Get Back Temptation

I wanted to use a title that had something to do with being back, and that song is on right now (by Ollabelle) so that's what I got. Not that starting to blog again has much to do with temptation, but whatever.

I just edited last night's post. Not some of my best writing, but I fixed the glaring grammatical errors. I just wanted to air some grievances.

Coming soon:
-more about folk music (who could possibly find it offensive??)
-Winter, Poe, and the Magnetic Fields
-parodies of blaxploitation bring people together
-and of course, David Brooks

I listen to lesbian music

and I'm sick of being mocked for it.

It's nearly 2am and for some reason I'm avoiding going to sleep. So I just spent a good deal of time reading the last several pages (and a few earlier other ones) of the "What music is everyone listening to?" thread on BFSSFG. I find it a bit odd that nearly everyone on there listens to the same genre(s) - punk, hardcore, noise, etc. Either fixed gear riding lends itself nicely to abrasive music, or fans of said music are inexplicably drawn to fixed gear riding. Also, it's quite possible that members of BFSSFG who do not listen to these bands don't bother posting in that thread because it's been hijacked by punk fans. Granted, there is the occasional off-genre posting, and I do own music that people list on there. Generally, however, that music is by bands I rarely listen to and find overrated.

Now back to this issue of being mocked for listening to "lesbian" music. I listen to folk. I listen to singer-songwriters, primarily of the female variety. Yes, many of the shows I attend are filled with fans who appear to be lesbians. But many are not. When I spout off names of bands I listen to, I often shoot for the more familiar ones, so people can actually recognize what I'm talking about. The Indigo Girls, Fiona Apple, Nickel Creek. But what about folk music? Patty Griffin, the Wailin' Jennys, the Be Good Tanyas, Ollabelle, and Terri Hendrix. These are not household names, nor are they all associated with a specific sexual orientation (though when I play the Wailin' Jennys or Terri Hendrix for people, that is often what they think). So:
1) Why is this music branded as "lesbian" if these people have never heard it before or seen fans at a show?
and
2) Why must I be so teased for listening to it?

My friends beg me to put something else on in the car, my boyfriend spends hours describing the intricacies of the punk bands he listens to but when I try to explain the unique characteristics of Laura Love's music he cuts me off with "I get it, I know, she plays bass instead of guitar..." I can't discuss the music I love so much with anyone, I have no one to go to concerts with, and it's getting quite lonely. The last time I got excited about discussing music was at The Duhk's concert this past summer when the man next to me asked me if I'd seem them live before, and we proceeded to each mention a few other groups we liked.

I wish people would take the time to listen a little more closely to the lesser known bands I enjoy. The Waifs, Ollabelle, and the Duhks, who currently have a live show up on Folk Alley. Not to mention the Celtic music I'm intrigued by, like the traditional works of Natalie MacMaster, the crossover compositions of Capercaillie, and the incredibly modern instrumental pieces of Shooglenifty. The ties between traditional Celtic, bluegrass, contemporary folk, and Americana are what my music collection is built upon.

Then, of course, there's Travis and Blur and Better Than Ezra and, most importantly, Tori, who is usually the one who incites the "lesbian music" comments in the first place.

People and Places I Like

I like David Brooks. But if you've read this blog, you know that.
I like Australia. And Big Sky and cool people, and even Mandy Moore.

And now for some blogs:

• BikeSnobNYC takes a cynical, critical look at bike culture. Mean. But amusing to the point where you can't stop reading it.

• IndustryOutsider is Brian's blog. Brian is a Bike Forums moderator who is cool. He lives where I want to live and thought I was tall. He also thought that I should post a photo on my blog because "Any women that sleeps with a Surly should have a photo." This implies that sleeping with a Surly is an intriguing quality guys should be attracted to. Unfortunately, I have not found that to be the case. You would think in a culture where guys outnumber girls more than 2 to 1, I could get a date. OK, this has turned into me ranting about dudes. I'll stop so you can read Brian's blog. He writes about cool shit, some of which is about bikes and some of which is not. Kinda like me.

Pets

This is Chowder, he is the most awesome cat ever but he is not in Philly, so it moos.
This is my Surly Cross-Check. Since Chowder isn't here, it is my new pet.
Notice how it is next to my bed. I will caress it before I go to sleep because it is just that awesome.
It may be a bit too big for me, but someone was selling it on Craigslist because it was too small for him. $300 for frame/fork/Ultegra cranks! He was a cool dude who works at Bicycle Therapy and knows my boyfriend* Dane, and he wanted to sell it to a cool dude. I'm not a dude but I'm cool, so yay.
It's going to sit by my bed til I can build it up. I think it'll start single speed, because that is easier, with whatever parts I gather for cheap, though I will get a new headset, stem, and seatpost. It will be my allpurposesweet bike. Fatties on for some winter riding and offroad. Racks on for touring. Eventually it will have gears. Most awesome.

*Dane isn't my boyfriend, I just think he's really ridiculously good looking.

ur on teh dorkforumz, postin' for ur gurlfrend

how lame of you. or maybe how lame of your girlfriend.

Bike Forums is a sausage fest of extreme proportions. Often times, dudes will post a question for their girlfriends. These posts say things like "My girlfriend's bike [instert bike problem]. What should I do?" or "My girlfriend is thinking about getting a new bike, I told her to get the [insert entry level bike] but now I'm wondering if she would be more comfortable on a [insert other entry level bike], or if I should build something for her with [insert bike parts]."
OMFG!11!!!one!1!!1!!! Why cannot the girlfriends post these questions themselves?!

I ranted about this on BF, and got a reply from one of the female moderators saying that:

"Given the way certain males reply to females on certain forums, I think their boyfriends are being very kind to help them out ... I think most of the women who do post and participate are tougher than average; that is, we can give as good as we get. But you know, even I just leave threads sometimes after it becomes clear that I'm not welcome because I don't have a sausage."

Apparently some females won't even register or post because they feel so threatened by the guys on the forums and "operate on the idea that they are just not wanted." To make these pathetic girls feel more welcome, Bike Forums has a Women's Forum, which I checked out after I got that message from the mod. Holy crap is it the lamest thing ever. First of all, most* of the people posting have names like "FlowerPetal" or "LollyBlossom."** More importantly, they don't even talk about bikes! The most popular thread on the forum is the "Internet Dating" one. Last week I had a date with a dude from teh interwebz, so I decided to post on it. One comment later and this is what shows up: "My boyfriend is visiting for the weekend, so I doubt you'll see any posts from me. Gotta test out my new tubal and make sure the doc did what he was supposed to. ;-)" WTF?!?! That is not even about internet dating, let alone bikes!
GRRRR. And then when I post an actual gender-specific bike question only two people reply.

Conclusion: girls are lame.

*ok, not most, but those are the ones that stand out
**names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved

Now I don't mind / A dirty girl

American Doll Posse doesn't either. Nor do a handful of men...

I didn't listen to any pre-released songs off Tori Amos's most recent album, nor did I read any reviews or attempt to understand her concept when I first got it. The idea of yet another concept album bothered me - after Strange Little Girls and Scarlet's Walk, not to mention that most of her other albums hinge on such strong themes that they come dangerously within earshot of the conceptual, did we really need more ethereal feminism shoved down our throats?*

I thought not, and I listened to the album with ignorance of the concept. Until now. A few weeks with the album, and the sudden realization that this is perhaps Tori's most sexual release to date, sparked my interest in album reviews and concept knowledge.
The attention-getting tracks "Teenage Hustling" and "Body and Soul" hit my carnal brain hard, and I couldn't help but look up which Tori alter-ego was behind these songs (not to mention thinking that, along with "Fat Slut" and Pip's other songs, they should be submitted to Fetish Exchange's list of good scene music). Who was behind the other songs I was drawn to (most notably "You Can Bring Your Dog," "Secret Spell," and "Bouncing Off Clouds")? Was I identifying more with one Doll than the others? Apparently: Pip and Santa with a dash of Clyde.
Who are these girls?, I wondered.

Turns out they're not girls. And turns out Tori's concept works beautifully. The American Doll Posse consists of "five very different women, each representing various aspects of modern woman as a whole." Therefore, I am not just Pip, or Santa, or Clyde. I'm a combination of all five personas - in fact, every woman is. No surprise that I'm more Pip than the others though.
This is where the concept works - Tori has broken down women's place in contemporary society into the "strange little boxes" women find themselves in today. According to her, they often end up "muzzled" in these roles, and "they don’t quite know how they got there." A press release issued for the album called ADP "the dismembered feminine re–membered." And oh how accurate that description is. Tori disperses women's roles throughout five characters, then puts them back together as an album that feels just cohesive enough to form one being, yet disjointed enough to prove that women will never truly be able to reconcile all these positions. (Quotes from Attitude magazine interview).

Uncut called ADP "a return to more conventional songwriting form."
Blender called it " maddeningly self–important, [and] wigged out."
MOJO noted that Tori's drive to create concept albums makes her worthy of "[t]op marks for willful eccentricity," but that, as with her other recent releases, only a few tracks stand out, and "less is more."
Right, correct, and precise. But I wonder how Uncut decided ADP is more accessible than "the difficult concepts of Scarlet’s Walk and The Beekeeper," or how Blender figured it's "[t]exturally, ... a middle ground between her searing early album Under the Pink and the sun–dappled 2005 The Beekeeper." SW and Beekeeper are surely more understandable than ADP, and texturally, the album is certainly darker than both UtP and Beekeeper. In my opinion, it's sonically most similar to Choirgirl, and infinitely gutsier theme-wise than her other recent releases.

*Her concept albums shove it down our throats. Her other albums leave it gracefully floating through our ears.

You better know / I'm at your door
(but you knocked first...)

David Brooks makes me...

horny. No wait, it's PMS that does that. David Brooks makes me...not hate conservatives?
Whatever he makes me do, I think I like it.
It's not that I agree with him. Most of the time I don't. It's his writing. He writes with conviction, in a conversational style that would make any liberal want to actually finish one of his columns. His casual style is a rarity in the New York Times, which, even though rivaled by Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich, comes across as more credible thanks to his ability to convince readers that he actually believes what he's writing (unlike Dowd, who, under the guise of feminism, writes to satisfy a gender-specific agenda that probably only exists in her head, or Rich, who sacrificed his socio-political commentaries formerly published in the Arts section to snub the current administration on a weekly basis in the Opinion section*).

*Of course, I'm all for snubbing the Bush administration, but Rich's insistence on doing so in the same way every week got old a long time ago. He harked back to his previous ways a last month with "Everybody Hates Don Imus" (April 15, 2007), in which he artfully combined his liberal stance with his own experience and the current state of the mass media in a way he hasn't done since leaving the Arts section. I liked.

Over the next few weeks [David Brooks will] detail some policies that might go into [the] human capital agenda [he outlined in today's column, "A Human Capital Agenda"].
I can't wait!

Cookiez

because spelling things with Z's is awesome-o.

Meanwhile, I had to go track down a professor a bit ago to ask for yet another incomplete this semester. Woohoo, more summer work! More importantly, I noticed while in his office that there was a half-eaten double chocolate chip cookie on his desk. I don't understand this. If there's a cookie on my desk I eat the whole thing in about 2 seconds flat. How doth one leave half a cookie uneaten?

Bags

I heart them. I'm not big into accessories, but if I had unlimited funds I'd buy a lot of bags and shoes. And bikes. By the end of the summer I'd like to build up a new bike; hopefully summer job funds will allow this. Meanwhile, I used the acquisition of Stealth to justify the purchase of a custom Reload bag. Enjoy.

People watching

...at 2nd and Chestnut. The heart of Old City. Because what else are you gonna go after a 2 hour Critical Mass ride, food and awesome beer at Eulogy, and shitty beer at the Khyber?

I don't spend a lot of time there. There are cool bars, but they are overrun with yuppies and overdressed women in heels and dudes in button-downs.

Meanwhile, Critical Mass was overrun with hipsters on bikes with color-coordinated Deep-Vs. I think I know what kind of rims I won't be getting when I build a new bike...

Tuesday Afternoons

are lame. Like MySpace and your mom.

For some reason the monotonous time I spend in front of my computer on Tuesday afternoons leads me to post many replies on the Philly Bike Forums thread, some of which get misconstrued as bitchy. (The keyword being misconstrued, but I gotta admit bitchy is an improvement to the assholeness on there. There is no femalez around that place at all). Anyway, I just thought I'd move on over here and make a post, since, unlike BF, no one actually comments on this thing.

Enjoy.

Tools

not the kind you fix things will, though those are cool too. I used some the other night at Bike Church to fix my bike.

I'm talking about the kind Leath and I are well on our way to becoming, him via a consulting job, and me in the opposite direction, via things like body modification and fixed gear bikes. According to Leath, "Tooldom is probably a giant circle. If we both go really far we'll probably meet up again. Granted, it may be in hell."

I'll end with a line from the classic film SLC Punk, in which Stevo's dad reminds him: "I didn't sell out, son. I bought in. Keep that in mind."

I'll be doing track stands in a very long while

because I can't balance for shit.
on the other hand, I learned how to skid tonight!
(much thanks to Tyler from Bike Church/Bike Forums* for teaching me)

*the internet is creepy. I walk into Bike Church the other night to fix a flat and see this guy from the internets (i.e., Bike Forums), which led to a completely awkward encounter since I felt the need to reveal my identity to him, then I get a BF message from Tyler who picked up on who I was thanks to the Bike Church/BF connection. Awkward, but at least he taught me shit so it's all good.

Some Art

more about these later

I'll be doing track stands in no time

...I hope.
Fixie hath been had.
This either makes me seem extremely cool, or like a huge fucking tool.
It needs a front break and toe clips before I can [try] to ride it, and maybe a tune up. I have no idea what kind of frame it is (it's just black, looks like all the decals have been stripped off), but apparently the back wheel is pretty good.
It's all black, and I'm trying to decide if I want to leave it that way (I've been calling it "stealth") or stripe the handlebars with hot pink tape and put stickers on the frame. We'll see what it wants to be after I get it tuned up.
Exciting!

UPDATE:
it's ready! and I can actually ride it!!

Bashing

as promised:

Hipster-Bashing, courtesy of David Brooks (The New York Times, 2/25/07): "Mosh Pit Meets Sandbox," a pointed commentary on hipster parents. What I appreciated about this bashing was his casual language, which successfully pointed out the absurdity of the hipster parent movement by turning their own terminology against them. What I most liked, though, was simply the fact that he identified their pseudo-mainstream badges of indie courage publicly in the Times, a publication that no doubt these people and their frenemies (and enemies) all read with a shared level of respect. (And which only publishes this kind of freewheeling banter about 25% of the time, usually in the dying-to-be-noticed* society pages of the Style section).

Male-Bashing, courtesy of me:
Asshole cheated on me. WTF?

*Unfortunately, these pages are too often actually noticed.
Also, between reading this column and today's Brooks piece, I think I can now call myself a fan of his writing [style].

Fuzz for Breakfast

Yesterday morning I awoke around 7am, with the slight taste of cotton in my mouth, to find myself about to put my blanket in my mouth. WTF?, I thought. Then I realized I'd just had a dream about eating pizza. No joke, I'd seriously rolled up the blanket in my hand like pizza crust, and was going to attempt to consume it.

coming soon: David Brooks' hipster bashing, my own male bashing, and an awkward look at urban cyclists (or something of the sort).

The Current State of My Coffee Table

(stupid flash. but I'm too lazy to photoshop the one without flash)
but I really should be doing this:

Law Books Strike Again!

This time: Why getting a planning degree is like poor man's civil engineering degree*.

Professional jealousy. ... Engineers often stereotype planners as starry-eyes dreamers who lack both technical skills and an adequate awareness of development costs. Planners often stereotype engineers as persons lacking both creativity and ecological sensitivity. Engineers claim to have the last laugh because they, not planners, have had (and in most places still have) the greatest influence over the shape of American cities and towns.
-Ellickson and Been (2005), p. 421

*it's also a poor man's MBA. I'm sure the book will address this at some point. Meanwhile, I still want to be an artist.

How is Mathnet NOT on YouTube?

I don't get it. but I did find the Square One theme song!

I want to be an artist

... so I started digging through my artist statements from last year. Upon reading them now I see flaws, but I'm gonna post them here for posterity. Or self-indulgence.

I’m an art major because everything else makes me fall asleep. I’m an art major because my Drawing I teacher told me to be. I’m an art major because in middle school my friend though it would be fun to take photography. I’m an art major because freshman year going to Addams meant I didn’t have to be in the room with my roommate. I’m an art major because it keeps me busy. I’m an art major because I like to work with my hands. I’m an art major because I was switched at birth. I’m an art major because the darkroom makes me happy. I’m an art major because I have something to say. I’m an art major because I have nothing to say. I’m an art major because I hate reading. I’m an art major because I love music. I’m an art major because I get it. I’m an art major because I have skill. I’m an art major because it sounds cool. I’m an art major because I’m cool. I’m an art major because I don’t know what else I’d do (wait, yes I do). I’m an art major because I get to write informal artsy things like this. I’m an art major because everything else makes me fall asleep.

That one makes me wonder why the hell I'm in planning school.

I’m an art major because in middle school my friend though it would be fun to take photography. And for some reason I stuck with it, and for some reason my “maybe I’ll minor in photography” idea before I came to Penn turned into much more (that ‘some reason’ being: I’m an art major because my Drawing I teacher told me to be).

In the four years of my life that I could have legitimately called myself an artist (I still hesitate to do so), I have seen my art become more than I ever could have imagined, and go in directions I never could have predicted.

The underlying idea behind all my work, the motivation to do it in the first place, has always been to make something that ‘looks cool.’ A very simple agenda. I’ve never sought to say anything profound, to promote any personal politics, to make any statements of truth or fallacy. But underneath and out of my very simple agenda grew a unique visual language.

Maps, the self, the body, feminist ideas. These are the ideas that drive my work. Maps because I could look at them for hours, and because our environment and the way we depict it and visualize it affects the way we experience it. Putting this into art allows me to bridge my psychogeographic environmental side with my art work. My fascination with maps often drives my compositions. I create works with paths running through them, with trails that lead you through the work like you’re led through a map, directions to follow and points to stop at and continue on from or travel back to.

The self because I discovered it as subject freshman year, became comfortable with it in Visual Diary class, and have been hooked ever since. The body because it relates to one’s sense of self. Feminist ideas because I can’t avoid them when working with the self and the body.

I’m an art major because everything else makes me fall asleep. Art is very much a physical process for me, and this is the reason I enjoy it so much. It’s about being in the darkroom, working with my hands, being on my feet, moving around and being physically engaged with what I am doing. I can’t sit still. I always need to be doing something. Passive reading and studying only make me fall asleep. Art allows me to work in a manner in which I thrive.

I’m just doing what I like. What people take from viewing my art is of the least importance to me. If they find meaning it, great (and I’d like to know what they see), but I’m not trying to make them see what I see. I make art for me, not you.

I have another thesis-specific one, but I'll save the for when I feel like posting photos of my thesis.

Searching

So I'm sitting around debating what to do this lovely Sunday and I devise this plan:

1. nap
2. read for class
3. research for paper

Then I thought, wait, I'm not going to research. I'm going to search. I am not re-looking for this information. I am going to look for it for the first time. Therefore, I amend my day's plan:

1. nap
2. read for class
3. search for paper

Wait, that doesn't make sense. I'm not going to look for paper. OK, third time's the charm:

1. nap
2. read for class
3. search for information for paper

the 216 on the TV

I've taken to watching 30 Rock on Thursday nights thanks to its post-Scrubs* time slot. Tonight's episode began with dialog such as this:

Tina Fey (Liz Lemon): everyone got food poisoning!
Alec Baldwin (Jack): how is that possible, that seafood was a gift from my friend, the owner of the Cleveland Browns. Those freshwater clams came straight from the (looks at label) ...Cuyahoga River?!

Awesome. I heart Cleveland. Too bad most people who heard that probably either thought "WTF?" or "Is that river still burning?"

*Scrubs has been somewhat disappointing this season. It's like, full of babies. Almost every character who could have possibly gotten pregnant is either currently so, or has recently had a baby (and said baby has to be in every scene).

Needles

This awkward quarter-life crisis I'm going through, along with recent unpleasant experiences with needles*, drove me to get yet another ear piercing - a daith in my left ear. I chose this piercing for its aesthetic value, but after reading about it I also like the idea behind its creation:

The Daith piercing was co-created in 1992 by Erik Dakota and a Jewish woman piercing client with a metaphysical bent ... The woman instinctively understood what the Hindus had been teaching about body piercings for about 3,000 years: that rings left in an orifice of the body act as a "Guardian of the Gate". They can be magically charged at the moment of the pierce to act as a "filter" to what goes into and out from that orifice. In the case of the ear, an appropriately placed and charged ring could filter out all that is nonsense or bullshit and let pass that which is intelligent. Erik and the unnamed woman were guided to create a piercing to do just that and the woman gave it the Hebrew name for intelligence: Daith.
-BME Encyclopedia

Here I display a photo of my 10 earrings:*I had a shot last week, and blood taken the week before. These were rather terrible needle experiences, which got me thinking that piercing is always a positive needle experience.

I Can LexisNexis Myself

A lot of this blog will probably end up being devoted to music. Here I present for you a previous music-related comment of mine, as published by The New York Times, and retrieved via LexisNexis:

SECTION: Section 2; Column 5; Arts and Leisure Desk; COLDPLAY; Pg. 6
LENGTH: 168 words
HEADLINE: Travis Came First
BODY:
To the Editor:

Jon Pareles has gracefully articulated everything that bothers me about Coldplay, from Chris Martin's voice and lyrics to the band's attempt to create entire albums as reverberative as its most successful single (this tendency is wholly apparent on its second album). Yet I own Coldplay's first two albums, and consider listening to them a guilty pleasure.

While I agree with Mr. Pareles, he is wrong on at least one count. Coldplay has indeed ''spawned a generation'' of similar bands. But Travis, if anything, spawned Coldplay. Travis released its first album (''Good Feeling'' in 1997) years before Coldplay broke out with ''Parachutes''; ''The Man Who,'' Travis's subsequent album and its most comparable to anything of Coldplay's, was released in April 2000, months before the release of ''Parachutes.'' While it is undeniable that these bands have influenced each other, it is worth noting who came first and who has demonstrated greater musical depth.

____________
Shaker Heights, Ohio
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: June 12, 2005

Pseudo-Indie Hipster-Pop

or maybe it should be pseudo-hipster indie-pop. or semi-elitist pseudo-indie hipster-pop. or semi-elitist pseudo-hipster indie pop.

Whichever it is, I think I may have been listening to it a lot this week. Currently Belle and Sebastian, which was preceded by Gomez (do they count?), and it all began several days ago when The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs took over my CD player (yes, I do still listen to CDs).

This all makes me feel very uncomfortable, because I am not a hipster. I walk a fine line between two groups of people I will never fit in with - the West Philly Hipster crowd, and the Penn crowd. The WPH are closely aligned with another group I was previously on the periphery of, WQHS DJs. This all is best illustrated graphically:

My current musical tastes align me with the west side of this map. I think I prefer the place where my more unique musical tastes (i.e., folk music) place me - off the map.

P.S. Does anyone listen to Live? Not quite the pseudo-whatever-the-hell-it-is that I've been listening to lately, but I did find myself rocking out to When Dolphins Cry today, and also enjoyed several tracks off their Unplugged album.

Where the Demons Dwell

This news story about Stonehenge makes me want to watch Spinal Tap.

How Exurban...

Awkward events last night led me to Victory Brewing Company in Downingtown, PA, about 45 minutes west of Philadelphia. The adventure began with a drive through Anywhere, USA and ended in an OFFICE PARK. Or at least what looked like an office park in the dark. Now, when I think of local breweries, I tend to think of historic brick buildings, not the monotonous industrial architecture of exurban office parks (of course, this could be because my point of reference for local breweries is Great Lakes Brewing Company).
Scenery providing the entertainment for the drive included: strip malls, strip malls, and strip malls. The interior of the brewery was about as interesting as its exterior. And the crowd consisted of they type of people who...well, the type of people who live 45 minutes west of Philadelphia.
Granted, the food was pretty good. And if you like Victory, the location and atmosphere are probably of little importance. But, all in all, I was underwhelmed. The whole experience was so...exurban.

Robert S. Leshner's Puns of the Day

This afternoon Rob graced me with his presence, and a variety of [bad] puns. These will probably only be amusing to him.

Earth:
me: look at this number, it's Earth's mass, I don't even know what it is - zillions? Quadrillions?
Rob: yeah, it's massive

The Magnetic Fields:
Rob: what are we listening to?
me: The Magnetic Fields
Rob: it's not that attractive

Cleveland (while listening to STP):
me: you know, Scott Weiland is from Cleveland. Chagrin Falls.
Rob: man, Cleveland has a lot of falls and heights. Do you fall from the heights?

Upon leaving:
Rob: Hey, everything you've said, I've pundit.

Porn, via Nicole...

Nicole posed the question to me today, as came up in conversation with her people last night, is there braille porn?
Which raises the broader question, is there porn for the blind?
Research to be done at a later date.

Modern Love

How is it that though the Modern Love column in the Sunday New York Times is written by a different person each week, it always has the same tone?

Law Books

Last week I started a course at the Law School. Prior to entering said class, I was quite worried. I pictured it something like Legally Blond, where I'd be the only one in there with a pen and everyone else would have laptops. When I got there I realized that all the other planning students had pens, too. What a relief.
However, I was still intimidated by the textbook: A solid red cover with that "law book" look , the title Land Use Controls: cases and materials (Ellickson and Been, Aspen 2005), and really small print. Scary. Turns out, however, that chapter 2 is infinite kinds of entertaining.
I leave you with quotes:

"Note on planners' weighty informational requirements and limited cognitive capacities" (section heading)

"Good planners laid down master plans 10 yrs ago and said that the neighborhoods will produce 600 children. Actually, the neighborhoods are producing only 2/3 of that - perhaps because the residents ride bicycles so much."

"The 1980 plan states that 'it is functionally pointless to attempt reconstruction of the city...population of the US will soon be back up to 100 million, barring resumption of hostilities or unforeseen results of radiation exposure.'"

Gmail ads, strike 1*

*strike 1, because they will inevitably strike again

Today I got an email from the CPLN dept about lectures this week by prospective faculty members. For some reason mention of transportation planning and faculty searches results in Gmail presenting an ad for Why Mommy is a Democrat.** I could not help but click on that one.

Apparently, Why Mommy is a Democrat is "a different kind of childrens' book...that brings to life the core values of the Democratic party in ways that young children will easily understand and enjoy." A subsequent Amazon search for said book leads to other liberal childrens books such as King and King and It's Just a Plant: a children's story about marijuana. The same search also yields results for conservative childrens books: Help! Mom! There are Liberals Under my Bed!: "Written in simple text, readers can follow along with Tommy and Lou as they open a lemonade stand to earn money for a swing set. But when liberals start demanding that Tommy and Lou pay half their money in taxes, take down their picture of Jesus, and serve broccoli*** with every glass of lemonade, the young brothers experience the downside to living in Liberaland." This book is part of a series of Help! Mom! books that also includes Help! Mom! The 9th Circuit Nabbed the Nativity and Help! Mom! Hollywood's in My Hamper!

Me thinks I should start collecting these books now. They would greatly compliment the collection of sex books currently on my book shelf. And when I have kids in many years, they can read them at the tender age of 5 and decide their political party affiliation on their own.

**one of the speakers this week is going to talk about "Access to Choice" in transportation planning. Gmail may have misinterpreted this phrase as some sort of pro-choice thing, hence the childrens' book ad...which makes me wonder why mommy is a democrat. "Little Billy, Mommy is a democrat because their laws allowed me to abort what what have been your older sister." Go Mom.
***wtf is up with the broccoli??

Frigerators

Ben and I decided we needed a blog a while back. Now we have one.

Currently: eating chunky apple sauce out of the jar. I wish I had someone to eat it with.
I also wish the apple sauce was cold. It's not because I just opened it, so it hasn't yet been refrigerated. Then I got to thinking, why do we REfrigerate things? The apple sauce has not been in the refrigerator yet, therefore when I do put it in there, it will simply be frigerated, not REfrigerated. I suppose once I take it out and put it back in, it will be REfrigerated, but not yet. I contend that we frigerate a lot of things. Refrigeration is overrated.
Also, it'd be nice if I had a bagel.

I have many other things to blog about, but to put them all in the first post would be uncouth.