The Old School Lunch

I forgot to blog about this earlier, but I just remembered it (again). For some reason, I remembered watching what’s that movie, Swiss Family Robinson or something when I was a kid. It’s an old, old movie and what I liked about it was the usual build stuff out of what you got to make a fort, make home and make a defense for intruders (the one about some rich family that crash lands on some remote island, I might be thinking of the wrong title). Anyways, I watched this when I was pretty young and even then, I remember knowing why at one point in the movie, the sailors, sea captains or whatever try and pass a young woman they had with them as man. If they realized that it was a woman, a young woman, they’d take her away and rape her. I don’t think I was old enough to know clearly about rape or that it was called rape but I do remember thinking that there would be trouble if they found out he was a she. It’s a pretty sad comment that I realized this at that young of an age and when I tried to think how I could’ve connected the dots (I don’t think they say “hey, cover up or they’ll see you’re a woman and rape you” nor do they just non-chalantly cover the woman up) I realized that watching all that tv and all those movies I did (my uncle let us rent whatever we wanted) I probably saw dozens of instances of violence/sexual assault against women and hundreds of the threat of sexual assault against women. Though there is a great deal of the former in media, the latter I think is what goes so freely without anyone wincing. It’s almost as if people say, “well yea, duh she’d get attacked or raped if she did [scenario].”

Pretty interesting.

I’m kinda surprised that it’s the Big H doing this. I wonder if other schools do this and if so, it took Harvard to finally make it in the press? Is this even press worthy?

[Last name Lee, btw. I don’t think I ever write that anywhere.]

Wow, what a difference a year or so makes. On more of a whim, I committed “facebookicide” more than a year or so ago and until tonight I haven’t been back on. I sunk into the trashy splendor that is MySpace (if you call periodically visiting and rarely updating “sinking into”) and just left the FB for lots of reasons. My brother’s been on it like a fiend so partially out of holiday boredom I tried to reactivate my deleted account, hoping that some of my stuff (friend lists, basic info) would still be on there. Well, that doesn’t work so well when your school email was deleted upon graduation and your whole facebook identity hinges on you having a legitimate school email address. So now it’s starting from scratch. Which isn’t so bad I guess. So if you’re like the rest of 99.9% of the world and are on facebook, hit me up!

[Bit of a Northwest windstorm]

Our nextdoor neighbors have some elaborate Christmas decorations. That’s fine. They have the lights that they don’t turn off at night, the lawn ornaments and an inflatable snow-man with a music-box that plays this hideously annoying music jingle. It’s 11:22pm and i’m pretty sure they went to sleep and the goddamn thing is still playing. Just for that, now I don’t feel bad that our unhealthy, moss-ridden crabgrass is likely going to infect and ruin their new perfectly healthy installed kentucky bluegrass that they’ve got. Yes, the music is that annoying.

Back from Bellingham after going to hear Jackson Katz’ speak at WWU. Exhausted from driving there and back with a bunch of co-worker and then dropping off folks, getting home at midnight and then having to wake up early for a meeting and then…having to drive some more tomorrow to Snoqualmie (I don’t know if i’m spelling that right, who cares!) for work. My brain hurts (not as a result of the speech). Great lecture but definitely lots of emotions. Too tired to write about at this point. More later.

Unbelievable.

I’m pretty certain that this applies to bone marrow donors as well. From my experience, part of the questionnaire that blood agencies ask when it comes to potential marrow donation is about sexual orientation and if someone says that they’re gay (I think this just applies to gay men and not women, but don’t quote me on it), they stop, don’t get a blood sample and the person isn’t allowed to even be put on the national database. I’d like for these folks to try and tell the parents of some kid dying with leukemia “well, we looked all over the world and the whole world came to us trying to help but we just couldn’t find anyone, honest! Oh wait. Except for, you know, The Gays who we didn’t even consider because you wouldn’t want their marrow anyways!”

[Got this promo in the mail]

I think the standard free trial membership for Netflix is 2 weeks but with this code, you can get it for a month (which actually makes the hassle of signing up, giving your credit card info worthwhile because I don’t think you can really watch a lot in 2 weeks).

Click here first (if you’ve never signed up for Netflix before) www.netflix.com/tellafriend

and then punch in M13652102465 or M56322302655

If readers are going to use a code, please say which one in the comments so I can strike them accordingly. Thanks.

I was commenting on Dora’s blog when I came to an unfortunate realization that has a little to do with this entire mess of my dept screwing up my grad application paperwork and then me having to apply to graduate again.

During the Spring of 2006, I was supposed to graduate and I had no intention of attending the large UW commencement ceremony. I would’ve, however, possibly attended my departmental graduation had I known about the goddamn thing but I never once received an email or message letting me know “hey, you’re graduating so come to Padelford on Saturday with your family!” I only learned about this until it was pretty much too late from a friend (who wasn’t even graduating but knew) and by then I was a little too miffed to attend. It was a good thing I didn’t because they would’ve looked at me like “who are you? we don’t have you down on the list of graduating seniors” which would’ve looked great in front of my family.

So after putting two and two together, I realized that I never got invited to the damn thing because I was never on their list of graduating seniors in the first place because, yes, since my dept advisor “misplaced” my grad app, to them it looked like I just wasn’t graduating. God. Damn. It.

OK, i’m going to be honest here. The department advisor for AES is an incompetent stone statue who is seen only as a fixture of AES and respected for what I imagine is some great work she did a while ago. Fine, great for her. I am not kidding you when I say she’s pushing an age where most folks are well on their way into the nursing home years and I really admire that she wants to work and be a contributing member but when you can’t do your goddamn job properly, when you don’t even know how to use email and insist that anyone who wants to communicate with you see you in person, that’s some serious bullshit. The AES dept is already seen as the liberal arts dump and it’s just made that much worse by someone like this who is the first and last person you talk to when you want to major in AES.

Fuckers.

[The last time I made a prediction on any sort of blog was about that season of Survivor and what would happen with the difference “races.” Fortunately/unfortunately, I was massively wrong.]

West: Jazz (very unfortunately) over the Warriors in 7. Suns over Spurs in 6.

East: Pistons over Bulls in 4 (that Gasol trade looks pretty good right about now). Cavs over Nets in 5.

And then.

West: Suns over Jazz in 5.

East: Cavs over Pistons in 5.

Which ends in.

Finals: Suns over Cavs in 6.

Walking away from it, what the post-season will show:

#1. Winning teams will run and play finesse ball where people do what it is that basketball set out to do: everybody should know how to pass and shoot. No more (or dramatically less) mauling people in the paint and going the way of the NHL and having people in the game just to bruise other players.

#2. Lebron’s leap to the top is going to happen a lot sooner than folks expected. He has enough to get to the near top, but he is way short of pulling it all off. They’ll look to consolidate talent and make big Z the third best player on the team, not the maybe-fourth (if they don’t trade him in the first place).

#3. The Pistons’ window has closed. Chauncey is on his way out, Rasheed, Chris and Antonio are old and now all you’ve got is Shawn Marion Jr. in Tayshaun.

#4. The Bulls, realizing #3 and being a little upset at their humiliation by the Pistons, will finally go after Jermaine O’Neal.

[Season one, disc two]

“If you don’t like it here in America, why don’t you go stand in line for toilet paper at the USSR!?”