Thursday, January 23

 
the news is so great. listen to this lead paragraph:

"one student was killed - on his 23rd birthday - and several others were injured in a violent early morning brawl wednesday between two feuding san jose state university fraternities that police say played out like a scene from 'west side story.'"

despite the one kid's death, how can you not laugh at an article that opens with a reference to the musical famous for "i feel pretty"?

"authorities said members of two asian american fraternities... gathered just after midnight... facing off in a prearranged gnag-style fight that investigators estimated involved between one dozen and 60 people."

that was the closest they could get? between 12 and 60? "yeah, we know it was more than two but definitely less than a billion."

"officers said fraternity members brought sticks and knives to the battle."

how stupid do you feel when your enemy appears brandishing blades and all you're sporting is a hickory switch?

"'this is sad, really sad,' said catherine unger, a san jose police spokeswoman. 'when you think of fraternities, you think of keg parties, not knife fights.'"

i don't even know how to respond to that.
posted by from shannon at 12:21 PM

 
i just noticed that i've posted for five days in a row. i feel like such a champ.
posted by from shannon at 9:45 AM

 
the ny times online today posted this article:

"Josiah Flatt, like about 60 percent of other newborn American boys, was circumcised soon after he was born here, in the spring of 1997. Two years later, his parents sued the doctor and the hospital.

They did not contend that the circumcision was botched or deny that Josiah's mother, Anita Flatt, had consented to the procedure in writing. They said, instead, that the doctor had failed to tell them enough about the pain, complications and consequences of circumcision, removing the foreskin of the penis.

The suit will be heard by a jury next month. In declining to dismiss the case here before trial, Judge Cynthia Rothe-Seeger acknowledged that the case was unusual in that nothing "went `wrong' during the procedure." The main harm Josiah seeks compensation for, Judge Rothe-Seeger noted, is 'diminished sexual sensation injury.'"

the thing that really shocked me about this article was not the fact the fact that someone would sue over foreskin that they themselves asked to be sliced. rather, i was appalled to discover that a mere 60 percent of men in this are circumcised. foreskin. ew.

posted by from shannon at 9:44 AM

Wednesday, January 22

 
it is officially the first night of the semester in which i will not get enough sleep. it's not my fault - latin is hard. first, there's not a goddamn order to anything - romans were just throwing subjects and verbs around willy nilly. what if i wrote sentences like that? no one me to understand would be able .

another irksome problem: i can't imagine another language in which there are 10 different ways to say "door". each noun is different according to number and depending upon whether it's being used as a subject, direct object, etc. it's driving me insane. i was up until 1am trying to do my translation homework. wheelock (that's the bastard who authored my latin text) gives me a sentence like this:

puellae nautis rosas poetae dant.

and i come back with:

girl sailor rose poet give.

you'd think somebody would have said, hey, maybe we don't need all these declensions - after all, whether we give it an -ae or an -am, it's still just a goddamn door. oh wait, a bunch of people did say that - they were the italians (or the spanish or the french, although the french just have a whole new set of problems, what with their flagrant wasting of letters no one will everre prounouncze.) no wonder the roman empire fell - no one could understand each other. poets were giving girls away to sailors and the entire civilization simply imploded.

posted by from shannon at 2:08 AM

Tuesday, January 21

 
note to good morning america:

i cannot in good conscience support a news/talkshow in which the hosts put ice cubes down each other's back on live television.
posted by from shannon at 9:00 AM

Monday, January 20

 
jared, i very much loved your latest update on aesthetics. question, though: does it make me an unfeminist if i like the fact that most guys are into me because of my melons?


posted by from shannon at 9:06 PM

Sunday, January 19

 
side note: i'm currently listening to piebald's "if it weren't for venetian blinds, it'd be curtains for us all. they are the funnest band i can think of right now. and they are playing HERE, tomorrow night, for FREE!
posted by from shannon at 2:04 PM

 
i love when other people get excited about reality television:

"So Joe Millionaire has filled the place in my heart that has been left unoccupied since the great Temptation Island craze of early 2001. I have two comments about the show. First, have you noticed that the girls look terrible one moment and then ridiculously hot the next? They show a girl and I'm like, "Get rid of her Evan!" and then they show her again and I'm like, "Oh my God, give her all the sapphires!" Second, is Evan not the largest human being you have ever seen? The man is gargantuan. He makes Yao Ming look like Short Round from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."
posted by from shannon at 2:02 PM