A View From Afar

The crew of Apollo 8 took this photo on Christmas Eve 1968 while oribiting our one and only moon, some 270,000 miles from the Earth. I was going to write what it makes me think, but I feel that is pretty obvious. Almost every person that sees this photo thinks only one thought, and it is probably one of the most powerful and important thoughts a human can have.

This Is One Of My All Time Favorite Works Of Art

This is a large textile made by the people of Paracas, on the south coast of Peru. It measures roughly 8 feet long by 5 feet wide, and is nearly two thousand years old.

Mexican Fun

Sybille Bedford - A Visit To Don Otavio: A Traveller's Tale From Mexico, p. 29-30:

I start a conversation - so good for one's Spanish - with the officer from Monterrey. Our exhcnage of civilities takes this form.
"Where do you come from?" I am asked.
"America."
"This is America."
"From North America."
"This is North America."
"From the United States."
"These are the United States - Estados Unidos Mexicanos."
"I see. Oh dear. Then the Senora here," I point to Esther, "is what? Not an American? Not a North American? What is she?"
"Yanqui. Le senora es yanqui."
"But only North Americans are called Yankees . . . I mean only Americans from the North of the United States . . . I mean only North Americans from the States . . . North Americans from the North . . . I mean only Yankees from the Northern States are called Yankees."
"Por favor?"

Pollock Strikes Again!

So Shewara took this rather ironic photo of me standing in front of a very famous Jackson Pollock painting (cleverly titled "#31" to differentiate it from the others). I tried to look all art historian-esque and contempliative while having a staring contest with the scourge of my academic existence. If you can't tell from the photo, the painting (if you can call it that) is pretty big - twelve feet wide and six feet tall I'd say - and I am standing about a foot from it. At the same time, there were a bunch of people (five or six maybe) standing further away. Shewara took about three variations of this exact photo of me, so it took a minute or two of interrupting these partons' enlightened contemplation of this (cough) masterwork.

Finally, when we were done photo-ing it up, I walked away from the front of the painting and back into the room. As I was leaving, this incredibly pretentious fossil of a British man who was clearly beaten by his undergraduate advisor turns to me and says, in the most pretentious and British and fossilly voice you can imagine, "Could the Orange please move away from the Pol-loch?" I felt like going on a rant about how I had been waiting my entire life to see this work of greatness, or some such bullshit, but it then dawned on me: why the hell was he saying this to me as I was LEAVING? Of course I'm moving - I'm walking away! I should have high-fived him right there and gone back and stood even closer to the Pol-loch, just to suck in some more of its essence. I think my orangeness was freaking him out, since it contrasted so sharply with the colors Pollock used - mainly different shades of drab mixed with crap. So I hope this dude fulfilled his dreams by getting a look at his Pol-loch. Ass!

Trip To Philly and New York

I left Chi-town on the 12th for a week-long trip to go visit Shewara in Philly, where she lives sometimes. Pictured above is the SEPTA stop for Manayunk, a classy shopping district outside Philly. While Manayunk managed to impress me with its amazing collection of random record shops, Tibetan- and African-themed stores, as well as good eats, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority actually managed to piss us off by randomly deciding to stop running trains (!!!!) in the middle of a Friday evening. Right after a huge concert. But we still had bunches of fun. The trip was originally billed as a chance for me to check out prospective graduate schools, but we ditched that in favor of more fun times. The totality of the awesome fun that was had can not be fully described in a short little post, but here is a short list:

Philly Cheese Steak remnants---->

During the trip, we successfully:
-Attended a Franz Ferdinand concert (awesome)
-Ate at a classy Peruvian restaurant, where I had ceviche - a dish I have been dying for for over a year
-Bought two random really old books (one 1848, other 1906)
-Got free admission to no less than TWO of the world's great art musems: the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (note the awesome MoMA painting below), where we saw many of the world's great artworks (but somehow managed to miss Hokusai's "Great Wave," which I'm sure you are familiar with from college dorm room posters)













-Made Rama Chicken and Gnocchis with Vodka Sauce, two of my faovrite dishes, while also consuming tons of tea, chocolate, and canolis.
-Visited Philly's historic district, where we saw: Ben Franklin's printing press, tomb, and house; the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall (both below); a Quaker Church dating from the early1800s (the Quakers, or "Society of Friends,"are some of our new favorite people); America's oldest continuously inhabited residential area (since 1703); and to cap it all off we were kicked out of the United States Mint

-Watched two fascinating films "Paris is Burning"(1990) and "The Women"(1939)
-Ate random chicken food on the streets of New York, while at the same time discovering the very large and surprisingly important distinction between 6th street and 6th avenue in Manhattan
-And visited the very small and undoubtedly underappreciated and under-funded Mario Lanza Institute in south Philly.

Don't you wish you could have come?

Snowman

Bill Watterson - There's Treasure Everywhere: A Calvin and Hobbes Collection, p.63:


[Calvin and Hobbes come upon a normal, standard, 3-ball snowman by the sidewalk]

Calvin: Look at that kid's snowman! What a pathetic cliche! Am I supposed to identify with this complacent moron and his shovel? This snowman says nothing about the human condition! Is this all this kid has to say about contemporary suburban life? The soul-less banality of this snowman is a sad comment on today's art world. Now come look at MY snowman.

[They approach Calvin's creation, a ghastly form with a distorted, agonizing face, seemingly screaming while clutching the sides of its head]

Calvin: I call it The Torment of Existence Weighed Against the Horror of Nonbeing. As he melts, the sculpture will become even more poignant.

Hobbes: I admire your willingness to put artistic integrity before marketability.

[Hobbes walks away as Calvin ponders this statement]

[Calvin makes a normal, happy snowman - just like all the others.]

GRE Madness!

So I am taking all day today, as well as Thursday through Saturday, to study for my upcoming GRE exam on October 11th. I have been pouring over my Kaplan study guides, and I have decided they can occasionally be completely useless. Allow me to elaborate.

When guessing the definition of words, they told me to consider foreign words that sound similar, to help me guess at the meaning. Mundane, for example, sounds like the Spanish word Mundo. Only one problem, Kaplan. "Mundane" means boring and repetitive, while "Mundo" means "world." What do these two words have to do with each other? Nothing at all! Thanks for the tip!

And it gets better. In Antonym Practice Test #1, question 6 asks me to choose the opposite of the word "abandon." I chose choice 1, "arrival," since to arrive somewhere is the exact opposite of abandoning that location. "We're abandoning Missouri to move to Chicago! Now we arrived in Chicago!" Makes sense to me. But not to Kaplan. They say the correct answer is choice 4, "restraint," since here "abandon" is being used as a noun and not as a verb. Well how am I supposed to know that? It's impossible! I didn't know that being psychic was a prerequisite for the text.

And lastly, my favorite, on AnalogyTest #5, they ask me to choose to analogy for "Pandemonium:Agitation." Now, as best I can remember, "pandemonium" refers to a state of extreme jubliation, usually among a group of college sports fans after their team crushes Michigan. They hug and dance and cheer and high-five everyone in sight. "Agitation" on the other hand, seems to be the opposite. Agitated people are frustrated, edgy, stressed, and difficult to deal with. Try to hug or high-five them, and they may well punch you, probably becuase they were born and raised in Indiana. Knowing this, I chose what I thought was the appropriate answer - until I looked at the answer key. Right there, in BOLD lettering mind you, was this sentence:

PANDEMONIUM is a state of extreme AGITATION.

Did I not get this memo? Have I gone through almost 16 years of fluency in the English language while successfully avoiding the correct definitions of BOTH of these words? I acknowledge that "pandemonium" can also have a negative connotation of like a riot, but this definition is much less used, and is definitely not so commonplace as to say that it is the ONLY definition like Kaplan does.

I think I'm about to erupt into a state of pandemonium.

My Trip To Iowa

So I drove down to Champaign on Thursday to pick up a friend. He's my best sports-love buddy, and we had scored two amazing tickets (50 yard line, 16th row) to go see the Illini play the Iowa Hawkeyes in Iowa City. What we didn't know when we arrived on Friday is that 1) Iowa is a godforsaken place where only fat white people live who seem to laugh at EVERYTHING, no matter how lame (just like the laughter inserted into stupid sitcoms) and 2) This was homecoming weekend for Iowa (a tradition that started at UIllinois, thank you very much), meaning that the city was absolutely packed with Iowa fans on Friday night, which made our search for a safe place to eat just that much more difficult. The fact that we were wearing all orange probably didn't help either.


We got to the stadium early Saturday morning after spending the night in lovely Cedar Rapids, about 20 miles north of Iowa City. We got to the stadium nearly two hours early, mainly because I was concerned about the parking situation, so we got to watch the teams warm up and see our beloved coach Ron Zook before kickoff. When we walked in there were only about fifteen people in the stadium, but by kickoff that number swelled to over 70,000 - some of which can be seen in the little photo to the left. I refuse to believe, however, that those 70,000 people had that much of an effect on our team's atrocious first half play. A red zone interception, a 2nd and goal from the 4 that resulted in a missed field goal, and two other blocked field goals add up to 20 squandered points by halftime, and an Iowa lead of 14-0. The Illini never got their swagger back (don't they look motivated? - see above) and lost 35-7. We soon after high-tailed it out of Iowa City and back to our native state that we know and love. The only good things about Iowa City were a pretty campus (though it lacks a Quad, is kinda hilly for my flatlander tastes, and is bisected by an un-navigable river as far as we could tell), and a fantastic collection of African art at the University's art museum. I bought a poster from them for $2, so not all bad.

We drove back to Champaign Saturday evening, and I stayed the night because I was too tired to drive back and in no hurry to leave my friend. We caught a showing of "A History of Violence" (do not see it under ANY circumstances), and some dinner at my favorite Thai restaurant on campus. I left the next morning, and quickly found myself stuck behind a cow- and odor-filled semi for roughly half the drive to Chicago. This frustrated me greatly, but also gave me the chance to avert my gaze from the road and note that Gibson City's "Safe Days" sign was only at 3. I thought this was pretty damn funny, since that must mean that there had been a (hopefully minor) accident at the plant the day I had driven down to Champaign (that day the sign had read "56 Safe Days"). It made me chuckle. I had never passed the sign when it was that low (I make the Route 47 drive a lot - check my previous "Flatland" post), the longest streak I had ever seen was 276 safe days. Hopefully they can get it back up. So the trip was some good and some bad, but I can't complain about free hotel and football tickets, even if we did get the snot beat out of us. In any event, we did make tentative plans to invade Bloomington for the big Illinois/Indiana basketball game on January 17, so we will see how that goes.

Iowa still sucks.