Link: http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/mothers-milk/2008/11/12/selling-michelle

It's my own fault for reading the fashion section of newspapers before the news, but take a look at this from a recent article in Slate's The Big Money:

Semiotics brand analyst Scott Hamrah says we can expect to see more faces like Obama's in mainstream catalogs not because she's exotic to Americans, but because she's just the opposite. "It's about restoring normalcy to the mainstream. Michelle Obama is an avatar of our desire to be normal again," he says, pointing out that the Obamas have redefined normal to include smart, middle-class black people. He argues that her race grounds her in authenticity. "Being black is equated with being real," he says. "Black people are more authentic than white people for various reasons, but primarily because they've suffered more. So it makes sense that in a time that not only wants to return to normal but also wants to emphasize realness and expects to be suffering a lot, that this nation should have a black first lady, that only a black first lady could be the next Eleanor Roosevelt.

What surprises me most about this article is how....well, surprised I am by it! "Black people are more authentic than white people for various reasons, but primarily because they've suffered more." My jaw actually dropped.

I guess I am not so cynical as I thought I was.

Working For The Weekend

Hey.

So I’m sitting here in my apartment waiting for a call from one of the manufacturing facilities in town to tell me it’s time to cut my plastic into strips. They’re actually going to cut it and burn part of it with a laser, so that it can be torn open easily. High tech. Figured I’d blog while I wait since I just got the internet in my apartment. Did you know that a large portion of major manufacturing facilities in America run 24/7, only stopping for the occasional holiday? It’s true, just like synchrotrons!

And did you know (?) that when the machines are set up to run, they run continuously, and so when you have a little experiment planned at one of these places they can schedule you at any time of day or night? Also true, in my case at least. Oh, I just got a call saying it would be a few more hours because they were having problems. Nice. Not like I have an early meeting with the sales guys who gave me shit* about not having this done weeks ago, only to have the customer tell us they don’t even want it until next month. I hope they get some good sleep tonight.

You Gonna Eat Those Chicken Fries?

Sorry. Sometimes this job. Let’s see, what can I write about? Hm. Well, my rant reminds me of another blog where the author often expounds upon the negative aspects of her job, and then itemizes what she has for lunch. I’m going to go ahead and list the items I ate last Saturday for lunch, which I’m pretty sure took a few weeks off of my life expectancy:

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Link: http://tinyurl.com/2869f9

And crazy happenings in the online poker world, to boot!

Obviously, more important than the scandal is my name being in the NYTimes.

Another thing I did in Berkeley was watch the short-lived-but-internetically-famous televesion show Firefly. It's space-opera meets horse-opera. It was surprisingly fun to pick out all the Western genre elements - aren't I supposed to be rolling my eyes at the hooker with the heart of gold? The rich, city-boy doctor come out to the sticks? The preacher that can hold his own in a fight? The gruff gunman who has trouble talking about his feelings, does some questionable stuff, but yet who's underlying goodness is never in question? But somehow they're all cool when they're in space - or maybe that's just the Joss Whedon touch.

I missed a couple of the Western conventions until just recently, however. The Indians? Not aliens - no silly makeup jobs in this show, folks. They're the reavers - apparently this story is spelled out a little bit in the movie, Serenity, which I haven't seen yet (so don't spoil me!), but they were stuck in a spaceship in the depths of space for too long, or something, and went stir crazy, and now do nothing but run around and kill and torture people.

Also, our hero fought on the losing side of a civil war, which explains why he hates the government and is living out at the frontier of space where it has less influence. Though it's reasonable in retrospect, I was unaware of this convention. That the rebel forces were tagged with a color, "the brown coats", should have been a tipoff.

I found about these last two from Rob Helpy-Chalk, who has some ideas about what's up with these sketchy elements. Me? I've got nothing. Or too much, rather - I was seeing loose connections between this and everything else. But picking one and developing it intelligently and entertainingly? Was daunting. So if people have interesting thoughts, I'd be more than happy to chime in with some of mine in the comments, otherwise I just wanted to pass on my recommendation and ask for one of my own: what are some of the great, classic Westerns? I'm clearly lacking in this important area of cultural knowledge.

Whoa! I'd sort of lost track that it's been three months since I last posted. It appears that some more productive bloggers have been given some guilt over this, which I find ridiculous - my "solo project" went defunct for a reason, people. Because it would be awkward and unnatural to just jump into substantive blogging, I will do the awkward and natural thing of attempting to explain the *actual* reasons I haven't blogged. Rather than exert effort organizing them in an intelligent and entertaining manner, I've just dumped them below the fold in a list. Lame, I know, but I have to ease myself into this. I could sprain my fingers, or something.

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So last time I indicated I had a bit more to say about life, the universe, and everything. Ah, yeah. I always have a lot to say when I’m drunk. Not so much when I’m sober enough to remember my debilitating awkwardness. But I do have links! And youtube links at that! Ahahahahaha!

Sometimes, through the magic of the internets, you discover there are others out there who really get where you’re coming from.

Choco-choco-chip!

Here's a music website I like to enjoy.

It’s been helping me discover new music since I’m still pretty much out of the loop when it comes to current events, popular culture, or the world around me in general. The idea is that you pick some artists you like, and it plays songs by those artists as well as other songs with similar characteristics. You can then rate those songs, and it chooses more music based on your ratings. You can also skip songs you don’t like. Better than the radio, at least, and I’ve always rather enjoyed people telling me what I’m supposed to like.

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UW math department, this is for you:

It is Wednesday morning and I am UP! Fuck drunk dials, I’m gonna blog this shit. Where are my notes?*

So it’s been an interesting week to say the least. Let’s re-visit a few highlights while we wait for Paul’s pictures from Paris, shall we? Reverse chronological order!

Wando’s Bacon Night!!!

I frequented Wando’s tonight for I believe the first time ever to experience “free bacon night” with the UW math crew. This is exactly what it’s like:

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So Liz and I were sleepily watching Iron Chef America "Battle Frozen Pea," the other night when the following line comes out of one of the judges mouths:

"I just really enjoyed the pea-ness."

We of course thought this was hilarious. This is because we are clearly 12 years old. Possibly funnier still was the feeling we got from the rest of the episode that the judging comments were pretty clearly heavily edited to remove the other judges' mockery.

Ok, so I'm bored and downloading some podcasts. While I wait, I go on this site www.myheritage.com which I heard about on VH1. As I do anything that channel tells me to do (I'm already ranking my "Top 40 Most Business Casual Appropriate Outfits" in preparation for "The Best Week Ever" where I get to go to Orlando for a Sheryl Crowe concert (and some stuff about SAP) because "I Love Consulting") I uploaded my picture to get my celebrity matches. Best...sentence...ever.

The results were surprising, mixed, disturbing, and oddly not Asian.

My closest match was Shirley Temple. Interesting choice (and yes, I did erase the other people in the photo...nobody gets a free ride).
It must be the squinty eyes...

The next 9 matches were a little bizarre. I'll give you a moment to take it in...
As Jibu would say, I'm rolling 9 deep.

So I go from Shirley Temple to Barbara Bush...not to be outdone, Selma Blair is then quickly followed by Madeline Albright. Nothing compares to you, but I apparently compare to Sinead O'Conner. I don't know why they couldn't get a more recent photo of Jennifer Lopez...and who the hell is Consuelo Velasquez? The lady who shot Selena? My personal vote is for Jimmy Page, but Carmen Electra is another obvious choice. I left you guys a space to imagine who else I look like.

So I'm on my way back from the airport this morning and due to the fact that apparently it's against the law to play rock music on rock music stations or something, I'm listening to NPR. Well that's not entirely true. It's one-half because of that and one-half because on the way to the airport Liz turned it on and said "see, look, it's not a pledge drive!" and now I have to listen to make sure that they are in fact going to beg for money just like every other time I turn on the radio. But that's neither here nor there.

A "news" story came on. The "news" was about a man who killed (I think I'm getting this right) the mother of his child, two coworkers, and himself, and didn't kill his boss because "the coworkers hid him in a meat freezer." Motive is believed to be that his work was about to start automatically withdrawing funds from his check to pay child support.

OK, so that wasn't very humorous. What I found interesting about this article was the very end. At the very end the reporter said that "eyewitnesses and the salesperson at Walmart where he bought the bullets said 'he said he was going to kill his boss.'" Har-dee-har-har. You know, I think that *perhaps* it should be illegal to sell bullets to people who say such things. *Perhaps* you should be counted as an accomplice if you do so. *Perhaps* the right thing to do if you do manage to sell bullets to such a person is to call the police immediately.

In another piece of news I read yesterday, police gave a man a $50 ticket for using an item he bought on ebay for $100 that automatically changed the lights to green for him on approach. Yeah police, that sounds like a reasonable punishment! I'm sure that there must be more laws that they could bring out than just whatever they found was $50 worthy. I mean $500 tickets for littering are routine.