the end of the world is nigh
i'm currently trying to buy a ticket to germany using priceline. if you haven't already tried this, you may should consider it. i've only done it once before (and did get a cheap ticket), but what i'm enjoying is the anticipation involved. if you start out with a ridiculously low bid and then inch your way up every few minutes, it can provide hours of entertainment with the final payoff of a plane ticket.
simple pleasures.
i'm from bessemer, alabama (a suburb of birmingham). here is the local version of "the onion":
The Birminghamster - Alabama's Great Equalizer
very funny stuff!
all stations reporting normal, sir.
i had my first problem with cable internet yesterday and today. the problem? no access.
cable guy came round. he was useless.
scott (see links) helped me rule out some causal factors via the old fashioned telephone.
then i had my first ever experience with tech support of any kind. and (after i finally got off "hold") it was very pleasant. i dealt with two techies and they were both patient, helpful, and knowledgeable. i was well pleased. three cheers for the good people at "adelnet"!!!
eventually, we fixed the problem (although no one seems to know exactly what the problem was). but what one doesn't know may not hurt one, in this case.
the best parts of the state of the union address are outlined below:
-- the part where dubyah talked about the "usa freedom corps". right on! i've always loved their comic books. especially the ones where they fought the "league of fascist totalitarians" (acronym: LeFT).
-- the parts where dubyah discussed his certainty that "we" can defeat evil. FINALLY! evil has been far too comfortable for far too long.
-- the part where dubyah said "let's roll!". i did, and i'm still high.
-- the part where he announced his intention to increase spending on just about everything (he's taking suggestions) except for those things we really need.
-- the part where he announced his intention to build a mighty tower so high that we can reach the gates of heaven and commune with god.
-- the part where he called for the navy to lash together a fleet so that he may ride his senator/horse across the bay of naples.
-- the BEST part was when he told gary oldman to get off his plane.
dawn's choir saga . . .
Dawn's Days
darlin: the fact that the guy says he feels like he has to apologize for being a white male is a major bell ringer! the ONLY people who ever say that are racist and sexist.
a clever take on "camp x-ray" by
Susan Block
on the counterpunch website.
i just said this to scott:
there are three types of people in the world: 1) people who are helpless victims of enron 2) people who wish they'd made a pile on enron 3) you and me.
scott and i met here:
Residence Life
OOOH, i almost forgot . . .
i had a dream last night. that's not notable for normal people, but i almost never recall even having a dream (much less what it was about). so this is a big deal. here's the dream. you try to figure it out:
i was parasailing (is that what it's called?) while being towed behind a boat. my brother was doing the same thing while being towed behind the same boat. he was flying MUCH higher than me (so often true of us) and released his tow and flew away. i, meanwhile, slowly skidded to the shore with no problems.
did i mention that george hamilton was driving the boat? i shit you not.
so. i got to shore and took off my life jacket. soon thereafter i looked at the horizon and saw a massive wave of water coming. it was HUGE (hundreds of feet high). i alerted my family and we made for the tram (don't ask). my folks managed to get on the tram, but i couldn't. i then started trying to run away from shore, thinking that the further away from the ocean i was, the better. it then dawned on me that, on foot, i'd never make it. my only hope was to find something under which i could hide (to prevent things crushing me). i then thought it might be even safer to be out in the open, so as to "ride" the wave.
at this point i ran into one of my professors, who looked so great that i gave her the frat boy eye follow.
that's all i remember.
the fox show "24" (starring kiefer sutherland) is being rerun on FX right now. this is the first time i've seen it. i think it will also be the last time: it has that shaky camera thing going on. i hate that and can't watch it. shakey camera is, i think, supposed to look "real" but my eyes (i can't speak for your's) don't work like that. my eyes work more like steadicam (see "er").
this story says, i think, loads more than it says (if you take my meaning, sir [says i as sam gamgee]):
Chicago Tribune | Bad EBay experience spurs Internet manhunt
one thing that jumps out at me is that these people are stupid for paying with checks and money orders.
another thing that jumps out at me is that they seem to have paid WAY too much for the laptops on sale (unless said laptops were HAL9000 quality).
another thing that jumps out at me is that ebay is just generally dangerous. this is really more the confirmation of suspicions which have long kept me from fooling with the beast (see: i admit to not knowing what i'm talking about!).
another thing that jumps out at me is caveat emptor.
another thing that jumps out at me is "if something looks too good to be true, it probably is".
another thing that jumps out at me is that i really don't care. i nominate all those who lost their money on this deal for the "darwin awards". if, on the other hand, it turns out that the guy was legit (which seems unlikely), i hope he sues the pants off the lot of them for invasion of privacy. actually, he might be able to do that even if he wasn't legit.
the website of one of my most favorite cartoonists:
This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow
here's a nice article:
The Beloved Community
i am so utterly exhausted by the first year of the dubyah era . . . i'm not sure if i can handle it if he is re-elected.
you heard it here first, folks: i may just quit the country at some point in the not too distant future.
i don't say this in an alec baldwin sort of insincere hyperbole. i say it from the perspective of someone who has actually lived abroad and knows from personal experience that it can be far less stressful to be an expat than to be a thinking pat.
my nemesis is named "rick steves" and he has a website (but don't we all?):
Rick Steves' Europe Through the Back Door
i love / hate him even more now that i know that his site is called "europe through the back door"!!! i've seen a movie of that same name . . .
the pbs show about easy and cheap and fun ways to move about europe is on. it stars some nerdy guy (steve something or other) who has apparently written books on the subject. i've seen this show several times and I WANT HIS JOB.
unlike many travel shows featuring places i've been, this guy actually gets things right. he knows the basic stuff and all of that. he suggests pensions instead of hotels, public transportation instead of driving, etc. the only problem is that he's a total nerd. it's hard to imagine him actually enjoying anything he does in any deep, meaningful, human way. it's very frustrating.
of course, he never stumbles through europe drunk, as i've done, and that may be why i hate him.
i told sara (my roomate) about the "find matthew mccaugnahey (sp?) an 80s tv show themed movie project" game and she suggested:
"Three's Company": starring m.m. as "jack", cameron diaz as "chrissie", christopher walken (playing his "continental" character from saturday night live) as "mr. roper", beverly d'angelo as "mrs. roper", and ted danson as jack's buddy who lives in the complex and joins him at the "regal begal" bar. we can't think of a "janet". . . any thoughts?
this would be an excellent film, if only because the sequel possibilities are great! two other characters filled the "chrissie" zone in the show (not playing "chrissie", mind you, but playing her relatives), "the roper's" got their own, short-lived spin off, and don knotts (of morgantown, wv, where i now dwell) played "mr furley" (sara suggested jim carrey for this role, but i'm not sure).
matthew? have your agent call us!
i've been thinking about the most recent episode of "enterprise" . . .
that was a good one.
really it is a good example of why i like the show: it's relatively slow. it's not breathless like "voyager" often was or like copycat shows such as "babylon 5". like the better episodes of "the next generation" and "deep space 9", "enterprise" is content to be quiet for long periods of time. in tonight's episode, for example, NO ONE got shot (or shot at). there were, furthermore, no bad guys in this one.
there isn't enough of that sort of thing on tv.
now that i'm famous (in a small way, having had this page mentioned on something called www.ezboard.com [i'm in the process of understanding what, precisely, that is]) i have to be more consistent with my blogging.
towit: scott (see links at right) has asked for a list of 80s tv shows we would like to see made in to films starring matthew mccaughnehey (ah hey hey?). i would like to see a "b.j. and the bear" movie. i will go further to add that billy bob thornton should play the late claude akins's magnificent sherrif lobo (b.j.'s smokey foil).
i think this film would do wonders for our national mood. war, recession, massive government and corporate corruption exposed, a stupid president, . . . why not add the glory that is the long haul truck back into the media mix?
flu is afoot in my body.
it hit me about midway through class today. the discussion was a victim of my rapid shift in health. see, we were talking about c.vann woodward's "the strange career of jim crow". he talks about the power of "impersonal forces" in the development of race relations in the south in the nineteenth century. i tried to get the students to figure out what sort of "impersonal forces" he might mean. several students came close, but i lost my patience after a time. the fever took me . . .
and i launched into an impromptu lecture on what a marxist historian is. this included an explanation of "homo oeconomicus" . . . i hope i didn't hurt anyone's brain. i did apologize: they had been exposed, i told them, to more historiography than they probably needed for the moment. ah well.
scott and shelley are both fired up about the fact that they have both been linked to by other bloggers.
they seem to be overlooking the most important issue: MY PAGE HAS NOT, to my knowledge, BEEN LINKED BY ANYONE OTHER THAN THE TWO OF THEM.
does this mean nobody reads me except my friends? if that is true, then the terrorists have already won.
i just took the personality test suggested on shelley's blog and i am a "dreamer / minstral". go figure.
on the first day of class (14 jan) i gave out the syllabus. on it was a list of twenty places for my students to find for a map quiz. the quiz was yesterday (23jan) and i graded it today (24jan). most were decent but . . .
i caught four (potential) cheaters. . . ON A MAP QUIZ
more importantly one girl got a one out of ten. she got washington, d.c. correct, but missed alaska, st. louis, chicago, montgomery (al), cuba, hawaii, korea (north and south), vietnam, and afghanistan. YEESH! not only does she have little clue about geography (which is sad but to be expected: it is, in fact, the reason i make them do the quiz) but she is apparently too lazy to study for the quiz. too lazy to learn where hawaii is? too lazy to learn where chicago is? great googly woogly!!!
there went 9% of her grade!
dawn,
if you're reading this: your last blog was scary. run away!
i think i know which guy you mean, by the way. is the guy who argued with chad about the eagles at the mexican restaurant? he set off ALL of my alarm bells (and i'm a local).
cheez and crackers! has this guy ever read the part about making a "joyful noise unto the lord"?
if, by the way, anyone who isn't dawn reads this, check out dawn's blog for a look at what i'm talking about.
since the prisoners we've got in cuba are officially "unlawful combattants" rather than "prisoners of war" in part because we aren't at war. sooo, when will one of the cable newsspeak channels change their graphic to:
AMERICA'S NEW UNLAWFUL COMBAT
???? seems appropriate to me.
by the way: why cuba? why not fort leavenworth, kansas (A PRISON, not a navy base). i have an idea why: some of them are going to "escape" into cuba. we will then have to expand the war on terror into cuba! perfect plan . . .
here are martin luther king, jr.'s thoughts on the vietnam war.
http://webusers.anet-stl.com/~civil/docs-mlkvietnamwarspeech1967.htm
what would he say today?
happy martin luther king, jr. day!
the best thing about THIS mlkjr day? we're at war while celebrating the life of a pacifist!
in fact we've been at war since this holiday was instituted back in the 80s (with rare exceptions). of course, during the 90s (and, so far, the 00s), iraq is always around to be shot at.
ugh. another year of waiting for justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream . . .
i'm beginning to think that mountaintop removal mining that is the military-industrial complex has filled the streambeds and blocked the flow of justice and righteousness. there is hope, though (if west virginia's experience is any guide): the artificial blocks on the natural watershed will eventually burst and release an all engulfing torrent. let's hope.
first meeting of the movie class tonight. so far so good (and bad)
on the good side: we watched "american history x". the pedagogy behind this decision is that the movie is about the 1990s and all of our students have memories of the 90s. also, it is about race in modern america (and all of our students, unless they are utter turds, have an opinion about race in modern america).
more than a few tears were shed. if you are reading this and haven't seen the movie. . . you should. it is REALLY good. i won't go into the details about the various qualities of the movie, but i will say why i like it.
on the bad side: it is about my family.
the movie is about edward norton, eldest son of a firefighter shot dead by a black person while responding to a call. norton--bright, athletic, charismatic--is lured into neo-nazism after his father's murder. he channels his anger towards the person who killed his daddy into a broader rage against what (he is taught, by stacey keach, to percieve as) the general assault on white protestants at work in american society. he (norton) becomes "super skinhead". one night he kills two black guys who try to steal his truck (seemingly in response to an earlier incident: the movie isn't entirely clear on this point) and is sentenced to 3 years in the pokey. while in prison he undergoes an epiphany and comes out determined to make good his misdeeds, most notably as regards the spiral of his younger brother (edward furlong) down the same hate drain which swallowed him.
here's how it fits my family. my (white, protestant) dad was a firefighter. he was passed over for a promotion due to affirmative action (affirmative action is revealed in a flashback to be a sensitive issue with edward norton's dad). my dad (like edward norton's) raged for a time against the unfairness of the politics surrounding the implementation of affirmative action. my dad's anger went a bit racial at times. i closed off contact with him until he reconsidered (he did, and thanked me for my tough love) but my younger brother responded differently.
around the same time as my dad's saga developed my brother fell in with skins. i can't remember now which came first (dad's racial outbursts or my brother's new friends) but they happened around the same time. i warned my folks that my brother was going down a bad path but they didn't (want to) believe me.
time marched on and the sherrif and the f.b.i. came a knockin. turns out, the skinhead group with which my brother had become (mercifully, loosely) affiliated were involved in the beating murders of at least two homeless men. my brother was present (according to the f.b.i., one of whose agents i met with personally) during at least two "bum rushes" but not the murders. gavin's testimony before the grand jury was partly responsible for putting two skins away for murder and the skin leader away for all sorts of RICO related crimes.
there was a time, when i was home visiting from college, when a skinhead called to harrass my brother about his testimony. i pulled out my father's pistol and chambered a bullet on the phone so the little shit could hear it and begged him to come on over and get shot. i was not joking.
this is, as you might imagine, not the most popular dinner-table topic in my family.
my brother has told me, incidentally, that "american history x" is DEAD ON about the way the whole racket works.
i, incidentally, was never in any way attracted to the neo nazis. i was, however, at times interested in violently opposing them. sigh. i once kicked a drunken skinhead numerous times in the belly while wearing steel-toed shoes (as long as i'm confessing). i regret that, in a way.
there is a line in the movie, near the beginning, where edward furlong (the younger brother) says "when people look at me, they see my brother." that line bugs me on many levels. you'll have to get to know me to understand.
er: i meant EMPERORS, not emporers.
by the way: i meant that modern u.s. was the most often taught HISTORY course. (see below)
first day of class today. so far so good!
i have a packed house, including 17(!) people who have had me before! i'm so happy! hehe
incidentally, my admirer is among my students. she is also registered for my section of the hollywood/am.hist. class. this should be interesting. . .
today i told my students that modern u.s. was the most often taught course at our univ (and, i guess, most univ.s) and asked them why. they gave me stock (expected) answers: make you a better citizen; learn how we got where we were; those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it . . . yada yada yada. i then submitted to them that this class is utterly insignificant and is, in fact, a symptom of the much criticized (and perhaps peculiarly american) disease of "presentism".
i noted, by way of example, that much of the hubbub in kosovo a few years ago centered on the 1388 "battle of kosovo" and told the students how the serbs and kosovars involved simply could not get through to americans (and "we" refused to understand) how important this sort of historical consciousness is. i went on to say that various cultures around the world just don't understand why "we" don't understand their interest in their own history.
i then told them about the dates listed below (my course versus the era of the julian emporers) and pointed out that the city of rome was 701 years old when julius took over and that the empire continued for anywhere between 400 and 1400 years after the dates i mentioned. i said "that, my friends, is history").
i did admit that my own research interests are in modern u.s. (i didn't mention my interest in modern europe), by the way.
i think they got the point.
and then i hit them again: people of the last hundred or so years are the first in human history to have the ability to destroy the world 1) on purpose and 2) on accident. so, i asked, is THIS why the class exists?
i hope we can work with that beginning. i'll let you know.
1865 -- end of Civil War
1877 -- end of Reconstruction
1898-1900 -- Spanish-American War
1917-1918 -- US involvement in WWI
1929-1941 -- Great Depression
1941-1945 -- US involvement in WWII
1954-1975 -- US involvement in Vietnam
1991 -- end of Cold War
2002 -- You are here
-----------------------------------
137 years, total
49-44bc (5 years) -- Julius
44-27bc (17yrs) -- civil wars
27bc-14ad (40 yrs) -- Augustus
14-37ad (23yrs) -- Tiberius
37-41ad (4 yrs) -- Caligula
41-54ad (13 yrs) -- Claudius
54-68ad (14yrs) -- Nero
-----------------------------------
126 years, total
i can't get os10 to run my printer (os9 did it fine). ugh.
the kid who flew the plane into the building in tampa was a terrorist, by the way, or there is no such thing as a terrorist.
so anyway,
school starts monday. new things this semester. i'll teach u.s. history since the civil war (for the first time) and coteach u.s. history and film. the film class may well be very cool. watching movies and reading books and discussing fact v. fiction. cross your fingers. i'm also excited about teaching modern u.s. in the modern u.s. i have (out of 44 total) 14 students who have taken me before for other classes. it could, i suppose, be just a huge coincidence that i have so many repeat offenders, but i prefer to think that they like me. now WHY they like me is another story. perhaps i'm easy? i know at least one of them has expressed non scholastic interests in me (sigh). oh well.
so now i have to get some work done. i still haven't finished my syllabus. doh!
welcome back, greg!
i had a lovely year-end-celebration season! i went to my birthtown (bessemer, alabama) to see my parents and aunt and uncle. actually, i went first to the greater (?) houston, tx, area to help my parents get shed of that place and move to bessemer. or rather, they aren't moving to bessemer. we moved their things to bessemer where they will be stored until they are moved to birmingham. it's a long story. i'll tell you if you really want to know.
anyway. my faithful indian companion birgit flew up from mexico to be with me for the celebratory period.
here's a quick list of people i saw over the period:
*people i saw and know rather well or at least well enough to consider them friends (not including my kin)*
scott, shelley (see links for their sites), birgit, dawn (hrdlica) stewart, chad stewart, richard conville, matt hull, brenda (hull?), kristi stahnke, cynthia scott, austin scott, susan steen, dave pumphert, jason hewitt, andrea hewitt, richard and holly gabler filce, marty brasher, stacey tagert (clark), chris clark, dave tisdale, monica bullock (only a sighting: no talk involved), and brad clark.
*people i saw and know a bit (even if they don't know me much or at all)*
emily graham, geoff jensen, jane claire tyner, steve deaton, clinton kirby, and jean mccartey.
*people i met*
amy conville (?). there are many others but i'm bad with the whole "meeting" thing.
so much to say. . . more later. see scott's xmess/new years era blogs for one of the things on my mind.
xxxxooooo
