why pennsylvania is only good for pit stops

millersville university denied this chick her education degree because of a "drunken pirate" picture she posted on her myspace page.

"Jane S. Bray, dean of the School of Education, accused Snyder of promoting underage drinking, the suit states."


reasons why this is dumb: 1) the woman was 25 at the time, so she wasn't drinking underage. 2) she could be drinking water for all we know 3) isn't there a teacher shortage in this country right now?
the wannabe teacher is suing the university's collective asses for $75,000. i hope they slap some punitive damages on to boot, mostly because the whole thing is dumb as balls.

proof that my life is in shambles

heading out the door today, i decided i needed a little snack before work (some would call this "breakfast"). i saw a bag of chips and thought, "hah! finally, i get to eat my roommates' food and screw them over like they've screwed me over time and time again."
it wasn't until i was stuffing oily potatoes in my mouth that i realized that i had actually bought those chips in a drunken haze. it totally explains the greasy hangover two weeks back, and also explains why the chips were in my cabinet. i have once again foiled my own diabolical plan.

MEDIA ADVISORY

Starting Monday, April 30, 2007, Alison Go officially gets paid to blog.

it's true. because my dear colleague elizabeth green is leaving u.s. news for greener, more neoconservative pastures (no pun intended), i'll be taking over her duties as author of the papertrail blog. my tenure will begin monday. look for my signature incisive wit, but no longer laced with profanity or pictures of attractive men, that is unless college newspapers feature pics of hot dudes and we also have the rights to post them.

this will put my blog count to three, and i'm sure i can maintain the utmost quality of all my endeavors

let's take another stroll down superficial, vomit-in-my-mouth lane

inside edition posted its list of dc's hottest bachelors!
question: why do the white guys have enormous hair? and why are they all "world class ______"? the guy who won is pretty buff, but i like the environmentalist. green is so sexy.


plus, his name is philippe cousteau. how foreign and adorable. he must be like, totally british or something.

if you're looking for the female counterpart, look no further.

girls, if you continue to twirl so hard, you might fall over. just one blue steel is about all i can handle. ::blushing::

insert cliche about hotness here

thank you jesse for sending me a link to The Beautiful Room, a dallas social club that is exclusively for, you guessed it, beautiful people.


a lot of these people are seriously hot, but most i'd say are above average, if not overtanned porn stars. i suggest taking a peek at the "beautiful pictures" if you want some fun.
even better, is reading these two articles about the group. one is by the dallas observer, an alt weekly, and the other is by details, the men's magazine un-differentiate-able from other men's magazines.
from details: A year-old social club in Dallas, The Beautiful Room is open only to people deemed attractive by Martini and a panel of judges. The concept is simple enough. “When you go to a bar, maybe only 5 percent of the people in there are people you’d want to talk to,” says Martini, 32, lounging on a red velvet couch at a Dallas restaurant called Dragonfly, where he’s nursing the cocktail that shares his name. His hair is messy in an orderly way, and he has the kind of tan that takes work. “What if you could go to a place where everyone in there was that 5 percent?”
and the observer: "The way I understand it, the couple decided that they were so beautiful and their friends were so beautiful and they had such "beautiful experiences" with these beautiful friends, why not just have a club full of beautiful people? And hell, while we're at it, let's charge 'em for it. As the founder put it to me during my introductory phone interview: "Have you ever been in a club and wished you could get rid of half the people in the room?" At that point, I hadn't. But after nights out with the TBR crowd at Sense and the Candle Room, I started to identify with the sentiment."

as much as i agreed with the observer POV, sounding like an angry, self-righteous bitch is unbecoming for a writer. i prefer the sincerity with which details approached the subject matter, and when he did take some pot shots, he did it cleverly enough that the TBR idiots didn't even know what hit them. like stealing someone's kidney while they he slept. or something.

PSA: there is an assload of caffeine in CVS menstrual relief pills

around 3pm today i began literally running around the office going crazy. i was really hyper, couldn't sit still, and was talking really fast. i even mentioned to another intern that i felt as if i were having heart palpitations. i thought back to what i had consumed today: 2 bananas, handful of pretzels, carton of red beans and rice, a small bag of reese's pieces, and one 8 oz cup of coffee. what the hell was wrong with me?

i then remembered i had also taken 3 pills for cramps. (TMI? get over it) i checked the label, and lo and behold, there are 60 mg of caffeine in each pill. caffeine is a diuretic, which would be a boon for bloating, but caffeine is also a CRAZY DRUG, and almost killed me today.

for some perspective, there are 55 mg of caffeine in one can of mountain dew, 80 mg in redbull. if you include the coffee i drank (appx 100 mg), i consumed upwards of 280 mg of caffeine in about 4 hours. that's almost 1 red bull an hour. "jitters" doesn't even come close to describing it.

lesson from today: check drug labels. and get rid of my uterus.

the environmental protection agency sucks at protecting the environment

that's actually old news, but what i really meant to write was that the occupational safety and health administration sucks at ensuring the safety and health of U.S. workers.

"Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.
The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them.
Instead of regulations, Mr. Foulke and top officials at other agencies favor a “voluntary compliance strategy,” reaching agreements with industry associations and companies to police themselves.
Administration officials say such programs are less costly, allowing companies to hire more workers and keep consumer prices down."

yes, please hire more underpaid workers so you can spread your misery to more and more poor people. UGH. i'm no socialist but this is absurd.

interestingly enough, OSHA ranks number 87 out of 222 federal government subagencies when it comes to employee satisfaction, while the department of labor (its umbrella agency) ranks 15 out of 30. don't you think a government agency dedicated to tracking the U.S. workforce should somehow have happier workers? that they have something to learn from all the businesses they study? as i've been told before, i expect too much.

p.s. while you're at it, check out my story on the rankings. no, i was not smart enough to find it on my own.

if you're still using aol, you can stop bothering with botox

the best part of technology moving really fast is that it timestamps everything, including people. sort of like reading rings on a tree or carbon dating, just check out what e-mail provider someone is using, and you can probably guess their age.

aol/ameritech/anything provided by a cable service: these are people who were young enough to be early adopters of comprehensive internet access in its commercial infancy (10 years ago or so) but also be old enough to afford it and also old enough to not embrace change. the ones who use ameritech or comcast finally wised up to cable (dialup? YARGH), but didn't understand web-based mail. average age: 44

yahoo/hotmail: this is the first generation of college e-mail users. they hung onto their .edu addresses for as long as possible, but then when forced to switch, used the most prominent free providers out there. this is before the popularity of crazy flashing banner ads, and once locked in (with shitty slow service) they never bothered to change. newsflash: tagging and mail forwarding. average age: 31

gmail: college class of 2004 and younger. since it launched april 1, 2004, and was created by the near-holy google, everyone ditching their college e-mails needed the newest and best thing out there. gmail is the standard, and besides facebook, is clearly the only way to communicate while at the office. average age: 23

this age-identifying system could be applied to almost all tech type stuff, such as social networking site of choice (friendster? really?) or IM client (does anyone under the age of 30 use ICQ?) and the only reason i decided to say anything about it was because i noticed someone on one of my football teams is using juno. JUNO. wow. lady, not only are you old, but maybe you're also senile. start taking the alzheimer's meds now.

was NBC showing the Cho videos the abu ghraib of virginia tech coverage?

in no way am i trying to equate the gravity of vatech with the iraq war (yes, the shooting was sad and shocking, but we're talking civil war), but something interesting my idiot roommate told me got me thinking.

he's the one who works as a producer for fox news, and he was telling me how in the week he spent in blacksburg, he and his crew and some of the students and families actually began forming a sort of camaraderie. yes, true the media are often depicted as vultures, but after a while, i think people start getting used to it. he said, for the most part, people were relatively open to talking to the press, and if not, were at least polite about it.

then NBC aired those videos and the whole tone changed. he'd ask questions and he'd get a big "fuck you" or "shove off." granted, he sucks at life and totally deserves it, but the bigger picture is that sentiment definitely shifted away from the media. the people were disgusted, betrayed. they no longer could trust us.

then think about what abu ghraib did to iraqi sentiment toward america and american troops. it's safe to say that a significant number of people (maybe not majority, and failure was probably inevitable, but we'll stick with a vague "significant") were on board with the whole america in iraq thing. but once the abu ghraib story broke, that whole concept was basically decimated. no more trust, yada yada.

what's the lesson behind these two analogous events? i'm not really sure. that the media sucks? or maybe just the world in general. don't fuck with people's lives.

captain america has been resurrected

... as a 54-year-old florida doctor.

The captain reportedly died in a recent issue of the comic book series, yet, somehow, miraculously, he was able to come back to life, show up at a skeezy bar on a physicians' bar crawl, shove a burrito down his pants, grope a woman, hide the burrito in his boot, get arrested, get caught trying to flush a joint down a jail toilet, and then go to rehab.

the man/superhero/my hero:


and the burrito:


who knew captain america ate taco bell? and supreme, too? i think someone's overcompensating ...

shout out to cuz mike for the heads up. don't know how i missed it.

those chrysler minivan commercials make me sad

do you know which ones i'm talking about? the ones with all the gloriously wild children running around and screaming; all fun and fancy free? but then, the evil, uptight, intolerant hardass comes and pulls down a mini tv screen, and POOF, the children stand mesmerized by the moving pictures.

the ad (i think, but i'm not sure b/c it disgusts me) is for a new satellite TV feature in minivans that will make kids tame and less bothersome while driving. asks "wouldn't it be great" if you could use a small tv screen to tranquilize your children all the time? not just in a minivan?

F THAT JIVE! kids are supposed to be a little nuts, a little closer to our uncivilized roots. stop zombie-fying your kids b/c you're impatient and selfish. it speaks to this trend of overmedicating kids who can't pay attention in kindergarten. what is there to pay attention to anyway? what bugs me most is that this is all based onthe premise that sedate, boring children are a good thing. wild does not equal abnormal.

maybe i'll sing a different tune if/when i have kids, but you can be sure as hell that they will be medicated as little as possible. that's what happens when your grandparents are doctors.

startling realization

i estimate that 80% of my interaction is a series of links, interspersed with discussion about those links. here is a recent debate about gun control that i had.

me: Guns with high-capacity clips are like bombs! BOOOO GUNS!
friend: but ali, don't you think guns have a deterrent effect?
(i then forward this to a journo friend who is writing a story about gun control)
journo friend: speaking of ted nugent ...
me, to friend 1: go buy some socks.

this of course takes place over the course of an hour or so, and with more words, but i'm pretty sure it sums up my life.

in other "what is my mind coming to" news, i was at a mexican restaurant last night that had about 40 different dishes on the menu. i love all things guacamole and my brain actually thought, "wow, it would be great if i could search this menu for only entrees that included guac."

and then i made a pledge to find some hiking trails.

reader survey! YOU could control the future of my powerbook

my computer is slowly going to the shits, so i've decided that i'm going to have some fun with it. i have whittled it down to two options
1. paint it. turn it white/gold/pink. whatever. any color preferences? or maybe i can make it a work of art.




2. sand all the paint off.



I am sort of leaning toward the second option. i am more of a rough-and-ready populist type. right?

nachos bell grande

rarely am i disappointed by fast food. it is just consistently delicious. but this little reality check (<--awesome site!) has devastated my world. who would have thought that the minimum wage workers couldn't replicate the multi-million dollar beauty of TV and poster ads. who would have thought.


on a related note, why hasn't taco bell returned to the glorious green onion days of yore? i'm of the belief that green onions make a HUGE difference in the taste of a mexican pizza or nacho supreme. i think the e-coli is gone now and look how amazing those green bits look!

yet again, more circulator troubles

news: circulator bus becomes unhinged and rolls into georgetown building. pictures = awesome.



in other news: about halfway on my route to work (on a circulator, of course), we approach washington circle (near the foggy bottom stop and GWU hospital) and about a gazillion fire trucks/police cars zoom by. no biggie, though. typical DC day. as we pull into the circle, a zippy little cop car parks in front of us. traffic stops. just as swiftly, he pulls out the deadly yellow tape and starts blocking the entire circle. he screams at cars trying to get through. he looks upset. UGH. i watch, knowing this will eventually be a blog post.
just moments before, i was thinking about all the little circulator stories i haven't been really telling recently. things like the homeless man throwing a sandwich and umbrella at the window i was sitting at or the two times in one week i had to switch buses b/c the one i was on broke down. annoying, but not really noteworthy.
but this, coupled with the bus hitting the building, deserves mention. after i got off the bus, i tried to walk through the circle, assuming it was an accident or something. then the cop yelled at all of us, "STEP BEHIND THE YELLOW TAPE UNLESS YOU WANNA GET BLOWED UP." hm. i'll pass on the blowed up. so i walked up two blocks, around the circle, then two blocks back and was ASS LATE for work. i ate a sandwich to mourn the time lost.

no funnies, but some thoughts.

i, for one, got absolutely nothing done at work yesterday, mostly because i was obsessing over all the latest news tidbits coming out about the virginia tech shooting. did anyone else (especially those that followed the news closely like i did), find the incessant need to talk to and be near people, whether it be online over IM or to co-workers next door. as the day wore along, i felt increasingly uncomfortable being alone.

and here's something that landed in my inbox from poynter (journalism ethics org) about some of the coverage of the shootings. i'm sure there will be plenty more commentary on how the press is handling the situation, but this addresses one of the major problems i've seen in the past 24 hours. i haven't decided who yet is to "blame" here, but the university's response didn't strike me completely incompetent or out of line. we'll have to wait and see. i can't imagine what it's like for the school officials who will forever be plagued by the "what if."

Poynteronline
Everyday Ethics
Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Posted by Kelly McBride 11:00:16 AM
Culture of Blame:
Ask the Right Questions of the Right People
Journalists have an obligation to be watchdogs, to question authority and hold the powerful accountable. To that end, the journalists covering the Virginia Tech Massacre should ask if the authorities responded appropriately when they allowed the campus to remain open after the first two murders.

RELATED RESOURCES
To receive "Everyday Ethics" by e-mail, sign up here. Newsletters are delivered as new items are added.
But asking every student on campus and every John Doe on the street his or her opinion on whether the school should have been locked down is not watchdog journalism. It’s seeding doubt without evidence. It’s planting distrust in the authorities without any indication of malfeasance. It’s answering the question by asking it.

Yes, grill the university president and his administration on this point. That’s appropriate. Delve into the state of mind of the police unraveling the first two killings. That’s investigative journalism. Ask other experts what questions and information the police and the college leadership should have been seeking between the discovery of the first slaughter and beginning of the second. That’s providing the audience with context and holding officials accountable for their actions. Because it is possible that if police dismissed the first two deaths as merely domestic violence, they missed important clues that could have prevented the next 30 deaths. It’s a legitimate question when asked in a setting where it can be analyzed and answered.

But don’t ask witnesses who’ve had to run for their lives. Don’t ask distraught parents. Don’t throw the question into the fray, just to see where it will stick. That’s the tactic of loudmouth shock jocks, not journalists trying to help a nation make sense of a tragedy. When asked repeatedly, of every single person interviewed, that question does nothing to promote accountability and instead becomes an agent of blame, a spark intended to ignite anger as a response to grief.

Questions are powerful tools. But they have to be applied with precision and accuracy. Asked at the wrong time, of the wrong person, a question can become a weapon that causes great harm without achieving any good.

my first comment on michigandaily.com!

i don't really read the daily very often, but this letter to the editor was brought to my attention by coop (we have been spending some quality time together).

i think it's commonly accepted by people at the daily that the best letter writers are engineers, so an editorial criticizing the engineering honor code was sure to provide a bevy of entertainment.

the original article
a decent letter
proof that LSA kids are in fact dumber than engineers

i only point all this out b/c i posted a comment addressed to this stupid girl. and now you are all entreated to revel in my genius. see the 5th comment posted by "history major." enjoy.

the weakness of man

a weekend spent with M. Cooper Forster (thanks for the post title) has confirmed why optimism for mankind is generally foolish.

1. wicked car accident on the walk home from the bar saturday night. i can't find any record of it online, but some presumably drunk dudes ran a red light and smashed into a taxi full of people. i didn't see the actual contact, but i was able to turn around fast enough to see the SUV catch some air and spin around almost 180 degrees. that dude ran that red no less than 30 seconds after i crossed the street. fuckers, you better have been sucking pennies while you waited for the cops. i talked to the three passengers in the cab, and they were ok. they were also apparently coming from some goth/s&m event. all were decked out in skanky black clothing, covered in purple glitter, and wearing black fishnet tights. the more fat one was wearing this awesome patent leather corset with her boobs janked up to HERE. this was not a hot look, but it was sort of awesome.

2. according to coop, someone shat some stinky poo in the urinal at the bar. how exactly do you do that (do you have to be tall?) and more importantly, why? we did have a decent view of the people walking in and out of the bathroom, and the expressions mostly went something like this:


HIGH-larious.

3. and the biggest travesty of all. I LOST MY PHONE. let's ignore for a moment the fact that i am partially to blame, but rather focus on how much people suck. i have no idea where i misplaced my phone, but someone did find it and also acknowledged that they had it. Will, an intern at work, texted me to find out where i would be, and subsequently had this exchange with finder/bastard via text:

Will: what's going on?
Ass-hat: Ur loser friend lost his fone & im waiting 4 him 2 call it.
W: What loser friend? i talk to like 6 people at the office.
AH: The loser u just texted.
W: I texted alison. last time i checked, shes not a he.
AH: OK, he, she lost their fone.
W: Ok, well have her tell me when she gets her shit together.
AH: I am not the operator.
W: Ok, can u email alisongo at gmail dot com and tell her u have her phone?
AH: I can't till monday. U should.

observations about this conversation. 1) will was clearly confused, perhaps abusing certain legal substances. 2) this guy is a total shithead, and i can be sure i'm not getting my phone back. 3) what LOSER doesn't have e-mail on the weekend? maybe that's why you're so bitter and mean.

this could be worse than the time someone answered my lost phone and when asked how i could get my phone back, said, "this isn't your phone anymore. it's mine. CLICK"

this is clearly what hannah arendt meant when she coined the phrase "the banality of evil," except on a much smaller scale than the holocaust. GOOD people don't pick up stray phones because they assume it will find its way home by itself or that someone else will take care of it. EVIL people pick them up to steal or cause trouble. for a while now, i pick up any stray phone or wallet knowing that i'm a better person than most. lesson: pick up lost items and make the world a better place.

dear wendy's 4-alarm spicy chicken sandwich, i win

when i saw the commercial for this sandwich, i scoffed. i knew that some white-man "spicy" sandwich couldn't conquer me. i mean, i eat chili sauce like it was peanut butter.

well wendy's, you must not know bout me. i didn't even need water, bread or milk. TRY AGAIN WHITE BOYS.

what tressel hayes will look like in 50 years ...

he'll look messed up!


thanks to jessica for the mash-up

speaking of death

gmail has been out for me (and only me!) for 2 hours and 37 minutes now. i can't concentrate or get anything done b/c i have to hit refresh every two seconds to see if it's working. omg. life is over.

"Server Error - We're sorry, but Gmail is temporarily unavailable. We're currently working to fix the problem -- please try logging in to your account in a few minutes."

you might as well tell me my husband is sleeping with my boss. my ugly boss. ugh.

"i'm allergic to life itself"

some british woman can't be around electronics. why even go on?

"The 39-year-old is so sensitive to the electromagnetic field (emf) or 'smog' created by computers, mobile phones, microwave ovens and even some cars, that she develops a painful skin rash and her eyelids swell to three times their size if she goes near them."

i'm pretty sure treehuggers would HATE this ...

bornrich.org is actually one of my favorite luxury blogs (it's for work, i swear), but a recent post has really made me question the intelligence behind the commentary.

"Redwood PC Case For Tree Huggers"



unless they want to hug a dead tree that has been cut down and engraved to encase a computer, then i'm guessing environmentalists are going to shy away from this. then again, unlike plastic, this is probably biodegradable.

a sober sports event is no sports event at all

don't you hate it when you go to some show or game and beer costs $25 for a can, and they don't let you bring any beverages from the outside? since walking with a flask taped to your inner thigh can sometimes prove difficult, buy these awesome sandals that have a flask built into the heel.

not to be a total michigan snob

but michigan state sort of sucks. i'm not the only one who said it, radar did too.

"Mix MSU's licentious ways with notoriously high acceptance rates and low SAT scores, and you get the school ranked dead last among the Big Ten."

do YOU want to be in us news and world report?

follow jess coulter's footsteps.

tressel hayes huffines sucks

some idiot named his kid after the two currently most famous ohio state coaches. i hope no one at michigan is dumb enough to name their kid "bo lloyd" or "lloyd schembechler."

words for the kid: since your father clearly sucks, you probably will too. plus, you are 1 month premature ... you'll probably have asthma. someone with that name would have asthma.

and now i've tightly secured my spot in hell.

chocolatey fatty wonderfulness

i was watching an episode of "unwrapped" on the food network, and it had this beautiful mesmerizing segment on ding dongs. i instantly craved the snack's sweet goodness.


in my (not extensive) search for ding dongs, i ran into a curious setback. i couldn't find any. WHAT? you ask, in disbelief. it's true, hostess ding dongs are hard to come by, and i realized, i may have never eaten one. i think my only experience with cream-filled snack-sized chocolate cupcakes is with the little debbie uncreatively named "creme-filled chocolate cupcakes" or the even more lame hostess "CupCakes."



i am now more determined than ever to find real ding dongs in their foil-wrapped superbness, and will eventually partake in a blind taste test to see if swirly white frosting on top makes or breaks a cupcake(s).

all are invited

american journalists flee south ... back to america

the washington post is closing its canada bureau, marking the "death of the American newspaper correspondent in Canada."

"The value of the bureau is that when a newspaper plants a reporter somewhere, they're saying they think the place is important and what is happening in the place is newsworthy."

so take that canada. we don't think you're boring, you're just not newsworthy.

public transportation sucks, part 2

so this morning, i waited a good 25 minutes for the aforementioned circulator bus. i was super pissed, but i didn't think it was a big enough of a deal to blog about. that is until my ride home.

apparently, if you're a bus driver who is ahead of schedule following another bus that's behind schedule, it's a really good idea to pass the front bus on the left. it's also a good idea to do this in rush hour traffic. an even better idea, side swiping the first bus and busting up its mirror.

i, not surprisingly, was riding on the first bus.

if only there was any other way.

all staffs welcome the internal and external trader to come over the business of negotiating,sincerely cooperate, and seek development altogether

i've been investigating plastic bags, and stumbled upon the Penison International Trade Group which sells/manufactures(?) plastic bags. i add the question mark because i have no idea what this company actually does since the text throughout the site is in crazy FOB english. besides the post title, more excerpts:
The company lies in the special economic zone of Xiamen, China, has convenient traffic, gathers economic and trade networking, and occupy regional advantage of geography. ... Depending on the sane management and thoughtful service, our company begins to form the wide channel of source of goods and customer"s network in the domestic and international, and have good image and prestige. Through the efforts of all colleagues, now, our products and service have already involved in many places as Japan, America, Europe, Middle East , and Southeast Asia etc, and win the favorable comment from customers deeply.

nice to know us amoral, soul-less god-haters have another name

it's "utilitarian"
"Imagine that killers have invaded your neighborhood. They're in your house, and you and your neighbors are hiding in the cellar. Your baby starts to cry. If you had to press your hand over its face till it stopped fighting -- if you had to smother it to save everyone else -- would you do it?"

the only logical answer to this question is yes. i've watched enough sci-fi, end-of-the-world scenarios to know the good of the many trumps the good of the few. it's also a common theme in law and order. the only exception is if the baby is some messiah figure, whose safety is worth the lives of hundreds (i'm thinking ... battlestar galactica, harry potter, even buffy) p.s. everything i need to know, i learned from star trek

and the best part? at least for me:
"On the other is a utilitarian calculus "made possible by more recently evolved structures in the frontal lobes." "

you hear that? by being horrible, i'm more evolved than you. tag. you're it.

supreme court ruling on auto emissions

is a good thing, but maybe not as good as we could all hope. tierney is probably right that the court's ruling--that says the EPA is responsible for regulating carbon emissions from cars--won't be the environmental windfall activists are looking for ... since when has the EPA done anything anyway? (don't you think 95% of the people who work for the EPA, who actually care about the environment, would want the EPA to lose this case?)

anyway, my whole point is to actually highlight this comment on the above-linked blog.

Environmental regulation deindustrialized the United States and destroyed the middle class.
— Posted by Mark Klein, M.D.

as far as i can tell, the middle class still exists and is pretty much thriving ... and the united states is still the most powerful industrialized nation. btw, europe has been implementing carbon caps and environmental measures for the past 10 years, and the euro seems to be doing pretty damn well. remind me not to go to a "mark klein" for medical care.

i want to be earth-friendly ... but public transportation sucks so much

the circulator bus used to be my all-time favorite. it was sooo fast, it came every 10 minutes and it was relatively empty.


ever since the route "enhancement" was put into place last week, it's been hell in a red box on wheels. let's forget all the people who totally freak out when the bus veers off the original route, but focus on the riff-raff that ride now. since the change is basically the incorporation of another bus, the number of people on the damn thing has more than doubled. THOSE BASTARDS.

but i can deal with that. what i can't deal with was yesterday, when a 20 minute bus ride actually took an hour, and when it was 75 degrees out, they inexplicably had the heat on. all this only encouraged the crammed people in the back to yell "DRIVER! HEAT'S ON! WHY THE HELL'S THE HEAT'S ON?!" meanwhile the anorexic woman in front of me is explaining that the bus driver isn't going to listen because the drivers in this city are crazy--that they kill people, and i should go read it in the newspaper. which begs the question of why she's on the bus in the first place.

this morning wasn't quite as bad, but some mascara-heavy woman yapping on her cell phone set down her wendy's drink, which at the next jerky movement of the bus (read: every 78 seconds) toppled over and spilled sprite literally all over the floor. since the bus is moving (slowly, yet still whiplash-inducing--a feat only imagined in the city) the shit got everywhere, including my fabric shoes. DUMBASS BITCH.

safely at work now, i find respite in my blog, and in the fact that i'm about to microwave me up some leftovers. life is good.

new posting policy!

since i have such funny, smart, and well-read friends, i will now be recognizing their funniness, smartness, and well-readness. in the past, when i've been sent links to post on my blog, i have not done a good job of giving credit to the genius that first discovered the internet gems that i opine over. this will no longer be the case.

although i won't be editing past posts, a thanks to jess, andy, elizabeth, mike, mike, and jesse. if i've forgotten you, then you're clearly not very important. or i'm an idiot. pick one.

this is what youtube was made for

not clips of stephen colbert ...

internet killed the printed book star

that was horribly not clever but anyway ... i'm working on something about scholarships and one that is sponsored by a textbook company asks in its essay: "What is the future of the printed book?"
answer: there will be no future if you keep giving away $2,000 for stupid essays.

speaking of the death of print. this grazergate nonsense is basically a waste of time. if you non-journo types (or even those in the business) have either 1) no idea what's going on, or 2) no idea why it's a big deal, that would be because it's the stupidest thing in the world to get in a tizzy about. and the editor resigned because of it.

what is the damage done anyway? has the LATimes lost its objectivity b/c the editor's gf's boss's friend's cousin's mother-in-law got brian grazer to guest edit a page in the newspaper? what's the conflict anyway? that they're "favoring" grazer b/c of these connections? maybe they're favoring him because he's a celebrity in his own right and is 1,000 times more influential than this flailing, self-important newspaper that needs to scrape out the bundle of panties up its ass. i mean, this guy is an executive producer for 24, and with one swift penstroke, can reaffirm for millions of americans that torture, as long as jack bauer does it, is OK.

anyways, LATimes, you've got bigger problems brewing (or are they overflowing already?) take a lap and get your head in the game.