Told you so

What's that? Oh, you DIDN'T lose my mail? What? You're sorry? Well...

Apology accepted, post office.

Oh God Damn It

Really, post office? You're going to LOSE a piece of PRIORITY MAIL? Oh, it's okay. It's just the packet with info for my LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION. Yeah. No problem.

There goes my fucking hyperdrive.

When I lose you in the asteroid field, post office, I'm going to laugh as your punk ass is force choked to death.

The First Transport is Away

Of course, by transport I mean grad school application, and by away I mean in the mail. Honestly, I could really use a massive ion cannon to clear a path, but you can't have it all.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Clash of the Bad Marketing Slogans

So...since the Super Bowl is the most commercial event in this plane of existence, it's always fun to chuckle about potential marketing angles when the thing is still a couple months away (and it beats grading papers or writing personal statements).

They didn't do much with the Raiders v. Buccaneers match up a few years ago, but what kind of obnoxiousness can we expect if the current favorites, the Giants and the Titans, face off in Super Bowl XLIII (or whatever it is)?

Anyone?

I know people

Have I accomplished anything of note recently? Not really.

But I know people...around (not so much 'in') the arts. Like, opera reviewer people. Seriously.

http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/2008/10/sunday_mozarts_idomeneo_at_the.php

It Tasks Me...

All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event-in the living act, the undoubted deed-there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts for the mouldings of its features from the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the GRE is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there's naught beyond. But 'tis enough. It tasks me, it heaps me; I see in it outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the GRE agent, or be the GRE principal, I will wreak that hate upon it.

Okay, maybe it's not that bad. Not at all, really. Still, I will be enjoying the celebratory beer and pizza dinner on Saturday night...

Thankfully, I'm taking the cursed thing downtown (we call it Uptown, which makes sense since most people in the area used to live SOUTH of Charlotte), so I won't have to fight the race traffic up the road at Lowe's Speedway(THE BEAST OF THE SOUTHEAST!). The traffic might have tasked me, verily.

I doubt Melville would mind the tweak. Besides, he's dead and this is public domain. Heh.

baudrillard sux

I have decided, authoritatively, I might add, that fact (in both the singular and conceptual sense) does not exist.

This has something to do with confirmation through observation, and also with social and individual constructions of reality, which are abstract concepts formed from (subjective) sensory input.

So, yes. Reality is a lie.

Pizza, on the other hand, is very real (thank God).

What we ACTUALLY talk about

Well, I've ranted on this before (that's a good start, right?). Still, I find it a little creepy, especially this time of year when football camps in college and the pros are starting to gear up, that sports writers and "journalists" constantly dip into the cliche pool and pull out something as tacky as "now that the new coaching staff has gotten their message across, these guys are really ready to drink the kool-aid."

...ready to drink the kool-aid? seriously?

What's disturbing to me is that I doubt many people younger than me are really going to get the reference, so whatever. The reference, though, is something that you probably ought not to make. You know, mass suicide. Striking any bells? Drinking the cyanide laced kool-aid?

This is of course, really in the spirit of the violence and media class I'm teaching. I might to a unit on socially acceptable violent language. Until then, I'll amuse myself with alternate sports cliches:

"These guys are really ready to close the garage door and leave the motor running."

"These guys are really ready to take a bath with a hair-dryer."

"These guys are really ready to commit Seppuku."

"These guys are really ready to self-immolate."

It bothers me also that Wikipedia has an entire article on methods of suicide (I looked because I forgot how to spell Seppuku.)

I will find a way to teach a Susan Sontag text even if it kills me.

Okay, so that pretty much says it all. I'll probably be using Regarding the Pain of Others for my Media Violence and American Culture class.

Ha. This is my revenge against reason and practicality for preventing me from teaching Illness as Metaphor in my satire class.

I laugh, and check that revenge off the list.