End Results of Senior Year Tour

This whole senior year tour thing has been awesome. It's made me appreciate my time at Mizzou a whole lot more. Although I still have a couple things that I haven't done, I'd prefer it that way. Or else I'd feel like I tapped out the city. There needs to be the potential for more things to do. The things I haven't done are go to the Wardrobe (thrift store that has dime and quarter days - where everything in the store can be bought for a 10 or 25 cents), go to the 63 Diner (whatever), and go in the tunnels under Mizzou (this is difficult and hot and there are reportedly video cameras down there, I don't know).

BUT, I did finally get to go to the Mizzou Observatory!! And, since my blog comes up when you google Mizzou Observatory, I'm going to give the information on it, since Mizzou sucks at this.

It's open on most Wednesdays from 8-10pm on the top (5th) floor of the Physics building, which is next door to the new Life Sciences building on College Ave. Take the elevator. It's just two Physics professors up there and they'll show you how to work the massive telescope. Perfect for dates. Do it.

We went up there twice when it wasn't open and waited hours for them to come open it. When you come out of the elevator, it's the door to your left. The door in front of you goes out onto the roof of the Physics building (which is also pretty cool, as it is one of the highest points in Columbia and you can see a lot of stuff).

Thanks to Julie for the photos.

Bisphenol-A: Way to go, Nalgene!

(jennshreve.com)

Awesome told me yesterday that Nalgene stopped producing bottles with BPA. Yay!

From my research, a good rule of thumb is that opaque Nalgene bottles are pretty safe.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (April 18, 2008) – In response to consumer demand, Nalgene® will phase out production of its Outdoor line of polycarbonate containers that include the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) over the next several months, it announced today...

The company recently unveiled its Everyday line, an assortment of bottles manufactured with Eastman’s Tritan™ copolyester. The line includes favorites such as the OTG (“On the Go”), the iconic 32-ounce Wide Mouth and the Grip-N-Gulp sippy cup. Tritan is impact resistant, withstands a wide range of temperatures and does not contain BPA. The new Everyday products are already available in stores and will be available through www.nalgene-outdoor.com next month....

“Today, everyone from hikers and outdoor enthusiasts to commuters and kids on the go are using Nalgene products to reduce the use of disposable bottles and containers,” said Silverman. “Based on all available scientific evidence, we continue to believe that Nalgene products containing BPA are safe for their intended use. However, our customers indicated they preferred BPA-free alternatives and we acted in response to those concerns.”

Faux Prank War

Awesome did this to my car. I poured middle school girl glitter all over Jeff and Chad's clothes on Tuesday, and so thought it was them that did this. She would have gotten away with it, had my neighbor not told me that it was a girl who post-it noted my car. The middle picture is Julie trying to act surprised when she had been in cahoots with Awesome the whole time.

Thanks Awesome!!

Thanks to Awesome, my fabulous graphic designer friend, who made the fantastic header for this blog. Woo-hoo!

Fragmentary Fragments - Fraggle Rock

Oven Baked Sweet Potato & Chicken Risotto recipe
In an effort to use up all my perishable food before 5-week long xmas break.

Freaks and Geeks - I've never seen it, I've heard it's amazing (see the trend of watching things just because there's a lot of pop culture references to it?). Holding a watch party this Wednesday. If you're in town, come on over. Awesome's swiping us all in at the dining hall (hahaha...)

I think I'm going to New York City (for the first time) this July 20-27 with the same group (Mission to the World) that I went to Malaysia with.

I'm really into TV and movies lately. I got a free episode of Aliens in America from iTunes and have been watching Pushing Daisies online at ABC.com. Both of them are delightful and wonderful, especially while I am waiting for the Office to come back on. Next show to check out: Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Still on corn trash bags (BioBags), and am considering them for Christmas gifts - expect a box of them in your stocking.

Lars and the Real Girl

Claire, Awesome, Zanzibar (who got punched in the face by an angry Mexican at a bar and has a swollen cheek! haha), Kathleen from Sociology, and I went to go see 'Lars and the Real Girl' at the Rag Tag last night. It was very different than what I thought it was going to be, and Zanzibar had the same reaction. He just thought that with there being a sex doll as the female lead the movie, it would go more in the 'Old School' direction. I thought it was going to be more lighthearted and funny. But it was wonderful.

I've been interested in the way masculinity is portrayed in the arts and media ever since we started focusing on it in Krew as well as my Critical Theory class. Because all of my classes assign similar paper topics, I've come up with a couple broad theories and bits of social commentary that I use and fit into whatever paper topic it is. One of the ones I've been thinking about is that people are dissatisfied with the social structure and rules that the consumerist materialist world has given them (which is that there are no rules - just buy more crap) and are searching for something more stable: a framework (however imperfect) that they can follow to avoid feeling fragmented and disillusioned. This applies especially in gender roles.

In Krew when we talk about what it means to be a man, it is because there is a general lack of knowledge on how to be a good one. Here's a scene from 'Lars and the Real Girl' that speaks to this (Gus is Lars' brother who is married and about to have a kid - Lars is 27 and single and socially awkward, Bianca's the sex doll that Lars ordered online):

Lars Lindstrom: I was talking to Bianca, and she was saying that in her culture they have these rites of passages and rituals and cermonies, and, just all kinds of things that, when you do them, go through them, let you know that you're an adult? Doesn't that sound great?
Gus: It does.
Lars Lindstrom: How'd you know?
Gus: How'd I know what?
Lars Lindstrom: That you were a man
Gus: Ahhh. I couldn't tell ya.
Lars Lindstrom: Was it... okay, was it sex?
Gus: Um. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's uh, yeah, yeah it's kind of - it's uh - no. Well, it's kind of sex but it's not uh, you know? I don't know. I don't know. It's - uh - good question, good question.
Lars Lindstrom: Yeah, but I have to know
Gus: [dryer buzzes] Hold that thought.
Gus: [in basement] You know, you should ask Dagmar
Lars Lindstrom: I did ask Dagmar. And she said that I should ask you.
Gus: Okay, you know I can only give you my opinion.
Lars Lindstrom: That's what we want
Gus: Well, it's not like you're one thing or the other, okay? There's still a kid inside but you grow up when you decide to do right, okay, and not what's right for you, what's right for everybody, even when it hurts.
Lars Lindstrom: Okay, like what?
Gus: Like, you know, like, you don't jerk people around, you know, and you don't cheat on your woman, and you take care of your family, you know, and you admit when you're wrong, or you try to, anyways. That's all I can think of, you know - it sound like it's easy and for some reason it's not.
(from imdb)

And in the rest of the movie Lars slowly tries to put these things into practice, telling a girl who likes him that he can't kiss her because that would be cheating on his woman (Bianca - the sex doll) and so forth. It's wonderful. I think it's really interesting that movies are discussing something like this. I asked my friend from sociology what she thought about the gender roles in the movie but we just talked about how Gus' wife fulfilled the typical gender role of cooking breakfast. We didn't get to talk more. I think it's all very interesting.

Belz @ The Artisan

I went to a poetry reading tonight at the Artisan of my old Worldviews teacher, Aaron Belz. It rocked my face off. Awesome and Julie were a little less enthused. I thought the three poets who went ahead of Belz were really good and some were funny and many of the poems were really beautiful.

Belz gave a discount to his students in the audience (two of whom I knew...where else did he teach? Or...Belz, if you read this: where else did you teach?) if they bought his book, and so I did. It's called The Bird Hoverer and it's on Mondo's favorite books list even though HE HASN'T READ IT.

My favorite poem of the night was the first one he read:

"Among Birds"

Having spent the better part of the morning
among birds, having heard
what they whisper
to each other as the sun comes up,

having noted how they name their offspring,
with names like Fuzz Packet and Mr. Charming,
Devily Doo and The Potato Famine Boy,

having observed, if momentarily,
as they begin to glide, their haughty eyes
and knife-like toes,
I hereby reject birds
and not only birds but
the places where they dwell, the patterns
of their lives, the very cosmic instinct
that brings them into being—in fact, the skies;

having been raised by birds and
having nursed at their impossible teats
and been subjected to their whimsical
sarcasm, also having been approached by
them on several occasions—

when my star had risen and theirs perhaps had not—

in the name of
neighborliness or good citizenship and having
politely asked them to step off,
can't you see
I'm busy, type of thing, and having quietly
informed them that I no longer belong
to their so-called tribe,
I hereby request
that they wipe the silly smirks off their faces
and find other people to circle, other places
to drop their glob-like feces, and that is all
I ask of them, not that we can't exist on the same
planet, free-thinking individuals,
in equal

if separate and clearly demarcated communities.


Poem that should have been read Mitch Hedberg-style:

"Hidden Microphones"

I am all about hidden microphones.
If you pay me a certain amount of money,
I will plant a certain number of microphones
around your home, or a friend's home.


Conclusions from the night (mostly based on the readings of the two female poets who went ahead of Belz):
- If I ever become a poet that people come to hear read my poetry I will be a lot more expressive in my voice than they were, with hand motions and rhythm in my voice.
- I think Belz's poems were ten times more funny if you had him for class.

Weekends With Awesome

Sad, Sad Day

My (and Cassie and Claire's and Awesome's) favorite illegal movie and TV site was shut down rather dramatically recently. The site was http://www.tv-links.co.uk Thanks to Awesome for giving me the Guardian article about it. According to the article (here) the site closure was "accompanied by raids and an arrest" haha. It's really unfortunate, because I was looking forward to watching all of Twin Peaks. I feel like there is a Twin Peaks-shaped vacuum in my cultural education.

I still don't know my ethics on TV and movies on the internet. I feel like TV shows should be on another plane ethically because of the invention of TiVo and DVR. You can get TV shows on demand in that arena, why not on the internet? Yes, I realize you also pay for the service. I don't know.

I should probably just stick to the free shows that are on the channel websites (NBC, Discovery Channel, more). Suck town.

Taxi Driver

Okay, so Darjeeling Limited was sold out, which might have been my fault for not getting tickets because I thought the RagTag opened at 5. Whatever. So Julie, Awesome, and Soulmate (not mine, Awesome's) went to see a free showing of Taxi Driver in Jesse Wrench Auditorium. It was really intense. I was expecting for it to be really bloody and gruesome, being Scorsese. But I wasn't expecting it to have nothing of the familiar narrative arc of anything I've seen before.

Julie and I were talking afterwards and she started the movie off thinking that Travis (Robert DeNiro) was looking to Betsy (Cybill Shepherd - who used to be really pretty and not at all scary) as a love interest for his hope in life, but then discovered that she was "like all the rest of the girls" and moved on to try to save Iris the 14 year old prostitute (Jodie Foster - weird) but that kind of failed too and then tried to assassinate a Presidential candidate as a last act of desperation. I kind of thought that the whole thing was a message towards the meaninglessness of life and how Travis couldn't really find anything to fight for or live for.

There's a great scene where Travis goes up to another older Taxi driver they call the Wizard and in a round about way asks him what the meaning of life is.

---

Wizard: Look at it this way. A man takes a job, you know? And that job - I mean, like that - That becomes what he is. You know, like - You do a thing and that's what you are. Like I've been a cabbie for thirteen years. Ten years at night. I still don't own my own cab. You know why? Because I don't want to. That must be what I want. To be on the night shift drivin' somebody else's cab. You understand? I mean, you become - You get a job, you become the job. One guy lives in Brooklyn. One guy lives in Sutton Place. You got a lawyer. Another guy's a doctor. Another guy dies. Another guy gets well. People are born, y'know? I envy you, your youth. Go on, get laid, get drunk. Do anything. You got no choice, anyway. I mean, we're all f---d. More or less, ya know.
Travis Bickle: I don't know. That's about the dumbest thing I ever heard.
Wizard: It's not Bertrand Russell. But what do you want? I'm a cabbie. What do I know? I don't even know what the f--- you're talking about.
Travis Bickle: Maybe I don't know either.

Oh, and on Wikipedia (article) they said that the end is a dream sequence. That makes a lot more sense. Also, whenever this movie would come up while I was growing up my mom would always talk about this crazy guy who was obsessed with the movie and tried to assassinate Reagan to impress Jodie Foster. Here's the story. Weird.

Oh, and Julie -- the passenger in the taxi who was stalking his cheating wife was Martin Scorsese!

Across the Universe

Across the Universe was AMAZING! I hardly ever go into a movie with high expectations and leave satisfied. I thought it would be more like Moulin Rouge in the theatrical, over-the-top sense, but it was lovely and beautiful and Bono was in it, and Salma Hayek made a cameo as well. Here are some pictures:

Technorati Profile

Thanks to Awesome for the pics and for downloading the deluxe 2-disc soundtrack so we can all enjoy it.

Across the Universe

I'm going to go see Across the Universe with Awesome tomorrow and I'm stoked. I saw the trailer (watch it here) months ago and I think that it's going to be the next Garden State, kind of the movie of our generation. It looks BEAUTIFUL.