Miscellany

• That Kevin Spacey Guy. The first couple of days I was here, there was this guy who looked just like Kevin Spacey whom I was seeing everywhere. At the coffeeshop, at Chipotle, in the lobby of every hotel I entered. Then, suddenly, he was gone.
• Fortune Cookie Messages. I have gotten Chinese take-out twice while here (from two different restaurants). The first fortune said, ":-) You have an active mind and a keen imagination. :-)" The second said, ":-) You are working hard. :-)"
• Number of people who have recognized my picture from my blog and come up to me to say hi: 2. And one more, a lovely young woman with a great short pixie haircut who keeps looking at me with recognition but who I think is too shy to talk to me.
• Number of light bulbs in my hotel room that have burned out since I checked in: 3.

1. The spelling of the word "doughnut." Ever since I was a child, I've disliked the "donut" spelling. It reeks of sloth, as if one can't be bothered to write or type the letters "ugh." Plus, they're made of dough, not "do." Yeah, I know they're not made of nuts. Shut up.
2. Split infinitives. It's a real stumbling block for me to read "to more effectively serve" or "to clearly write." Less obvious infinitives don't bother me; it's mostly the "to [adverb] [verb]" construction that I find distracting.
3. The use of "at" as the last word in a sentence. "Where are you at?" -- or worse, the dreaded "Yeah, so that's where I'm at in my research." Apologies, everyone. It's nothing personal; one of the customs of Festivus is the airing of grievances, and these are mine.
4. Rules associated with clothing and seasons. NEVER wear white after Labor Day -- which means no white belts, shoes, or purses, but other white clothing items are okay. Never mix black and navy blue. Never wear black pantyhose and white shoes. My Old South conservatism in this regard made it extra hard to pick out suits recently; if any suit was even a little too light-colored, I couldn't bring myself to try it on.
5. Unnecessary use of profanity in the classroom. As a student, I was always kind of disappointed when my teachers dropped the f-, etc. bombs in class, so I don't do it (but it's fine with me if students do). I know plenty of teachers who can make it work, but it's not my style.
6. The use of "Ye Olde." This only became annoying after I read Tari Fanderclai's rant some years back.

This one and this one.

Enough said, no?

I keep meaning to blog about Nuttin But Stringz, but have kept forgetting until this very moment. Go to the lower right corner of the screen and watch the Tonight Show video. I'll be buying that CD in January.

Treatment of the Impostor Phenomenon in High Achieving Women. Bookmarking that one for later.

There's a new issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication out, and of particular interest to me is Elizabeth Würtz' A Cross-Cultural Analysis of Websites from High-Context Cultures and Low-Context Cultures. Look at all the images from McDonalds sites and the Summary, Implications for Web Design, and Discussion sections. Very interesting work.

Finally, you must look at projects on the construction of identity and flickr, a clever and insightful art installation about "showing off one's good life" on Flickr. This Quicktime movie is especially illustrative and provocative. Hopefully I'm not the last one to see this site; I was trawling through the archives of the Flickr blog and saw it there.

• Go to the Carnivals! There's the Teaching Carnival and the Feminist Carnival.
• I've had Alabama's The Closer You Get in my mind all day. What's up with that?
• A good friend of mine who recently finished her Ph.D. said about dissertation writing: "Eventually you get to this point where you know you're going to finish it." I'm there. The chapter I'm working on now is going well, and quickly. All I wanna do is zooma-zoom-zoom-zoom and a boom-boom. I have full confidence that I'll be done with this thing before August 06.
• I've decided to take a new tack with my treadmill running. Instead of being hyper-vigilant about my time, I'm just entering a distance into the machine (2.5 miles today) and slowing down when I feel like it. I don't have a specific running goal, and I don't know what the best practices are for training.