| Quotables |
"Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself. I just bumped from my hotel to work and to parties and from parties to my hotel and back to work like a numb trolleybus. ... I felt
very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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"On the surface, it sounds irresponsible, but to flourish in a rapidly changing world, you actually need to make more mistakes. Fail quickly. Fail often. If you do something and it
doesn't work, just recover in a hurry and try something else. ... Help develop a culture that is willing to fail its way to the future."
-- Price Pritchett, Culture Shift |
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"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction -- every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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| hot & snot |
| Saturday, May 23, 2009 |
It's the weekend, and that means it's time for the wrap-up of Who's Hot & Who's Snot for the week ending May 24, 2009.
Who's Hot: My friends
For: Making my birthday incredibly fun.
Not only was I barraged with messages, e-mails, texts, Hallmark e-cards, Facebook wall posts, and two cakes, but the marketing reps at work called my desk in some kind of rapid-fire round robin, wishing (and sometimes singing) happy birthday. Best Birthday Call goes to Barbie, whose rendition sounded saucily similar to Marylin Monroe's "happy birthday" song. Yow-sah.
Who's Snot: Maple Woods Community College
For: Setting my life back about four years.
Those of you following the story know that Maple Woods Community College has been threatening to shut down its prestigious Sign Language Interpreting program for two months now, and this week, they confirmed it: indefinitely suspended. The decision, seemingly based on bogus placement numbers and wrongheaded thinking with regards to graduate skill level, sets my life back about four years but causes much bigger problems for several of my classmates: for logistical reasons, they don't have the option of switching to the only other school in the area that offers a similar program. They are anchored in place by family, kids, and other of life's valuables. For my part, I don't know if I'll be able to switch to Johnson County; I don't know how many more pre-reqs I'll need; I don't know if I can afford a tuition cost that's two and a half times greater. Maple Woods has rendered a decision based ostensibly on mysterious, inaccessible employment figures and fuzzy math, but probably much more related to their personal distaste for the program's director, who has been nothing but helpful, by the by. Big thanks to these ass clowns for ending our educational endeavors before they ever began.
Who's Hot: Green Day
For: Refusing to censor for a buck.
Finally, someone standing up for their rights: Green Day has refused to censor its album so Wal-Mart will sell it. It drives me absolutely insane that the goody-goodies over in Sam's neck of the woods refuse to sell albums with a "parental advisory" sticker. I don't know about anyone else, but I will not pay full price for anything but the full product. If they want to cut content, they need to cut prices as well, and make it stiff: I'd suggest a $1 cut for each act of censorship. Wal-Mart has the right to refuse to sell anything they like, and artists have the right to tell them to slurp shit and die. Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day said, "We just said no. We've never done it before. You feel like you're in 1953 or something." Well said.
Who's Snot: Jessica Biel
For: Not counting her blessings.
This one was an instant Snot nominee: Jessica Biel is bellyaching about being hot. In her interview with this month's Allure magazine, she has the nerve to say that her modern-day good looks have cost her. But I take all challenges seriously, so let me fix this one right up: Jessica Biel's range of acting motion begins and ends with "7th Heaven." Nothing she's done since then has been worth a damn. Her extraordinary good looks are the only reason she's a recognized actress at all. Meanwhile, attractive people everywhere routinely get better service, more extras/amenities, and more positive attention overall than those of us... less fortunate, let's say. Biel complains, "If you don't like the audition, then don't hire me. But if you don't even want to see me -- that hurts." Story. of. my. life. |
posted by N.T. @ 12:55 PM  |
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