Miscellany

Suddenly a curtain rises, and you figure out that you're on a large stage in front of a packed house. A spotlight shines on you. You're front and center, directly facing the audience, surrounded by smiling dancers in identical costumes, like The Rockettes. They've practiced and are ready, and they begin the number. You don't know the dance, so you try to fake it, awkwardly kicking your legs and gesticulating, staring at the dancers next to you. The audience roars. Turns out you're on Saturday Night Live, and this is a bit. You're alarmed and humiliated.

But then, cat ball shaver is a good one too.

I got back into town last night and haven't quite recovered from the month-long trip. I'm trying to get my apartment cleaned up, groceries bought, laundry done, etc. Oh, and tons of academic work, too. I'm just sluggish. Ah well. Maybe blogging some quotidian thoughts and occurrences will help.

A good friend of mine at home was ranting about these ribbons on people's cars that are arranged so that the text, "Support Our Troops," is horizontal. "Yeah, I sure am glad they made it so we can see the text horizontally. I wouldn't have been able to read it otherwise. Seriously! People can read all kinds of ways: Diagonally, vertically, backwards even!" Indeed it is ubiquitious. Here in Minnesota too, I've noticed. Is there some special reason to stick it to the car that way that I'm not aware of?

The Blogora might switch to Drupal. How hard is it going to be to import the MT archives? Anyone have firsthand experience with that?

When I went to the office to check my mailbox, I found the 2005 reprinting of the 6th edition of the MLA style guide. I guess as it's a reprinting, they didn't make any changes or addenda, but I looked for any mention of citing weblog entries and comments anyway, but didn't find any. I know there are improvised ways to do it, but I'd like to see weblogs mentioned in the actual guide.

Computers & Writing Online is in full swing! Be sure to comment!

I just finished reading Franny and Zooey for the first time. That's got me a little drained, too. The whole time I was reading it, I was thinking that it would have made a great movie, maybe still would. What do you think? Thora Birch as Franny, or possibly Christina Ricci? Tobey Maguire, or maybe Joaquin Phoenix as Zooey? Speaking of books, I never did take that trip, so I didn't listen to those books -- actually, I listened to exactly half of The Picture of Dorian Gray just driving around town (my Oxford World's Classics edition has 224 pages. I looked, and I'd listened up to page 112), and now I have to read the rest. So far, my literature consumption since the beginning of May includes:

• The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
• Passing, Nella Larsen
• Jazz, Toni Morrison
• Franny and Zooey, J.D. Salinger
• and half of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde

Not bad, huh? I should get back to research-related non-fiction though.

Via Jeremy, whose cities are somewhat more hip than mine.

"What do you get when you cross a member of the Mafia with a deconstructionist?"

"An offer you can't understand."

"Postmodernism." Encyclopedia of Folklore and Literature. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc. 1998.

I neeeeeed an FTP program for this iBook. I've searched on here for Fetch, but haven't been able to find it. Does it go by a different name now?

Also, now OpenOffice doesn't open. I start Start OpenOffice.org, and it starts, as does X11, but the actual OpenOffice program doesn't start. It's maddening. I'm going to try restarting to see if that helps... UPDATE: Works now -- but I still need an FTP application.

I should probably create a category for comics.

Went to theory.org.uk to see if I could download that theory screen saver for my iBook, and I found these theory Lego sets, just added, including Anthony Giddens in his study:

More here. No Zizek though, bummer.

Weird dream last night. In the dream, I was working at a liberal (progressive? Lefty? What are we calling it these days?) think tank. I decided to get a big group of all kinds of people in a room for a public policy brainstorm, and invited homeless people, children, teenagers, mothers, transmen, etc. etc. And Ludacris. I prepared a list of discussion questions, such as, "What obligation, if any, do the rich have to the poor?" But some internet-meme type questions crept in there somewhere, including "If you were a crayon, what color would you be?" and "What kind of kite do you prefer: box or diamond?" Well, the discussion group was ultimately unproductive, with angry debates over the difference between burnt umber and burnt sienna. My alarm went off in the middle of an impassioned impromptu address to the group by Ludacris, who insisted that sure, people can give their money away if they want, but the rich don't owe the poor ANYTHING.