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After Japanese, I went to the Union to do some reading. It took a little longer than I thought it would, but I did end up finishing it. While I was at the Union I went to get some milk, and while I was walking throught he market some big flames caught my eye. At first I thought, “Some ribs would be good.” Then I thought, “Those are some really big flames.” And then I thought, “Holy shit!”, as the flames got out of hand. The cook tried to throw some salt on the flames, then they got higher, and eventually the automatic sprinklers went off and they made everyone leave, not just from the market, but from the entire Union. The upside is that I got my chocolate milk for free. I was just glad I had decided on the larger more expensive container. It did make me wonder about the curious presence of fire trucks on campus.

I stuck around a bit to see if I could get a picture of the fire trucks, but I wasn’t quite sure where they went, and I didn’t feel like walking all the way around the Union. I went over to Stone and finished up my readings outside, then finished up my reading responses and questions for Rotman. Yuliya told me about going out to some bar after Myrdene’s party with 10-15 friends she has made since coming here. Must be nice. I looked at her textbook to see if the peppered moth story about evolution was still in it, and it was, which I thought odd since it had been debunked. Though when I went online to find some information about it I found that it hadn’t actually been debunked.

Rotman quickly went over a PowerPoint presentation she had on human evolution, then we had some brief discussion. We talked about the challenges and controversies faced when someone employs evolutionary theory.

Remis returned from her conference so we had our first class with her, which primarily consisted of a slide show focusing on how primates were pictured when “we” first came into contact with them. I was really placed with how she gave life to figures such as Darwin, such as highlighting the fact that he was a member of the elite and well connected amongst scientists of his day. This interest in context is, I think, what makes anthropology special and what drew me to the discipline. When conceiving the meaning that a person or a group of people have with regards to life it is necessary to try and understand them from many different angles. It was also comforting when Remis highlighted the fact that the discoveries which were made rested on the back of colonial exploration and exploitation.

In Blanton’s class we delved a bit further into the separation between the nomothetic-deductive and interpretive perspectives. Blanton posited that interpretive anthropologists could develop a more formal methodology if they wanted to. I have an inkling that part of the reason interpretive practitioners don’t rely on a more formal methodology is that they rest on the assumption of employing the mechanisms by which we come to understand meaning in our everyday lives already. Perhaps. We also talked about Kuhn’s overview of scientific progress and Blanton said that anyone who conducts science with an eye towards the role that power plays in scientific discourse, then they are conducting postmodern science.

After class I went to the Exponent callout, which was pretty basic, “Give us your information and go to these training sessions if you want to be a reporter.” It’s a scant fee per piece, but I think it might be enjoyable for various reasons.

I waited a long time for the trolley, had some jalapeno ranch style beans for dinner, then studied some Japanese before sleep. One of my roommate’s friends was being a little loud, but it suddenly got quiet for some reason right around midnight. Laura was up late listening to the new Bjork cd.

I did ok on my Japanese test, though I botched a few questions I didn’t study for because I thought I understood them well enough already. Sensei took my hiragana/katakana cheat sheet during the test. How embarassing.

I wasted some time in the lab (need to stop doing that), then went and sold my workbook after making some copies. Unfortunately, the numbers seem to have been off in the syllabus, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to use any of the stuff I copied. Though, I did stop after it got way off, which wasn’t that far in.

I got an envelope from Dawn in Stone (she keeps an ornately written daily journal), but I didn’t have the address, so I had to go back home. While there my roommate told me about getting arrested for possession and all of the strip clubs in Lafayette, though he said the best one is in Kokomo. He said he’d been smoking for about three years or so, but binged when his mom passed away not long ago. On top of this, he expects some bill collectors to start harassing him for some x-rays he took while on a trip to Florida. His insurance would have covered it, but his job fired him for going on the trip, even though it was with his relatives shortly after his mom died. Crazy kid.

I gave Chris a call on the way back to school to mail my rent check and the electricity deposit, and we talked about relationship stuff. I mentioned that George Carlin is coming here, and he said that David Sedaris is going to be there. I also might visit him during Labor Day weekend.

I did some reading in the library, and when that was finished, I came home for dinner, then went back to print out my Japanese composition and finish up some homework. The entrance to the undergraduate library is now my favorite spot. There are always people walking by, and there are two phones near by which are good for eavesdropping. While I was down there this asian girl told her sister Jeanette that she couldn’t let her go to some party, because all of her friends said she shouldn’t let Jeanette go and because she would look bad in their eyes as a Christian who holds God to be important in her life. I’m not really sure why the decision was up to her anyway, as she kept on telling Jeanette to just ask their mom because she would probably let her go. The conversation ended with the girl telling Jeanette to wear jeans if she did go because that would be less attractive.

I made way too many trips back and forth from school today. Especially when I walked on two of them.

Another fairly uneventful day, in some respects. I spent most of the day studying for my Japanese test, with a break to Target to exchange my cell phone charger and get a few groceries, like cheese and apples.

In the evening Laura brought up a conversation we had before I left Texas about some differences that had arisen in ou relationship. I told her that I still thought it best to try and work things out, so we will see what happens. Mostly, though, I’m trying to wrap my mind around the idea of having kids.

Because of my horrible adherence to a sleeping schedule on the weekends, I didn’t fully fall asleep until sometime between 1 and 2. I had tried to go to sleep at 11 but I just lay there, my mind racing.

Today was pretty uneventful. I stayed in bed until noon, then worked on a composition for Japanese until 6 when I took a nap, then finished up the composition and tried to figure out what I should work on next. I cleaned up a bit then lay down for a while thinking, finally deciding to do some updates.

Late into the evening while I was online I got into a big conversation with Leslie about marriage. She said that healthy people shouldn’t get married, but basically she was personally against marriage and was just trying to rationalize her views for everyone else. I brought up gay marriage and said she must think they are idiots, but as I suspected she would she made the contradictory statement that she supported gay marriaged and thought everyone should have the chance to make a mistake.

After Japanese I stopped by the lab to catch up on my feeds then went to the library to do some reading for Tuesday. After a while I ended up just checking the book out so I could get a drink and read somewhere with more noise. The shop in Stewart was out of mocha chocolate milk so I got banana milk instead. On the way to the union I noticed a bunch of student groups outside for the Activities Bonanza. There were a lot of religious organizations and engineering societies, as well as several role playing groups, and some queer Greek societies. The group that caught my attention most was the Purdue Beat Society, partially because they were playing some dnb. I talked to Jed for a while and he told me when they were going to spin dnb later on… To further characterize the event, it seemed heavily branded. I got some free low carb Coke and some Old Spice Red Zone body spray. The Coke tasted like a mix of regular and diet coke, and the body spray wasn’t too bad.

I sat in the union and read for some time, then took a peek outside to get some free food from the Taste of the Union addition to the Activities Bonanza. I got a burger, some pizza, a smoothie, and some yogurt. Quite nice. I finally finished reading and went over to Stone to waste some time in the lab and tell Sabrina I didn’t need a ride to Myrdene’s party after all.

The Purdue Beat Society set up and a guy spun a house set off CDs. Then Jed showed up and the dnb DJ played a slightly low key set that ramped up to some nice tunes. Jed told me and his friend Josh about this website he saw that said electronic music was of the devil. There were clouds and thunder about, but it seemed as if they would miss us, until it started coming down on us out of nowhere. They moved all of the gear under a tent nearby and I caught the trolley back home when the rain stopped.

Once I got home I took my car over to Myrdenes. I tried to hook up my new cell phone charger, but it didn’t work. I talked to Katje and her ex-girlfriend a bit at Myrdenes, then went inside and had some food. It was quite an interesting environment. The room I spent most of my time in had a very high table with books covering most of the space on the walls. I was amused when Katje’s ex-girlfriend asked me what JC stood for. Later I asked if this book I saw by Kuntz was her favorite by any chance. Before leaving Myrdene told us some stories about a friend that liked to serve Rocky Mountain Oysters and some type of creature she saw masturbate who was almost on the Dick Cavitt show until one of the guests died while being interviewed. Just before he died he said he planned on living to 100, and Myrdene said she assumed it was his ability to just “turn off” that allowed him to maintain such vigor when she saw him doze off. Myrdene seems like a really great and interesting person and also makes me feel better about being here.

On the way home, I stopped by Jakes to people watch and get some pictures. Lots of typical drunken shenanigans with fratty guys and Hiltonesque girls. Beth walked by while I was out there and asked for Lorrell’s number because she hadn’t seen her in a while and she was just supposed to take someone home. Beth was out celebrating her birthday. This guy Brandon, who is in American Studies, sat down at the outside table I was at and we chatted about West Lafayette and our academic interests, much of which share mutual aspects. After a while I gave him a ride home then came home myself and went to bed. While we were sitting out there one of the fratty guys that passed by had this look of derision while passing and looking at Brandon. I don’t know if it was because of Brandon’s size, his effeminate voice, the color of his skin, or a combination of the three, but nothing happened. Also while I was out there I saw someone come up on a bike and steal a car’s license plate. I felt kind of bad that I didn’t do anything until I noticed that they had been parked in the handicap spot.

After Japanese, I went back to the library to finish my reading. After finishing up with that, I got an Uncrustable, this premade peanut butter and jelly sandwich, discus shaped with no crust, and some mocha chocolate milk for lunch, and stopped by Beth and Lorrell’s office to chat and share my wonderful experience of Western progress. While there I showed Lorrell how to use Blogger.

We had some nice discussions in my prehistory class, about ownership, and meaning as the function of someone’s relationship to an object. Rotman brought up the question of whether we can ever truly understand the experience of someone unlike us, as with the rich understanding the poor, or women understanding men. In the middle of class a fire alarm went off, but we weren’t gone from class for long.

For biological the teacher was still gone, so we went and made copies. I also made my Purdue website into a blog.

In theory Stanton presented us with a grid that had contingency on the Y axis and positivism on the X, and we just went over the perspectives therein, such as Marx, Freud, interpretive, and praxis based approaches.

When classes were over I went to the lab and finished some updates. After that I took the trolley home then got in the car for a trip to Target. Dad called so we chatted a while, even after I got to Target. When I told him that I sometimes walked back and forth from school he asked me if it was dangerous. Argh… After I got off the phone with him Laura called so I sat in the Target parking lot a bit more. She told me I should go to Cisco on Sunday for Ethan’s birthday.

Finally, an hour after I started the trip, I went into Target for my grocery shopping. I got some peanut butter and jelly, tuna, bananas, and some spinach, among other things. Somehow I left the regular charger for my phone behind, then my car charger fully broke, and I went back inside to get a new one. I was so hungry by the time I finally had dinner.

After Japanese I went to the lab and worked on a short blog entry dealing with pornography. I got distracted, and lost a small part of the work I had done at some point, so it took a little longer than expected. I heard some kids talking about a macro again and found that they still had to do some manual work. I got a sample of the file they were trying to work with and wrote up a perl script to parse it out automatically without any manual intervention. From beginning to end, after dealing with some problems in the data file, and finding out which results had not been included, it took about two hours. Rachel later came to me and said that she would talk to John about getting me paid for the time I spent helping them out, which was a pleasant surprise.

I finally started working on my Japanese homework, but happily found that it was only for one chapter, so there was only one page, unlike the two days before where there had been two. I went looking for Lorrell to see if she wanted to go to dinner, but she had already gone home. Beth was there, full from a pita at lunch, and we walked part of the way home together. I called Lorrell and we decided to go have Chinese. She picked me up then we stopped by Beth’s for a while, then went to the restaurant after her incense had burned out. Beth wanted some sushi at Heisei down the way, so we said what they hay, lets just eat there. But it was way expensive so we just went back to the original Chinese place we had planned on eating at.

While there we chatted about favorite things. Beth said one of her favorite movies was Stand By Me. I can’t remember Lorrell’s, but she agreed with me about Muriel’s Wedding, and she said she was horrified by Killer Klowns from Outer Space. Neither agreed with me on Blade Runner, and they had not heard of most of my other favorites. On the subject of books, when I brought up Tortilla Flat, Beth mentioned that she had just read Travels with Charley. Beth and Lorrell don’t have any piercings or tattoos, but Lorrell did want to get her lip pierced at one point.

After dinner Lorrell took me back to campus and I read a chapter for class in the library. On the way home, nearing the midnight hour, it was pouring down, but I protected myself with several sheets of newspaper. Laura called while I was at the library, after she got finished seeing Napoleon Dynamite for the 4th time, and told me about the new ending. She had gone out to celebrate her appointment as department chair of English.

I continue to have difficulty interpreting the place of pornography in our society. For the most part, I am comfortable with its presence as long as the narrative it is imbued with does not surpass the mostly private boundaries it is currently confined to. Carly, at Pornblography, says, “I don’t really believe porn objectifies women,” but it is difficult for me to agree. However, there has been a recent spate of the “objects” speaking as subjects.

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An article in the New York Times highlights a recent offering by Jenna Jameson, as well as other notables such as Pamela Anderson and Tom Wolfe. Carly, who I mentioned above, further stated, “By and large from what I’ve been exposed to, my experience is that women are treated well in the porn industry,” but Judith Regan, president and publisher of ReganBooks, said that Jenna Jameson’s book is “the story of what she aspired to and what she’s become, and the price she paid for it.” If there were a similar exchange for most porn stars, the situation might be different, but it is doubtful that any but a small percentage of the porn stars out there will rise to a level of grandeur nearing that of Jenna Jameson’s.

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The primary focus of the article, however, is the way in which this high profile co-mingling of sex and literature has allowed books of this nature to appear more prominently on the shelves of run of the mill bookstores. On the one hand, I appreciate the fact that porn stars and the like are being allowed to speak as subjects. But on the other, it cannot be ignored that these products only exist because they stand to be quite profitable, and could at the same time expedite the general permeation of pornography’s objectifying narrative into the world at large.

Better known as the Engineering Mall, the Purdue Mall is home to the Purdue Mall Fountain. The fountain, for which the Class of 1939 donated $350,000, was built in 1989. Robert Youngman designed the fountain, which has become a popular spot for students to make fountain runs during the summer and early fall.

The tower once stood on top of Heavilon Hall and was burned down days after its orginial dedication in 1894. The 140-foot tower was rebuilt “one brick higher” in 1895 with a clock and four bells. When Heavilon Hall was torn down and rebuilt in 1956, the tower was not included the plans. The new 160-foot Purdue Bell Tower, which rings at the hour, half-hour and end of classes, was dedicated on Oct. 14, 1995.