7/30/2008

(hetero)sexism: "We all worship you already!"

My awesome** friends were kind enough to set up a profile for me on GreatBoyfriends.com! How lucky am I!?* Now it can only be a matter of time before Mr. Right appears in my inbox!* [fingers crossed.]*

Conveniently enough, GreatBoyfriends has established these two ranking systems, one for girls and one for boys, so that users can quickly and easily assess whether or not they want to date someone!

for girls:
for boys:
I can't really tell if the best* part about this great* new site is that it tells me right away if a chick is moody/if a guy has got the moolah to buy me a sparkly ring, or if it's the friendly, flattering* rhetoric of their emails.





------------
* : sarcasm
** : not sarcasm

7/29/2008

still laughing at this



"They believe... anything I say. It's amazing... it's incredible."

7/28/2008

um, no

I did not like Dark Knight.


Now, I realize that I'm in the minority on this one, and I'm not just saying I didn't like it to be that annoying I'm-so-unique person. I just wanted to leave the whole time I was watching it. I found it to be a miserable experience. (Except for at the end when the Joker was done; I liked the anti-save-the-world message.)

If this makes sense, I think it was just too well done. Heath Ledger was too disturbing. That's the best acting I've ever seen, but I'm not impressed or entertained, I'm disgusted.

7/25/2008

Now that's just good advice.

Just now, as I'm getting from a crappy, makes-me-feel-incompetent kinda day at work, my big brother Michael's gmail away message is what my Dad tells us to say when things are just shitty: Fuck the fucking fuckers.

Here's to some long-distance family-bonding.


good clean fun

emphasis on the fun

R.E.M.:


James Blunt:


Tracy Chapman:


Feist:


Spin Doctors:


Alicia Keys:


Chris Brown:


Norah Jones:


Goo Goo Dolls:


Hootie and the Blowfish:


India Arie:


Cab Calloway:


Smokey Robinson:

morning routine

Every morning, I wake up, put on a pot of coffee, make some grits or oatmeal, and get on my computer to read news. It's sometimes the best part of my day, not because the rest of my day is bad, but because it's such a damn good morning routine.

Today, the news I'm reading is a little weird.

7/24/2008

goosebumps


"So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is never easy. True partnership and true progress requires constant work and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other. "

This sounds a lot like what we agreed teachers need do with their colleagues if schools are to be effective learning communities when I was at a professional development thing last week.

ThisIsWhatIWantMyFaceToLookLikebook

A while ago, Cassie posted this about Facebook, and I thought it very clever:
The reason facebook is so ingenious is because every person's account centers on their own face, or faces, but the ones they got to put up themselves. Who do you want to be? Okay, you got it. Keep looking at it long enough and you'll believe it too. Then we all, or I at least, pretend we are everyone else on facebook, and click on "profile" to see what "we" look like through their eyes. I might create a facebookish site with the twist being, only you can see your own profile. So it is just a one-page site. Pretty easy to develop, eh? I think people would still do it. Because no one looks at one's facebook picture as much as oneself. And the more you look at it the more you're like hey, that's me. I think that is me. And when you can identify yourself as such you take a bunch more pictures of yourself as such and it changes and changes and you become the changing picture of what you want to be, at least in your own mind. I feel better about my identity knowing there is this page up. Maybe I am just super narcissistic? Maybe other people spend more time being creepy looking at other people's faces but I generally prefer my own.
I know that when someone requests my Facebook friendship, before confirming, I often go to my own profile, reading over it to make sure that when I grant this person access to my profile, they're going to think I'm cool. Which is inherently an uncool thing to do.

On Facebook, I'm in the group "People who want their eye to touch another person's eye." Now, do I actually want that? No. Ew. But I think it's funny, and I think it's funny that I'm the only member, and I want people to think I'm funny -- quirky even. ? Ew. What is up with that.

Trying to be "cool," and I just end up being embarrassing. I wonder if it's possible to be cool on Facebook.

7/23/2008

WARNING: nerdiness below

Currently, I'm re-reading a textbook that one of my favorite professors wrote for a course I took last fall. This guy is just an AWESOME teacher. The book is called How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, and isn't even half as boring as it sounds. I dare say it's funny in places. I really like the way that he almost neurotically covers a point so as to minimize reader confusion. For example,
"People who misunderstand deconstruction often think that it says there is no meaning... On the contrary, and most characteristically, deconstruction actually multiplies meaning. In a related misconception, people who know little about deconstruction often suppose that it simply means destruction. But deconstruction is not destruction. It can change the way we view things, but it does not destroy anything. It offers more, not less. In deconstruction, there is always more, a surplus of meaning and rhetoric that Derrida calls a supplement... This is not important, but people who know hardly anything about deconstruction say "deconstructionism" or "deconstructionalism." Perhaps they are thinking of analogies to words like "stucturalism." The usual terms are deconstruction, deconstructionist, and deconstructive... Though many deconstructionists, and occasionally even Derrida, use the verb deconstruct (and it has even entered the popular talk of the general public), I think that using the verb deconstruct and referring to deconstruction as an action misses a key point. Since deconstruction refers to a basic principle of all language, we cannot really deconstruct something. If critics want to think deconstructively, then, instead of deconstructing a text, they find the way that it is always already deconstructed. They don't do it to a text. Instead they expose the way that it is already done, the way that a text has always already deconstructed itself." (78-80)

I can't help wondering what he would have to say about this email that arrived in my inbox this morning.

I think the idea is that the meaning of denim is always already multiple: bootcut, skinny jeans, wide leg, jean skirts, etc. I mean, it definitely looks like the models are thinking deeply about différance, or something.





And because I seriously can't get enough of this guy's writing style, here's a little snippet from his chapter on stucturalism.
"I like to give examples and see if my students can tell which are metaphors and which are metonymies. I might pick out a student and say that, in our class discussions, she is a real spark plug. That is a metaphor, because this student is not connected to or part of an engine... But what if my student is a robot? Then "spark plug" turns into a metonymy...

[Then he discusses how structuralists might have exaggerated the usefulness of understanding the distinction between metaphor and metonymy, but that it can sometimes be useful. He ends the discussion with:]

(And for better or worse, referring to metonymies will allow us to describe what we notice in a cool and sophsticated sounding way.)"

7/22/2008

old and paunchy

This is me:

And this if my friend and colleague, Matt:


Last night, while we were teaching together, a student asked if he was my son. And then another one told me that she could "totally tell" that I am pregnant. I am not.

7/18/2008

Dear blog,

I miss you, but I don't have time to write in you. I'm doing and learning all kinds of interesting things this week. Also, so far, no students have told me that I "look pregnant," which is an improvement from last week.

I'll hopefully resume blog-writing next week, since I'm planning on using this weekend to catch up with all of the website-ing, lesson planning, packing for moving, and classroom organizing that's torn me away from you for so long. I'm also hoping to catch up on my farmers' marketing and pineapple margarita drinking. Also my Dark Knight watching.

Your friend,
Ellen

7/13/2008

come ON

After a lovely morning at the Urbana farmers' market, Kasey and I cut through Lincoln Square Mall on the way to pick up some delicious bagels from Schnucks. I wanted to check out the new piano bar there. I'm so glad we did, because we also got to take a gander at the featured pieces in the window of a local studio photographer, including this one:

7/09/2008

everything Google touches turns to gold, I swear



a slideshow of my Cuba photos

7/08/2008

single women, NO


This sign was at the elevators in our hotel in Havana. In this case, I think, wordless diagrams are insufficient.