Emily. Shock and Awe.

Phil. Just Like In the Movies.

Wendy. Ski Bum and Adventuress.

Rachel. Dancing Queen.

Julie. The Littlest Elf.

Chris. There Ain't No Party Like a Marching Band Party.

Cyn. Just a Pink Haired Girl.

 

I read this thing on the internet the other day about a new form of Diet Coke they are putting out. I was going to link to it, but I'm too lazy, but I just want you to know that it's the same as regular Diet Coke in being a 0- or 1-calorie product. It is not replacing the old version, but uses different sweeteners & is going to taste slightly different. People, this is a product for which there is absolutely no exigence.
That having been said, here are some reviews for various products (media & otherwise) & experiences, with ratings attached.

William Faulkner -- Soldier's Pay. 3. William Faulkner, I can't believe it's not better. This is way too clever, & to describe the way a fat person walks by saying that he "walked fatly" is not helpful. (Soldier's Pay was his first novel.)
Joseph Conrad -- Lord Jim. 10. A great novel. It has a fascinatingly complex narrative structure, & is drily hilarious in places. Recommended to everyone.
T. Rex -- The Slider. Probably should get a 10. Everybody loves T. Rex.
Comets on Fire -- Blue Cathedral. 8 or 9. This is really super, even better than the last Comets on Fire album. Most of the songs are really heavy & sound like Blue Cheer, but there is lots of variety between them so they don't all sound the same.
The A-Frames -- Black Forest. 8 or 9. Also really super. One of the least boring new post-punk bands. This is because they have better songs & sound more paranoid, instead of just trying to sound cool.
Cadbury Caramel Eggs. 7. These are not the best candy in the world or anything, but they are scrumptious. Also a hell of a lot better than regular Cream Eggs.
Losing my purse this weekend. 5. It might surprise you that it got this high a rating, but the story had a happy ending because a kind & helpful bartender found the purse for me, & held it at the bar so I could come get it. (There were many nice bar employees implicated in this story.) It was a plus that nobody used the contents of my wallet to practice identity theft, & by the grace of God, my Metro card wasn't in the purse, so I was able to go to work on Monday.

posted by Emily Comments [] 11:01 PM

Sunday, March 27, 2005

 

I graduated from Power School two Fridays ago. It was cold, but I was happy to get out of SC, so I didn't care. After a fun 14 hour drive I reach...

INDIANA: I get to see my brother, whom I haven't seen since last August. My mom tells me that I should try and date Michelle Kwan. I leave after two days, with a 13 hour drive east to...

PHILLY: Visit with Cyn! I am quiet throughout most of it, decompressing. Cyn allows me to do so (much appreciated). Meet Cyn's friends. I visit the Mutter Museum, and listen to electronic and metal on my iPod. Good times had. Travel 5 hours NW to...

SOMEPLACE IN NY: Visiting my friend Brian. Lives out in the woods. Drank alot of beer and Johnny Walker. Played video games and watched Star Trek. About to leave up to Saratoga Springs.

I still have a full week of leave left, and I don't know what I'm going to do. I'll probably just hang out and try to keep out of trouble. Don't know when I'll have internet up at the house yet. Hopefully the end of the week. I'll keep in touch.

posted by Christopher Comments [] 10:40 AM

Thursday, March 24, 2005

 

I'm here rocking out at the radio station. Conversation that just occurred between me & the previous DJs, my good pals, whom I will refer to as Jake & Vern:

{Emily shows up with a conspicuous band-aid on her neck}
Vern: Whoa! What's under the band-aid?
Emily: Okay, I'll show you, but I don't want to say, because I like to keep my personal affairs private from the listening public. {We were on the air at this point.}
Jake: A vampire bite!
Vern: Whoa, that thing is a monster!
Emily: Isn't it gross? It's the worst one I've ever seen.
{Some general merriment follows.}
Jake: So tell us about your week so far.
Emily: My week has been all about being on spring break & trying to get work done. I'm supposed to be writing my MA project.
Vern: "Get work done," eh?
Emily: Yes, "getting work done." "Lots" of it. "Working" "incredibly" "hard." & very "thoroughly," I might add.
Jake: Wow, every word in that sentence had more quotation marks in it.
{Slight pause}
Vern: I wish I could get some "work" done. Schoolwork, homework, classwork, anything. As long as it's not an independant study.
{Slight pause}
Jake: Heh!
Emily: Jake just got it. He's like, "oh, it's a funny joke."
Jake: Actually, I did just get it. I'm still filled with rage from listening to all that Minor Threat. It destroyed my ability to process irony.
Emily: Yeah, Minor Threat ain't very ironic.

posted by Emily Comments [] 10:49 PM

Saturday, March 19, 2005

 

"Life is hard, especially with Bush in office."

-- My mom

A truer statement could not be made. But although the hardness of life is fascinating, I am here to talk to you about my trip to Vanderbilt. I went, & it is nice there. The campus is a bit like Oberlin's, but prettier, with more gothic arches on the buildings. There are many trees, some of which have plaques on them to indicate what kind of tree they are, because the campus is also an arboretum. I found out they have a divinity school named after good ol' Reverend Oberlin, which made me feel at home. They also have these cool square wooden trash cans, very '70's, all over campus. (Well, details mean a lot, & there aren't any cool vintage trash receptacles at MD.) They told us all kinds of great stuff about their program: $4000 more per year than I am making now, teaching lit courses with fewer students in them, a 1:1 student to faculty ratio, etc. etc. They also have a cool seminar room with a balcony & copies of every book by Vanderbilt faculty.
There were I think 9 of us recruitees, out of 15 who had been admitted -- some of them couldn't make it & some probably have decided not to go there. We met so many people yesterday that we were completely exhausted of smiling & sounding intelligent by 4 in the afternoon. Then we went to a party at the department head's house. By 10:00 I was tired & feeling ready to leave, & was surprised to find that it wasn't around midnight. Also (this was earlier) I met a famous scholar who is friends with Noam Chomsky, & a had a very scary time because they sent me over to the comp lit building to seek him out, & he was sitting in front of a window so that he was backlit & I could barely see his face, & then he asked me what my ultimate goals were & what I might want to write my dissertation on & I was like "ahh! I don't know!!"
BUT IS NASHVILLE SCARY, you may well ask? Does it have only country music, & do people regularly get gay-bashed in Wal-Mart? No. It's not incredibly great; it is new-looking & kind of ugly. It doesn't have a main urban center but is divided up into districts, so you have to drive around it a lot, like L.A. It's not really the deep south, & people have described it as seeming sort of midwestern. It is also the least Republican part of Tennessee -- I think they have a Democratic mayor. I asked everybody if they have a good music scene, & it turns out that they do. I forget what I was going to say to end this entry, so I will leave you with this closing thought: Vanderbilt is rich. Rich is good.

posted by Emily Comments [] 9:38 PM

Wednesday, March 16, 2005

 

small problem: i went out to lunch today, had a couple glasses of wine, and returned to work slightly wobbly. that would be fine, but as i sober up, it becomes increasingly difficult, to type, spell, perform simple addition, and whatnot. also my head hurts.

last night i was driving home from class and stopped at one of those gas stations that have the wacky tv screen installed in the pump. normally, i don't really watch the miniature tv screen because it only takes a few minutes to fill up my small car and i preoccupy myself with other things such as cleaning the windows. if you're actually bored enough to want to watch television while refueling, it's possible that you may be driving a giant gas guzzeling war starting tankmobile. the little tv at the gas station last night was showing the o'reilly factor with the volume cranked up to full. it was impossible to ignore. worse, the show was in the middle of explaining that laws which allowed people to claim political asylum were responsible for letting thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists into our country. i became filled with anger. they should know better than to anger someone who has a ready source of gasoline. i don't want the o'reilly factor foisted upon me at the gas station. why can't they play something inoffensive on the little tv, like the weather channel. the weather channel is very helpful to drivers. because i'm a bad kid, i took the sticker off my apple and stuck it on the little tv to cover up bill o'reilly's face.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 6:02 PM

Monday, March 14, 2005

 

Conference

This weekend I went to my first academic conference, on the great novelist Joseph Conrad, in New York. I spent a lamentably short time staying with Rachel & Dani, but did get to revisit the hookah bar. I went directly from the Chinatown bus to the hookah bar, & was made dizzy by the tobacco. The event itself was in the Polish-American society (or something), a building that is probably a former residence of a privileged individual. It has marble floors & glorious plaster ceilings & lots of antique tapestries & Polish paintings hanging on the wall. We all got very hungry waiting until 2:30 or so to eat lunch, but got free sandwiches & cheese & wine. The papers people presented were very insightful -- I learned a lot about Conrad's Nostromo, so if anyone has any questions about it, just let me know. However, the proceedings ended on an odd note with two people getting into an extended debate about whether mention of red boots in the novel is or is not a coded reference to the wearing of red boots by the Polish nobility. My professor had to step in & shut them up. It was, frankly, the kind of thing that makes academics look silly.

McCann's Irish Oatmeal

You probably think oatmeal isn't all that exciting. You think you know what oatmeal is all about, & you'd rather eat cold cereal anyway. But if you tried McCann's Irish Oatmeal, you would be forced to revise that opinion. The difference between this product & the regular old oatmeal you are accustomed to is simply impossible to decribe. It has a heavenly, soft & creamy texture, & you do not need to make it taste good with syrup & raisins & all kinds of crap, because its subtle flavor is perfectly complimented by a little salt & butter. BUT IS THIS PRODUCT CONVENIENT, you ask? YES! I bought the instant kind & it cooks in the microwave in two minutes. Mm, oatmeal.

Extra Bonus

This is an amazing review of that White Stripes DVD.

posted by Emily Comments [] 8:16 PM

Friday, March 11, 2005

 

random item: i'm looking for a document on the network at work and i find this file that probably should be named 'mailing list' but is instead called 'mauling list,' and i think, hmmm, that's a really good idea.

posted by Wendolyn Comments [] 5:46 PM

Sunday, March 06, 2005

 

Two Things

I got into Temple; HOWEVER, they faked me out by sending me an acceptance letter all by itself in a thin envelope! I saw the thin envelope & was all "whatever, I've been rejected from better schools than Temple," so I didn't open it for a day or two. Then it turned out it was all like "welcome to Temple!" So why'd you frighten me like that, Temple?

Hey Julie, do you remember that night we went to some music-related protest against Bush,
& it was all cold & pouring down freezing rain, so we went to get pizza at Union Station? & how it was so weird there? I went to a cultural event with my parents & their friends, & afterwards we went to that same pizza restaurant. We only wanted drinks, but we had to tell both the guy who seated us & the waitress numerous times that we just wanted drinks, not any food, really, because they didn't seem to believe us. My dad's friend was unimpressed by their failure to have any non-alcoholic beer besides O'Doul's. I ordered a rum & coke & was served it in a PINT glass. That was certainly the first time such a thing has happened to me. Then they tried to cheat us by charging us for two or three rum & cokes on the bill. We had to complain to the waitress about it. I think that's their business policy: Stay open late, & put extra crap on everyone's bill.

The Cutest Thing in the World

The cutest thing in the world is when cats are cleaning their ears &, in the process, flip the ear inside-out. There's nothing cuter than a cat with inside-out ears.

posted by Emily Comments [] 7:09 PM