Synaxis TV

David Sedaris thinks that monkeys are funny. Well for me, it's burritos. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with me being Mexican, but for whatever reason, I think they are hliarious (and tasty). So, that's why this post from Boing Boing is so great to me:

A call about a suspected lethal weapon at a middle school caused police to place armed officers on rooftops, shut off nearby streets, and lock down the school. The culprit: a giant burrito. A suspicious onlooker phoned authorities yesterday after seeing a boy carry something long and foil-wrapped into Marshall Junior High.

So, I just heard the news. We've got a new Pope. The person they selected is Cardinal Ratzinger and I couldn't be more upset. When someone told me he was the one they selected I just felt sad and my eyes got watery. Now, I'm not Catholic or anything, so why should this bother me?

Well, Ratzinger was one of the names that popped up when I did my research on gay Catholics. He was the author of the "Halloween Letter," which reaffirmed the notion that homosexuals are "intrinsically disordered" and forced Dignity from meeting on church grounds. And when I heard that he was selected as the new Pope I just remembered the way they said they felt when that letter came out.

I can't imagine how they feel right now. And that is why I am upset. My heart goes out to them…

With much stress and thought, I finally made the switch—I have decided to start using 4×6 index cards instead of 3×5.

It was a long and hard decision. The inspiration came from being at Barnes & Noble and seeing all of the nice accessories that were available for 4×6 sized objects, like photo albums and photo frames. I got the idea that this would be a nice way to save index cards that I want to keep easily available instead of in deep storage.

I fully decided to make the switch at Target. I got some 4×6 cards to see if they would fit in my back pocket and in my bag, and they did. Then I found a nice expandable file and got a frame. It's a bit disruptive to switch from one format to another, but I think that it will be worth it in the long run.

• Vienna
• I woke up late then went to Vienna to grade. I felt achey and decided that I was either sick or malnourished (I've been eating lots of nachos). There were a bunch of people out because of the Bug Bowl, the nice weather, or both.
• Union
• After I finished I went through the Union to collect some shocker data, but I only got one male positive.
• Dog & Suds
• Mark showed me all of the monkeys he has collected (there were a lot). He had collected quite an array of figurines in general, like Planets of the Apes stuff and Simpsons figures. We tried to figure out where to eat then I remembered Dog & Suds. It was so busy a cop was directing traffic in the parking lot, but we didn't wait long. I got a foot long Coney dog with cheese and a root beer float. It was pretty good but the Coney sauce (chili) was sweet. Just before we left a girl next to us crashed into one of the buildings i-beams. I don't think the car or the structure were hurt very much though. After we left Mark showed me an impression of the girl after she crashed.
• Best Buy
• I stopped by to look at video cameras.
• Barnes & Noble
• I stopped by to look at Harpers and also read an interesting article in Foreign Affairs about the Bush administration propping up the stock market with retirement funds. I looked at some photo frames and albums there, but they were all for 4×6 stuff, and I use 3×5. Then I got to thinking…
• Target
• I decided to make the switch to 4×6 index cards, then got a frame and a small folding file. I also got some wood glue and a clamp to fix someone's figurine I broke in the office.
• Courthouse
• We stopped here because mark wanted to see if the cannons had any balls. While we were there I took a picture of him imitating the girl we saw crash earlier in the day.
• Kelly's
• Cathryn told me there was a party so Mark and I went to check it out. The only person there other than Kelly was Chris, but we had a good time anyway, and Sean showed up later. Before Sean showed up we watched Reno 911 and the Chappelle show. On Reno 911 they were doing a sting at the Burning Man festival. And they showed the Lil' Jon skits on the Chappelle show.
• After Sean showed up they tried to open some champagne but the corkscrew (that Kelly had just bought that day) broke. Sean was determined though and he eventually got to the champaign, cutting himself and breaking park of the bottle in the process.
• Throughout the night we talked about music (after I played some Venetian Snares for Sean and Kelly hated it), why women are attracted to jerks, my research on the shocker, and why women ask soft questions. Kelly finally kicked us out around 4 am.
• Home

• Back at home I glued the elephant together then played around with my keyboard.

• Overview: It was cold!
• Culture and Personality
• We watched some more of this video on Sparta. It showed how boys were paired up with an older mentor who they developed intimate relationships with. Later it sometimes took them months or years to finally leave their homosocial quarters after they got married.
• Taxes
• I forgot some forms at home so I had to go get those. I had something to eat while I was there then came back to Stone to do my taxes. It took a while but I got it finished. I figured out that I could get all my money back and pay no taxes on account of one of the education credits. I came home and figured I'd try out the electronic version so I could avoid going to the post office. It took a long time and I had trouble figuring out how to access the educational credit, but I ended up with relatively the same results. However, I wasn't able to efile because I didn't have the amount I paid the year before. At least there wasn't a line at the post office. There was just a guy standing outside taking people's mail. And I guess it was good to get some type of verification that I had interpreted my taxes correctly.
• Sgt. Prestons
• After dropping off my taxes I went over to Sgt. Prestons to meet with some liberal arts folk. I met up with Wendy, the girl who had the "I Agree with Jake" shirt, and she introduced me to some of her communications buddies. I spent a lot of time talking about my work with this girl Lisa, who found it to be quite interesting. Then I talked to this other girl Jessica who thought these roaches she saw here were beetles. Her boyfriend had spent some time in College Station but that wasn't enough to deter him from wanting to live in Texas.
• Took Kristen to the Train Station

• I left the gathering and picked up Kristen to take her to the train station. She had a friend coming in. We had some time to kill so I tried to find a place to eat something, but nothing stuck out. I tried going by Dog & Suds, but it was closed. I ended up getting some ice cream sandwiches. Her friend showed up and I took them home. Back at home myself I watched some of Fishing with John.

How did I never listen to this? I was browsing Bleep the other day and saw that Venetian Blinds had a new album out. I'd heard the name before and associated it with industrial noise but had never actually listened. What a tragedy!

This is exactly the kind of music that I like to listen to. Frenetic, disjointed, structured yet chaotic… It nice to find a new artist to enter into the list of bands I tell people to describe what I listen to.

The part that I like most about Venetian Blinds, though, is his humor. His latest album is all about Winnipeg and features titles such as "Winnipeg is a Frozen Shithole" and "Winnipeg is a Dogshit Dildo" (one of my favorite tracks).

The good thing though is that Venetian Blinds has been making music for quite a while so there is much to listen to. Can't say I'd recommend him to all though. His music is harsh and unrelenting, and after extended listening sessions I imagine the world around me disintegrating bit by bit. I think this picture says it all.

There was a women's symposium here at Purdue recently and it was super great. I saw lectures on same-sex marriage in India, rural transexuals manifesting identity through interaction with mass culture, BDSM and Abu Ghraib, transexuals pushing the categories of sex and gender, dirty sorority songs, and Michelle Malkin and security moms. I also met some great people from California, Duke, and elsewhere.

It was pleasant to hear Foucault and power mentioned so many times. It was also interesting to hear language being used that had recently been reinforced by some of my readings, like the notion of subject positions. Whenever you are in a situation like that I think it helps to ground terminology in your vocabulary, so it was very helpful for me.

Not everything that I heard was applicable to my own work, but sometimes it feels good just to think, and I think that I will continue to carry a lot of these interactions with me for a while on some level. Someone asked what I thought of the symposium and I referred to it as an oasis, in general, but more specifically, here at Purdue. It was nice to have my intellectual fix met if only for one weekend. Now excuse me as I try and face the rest of this year…

I was looking forward to seeing this movie because Sam Raimi did it (he also did the Evil Dead series). It turned out to be ok. I watched it in a coffee shop on my laptop with a friend so maybe that had something to do with it. But some aspects of it just seemed comical, like the scary meows and the suspenseful music. The plot was a little difficult to follow at times as well and the ending wasn't so great either. The only part that was scary was when the hungry ghost woman was creepy-crawling around - something about those jerky movements. It was nice at least that the movie was set in Tokyo and that it was influenced by Buddhism. If so many cultures believe that ghosts result from traumatic deaths then maybe they are real… I give it an A.

Ring 2 was not so great. It just didn't seem very scary. Everything was very predictable. And when it wasn't being predictable then it was ridiculous, like the CGI moose scene. Oh well… I give it a B-.

Incredibly weird dream. What's weirder is that I kept coming back to the dream in stages. I had set my alarm for eight thirty something and remembered thinking that I was getting such a restful sleep. Only when I looked at the clock it was almost ten—I had been hitting snooze over and over again, a not uncommon occurrence among humans I am sure. So the dream…

It started off with this guy they were doing experimental medicine on. There was some bacteria of some sort that could help heal the body. I remember at one point he was in pain because of his stomach and they said they'd decided not to do whatever surgery and just let the bacteria do its thing. I hit the snooze and when I came back the guy's body was glowing green and a big part of his face was cancerous and black—apparently the bacteria had to destroy before it rebuilt. Next time I hit snooze and came back to the dream things were out of control. The guy's body was still there but the green glow, and some mysterious substance associated with it, had filled the room all the way outside the building. Further on in the dream(s) a voice asked this woman if she wanted to "join" (the being I presume) and when she asked what she'd gain she was told that she would know everything and never die. She said ok and then the green glowing being enveloped her and some other people standing by. Then I woke up.