I'm listening to Audioslave's "Like a Stone", that weird Soundgarden/ Rage Against the Machine song that got a lot of radio play last year. I don't consider myself a radio guy, but I suppose I am, because for junior and senior year of high school my sister and I (plus any neighborhood tagalongs we carpooled) listened to 99x's morning show. I know that radio DJ's are supposed to be the basest form of entertainment vomited by American culture, but for some reason we listened to this morning show very consistentally for two years on the way to school. Sometimes I would try to put in a CD, but it would usually be met by a passive agressive protest on the part of the passengers, and I would usually break down and turn it back to 99x. After a while, it just became habit, or tradition, or second nature, so that now that whole morning show brings back memories of that route to school, which I could probably drive in my sleep by now. I really have so few rituals in college, which I guess might be good because rituals are usually associated with a grind, which isn't really present in such a sporadic setting (yet).
This sounds like something I might have said, but I predict that my mind is going to be spending the next few years dusting off all these little details of The Old Life, labelling them, and filing them away in the back. I'll try to restrain myself from describing them all in this blog. Anyhow, if you missed it, Audioslave's "Like a Stone," a song that I should, by all logic, not like, actually makes me think fondly of driving to school. The End. Let's move on.
I seem to be the only person in my Media Aesthetics class who actually enjoys it. There's a powerful cloud of apathy that hangs over that room in Cobb, and most of the class time is spent by people rolling their eyes, checking their watches, and making several bathroom trips where they can, I'm assuming, run out to Gates-Blake quad and scream at the top of their lungs before re-entering. One day our professor asked us, simply, if we'd found any lines of "Sunday Morning" we liked, and my mind immediately went reeling with a dozen things, and I was leaning forward to answer when this girl actually leaned across my desk to talk to her friend and whispered very audibly in front of my face, "I hate this class!". So I decided that offering anything might antagonize the natives. I guess this is just the typical core humanities class filled with people forced to be there who don't give a shit about John Cheever or Michel Foucault or any goddam poetry. I'm honestly beginning to doubt the worth of the Core if the people who come here just resent it. I mean, I can think of more than three times when my professor has actually had to stop class and ask people to stop talking to each other and pay attention. And this is a small group discussion class. I mean, are we in high school? Is this kind of thing still happening? Why do we offer advanced science courses but not advanced humanities courses in the Core?? We aren't fighting the Soviets any more, right?
So, the Henry Moore atomic bomb sculpture outside my dorm was mildly defaced by some young upstarts early yesterday. For some reason, they covered the thing (only partially) with black garbage bags, and then covered the little plaque on the sidewalk with black posterboard and masking-tape writing that read something about ending nuclear research. Frankly, it seemed a little pointless; I mean, it's not like the University is a nexus for nuclear arms-building anymore. The only people they're going to move are some very disappointed Japanese tourists. But, actually, I am not, like Rita, a protest-hater. Yeah, they're a little useless and even antagonizing, but I think they're also a necessary part of things. And waving a sign and yelling will always be more fun than sitting down on a panel to discourse.
On Japanese tourists: the average Japanese tour group to the Henry Moore sculpture drives up in an unmarked white van. An impressive 10 people emerge from the vehicle, immediately set to work taking many pictures of the statue with their camera-phones, and then, laughing, file back into the van and drive away. It's a mysterious ritual, but then I wonder what Americans look like when we're visiting abroad. I guess we usually have to somehow offend the local culture at least twice before we file back into our tour bus.
Is anyone else getting a little tired of hearing about gay marriage? Isn't it a bit of a non-issue? I mean, I love getting to hear an ignorant, indecent Republican soundbyte twice a day if only for the steady stream of ammo it provides against the administration, but come on. Isn't there a war right now?
Kristen comes in less than 12 hours. Like hell I'm blogging this weekend. See you next week!
This sounds like something I might have said, but I predict that my mind is going to be spending the next few years dusting off all these little details of The Old Life, labelling them, and filing them away in the back. I'll try to restrain myself from describing them all in this blog. Anyhow, if you missed it, Audioslave's "Like a Stone," a song that I should, by all logic, not like, actually makes me think fondly of driving to school. The End. Let's move on.
I seem to be the only person in my Media Aesthetics class who actually enjoys it. There's a powerful cloud of apathy that hangs over that room in Cobb, and most of the class time is spent by people rolling their eyes, checking their watches, and making several bathroom trips where they can, I'm assuming, run out to Gates-Blake quad and scream at the top of their lungs before re-entering. One day our professor asked us, simply, if we'd found any lines of "Sunday Morning" we liked, and my mind immediately went reeling with a dozen things, and I was leaning forward to answer when this girl actually leaned across my desk to talk to her friend and whispered very audibly in front of my face, "I hate this class!". So I decided that offering anything might antagonize the natives. I guess this is just the typical core humanities class filled with people forced to be there who don't give a shit about John Cheever or Michel Foucault or any goddam poetry. I'm honestly beginning to doubt the worth of the Core if the people who come here just resent it. I mean, I can think of more than three times when my professor has actually had to stop class and ask people to stop talking to each other and pay attention. And this is a small group discussion class. I mean, are we in high school? Is this kind of thing still happening? Why do we offer advanced science courses but not advanced humanities courses in the Core?? We aren't fighting the Soviets any more, right?
So, the Henry Moore atomic bomb sculpture outside my dorm was mildly defaced by some young upstarts early yesterday. For some reason, they covered the thing (only partially) with black garbage bags, and then covered the little plaque on the sidewalk with black posterboard and masking-tape writing that read something about ending nuclear research. Frankly, it seemed a little pointless; I mean, it's not like the University is a nexus for nuclear arms-building anymore. The only people they're going to move are some very disappointed Japanese tourists. But, actually, I am not, like Rita, a protest-hater. Yeah, they're a little useless and even antagonizing, but I think they're also a necessary part of things. And waving a sign and yelling will always be more fun than sitting down on a panel to discourse.
On Japanese tourists: the average Japanese tour group to the Henry Moore sculpture drives up in an unmarked white van. An impressive 10 people emerge from the vehicle, immediately set to work taking many pictures of the statue with their camera-phones, and then, laughing, file back into the van and drive away. It's a mysterious ritual, but then I wonder what Americans look like when we're visiting abroad. I guess we usually have to somehow offend the local culture at least twice before we file back into our tour bus.
Is anyone else getting a little tired of hearing about gay marriage? Isn't it a bit of a non-issue? I mean, I love getting to hear an ignorant, indecent Republican soundbyte twice a day if only for the steady stream of ammo it provides against the administration, but come on. Isn't there a war right now?
Kristen comes in less than 12 hours. Like hell I'm blogging this weekend. See you next week!
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