Update on Clay Babies Mystery

WhenToWork.com message from David Bottorff  forwarded at your request.

Hi all,

I'm sending this message out in case anyone knows anyone involved in distributing the plaster casts of dolls/babies/cupie angels throughout the bookstacks this year.

If you do, I'd ask that you pass on the message that this is actually quite a dangerous thing to do, given the chance of one of these falling off a shelf and hitting a patron or (more likely) a student shelver. Last year, one of our student employees was almost hit on the head when a plaster doll fell from a shelf and shattered on the floor.

I'm not interested in knowing who's doing this or even knowing if you speak with anyone about it. I understand the temptation to leave odd little "easter eggs" for others to discover in the stacks, but in this case the eggs are 5 lb lumps of plaster and could seriously injure someone.

If you find any of these in the stacks while shelving, please bring them down to me (I've got a couple of examples sitting on top of the shelves in my office). If you know anyone who's leaving these "gifts" please ask them to stop. I don't want any of you or anyone else getting hurt, and I'm sure they don't either.

Thanks,
David

Despite my dripping sarcasm in the last post, the Clay Babies are real and nasty, people! They're up and about, waiting to scare the bejeezers out of unsuspecting patrons in the Bookstacks. Ha!

Full Empty

"There are these kids who have dreams

then there are these dreams that will grow

until they get so goddamned big that they explode

And what's left in the smoke and the falling debris

are grownups like them and losers like me".

- anon

Why I I

I am So Happy, It's Sad

I fall in love and it tortures me
the inner peace makes me restless
I fall in love and it consumes me
the inner joy besets me in melancholy
I fall in love and it torments me
the inner contentment feels insufficient
I fall in love and it proves deep
the inner security is shallow
I fall in love and it brightens me
the inner glow casts me in darkness
I fall in love and it comforts me
the inner luxury gives me blisters

by Zwelibanzi Moya, a mentor and dear friend I gained in Johannesburg, ZA

The start of something beautiful scares me aplenty. The mind plays foolish tricks and questions the unquestionable, speaks the unspeakable, judges the unnavigable. But I tell myself it's going to be okay as I shush myself to sleep, for he is ready to be a friend. Not like the last one. And again, he, my friend who will always be a friend no matter what, is right, He is always there for me. I am never alone.

Still, I just want to be okay today.

Sound Bites In Cape Town

In spite of the beautiful sight of clouds embracing the flat top of Table Mountain (called tablecloth) that completes my morning walk to class, I face an inevitable horror. It is the horror of sitting poker-faced for 3 hours as my professor par excellence, world-renowned anthropologist and endearing mentor, John Comaroff delivers his grand lectures with all this anthropological jargon and sophisticated words.

Sometimes much too grand and sophisticated for my incapacitated brain (due to the euphoria of being in glorious, glorious South Africa).

For a taste of what I struggle to comprehend everyday...

In the exegetical discourse of African modernity, we problematize the grammar of post-capitalist Africanity through the normativity of limitations and the internal dynamism of a deconstructionist debate in a totality paradigm with a Hegelian perspective to modernity and positivist knowledge.

(Alina Epstein, on her imitation of John Comaroff, circa January 2010)

The fact is, of course, the verbose sentence means nothing. Completely nothing. (Hehe, not to mention we discovered that some words in our readings were conveniently made up)

But the truism is this: the higher the ratio of syllables to a person's sentence, the smarter he sounds. Damnation!

So let us create words like damnation and pray tell we sound much smarter than we really are, because in life, sounding smart gets you around:(|)

On a much lighter note, you can sound stupid and make many persons happy.

"Beautiful.. Show me your panties"

(Overheard in Cape Town, circa January - February 2010)

Clearly the best pick up line. Ever.

Am I Doing The Pantomime?

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinion, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation." -Oscar Wilde

What if we are nothing underneath our skin? Perhaps we are merely a collection of thoughts learned, quotes found, passions emulated and dreams followed. Maybe I am. The thought is too depressing for a weekend half wasted. Oh tidak. I need some green tea ice-cream. And some catching up with the surreal biatches living their unrealistic lives in the Upper East Side. Oh boy.

Fall 2009: An Abridged Update Of My Sad State In Life

"Or we might talk about the other great nemesis of the bathroom cleaner--pubic hair. I don't know what it is about the upper American class, but they seem to be shedding their pubic hair at an alarming rate. You find it in quantity in shower stalls, bathtubs, Jacuzzis, drains, and even, unaccountably, in sinks. I once spent fifteen minutes crouching in a huge four-person Jacuzzi, maddened by the effort of finding the dark little coils camouflaged against the egg-plant colored ceramic background but fascinated by the image of the pubes of the economic elite, which must by this time be completely bald".

-Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America.

Loving this witty excerpt read for one of my favorite classes so far. Enjoying my Macroeconomic class' emphasis on the government and welfare. Hating the grades and time-consuming problem sets due almost every day of the week (but what else is new?). A liberal arts education doesn't get any better than this when it gives you a full spectrum of emotional flavors.

The angst of securing a summer internship kicks in, due to impending travel to South Africa in January. Not to mention the strain of living up to the gloating statements I made about not returning home for next summer.

Tears have been shed over personal matters (notwithstanding the fact that the event also occurs once in 30 days, as some acquainted readers would know). But life goes on, this time with the new Macbook soon to be in my possession. I was told by one good friend that "Once [I] go Mac, [I] never go back". This is too sexciting, after 7 weeks of living live without the desirable convenience of working wireless, whenever and wherever I please.

A jump for joy is in line, even if the struggle out of loneliness and proving myself worthy of the rigorous academic life never ends.

Oh, and you noticed? Yeah, I changed my blog layout, for the millionth time, I know.

Because I Don't Want To Forget

"There must be an answer for everything, if only you knew how to set forth the questions."-233

"Some lived careful lives and some lived careless lives, and everything that happened could be explained by the difference between them."-254

"A person who'd been moved around a great deal never acquired a fixed point of reference but wandered forever in a fog--adrift upon the planet, helpless, praying that just by luck he might stumble across his destiny."-115

Those feeling lost and are in the losing, pick up The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler. Nothing like curling into a good book once you feel like you're losing the groove. Drug yourself with some Alice Hoffman magic too, while you're at it. A sure cure for those going back to school blues. I feel thankful ma thrust-ed these books under my nose. Now, if only I can permeate through this writer's block; have but one article and an intern testimony to fuss about. Sigh.