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* * * * * * * Viacom's overall combined media goals are perhaps best summed up in the words of its billionaire boss, Sumner Redstone, who said, "When you can make a movie for an average cost of $10 million and then cross promote and sell it off of magazines, books, products, televisions shows--out of your own company--the profit is enormous." \commoncouragepress\ The protest won't last too far into the evening. Maybe an hour or so. We'll protest and then go to a bar and be drunken clowns. First, we protest!!! Then, we party! \a squidlist announcement\ When institutions are stable over a long period, nobody is challenged to think deeply about their meaning. As a result, the practice of articulating the deep values of the university is largely left to the provosts who give graduation speeches. It's a nice spring day, the faculty and students have their medieval regalia on, the parents are absolutely thrilled like you can't believe, the provost stands up and speaks in a ritual manner for just long enough to keep everyone from glazing over, the assistant deans start handing out the diplomas, the provost sneaks off to the next of the day's ten meetings, and nobody thinks about the matter again until next year. \i forget where this is from. d'oh\ |
n o v e m b e r . 3 . 1 9 9 9 (2:11 am, berkeley) [simon makes me proud, or in andy's words, can a white man be a shaolin master?] there's a point on the 24 when it looks like you're about to sail out and over the oakland hills. the ramp pushes you out while banking in and every time i take this curve at night i smile. i know, my car is a simulation of control over my destiny. you think you could go anywhere when you're on the highway even when you're just going to work. back in new haven, on my way home my fingers would sometimes twitch the powersteering toward the sign for 95south and nyc, before twitching back to 91north and the state st. exit. but once, l and i, meaning to go to chuckee cheese's in milford, wound up at a quasi show in the lower east side instead. and the summer before, we went out for late night munchies, thinking gyros maybe, and ended up eating kimchee and chapchae on 32nd st. i keep these memories as possibilities because i usually just drove to kmart, picked up kitty litter and mozzarella sticks and came home. cars are like pacifiers. however, my calendar is a reminder that i'm a flake - i just remembered i meant to go to the lani guinier lecture last night. is the internet a pseudo-life? is a website a sorry imitation of a relationship? i think the fact that this website is real communication to me betrays how much of my innards come wrapped up in words, written-not-spoken. i used to write scads of letters (yes scads) and eventually the pen would trick the mind into letting it tell the truth. in face to face conversation, i lean towards selective exhibitionism, telling tidbits only. and here, though i'm scrupulously conscious of the wide overlap between who reads this and who i care about, sometimes the keyboard tricks me into typing my heart. luckily, i've been reading a whole lot of crappy writing courtesy of work - there's a diary section on both the high school and the college sites and whew, is there some stinky writing - so i'm too full of cliches to even think of trusting my fingers. things that have been showing up in my offline journal (i blame it on the high school diarists!) : "rattling around in my brain" "strike me with terror" "totally nast" (OK, so the last is a fake.) i was happy to hear l [the brooklyn l] the other morning. we talked a little bit about moving to mongolia [she's considering it], and talked some about envy [we both have it]. we talked about how cities make us covet things [though i think she's budgeting way better than me] and interminable lists of "can't miss" events [that i mostly end up missing, lani guinier being the current exhibit a] we both make because we live in cities that live with or without us. i think i might subscribe to too many lists. i know i'm an information junkie.
kaya | asian american writers workshop | aarisings | kearny street workshop | intersection for the arts | tripod | geocities | aladdin | san quentin | apple | colorlines | every goddamn yale organization i was ever even marginally involved in... |
home now *10.31.99 and then |