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Doh, almost forgot that today is Thanksgiving. My schedule is all thrown off, since I celebrated it over a month ago.
Though there will be no after-Thankgiving sales shopping for me, this year.
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Was I ever a first-year student?
The "quality" of these essays is amazing -- and I don't mean in a good sense, either! I'm helping mark a couple papers for a friend, and it is wild to read (much less grade) the level of writing in these papers, by university students. I think I'm a fair marker, but after reading a few of these tonight, I had to take a break and walk away before I slashed and dashed the entire piece.
The essay question involved students choosing advertisements from magazines and then analyzing them in terms of their psychological, sociological, or economical effects on the consumer. Sounds easy enough, right? Well...
Some fun examples of what I'm grading: (names have been omitted to protect privacy -- however, the horrendous writing and/or spelling errors have not)
(from an ad featuring a bunch of girls in bikinis, along with a captured merman) "These girls have been fishing and have caught a big one. They have not caught a fish though they have caught a merman. This makes a person wonder what they used for bate. Those girls would have worked as good bate for me. The same probably applies for all heterosexual males, including mermen."
"Want to be able to feel what they are feeling. Clothes's shopping is an escape for people. Advertisements help people to escape by bringing new ideas of what clothes can do for them into their heads."
"When I think of how society buys cloths I relate it to sex....Everyone has there own definition of sexy."
"Models wear revealing cloths and smile to be recognized as sexy. The women model figure with the perfect body, bigger bust, and hourglass figures."
Another favorite of first-years: Making the margins 2 or more inches, with the font 14 point or larger, and then acting surprised when they're called on it. 
Yup, Times like this, makes me wanna put down the paper(s), drink my Diet Vanilla Coke and eat my Munchos.
(the best part is that I get 20 more essays on Monday, to be graded by Friday. Ugh.)
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Good times.
Dontcha just love coming home from a long day at school, with the intentions of grading first-year essays (which are supposed to be handed back Friday), and instead, getting wrapped up in a game of Spanking the Monkey?
I do.
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Which Goddess Are You?
You scored 33.3% Artemis
If you are ruled by Artemis, your independent spirit belongs to no one but yourself. Your body is vibrant, your attitude robust and your manner vigorous and alive. You are driven by physical rather than mental energy. You feel complete without a man in your life and would never compromise your essential nature for a romantic partner. You are skilled at establishing personal boundaries and enter into relationships on your own terms -- in short, you can take care of yourself. This attitude may at times put men off.
You scored 25% Athena
If you are ruled by Athena, you are bright-eyed, shrewd, resourceful and inventive. With friends, you are the wise counselor -- always ready with an empowering message. You believe strongly that women can accomplish anything men can. No wonder you put so much time into your career. Athena women tend to be ruled by their heads, not by their hearts. You carefully guard your intimate side, protecting your emotions and vulnerability. If you want to awaken your unexpressed womanliness, you'll have to use the same passion you apply to your intellectual achievements. It's important that you work to integrate your strong masculine side with your feminine side -- bringing together your strength with your vulnerability, your creativity with caring, your intelligence with imagination. Otherwise, you risk coming off as unaffectionate and self-righteous. Take lessons from the goddesses Hestia and Aphrodite to do this.
You scored 16.7% Aphrodite
If you are ruled mostly by Aphrodite, your femininity and passionate spirit are the controlling forces in your life. You tend to be charismatic and self-assured, comfortable with your body and unrestrained sexually. Men are drawn to you like bees to flowers, which satisfies your erotic nature. However, you tend not to form permanent attachments with lovers because you value your sexual freedom, which may leave you feeling lonely and even depleted once a relationship ends. To find and form a more lasting relationship, you need to add more of the goddess Hera to your life.
You scored 16.7% Persephone
If you exemplify the qualities of Persephone, you have most likely experienced great loss in your life -- the loss of your health or your emotional or physical security, the betrayal of a friend or lover, the loss of a child, your own divorce or that of your parents. This experience has forced you to face the dark, unenlightened side of yourself (the side that blames other people or circumstances for your own suffering) and transform yourself into a stronger, more independent, more accepting and more loving person. It may have also led you down a spiritual path, and moved you to place great emphasis on inner calm and on close connections with friends. You are capable of embracing, integrating and accepting difficult experiences. Because of that skill, you offer others the gift of empathy -- you know where people are or have been.
You scored 8.3% Demeter
If you fit the Demeter archetype, you are a nurturer and caretaker. You have a generous heart and enjoy extending your love to others. You are motivated by the most powerful of instincts -- to give life -- and selflessly devote yourself to the life you create. You feel compelled to care for all those around you, even if they are not your own children. In short, you feel the need to be all things to all people, and therefore, your own needs sometimes go unmet. You must learn to say no, and apply Artemis's sense of boundaries and Aphrodite's ability to put herself first. That way, you can give to others from an overflowing rather than a half-full cup. To learn how to incorporate the qualities of these goddesses into your life, follow Weeks One and Two of our Become a Love Goddess in 30 Days workshop.
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Well, now I'm only 47 hours away from Weyers Cave than the 53 hour trek to Savannah.
Tonight I went to Handel's Messiah by the Saskatoon Symphony. It was amazing, and loads better than when I saw it performed in Savannah last year. It was in an older church, with huge eaves and arches in the ceiling, making the acoustics of it all incredible. It was so beautiful that it made me want to relax and sleep. Granted, the pews were ancient and hard, so that encouraged me to stay awake.
The University football team lost the championship but there's more football in my future, as tomorrow I get exposed to my very first Grey Cup (aka the Canadian version of the Super Bowl). I wonder if the commercials will be as good?
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Well, my parents have pretty much decided on where they're moving. Its a little town in the mountains of Virginia. Its so small that it doesn't even show up on Mapquest. The name of the town is Weyers Cave, in the northwest part of the state, in the mountains close to Charlottesville.
While I'm really excited that my dad will be doing what he loves and with people who are actually spiritual (instead of superficial), I'm still a bit sad at the thought that I'll no longer call Savannah home. They'll most likely be moving into an apartment at the mission complex there (which is both cheaper and actually bigger than our house now), but I'm not sure it will feel like home. I'll come to visit, of course, but I'm not sure it will be the same.
I'm a big girl, I should be handling this better. Change is just hard, I guess.
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Fodder for the commonplace book:
So, after a fun night of watching Bender play at McNally Robinson (yay Brent), I raided the menu of the café for fun quotes. Here's what I stashed, by stealing the waiter's pen and writing them down on the back of receipts in my wallet:
- Wine is bottled poetry. (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. (T.S. Eliot)
- Wine is sunlight, held together by water. (Galileo)
- Outside a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. (Groucho Marx)
- I live on a good soup, not on fine words. (Moliére)
- If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. (Carl Sagan)
- Seeing is deceiving, It's eating that's believing. (James Thurber)
Finally, one that I'll use as an epigraph for my next paper:
- Having your book made into a movie is like seeing your oxen turned into boullion cubes. (John le Carré)
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Wow. Where was this when I was in Haiti or on a camping trip?
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Life Happens.
Yeah, I've slacked in my duties of keeping all two of my readers informed of what's going on in my life. Things have been busy.
Yesterday I got up at 4:00AM to catch the Leonid meteor shower. We drove outside the city, so that we could see them better. When we left, the sky was clear -- by the time we got outta town (10 minutes), it was cloudy. Figures, huh? We spent the next hour and a half driving around, spying the sky for clear spots. Heard of "tornado chasers?" We were meteor chasers. All told, I may have spied 15 meteors, total. Too bad, it would have been awesome to watch that kinda meteor shower on the open skies of the prairie. Then again, I did get to hear my first pack of coyotes. That was pretty neat, though a little scary.
There's a heat wave going on in Saskatoon! It got up to 6 degrees today (43 Farenheit, 279 kelvin). All the snow is melted or in the state of melt. Fun walking home in the slush, which gets frozen to ice at night, then remelted to slush in the daytime. Granted, next week its supposed to go back down to -19 again, but for now its fun not to walk home in the biting cold.
I may not be in the English graduate school program for much longer. I met with the coordinator of the Rhetoric and Communication program here on campus. Meeting her was like meeting an academic kindred spirit. I started to feel the passion and excitement that Rhetoric inspired in me a couple months ago. I've been so disheartened after being shot down by the English Graduate Chair. Earlier in the term I had asked him if I could sign up for a Reading Course to keep up with my studies (already having the instructor agreed), and he basically told me to pursue my studies in Rhetoric "in my own time," more or less.
My own time? Oh, sure.
After experiencing that lack of support, I don't know if I've been more sensitive, but lately I've been feeling out of place in the English department. The class I'm taking is okay, but not earth-shattering. Everytime I try to bring the works we're studying into a modern context, we either backtrack into the past or into some aesthetic concept. I'm not even sure the topic I've chosen for the paper is going to be acceptible. So having all these doubts and insecurities makes me excited at the possibilty of a change in program.
But, I'm not dropping everything and changing ships. At least not yet, anyway. I will be taking a course next term called, Rhetoric Classroom as Rhetorical Situation. I'll be team teaching with a professor and other grad students the undergraduate course in Rhetoric. Something I know I'll love! From there I'll decide which path I want to take. I know that I want to specialize in Rhetoric in my doctoral studies, so I'm really leaning towards doing my MA in that too. But, I'm gonna give myself more time before I change schools in the University.
For now though, I'm going to go loaf on my futon and finish watching the rerun of Trading Spaces. Yay for TLC!
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I'm actually going to a school with a decent football team! We're playing St. Mary's (who also has a Husky mascot, oddly enough) on Saturday for the Vanier Cup Championship.
Go Huskies.
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Finally back in the Arctic. Lucky me, I had a lovely worm waiting for me. Ugh, at least I *think* I had one, nothing could detect it. This worm is a tricky one and can sometimes send itself to people, changing the "from" field to make it look like you're the one sending the virus. So, I dunno. I've checked and checked, and no luck -- so in case anyone's received a weird-ish email from me (okay, weirder than normal), then that's the reason why.
I woke up late this morning and stumbled into my grad class a half an hour late. Not good, though everyone was very nice and understanding about it. I guess that it helped I brought candy as bribery -- America's version of Smarties versus the Canadian chocolate Smarties. Instead of the "smarties" I'm used to, they're called "Rockets" up here instead. It's wild the little differences that pop up between countries.
My next batch of essays to grade aren't being turned in until December 2nd. Which normally wouldn't be a bad thing, but it is complicated by the fact my flight home for Christmas is December 7th. Ugh, more lightening grading sessions of undergrad essays (not a fun prospect). I'm not sure I'm used to this whole graduate school thing. While I love being surrounded by academics, I feel so overwhelmed and inadequate at times, like I'm an intruder. Granted, I'm still pretty tired and need to catch up a bit from being away for a while, but it seems like its a feeling I can't shake.
Well, to end on a lighter note, here's a fun website with lotsa fractal wallpapers. (courtesy of Uncle Willie)
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Oh, I feel *so* privileged to be "chosen."
From: Mrs Mariam Abacha
c/o: Mallam Isa Abacha
Your Honour,
STRICTLY URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL
I am Mrs. Mariam Abacha, widow to the Former Military Head of State, Late General Sanni Abacha, who died suddenly as a result of Cardiac Arrest on 8th of June 1998.
One early morning, I was called by my Late Husband General Sanni Abacha, who at that time was the Chief In Commander of the Army and the President of Nigeria. He conducted me round the apartment and showed me three metals boxes of money all in Foreign Exchange, my husband told me he was to use the money for the settlement of his Personal Royal Guards on his self Succession Bid and campaigns.
Upon his tragic and unexpected death, the new civilian Government of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, has insisted on probing my familys financial resources and has gazetted all our properties, also. They recently seized all the known familys fund abroad with the
assistance of the British Government. It is only this money US$30,000,000.00 (Thirty Million United States Dollars Only) that he deposited with a security company vault , that they can not trace because the funds were deposited as (ANTIQUITY) African Art Work from the National Commission for Museum and Monuments (N. C. M. M.) Nigeria, the family intend to use this money for investment purpose to enable the family start life all over again.
Therefore, the family is urgently in need of a very competent and investor participant that we could entrust with the certificate of Deposit and (PIN) Personal Identification Number Code to help us
remove the funds from the security company. Since no names were used in securing the vault.
I got your contact address and name from our Chamber of Commerce, Agriculture and Industry Office in Lagos - Nigeria, if the proposal is acceptable to you, after getting the money out from the security company vault to your country, my family have agreed to offer to you
25% of the total sum for the kind assistance you rendered to us. And in addition bank the familys own part of the funds and assist us in investing (with my approval on project) as a front for us until the
situation becomes more favorable for us to now meet and discuss the way forward, most especially now that my elder son, Mohammed Abacha and I are under pressure from the Government, despite the fact that my family had already returned the sum of US$3 Billion my Late
husbands Account in the U.S.A, Europe and other countries.
Please kindly state your early response immediately on this email:
is_aba11763@eudoramail.com for more details on the logistics and modalities.
NOTE: I do not need to remind you of the absolute secrecy and confidentiality that this transaction demands. You are free to speak directly with my son Mallam Issa Abacha on the phone.
If you are not interested, please kindly reply me immediately to enable me search for another interested partner.
I await your positive resonse.
Thanks and accept my regards.
MRS. MARIAM ABACHA
c/o Mallam Isa Abacha
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Oh, I'm liking being home!!! Today was such a beautiful day -- warm, sunny, clear skies. (meanwhile, back at the other home it's been snowing lots) I played tennis for the first time since I've moved, and I didn't stink as bad as I expected myself to. My skin isn't as dry, I don't have to wear 3 layers, and I can have as much Mexican and Chick-fil-a as I can stand (though I can see myself working twice as hard at the gym when I finally get home!). Tomorrow I'm taking my dad's digital cam out to document.
Until then, here's a site that will finally put the Catsup vs. Ketchup controversy to rest.
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Sigh, Eminem = Henry V? (or, What has the world come to?!)
Nov. 5, 2002 / 12:59 p.m. ET
Eminem as Shakespeare’s Prince Hal? word on Eminem’s “8 Mile” has some critics dilating and giving birth to raves. New York magazine’s Peter Rainer calls it “one of the year’s sweetest joyrides.” And in The New Yorker, which aims for a tonier readership, David Denby puts a Shakespearean spin on Eminem’s role in the flick.
Denby writes: “The master myth here may be derived less from pop culture than from ‘Henry IV, Part I.’ Jimmy is Prince Hal, a king in waiting, roistering among low company, a brawler who will eventually show his true colors. He rejects many of his friends — the movie ends in a series of renunciations — because he’s headed for better things.”
Whew! That’s Shakespeare’s Prince Hal to the letter. If it in fact applies to Eminem’s Jimmy, then Detroit’s Great White Rapper has turned the world upside down. I for one doubt that Eminem has ever heard of Prince Hal, let alone read the play. (OK, he’s reportedly a person who reads. I still doubt that he’s read “Henry IV, Part I.” I’d bet only English lit majors and actors have.)
The Great White Rapper himself says: “One thing I want this movie to get across is that people who live in this world of hip-hop — how seriously we take this, how seriously we take our music and battling and the sport of it and the competition and everything.”
Really, really. But it’s worth remembering that for all Eminem’s earnestness rap rivalries are basically marketing tools.
“Top rappers and executives, including Jay Z, Nas, Snoop Doggy Dog, Eminem and Jermaine Dupri, have advanced their careers through battles of insult,” John Leland wrote the other day in the most informative article on rap rivalries that I’ve read. “Some of the talk is dazzingly clever, much of it inflammatory, and all of it disseminated and promoted through the record companies. Much of the beef, or animosity, is purely promotional. ... Feuds create publicity at little or no expense.”
Some feuds are as real as their dead victims. Witness Tupac Shakur (gunned down in 1996 in Las Vegas) and the Notorious B.I.G. (Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, shot and killed in Los Angeles in 1997) — to name the best-known gangsta rappers and the most infamous rivalry.
But one New York City detective investigating the recent killing of Jam Master Jay, the DJ of Run-DMC, points out that a lot of so-called feuds are mere hype, like the one between Jay-Z and Nas: “If you listen to the songs they sing, you would think Jay-Z and Nas hate each other, but they hang with each other. I’ve talked to them both; they have no beef with each other.”
Meanwhile, anybody who thinks rap stars are minting money for themselves doesn’t know the half of it.
A music-industry accountant, whose clients include Run-DMC and Madonna said, in Leland’s paraphrase, that “it’s common for a performer with an album generating $17 million in sales to wind up with as little as $70,000 before taxes” and that “performers who make a 500,000-copy gold album might end up with more money working for UPS.”
Yes Virginia — it’s a hard, cold, peculiar, capitalist world out there.
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Well, I'm showered and mostly packed. All that is really left to do is finish packing up my carry-on (must get off laptop to do that) and vacuum pack my pillows and blankey. I won't go into how much fun/gratifying it is to vacuum pack something. And no, I didn't order these off the informercial (I got 'em from Walgreens back home). My flight leaves at 3pm, arriving in Atlanta at 10:13.
One somewhat-downer: I took my car into the shop yesterday to get a block heater put into it, since those things are unheard of/unnecessary in the South. While it was supposed to be a quick job, my car is STILL in the shop. Apparently the frost plug on the engine that its supposed to plug into is recessed, and impossible to pull out. Ugh, I just hope its done in time for my flight later today. That, and it won't cost me a whole bunch more in labor (considering I could barely afford it to begin with).
Oh well, c'est la vie. Here's a fun game that'll cheer me up til I need to be productive again. (Thanks lootjie!)
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One more sleep, til I be home!
Wow, to go from -14 to 24 degrees, all in a matter of hours. Sigh! Oh, I can't wait to see everyone, to feel humidity once more, to eat Chick-fil-a and Mexican, and to finally be able to order "sweet tea" with the waitress looking at me funny! I got all my undergrad essays marked and turned in, a new book, a couple Kevin Smith movies to veg out to (gracias, Kurt!), my passport and tickets...I think I'm all set to go.
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I am certifiably
Better than I thought.
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Modern Aphorisms:
- I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.
- Borrow money from pessimists - they don't expect it back.
- 42.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
- A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.
- A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
- All those who believe in psychokinesis, raise my hand.
- The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
- I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.
- OK, so what's the speed of dark?
- Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
- When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.
- I intend to live forever - so far, so good.
- If Barbie is so popular, why do you have to buy her friends?
- Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
- What happens if you get scared half to death twice?
- Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?
- A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
- Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
- To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
- Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film.
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