Raw Like Sushi

Sainsbury's Basics

2009-05-28T07:19:00.001-07:00

The grocery store, Sainsbury's has it own cheap brand called Sainsbury's Basics. I love Sainsbury's basics 1. Because they're really cheap, but usually good. 2. Because the plain white and orange packaging usually includes a tagline saying why the particular item is so cheap.

Apples: No lookers. Just as Juicy.

Orange Marmalade: Less oranges. Still Seville.

Jaffa Cakes: Some jam, som chocolate -- definitely Jaffa.

Plastic wrap: It wraps, it covers.

Laundry detergent: Cleans. No added promises.

Linksies

2009-05-19T02:03:00.000-07:00

Purty purty -- but unlike Nat and Nicole, I can't post songs on my bolg. bolg.

And I put this on facebook too, so why not here, where only the favorites read anyway.

To ol' D.H. Lawrence (see turtle poem below).

"It has got to go"

2009-05-17T23:41:00.000-07:00

"Borage is wonderfully good taste."

If you give a mouse a cookie

2009-05-08T04:52:00.000-07:00

The Rhodes email list is infamous for filling one's inbox is reams of unsolicited information, announcements, and observations. The natural result of giving a few hundred type-A personalities a platform and a captive(ish) audience. There are certain names that will elicit cries of exasperation from almost any rhodie. Others are a delight. I present for your consideration the following exchange which took place on the Rhodes list this morning. Rhodie C is one of the delightful contributors. She doesn't comment often, and when she does, it's always with a poem that is somehow related to the exchange at hand. She never explains how it's related, but if you think about it, it ususally makes some sort of sense. Background: The Rhodes Ball is aobut a week away and the list has been flooded with "anyone have an extra ticket" requests lately.

Subject line: A Solution maybe to the Tickets Problem?

Rhodie A:
I am just curious. Given the fact that MANY people want extra tickets, it seems to me the only thing preventing people from getting extra tickets is dinner seating. However, it seems after dinner, the Rhodes House can hold more people. Is there a way that tickets can be sold at a cheaper rate just for people to attend the festivities after, minus the dinner? That way everyone who needs extra tickets can have them.

This is likely a question for the organizers, and maybe there is some fire safety issues and so forth. Also, granted, I have no clue about the insides of organizing this. However, that seems logical to me.

Is that possible?

Rhodie B (who is on the ball comittee):

Pretty sure we are at capacity in terms of Health and safety regulations.

Rhodie C:

Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forwith, and we
Divide. And sure of what to do

We disinfect new blocks of days
For our majorities to rent
With unshared friends and unwalked ways,
But silence too is eloquent:

A silence of minorities
That, unopposed at last, return
Each night with cancelled promises
They want renewed. They never learn.

-- Philip Larkin

Bear with me

2009-05-03T13:07:00.000-07:00

Tortoise Gallantry
D.H. Lawrence

Making his advances

He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,

No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.

Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin

That work beneath her while she sprawls along

In her ungainly pace,

Her folds of skin that work and row

Beneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.

And so he strains beneath her housey walls

And catches her trouser-legs in his beak

Suddenly, or her skinny limb,

And strange and grimly drags at her

Like a dog,

Only agelessly silent, with a reptile's awful persistency.

Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.

Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation

And doomed to partiality, partial being,

Ache, and want of being,

Want,

Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to her.

Born to walk alone,

Forerunner,

Now suddenly distracted into this mazy side-track,

This awkward, harrowing pursuit,

This grim necessity from within.

Does she know

As she moves eternally slowly away?

Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying in the dark against a window,

All knowledgeless?

The awful concussion,

And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow, continue,

Driven, after æons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness and oneness,

At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron,

Driven away from himself into her tracks,

Forced to crash against her.

Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile,

Little gentleman,

Sorry plight,

We ought to look the other way.

Save that, having come with you so far,

We will go on to the end.

Just the facts

2009-05-01T09:30:00.001-07:00

1. They clap after lectures here. I don't get it.

2. I walked by a dignified-looking, silver-haired old man sitting on a bench in university parks this morning. He was about to take a pill that he had in his hand. Viagra.

3. Today is May Day. Morris Dancers were jingling around Oxford all day. Around lunch time, I passed a group of them. They were all dressed about like this, but with feathery headgear, except for one guy, who was wearing all the traditional garb and a Packers Cheesehead hat. I listened when he walked by, and he definitely had an English accent. I was tempted to ask, but I didn't.

4. I keep buying food and leaving it in other people's fridges to pick up later. My groceries are scattered all over Oxford. I picked up my milk, bread, and yogurt earlier today. I still need to pick up my cheese.

A square or a cat shape

2009-04-29T22:55:00.000-07:00

SAINSBURY'S
Belgian
Milk Chocolate
Spread
USAGE INSTRUCTIONS

A smooth rich spread made in Belgium. this is wonderful melted on hot toast, stirred into yogurt, blended with ice cream or spread onto digestive biscuits. Melt and combine with cornflakes or rice crispies, form a square or a cat shape, refrigerate and you have a great, quick cake. Melt and use as a sauce for pancakes or a base for chocolate fondue. Use as a topping or a filling for a great chocolate cake.
Store in a cool, dry place.
Best Before End: See Lid.

Celeb Sighting!

2009-04-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

I'm Just Sayin'...

2009-04-28T09:44:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of Americans in Oxford. Not only students, but just around the town. The ones I notice all seem to be middle-aged men in earth-tone suits, carrying man-purse-style briefcases and explaining things loudly. Always explaining something. Always loudly.

There are also swarms of Italian and French pre-adolescents taking school trips. They might be explaining things too, but it's in Italian or French, so I don't notice.

Lovely lovely lovely

2009-04-19T16:07:00.000-07:00

Lovely lovely lovely row this evening. Best part was maybe coming to the end of each run just by a pub where a bunch of people sat outside enjoying the lovely lovely lovely spring weather. Fun to come to the end of a piece and see a lot of people relaxing and sipping beer as you pant and sweat and spin the boat. Oh Pubpeople -- what I wouldn't give to be you and what you wouldn't give to be me.

My non-feathering forearm is sore after rowing today and yesterday. That's odd.

Chat with Emmacita about e.e. cummings led to an epic search for the following poem. All I could remember was the nice image of people as solids dissolved and in solution. Great surges of triumph when I found it. Confession: this post was really just an excuse to put up this poem so I would have it around, but it seemed a bit much to just post it without some framing fluff.

well) here's looking at ourselves

two solids in(all
one it)
solution(of
course you must shake well)

indolently dreaming puzzling

over that one
oh just thinking it over
(at that just supposing
we had met and just
but you know

supposing we

just had let it go at
that)that
seems important doesn't
it and
doesn't that seem
puzzling but we both might have found the solution

of that in

the importance of the
fact that(in spite of the fact
that i and that
you had carefully
ourselves decided what this cathedral ought to

look like)it doesn't look
at
all like what you
and what i(of course)
carefully had decided oh

no(but

--e.e. cummings

Hello, world!

2009-04-16T02:06:00.000-07:00

Bed at 1. Up at 9. Huge achievement in the battle against Day Sleeping.

Well how about that

2009-04-13T06:12:00.000-07:00

I hardly ever have dreams that I remember. But last night (night, in this case, being from 5 am to 2 pm. this really needs to stop) I had a very vivid dream about a spider. When I do dream, I usually realize that I'm dreaming and just sort of hop aboard for the ride. But this was one of those dreams where you "wake up" within the dream, only to enter a waking life that's actually just more dream.

So, in this dream, I was asleep, then woke up and saw an enormous spider on my wall. Like an out-sized tarantula with a glossy abdomen with broad yellow and black stripes. Its abdomen, as I told somebody in the dream, was the size of a tangerine. So most of the dream was spent trying to capture this thing under a glass bowl and then tape the bowl down so that it couldn't escape. The frustrating thing was that just as I was covering it with the bowl, it would go PHOOP and shrink into a tiny speck on the wall. When this first happened, I thought "Oh wow, spiders don't do that. This must be a dream." So I think I got back in bed (in the dream) and woke up again, checking around for the spider. Ok, right. Good. No spider. That was a dream, but this is real and there is no spider. I'm good.

Not so fast! there's a hairy spider leg peeking out from beneath the bed. Alright then, the spider is real. Back to the glass bowl. I finally captured it. I think maybe it shrank again, but not all the way. Somehow there were suddenly some other strange bugs under the bowl as well. and the bowl was filled with condensation. I taped the bowl down and went to go get people to show the spider to. The rest of the dream was me telling people from Oklahoma days about the spider. In Camden in London, I think.

Just to clarify, I wasn't really scared of the spider. I thought it was pretty cool looking and I was disappointed when it shrank. It was sort of MY spider.

Anyway, I got up this morning (read: mid-afternoon) and googled "spider dreams." Turns out that seeing a spider in your dreams is quite common and can have many different interpretations including good luck, bad luck, the need for creativity, the need for hard work, problems with your mother, and feminine power.

I think my spider meant that I need to start sleeping during the night.

Pynez me in a prysoun, put me in stokkes

2009-04-09T17:52:00.000-07:00

Super rocket turbo fun Middle English words of the day: "grychchynd" and "janglande." They both mean "grumbling."

Most of what I have to say these days has to do with stuff I'm reading and how much party accessories for the Rhodes Ball are costing. I find that lots of reading makes me really antisocial. I know that seeing people will make me want to see people. And I don't want to want to see people, I want to want to read. I realized this week that booky solitude is a viable lifestyle choice. And that it would have to be just that -- a lifestyle choice -- for me, unless I somehow develop better balancing capabilities.

Oh, and this article is really interesting: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/asia/08cambo.html

It prompted some thoughts about social memory and so forth when I read it this morning. It reminded me of Dr. Levy shaking his head and saying "How quickly they forget" when no one in our class had read any Tom Wolfe. Maybe when I'm a real grown up blogger I'll go into stuff like that a bit more. Not now. Still a wee 'un.

I still haven't figured out A) how to type the pound sign on my keyboard. B) the quotation mark vs. inverted commas thing.

I don't know if I can take this!

2009-04-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, RAW LIKE SUSHI went PUBLIC. From a cozy little one or POSSIBLY two-reader blog, Raw Like Sushi has gone to being laid (lain? lied? loaned?) raw, like sushi, to the prying eyes of, possibly, MILLIONS. Suddenly I feel senseless pressure to actually update this thing. And not mix my metaphors. I only give into one of those pressures.

In other news, my sleep schedule is completely topsy turvsy. And I don't have anything else to say about that.

Oh come on

2009-04-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

As of this afternoon, my new favorite thing to do in Oxford is reading in pubs. It's Sunday, which means that everything closes at 5 -- a somewhat charming and very inconvenient aspect of life here. So when I was booted out of the coffee shop at Blackwell's at 5, I headed over to the King's Arms, ordered coffee, and resumed reading there in a little nook just beside one of the bars. Behind me were two American men with baseball caps and an English man who frequents the K.A. and looks like Gandalf -- beard and all. They reached the inevitable topic of religion and conservatism in America. I've heard/taken part in this conversation a few times now. It usually consists of the European participant acting bewilderdly superior about how many churches he/she saw on his/her trip to the U.S. and the American participant adopting a complimentary tone of bewildered, apologetic inferiority. The same tone you might use when saying something like "My son said what? I don't know where he learned that word -- he certainly doesn't hear language like that at home. But you know what schools these days are like." In this case, one of the ball cap guys started repeating "I'm a purist. I believe in absolute separation of church and state. I'm a purist. Abortion shouldn't be a political issue at all -- I'm a purist about things like that." Gandalf then opined, "In America [British pause for gravity and emphasis] there's the east coast, and the west coast, and a few other places, like Chicago, where they read book, and write books, and create music and so forth. Then there's the rest of America, and the people there are backwards and superstitious. It's practically third world in mentality." (Almost a word-for-word quotation.) The Americans laughed uncomfortably and said something like "Yeah, if you want to see backwards thinking, take a road trip through Missouri." ("Is that what the rest of America is like? I'm so sorry. I'll have a talk with it when we get home.")

I considered for a moment turning around and pointing out to Gandalf how ignorant, closed-minded and arrogant he sounded not only about the millions of people in middle America, but about the 3rd world as well (British stereotypes, anyone?), but I try not to let myself get too irritated by stuff like that, because it's just bound to happen. So I packed my Shakespeare and left instead. So that's that. Missed opportunity for the fostering of cross-cultural understanding and fellowship? Maybe. Ah well.

You hear a lot about anti-Americanism in Europe. I haven't encountered many people who are anti-American across the board, but I have met several who will say things similar to Gandalf's comment about "the rest" of America. They're usually fine with what they perceive as the better bits of America, but they make free with their criticism about "the rest" of the country. Being very solidly from "the rest" and having been brought up in and among the institutions and ideas that they find so backwards, I'm not necessarily ready to defend all the things they criticize, but I am irritated by the complete lack of nuance, understanding, and, dare I say, tolerance in their criticism of mid-American culture. (Because it is, after all, a culture, with roots and reasons, for better or worse.)

And I guess that lack of nuance is the same thing that a lot of people find irritating about Americans' approach to other cultures. I think it's important A) to understand that such cultural misunderstanding is only to be expected, given that cultures ARE quite different and it takes a lot of interaction and education to understand or empathize with things that are different, and B) to recognize this natural tendency to oversimplification in one's self and amend it as one can. In my own case, it's also important to C) not get irritated or combative when people say stupid things about America like Gandalf. (See point A.) Oh, and Americans should quit apologizing for everything all the time in these pub conversations. That is legitimately annoying. And counterproductive. Stick to your guns (ha!), people!

I noticed today that the tree outside my window is covered in flower buds! I think they're going to bloom soon. that will be BEAUTIFUL. But it has already led to bees flying in my windows and I expect a burgeoning increase in the little buggers. Updates as bevents warrant.

-a

Retro activity

2009-04-03T03:39:00.000-07:00

I find myself putting things like "take vitamins" on my to-do list not only to remind me to do them, but for the cheaply-bought sense of accomplishment I get when I check the box. I over-segment tasks for the same reason. It works.

Oxford is beautiful right now. warm and blossoms everywhere. Today I'm going to run out to Marson to check the distance to the house I'll probably be living in with Nicole, Emmacita, and mysterious Bonnie. I will check both "go to Marston" and "work out" off my list. 2 for 1.

Follow up, several hours later: another of my to-do list habits includes putting tasks on the list after I've done them. Today for instance, "go to Marston" was replaced by "sort housing stuff" after I discovered that the house we wanted had already been let. So instead of running to Marston I ran around the internet looking for new housing options. Check and check.

reciprocity

2009-02-10T01:34:00.000-08:00

I have a friend here named Sherif. Sherif is sort of a Rhodes Scholar's Rhodes Scholar. Princeton grad, speaks 6 languages, articles published, blah blah blah. Sherif's kryptonite, however, is knowing where the heck he is at any given time. The child simply has no sense of direction. As I write this I'm also chatting to Sherif on gchat. He's supposed to meet me at my college for lunch today. He's been here twice before, but is still needing detailed directions. The first time he was here, he came into my house for about 5 minutes, then needed to be pointed in the right direction to get out of the college. (It's an absolutely straight shot from the front gate to my place.) It's really amazing how confused he gets. I'm not making fun of him, exactly. It's really quite endearing.

I have a new theory that if you're going to be THAT smart in some areas, you necessarily have to make up for it by being deficient in others.

I'm pretty sure my theory isn't terribly accurate. But it does seme to be bourne out by a lot of the ridiculously smart people I encounter here.

Heartbreak Hillary -- Week Four. Finishing out halfway. heeeyah.

-a

The Better Life

2009-01-27T01:06:00.000-08:00

The other day I went to Boots and bought multi-vitamins and calcium/magnesium pills. I don't really know what the magnesium is for, but I know I'm meant to take calcium to retain my shapely spine and I figure a little mag-mag can't hurt. And they didn't sell straight-up calcium.

It's a different life-style, the life of the vitamin taker. I think just having them in my room makes me feel like I'm taking care of myself and living in a wholesome way. Getting up early. Pretending to work. Staying hydrated. Writing blog entries. Eating granola for breakfast (what I'm doing now). I even think about flossing now and then.

Heartbreak Hillary: Week 2, the Week of Andrea. Isn't shaping up ENTIRELY as well as could be desired, but really, it's not too bad. I was telling someone yesterday that while I certainly had a social live at OU (the other OU, not this one), I didn't have 3 or 4 invitations to various things every day of the week. And even everyday activities get expanded here. Back home, lunch didn't have to be followed by coffee and dinner wasn't always tailed with a drink. Tea was a beverage, not an event and certainly not an excuse to take time off of your work.

I know there are people here who either ignore all these Time Eaters or else successfully incorporate them into their days. I'm working on becoming one of them. In Oklahoma, I could pretty much count on not having to be anywhere Monday through Thursday nights, and thus could piddle through the day and work in the evening. Not so here. One of my projects this term is to adjust so that I actually get things DONE during the day, allowing myself to traipse off guiltless to one of the million things going on during the weekday evenings.

Last night, for instance, I (guiltily) went to a pub in South Oxford -- the Cape of Good Hope -- with several Australian friends to celebrate Australia Day. Nobody knows why the Aussies always go to the Cape (it's their regular venue), which is clearly a South African thing. Maybe they're confused by the penguin on the sign. "Oooh! We have those too!"

Nat once told me that he had a friend who used to say "Never trust an Australian, but always party with one." I don't know about the first part, but I endorse the second. The Aussies are good fun, as they say here. They're maybe the only nationality in Oxford who are louder than the Americans. They get excited about things. And I realised for the first time yesterday that a disproportionate number of Australian men are ridiculously tall. I think that if Texas really did become a country, it would be a less fun version of Australia.

A bit more Ancrene Wisse and a whole lotta Paradise Lost on the menu today. Go, Andrea, go!

-a

Inspiration and Motivation

2009-01-25T02:32:00.001-08:00

Nat visited during naught week and made the comment that it would be really hard to study in Oxford and waste time sitting in your room watching Youtube because the city is so darn inspiring. I would like to testify right now that he was wrong about that.

I had an inspiration to try to do something clever with the root words of inspiration (breathing) and motivation (movement) and how the presence of first and the lack of the second leads me to do the academic equivalent of my favorite real-life hobby (mouth breathing), but I'm simply not that clever today. Nor that motivated.

Ancrene Wisse -- hitting it hard. Heartbreak Hillary. Week 2. Take 1.

-a

And Unexpected Turkey Craving

2008-11-27T02:48:00.000-08:00

I've never been the biggest thanksgiving fan. Not my kind of food. Too many dishes afterwards. So imagine my surprise this morning when I felt melancholy realizing it was Thanksgiving and that I wasn't going to be part of a nation-wide acknowledgment of the fact.

Then there was this. The final straw. The twist of the knife:

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=WQ26144948

Isn't that just great? Isn't that a jaunty song? Don't you love corn and pilgrims? I sure do.

gooble.

I need money

2008-04-15T19:28:00.000-07:00

and do not know how to procure it. a couple grand. quickly.

you know what I'm sayin'?

2007-06-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Daily blogging seems and impossibility. I have become vastly introspective and lazy. Far too introspective and lazy to even consider linking to things and giving analysis and so on. But I've decided that my lack of a paper trail up to this point in my life is going to make things woefully difficult on my future biographers. So, in a move of completely typical selflessness, here is my day in... heck, let's give it eight minutes.

So I got up this morning at the ungodly hour of seven, pressed snooze and rolled boldly out of bet around seven thirty. Quickly groomed self, evaluated new haircut to the slight disadvantage of new haircut (Hair Cutting Man knows best - shouldn't have told him to go shorter. but it will grow. it always does.) and rode bicycle to work at the stadium, arriving at 8. bike seat was slightly soggy from unending rain, thus bum was slightly soggy as well. but chairs at work are of a fuzzy absorbent upholstery, so problem was quickly dealt with.

At work, watched a lot of Arrested Development and downloaded some articles for research. Don't usually watch tv/movies at work, unlike my co-workers, but just discovered tv links about fifteen years behind everyone. I'm savoring my youth by trying to pretend I fit in. Also helped football player with paper and stoutly refused to write it for him, in spite of pressures.

Off work at two. Made self sandwich, ate sandwich and read Jude the Obscure. (Scandal! good book, so far.) Muss called, just back from research in Michigan. Made plans with same. Finished scholarship essay (I gotta win this one! i just gotta!), took checks to bank, then met with Muss for a cup o' joe. Or, in my case, a frilly blended strawberry thing. Muss paid with a gift card because muss is great like that. Had a lovely time with the Musser, she told me of her hellish times in Michigan with her drama queen professor and various co-worker tensions arising from too much time spent with lampreys.

at six, back to work! I was surprised my boss scheduled me this much, but I think one of the Andrea's on the schedule was the other Andrea who I didn't think existed because she never actually came into work. maybe that was her this morning. should have asked. well, almost out of time for this one. Just watched more Arrested Development tonight, printed scholarship application materials, and then wrote this. considering calling Muss again tonight to see if she wants to hazard the creation of a chocolate martini or two with me. I just found a recipe.

and there you have it. I think I went over my time just slightly. If I hadn't I might tell you about painting my kitchen. Thus making it a very good idea to time these things.

tata!

-a

2007-06-22T15:57:00.000-07:00

my day in three minutes.

So I got up a lot earlier than I thought I would because I stayed out late with a bunch of journalists who were mad at the world in general and the way that OU works in particular. I spent more on Guinness than I meant to because it was more expensive than I thought.

so I got up, groomed myself, made coffee, read "Life at the Bottom," a very good book and worth your time, even if a little repetitive. I wrote Melanie a poem (quite clever), showered, rode my bike to Campus Corner where I had pizza and talked about life with Professor Melanie and Friend Jamel. Worked out my life plan for grad school and so on. Rode back home, changed pants, rode bike to work at two, been sitting here since then (it's six) and the awkward girl I work with just awkwardly informed me that it's time to go.

anyway, I'm going home now. don't know what the evening holds. this took me four minutes. forsooth.

2007-06-19T07:05:00.000-07:00

This isn't me, but it's funny in that mild and unimposing way that things unrelated to me are allowed to be funny:

That said, I am pondering turning this blog thing into a daily affair for the amusement and edification of all three of my avid readers. But there would have to be wide and violent pleading before I made such a move. Otherwise... I might just make it anyway.

How do people do this every day?

2007-06-02T08:10:00.000-07:00

So it's the clink for Paris Hilton. Most reports you watch or read on the subject at some point drop the line "Many wonder whether this will damage her career."

First of all, what career? Has this girl been actively pursuing anything besides supreme bimbohood that I'm not aware of? In whose eyes, exactly, will she be losing huge amounts of credibility after a short stint in the pokey?

Secondly, who is wondering this? Apparently not the authors of the news stories themselves, who merely cite the faceless "many" who wonder, speculate, and wring their hands about Paris's "career." And ten bucks says that the 'many' aren't pundits and think tanks. No, chances are that all the reporters writing these stories figured that for a normal person with an actual career, a month in jail might be harmful. Take Martha Stewart - people actually did speculate about her career after jail. So the wording fits into the story. It sounds plausible. But I submit that it's bunk. Paris doesn't have a career and, even if she does, nobody worth mentioning is speculating about it. But it's a nice journalistic sounding phrase and, heck, all the other reporters are doing it!

Small beans, perhaps, but shoddy nonetheless. Journalists of America, consider yourselves reprimanded.

Kudos to Madame Tussad's, by the way:

well, I suppose that will have to do

2007-04-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

So everybody who has been avidly watching the unfolding of the Phil Spector murder trial (I know I have!) knows that before his first court appearance he went to his barber and said, "Give me the most spectacular hairdo ever seen on man, beast, or dandelion." The result:

Historic.

Word on the street is that his PR people objected and encouraged him to tone things down. Get the soccer moms on his side. Be accessible. So when the trial itself got underway, this was what he'd come up with:

Unfortunate.

The first look says "I AM rock music and you do NOT mess with me." This newest avatar is more along the lines of "I am an unbalanced old man in a yellow silk shirt who, let's face it, probably does come unhinged and kill a blonde or two every now and again."

You've chosen poorly, Phil.

By not exactly popular demand

2007-04-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

here's a link to the 'constipationary' column.

for those of you who are interested, the rest of my mediocre ink wasting can be accessed by this way-too-complicated method:

1) to to hub.ou.edu

2) type 'denhoed' into the search box

3) when it tells you it doesn't find anything copy and drag 'denhoed' down into the 'author name' box.

4) search again. and there it is.

I haven't discovered an easier way. if you do, let me know.

my finger-licking taste of journalism

2007-04-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

You get backed into a corner, sometimes.

Despite the constipationary effort that it is to come up with acceptable topics these days, I still enjoy my biweekly 'columning' for the school paper for a few reasons:

A) It lets my friends know I'm still alive, though overcommitment prevents actual physical appearances
B) I get to indulge my pretensions to wit and insight
C) I like being a recognizable campus personality. (on a very small scale, but I'll take what I get.)

And when people call me names I get a power rush because I made them emote, but you didn't hear that from me.

"some weeks are tough, though" complained the intelligent and well-fed college student. this week the inevitable topic was the shooting at VA. tough to approach creatively or, sadly, compellingly. how is it that something so catastrophic lends itself so naturally to cliches and platitudes?

turning the silly thing in over 12 hours late. and it's not quite up to snuff, but what are you going to do?

the Jackson 5 drowns my sorrows.

dashed interesting

2007-03-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

I am a highly motivated and deeply thinking student, dedicated to the betterment of my mind and the relentless pursuit of knowledge and truth.

So I spent the last ten minutes looking at the celebrity playlists on i-tunes. Jim Carrey's is good. I respect the man. Then there was John Mellencamp. Of his 15 songs, 3 were on my top 25 most-played list. probably top ten, but I reformatted my hard-drive recently and no longer have the list itself.

considering that 'jack and diane' is the only john mellencamp song I know off the top of my head, I'm not sure what this coincidence says about me. That I'm catchy and angsty and a bit too country for my tastes?

Ease in softly

2007-03-22T23:11:00.000-07:00

As always, when an Ahern says "jump" I say "how high?"

At Abe's (and Mark's) suggestion, I'm popping my little head up in the world of blog. I don't pretend to know anything about the essence of poetry or whom we should and shouldn't kill in the Middle East, but my fine education at one of our nation's foremost public universities has amply equipped me to expound on sorority fashion and how dumb it is that Fergie spells stuff in all her songs.

I see fine times ahead of us, my friends. Mighty fine times.