Durance of Reason

alex_white @ 2006-08-18T11:52:00

2006-08-18T16:05:19Z

Since it will probably get deleted from Everything, I'm going to put this here, where nobody can delete it, ha ha.

I am God.

You don't believe me? I will show you.

I am not the God. I am a God. I am not even the God, solitary and indivisible, of my craft. But I am a god of words, of ideas, of whirling and rushing memes and concepts and breathless explanations. You are too.

I will show you the art of creation. Watch.

Here is Jessie. He is. Watch me make him unhappy. He now lives next door to a beautiful woman, the woman of his dreams, in fact, to whom he has never spoken, and to whom he will never speak. He loves her, entirely and unselfishly, and does not believe that she knows he exists.

Watch me make her unhappy. Her name is Doris. She is thirty-five, once married, disillusioned with the world. She sees Jessie, and thinks of another life that could be. Although she will never admit it, she, beautiful and tall, wishes that she could be with him. She imagines, in her fantasies, that a life with him would be different, that he could show her the compassion that she has never seen before.

It would be so. I have created Jessie to be caring and intelligent, a fine lover with a strong, unwavering moral compass, who would be happy and successful and have everything he desires if only he would reach out and speak to Doris. They sleep so close that it hurts me, sometimes. Their beds are on either side of the same wall, and they do not know it.

Now watch Me make them happy.

I can change the future for them. I will change the future for them, because I love My children, and want them to be happy.

One morning, Jessie and Doris leave their apartments at the same moment, and, caught up in a thought that I breathed into her head, Doris is not paying attention, and trips. She falls in front of Jessie, concussing herself. Jessie, being a good person, as I made him, helps her up, and decides that he will be late to work today. He takes her to a couch and has her lie down while he gets ice. (Although he forgot to put ice in the freezer the last time he used it, I have just performed a minor miracle and put it there for him.)

Doris looks around the room, and sees in an instant a man who is just as lonely and just as intelligent as she is. They will be happy together.

When I sit down to create, My works are not perfect. I do not have same the mastery of the craft as the other gods of my pantheon. But I try my best. A small miracle here, an original thought worth pursuing there.

I am a God of great humor, of overwhelming faith in My creations, of a singular desire to give back with My works to the other Gods who came before Me. You are too. I see it in the balance of a phrase, how some words flow from your fingers like wine flows from the grapevine, swelling and bursting and carefully seasoned into a drink that the Romantics knew to be good. I want to show you how I can, like Hephaestus at his forge, craft works of such enduring beauty that I can simply sit back and say, "zeh tov" — it is good.

I am a God. I am a puppeteer. I twist strands into strings, affix them to the limbs of My children, and set them to dancing. I do not always know whether I do this for Me, for You, or for anybody else. But I do it anyway, driven by a fierce hunger for creation that sometimes lies dormant in Me, but is always there.

I am God. You are God. Let our words dance together, and it will be Good.

alex_white @ 2006-08-15T13:00:00

2006-08-15T17:12:53Z

So the word “fascism” is getting thrown around a lot lately, and I’ve like to remind everybody (especially Republicans, Christian fundamentalists, right-wing nuts, neocons, and all the other kneebiters out there) what it means.

Fascism is a system of government. It’s not just a belief system. It’s specifically a strong, centralized, autocratic government, that has a strong grip on (or connections to) military, commerce, and industry. The other really, really important thing is that in fascism, disagreement of any sort is interdict. So that means that opposing political parties, anti-government or anti-leader publications, and often simply anti-government thinkers are likely to disappear suddenly and violently. Fascism has also traditionally defined itself as being strongly conservative — the lowbrows who like putting things onto spectra usually have fascism and communism pinning down the two sides of the political spectrum.

Here are some quiz questions to test your knowledge.

Who is more fascist — somebody who wants a strong US government whose leaders have well-defined ties to military and industry, or somebody who wants to smash the US government?

If you don’t like somebody, does that make them a fascist?

Are all Muslim leaders fascists? (If you answer this correctly, you know more than some US Senators, according to recent Senatorial speechmaking!)

Was Stalin a fascist? Did he think he was?

Is clamping down on free speech “protecting our freedom,” or “establishing fascism?”

Is any of this mentioned in the Bible? Do you think it would be such an issue if it were?

Why have presidents become so uninformed?

alex_white @ 2006-07-28T14:48:00

2006-07-28T18:52:00Z

Here are some funny things I’ve seen recenty.

A Krispy Kreme marquee reading,

“Attention! Now…how can God get yours?”

Art in the Museum of Modern Art made in

“cut-and-pasted paper and cut-and-pasted painted paper on paper.”

A product in an airline catalog intended for

“ ‘seasoned’ citizens and the physically challenged.”

There's a whole world of stupid out there if you keep looking.

I found Jesus today

2006-07-19T21:27:30Z

He was passing me on the escalator in the subway.

No, seriously: flowing white robes, long hair, long beard, wild look in his eyes, yellow handbag with a flower on it. The whole bit.

It was a spiritual experience.

String the zither and fetch me a liar

2006-07-19T19:40:15Z

I recently received this e-mail:

From: Kelly Cassidy <kelly.cassidy@oberlin.edu>
Date: Tuesday, July 18, 2006 8:59 am
Subject: Credit hours...
To: Alexander.White@oberlin.edu
Cc: Liz.Clerkin@oberlin.edu

Dear Alex,

When completing a form verifying your attendance at Oberlin, we noticed that you registered
for EXCO 320C (crn 12743) for Spring '06 semester for 1.783 credit hours. Why?

As I'm sure you can understand, although the system allowed you to enter an odd number, we have changed the credit hours on your course to a whole number (2.00). We cannot permit students to register for courses for fractions of a credit hour. Can you imagine the questions
from grad schools when they review your transcript?

In the future, please register for whole credits only. If you have any questions or concerns
regarding this matter, feel free to give me a call at x58451.

Thank you,
Kelly J. Cassidy
Office of the Registrar

And my response:

Hi,

I apologize for any concern my change my have made. I decided that if I were being given the option of four significant figures in my credit hour choices, I should use it. It was partially irony, partially thumbing my nose at poorly thought out coding, but not meant to be malicious or offensive.

Although I don't mean to undermine your point, my hope is that any academic body seeing such a change would quickly realize upon asking about it that my actions were more indicative of expression and rationality than an attempt to undermine the system.

I've always been happy about the fact that Oberlin is an institution that encourages critical thought, risk-taking, and intellectualism. Surely, giving students the freedom to make silly, non-destructive choices, and then criticizing them for making them is not the Oberlin spirit.

Again, I'm sorry if any of this was personally offensive to you or anybody in your organization. My intention was to add a touch of strangeness to something so dull as a database.

Yours in FEARLESSness,

Alex White

If it wouldn’t have been such a terrible decision, I would much rather have made my response hopelessly obscene and insulting. But, as a member of an organization that has to deal with e-mailings from angry students, I know exactly what bureaucrats at Oberlin do in response to such messages (hint: forward them to supervisors). And I have a grad school-laden future to plan!

Really, this sort of thing bothers me more than it should, but then quickly stops bothering me. Obviously, they’re only trying to cover their asses now that they have a stupid system in place (if we’re not allowed to register for fractional credit hours, maybe you shouldn’t have made it an option in the first place — or just told us not to!), but even so, this is the sort of personal expression that it doesn’t make sense to stifle. If I fail to graduate by 0.217 credit hours, it seems to me that it’s my own damn fault. Similarly, I want to be answerable to graduate schools for my frivolity.

Sure, plenty of fine institutions would look down their noses at this sort of outside-the-box thinking, rife with synergy, proactively imagineering a new paradigm for credit hours, but there’s a small voice at the back of my head saying:

Fuck it! You don’t want to go to that kind of school anyway.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: bureaucrats are pigs. But only because they’re told to be.

alex_white @ 2006-06-27T22:58:00

2006-06-28T02:58:56Z

So I read an article today about how Congress narrowly failed passing a bill to ban flag burning. You may remember this issue from The Simpsons, in a bit parodying School House Rock. Quoting that,

"There's a lot of flag-burners / who have got too much freedom / I wanna make it legal for policemen / to beat 'em / 'Cause there's limits to our liberties / Least I hope and pray that there are / 'Cause those liberal freaks go too far."

"Why don't we just make a law against flag burning?"

"Because that law would be unconstitutional. But if we change the Constitution…"

"Then we could make all sorts of crazy laws!"

"Now you're catching on!"

I also found this:

[Senator Wayne] Allard [R-CO] said that a flag-burning ban would not be a restriction on speech, "only on the means the speaker chooses to communicate."

Does that set off anybody else's bullshit detectors? Why not just make peaceful demonstrations, underground newspapers, critical books, newspapers, and websites, and personal discussions illegal? Those are also just ways of choosing to communicate. By this guy's logic, we could make illegal every way of communication other than carving opinions onto the side of a limestone block in the center of the Tidal Basin, and it would still be perfectly in line with the freedom of speech outlined in the Bill of Rights.

By the way, if this had passed, it would have been the first amendment ever to have altered the Bill of Rights.

See if you can guess who spearheaded this crusade? (Clue: Orrin H.)

Addendum. I went to Senator Allard's website and submitted the following to him:

Sir,

Today I found this quotation from you in an article in the Denver Post (http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_3986618)

[Senator Wayne] Allard [R-CO] said that a flag-burning ban would not be a restriction on speech, "only on the means the speaker chooses to communicate."

By your logic, we could make peaceful demonstrations, underground newspapers, critical books, newspapers, and websites, and personal discussions illegal as well without abrogating the freedom of speech, because those too are just ways people choose to communicate. Indeed, we could make illegal every manner of communication other than carving opinions onto the side of a limestone block in the center of the Tidal Basin, and it would still be perfectly in line with the freedom of speech outlined in the Bill of Rights.

I don't think that this is consistent with the aims of the Constitution. Freedom of speech means the freedom to put forth opinions in any way one sees fit, although I would argue that this liberty only extends to communications which don't directly hurt people (for example, if a flag-burner were to use the flag to light a house on fire). Just because speech is offensive to some does not mean it should be restricted.

I realize that you probably will not see this, and that if you did, it probably would not change your opinion. But you (or the underling filtering this) should bear in mind that the purpose of the freedoms outlined in the Constitution isn't to give Americans a narrow set of circumstances in which they can act: it is to prevent oppression of exactly the sort that you are now a proponent of.

What separates our system from Fascism is that we can voice our opinions without being called unpatriotic. To wish any less for the American people is a disservice to everything this country stands for.

Yours in freedom,

Alexander White

After I submitted it, I was given a new page proudly saying

Thanks for expressing your view!

I found this both ironic and a little depressing.

Sputnik's only salad crisper

2006-06-26T01:44:47Z

Thing I saw this weekend: a cross-eyed man in a synagogue trying to get people to do shots of Jack Daniel's with him.

Manifesto time

2006-06-20T04:09:48Z

The world can be split into different kinds of people many different ways, but one of the most meaningful to me is selfish people and selfless people. There are people out there who help others, who make decisions not to benefit themselves, but to make things easier for everybody, who will try as hard as they can to make a difference, and then there are the people who take advantage of this and shit all over these people's work.

I'm getting really sick of dealing with selfish people. And it's not just specific people being selfish all the time. It's selfishness in various parts of people's lives, temporary selfishness. Rarely do you meet somebody who is consistently selfish all the time — such a person usually ends up being raped in prison. And frankly, it's all the better that they do end up that way. Nice and poetic.

But there are selfish people everywhere. I try to think that I minimize my own selfishness, that I organize my life in such a way that I'm not actively hurting people whenever I find that I am, and that I'm not passively hurting people as much as I can without making myself unhappy. It's getting to be really frustrating to do so.

Let's start with the first example that comes into my head: driving. I'm a good driver. Compared to most people, I'm a ridiculously good driver. I keep a safe speed, I signal my intentions, I don't tailgate, I don't pass illegally, I don't make sudden movements, I let people in when they want to, I don't run lights, I stop fully at stop signs.

I know that plenty of you reading this don't do all these things. Take a second and ask yourself why you aren't. They aren't that hard to do. And they're all good ideas. If you go faster than you should be, you put people in danger because you won't be able to react in time. If you don't signal, people won't be able to anticipate what you're doing, and will be forced to make guesses. If they guess wrongly, they might miss turns, end up in accidents, or worse. And you could have prevented that by reaching two inches to the left with one hand. That same logic applies to most of these: if you don't do what people are expecting, by stopping, turning the right way, signaling, or whatever, you are putting people in danger out of selfishness. And I hope that you learn your lesson in a situation so horrific that you will never shake off the knowledge that it was your needless selfishness that hurt people.

Just tonight, I was going about 35 on a 30 mile an hour road, at night, that curved through a residential neighborhood. The guy behind me was tailgating with his brights on for about a mile, after which he zoomed past me (illegally, of course) and ramped up to about 50 miles an hour. I really do hope that he hit and killed a small child tonight — not because I want to hurt this hypothetical child, but because I want that asshole to live the rest of his life with the knowledge that his selfish driving cost an innocent child his or her life. And I really do mean that.

Let's look at another part of life: bureaucracy. Why does bureaucracy happen? In theory, to make things better. But it's when people stop making choices that will help people, and start making decisions that will benefit themselves, that bureaucracy bloats of control and hurts people. Why is it that it takes so long to find and apply for so many useful government services? If we aren't supposed to get those services, they should be removed. If we are, it shouldn't be made impossible to get them. I believe that if there is a way to get people the things they need without requiring them to talk to fifteen different soulless people in business suits and fill out 20 forms in triplicate, it should be the way things are done. There is no justification for doing it any other way.

Now let's look at religion. Religion is just a hotbed of selfishness and self-delusion. Many religions got their starts for good reasons: teaching people the basic morality that for some reason they couldn't figure out themselves. But why is it that so many strongly religious people go out and do stupid, hurtful things? Selfishness. Why does Pat Robertson have such a strong agenda? He wants power and money. He is willing to lie to people constantly while keeping up a front of moral superiority in order to get himself money and power, and he doesn't care how many people he has to trod on.

Religion is used to keep people down. It's very easy to get people not to question why their circumstances are so miserable if you can convince them that Zeus or Jesus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster is going to come in their window and rip their torso open otherwise. Why did the Middle Ages happen? I'll tell you one reason: religion. Would your average peasant have accepted their miserable life quite as readily if they weren't told that there was a big payoff in the sky? I don't think so. Would these people have been kept subdued and ignorant without village priests hoarding all of the knowledge? I don't think so. And why did all of this happen? So that the fat could get fatter. While people were foundering in abject misery their entire lives, anybody from knights on up was living off of the peasants' efforts, and gladly so. Did you know that there were regular Papal orgies under some popes? I'll bet you didn't, and I'll bet that if you are willing to swallow religion, you won't, either.

Have you noticed that deeply religious people feel that it's their right to intrude into your life? to tell you what to do with your body? to tell you what sort of decisions you ought to be making? to tell you that it's okay that they harass and attack gays, because Jesus doesn't love them? And all the time, they're smugly convinced that they're on the moral high ground, so it's fine.

During breaks and the summer, I work as a freelance consultant. I help people with their computers. I fix them, I upgrade them, I teach people to use them better. I charge $30 an hour, and people are glad to pay it. Here's why: I don't cheat them. I'm candid about the problem, about how I'm going to fix it, about how long it will take, about how much money it will cost. I don't charge the full fee when I don't fix things. And customers are suspicious, because every computer service they've dealt with in the past has ripped them off. Charged them for time they didn't use to fix things, ordered parts and peripherals that nobody needed, and lied about the problem. Why? Why did this happen? How can somebody do this without feeling guilty about the fact that they are stealing from people who trust them with something crucial that they don't themselves understand? Same question for car repairment, telephone companies, loan companies, insurance companies, fast food companies, and everybody else who makes a business of stealing from people. Not to mention robbers.

Let me tell you a little story. This happened recently in my home town. A couple of the football heroes at the local high school held up a smoothie store. Why did they do it? To prove that they could. They did it with a toy gun because they thought that they were invincible. I live in one of the richest parts of one of the richest counties in America, one of the richest countries in the world. These kids are unimaginably wealthy compared to about 99% of the world, and they held up a store. They didn't need the money. They just thought they were better than other people. And here's the best part: they went and told a lot of people about it, and put photos up online of their daring robbery. When the police found them, they were shocked that there were going to be repercussions. They kept repeating that it was just a harmless prank. How much could $500 dollars mean to them? How much do you think it means to the Chinese laborers making their iPods and their cell phones and the seats in the Mercedes that their daddies bought them? And then, once they confessed in front of the police, their parents, and a lawyer (thus making it ironclad), the rest of the football team started putting up signs and sending around letters crying about how these kids were innocent of wrongdoing.

Why did this happen? Because they are selfish people, brought up by selfish people, surrounded their entire lives by a circle of fawning, selfish people. A couple of them had meathead football hero scholarships to good schools lined up for the next year, which were summarily yanked. Good. I hope they all end up on the street. And you know why? Because a good friend of mine told me that one of them tried to pick a fight with him when they were kids just for kicks. Because they have more money than God, and committed a robbery anyway just because they wanted to. Because they're selfish people.

I should take a moment here and explain my personal decision on crime and punishment: I think that any wrongdoing should be followed by an equal or larger punishment that will make the person regret his or her decision for as long as he or she can remember it. However, I don't trust any human body to be moral enough to make or enforce this decision. Thus, my rule, which you can find an equivalent of for other wrongdoings:

If you kill, you do not deserve to live.

Note that I said "do not deserve" — I don't think that you should be killed, just that you have forfeited any right you may have had to life. (Although I think that natural rights are bullshit anyway — was it Heinlein who asked how a drowning man can apply his rights to life and happiness?)

I'm tired of humanity. I have no faith in it any more. How can I when I know that any really good idea I might have will probably be stolen by somebody else out to make an easy buck? How can I when I know that a lot of people vote for a certain person because they always vote for that party, despite the fact that he thinks gays are evil and women are evil and non-whites are evil and the poor are evil? How can I when I know that many of those voters agree? How can I when I know that there are more starving artists than starving investment bankers? How can I when I know that my children, if I have any, will grow up in a world of filth and unbreathable air because a lot of spoiled rich Americans drive trucks for no reason other than the smallness or nonexistence of their penises? How can I know that when my classmates go to protests just to be part of them, not because they would have tried to change the problems in other ways? How can I when I know that my neighbors cheat on their taxes, beat their loved ones, run over small animals in their cars, have more than two children per couple, fail to tell their children that they believe in them, think that Islam is the religion with turbans and uncut hair among the five signs of faithfulness, vote for evil people, encourage Fascism in their daily lives, ignore the poor, ignore the hungry, imprison drug addicts instead of treating them, tell people that sex is evil, blame video games for the piss-poor job they do raising their children, litter, pollute, cheat on the people who love them, and drink to forget?

This may sound like a cry for help. It is. I'm not threatening to kill myself — it's not that sort of cry for help. But I want your help. We can fix the world, because the only problem with it is us. From now on, whenever you make a decision, ask yourself who it's helping, and who it's hurting, and whether you want to live in a world of people willing to make the decision the same way you do. It's the oldest maxim out there, the one that is behind every belief system before the bullshit, bathos, and evil set in.

It's the least you can do.

He who laughs last has a delayed laughbox

2006-06-14T03:11:50Z

Go outside!

alex_white @ 2006-06-13T23:03:00

2006-06-14T03:03:59Z

There once was a man from Tibet
Who kept a dead snake as a pet
He said, "I've been told
That the joke will grow old,
But my wife hasn't caught on just yet!"

Thank you.

Fruit cups for the insane

2006-06-13T04:26:44Z

Idea for a TV show: a bunch of prissy spoiled upper-echelons-of-high-school-popularity girls are put into boot camp. There are prizes beyond anything that they will make before marriage if they can just make their way through it. However, the personnel training them are all woman-hating gay men, so none of the girls' tricks and gambits and whatnot will work (but you don't tell them that).

Also, introduce rules bit by bit. Don't tell them that makeup isn't allowed until a couple of weeks in, and then punish the shit out of them for having it.

Another idea: pick some embarrassingly nerdy people (the kind who play collectible trading card games based on sci-fi TV shows, and constantly quote anime sans context at people who wouldn't get it) and put them through a six-week regiment of steroids and hardcore physical training. Then send them into a gym or a skinhead rally or something with nightsticks and Glocks and watch the fun.

Another idea: diving for gold bricks in 30-foot deep vats of gravy.

Space Jelly

2006-06-13T04:21:19Z

"Oh man, I had a great time in Tim's bed. All night. Whoo, wow."

-Kelly, taken out of context

alex_white @ 2006-05-03T16:05:00

2006-05-03T20:06:31Z

The display of the printer in the Helpdesk currently reads "W00T."

Fuck everybody at this college but the students and professors

2006-03-14T18:27:05Z

1. The administration is trying to push to turn us into an absolutely generic school. Nancy Dye is concerned with our image of a quirky, offbeat leftist school, and is pumping money into athletics and other mindless meathead distractions to give the world a different impression. She's also apparently concerned with our position as a gay-friendly school. Fuck Nancy Dye, and fuck this asshole soulless marketing lackey of hers. Does anybody at this school think of us as "fearless?" Would anybody actually put that on a personal list of ten or even thirty accurate descriptors? Does anybody believe that that image is being pushed for any reason other than to draw in more athletes and others?

Not that I have any problem with people who play sports; I just think that anybody who goes to a particular college because of the strength of its athletics program should be fixing my plumbing or pumping my gas, not majoring in some bullshit social science so that they can demean the value of an Oberlin education.

Fuck you, Oberlin College administrators.

2. I recently put in a work order to have my blinds replaced. I got back to my room to find my desk partially rearranged and a complex LEGO model that I had built from scratch completely shattered and sitting in a pot on the floor. It's pretty obvious to me that the person who did this didn't just knock it off the shelf; they took the time to break it into smaller pieces afterwards so that it could fit in a pot.

ResLife (rené ResEd, as if they have anything at all to do with our education, other than educating us in how to deal with shiftless, incompetent bureaucrats) is so full of water that it makes my head spin. When was the last time that you tried to accomplish anything relating to housing that didn't involve getting foisted through at least three levels of bureaucracy? Why is it that a part of the college that could be handled by twenty efficient people and a couple of computers instead employs hundreds of incompetents? Why is it that they're pushing for more on-campus housing and barring us from alternatives in an attempt to save money at the same time that they employ God knows how many people who don't now and never will deserve the amount of money they're being paid for what's effectively a monkey's job?

And it's not like anything is particularly well-done, for all of that redundancy. The new Union Street houses were partially constructed with rotting wood, over time, over budget, over everything, because we hired a shitty contractor who did a shitty job, and our bureaucracy was too incompetent and shitty itself to fire the contractor and hire a worthwhile one. When the houses weren't finished in time, ResEd assumed it drew enough water to force the Oberlin Inn to cancel the reservations of paying customers and put up students until the houses could be finished. The first heavy rainstorm of the schoolyear flooded the basements of several of the houses, knocking out power and Internet to the entire complex. Why did this happen? Because nobody bothered to make sure it wouldn't.

Fuck you, ResEd.

3. Our network is being choked in order to prevent piracy. It works pretty well at that; if you've ever tried to access an external file-sharing network, legitimate or not, you'll find that it's pretty much impossible to connect to other computers. However, legitimate services are getting fucked in the ass. It's an ordeal to deal with the secure part of any website that sells products or services; one cannot use Amazon without frequent timeouts. If you've ever blamed the servers of the company you're dealing with, you're wrong. It's us.

We're being constantly insulted with the lack of responsibility credited to us by the CIT. As an employee, I can guarantee you that we have enormous amounts of bandwidth going to waste. Why is it that certain services are being choked, but that bandwidth isn't being redirected to the Web, or other legitimate uses of the network? I'll tell you why: it's easier to choke everything than to do your job right.

It's kind of funny, really, that the only dependable service on our campus network is Direct Connect; the only guaranteed way of getting data is in the form of piracy at 2 MiB per second. Even the services that our campus provides are done worse than Direct Connect: it doesn't go down on Monday nights, setup and installation are simple and intuitive, and more. It's laughable.

You know why it's so hard to change our passwords on ObieMail? It's because there's a fundamental disconnect between the way that we (the CIT) think about e-mail and the way we provide it. If you want to change your password, you need to go to the Helpdesk and fill out a form, which is checked personally by a student worker, who then brings it over to a box at his or her convenience. That box is then emptied at the convenience of another CIT employee, who then changes the passwords — by hand — at her convenience. The form is then put in a big ol' binder, in case there's a problem later.

Fuck you, CIT.

4. We hear constant talk about the dire financial straits the school is in. What's our solution? To cut programs and services that matter. Never mind the fact that nobody in this entire school has any idea of where the money is going — let's cut the London Program and a whole bunch of faculty and make the school a residential college and hire some overpaid Boston marketing fuck while completely avoiding the question of where the millions of dollars in salary going to the administration is coming from! I say, put your money where your mouth is, Mrs. Dye, and eat me. Then give the money back, if you care about this school at all, and not just padding your pockets. We're told that the reason that Nancy Dye gets so much money is that she's the best of the best, that she does a good job getting money for the school. Well, I have some news for you. Somebody who is good at raising money, but then does her damnedest to make sure that it gets wasted on things that the students don't care about, is a fuckup. Not the best of the best. I'm not impressed.

Here's a fun fact, by the way: the day after Coca-Cola was banned from this campus, Pepsi Corporation donated $500,000 to the school in order to build a new scoreboard. Turns out that the offer had been discreetly put on the table beforehand. Sure makes you believe in students effecting social justice, doesn't it?

Fuck you, financial system.

5. Here's another fun fact: if you get below twelve credit hours two semesters in a row, you're suspended for a year. If after that year, you get below twelve credit hours any semester for the rest of your stay here, you're expelled. Boom; fuck you; don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. For Christ's sake, if you get rip-roaring drunk and shatter somebody's kneecap with a golf club, the most that will probably happen to you is a semester's suspension, and then probation for your stay at Oberlin. Actually, it probably won't even be that. You'll probably just go into mediation.

Let's keep in mind what twelve credit hours is here, people: if you're taking upper-level classes, most likely that means failing just one class. Just one. What if your parents died, and you spent a year wallowing in your own misery, and then came back to school after the suspension year with the determination to make a fresh start of it? Well, you'll have to spend the rest of your time at Oberlin babying yourself and taking classes you're sure you'll do well in. If you get into one class with a bad professor, where the cards are stacked against you and you fail, you're finished. Have fun at a state school; you're obviously not right for Oberlin.

Fuck you, Academic Standing Committee.

6. This isn't a bad school at all. I think that the students and most of the professors are among the most interesting, intellectually active, dedicated individuals I've ever met. I just think that anybody whose job can't be stated using two words or fewer should be fired. And a few people besides.

The rest of you are free to continue with your business.

i'm high

2006-01-21T05:27:48Z

http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/natetrue/gar.html

Angsty bullshit et al

2005-12-12T22:56:07Z

Before I begin, I'd like to mention that ordinarily I object to this sort of frivolous angst-sharing, but this needs to be said.

I feel like a lot of people I know are being ridiculous right now. You're all at a great, fun school full of intelligent, weird people, and just by being here you're guaranteed four years' safe haven in exchange for what should really be a manageable amount of working, if I'm at all familiar with your respective intelligences. You should be happy and productive and social.

But a lot of people aren't. And I'm not sure why. A lot of you seem to be going through some sort of mental crisis right now that really doesn't need to be there. I've yet to hear somebody really explain to me why their binge-drinking, friend-abandoning, or other self-destructive behaviors are justified. (And before anybody leaps at my throat, I'm thinking of a number of people in different circles with these comments.) It's kind of ridiculous, really.

In just a few years, you will graduate. And what then? Maybe you'll go to graduate school. In that case you'll basically have your life structured around your studies. Teacher-assisting, or whatever it is you end up doing, is a lot of work. And in addition, you won't have the network of friends and acquaintances that you've developed here. And there won't be any POP trips or orientation weeks or any of the other activities that Oberlin arranged for you so that you could meet people. You'll be on your own.

Maybe you'll go out and get a job. Odds are that your quality of life will be less than it is now. And all of the things I said about friends in the last paragraph will still be true, except that you'll be working a job, dealing with a landlord, dealing with payments, dealing with all of the other folderol that gets wrapped up with "adult stuff." And you'll be on your own.

But right now, you're still at the country club. You still have all of your meals prepared for you, unless you're on a cooking crew, or (and this applies to relatively few of the people who will end up reading this) are living in an apartment on a reduced meal plan. And even so, most of your meals are being prepared for you. You have all of your utilities taken care of. When was the last time that you thought about electricity, gas, water? I'm guessing that you haven't. It goes into your term bill whether you use it or not. You have a nice comfy place to sleep. Really, most of the people I know with complaints about their living areas complain that they're too hot. Well, guess what? If you're living in a crappy tenement once you graduate, that will probably never be a concern.

So everything is peachy. And this is a great school for everything to be peachy. As I mentioned, there are a lot of interesting people. There are also a lot of interesting events. And a lot of opportunity for you to create your own interesting events or groups.

But instead a lot of you are thinking about dropping out. Or are setting the stage for becoming alcoholics in a few years. Or are so full of ridiculous bullshit angst that you're holed up in your room staring at a screen for hours every day. What the fuck, man.

What the fuck.

Quiescently frozen dairy confections

2005-11-01T01:34:27Z

Candy found in the pay-too-much-and-get-a-bag-full-of-candy thingamabobs in a theater near me:

Nitwitz (a Runts knockoff)

Sweet Revenge ("Secret-flavored candy")

Crazy Bananas

Tangy Bytes

Skullz

Bonz

Candy Grab (generic assortment)

Microbytes

You know

2005-09-29T20:42:38Z

Proposed slogan for a sexual accessory company:

We turn out delights!

The last guy who asked me that is singing from the bottom of a well

2005-09-29T13:08:05Z

They say (this being the ubiquitous they) that images entering the lens in your eyes are refracted into an upside-down version of the original image. Your brain then interprets the image as being right-side up. (You can verify this empirically by taking the lens out of a person's eye and putting it in front of a piece of paper; the image on the paper will be different from the one you see by looking at what the lens is looking at.)

What does this say about the human brain? We're not seeing that image as upside-down; it's been flipped back for us. I know it's a trite point, but I find it utterly bizarre that such a fundamental part of our perception of the world is fundamentally altered by our brain before we get around to perceiving it. What else are our brains doing without telling us? Does it matter? Can empiricism work? I used to think it could — it seemed that there wasn't much else to believe in if perceptions couldn't be, but if they're being filtered? They're bullshit.

On a lighter note, the empiricists themselves were righteously full of it, but that doesn't mean they weren't on to something.

Found on the Internet

2005-05-18T17:51:06Z

A review of Kirby's Air Ride, from all4share.com

THE GAME SUCKS
I thought this game would be cool because it had kirby in it, however this game dissappointed me in many ways. 1. way too easy controlls the whole game is based on one frikin button, you attack, suck in ppl, use brakes, use weapons get off your vehicle, and you boost. All WITH FRIKIN A BUTTON. No offence nintendo but this has got do be the biggest let down ever from you. I mean what the heck were you thinking when you made the game a one button game what the hell.your giving gamecube a bad name. dont buy this game its horrible. Rent it first and youll see. by the way.....................IM RICK JAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMES FEMALE DOG!!!

This is the person who's driving gaming today. You heard it here, kids — games suck if they don't have every separate action mapped to a different button.

The funniest word in the English language

2005-05-17T17:32:42Z

"moist"

London Program

2004-12-09T17:41:51Z

So I know that this isn't my usual style, but I don't know where else to put it.

If it's true what I've been hearing, that the London Program is gone, then there is something terribly wrong with this school.

Assuming it's being cut over financial purposes - is this really the way that we need to do things? How many places and people in this College are wasting money like crazy? Here's a small list I've put together:

All grounds staff drive little cars around all of the time. Why don't they walk? They're almost never carrying so much that it couldn't be held. And why do we use huge tractors to mow in front of dorms, or leafblowers to clean up Wilder Bowl?

Dorms have extremely poor insulation, and as a result, we're pumping huge amounts of energy into heating them. This is money wasted on upper floors, as most people shut the vents and open windows in order to keep their rooms cool, and money wasted on lower floors, as there's no point in heating without insulation.

I know it's been said before, but Nancy Dye really has no use for the mind-boggling amount of money she's being paid. If she really believed in Oberlin's principles, she would be willing to help the students and faculty by taking a pay cut rather than cutting one of the most popular and enriching programs on campus.

No attempt is made to stop town children from skateboarding on our property, or to force them to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars that they cause in damage. Isn't there something that can be done about this other than shrugging and putting our heads in the sand?

We have an enormous math department steeped in a culture that it's better to have a wide variety of professors who can pound lots of knowledge into unwilling students' heads than to have a few knowledgeable professors dedicated to making the subject interesting and engrossing for the students.

The campus is heated by coal, with no attempt at all to supplement it with alternate power sources that don't require constant refueling.

This is just what I know off the top of my head. Keep in mind, also, that I know nothing of the Conservatory -- we can probably cut some costs over there, too.

You don't have to take this. Write to President Dye and tell her what you think. I'm personally hoping for a vote of no confidence.

Happy 76th entry

2004-11-30T02:44:48Z

to me, to me...

SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH

2004-11-30T02:36:21Z

Just for a day, try going around and calling people by their best friends' or siblings' names. See how long you can get away with it.

alex_white @ 2004-11-29T21:35:00

2004-11-30T02:35:05Z

The most wonderful thing about Tiggers
Is stuffing their heads and mounting them on your wall