King of Etruria

31 January 2004

My mom bought me a new Sprint picture phone. She and my brother each have one too. I would argue that the purpose of a cell phone is to keep you safe and connected in the event of an emergency. My mother, however, decided to use this technological advance to instantly send me a picture of her rack.

Posted at 1452.

26 January 2004

Is it stupid of me to check my blog occasionally to see if anything new has been posted? And then to be disappointed when nothing has magically appeared? Well, it's a snow day from school and the only interesting thing that happened was a redneck in a truck asking me if I needed a ride home from the Teeter. That's one thing that's disappointing about North Carolina--somehow the rednecks are just not as rednecky as in Virginia.

Posted at 1412.

25 January 2004

Essay Exam Summary: I think I aced the ones on Hellenistic architectural sculpture and the origins of Roman verism. My essay on the importance of the Forum Iulium and the Forum Augustum was kind of slack, though. I kept gazing out the window at the snow that was furiously falling. We're up to about 4 or 5 inches judging from my driveway. UNC hasn't closed yet. Stupid public school. Duke's closed. :p

Only one more exam to go. Next Saturday I get to wake up early, haul my ass into Chapel Hill, and write about Mycenaean shaft graves. Yipee.

Posted at 1858.

Catherine made me post a word her sister made up: superubergoober. There. Now maybe it'll be spidered and enjoy the same fame as wedgiquette.

Posted at 2349.

24 January 2004 - Happy 26th Piki! =(#|

Slide Exam Summary:

	22	Right
	4	Not sure
	3	Close but no cigar
	1	Utterly wrong
Total:	30 slides	60 minutes of pain

Posted at 1200.

23 January 2004

Has the middle finger now been replaced by the far more civilized "sarcastic thumbs up"? Some jerk in a Saturn was braking erratically on an exit ramp this evening, and since I was behind I stopped and then crept up to him slowly. As soon as I got behind him at the stoplight, he started wildly gesticulating and giving me the thumbs up. I guess he didn't want to give me the finger for two reasons: a) he was the one being a dick; and b) I could have kicked his sorry, middle-aged, male-pattern-baldness ass. Frankly, I would have preferred to have been flicked off. It's far more manly than passive-aggressive sarcasm.

Posted at 1844.

22 January 2004

Andy and I were palavering at Satisfaction's yestereve, when a misauscultation on his part of a voiced bilabial plosive for a dentalized stop led to a gelastic interchange regarding the, shall we say, proscenium of my theatre (nictation, nictation ;). Thereupon, I expostulated on the provenance of "antepenultimate", the genesis of which, without counting the recherche Oxford English Dictionary among my appurtenances, I can only surmise is synchronous with the Kulturwissenschaften enthrallment with Sprachstudium in the 18th century. What a convivial postprandial confabulation!

You'd think that writing a blog is taking away time from my exam prep. But if I can use even half of these words in my essays, the classicists will love me.

Posted at 1110.

19 January 2004

Woo hoo! My blog has been spidered. Now when you search for "wedgiquette" (see Jan 11 posting), you get me! By the power of google...

Posted at 1143.

17 January 2004

According to Suetonius, Julius Caesar had a comb-over but plucked the rest of his body hair, Caligula looked like a goat, and Tiberius could see in the dark. Wonder if I can find a way to fit that into my MA exams. Maybe I'll just make an ancient world version of "Am I Hot Or Not"...

Posted at 1813.

16 January 2004

Graduate seminar courses should be run like Survivor. You get to vote out anyone who pisses you off. When everyone agrees that they don't want to vote more people out, the rest of you get A's for the semester. Rob and I concluded that we'd both vote off the same person this week: Verbal Diarrhea Girl. Annoyingly Slow Talker was a very close second, but she can stay on Erudite: The Scholarship Islands another week.

People should read faster. This guy on the bus was reading The Da Vinci Code really openly and obviously (yeah, I'm so impressed) so I read over his shoulder. He was so slow. I couldn't decide if I wanted to yell at him to turn the page or offer remedial reading lessons.

I discovered today in the car on my way home from school that I know all the words to "I Can Only Imagine," a lovely little song about how righteous Christians are going to be saved by God at the apocalypse. Thank you, Clear Channel, for instilling religious dogma in my head through your ideological mind-control.

In other news, Xtreme Racquetball rocks!

Posted at 1854.

15 January 2004

It's been a random social day. TA'ing ANTH 10 might be more fun than I thought. The other three TA's are some of my favorite guys in the department, and I even scored an unsolicited compliment off one of them today! OK, so it doesn't really count when a gay guy implies you're hot.

This guy in my German class never talked to me before, but now he's in my Roman history seminar this semester. So I struck up a conversation after German tonight about tomorrow's class... man, I couldn't get him to shut up! I didn't understand half the things he was saying, though; I don't speak New Zealandese.

But, aw, it's only taken me 26 years to realize that there are lots of people just waiting for me to talk to them. As long as I keep in mind that too much self-confidence and no inner monologue could turn me into the weird aging Gen-Xer from yesterday (vide infra).

Posted at 1913.

14 January 2004

Scary compliment of the day: I was walking to my car in the parking lot outside Whole Foods and this middle-aged woman practically runs up to me. She's slightly out of breath and says, "Excuse me! Excuse me!" to get my attention. Thinking I just left my wallet in the store or something, I look at her questioningly. She catches her breath and says, "Where do you get your hair done? My hairdresser just left to have a baby, and my husband is sick of my whining about my hair, so he made me promise that the next person whose hair I saw and liked I would ask where she got it done. So who's your hairdresser?" Unfortunately, my hairdresser just moved to Texas, so the woman kept talking to me about how hard it was to find a good stylist and how long her hair has gotten and how fine it is now that it's grey... Ah, the South is so much fun sometimes.

Posted at 1345.

13 January 2004

$10 word usage of the day:

From Barthes' Mythologies: "Against a certain quixotism of synthesis, quite platonic incidentally, all criticism must consent to the ascesis, to the artifice of analysis."

I mean, seriously? Must he mix Cervantes and ancient Greece? Can't he just rephrase it as it really is: "Synthesis is pointless and circular, and criticism based on it is an exercise in mental masturbation"? I know that's how I feel when I read Barthes. He's one crazy French structuralist mofo.

Posted at 2143.

12 January 2004

This is why I hate anthropology sometimes:

> UNC/Duke Joint Colloquium
> Friday, January 16 at 5:00
> 310 Alumni
> Potluck Dinner to follow
> Speaker: Brad Weiss (Anthro, William and Mary)
> "Chronic Mobb Asks a Blessing: Apocalyptic Hip Hop in A Time of Crisis."

Just when I think anthropology is becoming more scientific as a result of the utter failure of other disciplines (*ahem* meteorology -- they were only off by 40 degrees in today's weather forecast) to provide accurate information, I have to get reminded that crap like this is funded by my department.

Posted at 2115.

11 January 2004

I made up a new word today. Wedgiquette. It's that sense of uncertainty you get at the gym when you really need to fix your underwear but aren't sure if Miss Manners would approve of your doing it in a public place. The rules of wedgiquette, though, are as follows:

1. It is perfectly OK to adjust your undies at the gym, as long as you accomplish the adjustment as discreetly as possible--no digging or flaunting--and as long as you aren't wearing a pair of those idiotic sorority chick shorts with the name of your school across the ass--everyone's already looking at your butt.
2. There is a 20-yard wedgiquette zone around the gym or exercise facility in which you may adjust your undies but only discreetly and if you have warm-up pants or a long shirt or jacket over your shorts.
3. If you are exercising outdoors (running, basketball, etc.) you should ascertain that nosy nellies and other noisome neighbors are not watching before your adjustment.
4. Finally, it is not mannerly, prudent, proper, or ladylike to remedy wedgies in any other situation until you have hied yourself safely to a bathroom.

Posted at 1848.

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Tonight I saw a commercial for the new Fajizza from Domino's. (I think. Interestingly, you only get one hit for fajizza on google, and it involves Fabio and gay porn, so I can't confirm. I think it might be spelled "fajitzza", but that only gives you four hits.) The unholy amalgamation of two random food words reminded me of my all-time favorite Taco Bell treat, the enchirito (which comes under "ecto cooler" in a list of 80s foods), and other ridiculous hybrids like the Crossan'wich and the P'zone.

Can you play bad marketing exec and come up with new "fusion" food on your own? My suggestion: strogan-oeuf. A tasty Slavic dish made with mushrooms, broth, cream, butter... and hard-boiled eggs. Yummers.

Posted at 0058.

10 January 2004

I'm getting a little tired of receiving e-mail from Mrs. Loi C. Estrada. However, receiving one always reminds me of this guy who actually responded to the Nigerian bank scam. I can't do it better, so here's a link to his saga. I also quite enjoy the collection of over 100 similar free-foreign-money scams.

I do wonder why Americans seem to fall for this. Is it because we are a trusting people? Because we love the idea of free money (screw the Protestant work ethic)? Because the internet helps connect and empower even the poor and disenfranchised, who are more likely to fall victim to a con-artist than the more educated among us? I remember when I was a kid and I fielded a telephone call for my mother from a time-share sales pitch couched as a "You've just won...!" announcement. I really wanted her to call the nice man back and see his condo so that we could get a new portable TV or discounted tickets to Disney World or something. My mom wouldn't call, and I was pissed. I vowed to look at all the time shares I could when I was an adult. But I grew out of that at, like, age 7.

Once I really did win a contest. It was, unfortunately, for a free sitting and picture at Olan Mills in Charlottesville. Yay.

In the vein of free association, I called a 1-900 number a few times when I was a kid. They showed the number on TV right after my soap opera. If you called, one of the actors would tell you what would happen the next day on the show. I called 3 separate times in one day. I thought Erica would tell me something different if I just kept at it. Ah, the optimism of youth. Our phone bill was quite high that month.

Posted at 1912.

8 January 2004

The Daily Tarheel today published a letter to the editor with the following: "Even though many years have passed since Roe v. Wade, abortion is a new tragedy because the babies who die today never died before." It amused me, in an illogical, catachrestic way.

Posted at 1029.

7 January 2004 - Khristos razhdayetsia!

My racquetball strateegory: conquer through self-inflicted injury. Here is a pic of what I looked like playing racquetball today. If I were male. And right-handed. And if the guy in the picture had a little more follow-through and had just hit himself in the head with his own racquet.

Posted at 2339.

6 January 2004

I found the best tea today. It's Celestial Seasoning's Gingerbread Spice Holiday Tea. The taste is amazing--like a real gingersnap, only without the rheological joy of sinking your teeth into a sweet, crunchy, pleasantly spicy gingerbread man's cranium. Mmmmm.

Posted at 1652.

5 January 2004

Patrick got a really exciting telegram in the mail today! Note the printed faux-dot-matrix borders! The Priority: High! The personal message from Dr. Mario Vidalon at CU Boulder! I'm sure it must be a top-notch program, turning out strong researchers. So let's see what the Center for Advanced Engineering and Technology Education has to tell me about my Road to Success.

Posted at 1722.

3 January 2004

I think that anyone should be able to use any contraction s/he devises for any purpose. Whyn't? Of course, it turns out someone already made up mine.

Posted at 2309.

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I was shopping this afternoon (damn, I'm hot in my CFM boots! ;) and ran into a former student of mine in a store. He's home for the holidays from his new job--peace-keeping policeman in Kosovo. He makes 10 times what I do... but he also gets shot at occasionally. I think I'll keep my job.

Posted at 1726.

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Patrick just called. He's at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, presumably liquored up and getting a lap dance from a stripper as he talked to me. He, Jeannie, and David are staying with my aunt and uncle, who is a doctor. Apparently my uncle offered to write them a prescription at some point after they all met. I think he was joking, though, and not going all Wilma Cline on them.

Posted at 0116.

2 January 2004

OK, this is blog-worthy, if such a term means anything at all. I was googling myself today because, well, my husband's out of town ;), and on page 3 of the results, the antepenultimate link is to someone else's CV. Yes, someone else has cited my report, co-authored with him, on his CV. It's weird... I feel like I've arrived but at the same time... this guy is one of the foremost researchers in this field. And he cites a piddly report I wrote for him when I was desperately trying to get into graduate school four years ago? You'd think he'd have better things to do than hang out in his office scouring his filing cabinets for any shred of publication his name is on. Egomaniac.

Posted at 2159.

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Because of the recently-departed holiday, I was thinking about visits with family and friends and decided I should tell a brief story about Patrick's grandfather that ends in a bad pun. Tak is an interesting man, sometimes reminding me of the father character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding because of his interest in his Greek background. One of Tak's odd characteristics is that, whenever there is only one of some food item remaining at a family dinner, he will insist upon sharing it with someone else and would sooner not eat it than finish it all himself. One day a few years ago, I was talking to Patrick and Lynn, who were telling me this story. I thought of a clever pun for this behavior; however, I thought this pun was so funny and so clever that I couldn't finish saying it before cracking up in hysterics such that tears started running down my face and I was having trouble catching my breath. Needless to say, by the time I finally got out, "He doesn't want what he can't halve," Patrick and Lynn thought that I was more amusing than my pun.

Posted at 1307.

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Yet more IM transcripts. Hm. I think I should sleep.
 
(00:26:56) Kristina: Onions fucking bleed. I'm sure it's on the web somewhere.
(00:27:02) Kristina: Here google google google google.

Turns out no one else thinks onions bleed. But I still do. I can hear the screams as their watery purple blood oozes from fresh cuts.

Posted at 0029.

1 January 2004

OK, this is what someone who shall remain nameless wanted me to put in a blog. It's an IM transcript. Yeah, I'm that sad. Hence the blog. (Which, by the way, is a weird word. How many words can you think of that are foreshortened? Most words are shortened by dropping letters or a syllable at the end, not the beginning.)
 
(19:33:48) Kristina: So my mom bought me this weird bottle of milk. It's a quart, I think, and oddly bulbous.
(19:33:59) Kristina: And since it's been in the fridge, I've been really craving a drink of milk.
(19:34:13) Kristina: Which is weird, because I'm not a big fan of non-soured dairy.
(19:34:22) Kristina: At first, I thought I lacked protein, but that's not it.
(19:34:25) Kristina: Then I realized...
(19:34:48) Kristina: The oddly small, squat, bulbous shape must have been designed to evoke memories of the breast.
(19:35:07) Kristina: The milk company is playing on my innermost thoughts, on my very id, to sell me more milk.
(19:35:08) Kristina: Crazy.
(19:35:12) Ankur: You know, talking with you sometimes convinces me that thinking too much can be a problem.
...
(19:38:42) Kristina: But I think the milk bottle thing is serious. Now, if I wrote a letter to the manufacturer detailing my thoughts and posted the letter and the reply... now *that* would make a good blog.
(19:38:45) Kristina: But, alas, I haven't the time.
(19:39:36) Ankur: All you have to do is just copy/paste that into a letter!
(19:40:09) Kristina: Hehehe. Nah, I'd have to wax poetic for it to be good. Something about the swelling mother's teat of prosperity in this innately capitalistic society.

Posted at 1643.

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Someone told me to start a blog. This someone thinks I'm amusing. He thinks someone else will read it. I don't think so. Let's see, shall we? I downloaded the first hit on Google (as if you needed that link) for "free blog template" and got this. Schnazzy. Bets on whether this lasts past today?

 

Oh, it's Ankur. Ankur made me do it. Start the blog, that is.