No Comments

So, I had to turn off "comments" for a while, as I seem to be under attack from a whole slew of retards who don't know what "I will erase your asinine comments" means. Get it straight, fags.
You no have voice here.
This not open forum.
Me talk.
You listen and shut the fuck up.

Hey, I just play by the same rules as the GOP. Try telling them to fuck off.

I will turn "comments" back on when you accept that I'm only doing this for your own good.

Apparently, Saturn has a polar aurora. Bitchin.

More FWOF

Another great time waster is to answer those spam emails you get from Nigerian bankers who magically have access to 12.000.000 USD from a deceased Prime Minister/businessman/lottery winner's estate. I like to send replies that thank them for the legitimate business offer, but I tell them I have a much better, phony system of email offers that, together with his emailing expertise, will make us rich men. The people who send out the spam emails actually respond to me. It's great. You try.

For more, check out http://j-walk.com/other/conf/

Fun with Our Friends

Please find below an actual review from Amazon.com of Where's Waldo?: The Fantastic Journey. It's banned in several libraries (too violent. Bet you never thought you'd see that in connection with Waldo. Parents and librarians are such pussies.). My nephew, therefore, is getting a copy for his birthday.
So, without further ado, another piece of Fun with Our Friends:


"Have you ever felt like there's something missing in your life? An empty spiritual void in the center of your soul? Do you wish to enjoy the wisdom and blessings of the true faith? Seven years ago, I too felt this need. After a nasty divorce, the death of my parents, and my incarceration, I was at a low point in life's journey. I turned to prescription painkillers and cheap hookers to satisfy my longings, but to no avail. After my home was repossessed I was sleeping in alleys and stealing car stereos. One afternoon while I was relieving myself in the children's section of the local library, I came upon a text that changed my life. As I sat in the undersized chairs leafing through Where's Waldo?: The Fantastic Journey, I knew that I had found salvation. The mysteries of Waldo are a path to the ultimate, glorious meaning of the universe, a path through realms of wonder and fear, and the great striped Messiah is our guide. We are beset on all sides by evil, confusion, and the abominable deceiver, Odlaw. Only Waldo, with his holy cane of righteousness and cap of wisdom, can lead us to the promised land on the last page. I recommend this tome, and the rest of the Waldo scriptures, to every last man, woman, and child on the planet."

Is Wayne Gretzky the Jordan of Hockey?

Let's get two things straight: Michael Jordan is the greatest player to ever step onto a basketball court, better than Chamberlain, better than Russell, better than Magic and Larry put together.
And he absolutely killed the NBA.

Once he retired, it was so what? and who cares? with the NBA. They're still trying to recover, and doing a mighty poor job of it, too. Every strategy for reviving that dog revolves around Jordan, still: who's next? how should they act? what do they do like Jordan? etc., etc., etc.

Today, come to find out the NHL is planning a return to the days of Gretzky and...shit, I guess Gretzky was the only talented player of his day. The league wants to change the rules to up the scoring and speed up the skating. Goalies don't come out anymore; red line gone; no-touch icing; tag-up offsides; smaller pads; smaller neutral zone; no more trapping. Essentially, they want to make it soccer on ice, where some moron sprints down to the other end, tries to beat four defenders by himself, and takes some crazy-ass shot before being taken down. Oh, good idea, guys. Really fucking smart. I've seen minor league hockey (where, incidentally, all the aforementioned rules are currently in place) and it's not very fucking good.
And the shootout, who could forget that? What, my dear, feeble American friends, is wrong with a tie?? Football has 'em. Hockey has 'em because if you don't win in regulation or overtime, you should have to go home and think about what you've done, you damn semi-loser! And, everybody gets a point--talk about insult to injury. It's a great system, and it works real well until Johhny Fat-ass and his fat-ass family show up at the rink in their matching Dockers Fat-ass Khakis and XXXL fat-ass T-shirts and demand that there be a winner. Why? Because Johnny Fat-ass, who is, of course, American, loves baseball and basketball, and any other goddamn sport where you pay $300 for a family night out, and he wants to see a clear resolution. Just like he wants to see a clear "resolution" in US foreign policy, in mainstream movies, and in his religion and philosophy (God did it all in 7 days? OK, padre, whatever you say!).

Fuck him. His kind is what made us #3.

As for the defensive changes: God fucking forbid that a small, low payroll team should be allowed to compete. Get rid of the trap and the left-wing lock, and you can kiss Carolina, Minnesota, and Dallas goodbye (which is not all that tragic--see previous posts on this topic). Nobody is going to pay to see the Hurricanes get beat by 5 goals.

Look, Gretzky came along at a time when hockey was in transition, and he was one-of-a-kind. There was never anyone like him before and, it turns out, there won't be another after him. He embarrassed those old hackers because, unlike them, he had talent. Nowadays, everyone in the NHL is top-notch. There is no real talent disparity except that created by offensive- versus defensive-minded coaches. Certain teams are built for certain things. Why would you want to fuck with that? Gretzky did what he did in a certain historical context, and trying to recreate that moment through endless butchering of the traditions of the game won't make it a better game; it'll just maim it. I suppose we can look forward to a future for hockey where everything is about the breakaway. Maybe one day we'll get a game that's just one skater against both goalies, an endless shift of nothing but odd-man rushes. Boy, won't that be exciting.

It's all about the homerun, kids. That's all Johnny Fat-ass wants to pay for. Now go work hard to make yourself a one-dimensional player.

I'm dead.

Tar Heels Win. Again. (yawn)

UNC 81
NC State 71

Even without its best player, UNC cruises in the second half. McCants had the shits. Ha! Look it up if you don't believe me.
Oh, we are gonna crush Duke this time. Come on, March 6th.

I Really Like This Guy

This ought to be posted, though you lazy bastards could see it under the comments tab at the end of the original post. I think Jamie is onto something here. Why can't the rest of you be more like him? C'mon people, you won't find any ideas on your shoes...



I'm not a historian (ya'll make theoretical physics look easy), but the current split b/t faith and reason seems to have its roots, if only ideologically, in the 19th century. 1859, if you want a specific date, as in the pub. date of "On the Origin of Species . . ."The current debate in the school boards of Cobb County, GA, Dover, PA, and KS over the teaching of real biology (based on evolution) versus intelligent design (based on argument from ignorance/ medieval ju-ju/ math is hard and I'm scared) provides a good laboratory for the question you ask, if I'm interpreting it correctly.It will be difficult to reconcile science and morality when most Americans fail to understand science (paradoxically, since we are at the forefront of science and tech, for now). And I don't mean science as in actual scientific knowledge, but in the process of science - methodological naturalism. Despite Bush's emphasis on "teaching science," many of his supporters reject the most well-defended fact and theory of biology - evolution. Maybe this is due to a conflation b/t methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism, though even then, phl. nat. still argues for morality, and in my opionion, more productively.Schools aren't teaching kids to think scientifically, that is, logically and not dogmatically. EOG tests only exacerbate this problem (ala NCLB). Anyone with half a brain knows that multiple choice tests, for instance, are a disservice to students and a total sham. The colleges and universities even are becoming bastardized, career-track diploma mills of basic vocational training (read: regurgitation).Reconciling science and morality? Let's start with giving people science. Morality, real morality, will proceed from there. Even the most ardent of atheist scientists, like Richard Dawkins, argue for moral action, perhaps with more legitimate fervor than some goddies. Plus, science provides the "how" for moral action (had too many beers to get into that right now though).This false dichotomy b/t science and religion/ morality is an antiquated concept. S.J. Gould did a good job on this issue in "Rocks of Ages," though he did create, as his central thesis, the masturbatory and extraneously polysyllabic phrase "nonoverlapping magisteria," basically that science asks "how" and religion asks "why." Religious people (not so much in Europe, or here, in academia) continue to view modern science as antithetic to religion. And we falsely equate religion with morality (unless we're talking about Muslims of course, cause only Muslims commit acts of terror, Mr. Eric Rudolph).I meant to offer a more substantive response here, but I'm still at a loss on this issue (and a bit tipsy now). Maybe it's my scientific bias - I believe strongly in right action, and I believe scientific method is the best tool in providing a framework for the most effective action. But Bill Moyers quotes a Gallup poll in In These Times that says that one third of us 'mericans believe the Bible to be literally true. Extrapolating this, that means 1 out of 3 of us don't know how to read, 1 out of 3 of us believe that the Earth is about 8000 years old, dinosaurs coexisted with modern humans, Noah was one hell of a boat builder, and medical science can't help HIV victims. So I don't know.Basically, we're just fucked. Maybe there's hope in the next generation. . . . at least kids are still inquisitive and relatively un-indoctrinated . . . Jamie

The Only Thing Worse

The only thing worse than being a lonely loser is probably to be that same loser but friendless in a much larger setting. Enter "that thing": the internet("s" if you're a dumbass).
Have you ever tried the "Next Blog" tab at the top right? Do it and then come back.

Like what you saw? What was it, Spanish gibberish? Nordic yammering? California self-love? Utter crap? Terrible beauty?

No. What you probably got was a site of truly "meh"-gnificent stature. Look, most people can't speak, let alone write, but the blog makes it OK to be a moron. This blog, in fact, was the product of idiot-proof Blogger, Inc., TM & Co. And I am not cyber-savvy.

The thing I wanted you to see, though, was NOT the truly crappy level of discourse on the 44 billion blogs out there.

It was the comments.

There were none, were there? That's correct, folks: you can now shout your loneliness into the void, and the void doesn't even have the decency to answer back. We have truly reached the ultimate in subjectivity; for you can tell yourself, in the absence of proof to the contrary, that you are the only person on earth who gives a shit what you think. Irony is the existence of the optimal medium for mass communication in which nobody cares what anyone else has to say. You are putting out very private ideas for a potential audience of billions--think about it.

The blog, in theory, is a chance to get into another person's beady little brain (even if that brain is as banal as network TV) and crawl around. At its best, that's what the internet does for human interaction, and it's something that books, music, and movies cannot promise to do so directly or so well.

And still they are there. Page after page after page after page of blogs with zero comments. Does self-absorption prevent suicide?

This is what happens when you get distracted by butt monkeys in the White House...

502 Here We Come

501, bitches!

I'll stop now.

The Big 500

That's how many people will have visited this site since its inception, and we should hit the 500 threshold in a few days. Hot dog. I owe it all, of course, to my man behind the scenes, the hatchet-jobbing, widow-robbing, Boll Weevil of Evil, Karl Rove.
Me famous now.

Somebody Up There (in NJ) Likes Me

Is it just me or is my popularity soaring? I cannot imagine why, but the site is getting tons of hits these last few days. Amazing. Apparently, the people know great writing when they see it. Either that, or they're coming back again and again to steal my stuff for their own publications.

Nah. Who would want it? Besides, that would be illegal, since my thoughts are, well, mine. Perhaps I should check around just to be sure that no one is doing anything illegal, like taking my work out of context, changing its meaning substantially, or misrepresenting it in some other way...

Hot Damn

I don't know what a "Hokie" is, but I love it!

Virginia Tech 67
Duke 65

I do, however, know what a "mediocrity" is, and Shelden Williams fits the description to a T.
Va. Tech only had 5 players who scored in the game.

Hockey Season Canceled, Unkissed Sisters Upset

Well, what can you say?

I'll tell you what you can say: what a bunch of fuckups and shitheads. Imagine, a collection of grown men being that stupid...it boggles the mind. The NHL will never return, it seems, because nobody cared about it leaving. If the lockout extends into next season, there will be no replacement players, because all the players there are already play somewhere--mostly in Europe, if they have talent. On this side of the pond, we can already watch the best (active) players in the minors for next to nothing. Who would pay $70 to watch an AHL player in an NHL sweater?

The league is totally screwed.

Good thing, too. Now hockey can once again become a regional sport, which is all it ever claimed to be anyway. Think about it. Hockey isn't "America's Pastime" (baseball), "America's Game" (NFL football), "The World's Game" (soccer [shudder]), or even the "Urban Males' Game" (NBA baketball--which, by the way, sucks). Hockey is the Canucks' frozen white northern funny accent game. And that's a mighty specialized market. I'm sure chauvenism has something to do with our indifference over the loss of a beautiful game; if baseball had been invented in France (just to give you rightwing fucktards something to wrap your gummy little minds around), would it have survived a strike? Hell no. Not now.

But regional sports might be a good way to go. Every damn sport is overextended, overexpanded, and overexposed anyway. The NBA is in free fall, MLB is about to go into the crapper along with Barry Bonds' legacy, the NFL is plateauing after years of upward growth. Even NASCAR is feeling a backlash from its core fans who resent the taking of races from Rockingham, NC to give them to a half-full raceway in the Nevada desert. What the fuck does Nevada know about moonshine running or a 396 with a Webber 4 barrel? Not a damn thing, clearly.

Who "does" football really well? Florida, Alabama, Texas, and maybe some of the cornbelt states. Baseball? Texas, California, and the Deep South. Basketball? The South again, if you like skill; the Midwest if you like hockey on hardwood; the West coast if you prefer no D. It's regional, people. NASCAR? Purely southern, with Indiana as an honorary member of the New Confederacy (hell, they were damn near being in the old Confederacy). Soccer? I would hope that nobody would want to be known as the home region for soccer, but let's give it to the preppies in the northeastern US.

And hockey? Midwest, Northeast, and Canada. That's it. Iron cities/golden horsehoe and above.

This is a great plan. Again, and for the first time in a long time, you can wonder at the variety of the North American experience. "What's life like in Missouri?" "Goddamn, I have no idea!..."...wouldn't that be cool? You might actually have to GO to Pittsburgh to see a warehouse apartment building; or Kansas to see a farmer; or Vancouver to see a hockey game. I for one don't want to know everything about everybody all the goddamn time. I want a little variety, mystery, and the like. I hate Chili's and Target and Cosmopolitan magazine, because they need us to believe that everything is the same everywhere. That's the price of our souls.

Besides, who wants to see bad hockey in Miami? That just plain sucks.

Knowledge is Power. So, None for YOU

The University of Chicago's Regenstein Library is this month's winner for Worst Library Ever. Aside from being designed by the same hack who did the drawings for UIC (the Concrete Monstrosity--I speculate that Daley had a friend who needed to move about 800 tons of cement, so the Mayor founded a university), the Reg has the distinction of being the unfriendliest, least accessible library in the country. No one is really sure what goes on in the building--you can't get in. They give day passes (no borrowing!) to people who either: get an affidavit from an archivist at another major city library or who don't live in Chicago and are willing to surrender their ID for the duration of their visit. Even alumni have to pay steep fees to get beyond the security desk. May I ask if you noticed who is therefore excluded from visiting?

That's correct: residents of the city of Chicago. If you live here, you cannot get in the door. Non-residents, sure; residents? No. What the fuck?

The ironing, naturally, is delicious. Part of the Reg's collection is Frank Wakely Gunsaulus' rare book library, which the great man was good enough to donate upon his death. A famed theologian and collector of rare manuscripts at the turn of the twentieth century, Gunsaulus also persuaded J. Ogden Armour (of meatpacking fame) to bankroll the Illinois Institute of Technology, a trade school that Gunsaulus hoped would fill the educational void left by those institutions that fled the city to avoid the waves of eastern European immigrants who were then flooding Chicago. IIT still exists, right in the center of historic Bronzeville, and you can tour it by taking the green line south from downtown.

Gunsaulus, as a champion of public learning, would no doubt be quite dismayed that his prized collection, said to be one of the finest in the world, sits behind a barricade to the public, seldom accessed, seldom cited, and available to a smaller group of people each year.

The Joseph L. Regenstein Library--a true failure as a repository of knowledge.

*I should note that, as a kickass intellectual, I have access to the Reg. It was damn hard to get, I might add.

The Non-Workingman's Library

This month's runner-up for Worst Library Ever is, appropriately, the Harold Washington main branch public library downtown. While certainly beautiful on the outside, the building houses (if you could get inside to see it) some really lousy collections, staffed by unfriendly people, surrounded by uninspired, blank walls. It's bad enough that patrons have to go to the 3rd floor just to get to the circulation desk, but then to have books grouped by discipline ("oh, you want Foucault? Let me see, is that floor 6, social science, or floor 8, humanities and philosophy?"...apparently, theory is a social science, as is history, in this parallel library dimension. Bizarre.)...I mean, damn why can't you be a little bit helpful?

The best (or worst) part is that, when you look up a book on one of the few computers not being used to ogle internet porno, you are met with a password screen--on a public computer that's only supposed to access the card catalog! What on earth would you need a password for?! Hostile takeover attempt from that least-expected point, the card catalog???!!

Then, if you get in and search for your book, what the computer returns is a screen with the title, author, and a little acronym that tells you (now, you might guess I'm about to say "call number" or "where to find the book." Jesus, have you never been to this library?) whether or not the book is on the shelf.

It doesn't tell you where the book is. Just that it's there. Where? Exactly.

If you want to know the call number (and, my fucking Christ, why would you not?), you have to find the obscure link to "full record"--and usually you'll find out that "on the shelf" and "in the library" are not the same. The book I wanted was returned almost a month ago; it's still "in transit to the shelf." Is it walking itself there??! Assholes!!

Finally, this is a "public" library that opens its doors at 9 AM and closes at 4 on Fridays. Now, who is available from 9-4 every day? The homeless, the unemployed, a few students, old people, and, apparently, cops. That's the clientele of the Harold Washington. There's nothing--I repeat, not one damn thing--wrong with that, by the way. I just wish the working stiffs in Chicago could get to the library sometime; you know, self-edify; get to the bottom of knowledge; shit like that. In this town, they don't have a fucking chance. No wonder we're all so stupid.


Vote Daley!

Black History Month II

Lynyrd Skynyrd (nyrdnyrdnyrd?) performed at the Grammys t'other day, and played Sweet Home Alabama. During Black History Month. Is it a racist song? I suppose that depends on what you think of the Skynyrd vs. Neil Young "controversy"--if you think about it at all. Is it a satiric take in southern pride? I suppose that depends on whether anyone believes Ronnie Van Zant was smart enough to spell "satirical," much less be it.

Point: poor taste to play it during February. Better point: proves that no one even remembered that February is Black History Month. Even better point: Southerners need to embrace black southern music (especially the variant of rap that holds a top spot in the genre), because the Grammys proved that country music and "southern" rock both suck big, fat dicks these days. Have you ever seen a bigger bunch of pussies than the men who sing "country" songs these days? I mean, outside of Duke University.

What the Fuck Happened to Black History Month?

Every year the question becomes more pertinent. This year, for example, BHM is being "observed" by a slew of "urban" awards shows (My personal favorite is the "Spirit Awards," where R. Kelly continues to draw nominations--and sometimes, trophies!--for pissing on underage, poor girls). Comedy Central is doing the second Galaxy of the Black Stars (um...what?) comedy weekend, featuring Jamie Foxx(xxxx?) in something called Laffapalooza which, if I recall correctly, is a play on the name of a white-dominated alterna-rock festival from the 90s. I guess Comedy Central needs this ghostly tie-in to ensure that enough white people watch this tired parade of stereotypes. Also, in case you haven't noticed, basic cable channels have opened the vaults and are now showing such craptastic "films" as The Tuskeegee Airmen, Barbershop, anything with Denzel Washington, and some Oprah movie of the week selections, every afternoon at 4 and noon on Saturdays.

So there you have it. Black people have captured, if only for 28 days, the awards show circuit, a third-rate cable comedy network, and commercial TV matinees. "Brothers and sisters, I have been to the rooftop! And I have adjusted the antenna, and I have seen the shuck-n-jive Negroes on television! Now, I may not get to the end credits with you, because I may have to go vomit my fucking guts out, but rest assured that we have secured a place in an America that values us for the way our buffoonery eases its guilty conscience, and not for the content of our character! Fuck you all. And somebody stop this grave, it seems to be spinning..."

What a shithole this place is.

Oh, for a brilliant encapsulation of the farce that is BHM, see the Rutgers Centurion, ever the enemy of history, which pillories Paul Robeson this month because he said something nice about Stalin. Why couldn't that asshole have just licked whitey's boots some more? I mean, damn! there were plenty of shitty white folks right here in the USA he could have kowtowed to.

The Left and Moral Values

I don't buy the assertion that the Left lost an election on "moral values," because anyone who thinks knows that morality has only a passing familiarity with the Left but even less with the Right. The way I see it, and as I have said already, the Democrats lost on the war, which Kerry punted to Bush in exactly the way Dean wouldn't have (I know, that a counterfactual statement).

My big question is, how do we, the normals, get the moral high ground back (or any moral ground, for tha matter)? My father says the split between faith and reason came during the Cold War; I know from research that progressives in the 1910s and earlier felt a strong millennial impulse. Their secular faith in the transformative power of "science," as Lippmann understood it was the driving force behind many otherwise incomprehensible movements.

OK, so the Cold War is a nasty legacy to live with. Where do we begin dismantling it? How do we (re)reconcile science and morality? Anyone?

Bueller?

Put Your Pants Back On

This week in Anecdotes of Higher Meaning, the case of hearing loss:

Last year, I suddenly lost hearing in both ears. It was quite convenient for avoiding unwanted conversations and for annoying my wife ("what's that, honey? Remember, I have the ear thing...what??"). But, it got old real fast, too, since I, like most people, enjoy being able to hear.

Eventually, I was able to get an appointment with student health, and they gave me some eardrops and a week to try them out. Just for fun, try lying on your side for ten minutes, three to four times daily, with fizzing earwax-dissolver in your ear. It is not so much fun, and the sizzling noise of liquifying wax is both disgusting and loud. Think Pop-Rox on your brain. Furthermore, the damn earwax never drains properly so your pillow, shirt collar, and sofa will have yellow/orange/brown stains on them from where you moved around after the treatment.

It turns out that, like a colon, shit builds up in your ears over the course of your life, too. Mostly due to the use of Q-Tips, it seems; people jam the goo further and further into their ears over the years, like loading a musket (Q-Tip as ramrod, wax as bullet and charge). In the inner ear, the wax solidifies and dries out, becoming brittle and porous, like pumice stone. This substance was firmly blocking both of my ear canals.

When the eardrops failed to remove the wax lattice, the doctor brought out a machine that resembles a water-pik with a suction tube attached. She used it to shoot warm water into my ears and then suck it out into a collection screen. The water feels quite good, but doctors tend to rub the inner ear raw, I've found, with their zeal for waxbusting.

Incredibly, it worked. And boy, how it did work. From each ear, she removed a walnut-sized chunk of shit: pale and biliously yellow, containing within it alien-like sharp protrusions, hair clots, dirt, bugs, a boot, a fish bone, a clock, and a top hat. I vomited in the sink.

Who knew the human head had all that space in it? Serious design flaw, God. For the love of the aforementioned, kids, don't put anything in your fucking ears. We can all benefit from my experience. I asked if I could keep the brain-pumice, but alas, it was a biohazard.

The point, though (as if being disgusting wasn't the point), is that on the train back home afterwards, every little noise was glorious and three-dimensional (can sound be 3D? Ah, it's descriptive enough). I could not only hear myself breathing (I'm not a mouth breather), I could hear my hair moving on my head (it makes a scritching noise like lightly scratching a blackboard. I'm glad that went away).

I got a pounding headache almost immediately.

Whether it's a re-acclimation to sound or the beginning of a new wax fortress in my head, I cannot hear that well anymore. Not to be maudlin, but I think everyone ought to have their ears cleaned once as an adult, if only because I remember that the one thing I wanted to do before my hearing faded again was listen to my favorite opera, the vulgar and plebeian Cavalleria Rusticana (also the provider of the theme from Raging Bull). It was so pure, so transcendent that I realized as I listened all the dreams I had forgotten; an experience made all the sweeter because I knew that soon I would forget them again and that I would never relive this experience. But for that one day, or one hour, I felt as alive and as human as I ever have. We might imagine that this was the original condition of our childhoods, the ability to receive continuous revelations and then to forget them. As James Baldwin once wrote about another subject entirely, "...I felt my own tears begin to rise. And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky."

We are only once perhaps privileged to have these epiphanies, and then we lose them, or more often detroy them. We are the sailors who stand quietly and stare as the angel is executed, coming no closer to his perfection than to once know the freshness of the condemned man's last vision. "The hull, deliberately recovering from the periodic roll to leeward, was just regaining an even keel when the last signal, a preconcerted dumb one, was given. At the same moment it chanced that the vapory fleece hanging low in the East was shot through with a soft glory as of the fleece of the Lamb of God seen in mystical vision, and simultaneously therewith, watched by the wedged mass of upturned faces, Billy ascended; and, ascending, took the full rose of the dawn.
"In the pinioned figure arrived at the yard-end, to the wonder of all no motion was apparent, none save that created by the slow roll of the hull in moderate weather, so majestic in a great ship ponderously cannoned."

Headline: Labor Historian gets Laid Off

Ah, long break. Been reading Ava Baron's edited collection Work Engendered: Toward a New History of American Labor. I recommend it to anyone wondering 1.what good labor history is (yet to be determined) and 2.what gender analysis can add to it (quite a bit). Jackie Hall's article on the Fulton Mills strike is a bit iffy--the origins and outcome of the strike are entirely unrelated to the gender perspective she takes--but Baron's article on the shifting notions of masculinity necessitated by the death of apprenticeship programs in the late 19th/early 20th century is quite good. I guarantee you'll think differently about gender and history after that piece. On the whole, I suppose the question remains, though: just as many have criticized Joan Scott's essays on French women at the end of Gender and the Politics of History for not proving the centrality of gender analysis to a "new" understanding of history (hey, she said it was a useful category, not the only category), so too will readers of Baron's work have to decide if the essays contained there merit groundbreaking labels.
One last word: skip the Dana Franks piece. I think she's just trying to be difficult.

fuck fucK fuCK fUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!!!!

Goddamn Tar Heels.


FUCK!!!!!

Must have been the crystal meth...

Jesus, what a pussy. Too bad the medics were on hand.
Duke sucks.

Coach D'oh! taking his Meds, wants back in...

So, check this out. What to feel in this situation? He did fuck up NC basketball royally, but he also played with Jordan in '82. So...many...conflicting...emotions. Ah, fuck it. You know what? Just like when my pops said Tommy Amaker should take the UNC coaching job because he would try to gut Coach K, so too Doherty ought to look into the NC State job (oh, it will be available next year) and go after Roy Williams and the Tar Heels. Nothing says blood feud like a native son scorned. I don't know if the Pack would get the better of the series, but those games would be a hell of a lot of fun to watch. Besides, he got a raw deal in some ways, and the UNC/State rivalry needs some rejuvenation (see, for example, the drubbing UNC put on the Pack yesterday).
God I love (some) sports.

Duke Sucks

Wake Forest: 92
Spoiled White Boys: 89

Take that, Coach Gay.