Dreamweaver or that CSS crap, you loser - I checked my Gmail account to make sure it was still working.

2. After flopping into the inbox of the account on which I have received all of my official TFA and Corps correspondence, I noticed it has a ticker up top

3. which is apparently READING MY EMAIL, because there was a link entitled "Alternative to Peace Corps", which led to this site. Not even their general site. Nope. The one that referred specifically to the Corps.

4. So it was there that I found out what the Corps acceptance rate is! It is 50%! Holy CRAP, you people, it took me SIX MONTHS AND A SPY IN MY INBOX TO DISCOVER THIS.

Ok it is my bedtime.

Memed.

2006-02-03T00:55:00.000-06:00

Oh god they're like a disease! Won't someone please inoculate me?

Four Jobs I've had:

1. Cashier (aka. angry customers' whipping boy)
2. Customer Service Desk Person (aka. not so bad because they take all the yelling out on the cashier)
3. Student Manager/Barista (aka. GOD MAKE IT STOP, THERE WAS POOP COMING OUT OF THE FLOOR BEHIND THE COUNTER LAST NIGHT)
4. RA (aka. police)

Four movies I can watch over and over:

1. Princess Mononoke
2. actually my attention span is too short
3.
4.

Four places I've lived:

1. Buffalo
2. East Aurora
3. Elma
4. Durham (gack)

Four TV shows I love:

1. Firefly
2. Homicide: Life on the Streets
3. Battlestar Galactica
4. Family Guy

Four places I've vacationed:

1. California
2. Acapulco
3. Lisbon
4. awesome ridiculous and still-missed epic Swiss roadtrip

Four of my favorite dishes:

1. My little plates with the blue flowers on them
2. Haha!
3. I am so witty.
4. Really, FAGE yogurt with honey. It tastes like sour cream!

Four sites I visit daily:

1. my web mail, because I hate Outlook
2. It's not stalking if I'm family!
3. Feministe. That is stalking.
4. Qwantz

Four places I would rather be right now:

1. standing on a stage in a funny hat with people clapping for me
2.
3.
4. (nothing really matters besides that)

My Tuition! Is Still High! But Maybe Now Justified!

2006-01-29T21:58:00.000-06:00

I am now an official hypocrite. Well...hey! stop laughing! more of a hypocrite.

Last week I was on the receiving end of one of these bad boys. 30 gig. Black. Video.

Yes, video! It plays videos! By which I mean it has Star Trek on it now and I wander around happily and listen to Star Trek all the time. I don't even need to watch the show, really. I know what's happening. In fact, I bet you could find me any TNG episode ever made, whether I've seen it or not, and, given the soundtrack, I could construct a reasonably accurate storyboard. I include blocking, facial expressions, and VERY DRAMATIC CLOSEUPS OF KEY CHARACTERS BEFORE COMMERCIAL BREAKS WHOOOO!

Holy crap though, my iPod, it is so pretty. I have spent a lot of money on episodes of Battlestar Galactica to watch on it. You will like it too, and so I have come up with the following proposal: whosoever shall take and love my fish while I am in the Peace Corps (because that will still happen despite the fact that I am nervous NOSHUTUPITWILL) shall also receive Sir Pod. I might want it back when I get back? if it still works? but probably not, and that wouldn't be a good enough reason for you not to beat the hell out of it while you had it. I think this is a good deal! You should consider it. The only possible drawback is that the battery power leaves something to desire. It's perfectly good for audio, but it caps out at 3 eps of TNG before it craps out on me for video. The backlighting, you know. Anyway, think about it. Oh, and also be forewarned that owning this bad boy will automatically put you out like a billion dollars on iTunes, because you won't be able to resist, especially if you are all looking for Trinity-type songs to play at work. Especially, um, Michael Jackson? you will buy a lot of Michael Jackson. And then you will try to dance. It won't turn out well.

SO LET'S TALK ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE! LET'S TALK ABOUT THE PEACE CORPS! LET'S TALK ABOUT THIS LADY WHO IS SUPPOSED TO BE A DOCTOR AND HASN'T SENT ME MY FORMS BACK YET! TWO MONTHS LATER! LET'S TALK ABOUT HOW THIS IS MAKING ME SHRILL AND NERVOUS! We can also talk about the assumption you might have that doctors are supposed to be more responsible than the general populace because they hold your fragile bodily functions in their sure, tender hands. Let me be the first to disabuse you of that notion, because it is totally incorrect. Doctors, apparently, feel absolutely no responsibility to you! Huh. How bout that. Maybe you should stop paying them and see how they feel then.

I will drop my normally affected hilariousness to let you in on a little secret: this is terrifying me. What if she doesn't send me the things I need? What if she does send them, but it's too late, so I can't get accepted to the program? What if she sends things and they're wrong so I have to get them sent back and forth and back and forth? What if this one tiny little thing ends up messing up my life? Could I SUE HER? Sue her for breach of human responsibility?

And then comes the complication that I turned in my Teach for America application Friday night. Teach for America is the Harvard of service post-undergrad programs (13% acceptance rate! that sounds familiar to me!). There are Rhodes scholar TFA students, ok? So it's not like I expect to get in (though it would be nice, and I would really appreciate an interview, ok guys thanks!). But should I wow the interview peeples and get a placement (no will not happen, but still), they need you to answer right away. So what if I haven't heard back from the Corps yet because of this form and that happens? What will I do?

HOLY CRAP DELVE DEEPER INTO MY NEUROSES

And then behind that is this tiny gnawing wondering of which I'd really rather do, really. My whole outsideness is gunning for the Corps, of course, because of reasons blah, but there's this tiny little inside part that is saying to me "look. It's the same job, more or less. And here's the thing - we want a home. We're sick of feeling itinerant. We haven't been at peace anywhere in almost ten years now, and we want a kitten and some kitchen gear and one nice knife. Corps is nice, but it's not a home you can carry. TFA you can bring with you if you leave. We want that", and I am listening to it, because it is right. So, I don't - I am conflicted, and it is making me in a bad mood all the time. And thesis is still only 15 pages, and the Trinity box was $100 short last night and I DON'T KNOW WHERE THAT MONEY IS GOING and all these things together made it very hard for me to sleep last night. And I'm still not writing thesis right now? and I have this presentation tomorrow? and oh god everybody I'm kind of a basketcase. I mean, I'll be fine, I'm not an actual basketcase, I'm like a...metaphorical metaphorical basketcase. That's two steps of ok. Like extra cheese!

OK GOALS WILL MAYBE HELP? AND I HAVE A COUPLE FUN LINKS!

First, qwantz is my new favorite comic. You might not get it, because I'm really not sure if it's actually funny to anyone but me. I'm thinking no.

Girls Are Pretty reliably makes me happy. It's supposed to be that weird, yes.

Aaron showed me Walk Smash Walk this weekend and it is keeping me going. I Love Death is also very good.

Now goals:

I will get up early tomorrow morning to prepare for this presentation.

By the end of tomorrow I will have finished Theology of the Icon and Painter's Guide, if I've gotten it, edited the pages left over from last week, and written two more pages. Yes, I can do this. Also will have gone to the drugstore to buy lipstick. Also will not have blown off Firefly Mondays for the second consecutive week.

I will show up for senior photos on Wednesday with makeup on.

I will schedule a thesis meeting this week for next week. I will have at least 25 pages for that meeting. yes, I will. I can do that.

I will not regret spending $10 on this Imogen Heap CD because it's good.

Coffee Jerks Don't Deserve Tips Because We're Just COGS in the MACHINE, Man

2006-01-27T23:58:00.000-06:00

I have a real post fermenting in here somewhere, but until then I just have a tiny little baby rant.

I'm working a lunch shift this semester for the first time in maybe ever. I always used to avoid the lunch shifts, because the geographic monopoly we conveniently hold on campus leads to us getting wrecked in the afternoons. I've always had a bad feel on anything before 5pm, but it looks like I was wrong - we're busy, but the busy periods are short bursts with long breaks in between, so I have time to restock and get myself back together before another comes.

The lunch shifts are also the only shifts that make any kind of tips. Now, you have to realize that the first three years I worked at Trinity I probably made less than $5 in tips, gross. I averaged about 10 cents a shift. The lunches can get up to $1-$2/shift, because real adults come in and they have to pay with money, rather than the untipwithable DukeCard. But here's what gets me.

The vast majority of professors will come in and order a small coffee to go with the lunch they bring from home. That's fine - I wouldn't pay money for the food we serve, either. So a small coffee with employee discount comes to $1.24. Invariably, I will smile, kowtow, hand them their steaming hot coffee, take a dollar bill and a quarter from their hand, give them back their penny - and watch as they tuck it parsimoniously into their wallets. The tip jar is less than six inches from where all this is happening.

A penny. And they will then have the audacity to smile widely at me and wish me a good afternoon before they scurry off.

See, this is why I'm rethinking the prospect of going into academia. Professors suck.

Actually, I lied. Professors aren't the worst. Grad students are the worst. Grad students not only don't tip, but they steal from the tip jar. True story. They're all a bunch of self-important, over-educated hypocrites.

Five Seconds

2006-01-22T00:01:00.000-06:00

Cute girl walking in front of me.

Cute girl walking in front of me, orange truck passing by.

Cute girl walking in front of me, orange truck passing by, man on the orange truck.

Cute girl walking in front of me, orange truck passing by, man on the orange truck, green truck behind the orange truck.

Cute girl walking in front of me, orange truck passing by, man on the orange truck, green truck behind the orange truck, man on the green truck.

Cute girl walking in front of me, orange truck passing by, man on the orange truck, green truck behind the orange truck, man on the green truck, man on the orange truck looks at her butt.

Cute girl walking in front of me, orange truck passing by, man on the orange truck, green truck behind the orange truck, man on the green truck, man on the orange truck looks at her butt, man on the green truck looks at her butt.

2006-01-18T23:25:00.000-06:00

I know none of you care about the pictures, but I keep coming back to look at them and be reminded of fishies past and fishies beautiful. I miss them.

In other news, TFA is considering opening a program in Hawai'i for those seeking rural placement. Hot. Damn.

Peectures (by Like-Factor)

2006-01-15T22:32:00.000-06:00

Bert

I luf muh Bert.

Cotter

On a bad day, after someone took a bite out of her. She got better.

Fozzie

God, he's so beautiful I just want to roll him in Shake n Bake and eat him.

Nero

Frilly.

Ernie

Pissant.

Suck Sucks.

2006-01-11T19:23:00.000-06:00

In the past five weeks, I have gone from being the mother of 6 fish to being the mother of 3 fish. There is a word for this phenomenon; it is called Teh Suck. As you may or may not have guessed, it is unpleasant. I am reveling in Teh Suck tonight because my second-fishiest favorite of all my favoritest fishies is now no longer a fishie in the strictest sense of the word.

Two morals can be learned from Teh Suck:

1. If you buy a bunch of fish at the same time, they will all die at the same time, and you just get to STFU and deal, because you are a stupidhead.
2. It is not a good idea to let your boss watch your pets, even if she means well and is doing you a favor. Really. It's not. Because if you do it, you will hate her.

Also, Teh Suck has the power to transform your mood. Magically! As in without any perceivable cause, except the one that I just perceived! So making sure that you will, in fact, graduate; having a video iPod dangled in front of your nose with no cost to you; a class on video games tomorrow; 2 1/2 hours of Final Fantasy in your afternoon; these things will not help you. Go home and wallow, you loser.

Read What's Below; This Is Just Bragging

2006-01-07T21:05:00.000-06:00

So here's a thing:

Latin Honors Cut-offs

	Summa Cum Laude	Magna Cum Laude	Cum Laude
2005-2006 Graduates
Pratt Graduates	3.930	3.758	3.670
Trinity Graduates	3.867	3.738	3.661

And here's another:

Credits taken toward GPA	35.000
Total Gradepoints	135.500
Credits In Progress - Current Semester	3.000
Total Cumulative Credits *	43.500
Cumulative GPA	3.871

And here's what I have to say about the affair:

SNAP!

Also:

Now I can't mess up this semester, for sure.

2006-01-07T21:01:00.000-06:00

The problem with writing a thesis, says Allison, is that every time I think of writing a thesis I get heart palpitations and clammy hands and can't sit down long enough to churn out a sentence.

Methinks the only cure for the nervous fits is to write enough so that I don't have nervous fits. HMM. See the problem, anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

So here is the goal. Before I go to bed tonight, I will have written two pages. Before I go to bed tomorrow night, I will have written two more pages. Before class starts on Wednesday, I will have a total of ten pages to show the thesis advisor. MINIMUM.

And now I am going to go play video games until my hands stop shaking.

2006-01-03T13:41:00.000-06:00

It is really stunning how little I have to talk about lately. You'll think I suck at writing and I am neglectful of this thing, which is in large part true, but it's also that there hasn't been anything funny or artsy-pretentious for me to talk about since I got sick (I think the rib has traveled back from the area of my kidneys and reattached itself, by the way, judging by the fact that I no longer feel the urge to scream every time I do anything). I wish I had graduated already and my nose is still big. That's it.

I guess the one good thing is that the process of cleaning up the Delaware house has led to a new bed in my room here. I never thought the transition from a fifty year old twin to a new full could be so enriching. It's like sleeping on a baby's butt, except without the mess.

Give me another couple days and I'll think up something interesting to talk about. Or else Dad will have made my head explode. Whichever.

2006-01-01T18:20:00.000-06:00

Why am I watching the show Commander in Chief on CTV?

Stupid Thingiething

2005-12-30T16:24:00.000-06:00

I got tagged. :(

Seven Things To Do Before I Die:
Be in the Peace Corps
Not get shot in the Peace Corps
Parasail
Go rafting down the Li River
On, like, a real raft, not a tourist junque. Huck Finn style.
Recapitulate Myrtle trips re: awesomeness, quality of company, except somewhere nicer. Hawaii, perhaps.
Huggle a baby panda

Seven Things I Cannot Do:
Ice skate
Roller skate
Dance
Really anything that requires balance or coordination or, you know, grace
Stand on the edge of a canyon
Play my guitar :(
Make a lot of money

Seven Things That Attract Me To Blogging:
Blargh.

Seven Things I Say Most Often:
HORNS.
I am so awesome.
Why do I still work here?

Seven Books That I Love:
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card
Dune by Frank Herbert
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again:
Dumbo. Shut up.
Spirited Away
Star Wars
The Empire Strikes Back
Princess Mononoke
The Big Lebowski
FREEBIRD! I mean...umm. Talk to Her.

Seven People I Want To Join In Too:
nope. Not doin this part. It's too cruel.

Welcome Home

2005-12-27T22:56:00.000-06:00

I think the single best sign that I have been living in the South for too long was given me at the airport on my way home for break.

I am not what you might call a "good" flier. Sure, I'm a frequent flier, but I'm a prissy little baby about it. I need candies, a water bottle, and snacklings available at all times. As you might imagine, this Triumvirate of Sustenance leads to a prodigious number of restroom trips.

So I got to Buffalo last Monday, dumped some detritus outside the gate, and ran to the bathroom before getting picked up. An old woman was cleaning out the stalls - I noticed a shock of white hair as I juggled my stuff. As I was washing my hands, the white hair moved over towards the garbage can. I turned to say hello to the head beside me - and I stopped for a second.

The woman cleaning the bathrooms was white.

***

I remember the first day I ever walked into the freshman dining hall at Duke. I'm struggling to find the words to convey the power of the shock I felt, because it was almost a tangible thing in its strength. I remember stepping in past the cashier station and feeling like I was on the set of a bad Monty Python sketch, maybe the one about the Dandy Olympics. I walked in that room and here is what I saw: 100 very rich, very white kids in pressed polo shirts being served by employees in hairnets and gloves, every single one of whom was black. The dishwashers were black, the food servers were black, the cashier who swiped my DukeCard was black. I started laughing, right out loud, in the middle of the floor. Were they joking? Did they think we wouldn't notice? Did they think we were that stupid, to not read the implications?

After a couple weeks, I started to get to know the housekeepers who came in to clean up after our filthy selves. They, too, were all black. I have lived at Duke for four years, and to this day I have never met a white person who works on Duke's campus for an hourly wage. Not one single time. And if they exist - a hypothesis I would be willing to entertain, given the proper introductions and explanations - then my counterargument stands: where are they? Why do we not see them? Why is it that in the everyday circumambulations of the average Duke freshman (a path I have walked for longer than most), we are presented with a recurring Jim Crow history pageant? Why is it that at the fifth-best school in the country (and this is where you should picture me poking my bony finger into your chest) there is a dead silence about employee class and racism? Are we not, as a university, charged to challenge such things?

***

There was a particular night sophomore year I had to help close Trinity. It was a weekend, though I don't remember whether it was my shift or Jeannie's. As she closed out the box downstairs, Deirdre and I pushed the garbage bin to the elevator, headed to the dumpster behind the building. I jabbed at the Basement button as the doors slid shut behind me. Deirdre was talking.

"You know, it's funny," she said. "Before I came to Duke I remember thinking of myself as the kind of person who would always take care of my things, you know? Like, I would never leave anything for someone else to do behind me, messes or responsibilities or anything. I was never so complacent about things. But since I came here, I find myself becoming a different kind of person, and it scares me. I don't understand how it's happening, or why, but I can feel that it is. I'm losing that part of me."

"Yeah, I guess I understand that," I muttered. "...hey - haven't we been in this elevator an awful long time?" She laughed and reached past my shoulder to press the button again. She hit it solidly, and I heard the cables begin to move.

***

I have heard it charged that Buffalo is a racist community, though segregated and complacent might be a better phrasing. This is probably true. I don't know - I haven't lived in Buffalo for almost ten years now.* But what is true is that's not how I remember Buffalo. I remember growing up in a near-equal split between white kids and black kids, courtesy of Brown v. Board, magnet schools, and bussing. Maybe it's a good thing I got the limited exposure, living with (a semblance of) racial equality as a kid, moving out before things got more complicated. But I can tell you one thing for sure - it wasn't growing up in Buffalo that conditioned me for shock when seeing a white lady clean a toilet. That was Duke and the South. So here's my point:

I cannot graduate fast enough.

*Typing that sentence almost gave me a stroke.

2005-12-14T21:36:00.000-06:00

I have sneaking suspicion that I may have detached one of my floating ribs.

I have no idea how that could have *COUGH COUGH cough gasp COUGH COUGH COUGH hack retch gasp COUGH COUGH gasp sniffle spit groan* happened.

I Have Not Posted, And Here Is Why:

2005-12-06T16:01:00.000-06:00

I am 98.888947023% sure that I have SARS.

Tiny Things

2005-11-29T13:42:00.000-06:00

1. Please bid a fond farewell to my fat fish Fozzie, as he has shuffled off this mortal coil. He received a respectful toileting early this afternoon. Which is kind of sad, because now from time to time I'll find myself in the bathroom wondering if he's doing ok down there. And then I have to think to myself, "he's dead, you idiot, and you sent his corpse down to rot in a system of human waste and tiny crocodiles". And that makes me sad.

2. If for some reason you should find yourself in North Carolina this weekend, come see the Messiah. It has me in it.

3. Last night my lazy nerve was a-painin' me, so I went on a walk with Big Jon. When I mentioned the existence of the lazy nerve and what makes it go off, he turned to me and said "isn't that called sciatica?". According to the Internet, it is! According to that website, I need surgery! w00t!

2005-11-24T20:24:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving! I can't find my DukeCard.

HAPPY POTTER!

2005-11-18T02:38:00.000-06:00

HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER HARRY POTTER!

VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT VOLDEMORT!

I mean, ahem.

****
(Sort of) spoiler-free synopsis:

1. Cedric Diggory, while still very pretty, looks markedly different than the impression I got from the trailer. His nose is small. Considering that he's a pretty big kid, the nose was odd.

2. Emma Watson and Rupert Grint each have only one facial expression (respectively: exasperated, confused). I predict this will get old eventually.

3. Hermione looks stunning in her dress robes.

4. Krum is very good and just meatheaded enough.

5. There is an ABSOLUTE ABSENCE OF QUIDDITCH. NO WORLD CUP IS SHOWN. WHAT THE HELL.

6. Tiny Voldemort looks like a Muppet. Big Voldemort, on the other hand, is pretty terrifying. The reconstitution scene fights its own personal battle between cheesy and OH GOD, HIS ROBES ARE MADE OUT OF THE NIGHT.

7. The people trapped underwater? They're so dolls. It's not even forgiveable. So cheesy. So corny. So BAD. If they could afford to draw in MERPEOPLE, why can't they make the PEOPLE look human?

8. The labyrinth scene is not anything like anything even remotely resembling the book.

9. Moody is great. He's easy to like, just weird enough, protective of Harry, etc. However, not ONCE is the phrase "CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" to be found.

10. Severe lack of Severus.

****

Done now.

Brief Note

2005-11-17T20:20:00.000-06:00

I am trying my bejeezusest to enroll in ISIS 210, a course entitled "How They Got Game":

"History and cultural impact of interactive simulations and video games. Evolution of computer and video game design from its beginnings to the present: storytelling, strategy, simulation, sports, 3D first-person games. Cultural, business, and technical perspectives. Insights into design, production, marketing, and socio-cultural impacts of interactive entertainment and communication. Students should have a dual processor implant with 1TB of VRAM."

Is this real? Are they kidding? History and cultural impact of video games? I AM the cultural impact of video games!

Look, look: All your base are belong to us. You have no chance to survive make your time! For great justice launch every Zig!

See? I need to be in this class. I need it. But look at the requirements - I would have to buy a whole new goddamn computer. I can't afford it, and even if I could, I'm gonna be gone for 27 months, so why would I? Does anyone have a spare l33t rig I can borrow? I will rent it from you if necessary. Please? Please?

Do you think the textbook list would include Final Fantasy? The Sims? My imminent death from pwnage? or awesome overload?

There is also another course entitled Web-Based Multimedia Communications. It is a course on Flash. It's got a waitlist up the wazoo. It's not fair.

Inconvenience!

2005-11-15T23:37:00.000-06:00

I had a really stellarly funny post to put up here but personal circumstances beyond my control have rendered it inappropriate. Damn!...though is anything I put up here really considered appropriate? No. No it isn't.

I would be happy to elaborate on this but I have this paper...thing. On Orientalism. And flamenco. It's going to be really bad.

Apenas te conozco

2005-11-10T19:41:00.000-06:00

Que si me muero sea de amor
y si me enamoro sea de vos
y que de tu voz sea este corazón
todos los días, a Dios le pido...

Juanes

After dark we meandered, side by side, back to the hostel. Jorge and Kristina were in front of us, maybe, or behind. The only light came from the moon gleaming behind our right shoulder, diamond-distant. Mountains gobbled up the frigid glitter of tiny stars. I was wearing two coats; it was the kind of cold that makes you think of eternal wandering and Saint Bernards with collar-flasks, makes you wiggle your toes to be sure you appreciate them while they're still there. He talked about his father, said he had pet canaries at home. His hair brushed the collar of his jacket as he spoke. It was too cold to look at his face.

We got home before them. I skirted the brook beneath the trees; ice broken by my sneaker before nightfall had reformed, stronger than before.

The next morning the sun shone offensively bright. We've found a road, he said. We'll get to Austria in half the distance, better scenery. More fun.

We rounded mountains and mountains, all different and the same. Clouds and lakes reflected each other. Tiny houses, wood lace on wood shingle, stood shuttered and silent. We crept through passes, always climbing, until switchbacks lay on top of one another. I crowed happiness as I watched the snow deepen. We fought over the stereo; why can't you put on something good, like Peter Gabriel, he asked. Tears squeaked out the corners of my eyes as I fell laughing against the window.

The car passed into the shade of the mountain. A wheel caught, began to slide. He cursed, downshifted, cursed again. I gazed out at the tips of the pine trees below us and knew I wasn't going to die.