Silda

John Kass' rant against Spitzer's "dragging Silda like some prop to be shamed" is a little on the misguided side. Of course I feel awful for her. Of course she's following in the footsteps of other political wives standing by their men. Of course she didn't have to do it . Kass has Spitzer "drag," "parade," and "trot out" his wife -- completely forgetting that Silda has two feet of her own. I have no idea why she went along with it, why she was up there. I can't pretend to understand; I can only have the deepest sympathy and utmost respect for whatever decision has made or will make. But the fact is, there's nothing political for her to gain - he's toast, she was never interested in campaigning, as far as I know. No one in the world would blame her if she weren't next to him for the cameras. The combination of those two may make her appearance hard to understand, but it was her own choice. To imply otherwise (indeed, to use all sorts of demeaning, passive verbs) is to assume that she is not a reasonable, thinking entity. Of course, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors - and if he asked her, that was a huge request and a huge compliance. If he didn't ask her, that was arguably an even huger move on her part and we have no place to comment.

We also have no place to read philosophical drama into the minutest of details: "At one point in the news conference, Mrs. Spitzer looked toward the ceiling to the back of the room -- and it seemed she saw infinity, perhaps remembering in a flash, all the little betrayals of a life together, some of them quite loud and fantastic, some silent and unspoken." Leave the lady alone. If you don't have anything supportive to say, don't say anything at all.

everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes

So a friend of mine the other day said online that since it was so nice out she was going to talk to campus for "fresh air and gd." Turns out she meant DG, but I really like "fresh air and God" as a reason to be outside. For anything.

You're at my school!

Seeing the children out of context is one of the best things ever. They're going to be playing in the quads today! It's so exciting to see them. Except they tend not to believe that I go to school there. I'm not sure how to convince them ("Uh.. yes I do! See that building over there? That's Pick! It's for international studies! And there's Cobb, over there, I've had Spanish classes inside! What don't you believe?!").

Some finals inspiration

Brought to you by my thesis seminar professor, Dr. David Gallo:

"So, you're all doing a great job. Just keep going... and you'll be done."

Soapbox

So I was all excited to write about Garfield Minus Garfield, the greatest thing this side of awesome. It takes Garfield out of all the strips so all you see are bizarre, depressingly hilarious frames of Jon Arbuckle and sometimes lasagna. They are objectively wonderful. But someone else who decided to show this off noted that one of them "reminds me of an inside joke, and is probably only funny to me and a handful of my co-workers." Really, Steve? Really? In addition to being outlandishly immature, referencing inside jokes to other people is downright mean. (PS, The strip is independently funny. I understand you didn't think I would appreciate it outside of your group of friends who find it funny because of some other backstory, but believe it or not, I thought it was funny of its own accord.) I know I'm overly sensitive to things that involve exclusion, but bringing up inside jokes to people who wouldn't know them is one of the rudest, most condescending things you can do in a friendly conversation. Slash blog post.

Anyway, GMG is life-changingly phenomenal, and the New Pornographers' "Challengers" video is the greatest thing this side of the Sony bouncy balls commercial.

Okay fine I admit it

Despite whatever deep and profound reasoning my first post may claim as my reasoning for restarting this blog, I admit that it is only still around because of a desire to write something other than my thesis.

But here's something interesting - when given a choice to play with (or be, or take home, etc) a Black versus a White doll, both Black and White preschool children chose the Black doll. Then there was a huge intervention with the researchers reading stories that were really positive towards Blacks, they rewarded children who chose Black dolls, they had them recite favorable things about Blacks, and then the majority chose Black dolls (Powell-Hopson and Hopson, 1988)! Hope for the race relations of the world, at our fingertips! Now to figure out how to either adapt that for the adult population among us or to just raise everyone like that, and we'll be set.

I realized something the other day - I've been playing with children for eight. Years. Holy schlamola.

p.s.

Half of the work for my thesis is waiting. Waiting for consent forms, waiting for surveys back, waiting for these articles to load. I'm wa-a-a-aiting on you, yyoooouuu-u-u...