Prepoceros

Marvin Zindler, the quirky newscaster/consumer advocate/unmistakable personality, he of the oversized sunglasses, the white suits, the ridiculous hair, and the plastic surgeries too many to count, died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 85. I happened to be at my parents’ house yesterday (they have TV, see), so I watched KTRK’s tribute to him on the 10 o’clock news.

If you’re not from Houston, you may not have heard of him—or maybe you have—but around here, he’s a legend. I grew up watching (and making fun of) Marvin on the nightly news, but I didn’t realize that he’d been a force to be reckoned with around town for decades before I was born. When I saw him, he was either finding roach droppings in the kitchens of local restaurants or bringing doctors to foreign children’s hospitals to perform surgeries. He always stuck up for the little guy.

(more…)

This article was on the front page of CNN. It’s ridiculous.

Summary: Your husband/boyfriend/date is a lumbering, drooling caveman. Your best bet is to manipulate or tease him into giving you everything you want. Bitch power!

Meet every protest and argument he makes, no matter how ridiculously false, with the observation that he is absolutely correct … but you still want what you want. In boxing this is called rope-a-dope, and even if you don’t know what the rope part means, the dope part sounds pretty applicable. This is called win-win — except you did and he didn’t.

This paragraph makes my head all full of explodingness. Seriously, are there actual relationships like this? After seventh grade? I find it hard to believe, but there must be, or Oprah wouldn’t be rolling in cashmere track suits*.

Articles linked from this one include “Why do men watch porn?”, “What do men think about after sex?”, and “Why are men so obsessed with golf?”

———
* Can you make a track suit out of cashmere? I couldn’t remember if velour was high- or low-class.

At the teahouse again, I find myself sitting across from a table of three people in their mid-twenties who are almost certainly algebra teachers. They appear to be planning in great detail how to teach their students a unit on functions—a list of necessary concepts, the order in which to present them, how to test for understanding, different ways of explaining functions for differently-styled learners, extra-credit assignments, and, of course, how all this will be tested on the TAKS.

I think one of them is a returning teacher and the other two are new, or at least new to teaching algebra, but all three appear to be competent in their subject and to care a good deal. [I was worried a bit when I saw one guy’s copy of Algebra for Dummies, but now I surmise that he’s using it to find examples of ways to explain these concepts simply.] Their students are very lucky. This gives me hope for the future. Huzzah.

While out taking pictures for a school project today, I spotted this car parked in the lot across from the Museum of Fine Arts.

I’d seen “Republicans for Voldemort” before, but the other two were new to me.

CTHULHU FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004. Don’t settle for the lesser evil.

Knowledge is power. Power corrupts. Study hard. Be evil.

And it seems I’ve forgotten the magic words that center images in HTML/CSS. I am not so talented with the computers and the secret codes and the effort it would take to look these things up.

Also! Jim Thompson tagged me with that “eight things” meme that’s been going around, and I only just noticed. I am slow sometimes, yes. Okay, cool, I’ll get on that.

Change of plans: the road trip’ll be rained out (we were gonna go to Schlitterbahn), so I think I’ll finish Deathly Hallows tonight. Two hundred pages left. Ooooooh.

The seventh book, it is good. Every time I pick it up I tell myself I’m only going to read one chapter, maybe two, but stuff just keeps HAPPENING. Geezus.

Last night I was up until two doing math homework but didn’t actually get to sleep until after four, thanks to Ms. Rowling. I’m trying to stop reading, really I am. I have a bunch of assignments due by the end of the week, and it would be awesome if I, you know, slept every now and then. We’ll be off on a wee road trip this weekend, so that should be a good time to get those last five hundred pages finished off before anyone can ruin it for me.

In other news, YouTube’s front page just got hacked, about ten minutes ago. Now every featured video is a version of the song “Chocolate Rain,” whatever that is. YT has certainly broken itself many times before, but this is the first outside job I’ve seen. You don’t care. That’s cool. By the way, have you seen the head-cleaner tape for my camcorder? It’s decided to put wide green stripes across anything it plays—not a desirable effect. I’ve been looking for this tape since July 4th. I could give it up for lost and buy a new one, I suppose, but they’re kinda pricey. Plus I would have to leave the house. No, better to sit on my ass and hope it flies in here and whacks me in the face. Accio tape!

Dork.

EDIT: Um, apparently it was an inside job after all. YouTube took themselves over. Mmmmkay.

July 8th was a couple weeks ago, eh? Suffice it to say that I’ve been enjoying my summer, full courseload notwithstanding. Haven’t got a clue what the next few summers will look like—some kind of graduate school, maybe, or even (gasp!) a real job—but I do know that this summer is one of the best I’ve had in a while, so I’m gonna keep on living in the moment for…the next several moments. Mmmm, life.

I’m teaching LSAT again, two evenings a week. I can’t wait until I’ve established my professionalism well enough to start wearing comfortable shoes to class. Three and a half hours of pacing around the room is torture on my poor feet.

(more…)

We’re doing another one of these global concert things? Mkay. How’d that last one go—the one with Bono? Was that it? He was trying to convince the countries at the G8 conference to…do something? Maybe they all have Bono.

I’m all for global togetherness, but these big productions seem a little silly. I’m all meh-ed out on this one. No one I’ve personally talked to cares at all, as far as I can tell—is this a widespread sort of ennui*?

I do like this article. It’s got that fun reality check feeling. Practicality check? Yes.

Do you think they pick the cause for each new concert by how clever a name they can come up with for it? Because “Live 8″ was pretty catchy, with the pun on “Live Aid” and all. And “Live Earth” isn’t too bad, once you’ve done Live 8. “Live AIDS,” anyone? “Live Hate (crimes)”?

———
* Did you know that ennui also has a transitive verb form? You ennui me. And when you use it like that, it sounds like annoy, from which it is Frenchily derived. (I didn’t know that.) It’s mostly used as a past participle, though, but hey, that’s still pretty cool.

1. Purchase AT&T U-verse internet service for your new apartment.
2. Two weeks later, watch your puppy befriend the install technicians and try to steal all their stuff for his personal chewing purposes.
3. Wait for your internet to go out. In my case, this step took about a week, but YMMV.
4. Call your boyfriend/24-hour tech support. Establish that the problem is not your cranky computer, but your broadband connection.
5. Look through the brochures the techs left you for the U-verse tech support number. Find only the general AT&T customer service number.
6. Call the main number with some trepidation, remembering your previous experiences with incompetent/confused reps.

(more…)