More Amadeus...

I know Dr. Kavanaugh would have issues with the accuracy of the lyrics....but the song's so much FUN! I wish I could find a link to the music video.

http://www.amadeusimmortal.com/fun/falco.php

Art

"...suggested the major contribution of American art was the design of the American bathroom."

Paul J. Dimaggio, Constructing an Organizational Field as a Professional Project: US Art Museums, 1920--1940.

Do you believe in art-as-such, or broader, more changeable understanding of art? Can a well-constructed chair be art? Can Dutch art be meaningless in non-Western cultures?

Frozen Waterfalls

I got to go to Toledo for almost a week. We had three inches of snow on Thanksgiving Day. That still seems so strange to me. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we went with my grandparents and the Eckles (aunt, uncle, cousins) to Mohican Lodge, in the middle of Ohio. After a bit of wrangling (my mother still thinks, after nearly a decade, that I am an incompetent driver), I was allowed to drive my uncle's van with my brother and my cousins. Matthew tried very hard to convince us that we were staying in a hostel. My poor little cousin has a phobia of hostels because the last time she stayed in one, my aunt rammed beds against the doors so she wouldn't be kidnapped. Thankfully, we had private rooms. I tolerate hostel conditions in Switzerland. I demand comfort if I am to be relegated to central Ohio. The Lodge was thankfully spacious, attractive and comfortable. The landscape was, surprisingly, varied, with lots of wildlife.

We all fought over who got to hook their IPOD to the radio. Matthew, the Classic Rock supremacist, won out, since he was in the passenger seat. I must admit, I quite liked "Rock me, Amadeus" by Falco. Austrians are cool. So are Germans. I've been listening to a lot of Bach cantatas I picked up at the central Toledo library. I took my grandma there during the snow storm. A group of low-lives actually CAT-CALLED at me in the LIBRARY. I was too surprised to do anything un-Christian. That happens a lot. My slow reactions have kept me from many sins.

Saturday, while my grandparents went to see the local "Bible Walk" attraction (the iconoclast in me simply shivers) we went hiking down the river (past the "danger: treacherous trails" signs).

That night we got to see a "birds of prey" exhibit by the local bird sanctuary. Owls are neat looking. They're not actually smart, though. Their heads are about one inch in diameter and their eyes are the size of shooter marbles....not much left there for anything else.

Google. Very funny.

http://gvod.blogspot.com/

http://video.google.com/


Type in "baby fart" (the clip with the actual baby). Check out the "ping pong matrix" and "darth vader crying".

German Humor about New Chancellor

Conservative daily Die Welt wonders what Merkel's style will be like. Will she pat foreign leaders on the back like predecessor Helmut Kohl did with Russia's Boris Yeltsin, or Schröder with Vladimir Putin? One thing is certain -- joint sauna visits can be ruled out, writes Die Welt: "It's harder for women politicians to make comradely gestures." Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was an exception because she had a grandmotherly way about her, but Merkel, 51, is too young for that. Schröder's meetings with French President Jacques Chirac, with their hugging and kissing and snorting, resembled encounters between two whales, writes Die Welt. If Merkel smiled at Chirac the way Schröder did, theirs would be mistaken for a different type of relationship. "As a woman Angela Merkel will bring sobriety to foreign policy. That need not be a bad thing," opines Die Welt.

http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,386070,00.html

Stupid things in the draft of my paper....

"Kuhlthau describes stages through which the study participants went through."

"They must select material for the different age groups and interest groups: . . . audiobooks for the deaf . . . ."

"Our physical environment has some effect on how we absorb information and turn it into knowledge. Is a fast-food restaurant, the bathroom, or the car, really the best place to absorb knowledge? Clark has written an entire book on the premise that we have forgotten that the mind is connected to the body, that 'the biological mind is, first and foremost, an organ for controlling the biological body.'"

Sledgehammer Willi...

I'm mad at APA again.

The APA cribsheet (http://www.docstyles.com/apacrib.htm) starts out with a section on Avoiding Biased and Pejorative Language. I mean, you all know that I'm totally against being pejorative. Pejorative language never escapes my pure and untainted mouth. But, as tolerant as I am, I don't like wasting nine words(count 'em: gay men, lesbians, transgender and bisexual men and women) to say "homosexuals." I also dislike the ban on the word "mankind" or "man" as a general term for humanity. I always assumed I was included in mankind by Shakespeare and the translators of the KJV (in fact, even the Greek anthropos means "mankind"). Not, so, it appears. Women weren't included in humanity until the 1970s, or whenever they developed gender neutral language. I'm glad to know that Aristotle, Shakespeare, and God were such misogynist pigs.

See guys, I'm still kinda a Republican ;-)

Another thing that's bothering me. Dove Promises. I like the chocolate. But the worse-than-fortune-cookie truisms on the wrappers bug me. If the chocolate doesn't make me feel sick, the wrappers ensure that I do. I could write a ballad with all the ones I've unwrapped today:

Love is always the perfect gift.
Joy is contagious.
Warmth on the inside can melt cold on the outside.
Holiday magic starts from within.
Miracles aren't limited to the holidays.
Togetherness is in itself a holiday treat.
A helping hand is sometimes the best present of all.

Help!

What's the plural of "faux pas"?

My procrastination skills are continuing to improve

Remember when I used to write all my papers at the beginning of the semester freshman year? Yeah, well, I don't do that anymore. I have a 6 page, single-spaced reading synthesis due Monday. I've been doing the research (i.e. actually reading the required reading) for it in short spurts. That's the only way I can stand it. I've now locked myself in the basement with chocolate, apples, and cappucino. The window in my room was giving me SAD, with the leafless trees and ploughed-over communal gardens. Brianna taught me the virtue of constantly shifting locations.

The best distraction from work, however, is the Internet. To a will-less person like me, it is practically irresistable (witness this blog post). Yesterday evening, I decided to look up "unusual psychological disorders." I came across a discussion board of a bunch of people claiming to be vampires who were offended by the confusion of vampirism with Renfield syndrome: http://house-eclipse.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=5675&sid=4657374e9f8dff04d603e3402754d8e6

My brother and I have always been fascinated by abnormal psychology. We spend hours reading the DMS-IV. Matthew wants to publish a pocket version. We've diagnosed all of you. It probably stems from our childhood. Mother ran a lot of errands dealing Tupperware and being vice-president of the Navy League. She would leave us sitting for extended lengths of time in the car. If we complained, her response was "Well, I tried to park you in the shade, what are you whining about?" We spent this time very constructively: when we were not pulling each other's hair, we decided what animals the people walking by were. I think our most popular observations were walruses, pigs, and various birds.

So....um...as you can see I've gotten a lot done on my paper in the last ten minutes....Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and people in graduate school are very diligent.

AHHH!!! Christmas is here already!

Windows Media Player Radio currently features no less than nine Christmas stations. That's nine different continuous-play stations dedicated to nothing but the same couple dozen Christmas songs over, and over, and over again. I mean, I'm not against an occasional Andrews Sisters and Bing diddy, but can you imagine listening to the "kids" or "wacky" Christmas station for the next eight weeks? "I want a hippopotamus" for the sixtieth time? Talk about Chinese water torture! Is the stretching of Christmas back to mid-November, particularly the recycling of mediocre old songs every year, a sign of our culture's decline? Well...back to my "vocal Christmas" station...maybe it's time to move up to "motown Chirstmas".

In keeping with my trend towards irrational means of personality analysis...

I was born in the year of the DOG (and I don't even like them *sniff*, except big, shaggy ones).

Chinese Zodiac - Year of the Dog

People born in the Year of the Dog possess the best traits of human nature. They have a deep sense of loyalty, are honest, and inspire other people's confidence because they know how to keep secrets. But Dog People are somewhat selfish, terribly stubborn, and eccentric. They care little for wealth; yet somehow always seem to have money. They can be cold emotionally and sometimes distant at parties. They can find fault with many things and are noted for their sharp tongues. Dog people make good leaders. They are compatible with those born in the Years of the Horse, Tiger, and Rabbit. You are honest and faithful. You can worry too much. You will make an excellent business person, teacher or secret agent.

Coronation of Poppea

Mom and I went to see Monteverdi's 1643 opera "The Coronation of Poppea" last night. It was about, of course, Nero, Poppea, Seneca, Octavia, and Otho (Nero was, fittingly, a male soprano, while Seneca had a deep, resonating bass). The setting, however, was Mussolini's Italy. I thought the two eras blended well together, especially when Seneca and Nero were arguing about whether unbridled force puts the prince above reason (echoes of Machiavelli?) The music was uplifting and cerebral Baroque, performed on replicas of period instrument. My housemate was the goddess Virtue and, when she heard we were going, gave us her tickets. It was at one of the many performing arts centers here. Emily, you should have gone to a big public university; you would never have had to fight for a stage.

Does anyone know...

How to host a picture for my profile without making a posting about it? Hello is confusing. I don't see why we can't just upload one. That is why that picture is there below.

peace disco icon 

Archival Sin

The Bentley is an intimate archive
With no armed guards and conveyor belts.

And no claims to universal knowledge
But only to Michigan.
Which is, after all, enough.
Isn’t it?

The doors of its heart opened wide
With the deposit of a borrowed quarter in a locker
And the orientation of a properly-rounded records gnome
Who lent me the quarter.

And I bent over six linear feet of court records
From Wayne County and Indiana Territory.
Whose names were all the attempts of dead men to hide the fact
That they were 18th century records from the Michigan Supreme Court

There were other researchers in non-archival jeans with irrelevant young faces.
But the friends of the archive, who respected it too much to use it,
Tittered in the conference room in scholarly garb
Eating donuts and talking about the lack of parking.

I was here to criticize the finding aid
Which was new thirty years ago.
And I was supposed to say it needed to be new and neutral
And put on a computer screen for the eyes of undergraduates to soil it
So they didn’t maul the fragile leaves inked in supercilious cursive
By our chronological betters.

But I angered the collection, the ghost in the machine
It turned on me because I had committed the unpardonable sin of distraction,
Rushing through a dozen folders while thinking about the future

So the past, angry that I did not respect its entire 52 linear feet
Cursed me with silence and confusion and backaches
And the dust of crumpling papers on my hands like Abel’s blood.

And I fled from the archives.
And redeemed myself with tea in the eyes of the past.

Emily no longer thinks I am a megalomaniac...

...Since I decided not to set my blog as my homepage. Such a sacrifice. Nothing brightens up my day like my own wit and eloquence.

Random Comment of the Day

APA is an ugly, graceless citation style. Probably because the social sciences are ugly, graceless subjects.

Common Sense and Sensibility

Most of you know that I do really stupid things occasionally. This impulse to go outside without my coat, to try sledding without a sled, to lean too far out windows, is what I term "me," since it is my first impulse.

Luckily, there is another, more thoughtful, less visceral me who usually pops up on my other shoulder and a dialog like the following insues:

Me: "My car smells musty, and I don't like the little pine thingies you hang on your mirror. Maybe I'll burn incense on my way to work tomorrow."

C.S.: "Probably not advisable. Car seats tend to be highly flammeable and it would be kind of hard to keep it from tipping over unless you intend to hold it between your teeth."

Little things make me unhappy...

I'm trying to perk myself up right now. I was watching the boy this evening and he was quite tired and disconsolate as well. He got very frustrated trying to do a dinosaur lace-up and was too overwrought about it to let me help him for awhile. I know how he feels.

Little problems:
1) I did laundry today. My white shirt still has a spot on it and I am missing a sock.
2) I had enough vodka-based drinks last night that I couldn't walk in a straight line (well, less straight than usual). It was fun at the time, but between that and Chinese food and 3 Austin Powers movies in a row until midnight, I woke up feeling less-than-perky.
3) I worked on a paper all morning, got stuck, emailed my GSI with a question, and haven't heard back from him so I can keep going.
4) I wasn't able to answer a reference question for the first time. (It was about the Gini Coefficient by region in China for the past 15 years. The answer simply wasn't there, but I still felt incompetent).
5) I've been busy with school and babysitting so I didn't get to go for my usual walk.
6) I dropped my pasta on the floor.

No, they're not big in themselves, but they're enough to give me a rather drab perception of the world and myself right now. So I'm fixing the little-things problem with little things: putting on new pajamas, listening to non-angsty music, drinking lemonade, and complaining on my blog.

OK, I am OFFICIALLY moving to Iceland or New Zealand...

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/tax_tot_tax_wed_sin_wor

So much for our "free society." We're taxed more than Britain. OK, OK, I realize that they aren't factoring in ALL the taxes, but STILL...we shouldn't even be in the ballpark of countries that offer their citizens tangible benefits like health care (as opposed to "we're protecting you from terror by waging war on selected dictators.") Yeah, I know, the US is a target for every freedom-hating evil warmonger in the world because we stand tall as an example of Capitalism and Christianity. I guess that explains why we have to be the most militaristic nation behind Israel and Singapore (http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fig_cap). Instead of "standing tall" for capitalism and Christianity, maybe I'll just go quietly practice them in another country. Well...I guess I really can't help standing tall anyway, can I ;-)

I'm Going to Die at 83.6...

Of cancer, according to okcupid.com's death test. I'm 28% of the way through my life. So watch out...I'm going to be around to pester ya'll the rest of your mortal lives. Can anyone beat that score?

Labadie Collection of Social Protest

In SI 647 (Reference Librarian class) we had a visit from the director of the Special Collections Library here. Check it out (especially the sidebar of digital exhibits and the Labadie Collection): http://lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/. The website has links to some intriguing and eclectic exhibits (in some of them it is hard to get to the actual content, but it is there). Not listed on the website, but in the collection, are the papers of the Unibomber, with whom we have an "ongoing donor relationship." I, of course, particularly liked the anarchist posters exhibit.

Happy Halloween

I was a grown-up this Halloween. Almost. Since I didn't have Gabi and Stephanie to accompany me on wild gads through Purcellville, I bought candy and handed it out to the real children. In Puerto Rico and in VA, of course, we were sadly lacking in trick-or-treaters. Not this year. There were lots of them, and they cleaned me out. There were lots of witches and grim reapers (they probably went and had a Black Sabbath immediately afterwards). There was a particularly good little barbarian girl to whom I gave extra chocolate (I ALWAYS give chocolate). There are many Chinese international students in my neighborhood, and they seemed to have no scruples about taking pictures of me giving candy to their children. Unfortunately, I was wearing a wife beater and sweat pants. Dad wanted to take pictures of the trick-or-treaters down in Toledo, but Matthew restrained him with threats that he would end up in a cell with Michael Jackson.

Matt and I carved pumpkins that I picked from a farm. The features on mine were too big and the face caved in. I was nearly in tears (note: nearly) but Matthew tacked it back together with nails and it looked more gruesome than ever.