Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Just like Jesus Christ Superstar with less Jesus and more drugs!
Hair is the new Rocky Horror! Thank God for sexually charged musicals! (This time with more hippies, a clearer message and more, well ... hair.)

I know, I'm about a decade behind in discovering this. I'm NOT saying this replaces Rocky, though! There's room in my life for both.
posted by D-Bo @ 4:21 PM

Monday, June 28, 2004

Bowling for Columbine!
er... i mean, Fahrenheit 9/11!

We went to go see F 9/11 tonight as a gift from my mom for watching her dog and eating her food for her. As expected, we arrived 10 min. late and the movie was sold-out. So, as any red blooded american would do, we bought tickets to Dodgeball, and went to F 9/11 anyway. I'll respectfully not offer a review, as I have nothing original to say about it.

I'm still debating whether the movie was worth $5.50 and a dinged up rim, stupid potholes.
posted by kate @ 11:09 PM

got a little yellow card today. goshen college wants to know what I'm up to for the alumni directory. so the thing to do now is come up with a lie that, while crazy, is still enough within the realm of believability that it will be published. can your suggestion beat the current best idea. and don't give me any crap about honesty being the best policy. you think i got where i am today by being honest?
posted by weiss @ 11:38 AM

Friday, June 25, 2004

New Bigger, Better Titles!

So now your spelling errors, excessive capitalization (or lack thereof) in your post title will be much more prominent. I left them black, but let me know if you have suggestions for a new color for titles for even more pizzaz.

If you don't like the new titles, you can skip that box completely or add your own within the body using < strong > tags (without the spaces) like I did in this post.

In other news..
Buy a mummified banana on Ebay or see what happens when a catfish tries to swallow a basketball.
posted by Unknown @ 12:02 PM

Update on forced Cuba exodus
The following message was included in an e-mail Rachel Eisenstat sent in her last mass e-mail. Apparently Keith G-M did some follow up research as to why the group had to leave cuba and summarized it into these following graphs.

from Keith:

You might also be interested in the following information from a listserv for
those interested in the academic administration of international education
programs. Apparently all 300 of the academic institutions granted licenses by
the State Department for study in Cuba will be affected by the Bush
Administration´s recent actions. Virtually no short-term programs will be
allowed; license holders will only be allowed to enroll full-time students;
students must be enrolled in a degree-seeking program at the licensed
instituion; and so on.

The State Department has labeled all short-term, faculty-led programs in Cuba
a form of "disguised tourism." The Administration has chosen to define what
constitutes legitimate study abroad programs. And, most alarming, officials
are delving into defining curriculum, allowing short-term educational programs
in Cuba only if they are designed to promote "regime change" on the island.

You may find this as amazing as we did. It´s no wonder the Cuban government
is jumpy about both church groups and religious groups coming to Cuba. The
U.S. has essentially damned any of these cross-cultural programs, or material-
aid and mediation programs, or immersion programs like ours, by saying these
groups will be the patsies of the U.S. government, or by denying them access
to Cuba at all.

posted by joel @ 7:39 AM

Thursday, June 24, 2004

England loses
So tonight I watched the most excruciating game of football I've ever seen in my life. And probably the one I've been most into thus far as well. England scored after 2 minutes and then barely got ball across the midfield line for the next 80 minutes. And then, with less than 15 minutes to go, Portugal scored. In the second half of overtime, Portugal scored and then England managed to get another one. And it went into penalty shots which are the worst. Period.

I've never been that big of a football fan, but I couldn't help but get into the spirit for the four England games is the Euro 2004 tournament. When England scores you can hear the shouts and screams all over London. I went out walking after the game and everything was dead silent.
posted by Unknown @ 6:58 PM

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Earth Liberation Front
While doing a random search on old growth forests, in hopes of finding the one in Appalachia (i did), I came across news related to this group ELF. Apparently the ELF has been in operation since the mid 1990s and claims over $100 million dollars in damage to individuals, companies and governmental operations that harm the environment. They recently torched a Hummer dealership burning something like 50 hummers. our government views this group as an internal terrorist threat.
posted by joel @ 3:54 PM

help! what do i do
i'm watching this short fat guy with curly hair and a beard completely disassemble this bike. he's got the rear breaks and seat clamp so far, the front wheel and handel bars were gone before i got here. now he's standing around the bike on his cell phone. yikes, he's going for the reflector, both derailers are still intact. i can't tell how good of a bike it is from here, but from the looks of the fork and crank arms, maybe $150-$300. he just took off the screws for the water-bottle cage, congrads guy, $0.50! i feel like i should go over there and say "excuse me, are those screws yours?" but i kinda feel like his gumpy shoes could easily kick my ass, plus, who the hell was he talking to on the cell-phone. ghah, he's gone now, i lost my opportunity.that sucks, i'm never leaving my bike out again... except i have to work tonight, oh well.

so i spent o good part of this rainy day wondering around the city looking for more free wifi spots, and cyberSTOP café, where i currently reside, has been my only success. It's pretty cool though.

My poison Ivy has taken a turn for the worse, pants are hell to wear, especially to bike in, so i've been wandering around NW with my little brother's giant swim shorts on -- i look cool!

so in conclusion:
tryst, asylum, cyberStop - yay
Starbucks Georgetown Café, Foster Brothers, I Lounge, Café International, Sparky's Espresso Café, Café Café, TeleFlexys I, Zanzibar, Zebra Lounge, Cantina Marina and probably most hotels - boo
next up i'm investigating Borders, 1850 K st., vermont Village Cafe, Café Des Amis, and Classic Corner.
posted by kate @ 2:07 PM

I can't believe this. At least it clears up the decision of whether to apply for that job in Philly where the interview might have fallen on the twelfth.

I apologize for posting so much, but this news is just crazy.
posted by weiss @ 7:35 AM

American Splendor

It's not the best movie ever. It's not quite as good as the official movie of Shoup House. That said, it's extremely good. The whole mish-mash of an actor playing Harvey Pekar, Harvey Pekar himself, comic drawings of Harvey Pekar, file footage of Harvey Pekar, and voiceovers of the first by the second is like a film student's wet dream. And that it manages to humanize an actually fairly dislikeable character is swell as well.

Oh, and the foreshadowing! I always had a soft spot in my heart for that sort of thing. Mid-afternoon today I finally caught what the opening scene was about.

The one thing I couldn't really take about the movie was the music. The problem with it is that it sounds as though the producers wanted Kind of Blue but discovered it was cheaper to hire Eytan Mirsky to write knock-offs than to pay Sony for the rights. A bad decision. "This is supposed to be 'Blue in Green,'" I would bother Celeste by saying. "Oh, and this is supposed to be 'Freddy Freeloader.'"

But please forgive a work of cinematic genius its musical mistakes, even if the main character does write reviews of jazz. The next time you want a quiet night at home, you should get this movie.
posted by weiss @ 4:31 PM

1.9 CENTS !!
Online phone cards rock. Check out this site where you can sign up for a virtual calling card, no more "empty cards to be charged when i get back to cvs in the near future cluttering up my wallet" pieces of plastic. oh, if you're interested, you can call hong kong for 1.9 cents a minute. go to BigZoo and make sure to click on the giraffe for extra fun.

posted by joel @ 12:35 PM

I am so ashamed!
I find myself adding Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter to my Netflix queue today.
posted by D-Bo @ 10:58 AM

Vacation

Hizaa for the kick-ass escape from DC this weekend! (even though we missed joel's super party)

10 points to Chez O'Hara for some kick-ass chicken and fun times with the Swazi folks. -10 points to Ms. Katie O for the "game" of disc golf which landed me with oozing puss bubbles of poison ivy nast up and down the backs of my legs! i'm kidding. about the negative points. not about the suck-ass ivy...

10 more points to the east coast for some amazing weather and... crap... i just found some more spots on the back of my hand... i hate life...

oh. and 0 points to justina for hiding at friends' houses who aren't listed in the phonebook and restricted their phone so caller id doesn't work -- i feel like someone's afraid of the po.

speaking of which, lunch friday was with some lancaster cops, how bizarre is that?

note: this picture was taken of my brother like 5 years ago

and, um, 12 points to the smoker family for, er, an indescribable family reunion.

and i guess a couple points to my little brother who's kickfliping it in Bacelona and Paris for the next couple weeks.
posted by kate @ 1:49 PM

yay!!
tomorrow's my first day at my internship!! and then i'm coming to goshen!! got a ride with my grandparents!! i'll be there wednesday night through sunday night!! i'm staying at the cave!!(if that's still cool) i'll be making my third attempt at getting an indiana drivers license!! and doing other shit!! i hope to see all of you!! call me or something!!
-sara

posted by Sara @ 10:40 PM

Incroyable
Ok, je livre des pizzas pour la Pizza Hut, vraies? Bien, les employés de la Pizza Hut ne sont pas les "employés" simplement, nous sont des customer maniacs! Ainsi nous avons eu cette "customer maniacs meeting" aujourd'hui qui était trés drôle. Nous avons obtenu des prix pour répondre aux questions et nous avons dit à d'autres customer maniacs pourquoi nous les avons appréciées. J'ai gagné un billet de loterie et une carte de gaz. points pour moi!

I don't know why this is in french. Oh god, save me from the world of food service.
posted by meg @ 1:18 PM

It is done! (+ NWP plug)
From 1928's Wings to 2003's The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, I have now seen every year's Best Picture, as according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Oh Switchboard, how I love thee.

Also, if any of you want to get your Shakespeare on, feel free to come this weekend or next to New World Players. There is no entrance fee, but donations are encouraged and appreciated. The show is The Comedy of Errors. Thomas Bona and I will be playing (what else?) identical twins. (We never realized until recently how similar we look, especially with the same facial hair! We're always confusing people at play practice by pretending we're the other person. You should see the confused expressions on their faces!)
posted by D-Bo @ 4:44 PM

Mother of All Boards

So two days ago my computer quit on me. I was happily typing a sentence when *blork!* and the screen shut off. The computer wouldn't come back on. I called tech support.

"I want you to unplug the adaptor from both the wall and the computer."
"Okay."
"Now plug it back into the wall."
"Okay."
"Is the little bright green light on?"
"Yes."
"Now plug it into the computer. Is the light still on?"
"Yes...no...it's fading...it's out."
"Then your motherboard is out."

That was the bad news. The good news is my service warranty is still good. I'd already soaked them for a new battery when mine died and a new adaptor when I twisted mine so hard that the cord busted. But that didn't stop them from sending a tech support guy with a new motherboard, though he was kind of amazed at where I live, finding it too far from downtown to really be reasonable. But he came anyway, industriously tearing the laptop apart with his ratchet screwdriver and popping in the new motherboard. I offered him a glass of water but he declined, so I just went to sit on the couch and read the paper until he was done.

That man is now my new best friend. I would buy him a beer, but he was dressed as if he could have been Muslim and thus probably wouldn't have accepted it.
posted by weiss @ 10:20 AM

PARTY at joel's house saturday evening: 9 pm
yes, indeed.

why? to honor summer.
who? for all those persons in lancaster this weekend.
when? 9 pm
what to bring? a drink or a snack, or both if you want to be really cool
where? 255 S. Ann Street see -> map

rumor has it celeste, kate and julia will be in town this weekend.

questions? call 717-396-8720
posted by joel @ 9:58 AM

hey, stay at my house!
kate and julia,

you are more than welcome to stay at my home; we have a futon, pull out bed, floor space and a tent to offer you. it's located at 255 S Ann Street. follow this link for a map -> map

my home phone number is 717-396-8720. work phone number is 717-859-1151 ext. 275. i will be arriving home after work between 5:30 and 6:00 pm this evening.

look forward to seeing you both even if you don't stay at my place.


posted by joel @ 9:52 AM

Camping or Mooching!!!
We're off to Lancaster today! It's an extremely well-planned trip considering we decided to go an hour ago. Anyone is Lancaster have a house Kate and I can stay at to night? Or anyone have a tent? Or how about a sleeping bag? All of these things could make our trip much more enjoyable.

p.s. what is fuck house #2?
posted by julia @ 9:24 AM

janis karpinski...please check your pronouns
Is Janis a man or a woman...the debate continues -> BBC News Link

posted by joel @ 11:59 AM

God help us all
Really, what more is there to say to this?:

"General Janis Karpinski, the man responsible for Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison during the time when American soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners, has reportedly said that he was 'asked to treat Iraqi prisoners like dogs."

"[General] Miller told Karpinski: "Captives are like dogs. If you let them think they are superior to a dog even for a moment then you lose your control over them."

From "I was told to treat prisoners like dogs"
posted by Unknown @ 11:19 AM

Wigging out with Wikipedia
In the last few days, I've been really getting into Wikipedia, an open source encyclopedia where anyone can write, contribute to, or edit articles. It's a great idea that seems to be working miraculously. Although its really more a combination of WikiLove and a lot of people have spent a lot of time putting together a really impressive decentralized system of checks and balances than a maracle. In January it even passed passed slashdot in traffic volume.

So far I've written an articles on the Constantinian Shift, Nonviolent Communication and Ten Thousand Villages. It's really satisfying to finally be able to put all that Mennonite liberal arts education to use and get some practice writing for an audience. The next article on my To Do list is one on Christian Peacemaker Teams.

If you don't follow any other link in this post, follow this one.
posted by Unknown @ 9:24 AM

Come!
(hee hee hee)

EVERYONE: come to DC anytime, except the time when i'm in Lancaster (hint: i'll take excuse to come - a party, long's park, trail riding - prefereably late July)
If you come to DC i'll personally guarentee a good time, we have mustard that tastes like beer!
posted by kate @ 10:21 PM

ooh, ooh--it's monday afternoon.
so, i'm researching different digital archive systems for work. today i called the new york times, national geographic, getty images (punks, no lovin' there) and a few other image database folks. did you know that the new york times has archived over 2 million images? i bet not.

i got a question for you washington d.c. folks. when would be a good weekend to come down and visit? we can ride bikes all over the city, causing much chaos with our goat cheese weapons of mass destruction.

anyone made a cicada smoothie yet?

here's to biking to work: 26 miles round trip! oh, my knee healed. i get my mountain bike on friday, thanks to eric kanagy's grandpa. katie o and i are going to trail riding. hopefully we can find one with lots of cicadas to smooooosh.


posted by joel @ 1:49 PM

okay, don't know if my first post published...
but the short is:
my birthday rocked after I got off work... (I was scheduled open to close.. on server register--aka no-tips-for-rini)
had my first shot ever (redheaded slut.. I think)...
and found a bar/club that I love. It's called the CrowBar.. it's the new gay club.

anyway. it's good here.

I'll be moving back to goshen in august.. maybe before the 20th.
call me: 1-419-627-2121 x5053; we've got a machine so leave me a message!
posted by Erini CS @ 12:17 AM

I rode 60+ miles today
the other day i was standing, cold and wet, outside of Asylum, alone, and this guy looks at me and hands me this flyer. the Washington Area Bike Something-or-others held a bike ride today called "the quest for the 51st state" or something like that, and I thought it looked like fun so i went, at 8am. It wasn't all that fun, but whatever. I think stuffing goat cheese into little plastic containers was more fun than the bike ride, but then again, goat cheese is pretty fun.
After the bike ride i wondered what another 40 miles would feel like. I met some folks on the metro today who had just finished 184 miles over 2 days.
post-ride, post-lunch, i went down to the capital pride festival where i think HRC had managed to brand everything, including a beer can, with their logo. After that I played with the goat cheese at Chez Antoine. I got on my bike at 7:45 this morning and didn't really get off untill almost 9 tonight, except when i was playing with the goat cheese.
posted by kate @ 10:53 PM

Laura
Why, yes I am keeping you job warm for you! The money isn't the best, but the food is wonderful!!
posted by meg @ 12:33 PM

Stuff you should come see with me.

The Decemberists	The 9:30	Monday, June 14	$12
Pedro the Lion	The Black Cat	Wednesday, June 16	$12
Q and Not U	Fort Reno	Monday, July 5	FREE!
Ted Leo/Pharmacists	The Black Cat	Thursday, July 22	$12
Lollapalooza	Merriweather Post Pavilion	Thursday and Friday, August 12 & 13 (but I'll probably only go to Thursday)	$40 for one day, $60 for both

Then there's Pixies at DAR on December 6, but that's too far away to plan.
posted by weiss @ 8:59 AM

Summer meal plan: Meg
Cost: Free!

Memories of China: Free "breakfast" and lunch on Sunday mornings/afternoons and other random weekdays.

Bread and Chocolate: Free dinner (shark, steak, super pasta, etc...), salad and soup

Pizza Hut: Free personal pan pizza per 4 hours of work

Steak and shake: 65% off all meals, occasional treats of free ice cream from flavor freeze, free pizza from pizza hut and free doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts from the managers.
posted by meg @ 5:51 PM

This place rocks!
we were riding our bikes through downtown yesterday and right after i pass this SUV he opens his door which Julia then promptly smacks in to, ouch!

anyway, so there's this kick-ass place in shaw called "chain reaction youth bike shop" and they sell used bike parts and charge like $8 to install it. the place is way hard-core, it even sells used bike clothes! anyway it "educates youth about the role of the bicycle in sustainable communities, equips youth with job skills, and provides residents of Washington, DC, with safe, affordable, and pollution-free transportation." which is pretty cool. plus they gave us a bunch of free relectors! yippe,yay for free!

p.s. y'all should come down here, it's a hoppin' good time, i think Tasara knows a bunch of free happy hour stuff...
posted by kate @ 2:44 PM

Attn: ex-brick residents
There is a bed in mike's old room that I had and completely forgot about...I would appreciate it if you didn't sell it to next year's brickers. email me about what I should do about the bed. Thanks, you all are groovy!

omigod omigod omigod
Sid's movie starts in, like, a week!!! eeeee!!! I'm stoked.

damn blogger, it's so smart
arrg, too smart for me.

dude
theyrule.net totally rocks my socks. the bigger the directors are, the more companies they sit on, making them evil nasties, compared to the small guys who only are only at the top of one company. simplton says: "the tinky fellows and gals aren't as bad as the porkers." agreed. so I'd like every one to note how emaciated apple computers looks compared to microsoft which has many Chubby McChubsters on board. grrr.
posted by meg @ 4:52 PM

plans for tonight:
yay for Kennedy Center comp. tickets!

Also, yay for Ben & Jerry's and the Elders who gave their so we could have a free pint of scrum-yum-diddly-imscious ice-cream on this hot hot muggy yucky day!

more free things:
shakespeare in the park, much ado about nothing!
okay, so i slept throught the first part, but i mean, plot build up is so boring.
posted by kate @ 2:50 PM

Hmm... I really wonder how that roll of film managed to just be around the house somewhere, then get processed by my mother. Did she look at the pictures before sending them to me? I rather hope not. In any case:

Katie Ho and Robin: Three pictures of you two on (opposite ends of) the good old gray Dam Green couch.
Tim and Char: A picture of the two of you kissing at night under a street sign reading "NE 95 ST"
Carl and Karissa:A picture of the two of you napping on a couch at that cabin on the Puget Sound.
Jenna: A picture of you with your mouth forming words in the Dam Green kitchen. This is somehow doubly exposed with a picture of my little sister's friend Julie in a prom dress.

There are other pictures, too. One of the more interesting ones is of both the November Vigil and a large room with flourescent lighting. Placed together it looks as though regularly-spaced rectangular halos are hovering over the heads of the crowd. Very curious. Some other pictures are doubly exposed with leaves and Julie again.

Does anyone in DC have a scanner?
posted by weiss @ 9:52 PM

Thwarted!
ha ha! they disabled everything but cash register program, or so they thought....

Ack! kids! i hate kids. go away kids.
stupid school groups with millions of kids.


the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a very boring place to work.
posted by kate @ 3:17 PM

Boston, Mass.
Greetings from Boston, where Misha, Tom & I are seeing Tom's old haunts and hearing stories of his wild college days. His 35th anniversary reunion is Wednesday, and we are way looking forward to seeing his old friends and eating lots of free food. For now we are hanging out in a big old college house (like a Shoup-and-a-half for size, but like Brick for number of people) filled with books, computers and quirky students. Everybody seems very smart, or at least tries to act that way. A gal on the street had a t-shirt that said "Hahvahd". We all laughed. It's a good scene. On the way down, we stopped in to see my Vermont cousins, play pétonque and drink home brew. Again, good scenes all around. You know, America seems to be holding up without me in it. Good job, everybody!

More Harvard stories to come, I'm sure, and hopefully Misha & I will get into some hijinks of extreme noseliness. We already crashed a political rally in small-town Vermont to great success, so who knows. Y'all take care, now.

PS: Congratulations, Joel and Allie!
posted by sasha @ 7:17 PM

Meta Shoup

Vital Stats:

Value: B$1,366.67
Source: Blogshares

Keywords: family, goshen, people, love, pizza, mike
Source: Keyword Density Analyzer on Webmasterbrain

Rank: 90611/143848
Source: Blogstreet

Eliteness: 7 Inbound Sources, 7 Inbound Links (we're just so healthy and balanced):
Source: Technorati.com

Miscellaneous shoup links:

Historical Info:
blo.gs

Review random old Shoup posts:
blogfreaks

And finally:
Blogroll Shoup
posted by Unknown @ 4:28 PM

DC my Bust, mista!
This is not very interesting at all

We went to see Harry Potter at Union Station last night and actually confused a preview for the Sponge Bob movie with koyaanisqatsi.

After two weeks of searching for jobs we have the exact same jobs we had before moving to DC. Looking for jobs sure is fun.

I had my first day of work (not first official day of work mind you, but the first day) typically before starting a addressing jobs there is some training, like where you learn how to give tickets to the cook, or pour beer, or use the credit card machine, or speak french. However, when I showed up this morning it was just me and a particularly salty french guy name Jerome who is the cook and hates his job. Not to mention he was pissed at the guy who hired me for a number of things which i had nothing to do with. Anyway, I didn't die. But I think life would have been easier with like training or some advise from salty french guy.

Oh. and i saw Shakespeare in the Park's Much Ado About Nothing for free. Rock. And got into a $12 show at the Black Cat for free by drawing stamps on our hands. Super rock.

Also, Sara's parents are gone for the weekend - PARTY!!!
posted by kate @ 11:12 PM

Guinea pig heart attacks
So this past week I was assigned to take care of my host family's guinea pigs for a week while they were camping in France. It was pretty standard fare: clean out the hutch, cut grass for them, give them fresh water and put them outside on nice days. Except for their noisy resistance to leaving their cage once or twice, the week passed without event. However, the day after the family got back, one of the guinea pigs wasn't acting its usual squeally self, so Martin took it into the veternarian for a check-up. The office must have been a little much for the poor guy as he keeled over and wouldn't respond to oxygen or CPR. The funeral was held yesterday in the backyard.

Though I've been assured that the passing of our furry little friend had nothing to do with me, I do feel a bit odd. I barely escaped having to explain to a 4 year-old and a 6 year-old why "Topsy" had gone away. Of course, when Emily did find out about the guinea pigs death it only took her a minute two to get over her grief. And she was soon demanding an adequate replacement like a rabbit or better yet, new shoes.

In Other News...

My sister arrived in London on Friday and you can see photos of us running all over London yesterday.
posted by Unknown @ 4:45 AM

I'm alive!
finally able to check out the blog too!
The internet thingy at my dorm at the Point wouldn't let me view this page.. also, it only allows me to check my Goshen e-mail.
I'm at home now.. my brother's wedding was today... I can't believe it...

anyway.. don't know how often I'll be checking my mail, but I'd still love to get some. (mail that is...)

The point's getting better.. as are the tips. yay! So thanks for housing offers, but I'm going to stay for a bit more.. I need more cash. But I will be leaving there before August 20th. So I'll be picking things up from home and attempting to move up to Goshen to live there until school starts.

Send me some lovin' next Sunday the 13th. It's my 20th birthday. E-mail or call or something..

Lastly before I go to bed... I've updated my Rini @ the Point blog too. It's basically my e-mail that I sent out.. to a smaller list this time...

Miss you all!!
posted by Erini CS @ 1:41 AM

Bush is better than Chomsky
The trailer for Farenheit 9/11 is finally out (3 weeks before the release date) and boy is it great. Moore's taken all the really mind-blowing Bush factoids from the last 3 years and put them all together.

My favorite quote from Dubya is from a Black tie fundraiser: "This is an impressive crowd, the haves and the have-mores... Some people call you the elite, I call you my base."

I don't think Chomsky himself could have put it better than that! And somehow Bush throwing around that term is even more convincing. Never in the history of the United States has a president so blatantly and openly pandered to the elite in this country.










posted by Unknown @ 3:39 PM

Kerah
you know that feeling when you've worked for 20 hours through the night into the morning and you're in kind of a high where you're talking to yourself and you think that you should be blogging instead of talking to yourself because you think that then at least you won't be talking to yourself, but you realize that you have nothing to talk about because all you've done is work. so you find yourself watching Home Alone because you're to buzzed off of caffine from just two hours previous to go to sleep and you're making up random words because you can't figure out what the title of a blog about nothing should be and then your watch alarm goes off three times that usually tells you when to wake up but now its trying to tell you to go to sleep but you didn't turn off the alarm because it didn't occur to you that you had the power to stop the beeping. well. I feel kind of like that. I love you pizza hut delivery and steak n shake.
posted by meg @ 7:51 AM

Je suis encore vivant!
In Montréal. Still alive. Busy, but miss you all. My cousin Debby is here, and the crazy Goshen boys spent a week. Hoo boy. Pictures so forthcoming.

Love,
sasha miguel
posted by sasha @ 11:42 PM

Do not worry little bird on my back porch, I do not want to take your cicada from you. Even if I did want a dead cicada, there would be no need to fight even such a very little bird as yourself for it. I could get my own quite easily.

I am simply watching you in condescending amusement, feeling superior in my opposable thumbs which enable me to tear things apart and place them in my mouth. You, adorably, are unable to do anything but peck with your tiny beak.



posted by weiss @ 9:57 AM

Peacewashing MMA
For many years, environmentalists have used the term greenwashing to describe companies who talk one thing and do another. Perhaps its time we coined the term peacewashing. In the June 1 issue of The Mennonite, Michael Shank has an article talking about just how socially responsible Mennonite Mutual Aid's investments really are.

Apparently, their top "socially responsible" investments from last year were McDonalds, Clear Channel Communications, Kraft, Coca-Cola and Weyerhaeuser. Compare these companies and practices with the list of "six core values" that supposedly govern MMA's "stewardship investing":

1. Respect the dignity and value of all people.
   
2. Build a world at peace and free from violence.
   
3. Demonstrate a concern for justice in a global society.
   
4. Exhibit responsible management practices.
   
5. Support and involve communities.
   
6. Practice environmental stewardship.
   

When Shank called in to point out that Weyerhaeuser was heavily involved in the logging of old growth forests and clearcutting, the MMA rep tried to defend Weyerhaeuser's corporate practices. So much for share-holder advocacy!

It's clear that MMA has moved from being a church agency to being a insurance and investment firm that sees Mennonites as its target market. They exploit the term "socially responsible" (not to mention "Mennonite" and its wholesome image) to lure investors and assuage the consciences of their investors. At the end of the day, however, it's clear that the most important thing for them is their financial performance

In the end, what I find most sad and ironic is that its been Mennonites of all people who take the liberating concept of mutual aid, squandered all its revolutionary and egalitarian potential and turned it into just another corporate brand.

P.S. If you want to read more about MMA's slide from church agency to sleek corporation, check out Keith Graber Miller's article in Building Communities of Compassion: Mennonite Mutual Aid in Theory

P.P.S. If you're not completely cynical and thing there still might be hope for MMA, you should definitely call them and tell them so. They're toll-free number is 1-800-348-7468 and their e-mail is memberinfo@mma-online.org.
posted by Unknown @ 3:20 AM

go gas go
gas goes even higher!

bikes for everybody. mcc rocks. today i photographed soap. tomorrow people. woo hoo!

want to visit me in lancaster? here's the contact information:

255 S Ann St
Lancaster, PA
17602-4314
(717) 396-8720

it can also be found at this web address:

http://www.goshen.edu/~joelrf/lancaster.html


posted by joel @ 11:15 AM

Thai food!
Time: 1:00 pm
Date: Sunday, June 6th
Place: Electric Brew in downtown Goshen
Menu: Absolutely incredible 8 course meal- served buffet style.
Price: $25 donation to New World Players

Talk to me if you are interested.

posted by D-Bo @ 8:35 AM