blog recommendation

Amy would be one of my favorite bloggers because she tends to blog on a theme. There's what she calls her "Jew Blog" which she's using to document her research on her family. And this new one, C-U Street Style!, a blog dedicated to "thinking globally but looking awesome locally. Corn and soy surroundings shouldn't stop us from looking beautiful and representing our personal style!" Probably part of the appeal in C-USS for me is that Amy thinks I'm "looking awesome locally," which is pretty sweet. Anyway, I say she would be one of my favorite bloggers because she doesn't actually blog as much as she creates cool blogs that she doesn't update.

the Wesch-meister

I really like this Michael Wesch guy's videos. Here's the first one I (and many of my classmates) saw:


and now this one, which is even cooler, I think:


I also came across this rather lame knock-off:



...Tune in next time for some really exciting stuff about *TIMELINES*!

reason no. 2734059867984357938749303 why I love the Internet:

MySpace Music. Last week one of my students got all excited about telling me about this band that he's totally into. Now I can tell him tomorrow that I checked them out on MySpace and that they seem pretty cool.


How archaic/WHACK am I? Still talking about how neat this World Wide Web thing is...

in thanks for low- to no-maintenance friends

You know what's the best? When you have a buddy at the coffee shop, who you don't actually know, who watches your stuff when you go to the bathroom. Or another driver on the expressway that you pass back and forth with. Or other patients in the waiting room at the doctor's office. Or classmates that you don't know but that you always sit next to in lecture. Or people who let you go ahead when a cashier who's just opened a register at the grocery store says, "I can take the next person in line over here."

Seriously, these people rule. They do nice little things and don't ask for anything in return.

S.P.E.A.K. Cafe

Last night I checked out S.P.E.A.K. -- Song.Poetry.Expression.Art.Knowledge. -- Cafe, an open mic night with a social justice focus set-up by UIUC's African American Studies and Research Program and the Krannert Art Museum.

Um, coolest thing ever.

Highlights included a student from Urbana High School who read about the ways that she wants to resist the image of the "video ho" that she's told to emulate; a student from Centennial who read his scathing adaptation of the Bibical Sermon on the Mount that ended with "Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs are the streets of America;" and a guy who looked to be college-student age who read about refusing love as the path to oneness, or completeness, or happiness, or whatever. He introduced his work by saying that he was writing against the notion that you gotta be all blues when she's gone and left you, and once she comes back you go jazz. Love it.

The next one is November 8th from 7:00 to 9:00 pm at the cafe in Krannert Art Museum. Seriously, check it out if you're in C-U.