Month: September 2004

An undergrad talking to her friend on the bus tonight: “And she was like, ‘You told me to shut up!’ and I was like, ‘I tell all my friends to shut up!’”

I was startled to hear the opening synth line from Prince’s “1999” as a ringtone on a cellphone this afternoon. I guess Prince has no copyright control over his Warner Brothers material, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at that as much as I should that that particular song’s being used as a…

Another day, another weather pattern. Much more summery and mild today. It was pleasant weather to walk home tonight in short sleeves.

No sooner had I posted the last entry when, boom, in stomped autumn, ready to open a can of whoop-ass. Today was cold, windy, overcast, dreary, and even drizzly at points. When I was in the area around Liberty and Fifth around noon, the streets were almost deserted. Nobody wanted to be out unless they…

Weather’s getting gradually cooler, but it still feels like late summer (despite the change in our page colors). Today there was scarcely a cloud in sight, the temps were up in the 70s, and it felt more like May than September. (Well, it felt like May would have felt if May hadn’t been rainy and…

I saw a guy studying at a desk this afternoon who was wearing a big white sweatband and a powder blue sweatshirt. I felt like I was looking at a Xerox of John McEnroe circa 1981. And was that old-school KRS-One I heard blasting from an SUV tonight while I was waiting for the bus?…

An ‘incendiary device’ discovered on a Virgin Blue 737 in Sydney « may (or may not) have been a hoax ». But buried in the article on the find is this priceless ‘graph: ‘A baggage handler found the device on Monday in the cargo hold of the plane when it landed in Sydney after an…

It was inevitable, I just wondered how long it would take. « Southwest Airlines has been sued over its oversize passenger policy »: ‘An Oakland man who describes himself as being of “ample proportion” is suing Southwest Airlines, accusing the carrier of humiliating him by asking him to buy a second seat. Lionel Bea, 40,…

Exhausted. Finishing a two-week guest teaching stint at a northwest Ann Arbor middle school. Seventh grade social studies. Some of the kids weren’t even born when Bush 41 got his butt handed back to him by Bill Clinton (thanks, Ross!). Hands/wrists still messed up, so trying not to use them too much, even though it’s…

A car coming up behind a bus stopping to let passengers off at a bus stop on Packard this evening and honking at it. What are you going to accomplish by honking at a bus, for crying out loud?

I don’t know if it’s just me, or if as a grad student you just become used to sitting at attention through three-hour classes several times a week, but it was fascinating to sit at the back of a room this afternoon during a presentation and watch a class of undergrads (who were, for the…

Oh, the oozing contempt with which the BBC reporter pronounced the phrase “to plant her spring garden” tonight (in reference to Martha Stewart’s stated desire to get out of prison by next March to attend to her horticultural obligations) …

Holy crap, that was a great ride I just took. Yes, the surgeon said stay off the bike for two months, but … I miss it too much. It’s almost an addiction/high today. I rode the long circuit around, just five miles, but got a total rush from it, particularly in the legs. And my…

Pleasant: Walking home at twilight on a mildly warm Monday night, the streets of my neighborhood almost completely deserted. Looking up and seeing the crescent moon in all its glory. The sunsets and twilights this time of year are absolutely unparalleled. Unpleasant: Harried and rude shoppers rushing around Kroger, acting like jerks even when the…

Laura Miller writes in today’s New York Times: I doubt I bought a single new hardcover book for myself (as opposed to for a class) until sometime after I’d turned 30. Being underemployed and unencumbered by children like a lot of people in their 20’s, I read a lot, but the only new books I…

This afternoon we took the beagle to the grounds of Forsythe Middle School, where he had a great time chasing squirrels and sniffing the ground (and making up for the ignominy of this morning, when he was tormented by a neighborhood cat who loves to saunter past and revels in ignoring him when he howls…

I read a column in Thursday’s Michigan Daily (called, appropriately enough, “Get Over It Man: Your Favorite Band Sucks”) that made my jaw drop. Some writer made a point of slamming Coldplay, Dashboard Confessional, and David Gray. Not only that, he actually cited Frank Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours and Joni Mitchell’s Blue as…

Wow … I don’t remember who it was, but something that somebody said about Michigan weather has stuck with me, which is that if it’s been one mode of weather for five days in a row, you can guarantee that the sixth day will be completely different. So after roughly 5 or 6 or so…

Last night I was waiting for the bus at the corner of South U and State. I guess srah’s right — the Gideons are out in force. Or at least I think it was the Gideons. It’s so hard to tell the different factions apart. Anyway, a guy with a bullhorn was standing on a…

Seen on the way home from teaching middle school social studies Friday afternoon: 1. A minivan with New York license plates and the bumper sticker, ‘I’d Rather Be In Ann Arbor’ and … 2. The happiest dog in the world, riding in a car with gleeful abandon. He was quite sad when they had to…

This pretty much sums up the hypocritical state of the Empire. « Says Mike Reiss, a writer for The Simpsons »: ‘The rules governing what we may or may not say are a little hard to follow. This year, for instance, Howard Stern’s trash talk lost him six radio stations … then gained him nine…

From Daniel Boorstin’s 1961 classic The Image: Nowadays everybody tells us that what we need is more belief, a stronger and deeper and more encompassing faith. A faith in America and what we are doing. That may be true in the long run. What we need first and now is to disillusion ourselves. What ails…

Speaking of missionaries, I guess the Mormons have a new trick going. One night last week when I was waiting to cross State, a guy appeared out of the corner of my vision and pressed a Book of Mormon card into my hand. He was in plainclothes, and he was flanked cleverly on both sides…

There was a Jesus freak standing in the middle of the Diag at noon today railing against secular humanism and the evils of going to college, getting an education, and “getting ahead,” which he described as self-serving folly and as a sure road to hell. Sounded exactly like every line I was fed by fundie…

Not only did Johnny Ramone die today, but when I stopped during my hectic day to get a bite of lentil soup at the Rendezvous annex on South University, the kid behind the counter, as she was taking my order, said, “It sucks that all the great music was made the year I was born.”…

Haven’t been posting here thanks to the ongoing drama with my hands. But I hope to get to regular posting soon. The hands are healing, but I have to take it easy. It’s a total pain in the tuckus ..

Motley Fool says it best: ‘Think about it: Would shutting down the nation’s seventh-largest carrier really be such a tragedy? On a human level, yes, undoubtedly. The sting of more displaced workers wouldn’t be easily sedated. And yet, on paper, US Airways has been a net destroyer of shareholder value for years. The owners —…

I made it to 90 miles on the Bobcat before disaster struck: A few weeks ago, I was involved in a hit-and-run with a total bitch who came from behind me while I was cycling south in the bike lane on Packard and turned right into me. I hit her car hard with my hands…

From Gag Rule by Lewis Lapham: ‘Ashcroft said that the onerous regulations under which the FBI had been operating for the last thirty years “mistakenly combined timeless objectives – the enforcement of the law and respect for civil rights and liberties – with outdated means.” ‘As modified by the context and subject to the circumstances,…

We went to Nichols Arboretum this afternoon, our first visit there. It seemed strange that there was no parking, but I found out after we got home that the main entrance is apparently on the other side from where we entered. (We parked on Oswego and walked across Geddes to enter.) The arboretum is large…

Classes only began for me Wednesday. But I officially began the second year of library school at 8.30 last Thursday morning when I volunteered to help out at one of the new student orientation events. One of the centerpieces of the SI orientation experience is showing students what it’s like to collaborate by throwing them…

A very nice sunny day today, not too hot, almost no humidity to speak of. And the light is starting to take on that languid, deep-toned, Gatsby-esque autumnal quality. I went outside briefly tonight at dusk and looked west. There is nothing in California (at least nothing in any heavily populated areas of California) to…

Student Move-In Days were this past week, from Wednesday through Friday. The dotty Ann Arbor News ran a front-pager recently featuring a list of the Top 10 ways you could tell students were back in town, but, unless you’re a Martian having made a recent first-time Earth landing, it really isn’t all that difficult to…

Odd weather this past week … for the first time almost all summer long (except maybe for a few days in May and June) we had what could truthfully be called Summer Weather with capital letters, with highs in the mid-80s, strong humidity, and relatively cloud-free skies. Then, yesterday (Saturday), it rained part of the…