The Old School Lunch

The exchange of emails that i’ve received just now:

Dear #####.

We had our meeting with ##### ###### yesterday. She informed us that Luke has to request the retroactive dating of his diploma himself. He can write an e-mail message directly to her <######@u.washington.edu> cc’ing ####### and me so that I can then write a message in support of his request.

We also agreed that ######### would communicate these instructions to Luke, but I understand he has moved, and getting a hold of his address & telephone number has been an issue. So, if you are in touch with him, I would appreciate your conveying this information to him as well. Thanks,

–#####

Hi ######,

Yes, I have just learned that GARS won’t make Luke’s degree retroactive. I need to speak further with Angelica about this (she is out on a medical appointment this afternoon).

We have a meeting with ######## scheduled for tomorrow. I’ll inquire about
Luke’s case there. ######## found a copy of the graduation application she
says she sent to the Graduation Office long time ago. But ##### has told
######### that they never received it… a convoluted story. Again, one of us
will get back to you as soon as possible.

–######

Dear #####,

Luke has contacted me once again, and has told me that he has been
informed by GARS that his diploma will not be retroactive. Please let me
know if this is a mistake, as he is very concerned about it.

Thanks you,

#########

“getting a hold of his address and telephone has been an issue?” What the fuck? I did move but that was about, oh, almost 4 years ago AND i’ve had the same goddamn phone number listed on my UW account the ENTIRE time. The only thing that’s changed is that since they didn’t record me ever graduating, they deleted my UW email address completely and didn’t offer me any chance of paying to keep it active. Assuming that I had graduated, I thought this was just something that happened to everyone but no, I learned that alums actually get to keep the damn email address for a while. God.

I’ve been pretty into flickr recently and a group that I joined called “feminism” has started to get me wondering: what the fuck do 95% of these pictures have to do with feminism? What I don’t understand even more is that a lot of these tags in the pool are of the “feminine mystique” (along with “selfportrait” and “portrait”) but the photo itself is either of the female body or a Facebookish portrait shot of a woman. I know what the Feminine Mystique has to do with feminism, but am I missing something here with these other photos?

[Warning: Potential rape and sexual assault triggers within links]

I recently watched Hard Candy and without getting completely into it, it was pretty good. Ellen Page (who identifies as a feminist!) makes the film and I saw that she’s in another upcoming movie that (once you read what it’s about), well, it just crushes you. On one hand I almost wish I had never read about it because Jesus Christ, that’s gotta be one of the worst most awful fuckin things. On the other hand, it seems like an important movie and statement to make because despite some serious but inevitable-given-the-characters-involved mother-blaming, the horrific real-life events reflect our culture’s complete hatred and physical and sexual violence against women. I haven’t talked about VT (and I don’t know if i’m ever going to talk about it here) but along the same thread the acts of the VT shooter and those like Gertrude Baniszewski are all too quickly and wrongly dismissed as one-dimensional, static “evil monsters”…extreme anomalies of the social pool who just couldn’t possibly have been informed by any of our own culture’s (in Gertrude’s case, at least) sexist, women hating, women blaming, eve-was-weak ways.

Honestly, I don’t know if i’m going to watch this movie if I get the chance but in many ways, i’m glad it’s being brought to light because folks forget (and I don’t know the exact quote or who to accredit it to) “just how much they hate [women].”

Via email from the person who is helping to sort shit out:

I’m working on it. There has been some confusion around your address, evidently. I don’t have all the details. I will keep you informed as I get them.

Who would’ve guessed that the single most viewed photo in my small Flickr photolog (by a considerable margin) would be this, the first in a short series entitled “I wish I was a graphic designer.” My guess is that folks somehow found the photo through the design tag and clicked on the set only to say “wtf is this shit? where’s the graphic design?”

[I know this is late, but forgive me, i’m probably the last person to see this film]

What irritates the fuck out of me is when someone says something like this…

“none of the stories in the film are interesting (except one), the ultimate lack of connection between them all is surprising and worst of all, it all just felt like a school lesson to me, taught by a condescending know-it-all.” -JoBlo ’s Berge Garabedian

…about something that very deliberately tries to tell the viewer/reader/audience “hey, shit in the food is just one thing to protest here. Look at how people are being treated. Look at how our government, our giant corporations condone this type of abuse. Look at the position these folks are in. Look at where our attention goes when we think of big-chain fast food joints.”

Dear readers, if you’ll remember several weeks ago I told you this story. Well, it’s been over two weeks and guess what, they’re going to fill my graduation order and all that for Spring of…2007.

That’s right, not 2006 (as this was the actual year of my graduation) but 2007. I was told by a person at undergraduate advising that my date of graduation would be made retroactive as this was 100% an error on the part of my 85 year old department advisor but oh no, folks at the degree office say “we have no record of blah blah blah.” This is just the more upsetting because I was assured by two different parties that this retroactive graduation date order was done, taken care of, ready to go.

So remember folks, if you intend on graduating this spring, make sure that when you fill out your graduation paperwork and give it to the person whose JOB it is to submit the damn paperwork, call them back just to double check that they actually did it.

[A random story]

The very first time I heard the term “feminist” (or “feminism”):

I was young (really young) and I was at my grandma’s house watching TV. I think the program was some british sketch-comedy show. A woman was advertising a new boardgame called “Feminist monopoly” and giving a tour of the boardgame and the different pieces that players could choose. Instead of the thimble, the shoe, the race car…Feminist Monopoly had different kinds…of nutcrackers.

LGBTQ Project Coordinator.

Any interesting/cool/career-aligned job that i’ve found has all been in some “director” or “coordinator” position. I’m nowhere near ready for anything like that but I would be ready for an “assistant” type position or a general support/counselor deal that (with several years of steadily doing that) might actually put me on the road to being better qualified for stuff like the above.

But as a sidenote (and I don’t mean this to be a jab at the organization above) i’ve become increasingly suspicious when an org has to go so far as to promote the opening on CL and not fill the position within the organization. I know they have to do it most of the time for union and full disclosure reasons and whatnot, but from what i’ve seen, when a lot of coordinator/manager/director positions keep popping up and they promote it like bananas, it’s a bad sign.

[Good idea, bad idea: Month left of health insurance and wisdom teeth “ready but you don’t have to get them out right now, it’s your choice” to come out? Why not!]

X: “Hmm, this is a pretty old-school kind of medicine”

Y: (With Kanye West cheeks) “Muh duntiisssss iss rully oll”

X: “Oh.

[Worst advice ever from the dental assistant: “Since you’re numb right now, you can eat whatever you want as soon as you get home because after that, you’re not going to be able to eat anything solid for a while.” My failed attempt at trying to eat a sandwich hurt like a motherfucker, thank you very much.]