first efforts

Gin Man

Lately my beloved and I have been renting classic movies we'd like to see again. Last night it was "The Thin Man," the 1934 caper based on the Dashiell Hammett novel featuring the dapper, wise-cracking William Powell and the ever-sexy Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles, amateur detectives. Let's just say it bluntly: these people drink. A LOT. While neither of us has anything against a social drink, or three, we do not (I repeat NOT) have a bar set up at the end of our bed. Nor do we consume 6 martinis in one sitting (even when the glasses are admittedly small). When Nick got shot by an intruder, and then announces to Nora "I didn't feel a thing," my beloved shouted at the TV, "That's cuz you're a drunk!" A fact confirmed by Nora's visit to said bedroom bar to get Nick a little something to, well, take the edge off. Chalk it up to post-Prohibition exuberance, or what have you, but it's clearly no coincidence that imdb.com lists one of the plot's keywords as "drunkenness."

dhawhee at UGA

"Bodies as Equipment for Moving: Kenneth Burke's Incipient Rhetorical-Aesthetic"

Burke, music critic?

He theorizes rhythm;

Fits form to bodies.

Filmy; or, my annual spring allergy haiku

green and yellow film

infiltrates my nose and lungs;

makes it tough to breathe.

(last year's haiku (and comments poetic) here)

Seen and heard on campus today

SEEN: First anti-Hillary-for-Prez bumper sticker I've encountered. Affixed to the back of a brand-new Dodge Ram pickup truck. Featuring an unflattering photo of Hillary. And reading: "A woman's place is in the house. But not the White House."

HEARD: One Vanderbilt Bookstore student clerk to another: "You know Cindy, don't you? She's really tall? And thin? With long, straight brown hair?" Cuz, you know, on this campus that narrows it down a LOT.

Springtime in Nashville

Pond scum never did look so pretty...

Sunday morning at Radnor Lake

Sunday morning hike wildlife count: 3 deer a-munching, 8 turtles sunning, 1 owl a-staring

There she is...

I'm no social scientist, but I do subscribe to the rule of evidence which states that when something happens once, it's an anomaly; when it happens twice it's just a coincidence; but when it happens three times, it's a pattern.

The pattern? When I was in grad school at Northwestern, a Northwestern student named Kate Shindle was crowned Miss America. A few years later, after I started my job at Illinois, an Illinois student named Erika Harold was crowned Miss America. And last night, a Belmont University student named Rachel Smith was crowned Miss USA. And where is Belmont University? Say it with me, kids: it's in Nashville.

Thus I can now say with absolute scientific certainty that I attract beauty queens.

Farewell, my up-until-last-night-awesome tourney pool!

It was fun while it lasted.

Our Little NCAA Pool Experiment

Inspired by Inside Higher Education's "alternative" NCAA bracket (Holy Cross takes it all!), my beloved and I decided last week to launch an experiment of our own. Given that weekend two of basketball heaven is upon us, it seems like a good time to publicly reveal our choices (click for larger version):

Careful perusal of the bracket reveals our strategy: teams with dog mascots win. Sounds easy, but this bracket actually required pretty intense deliberations. Here are some of our guiding maxims:

Fast break dogs always beat big man dogs (hence, SIU Salukis beat Albany Great Danes).

Dog pets always beat animals, even if those animals are dogs (e.g., Great Danes beat Nevada Wolfpack).

In a matchup with no dogs of any kind, animals beat non-animals as well as animals they could legitimately eat (hence, Gators beat Wildcats).

Wealthier or stronger people mascots beat other people teams (e.g., Vandy Commodores beat GW Colonials).

The category of mythical mascots is tricky (e.g., Va Tech Hokies, Georgetown Hoyas). Hokies and Hoyas aren't anything. We decided that schools with no mascots (e.g., Illini!) lose to teams with mythical mascots (e.g., Hokies) but that Hoyas are a special kind of mythical mascot because they have adopted a dog image; hence, they are quasi-bulldogs and go far in the tournament. (But, of course, they lose to the Great Danes because the Great Danes embrace their dogness and don't have to make up silly names like "Hoya").

So, where did this all get us? So far, the Dogs Win bracket is in last place in the pool. But, we still got 26 out of 48 correct picks. Not bad! And we have picked the Salukis to go all the way, so you never know. Only time (and Kansas coach Bill Self's tendency to fall apart in the tournament) will tell...

Next year, a cat bracket. We promise.

Bully!

This morning's NYT...it's certainly not the first time that Karl Rove, Inc. has used the backdrop of the rough riding TR for a Bush speech, but the choice of it on the 4th anniversary of the Iraq debacle is pretty telling (click images to enlarge).

Probably Rove and Co. mean to evoke images like this:

or this:

but probably not this:

or this:

*For more fun with the image of TR, check out Theodore Roosevelt: Icon of the American Century.