I enjoyed this slideshow that Forbes Magazine prepared for women: Six Reasons You’re Not Advancing At Work. The pictures bring this salient nugget of multimedia journalism to a new level and because of them, I will no longer wear mascara to work in case I need a good cry. But really, someone should tell Forbes that gender is a social construct.
Media of the Week is military newspaper Stars and Stripes, which triumphantly broke a story this week about the how the Pentagon has been screening U.S. journalists who apply to to embed with the forces by classifying the tilt of their past pieces about the military. As George Patton once said, “Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.” THAT MEANS YOU, PENTAGON.
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Tagged media of the week, propagandamerica, stars and stripes, the pentagon
I am a student again. I have a laptop bag and a peanut butter sandwich and everything. I could maybe do this forever, kind of like this guy. (If you can access The Chronicle of Higher Ed article about him, PLEASE do so. It’s one of the best articles I’ve ever read. It talks about how he gained 140 lbs throughout his studies from only eating one 3,000 kcal meal per day and also how his mother types his papers.)
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Tagged academic life, benjamin bolger, perpetual students, the freshman 140
Whenever I need to relax, reflect or pretend I’m in Asia, I go to Times Square. I like it. I have good associations with the place. I was there when Michael Jackson died and the hullabaloo made me proud to be an American.
David and I walked there from uptown sometime after midnight Saturday and rejoiced in its ephemera, including an unassuming man with a boa constrictor around his neck (can’t decide if he’s on par with or above the man with the cat on his head) and being called fags by some Jerzettes. It was wonderful.
And that is how I concluded my summer vacation.
Media of the Week is the blog Amish America, which, in all its irony, is an unequivocal resource for those interested in Amish life. Seriously, no bit of heavy cream is left unchurned on this site, from the Japanese interest in the Amish to the difference between Amish and Pennsylvania Dutch. Bonus points to the site for its stolid coverage of Edward Gingerich, the only Amish man to be charged with murder.
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Tagged Amish America, Amish crime, Edward Gingerich, media of the week
David Souter still eating well, pining for blueberry muffins.
My article’s up on The Morning News today. A labor of love if there ever was one. Yuk yuk yuk. Yuk.
While in Seattle, I found a copy of Frederick Kaufman’s “A Short History of the American Stomach” nestled in the grass at the corner of Summit Ave. and Roy St in Capitol Hill. Now, I am by no means a religious person, but I can only interpret my happening upon this book as some sort of sign of something somewhat supreme. This is the book of my life. Not only does it explore America’s longstanding relationship with dietary extremes, it features my favorite Cotton Mather as a major player in gastronomic history AND relays his cure for jaundice: “The urine of a healthy lad, six ounces, with six grams of white sugar; drunk fasting.” Apparently, Cott was also a rampant bulimic. I had no idea. Everything makes sense now.
And then there’s this choice quotation from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s sister-in-law, Mary Mann:
“Every intelligent dyspeptic knows that he is a worse man when suffering under a paroxysm of his malady, than in one his of lucid intervals … Why is not dyspepsia disgraceful, like delirium tremens? When it comes to be so considered, as it assuredly will when the gospel of the body is fully understood, it will be banished from good society.”
If only!
An inexplicable series of panic attacks lately, like during that time John McCain was running for president and I did a bad thing to a truck with a Sharpie. I’m sorry for that now, a little. It was my socialism speaking, not me.
I attribute these most recent events to the fact that I have been living out of a suitcase the size of a baby rhinoceros since May. Ah, well. There are worse fates.
The events of this post occurred July 29.
So, grass is green, beds are soft places to sleep and I have a thing for whales. What else is new. I can’t really explain my cetacean predilection; I think it started in an effort to stave off childhood boredom — I would pass the time by imagining a whale wherever I was and how big and weird it would be. I still do it to this day whenever I’m feeling restless at school or on an airplane or in a holding cell.
I’m a baleen lover by nature, but I knew I had to see some Shamufolk while on the West Coast and my dream was realized today off the coast of Anacortes, WA. The orcas I saw were kind of small and they were also kind of dolphins, but by far the most interesting thing about the watch was learning about the species’ behavioral classifications. For instance, there are two main types of orcas: resident and transient. Resident whales inhabit specific areas consistently, travel in large, tight-knit pods and eat salmon and squid. Groups of resident whales speak in unique, highly developed dialects. Known individually by researchers and whale-boat tour guides, resident whales are often dubbed with names such as “Ruffles” and “Granny.”
Transients, as explained by our whale-boat tour guide, are the rogue whales of the sea. Pods are small, often composed of single mothers, their children and whoever else wants to ride along. They scour the water in search of animal flesh to eat, preferably in the form of sea lion. Their language is rudimentary and they deign to have steady homes, spending most of the year roaming from one place in the ocean to another, hence their name.
I was expecting the tour guide to go on and say that all transient whales have skinny pit bulls and are on whalefare, but he was called to the other end of the boat before he could tell us more about derelict orcas. I think he got distracted by Leilani, the beautiful young resident orca daughter of an orca businessman and an orca nurse, happily orca-married since 1992 and members of the Orca Baptist Church. Or something.
Interestingly enough, transient orcas far outnumber resident orcas worldwide, which leads me to conclude that since only resident whales were present in the waters surrounding the San Juan Islands, the area is a whale version of Celebration, FL. Next time, I’m going to the hard whale streets where whale life is real. Sitka here I come.
Portrait of an Orca, oil on canvas, 1999
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Tagged celebration florida, whale socioeconomics, whale watching
