Bloody Backs: A Festival Favorite, A Hygenic Nightmare

Now that the summer has officially passed, I suppose it's time to start recalling those moments whose saliency and sheer amount of exposure to biohazardous fluids suggest they deserve memoralization. Or at least for me to blog about them so that you, my one or two sporadic and disinterested readers, can note their passing.

While waiting to hear Spoon play at a music festival earlier this summer, the red-bandannaed, fleshy blob you see in the center of the picture pushed its way through the crowd and towered over me and my fellow short friends. Its back glistened with sweat - a glisten that was dimmed slightly by a fine sheen of dirt that seemed to highlight every pore on its skin that was about seven inches from our faces. In the near center of its back - at my eye level - rested a bleeding cut that slowly trickled blood as it bobbed frenetically and unrhythmically to the music. It threatened to careen into us on several occasions - my initial state of speechless terror at the prospect of this unhygenic impact soon blossomed into a whisper that grew ever louder and louder in my head: photo op.. photo op... PHOTO OP!

What better way to face your fears than to snap a pic of them? They say in some cultures that to take a picture of something steals a part of its soul (seriously, they said it in Zoolander so it must be true). If we captured even a trace of bloody essence in the above photograph, then we have confronted the powerful essence of concert douchebags everywhere who push their way to the front of crowds, stand directly in front of people who are CLEARLY shorter than them, and reek to high heavens because they decided today was the day they were going to try using that rock deodorant, and we have put them on notice (as Stephen Colbert would say).

Why aren't you at Popeyes?

I saw this dog outside of a Dunkin' Donuts in Chicago late one night at the end of a hot, July day. Maybe he didn't know there was a Popeyes just a few blocks down the street.

You crazy dog. Here in Champaign-Urbana, we don't have any Popeyes. Yet Bloomington - 46 miles away - has an embarassment of Popeyes riches (two of them! in the same city! just think of it - twice the biscuits!). I went back to the same Dunkin' Donuts the next night but he was gone. Maybe he finally figured it out.

I like to think of that sweet dog sometimes, feasting upon an overturned dumpster that overflows subtly spicy red beans and rice; deliciously peppery gravy wedded to white, creamy mashed potatatoes; and that signature spicy fried chicken. Watch out for the bones ol' boy... you lucky, lucky dog.

Academia Saves Lives

There are moments in graduate study when I doubt the importance of research in the humanities - both in terms of its scope and reach. But running across a call for papers like the one below comfortingly reminds me that we're up to good things:

REEL WIZARDS: REPRESENTATIONS OF MAGIC AND MAGIC USERS IN FILM
Deadline for Proposals: September 15, 2006

In J. R. R. Tolkien's THE LORD OF THE RINGS, the Hobbits are warned, "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards"; yet, few readers today, in a time when the wizard features so prominently in both popular culture and scholarship,
would choose to follow this admonition. Accepting this as a given, proposals are now being accepted for an essay collection investigating the representation of magic-wielding figures in electronic multimedia.

This volume is intended to serve as a casebook for further academic research on magic-using characters in film, television, and video and computer games. We hope to include a number of essays that offer surveys/overviews of specific images or media as well as a limited number of spaces for investigations of specific films.

As an aid to potential contributors (and those interested in pursuing further research on the wizard figure), a listing of potential topics and a working bibliography devoted to studies on wizards can be found online at < http://mtorregrossa.home.att.net/cfp/wizards.htm>.

Hipsters Across World Continue to Mourn Loss of Barrett and say "Haifa Wha??? Who cares Barrett's dead dude."

Happy Birthday Terra, Observed

I got to see my great friend Terra on her actual birthday this past Monday but tonight we officially observed her birthday by going out and telling the worst jokes imaginable to horrify her. Not pictured but pros at telling the worst of the worst grossout jokes include Melissa, Christopher, and Bart. I may have thrown one or two in there myself...

"YouTube - Broadcast Yourself"

I uploaded my first video on YouTube today - I uploaded it as an mp4 (oooh now you can watch it on a video iPod) so the quality of the video leaves something to be desired. I know the sites I have been frequenting heavily this summer - blogger, myspace, and youtube - still raise a lot of questions for me in terms of the affordances they seemingly provide for the people who use them, the modes of expression they seem to promote, and the sticky business of who or what entities own these sites (particularly with the purchase of myspace by Rupert Murdoch and the subsequent EVIL changes in its user agreement), and in turn, how they set up the relationship between the formal structure of the site and the content that individuals provide for it. Somehow all these questions can't seen to quash my compulsion to keep adding crappy, self-centered content to all three sites...

I bought a fanny pack, or the top five signs I might be losing it this summer

So a few of my friends this summer have suggested that I have been acting out of sorts - I can't say that I noticed feeling any more bitterness/anger oscillating with extreme despair than I usually do (I mean we all make jokes about huddling into the fetal position in the shower while sobbing out strings of incomprehensible words, but it's not like I really do it that often). Not to make light of my friends' observations, I decided to take note of any activities I have engaged in lately that might suggest I'm losing my shit. You know, besides blogging.

5. I've started sewing non-functional buttons onto everything. It began with a shirt or two but it has moved on to paper products... but this doesn't really mean anything except I've got a bitchin' penchant for the decorative arts. Maybe I'll start worrying if I wake up one morning after a blackout with several buttons sewn onto my body.


4. I've been reading weight/strength training books. It's not like I've actually bought any books yet (cough cough Kim Perky), I just check them out from the library. Also, I think it's a positive sign that I don't aspire to look like any of the people on the cover, right?


3. I'm slightly obsessed with the birds that live outside of my apartment. It started earlier this year when a tiny, sweet bird roosted on my porch over the winter (see red circle) only to disappear with the arrival of spring. Perhaps the obsession started when I began to read the presence/absence of the bird as a metaphor for my life and began muttering "nothing gold can stay Ponyboy" to myself as I wistfully gazed at the abandoned perch. So I bought a bird feeder and have filled it with seed, hoping to entice my bird friends to come visit me.









2. Okay, so I moved on from Western books on weight training and borrowed a book from the library on how to be a ninja. Maybe I've even imagined myself on the cover of the book... It's not like I want to start cybering people under the m.o. of the bloodninja. I mean, that would be messed up.









1. I bought a fanny pack. Not only did I buy a fanny pack but I read reviews of them online and made my purchase after several days of research. I claimed it was to use just for when I went out on bike rides but I find myself using it even when I'm not on a bike ride. Jinkies!

John Walsh, America's Most Wanted Douche

So I actually took a day out of my vacation a few weeks back to read John Walsh’s tome, Tears of Rage: From Grieving Father to Crusader for Justice. Sure I went into reading the book thinking, JOHN WALSH IS A DOUCHE, but upon finishing the book I realized I had really underestimated him. John Walsh is actually a douche of epic proportion, quite possibly the MOST GIGANTIC DOUCHE IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE, at least living today.

Perhaps the most disturbing anecdote in the book is how he describes his future wife:
“People liked her. Or as one of my friends put it, she was John Walsh with longer hair” (17).

Did your mouth just fill with the bitter, rank taste of bile? Did any even remotely sexual thoughts void from your consciousness only to be replaced with feelings of shame, disgust, and despair? Yeah, I thought so. But, the book is so much more than John's special brand of solipsistic sexuality. Readers - who can actually stomach reading the book through to the end - gain a sense of the many facets of John Walsh, America's Most Wanted Douche. The best part of the book is truly John Walsh on his favorite subject… John Walsh:

John Walsh, the Churchgoer:
“my younger brother Jimmy and I – were ordinarily in the back row with the old women and nuns, wearing the black eyes and split lips we’d picked up in fistfights the Saturday night before” (1)

John Walsh, the Dancer:
“Tom and I were the only white guys on campus who could dance. In retrospect, I think that was a big part of our allure” (17)

John Walsh, the Businessman:
“My career was on a fast track, and I knew I was going places. Everyone was saying it: John Walsh was a success story waiting to happen” (22)

John Walsh, the Procreator:
“I had created a new member of the species and I would now have a legacy. My genes would be carried on along with the Walsh name” (29)

John Walsh, the Romantic:
“on the nightstand by her bed were a dozen red carnations. And in the center of all those red flowers was a single one, white. That was what I sent her” (29)

Whoa there big spender! Carnations?! WTF? And he's bragging about giving them to his wife after giving birth. That's practically like saying: "on the nightstand by her bed was a picture of me performing a Dirty Sanchez with one of my fellow douchebag friends. And in the center of that picture was a little poop smear, brown. That was what I sent her."

Finally, my favorite facet of John Walsh - when he thinks he's a badass:

John Walsh, the Badass:
- “We would never be anything less than all right because we were so unrelentingly ice-cold-blooded” (24).

- “The guy had told me to mind my own goddamn business. As if that were something I was really going to do” (25).

- “And when he came up to me and tried to shake my hand, I refused. Fuck him. He voted no on the Missing Children Act” (151)

- “Finally, one of them looked at me and said, ‘You know, you’re a real wiseass.’
I said, ‘And you know what you are? You’re mercenary bastards. Worse than that, you’re chickenshits.” (156).

Oh dear sweet, John Walsh- my eyes weep vinegar and water for you and I dread the day when your magesterial reign as America's Most Wanted Douche comes to an end.

giant quotie bug attacks Michigan

A giant quotie bug was spotted on the Portage Lake Ship Canal in Houghton/Hancock Michigan yesterday afternoon. Holy shit, eh?!?! Quotie bugs can cause tremendous damage to the environment - much of what lays in its path can be turned into discourse with the mere movement of the bug's pincers and utterances from its mouth. Bystanders reported hearing the bug mumbling something about "action fabrics" and becoming incensed over two- and four-way stretch materials. Luckily the vertical lift bridge over the Keweenaw Waterway tangled the quotie bug's antennae - trapping the bug until authorities could exterminate the pest.

hi, I'm that dork at new media summer camp

I had homework the first night of new media summer camp - in photoshop we had to create a single screen collage that makes a "visual argument" without inserting any of our own text. If there were any doubts to the depths of my dorkiness, they will slowly be erased over the next two weeks. I took the background photograph earlier this year but I secured the other images through various image sites on the web (morguefile.com is a really great one I have recently discovered). I think I might call the collage, "stfu pomos."