Jennyhas tipped me off to whole food markets. I’m really psyched about this discover and I’m looking forward to a Wegman’s like experience.

I’m not going home for Thanksgiving. Instead I’ll be here working on research papers and trying to catch up on reading. The quarter will be over in a few short weeks and I have three finals to get through. I can sort of see the end and the end looks beautiful.

Oh, on a different note, does anyone have any idea what I’m missing in the CSS for this template that creates these lines underneath the post titles. I really want to get rid of them.

Ok, I was just getting up to leave when I realized that the person at the terminal directly behind me, and in the path I must walk to get to the door, is lookin’ at nudie girl pictures. Ok, lets quickly disect the desparation that some people reach. It’s friggin’ 7.30pm on a Saturday and you’re in a college library computer area downloading porn. What’s that spell? L-O-S-E-R.

Ok. Signing off to go look over that guy’s shoulder… I mean go home and keep reading.

I really meant go home and keep reading.

Stop looking at me like that!

My computer’s in the shop. Unfortunately the shop is in Texas. The friggin tablet feature died on me. Actually its been dead for a few weeks. As in immediately after it got out of the shop the last time. To say this ticked me off would be an understatement. From what I can tell from talking with other Tablet PC owners, I guess I just got unlucky as Tablets seem to have a low failure rate. Oh well. This was the week I could afford to lose it for.

checka it out titles that finally make sense.

The beginning of this week was really tough. I lost all perspective on things and had sunk into a bit of a depression. I still liked the program, but I just felt like I couldn’t make it to the end of the quarter. It seemed like my performance was slipping. I wasn’t absorbing the readings and my last ethnography was a disaster. Or the later description there was more than a bit of hyperbole. Mediocre would be a better description of my participant observation. Ironically I had made some good progress on my thesis. But all and all I was feeling l-o-w. I just wanted to come down, like some junkie cosmonaut… what happened to Cracker anyway?

Finally I realized that what I needed was to take a night off and not feel bad about it. Up until that point, if I allowed myself to get distracted from things I would get ticked at myself and not let go of that frustration. I think that’s been my main problem. So for the moment I’m beyond that. Last night I went home and cleaned and organized my apartment. I feel so much better.

IRB

Sucks. Institutional Review Board. Just because some medical researchers had to go off and conduct immoral experiments on unwitting participants, I need to get what feels like fifteen bazillion releases before I can talk to someone. Double that amount if the person is pregnant. And its frustrating. I blame you for this foodgoat (only one reader of this blog will get that inside reference).

A recent interviewee for a possible thesis topic requested anonymity. Now I’m not sure how much, if at any, I’m able to talk about that interview. Ugghhh! And I really need to beat on the topic and the interview with people to decide if there is something there. Grrrr.

well, I was touching up the blog design, trying to come up with something a little more hybrid. This could also be interpreted as trying to dodge writing up an ethnography that I’m struggling with.

Anyway, I get things to a point that I like them, and then proceed to republish not only my index, but my entire blog. And the worst part of all of this is I realize what I’ve done only when it’s too late to stop it. It’s a weird experience: watching each page of the old design get turned over. Racing through my archive and looking at the old style of pages one moment. Then simply hitting the reload button and finding the new look in it’s place.

I managed to make a few screen captures. But the old look, on any page you select, is history.

I guess its liberating as well. But I always liked aspects of the old design (though the CGI page load time sucked). Still, I feel like I just digitally remastered my past. Created a special edition.

I’m trying to type up and ethnography of a meal that I conducted last night. And it’s like pulling teeth. Grrr… this shouldn’t be so hard. The problem is nothing really happened. Which is to be expected as life isn’t always dramatic. Argueably this is one of the many things that sparates journalism from anthropology. However, you still in the back of your mind hope for an “ah ha” moment where you reach some deep and resounding understanding of the universe. That just didn’t happen.

As to where did we go for dinner? Check it out:

Chinatown! And it was really yummy. Unfortunately I can’t disclose who went with me because of Institutional Review Board issues. Because of releases I have to secure for my class I have to protect their identities.

Speaking of identities, you might not recognize me. Since returning from my short trip to Rocester a few weeks ago I haven’t shaved. Heck folks are luck I’ve been showering with my current work load. So here is my current look. The beard is going bye-bye tomorrow.

Scary huh?

After my second all nighter I succeeded in turning in my Language and Culture midterm. At this point I’m am hoping for a “b” though I’m willing to settle for a “b-”. It sucked. Two essays, five pages each. And here’s a sample question:

2. Why should ritual text-in-context be hypermetasemioticized in every respect? We have considered the role of densely laminated metricalization as the prime reflexively calibrated metapragmatics that regiments the signs within ritual so that the whole as well as its parts are determinate indexical icons, even if that indexical iconicity is only a figurative sign of aspects of the “conventionally cosmic,” i.e., the universe of presupposable conventions. But, taking one of the elaborate examples of ritual from our reading list, show how in addition to straightforward metricalization, the form is saturated with meta-semiosis layered upon meta-semiosis. (Recall here the relationship of the “literal” or everyday to the “tropic” or figurative in Jakobson’s account of “poetic function” in denotational language involves a metasemiosis moving from a lower to higher plane of meaning.) For the example you choose, explain the role of any folk metapragmatics that attempts to understand the possible/likely/guaranteed “effectiveness” of ritual as performed. Is there a Rhematic understanding of some principle(s) that make effectiveness transparent to local understanding, for example?

It literally took us one week to decode these things. Then almost another week to formulate our answers. I’m not looking forward to the final. And in the meantime I’m planning to take a long nap.

However, folks, start expecting e-mails as my life is sorta my own again.

the Reg is our post Soviet Block architecture library. And I’m here working on Language in Culture… in threory at least. I can’t concentrate and I need to get through at least 200 pages of reading in the next few hours. I’m not currently loving life.

I got a B+ on my Perpectives in Social Science Analysis Course. As I had been hoping for a B, this was good news. My gut is that this is the average grade. Basically what it means is that I can still get an “A” in the course, I just have to write a kick butt final, which I don’t expect will be anywhere near as intimidating. Well at least not quite as intimidating.

However, that can’t me a concern right now. Right now, Langauge in Culture is all that occupies my waking and sleeping hours.