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| February 2008 »
It is with deep sadness that I must report the imminent departure of the Sunflower Market. In a sea of fast food and pizza joints, it one of the few remotely healthy sources of sustenance in the campus area. As a crunchy green veg-head, this loss hits me on multiple levels. First, there will be no more $5 off $5 purchase coupons, though I have to say those are probably partly to blame for the chain's demise. Second, there will be fewer choices for organic, local, and exotic food in town. Third, I now have to go back to walking at least five blocks to find the nearest grocery store. Oh well. Maybe it will burn off all the calories I gain from eating nonorganic factory food. (Just kidding. I wouldn't touch the bad stuff anyway.)
On the plus side, Kroger is almost always cheaper!
I seem to have an unholy amount of reading this quarter, despite only taking three classes. Most of it is for my English 575 (Women in Science Fiction) class, and it's all very thought-provoking and fortunately fairly quick to read. Maybe it's just the genre, but there does seem to be a lot of...shall I say, less than top-notch writing in many of these works, which doesn't mean they're not worth reading or anything. Some of it is amusing while some is just plain baffling, but let me show you what I mean.
"A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest." -Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. (Of course, this is cyberpunk, so I think there is a certain degree of irony in there. I find this whole book just hilarious)
"It was not human guilt but the kind of helpless, hopeless despair that would be felt by a small wooden box or geometrical cube if such objects had consciousness; it was the guilt of sheer existence." -The Female Man by Joanna Russ. (This is quite possibly the most depressing sentence I've ever read. And I've read Solzhenitzyn.)
"I have worked with grasshoppers, however, not your garden peas. Although you are a man of the cloth, you are also a man of science, and I pray that you will not be offended when I state that I have specifically studied the reproductive organs of male grasshoppers. Indeed, I did not limit myself to studying the organs themselves; instead, I also studied the smaller units that make up the male organs and have beheld structures most amazing within them." -Introduction to Genetic Analysis, Solution Guide (I guess writing science textbooks must get boring, so they have to make up weird stories about discovering independent assortment.)
I auditioned yesterday for "A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and A Prayer." The play is associated with The Vagina Monologues and I think it was compiled by Eve Ensler, VM's author. It's a lot of monologues written by various personalities, all about issues of abuse against women. I did some theatre in high school and have always wanted to get back into it, and since these are individual monologues that don't require a lot of group rehearsal, I thought this would be good.
At my audition I was asked to read an excerpt from a second monologue, this one about human sex-trafficking in Asia. Afterward the student in charge of the auditions told me point-blank that she has to keep an eye on diversity when casting and that I might well be cast based on my ethnicity. I didn't say this, but in my past experience I am used to being cast in spite of my ethnicity, or more commonly, not getting cast based on my ethnicity, so I have no beef with her making a decision that way. I participated in a trafficking-awareness campaign my freshman year, and because it is primarily Asian girls involved, it's a cause that is near and dear to my heart, so I definitely don't mind being the Asian voice. Besides, no one can claim to be race-blind, not even myself; when I was paging through the script, I usually skipped over the "black" monologues, automatically thinking, Oh, I can't play those parts. But why the heck not? Yesterday was MLK Day, and he talked about a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character...I guess that should extend to the stage too, yes?
Should hear back in the next few days...showtime is March 28 and 29, everyone should come!
I'm taking a service-learning course this quarter, English 567S (Rhetoric and Community Service). You are matched with a community partner for whom you do practical writing projects according to their needs, from organization newsletters to catalog entries to web content. I am working with WOSU Public Media and I'll actually be involved in their efforts to expand to online social media venues...i.e. blogging. I've been a personal blogger for about seven years and I've been writing here for almost a year, but I never really thought about the larger "blogosphere" as it were. Most of my blogging activity is just an extension of my real-life relationships, except for a few online acquaintances. But after checking out WOSUConnect and learning about WOSU's Social Media Cafe, I'm realizing that blogging can be more than just high schoolers spilling their guts about their crushes (a stage I finally, mercifully outgrew a few years ago) and that it can actually have an effect on the whole community, even the whole city. I'll be able to meet some of the blogging "celebrities" of Columbus at the next event, which I'm looking forward to. Stay tuned...
For the first time in my history at OSU, I have all women professors this quarter. (Last quarter was all men.) I would say that this is largely due to the fact that I am taking two English classes, except when I really think about it, the majority of my English professors have actually been men as well.
Ironically, one of those classes is Dr. Sharon Collingwood's "Women in Science Fiction," so maybe that is why I'm noticing the sudden female presence more acutely. I'm sure there are reams of studies published about this, but my own limited experience in academia has already shown me that it is not a terribly family-friendly lifestyle. Of course plenty of women make it work, and that is a very good thing, but I know for sure that it is not for me.
Just as an interesting exercise, the gender break-up by department of my professors:
English: 6 men, 3 women
Chemistry: 4 men, 2 women
Biochemistry: 1 man
PCMB: 1 man
Geology: 1 man
Math: 1 woman
International Studies: 1 man
Linguistics: 1 woman
Physics: 3 men
Art History: 1 woman
Total: 17 men, 8 women
Almost a 2:1 ratio in totals and individual departments. Very interesting. Here's an article from USC's faculty newsletter about Gender Inequity in Academia.
(Title a shout-out to my fellow Douglas Adams fans.)
Another year, another BCS Championship we are not bringing home. Honestly, though, all I wanted this year was to not go down in flames quite as badly as last year, and I think our boys played well in that respect, though a little more sloppily than desired. When I found out we were facing LSU, I felt like Moe Syzlak in that episode of the Simpsons where he finds himself fist to fist with Drederick Tatum, wondering, "How on earth did this happen?" Oh well, there's always next year...
I call this the Edible Buckeye Football, made of peanut butter rice krispies and milk chocolate frosting. You could whip it up in your dorm microwave if you were really careful, but for the sake of all the RA's and maintenance staff in our dorms, I advise you not to.
The Happy Greek has two locations near campus, one in the South Campus Gateway and one in the Short North. Since we were in the area for a (much more pleasant, weatherwise) Gallery Hop last night, my boyfriend and I visited the Short North incarnation. There are lots of restaurants in the Short North that I would like to try, but many of them are screamingly expensive by college student standards. Not so the Happy Greek. Drew's chicken schwarma platter was less than $15 and included salad and fries besides the generous helping of chicken. I had the lentil soup of the day and a side of Mediterranean vegetables, which ended up being a little redundant because the soup was absolutely giant. Tastewise it is similar to Aladdin's, although HG's pita is quite different: it tastes, more than anything else, like the Chinese green onion pancakes my dad makes, chewy and full of herby goodness. The walls are painted with happy Mediterranean murals that make me long for the sun-drenched beaches of Santorini...or just the sun at all would be nice, amid all this rainy, gray, dreariness...
I am currently taking a measly 14 credit hours, which is the lowest in my college career. It would have been 17, but I dropped my Mol Gen 705 after discovering I had not taken Cell Biology, which probably would have made Advances in Cell Biology rather difficult. My guess is that I could have done it, but it would have been a hellish quarter trying to keep up with graduate students. Besides, I would like to dedicate as much time as possible to my service-learning class, English 567 (Rhetoric and Community Service). I would also like to work at WOW more, plus I have other commitments to Chimes Junior Class Honorary, Chi Alpha, and my church. My English 575 (Women in Science Fiction) also has a fairly heavy reading schedule, but I don't expect any of it will be too terribly difficult. (I PROMISE to take feminist science fiction seriously. Seriously.) I figure, after seven 20-hour quarters (or somewhere close), I deserve a little break, as long as I don't end up like my friend who is juggling 24 hours in her penultimate quarter at OSU. But she's going to medical school, and I am not, so I will hopefully have less to worry about.
Back on campus with nothing to do, my boyfriend and I went down to German Village to check out the Book Loft and that is one place I would not mind being trapped in for a year, provided I had food and water. Thirty-two rooms in four wings of the building...all chock full of books. It is quite amazing. And it's not terribly expensive. Right now almost everything is 5% off publisher list price, and many have additional markdowns. I bought a $5 copy of The Brothers Karamazov and it is my intention to read it by the end of this year. I just realized that I have acquired at least twelve books since the beginning of December. That figures out to one book a month, but some of them are cookbooks and I finished Cyrano de Bergerac already, so I should have more time...except for the fact that I know I am going to buy more books. I am going to SBX tomorrow to buy textbooks, and I can never resist their bargain book rack. Oh, what ever am I going to do...
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