hide your head in the sand, little girl
WEEKEND
[insert griping about getting up at 8 a.m. but rewarding experience of tending a class of reporting students here] Skipping along on the record, I made a good show of studying before my French test at 3 p.m., which ended up being the easiest we've had all semester, glory be.
After a nap, we grabbed dinner at Sawamura during the traditional 10 p.m. hour over an extended debate about a suggestion Foley made yesterday. Whatwith all the pro-choice groups hosting events and forums and such, how does the anti-abortion sect feel? Well, let things rattle around in my brain sometime and see how fast they become bigger and more complex than strictly necessary, and that one stewed long enough for me to be contemplating going to a clinic or meeting and getting advice on keeping my alleged pregnancy.
Now, I didn't miss the misrepresentation lecture of MMC2100, but how feasible is it to assume that they'd give me the same information as a journalist than as someone off the street? Basically, I want to look at the feasibility of the anti-abortionists, of what kind of care, counseling, support, advice they give to women to one, make them choose to keep their pregnancies, and two, what they and other groups/organizations offer in the long-term feasibility of that decision. I'm sidestepping the whole argument about when life begins and playing God and imposing ethics, but even beyond that it's this incredibly complex thing with at least three angles.
Mike dutifully reminded me that there is another side to this - what do the pro-choice people tell women to make them choose abortion? How is this a choice that they support afterward? See, I'm just nutty about the people cutting social programs and advocating the death penalty in the same breath as they argue for bringing every potential person into this world while disregarding the life of the one(s) already in it.
After all that, we caught Corpse Bride, about which I have exactly one thing to say: I saw this movie better and with more compelling songs and characters when it was Nightmare Before Christmas. Seriously, all my love to Tim Burton, but he ought to be feeling the gritty nasties of self-plagiarism right just now. I was downright bored and would rather have watched Nightmare for the hundredth time, alas.
Saturday was a whole lot of lounging around before heading to Best Buy, where it took no time at all to distract me thoroughly from the task at hand by the laid-out Dance Dance Revolution mat. Did you know one 1:30 song burns only 12 or so calories? Scandal! But still inarguably fun, even if my prowess is distinctly in the past.
SUNDAY
By no fair turn of time, the weekend was again over, and to a huge paper and still no canceled school. The Editorial Board concurred that a good minimum fifth of the school's population won't be thinking about anything academic tomorrow and that the university should recognize this for those who need or want to skip town to help their families through the, you know, Category 3 hurricane. But in thanks to the largest Sunday budget I've ever seen, timely budgeting and decent story flow, we got to keep our anxieties focused.
MONDAY
Alive and well, and would be enjoying the gorgeous cool weather if I'd gotten hold of my people in any way at any point today beyond my father telling me the last he spoke to my brother, there was water in my house and trees down all around it. Seriously, I wasn't too worried earlier this afternoon, and logic dictates that whatwith West Palm Beach being one of the hardest-hit areas the cellphone towers were among the first to go, but don't think I'm not looking into calling the local police and asking for a friendly drive-by. Seeing images of Hollywood Beach and downtown Ft. Lauderdale on CNN aren't helping, nor did my decision to boycott French as per our editorial about the university's lack of hurricane policy. Thankfully, walkingshadow and hers are all well, if without power, but even their feathers were ruffled more than usual.
Also, allegedly the Sun-Sentinel renegged on its agreement with The Miami Herald that in the event of an emergency, it would print its biggest rival's newspaper. Bastards. The Herald did get printed on Tampa Tribune presses, but how it got back to Dade County and distributed is a special kind of improbability.
Features Editor Neil and I debated people who like The Who because of Limp Bizkit's cover of Behind Blue Eyes. He's one of those who begrudges that Harry Potter got kids reading and people who get their music education from popular culture. I say if you discover Jimi Hendrix through P.Diddy, good for you. Your ability to extract quality from crap is no less merit-worthy than taking the hypotenuse of adopting your parents' tastes or spending all your allowance at used records stores.
Finally, beginning tonight, I leave you with this:
Witnessing his first hurricane, Sam Padgett of Yorkshire, England lights a cigarette while standing in the doorway of a hotel in Old Naples as Hurricane Wilma passed over the city Monday. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press)
Because really, what else is there to do?
Also, a parting thanks to Duran Duran for rescuing me from the chorus of Personal Jesus as the last strains of Too Much Information play me off the stage.
TUESDAY
So, I knew she was ineffectual and patronizing, but apparently my former feature writing teacher is also batshit insane. Also, incapable of spelling and, as most crazy people, overly fond of rampant capitalization. Good god.
She sent a letter to the editor last night about a story we ran about the reaccreditation of our College of Journalism and Communications, and how it was found in compliance in all areas except administration, meaning our not-so-esteemed Dean Terry Hynes. Wretched woman totally removed from students, with ludicrous criteria for professors on which she almost rejected Foley and has rejected revered journalists interested in taking up a semester of teaching here and there.
But that's neither here nor there, our writer got a copy of the report and wrote it up as he saw it, and it wasn't pretty but we could shake a dossier in her face for every fact we mentioned in the story and she still accused us of unjustly attacking the dean. With poor grammar and bad spelling and the same kind of self-righteous attitude that makes me want to chuck phones across the office and against a wall, hard. Oy.
Other than that, it was the sort of weather today that truly makes you feel lucky to be alive just to breathe it in. Even justified wearing a scarf!
Also, blessed be the spotty technology because I got a voicemail from my brother this afternoon, and as the best people in my life do, he made me laugh and cry in the same sentence. My people and puppies are all fine, have a generator running and despite having trees in both our garage and house, he said things are OK.
When I tried calling back a hundred times tonight and finally made it through by some small miracle, my mom spoke heartbrokenly about watching her garden and palm trees that all my family worked so long and hard on after even the hardest weeks, uninsurable but loved, be torn out of the ground plant by tree by flower. And it's the silliest thing, she kept saying it herself, because as long as they have gasoline they have power, running water, food, television (FPL is saying months, not weeks, which is not what the AP reported), but she's almost beside herself about the yard. It killed me to listen to her telling me that she spent the day picking up branches and carrying out palm trees and that gone, it's all gone she kept saying through her tears. There are no power lines left on the main road leading to our house, no gas and even if there was, there's no electricity to pump it out. Last I heard, 98 percent of Broward County was without power.
The mind boggles. Their lives as they knew them Sunday have ceased to exist. It's always been in Miami or North Carolina or New Orleans, but seeing streets and neighborhoods I know deserted and bedragged, hearing my mom talk about riding it out and the pointlessness of the next who knows how long, of having nothing to do and nowhere to go, just sitting on the broken, leaking foundation of our house - I was almost sick at the notion. We all joke about how nice it would be not to have to go to work tomorrow, but that being an actuality is absurd. I can't imagine what I'd do without the paper. My mom is a real estate agent, so it's even more impossible for her.
My stepfather and brother run an insurance contracting business that comes in after these kinds of disasters, and the less spectacular ones, all the time, but they have none of their equipment and likely won't get to more than draping a tarp over the compromised parts of our house until whenever they get to it. If this utter helplessness is this sour in my stomach, I just hope they can hold together down there.
After attempting an existential cigarette at the downtown Starbucks, I went to campus to talk to McKeen about the abortion story. Freakishly enough, three steps from my car I ran into Mike, and together we went to the notorious third-floor Student Government offices because I was feeling cheeky and wanted a stress ball. Well, despite having paid my Activity & Service fees for ten semesters so far, Student Body Vice President Joyce Medina, as in the one SG Reporter David would sooner slit his wrists than call for comment, told me in no uncertain or civil terms that if I want one, then come to an SG event. She didn't recognize me but said to Mike, "Why are you always making trouble?" Seriously, aside from the world-class bitchery, she had no grounds to deny my request for swag I've already paid for, and we requested the public records that may state otherwise, but mostly, I'm going to write a column and demand she give me one personally if that is in fact the policy.
Joe Goldberg eventually came out of his office to see what the commotion was about and invited us back. It's... a lot smaller than I thought, which is so fitting I had to bite my lip to keep the giggles at bay. Met some more of our regular cast of characters, including Tom Philpot and Adelle Fontanet, the bisexual Pride exec who didn't know who Kevin Bacon was when she started dating our own student Sen. Kevin Bacon.
And the photo, mais oui:
A tree split in three seen on a golf course in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday. Hurricane Wilma's high winds toppled mature trees, causing extensive power and phone outtages in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. (Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press)
[insert griping about getting up at 8 a.m. but rewarding experience of tending a class of reporting students here] Skipping along on the record, I made a good show of studying before my French test at 3 p.m., which ended up being the easiest we've had all semester, glory be.
After a nap, we grabbed dinner at Sawamura during the traditional 10 p.m. hour over an extended debate about a suggestion Foley made yesterday. Whatwith all the pro-choice groups hosting events and forums and such, how does the anti-abortion sect feel? Well, let things rattle around in my brain sometime and see how fast they become bigger and more complex than strictly necessary, and that one stewed long enough for me to be contemplating going to a clinic or meeting and getting advice on keeping my alleged pregnancy.
Now, I didn't miss the misrepresentation lecture of MMC2100, but how feasible is it to assume that they'd give me the same information as a journalist than as someone off the street? Basically, I want to look at the feasibility of the anti-abortionists, of what kind of care, counseling, support, advice they give to women to one, make them choose to keep their pregnancies, and two, what they and other groups/organizations offer in the long-term feasibility of that decision. I'm sidestepping the whole argument about when life begins and playing God and imposing ethics, but even beyond that it's this incredibly complex thing with at least three angles.
Mike dutifully reminded me that there is another side to this - what do the pro-choice people tell women to make them choose abortion? How is this a choice that they support afterward? See, I'm just nutty about the people cutting social programs and advocating the death penalty in the same breath as they argue for bringing every potential person into this world while disregarding the life of the one(s) already in it.
After all that, we caught Corpse Bride, about which I have exactly one thing to say: I saw this movie better and with more compelling songs and characters when it was Nightmare Before Christmas. Seriously, all my love to Tim Burton, but he ought to be feeling the gritty nasties of self-plagiarism right just now. I was downright bored and would rather have watched Nightmare for the hundredth time, alas.
Saturday was a whole lot of lounging around before heading to Best Buy, where it took no time at all to distract me thoroughly from the task at hand by the laid-out Dance Dance Revolution mat. Did you know one 1:30 song burns only 12 or so calories? Scandal! But still inarguably fun, even if my prowess is distinctly in the past.
SUNDAY
By no fair turn of time, the weekend was again over, and to a huge paper and still no canceled school. The Editorial Board concurred that a good minimum fifth of the school's population won't be thinking about anything academic tomorrow and that the university should recognize this for those who need or want to skip town to help their families through the, you know, Category 3 hurricane. But in thanks to the largest Sunday budget I've ever seen, timely budgeting and decent story flow, we got to keep our anxieties focused.
MONDAY
Alive and well, and would be enjoying the gorgeous cool weather if I'd gotten hold of my people in any way at any point today beyond my father telling me the last he spoke to my brother, there was water in my house and trees down all around it. Seriously, I wasn't too worried earlier this afternoon, and logic dictates that whatwith West Palm Beach being one of the hardest-hit areas the cellphone towers were among the first to go, but don't think I'm not looking into calling the local police and asking for a friendly drive-by. Seeing images of Hollywood Beach and downtown Ft. Lauderdale on CNN aren't helping, nor did my decision to boycott French as per our editorial about the university's lack of hurricane policy. Thankfully, walkingshadow and hers are all well, if without power, but even their feathers were ruffled more than usual.
Also, allegedly the Sun-Sentinel renegged on its agreement with The Miami Herald that in the event of an emergency, it would print its biggest rival's newspaper. Bastards. The Herald did get printed on Tampa Tribune presses, but how it got back to Dade County and distributed is a special kind of improbability.
Features Editor Neil and I debated people who like The Who because of Limp Bizkit's cover of Behind Blue Eyes. He's one of those who begrudges that Harry Potter got kids reading and people who get their music education from popular culture. I say if you discover Jimi Hendrix through P.Diddy, good for you. Your ability to extract quality from crap is no less merit-worthy than taking the hypotenuse of adopting your parents' tastes or spending all your allowance at used records stores.
Finally, beginning tonight, I leave you with this:
Witnessing his first hurricane, Sam Padgett of Yorkshire, England lights a cigarette while standing in the doorway of a hotel in Old Naples as Hurricane Wilma passed over the city Monday. (Julie Jacobson/Associated Press)
Because really, what else is there to do?
Also, a parting thanks to Duran Duran for rescuing me from the chorus of Personal Jesus as the last strains of Too Much Information play me off the stage.
TUESDAY
So, I knew she was ineffectual and patronizing, but apparently my former feature writing teacher is also batshit insane. Also, incapable of spelling and, as most crazy people, overly fond of rampant capitalization. Good god.
She sent a letter to the editor last night about a story we ran about the reaccreditation of our College of Journalism and Communications, and how it was found in compliance in all areas except administration, meaning our not-so-esteemed Dean Terry Hynes. Wretched woman totally removed from students, with ludicrous criteria for professors on which she almost rejected Foley and has rejected revered journalists interested in taking up a semester of teaching here and there.
But that's neither here nor there, our writer got a copy of the report and wrote it up as he saw it, and it wasn't pretty but we could shake a dossier in her face for every fact we mentioned in the story and she still accused us of unjustly attacking the dean. With poor grammar and bad spelling and the same kind of self-righteous attitude that makes me want to chuck phones across the office and against a wall, hard. Oy.
Other than that, it was the sort of weather today that truly makes you feel lucky to be alive just to breathe it in. Even justified wearing a scarf!
Also, blessed be the spotty technology because I got a voicemail from my brother this afternoon, and as the best people in my life do, he made me laugh and cry in the same sentence. My people and puppies are all fine, have a generator running and despite having trees in both our garage and house, he said things are OK.
When I tried calling back a hundred times tonight and finally made it through by some small miracle, my mom spoke heartbrokenly about watching her garden and palm trees that all my family worked so long and hard on after even the hardest weeks, uninsurable but loved, be torn out of the ground plant by tree by flower. And it's the silliest thing, she kept saying it herself, because as long as they have gasoline they have power, running water, food, television (FPL is saying months, not weeks, which is not what the AP reported), but she's almost beside herself about the yard. It killed me to listen to her telling me that she spent the day picking up branches and carrying out palm trees and that gone, it's all gone she kept saying through her tears. There are no power lines left on the main road leading to our house, no gas and even if there was, there's no electricity to pump it out. Last I heard, 98 percent of Broward County was without power.
The mind boggles. Their lives as they knew them Sunday have ceased to exist. It's always been in Miami or North Carolina or New Orleans, but seeing streets and neighborhoods I know deserted and bedragged, hearing my mom talk about riding it out and the pointlessness of the next who knows how long, of having nothing to do and nowhere to go, just sitting on the broken, leaking foundation of our house - I was almost sick at the notion. We all joke about how nice it would be not to have to go to work tomorrow, but that being an actuality is absurd. I can't imagine what I'd do without the paper. My mom is a real estate agent, so it's even more impossible for her.
My stepfather and brother run an insurance contracting business that comes in after these kinds of disasters, and the less spectacular ones, all the time, but they have none of their equipment and likely won't get to more than draping a tarp over the compromised parts of our house until whenever they get to it. If this utter helplessness is this sour in my stomach, I just hope they can hold together down there.
After attempting an existential cigarette at the downtown Starbucks, I went to campus to talk to McKeen about the abortion story. Freakishly enough, three steps from my car I ran into Mike, and together we went to the notorious third-floor Student Government offices because I was feeling cheeky and wanted a stress ball. Well, despite having paid my Activity & Service fees for ten semesters so far, Student Body Vice President Joyce Medina, as in the one SG Reporter David would sooner slit his wrists than call for comment, told me in no uncertain or civil terms that if I want one, then come to an SG event. She didn't recognize me but said to Mike, "Why are you always making trouble?" Seriously, aside from the world-class bitchery, she had no grounds to deny my request for swag I've already paid for, and we requested the public records that may state otherwise, but mostly, I'm going to write a column and demand she give me one personally if that is in fact the policy.
Joe Goldberg eventually came out of his office to see what the commotion was about and invited us back. It's... a lot smaller than I thought, which is so fitting I had to bite my lip to keep the giggles at bay. Met some more of our regular cast of characters, including Tom Philpot and Adelle Fontanet, the bisexual Pride exec who didn't know who Kevin Bacon was when she started dating our own student Sen. Kevin Bacon.
And the photo, mais oui:
A tree split in three seen on a golf course in Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday. Hurricane Wilma's high winds toppled mature trees, causing extensive power and phone outtages in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. (Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press)