Monday, July 31, 2006

Alcohol consumption = anti-Semitism
Everything we've been taught about alcohol is true! Not only is it bad, but it causes anti-Semitism, Mel Gibson discovered this weekend.

"I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am ashamed of everything I said. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse."

What did he say? Well, "Fucking Jews," "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" and asked the arresting deputy, who admitted to being "frightened" by Gibson, "Are you a Jew?"

But don't worry, he didn't really mean it; he was just drunk (and driving).

Now, who wants to watch The Passion?
posted by D-Bo @ 8:20 PM 0 comments

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Finished the bar. Spent the afternoon on Loyola beach, kids throwing stones at seagulls. I worried a bit, but the seagulls seemed to know that the kids couldn't hit them. The apartment is so tidy with all of the ugly study materials safely packed away in a box for return.
posted by weiss @ 5:58 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

because embedding videos on the blog is so hip
here mennonot, you might know something about this. apparently this guy's pretty hot over there in G>B.


posted by kate @ 8:36 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Roger Beachy
In addition to not knowing about this hallowed Goshen gossip, I also can't yet use Wiki (though I'm getting trained in a few weeks.) If, before then, Mennonot would like to update the page, I would suggest adding Roger Beachy, a pioneer in creating transgenic plants that are resistant to viral infection, under science and technology. Though his research is controversial for many Goshen biology and environmental studies faculty, students, and alumni, he is nonetheless perhaps the most accomplished Goshen graduate in a scientific area.
posted by celestial @ 9:45 AM 0 comments

Monday, July 24, 2006

Weiss, sounds to me like you are just taunting the rest of us who are even farther out of the loop with the fact that you now have hot Goshen gossip that we don't. :-(

In related news,

Look who made the Wikipedia List of Goshen College people. I wonder who 65.41.54.34 is or better yet this mischevious imposter? Wikipedia is so much fun!
posted by Unknown @ 4:28 PM 0 comments

Birthday phone call to my sister reveals entire realm of Goshen gossip of which I was aware only tangentially, if at all.

"You didn't know about that? K thought everybody knew about that."

"No, I didn't. I pretend like I don't care enough to keep up with this stuff, but that's just a cover to make me not feel bad about how really out of the loop I am."
posted by weiss @ 2:36 PM 0 comments

ewe helloooo
i'm seeking the where abouts of commandante. he has my golden eagle. an di have his key. if anybody has any info, please contact me ASAP at (turn you computer upside down) 9OhI-I9h(IOE)
posted by kate @ 8:52 AM 0 comments

Lovers Electric Music Video
Check out the new music video from my friends Dave and Eden of their new single "Honey":



How about that snazzy stop animation thing? Took over 150 hours of editing...

You can download more beautiful, higher resolution versions from their website at www.loverselectric.com
posted by Unknown @ 8:29 PM 0 comments

posted by weiss @ 2:30 PM 0 comments

For anyone who is interested, a guy from Lancaster might win the Tour de France.
posted by weiss @ 9:18 PM 0 comments

Culture Jamming with Corporate Tools
This is a few months out of date, but its still very much worth watching. The story is that Chevy had the bright idea of creating a make-your-own-ad website. Users could drag and drop pre-chosen grandeose clips with superimposed text and canned soaring soundtrack to advertise a new Chevy SUV. The results are an inspiring reminder that the best parody can come from the most spectacularly saccharine corporate environments:

http://news.com.com/1606-2_3-6056633.html?tag=ne.vid
posted by Unknown @ 5:04 AM 0 comments

Getting past the powerlessness Re: Lebanon
&Over the last week I've struggled with an overwhelming sense of despair as we've watched the situation deteriorate in Lebanon. It is a country which has struggled to slowly but surely rebuild from its civil war over the last 10 years. And now, in a week, that has all been reduced to nothing. Its infrastructure is being systematically destroyed and its tourist trade devastated. I got an email from a friend describing his feelings as he watched the Beirut burn from tourist resorts that have now become refugee camps.

So last night I did about the only thing I know hot to do. I went to a vigil across from parliament. It was quite a bit different from most of the protests I'm used to going to. For one thing, I didn't see any familiar faces in the hundreds of people there. Which means that this wasn't the usual suspects. It was Lebanese and Palestinian families out with their children and strollers, lighting candles as best they knew how. At the same time, there was a tight crowd of angry young men gathered around candles that eventually turned into a mini-bonfire. They were shouting angry chants and ended up with a mini-bonfire. But who could blame them? Their country is being systematically flattened and sent back 20 years. If they have relatives in Lebanon, they are most likely refugees. For what? For why?

And what does Bush have to say? "what they need to do is to get Syria, to get Hizbullah to stop doing this shit and it's over." The video is even more amazing. You can watch the whole clip via link three paragraphs down this cnn article:

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/07/18/bush.tape.reaction/

In other news

What happens when you introduce when you combine classic video games and real live creatures?

Humans replace pixels in Space Invader

and

Crickets replace ghosts in Pacman 
posted by Unknown @ 6:35 PM 0 comments

A friend fo mine, Tarin, recently shot this music video in Brazil with the band CSS...


posted by meg @ 5:04 PM 0 comments

So whoever put up that graphic of Female Chauvinist Pigs the other week, did you actually read the book? Because you really ought to. The same to the rest of you as well. Levy definitely has her finger on the pulse of something that's going on in U.S. (at least) culture and which, strikingly for me, seems to represent a significant shift even since I was in high school.

I found myself wishing repeatedly that I'd been assigned this book back in one of those women's studies classes I used to take. Such would have been impossible of course; the book hadn't been written. Still, I might yet get in touch with some professors who I presume are still doing those courses and suggest they take a look at this book, if they haven't already.

I also kept thinking that I'd like to write Ariel Levy a letter. Questions popped up constantly as I read the book. Brilliantly, she tackled most of them a few pages later, but some stay with me. I doubt I'll ever actually write her, but I'll probably spend a lot of time arm-twisting you all to read this book so I can talk about it with you. Here's a start: if you read it, I'll buy you dinner so we can talk it over.
posted by weiss @ 12:04 AM 0 comments

In a fit of jealousy for those of you who've gotten to live in London for a while, I blasted through my practice questions last night and kicked it back on my futon with some chips and a copy of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which I'd read was good and is set in London anyway.

In sum, I'd recommend it for some night when you're looking for something to do. Not quite as good or London-y as some other movies, but a whole lot less depressing. Whooh, that's for sure.

And now turning to the question of peace in the Middle East, here's an adorable idea: make up a bunch of new countries!
posted by weiss @ 11:16 AM 0 comments

Lee has a question

hi, I was wandering around trying to think of ways to find floor space in chicago for the pitchfork festival and came upon this blog noticing you were looking for the same. If you did find any abundance of willing participants I was hoping you might pass along news to a friendly very poor traveler. About me: my name's lee I'm on my way to iowa city for an mfa in poetry, riding w/ some friends to see the festival and then greyhounding to iowa. thank you for your time -lee

email lee if you can help him/her:

super cool canned-'meat'-free email code:

lee's-first-name-plus-the-three-letter-abbreviation-for-'positive'-plus-the-first-letter-in-'silly'
-plus-the-atomic-symbol-for-'sodium'(at)gmail(dot)com

or email me at: contact(at)my-first-and-last-name(dot)com if you can't figure out the puzzle
posted by meg @ 8:19 PM 0 comments

Jules: what is your piccolo smoking?

Also, if anyone wants to eat grilled salmon with blueberry salsa on Saturday, that person would need to call me because I have a plan for that.
posted by weiss @ 12:50 AM 0 comments

Attention Shoppers!
uhhh...I mean, Shoupers. I'm such a dork. Speaking of dorky activities, all y'all are invited to one or more performances of Verdi's Il Trovatore, produced by the Summer Opera Theatre Company at Catholic University in DC. I'm playing piccolo. The orchestra is pretty decent but the singers are supposed to be amazing. You can get cheap $10 tickets for the preview performance. Let me know if you are coming so we can hang out afterwards!

Preview Fri. July 14 at 7:00pm
Performance Sun. July 16 at 2:30pm
Performance Wed. July 19 at 7:30pm
Performance Sun. July 23 at 2:30 pm
posted by julia @ 9:46 PM 0 comments

an actual "must see"
I'm not usually one who tells others that they have to go see a particular movie, but Al Gore's (yes, I'm actually writing this) new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, is something that everyone and their grandma needs to go watch. I have to thank Derek for inviting me to go, because I don't think I would have watched it otherwise. If you haven't heard about it, the documentary focuses on global warming and is basically Gore presenting a lecture about the dangers. While that sounds about as riveting as molding cheese, I found it both engaging and alarming.

Perhaps it is just the way he constructs the facts, but moreover, there's new stuff that I had not heard, or had not lent enough weight to--such as, the amount of CO2 in the air is way above anything that earth has experienced in the past 600,000 years; that Greenland and Antanrctica are starting to lose GIANT chucks of ice and could raise the sea level by 20 feet, which would submerge places like Manhattan, San Francisco, New Orleans, Beijing, Shanghai, and The Netherlands. There's plenty of fascinating things packed into 2 hours, but I think ultimately, the documentary is so necessary because of its organization and committment to making the consequences clear. I've never felt such a sense of urgency as I did since watching it yesterday, and I consider myself fairly committed to living sustainably.

Also fascinating to me, because of my interest in politics and journalism, is the comparison of of surveys from scholarly journals and media outlets on the disagreement over the role of humans in causing global warming from a ten-year period in the past fifteen years: Amongst scientists PRECISELY ZERO of about a thousand articles disagreed with the consensus that humans are causing global warming; within newspapers and magazines, 53% of articles questions the validity of the claim. No wonder people are confused. Disgusting.

Go watch this film and drag everyone you know with you!

Shouper formely known as Commandante
posted by Landon @ 4:19 PM 0 comments

body/anti-body
From the production journal of an ultra-low budget feature:

"Gaffer Meg Schrock creates lights out of tin foil and the sun. It is very impressive."

This is from the day that sasha helped out!

More news: later today i'll be working on a music video for The Rapture
posted by meg @ 12:42 PM 0 comments

Tony Blair and a false sense of grievance
Yesterday Tony Blair, in a speech before parliament, Tony Blair put the responsibility for defeating extremism squarely on the shoulders of the British muslim community:

"If we want to defeat the extremism, we have got to defeat its ideas and we have got to address the completely false sense of grievance against the West.

That's right, boys and girls. The best way to end terrorism is to completely deny that there is any legitimacy to the grievances of the Muslim community with the West. If we keep on denying that there's any problem and be real hard nosed about it, they'll come around to seeing things our way. That's what Jesus says, right? Making any attempt to understand what motivates our enemy or worse yet, acknowledging their grievances, shows weakness and that's just what those jihadists are waiting for.

For more on grievance, see my review of Loving without Giving in: Christian Responses to Terrorism and Tyranny. Or the terrorists win.
posted by Unknown @ 8:45 AM 0 comments

y'all might know my good friend teresa. Well, she's going to be in Peru until Christmas!! so i you miss the ol' trippitytrip blog, you can now check out the brazy clog!!!!
posted by meg @ 3:53 PM 0 comments

It sounds like a war tonight out back in the alley, so I poke my head out the window to look. Sure enough, it is a war and everyone is there. Paul Bäumer fires off bottle rockets from the trenches. Yossarian pilots the police helicopter overhead. Billy Pilgram stares with boredom at a sparkler held in his right hand.
posted by weiss @ 12:46 AM 0 comments

posted by meg @ 12:20 PM 0 comments

A New York Day
Oh man, what a great day! Even though my bus came in late, Meg told me where her film shoot was I we got to spend time setting reflectors on C-stands, hamming with PAs and learning some of the lingo. Also, free sushi and beers for lunch! And a great nap with interesting tan lines to show for it.

Then we hit up some avant-garde Japanese dance (after taking the subway to Brooklyn by accident), had some deluxe rice pudding and hung out on her Bowery roof until my 3:45am bus to DC. Awesome!

Thanks for the great day, Meg!
Sasha
posted by meg @ 2:20 AM 0 comments