"To Creep or Not To Creep" - analysis of the day:
The issue of whether it is possible to creep on Rhodes campus has been raised of late by the illustrious plan filers greld and labmt. I have asked around and drawn on my own (highly limited) experience, and come to the conclusion that it is possible to creep--but no matter the degree of luck, skill, resources, and time you have, you are bound to get found out eventually. It is possible to creep--only to certain degrees. If you realize, in the end, that you don't care that you're going to get caught--or that you have been caught, as the case may be--then it's better, because you won't get so nervous about it and will hence be able to creep more naturally & successfully. Within the confines of the Rhodes bubble, somebody is going to see you going about your business, frequenting a certain hallway a lot, appearing certain places at certain hours. And even you go off campus, if you have friends in common with whomever you're trying to creep around, you'll be found out. People will start to wonder, "Now where did so-and-so go? They're never around on Tuesday night, blah blah," and two and two will be put together. The success rate of creeping is raised incredibly when off-campus people are involved; so is the time span of the creep period. It can be limited by the interference of human emotion--do you creep just because you can, or because you're trying to get to (or back at) someone? And once caught, will you continue, or will you see the error of your ways? I think this would be a really good ethnography for anybody in the anthro/soc department, a good senior paper project. Maybe they could do some "research" before leaving Rhodes. (That's another factor--whatever year you are, and how much time you've got left, is probably inversely proportional to the risks you're willing to take.)
plan file analysis
"I see no moral difference in killing a human being and killing a super-cat."
Prof. Larry Lacy, whose classes I will miss sorely someday
From an AP news story about Clinton's arrival in Vietnam:
"Even before Clinton got here, Nguyen Thanh Luong told a reporter he was looking forward to the visit. He glimpsed at a workman cleaning a statue of V. I. Lenin at the Lenin park, and said: 'I think if Lenin were alive today, he would be happy to see Clinton coming here with a message of peace among all peoples.'"
Yesterday as I was walking to Buckman behind the library, I saw someone on the grating playing in the steam. That seemed like a really bad idea, mostly because the drop looked to be about 40 feet and I'm deathly afraid of heights, but it also looked so cool. Nobody does that kind of thing around here, and to see somebody enjoying an act of spontaneousness was great. It was kind of a "Master and Margarita" moment, too, because the person was all in black and had bright red hair and looked vaguely like an impish demon dancing around. Happy moment. If only a 6-foot-tall vodka-drinking tomcat was nearby.
plan file musings
A joke:
Why do southern women rarely participate in orgies?
Because afterwards there's just too many thank you cards to write.
"There are a lot of interesting people here, a pretty high concentration of creative, interesting, smart people. You just have to make an effort to group them together, because they're interspersed with a lot of morons. But that's real life."
Aimee Mann
"Just remember that profanity is key to a successful academic finale."
Kristin
"Don't knock President Fillmore. He kept us out of Vietnam."
Anonymous
"Eisenhower was very nice,
Nixon was his only vice."
C. Degen
"Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored."
George Saunders' reported last words
"Rule of the Great: When people you admire appear to be deep in thought, they are usually thinking about lunch."
Anonymous
"Talking much about oneself can also be a means to conceal oneself."
Friedrich Nietzsche
"If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings."
Lisa Moriyama
Eve's happy thoughts (and boy have I needed them:
I love mice! ~( )8:> Email from Rez. The noises made by toy dog & toy lion. G hour, Wednesdays... Serenading people loudly outside a window when other people are studying. The southern part of the night sky. Prof. Tran's silly little boy. "Love for Three Oranges". The Little Prince. Hot green paint. My portable seal. The "curious dog" hand puppet. Friendly. 316 Voorhies.
"Don't mistake my kindness for a weakness."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Professor Slisher: I'm used to finding stars by constellations... I think of them as players on a baseball diamond. There's home plate, first, second, and third; and if you're really good you can see a pitcher and a catcher, and thousands of little outfielders. Hey, I bet nobody can guess the game they're playing.
Student: Baseball?
Slisher: Yes, baseball. But they're playing the All-Star game.
The entire class: Ohhhhh!!
While innocently poking around on the Rhodes network, I found a porn video stashed on somebody's hard drive. I didn't know it was a porn until I clicked on it and suddenly people were having sex in the little Real Player viewer on one of the pc's in the computer lab. The person sitting next to me saw me close it. How embarrassing.
plan file musings
"I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter."
Blaise Pascal
"Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else--unless it is an enemy."
Albert Einstein
"Conceit causes more conversation than wit."
Francois de La Rouchefoucauld
"We must remember the First Amendment which protects any shrill jackass no matter how self-seeking."
F. G. Withington
"Whenever anyone says, 'theoretically,' they really mean, 'not really.'"
Dave Parnas
"The truth of certain empirical propositions belongs to our frame of reference."
Ludwig Wittgenstein
"I grow old... I grow old...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."
T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"
Brian: I am pathetic. Did I ever tell you that?
Eve: Well, not in so many words.