Things that are random

So I am watching VH-1 this morning (yes I do that a lot), and after sipping my coffee to the infectious beat of Amy Winehouse's "rehab," I hear what seems to be Portuguese, and I am thinking, what does VH-1 play Brazilian music now? But when I look up I see that it's a McDonald's commercial, and I am like have I stepped into the twilight zone? when did McDonald's decide that Brazilian music would be an appropriate marketing technique? One of those things.

It's always the crack!

When I first heard about it, I thought that the report of the woman who drove her car into a crowd of people in Washington, DC was a bit odd. I mean how does one manage to actually do something like that? Well the answer has come out. The Washington Post quotes the DC police chief saying that the woman was "smoking crack all day long." And we all know that crack sends a person toward the worst possible decisions.



Crack was the drug of the eighties and early nineties and it creates pretty strong images, but we tend to think of it as a somewhat passe drug replaced my more fashionable alternatives like meth or ecstasy. So it's always slightly amusing to me to be reminded that people still do crack, and then act like crack heads.



Most of what I know about crack abuse comes from comedians Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle, and a wave of dreary documentaries meant to scare use straight. Given the sources of my data and my cynical turn of mind, crack has become for me the explanatory joke for bad choices:



Why did you date that jerk? Must have been the crack.



Why did you take that job? Must have been the crack.




Why did you move to the unhappy valley?
Must have been the crack.



Why did you drive your car through 35 people? The crack.



I admit I laughed when I heard that the woman was cracked up, I mean who does crack anymore? But of course people do and the drug is still around, still dangerous and still has the potential to destroy lives and communities. Maybe it's not that funny.

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International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

Found out about this idea on Boing Boing, and if I had some professional quality writing to give away I would, but I don't so I am linking back to the source.

33 Dead at Virginia Tech

The recent attack at Virginia Tech has struck me in my core. As someone who works at a University, I have always felt that it would be exceptionally easy to terrorize our nation by targeting a college or university campus. In academia we have open campuses. It's easy for anyone to walk onto most campuses and to do pretty much anything. It's part of our pedagogical culture. We hold this idea that the halls of learning should be available and welcoming. So this recent attack at Virginia Tech was particularly horrifying for me. As a college professor, I am frequently frustrated and annoyed with my students, but they are still my students. I am in a role that forces me to fell protective of them and I cannot help but experience great sorrow at the deaths of the 33 young adults at Virginia Tech. Perhaps this will also signify a loss of innocence in the ivory tower, as we are forced realized that we are not set apart as we once were, that we are not an inviolate and protected castle on a hill. Maybe we will bunker down and move away from our earlier conception of our mission, and begin keep people off our campuses. Or perhaps we will shake our heads and say the right things and move on to business as usual.

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"Kurt is up in Heaven now."

Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday at 84. It's one of those things that happens when an author dies. Having read so much of his work, a girl feels that she knows an author a little bit when she doesn't know him at all. One respects a talent like his and a point of view like his and anyone with pretensions of authorship like mine wonders if she could have a little of what he had. I have always like books that made a person think and written in a style that was clear concise and yet lyrical. A pessimist, a humanist, a realist-- a voice that we have needed In These Times:

From a Rolling Stone Interview: "I've given up on it ... It won't happen. ... The Army kept me on because I could type, so I was typing other people's discharges and stuff. And my feeling was, 'Please, I've done everything I was supposed to do. Can I go home now?' That's what I feel right now. I've written books. Lots of them. Please, I've done everything I'm supposed to do. Can I go home now?"

And from that recent tempest in a tea cup in the Australian: "They [suicide bombers] are dying for their own self-respect. It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's [like] your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing ... It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in."

Kurt Vonegut, (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007)

The Simulation has Ended

Jean Baudrillard has died. This author of Simulacra and Simulation has long been one of my favorite postmodernists. But, since I have long found it difficult to remember which of the French postmodernists were alive and which were dead, I may have already included him within the ranks of the dead French guys in my conversations with students. It seems, however, that now with Baudrillard passing and joining the ranks of Bordieu, Foucault, Derrida and Lyotard all the big names are dead, perhaps this will cause relief in the hearts of literature graduate students everywhere. Perhaps not, since their syllabi will still include these names and they will still have ot read all the texts of the dead French guys.

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Is She or Isn't She?

Is it to early to write an obit for the most disfunctional Battlestar Galactica character, Starbuck? With the gender reassignment and the failed romance with her fellow pilot Apollo, Starbuck of the new series has become quite a crack up, and not in a funny way. It seems that Starbuck launched her ship into a planet and shuffled off her mortal coil, and according to the wired blog,

it was possibly the stupidest and most pointless death imaginable for a
kickass pilot and awesome pivotal character. Delving into Starbuck's
childhood abuse and turning it into a flimsy excuse for a sudden mental
breakdown made no sense whatsoever. And what about the whole Leoben
paint-sex scene, coupled with his puppy-eyed sympathy as she remembers
her dead mom? As they say in Australia: yucko.

All true,but I for one am not terribly sorry to see her go. One would like to believe that her absence will bring some dynamic revelation (like she's one of those mysterious other cylons) to the show or some mojo, but it is TV and the TV Gods do manage, to bring those dead characters back when one least expects it. One can only hope that in this case it will not be for a while.

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Anna Nicole Smith (1967-2007)

I had been rooting for Anna Nicole for some time. She seemed to be a woman who realized what her true gifts were and used them to great success. We all should be so wise. I had followed her case as it marched its way into the Supreme Court and was genuinely pleased to see the Court rule in her favor. I was saddened by the sudden death of her son and had truly wished her well. When I first heard of her death yesterday, I experienced the same shock when I read of her son's death. Young, vibrant and seemingly healthy people should not just fall quietly into death.