Archive for January, 2007
Devices in Boston Area Linked to Marketing Campaign
Attack of the Mooninites
Time for class. Commentary later. This is absurd.
Later.
This is a good one too: Boston devices a cartoon publicity ploy
It made Slashdot, too. This commenter sums things up pretty well. I spent the day on or near campus and heard nothing of it all until I saw a “heads up, something’s going down” message on Emerson’s internal main page around 3:30. It was warning students to check for delays on the subway (which made it painfully obvious that the MBTA’s website is in serious need of more bandwidth for occaisions like this). But apparently the Red Line, which goes over the river, was only delayed by 15 or 20 minutes. Can’t comment on other transportation. Apparently the media have enjoyed making an event of it all afternoon, though.
Categories: life in the big city
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Two Fridays ago I had an open afternoon between a morning in payroll and a late afternoon staff meeting for my new lab assistant job. To pass the time, I wandered into John Adams’ library.
I had passed the main branch of the Boston Public Library on several occaisions because it’s within easy walking distance of the college, but never gone in before. It is, in fact, two large buildings. The first door I opened led to a grand old space with stone lions and Classical figures painted on the walls. I briefly wandered around with my jaw open and a nagging sense that I wasn’t really supposed to be there, eventually figuring out that it holds only the non-circulating research and reference sections. Eventually I made my way into the Johnson building, which is built in the style we might call Mid-Twentieth Century Ugly (you could say Utilitarian if you think that’s harsh), and houses everything that normal people expect to find in a three-story library. But before I got there, I wandered into a temporary exhibit called John Adams Unbound.
The focus of the exhibit was a wall of books: Adams’ personal library. Fascinating to see the great variation in size — some books wouldn’t be out of place in a row of paperbacks, but his collected works of Locke would compare favorably with my parent’s largest atlas.
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Categories: books, life in the big city
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January 30, 2007 11:02 pm
As bees, geometry again. I’m going to stop linking and give this a category because this gives me the warm fuzzies every time it happens.
Two more incidents, bringing me up to a total of four:
#3. Last December, on the street, leaving school. A guy right behind me gets my attention — he’s probably from my college; he fits the profile — and asks about the bag. I start to babble, but he cuts me off. “Wait,” he says. “I don’t understand.” I am flustered and want to get home. “It’s about honeycombs,” I say.
#4. This afternoon in a Starbucks near school. A well-dressed middle-aged business man. I’m starting to have a spiel and I rattle it off as my friend stands by, bemused. Businessman seems honestly curious and interested and is very polite with an acute sense of how strange it is to stop me as I walk by, on my way out with my “wild orange herbal tea” (quite nice, by the way).
Categories: bag stories, life in the big city
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Yesterday morning I was awoken at 8:30 by the mailman ringing the door buzzer. That would have been okay, except that the fire alarm had gone off at 3:30.
For a moment, my brain hardly registered that it was in fact the alarm. It wasn’t the one in the apartment, but the one in the lobby-and-stairwell part of the building, which the construction workers manage to set off all the time. The effect was like hearing someone else’s car alarm go off–hardly worth paying attention to. Of course, then it did kick in that it was still the fire alarm and the workers had long since gone home.
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Categories: life in the big city
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When one has been more or less sitting on one’s tail for three weeks of vacation between semesters, one expects a certain amount of out-of-shapeness. That upon returning, all the stairs and all the walking will take a certain toll.
One does not expect to be distressed over losing one’s “hole-puncher muscles.”
May I introduce my sometime friend, the Stanley Bostitch Hole Puncher, a frequent cohort in my efforts to alphabetize and file the world around me (aka, the payroll department). This sucker can handle a mess of paper at a time — but it has to know you really mean it. No, ladies and gents, this is not a hole puncher for the weak of heart. Or weak of arm.
Here’s to you, Stanley. You bastage.
Categories: grad school
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Well, the calendar turns and here I am with a new schedule.
Clearly, last semester wasn’t nearly crazy enough, so I’ve upped the ante. I’m taking three classes instead of two, and I’ve just landed a second part-time job. Since the college mandates that I can only work a total of 20 hours/week for the college, this looks (in my haven’t-lived-it-yet eyes) not unlike fall term of my senior year at Furman. Especially since I’m taking a poetry workshop again!
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Categories: grad school, life in the big city
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Liz, Elf and I had a tremendous giggle-fest at the movies tonight. Who wouldn’t want a t-rex skeleton that thinks it’s a puppy? So cute!!
Night at the Museum was great fun as long as they kept to the museum. There was a minimal amount of stock background involving the main character’s kid, disapproving ex-wife, and ex-wife’s dorky but dependable new husband that could have been pulled out of The Santa Clause (for example), only plus cell phones. But inside the museum, our hero must appease Attilla the Hun, not get eaten by the lions, babysit the fire-obsessed cavemen, and deal with the manifest (though miniature) destinies of both U.S. frontiersmen and a Roman legion. And check for his keys, because the monkey has probably made off with them again. Robin Williams makes a surprisingly good Teddy Roosevelt, who quickly becomes an important ally. TR’s puppy-love crush on Sacagawea is a cute gag, as is the fact that Lewis and Clark are so intent in arguing over their map that they seem not to notice that they’re locked in a glass case with a beautiful woman.
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Categories: dinosaurs, home, movies
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