Left-Hander Resource

Wow, that compulsory waltz is getting annoying...I mean, I'm studying for my midterm, really...

Had to share...a store for the really underprivileged in society. Forget about traditional minorities!

http://www.anythingleft-handed.co.uk/home.html

Graduate School Humor

A friend sent me this the other night...

Graduate School Barbie comes in two styles! Delusional Master's Barbie (tm) and Ph.D. Masochist Barbie (tm).

Every Graduate School Barbie comes with these fun-filled features guaranteed to delight and entertain for hours:
Grad School Barbie comes out of the box with a big grin on her face that turns into a frown after 2 weeks or her first advisor meeting (whichever comes first).
Adorable black circles under her delightfully bloodshot eyes!
Two outfits: a grubby pair of blue jeans with 5-year-old gap T-shirt, and a floppy pair of gray sweatpants with a matching "Go Screw Yourself" T-shirt!

Grad School Barbie talks! Just press the button on her left hand and hear her say such upbeat grad school phrases as, "Yes, Professor, It'll be done by tomorrow" "I'd love to write it all over again" "Why didn't I just get a job, I could have been making $40,000 a year by now if I had just started working with a Bachelor's degree. But noooooo, Mom and Dad wanted a masters degree" and "I wish somebody would drop a bomb on the school so that I'd have an excuse to stop working on this degree that's sucking every last drop of life force out of my withered and degraded excuse for a soul..." (9 V lithium batteries sold separately)

Grad School Barbie is anatomically correct! Experience the exciting changes that come with pursuing a higher education! Removable panels on Barbie's head and torso allow you to watch as her cerebellum fries to a crispy brown, her heart race at 150 beats per minute, and her stomach lining gradually dissolve into nothing! Deluxe Grad School Barbie comes with specially designed eye ducts. Just add water and watch Grad School Barbie burst into tears! Fun for the whole family!

Other accessories include:
Grad School Barbie's Fun Fridge (tm). Well stocked with microwave popcorn, Coca-Cola, Healthy Choice Bologna (99% fat free!),and small bottle of Mattel Brand Rum (tm).
Grad School Barbie's Medicine Cabinet '. Comes in Fabulous Pink and contains Barbie sized bottles of Advil, St. Johns Wort, Zantac, and your choice of three fun anti-anxiety drugs! (Barbie Medicine Cabinet not available without a prescription).
Grad School Barbie's Computer Workstation. Comes with miniature obsolete PC (pink of course), rickety desk, and over a dozen miniature Mountain Dew cans to decorate your workstation (Mountain Dew deposit not included in price, tech support sold separately. Miniature cigarette butts and Oreo packages also available)

And Grad School Barbie is not alone! Order now and you'll get two of Barbie's great friends! GRADUATE ADVISOR KEN: Barbie's mentor and advisor in her quest for increased education and decreased self esteem. Grad Advisor Ken (tm) comes with a supply of red pens and a permanent frown. Press the button to hear Grad Advisor Ken deliver such wisdom as: "I need an update on your progress""I don't think you'll be ready to graduate this spring" and"This is no where near ready for publication."

REAL JOB SKIPPER: When Barbie needs to talk, she knows that she can always count on her good friend Real Job Skipper (tm), who got a job after getting her bachelor's degree. Press the button to hear Real Job Skipper say: "Sometimes I wish I went for my masters degree" and "Work is so hard! I had to work a half an hour of overtime!" Real Job Skipper's Work Wardrobe, Savings Account, and New Car sold separately. (WARNING: Do not place Grad Student Barbie and Real Job Skipper too close to each other, as there have been several mysterious cases of children leaving the room and coming back to find Barbie's hands mysteriously fused to Skipper's throat.)

More figure skating

"He is just suffering from Olympic-itis. He's just...down"--deep-voiced male NBC commentator (not Dick Button).

Interesting slide show on Weir's fashion (for poor Emma, who's NBC-deprived): http://www.nbcolympics.com/figureskating/5095886/detail.html

Update

Look!!!! It's a girl!!! It's a nymph!!! NO!!! It's Johnny Weir! I think I should become a fashion designer for male figure skaters.

Much more interesting than what I am currently supposed to be doing, which is designing a better search and retrieval interface.

Am I Normal?

Sometimes living in a dorm with a bunch of other girls my age challenged my sanity, but at least I could always compare my experiences against theirs. Now I am more isolated, and exist in a more heterogenous population. So sometimes I begin to wonder...Do other people do the things I do? Please, dear readers, reassure me.

Do you?

1. Begin to feel awkward about going to the grocery store, or any other place you frequent (coffee shop, etc.)? I'm afraid that the people who work there might begin to recognize me and wonder what I'm doing.

2. Feel uncomfortable when you sit facing someone, or when your back is not against the wall?

3. Feel almost physical pain when you have to drive the same route, or be in the same place, every day?

4. Go through stages in your eating habits? For example, one week I will eat almost solely Mexican food and the next nothing but carrots and almonds. I don't even like foods that I liked in a previous stage.

5. Want to do something (i.e. study, go for a walk, listen to music) until you can do it, and then stop wanting to?

It's Darwin Year!

Evidently the University of Michigan is trying to incorporate awareness of Charles Darwin's work into their curriculum this year. A certain professor, who is self-describedly "secular," was a bit chagrined that he could not find much connection between the evolution hypothesis and pre-print books. But he did find a tenuous connection to creationism. He said that he'd been reading a book by Karen Armstrong, who believed that pre-literate myths were not meant to be taken literally. "So," continued my professor with a smirk, "perhaps creationists who take the Genesis myth seriously should re-evaluate their position."

I must admit to being slightly upset. Not that someone thinks differently about Genesis, but that he would take the opportunity to make a gibe that was barely tangential to the class.

Undeniably, there are elements of the oral tradition throughout the Old Testament. Yet because some myths are "just pretend" doesn't mean all of them are. I remembered Lewis' Myth Became Fact. Here's a snippet I pirated from a Christianity Today citation. Here he is talking about the Passion instead of Creation.

"[t]he heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. … God is more than god, not less: Christ is more than Balder, not less. We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology. We must not be nervous about "parallels" and "pagan Christs": they ought to be there—it would be a stumbling block if they weren't. We must not, in false spirituality, withhold our imaginative welcome. If God chooses to be mythopoeic—and is not the sky itself a myth—shall we refuse to be mythopathic?"

Doesn't it just make you feel awfully sorry for those poor Darwinists who follow the new, hyper-literate (and thereby schizophrenic, abstract, homogenized, and mechanical) narrative of evolution?

Neil Postman on Truth

Postman claims repeatedly that he is not a relativist. Well, perhaps his later chapters will prove him not to be. But these sound deliciously close.

"We must not be too hasty in mocking Aristotle's prejudices [in favor of deductive reasoning]. We have enough of our own, as for example the equation we moderns make of truth and quantification. In this prejudice, we come astonishingly close to the mystical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers who attempted to submit all of life to the sovereignty of numbers" (23).


"Truth, like time itself, is a product of a conversation man has with himself about and through the techniques of communication he has invented" (24).


Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. New York: Penguin, 1985.

A Poll

I am curious about the shadow-people who visit my blog and don't leave comments. I am also not very sober, either from lack of sleep or excess of alchohol, you decide.

So here, for your pleasure, edification, and self-discovery, is a poll.

Oh, btw, I think contenders like "Batman Begins" are perfectly legitimate. Just didn't have room to add them. So feel free to write them in (except for Star Wars).

He Finally Popped the Question...

"Michaela, are you going to live with us forever, until you die?"

Something Less Vituperative, or, the Cinema

I apologize for my last rant if it appeared as an attack on men in general. A single blot on the parchment of my existence incited it.

I shall now discuss the cinema.

I determined to watch a Bergman film last week. I got Fanny and Alexander from the university video library, but then noticed that it was three hours long. Being home alone and possessed of many tools by which to take my own life, I decided not to embark upon that voyage. The next day I took out the Seventh Seal, of a healthier length.

I didn't know anything about the movie apart from what Schaeffer had said about it. Like Wild Strawberries, I did not find it entirely dreary. There are moments of beauty and happiness. The family of actors seem least touched by their circumstances (the Plague). Is it their youth? Their child? Their affection? Their lack of material possessions and security? The squire and the knight approach death differently. The knight wrestles with Death embodied (a chilling portrayal) by means of an extended chess game. He needs faith in God to help him face Death, and is angry that it is denied him. The squire faces up to Death with dark humor and moment-by-moment decency to other human beings, believing that metaphysical questions won't help at the end. Those that seem most despicable in the film are the commoners who allow fear of Death to consume them, rob them of the joy of living, and turn them to self-mutiliation and witch hunts.

Has anyone seen End of a Spear yet? Any good? I liked the look of the cinematography from the previews. My grandfather wants to go, which is surprising. As far as I know, he has never been to a cinema. He always told his daughters that going to the movies was like picking up a ham sandwich from a gutter. My grandmother's parents held the same beliefs. She used to sneak out of the house to see Shirley Temple movies.

For Future Necessity...Dealing with Louts 101

There will come a point in every woman's life when she needs a strong yet concise response to an insensitive or forward male. Drawn-out analogies (oh my, did you swallow a garlic clove or is that your natural odor?)may be more subtle, but such rounders tend to stop paying attention after the first word.

Hence, in partial fulfillment of my calling as an information-provider, I offer the following list. I'm sure my intelligent readers are not unfamiliar with these terms, but unfortunately they may be stored in the far recesses, quite literally in the "back of the mind," when most needed.

I therefore suggest a daily, or at least weekly, refresher glance to keep these essential terms at the front of your minds. Ladies with endearing baby features like large eyes (i.e. Allis and Emily) should also practice icy glances in front the mirrors. Ladies with determined chins and gaits (i.e. Sarah and Ann), should utter these words very quietly or they may decimate unoffending male egos for miles around.

One final word. If the offender is unlikely to be familiar with these terms or is too much of a lamebrain to use a dictionary, go with the biggest and most obscure term. Confusion added to insult increases disphoria exponentially. If you are dealing with a smirking slimeball, precision should be valued over grandiloquence, so you do not open yourself up to ridicule.

And now, the list...(my favorites highlighted in red).

Particularly appropriate for the NASCAR sector of the population:

barbarian
bear
blockhead
boob
bumpkin
chuff
clod
clodhopper
clown
dimwit
dolt
galoot
hayseed
hick
hobnail
ignoramus
lamebrain
lubber
lumpkin
mucker
oaf
philistine
rube
rustic
simpleton
swain
vulgarian
yokel

Good for all-round general usage:

beast
bigot
boor
brute (and do roll those rrrrrrrs convincingly)
buffoon
cannibal
churl
hooligan
hun (probably not the term of choice unless the subject knows what a "hun" is. The really ignorant might mistake it for a term of endearment).
lout
monster
rascal
ruffian
troglodyte
vandal
wahoo
yahoo

For all the used car salesmen types out there:

bounder
creep
cur
curl
dog
heel
knave
louse
maggot
rake
rascal
rat
rogue (as with rake, use this term with discretion. Some men might consider it a compliment)
rotter
rounder
scoundrel
sleazeball
slimebucket
stinker
worm

(Words taken from thesaurus.reference.com. Catagories are my own).

Existo

Classes

In terms of absolute value, are getting worse. The mandatory classes have a strong dose of math cum computer science cum social science. In other words, I get to operate in the numerical realm I hate, with notation I've never seen, through fuzzy methods. But I do not think I am in actual danger of losing anything but my mind. Once again, I'm grateful for the mathematical knowledge that has been thrust upon me.

On the bright side, Books and Printing is a definite go. One of my textbooks is a glossy, coffee-table looking book with illustrations of illuminated manuscripts. Another is The Coming of the Book by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin. It's surprisingly interesting. Perhaps the excerpt on farm implements we read in Historiography was boring by virtue of its subject rather than its authorshp. But they are socialists. Definite socialists. But who wasn't back then? I am getting more than my fair share of class participation in right now, since we've been talking about Martial's Epigrams, Augustine's Confessions, and other subjects with which I am at least passingly familair and most people, it appears, are not. We made an octavo on Tuesday, and I have to buy a caligraphy pen for Thursday.

Getting Away

I intend to go to California in May to see my beloved mustard-bottle-throwing Jezebel. There is also a chance I may be in D.C. in February for Alternative Spring Break. I aaccompanying someone I don't know for the talent show to raise money. Aren't I brave?

There is also the little matter of securing a summer internship. You see, poor unwitting I seems to be drawn to schools who have a great belief in Principles and Theory. In order to secure the less vainglorious but more demanded practical skills, we have to scavange for internships. Most of the ones here are unpaid. So, if you have a large library or information center near you that could use a theoretically-trained but practically-wanting grad student who will work for menial pay, then I will come and live with you this summer ("you" being defined as a likeable female who lives in a desirable location). Too good to be true, I know.

If you are a strange person who reads strangers' blogs, or a casual acquaintance, you may want to STOP READING HERE, because I am going to talk about my HEALTH, and even I find it boring. But not so boring that I won't bore my readers with it.

Remember that I haven't been able to straighten my left elbow for awhile? Well I am now in physical therapy and their voodoo has managed to straighten it by several degrees. Last time it made a big "pop" and my hand was numb for awhile. Evidently little pieces of scar tissue may have been restricting it. My occasional indulgences do not seem to have affected me adversely, as I have had no irrate calls from Dr. Mohammed about my blood test results. He did threaten to extract blood from my mother if she didn't make sure I had tests every six weeks, though. They don't really get along.

Oh! Some of the people around here have the most interesting names. One of my profs is named Dragomir--Drago for short, and the technical support head is named Vladmir--Vlad. Virtually a crypt of vampires!

Pessimism

"...there is not even any mandatory a priori knowledge necessary to function effectively as a librarian of any persuasion. Any intelligent college graduate can begin working in a special, public, or academic library and quickly learn the skills necessary to catalog, do reference work, manipulate overrated computer systems, or even administer."

Hauptman, R. (1987). The myth of the reference interview.

So why am I putting myself through two years of psychology and algorithms, poverty and toil? So that someday in the dim future I won't be passed up for a promotion.

Yes, I am feeling sorry for myself.

First Day of Classes

Brianna requires another post, but I find myself uncommonly tongue-tied. So I will talk about this coming semester. Which will be of interest only to long-suffering and empathetic friends. But that's OK.

Looking Forward To:

* Four University Musical Society events for which I have tickets: Lief Ove Andsnes and the Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic (expensive, but worth it!), Chanticleer, and the Tallis Scholars.

*History of Books and Printing Seminar, taught by visiting Yale philologist Mark Burde: I attended the first class today, and it was a breath of fresh air after the drivel of social science that is my daily fare.


Not Looking Forward To:

* The last two foundations courses. Forget all the positive connotations you may have associated with the word "foundations."

* Purchasing the ridiculously expensive cognitive psychology and microeconomics textbooks required for one of said foundations courses. All my other professors have brilliantly skirted copy right law by assigning us exerpts of books and articles. But evidently psychology and microeconomics are such important topics that we need textbooks....

* At least three more months of coldness and darkness (our snow is melted...for now).