28 March 2005
Easter never fails for drama in my family. Not to be outdone by Jesus'
rising from the dead, my brother is having his appendix taken out as I
type. The weird thing is that he just happened to be out visiting my
dad's family in California this weekend and nearly had to have the surgery
at the same hospital my dad had his appendectomy in almost 40 years ago.
At any rate, we should be able to evolve a lack of an appendix. It was
used millions of years ago to digest rancid, raw meat, and now it can
rupture and kill us. But I guess that's what cultural evolution is for...
so we can cut people up and charge them thousands of dollars. So, yeah,
Christos
voskrese to all you non-orthodox heathens out there.
Posted at 2226.
26 March 2005
As I was leaving the gym today, I saw a minor celebrity. OK, very, very
minor. Duke basketball benchwarmer minor. I noticed an unusually tall
guy and then realized he was wearing warmups. It was
Patrick
Johnson, back from Duke's horribly disappointing loss to Michigan
State, which ruined a large part of the CS department's bracket pool.
*sigh* If only it had been JJ, I could have... you know... comforted him
on his *ahem* performance problem. ;)
Posted at 2230.
25 March 2005
I just got an e-mail from the anthro department chair in which he actually
used the word "picayune" to describe changes he made to a test I wrote for
ANTH 43. That word definitely seems more 19th century French playwright
or SAT practice test than anthro professor. Of course, had this e-mail
been from the classics department chair, I wouldn't be blogging about
it. You've got to expect some picayunity from classicists.
Posted at 1903.
23 March 2005
I'm in a moral quandary. There's a fairly new radio station in town,
100.7 FM, that plays pretty much
everything from my iPod - old REM, The Police, 10,000 Maniacs - with fewer
commercials than other stations and no annoying "personalities" or Sunday
morning god music. But I found out a few weeks ago that this station is
owned by
Clear Channel,
whose evil I've
blogged about before.
So... Clear Channel is now putting out the best contemporary music
station in the Triangle. Do I listen to it or reject it? Since I'm an
anthropologist, I subscribe to the idea of moral relativism. Doesn't that
mean I can listen to the station without compromising my hatred of Clear
Channel? After all, what's a little ideological mind-control now and
then? I wish there were a commercial-free alternative radio station here
like
WNRN in Charlottesville. And not
just because my
brother-in-law works for
them.
Posted at 1807.
17 March 2005 - Happy St. Piki's Day!
To go with my Indian math of yesterday, today I learned Relationship
Poker. It so happens that UNC and William and Mary scheduled their
graduations for the same Sunday in May, which means I will have to miss my
sister-in-law's ceremony in favor of my own. I let my mother-in-law know
that I can't make it but that Patrick would probably go, and she said, "In
the scheme of things, a spouse trumps a sibling." I wonder how many pets
it takes to trump an uncle. Or how many spouses to trump a grandmother.
Or if a 3 of hearts trumps a step-aunt...
Posted at 1843.
I had a great day at the Duke gym yesterday. They just got four new
treadmills and installed six flat-screen TVs in the cardio area. This
definitely puts yesterday in my Top 3 Duke Gym Days:
1. Having the Duke Blue Devil mascot leave his post cheering on the swim
team to come cheer us on over in the cardio area.
2.
Nearly slamming into Coach K, who was all
hot, sweaty, and red-faced
from racquetball, as I turned a corner.
3. The day they got 6 flat-screen TVs.
Private schools are richer.
Posted at 0920.
16 March 2005
Ankur taught me Indian math today.
Apparently, many Indians don't buy
furniture until they get married. I asked what the likelihood is that a
certain married Indian colleague of Patrick's has a couch for him to
sleep on when he visits San Diego this weekend:
Ankur: Hm, a couch. Yes, this is a difficult question. . .
.
Ankur: My guess is. . . maybe.
Ankur: I'd give it about a 43% chance.
Ankur: That they have a couch.
Ankur: Subtract 10% if they've lived there less than a
year.
Ankur: Subtract another 5% if they're planning to move in the
next 6 months.
Ankur: Subtract 5% more just in general.
Ankur: There isn't any adding of percentages here.
Ankur: It only really goes down.
Ankur: Now, if you want to know if they have a stool. . .
they've probably got that.
Is it just me, or does this remind you of the
Tom Lehrer song
New
Math?
Posted at 0024.
15 March 2005
Well, folks. Boredom has entered blogdom. Having finished my thesis is
satisfying. Knowing that I've seen every episode of Dawson's Creek on
TiVo is satisfying, albeit in a twisted way.
Realizing that I have nothing to do, though, is kind of freaking me out.
So I was thinking today as a caravan passed me with a hearse in the lead
that both criminal acts and dying are considered socially deviant in our
culture. Hence, the necessity for a police escort. It's not just about
going through red lights but about bringing order to disorder.
I need to get out of the house.
Posted at 1155.
10 March 2005 - KK Day!
Erika and Paul took me out to the Lime and Basil for dinner tonight. I
needed to ask the waiter for some silverware, since I am terrible at using
chopsticks, but I couldn't remember the word. So I said, "Excuse me.
Could I have some
actual utensils?" I immediately realized how
horribly ethnocentric that sounded. I guess that's what the Vietnamese
would call an anthropological "pho pas." Hahahahah. I slay myself. I
should be writing for the Jumble. Actually, it was Paul's joke first. I
just gave it a more interesting context story.
Posted at 1147.
In honor of today, I have penned a little verse:
Happy birthday to me,
I'm not yet thirty.
Twenty-eight may be old,
but I'm not a fogey.
Happy birthday to me,
I finished the FSP.
But don't get too excited,
'cause it's pretty crappy.
Posted at 0002.
9 March 2005
Mark this moment in time: Wednesday, March 9, 21:43! I am officially done
with the first draft of my MA thesis in classics. Woo! It comes in at
exactly 79 pages of text, plus 9 or 10 of bibliography. For once, I
didn't overshoot my goal of a 70-80pp master's thesis by 50%. :)
Oh, and the title ended up being "Bioarchaeology in the Roman World,"
although I very much appreciated Bryan's suggestion of: "Bioarchaeology:
There's More to Rome Than Just
Gladiator, Bitches!" Only good
enough to be memorialized in the ethereal medium of my blog, though, not
my
monumentum aere perennius. Sorry, Bryan.
Posted at 2143.
8 March 2005
I just got one of the most interesting e-mails I've received in a while.
Some yoga teacher is planning a retreat on Crete (teehee that rhymes) in
May. She wants to take students around to Phaestos and Knossos and the
like, and wants permission to circulate a link to my online pics to her
students. Uhhmmm, they're on the in-ter-net for a reason. It's strange
she's asking permission. No one ever asked my permission when a pic of me
and Patrick was used for some bizarre internet-scavenger-hunt years ago.
Anyway, the woman signs off with, "Yours in the light of yoga..." Ahhh,
new agers.
Posted at 1504.
I am notoriously bad at coming up with titles for papers. So I've decided
to post some title options for my upcoming thesis here. If there's one
that you like, e-mail me! Better yet, propose one of your own, and if I
use it, you get credit in my thesis! Imagine being immortalized in the
musty tomes of the classics department thesis room! Anyway, here are a
few titles I jotted down:
* Dust and Shadow: A Bioarchaeologist's Perspective on Roman Archaeology
* Towards a Bioarchaeology of Italy
* The Utility of Bioarchaeology in the Roman World
* Beyond Texts: Considering Skeletal Remains in Roman Archaeology
* Questioning the Past: How Bioarchaeology Can Shape the Future of
Roman Archaeology
Posted at 0012.
7 March 2005
On Saturday, my mom handed Patrick a cassette tape she'd dug out of an old
box somewhere and asked him if he could put it on a CD. The tape was the
Armed Forces Workout, which she thinks my dad bought her almost 15 years
ago. It's hilariously voiced by an actual gunnery sergeant who,
incidentally, trained Lou Gossett, Jr., former prominent
Charlottesvillian, for his role in
An Officer and a
Gentleman, and the accompanying music includes She Blinded Me With
Science and a Flock of Seagulls song. Yeah, I'm real sure the Marines
exercise daily to
Flock of
Seagulls. Anyway, after playing the tape several times (the wheels
had gotten a little stuck), Patrick did succeed in making it into a CD for
my mom and gave me a copy. Lucky me.
The best part of the
workout, which I do fondly recall along with Richard Simmons' Reach
workout as afternoon childhood pastimes, was the drill sergeant yelling,
"Whip it on!" Patrick asked me if I had any idea what that meant. Well,
I believe that
now I do.
Incidentally, apparently Dave Letterman has a feature on the Late Show
website about ridiculous old records. The
Armed
Forces Workout is among them. I think you can listen to a clip of the
record on this site. I should warn you, though... it might make you want
to whip it on.
Posted at 1634.
6 March 2005
My mom bought a bunch of bags of Gummi Roadkill at 7-11 a few weeks ago
after telling my brother about how amusing the concept was. This happened
to be right before production of the candy was stopped because the
New Jersey SPCA claimed it
encouraged kids to be mean to animals. She was going to send all the
candy to
Doods anyway, but I convinced her to give me a bag, thinking I could
eventually sell it on eBay. The
highest
price I've seen so far for one bag of roadkill is $2.50. Damn. I was
hoping to retire off the stupidity of others. Guess I'll have to think up
another get-rich-quick scheme.
Posted at 1147.
4 March 2005
The secret word of the day is "job"! You know what to do when you hear
the secret word, riiiiight? Whenever anyone says the secret word, you
scream as loud as you can! Yaaaaaaaaaaaaay, Juline!
Posted at 2315.
3 March 2005
After picking Juline up at the airport, we all went to Pepper's Pizza for
lunch and then sauntered over to the Ackland to check out her competition.
I saw Sara's friend Karl (who a few weeks ago mistook Erika for Sara)
there and said hi. Later, walking along Franklin Street, I saw one of my
anthro officemates and said hi as we passed. Juline exclaimed, "Wow, you
know everyone in Chapel Hill!" Yep, that's me. Ms. Social Butterfly.
Posted at 2210.
