« January 2008 | Main | March 2008 »

February 28, 2008

Synchronicity and Absence

I have been missing from Chattablogs for a little while now, and I feel bad about it. However, I've been very busy with good luck and kind favors lately. I've been kept very busy holding down two less-than-part-time jobs on top of everything else I do. One of these jobs will hopefully send me to England over the summer, and I've been enjoying it enormously. It involves a great deal of filling, and so whenever I have a spare hour or two I get to shut myself up in an unused conference room, crank up my mp3 player, and do embarrassing booty-dances while I put pieces of paper where they need to go.

The good fortune and kindness comes in this week, when I found out that a paper I wrote has been accepted to a national conference-- the first I've ever been accepted to. On top of that, I've kindly been offered a very generous scholarship to help me be able to attend. And even greater, my roommate got accepted to a prestigious Chemistry program in Germany for over the summer. To celebrate we all went out to Durty Nelly's, which sadly enough will only be open for one more day tomorrow before it closes forever. We all enjoyed hamburgers and Dear Boyfriend and I alone enjoyed the Guinesses-mixed-with-things (Black Velvet-- Guiness and champagne and Poor Man's Black Velvet-- Guiness and cider) since we were the only eligible public drinkers.

As for the synchronicity of the universe part of the subject line, there's been an odd, and completely coincidental, amount of talk about suicide lately. Mostly the philosophy of the act has come up in a number of unrelated classes-- the American Drama class Dear Boyfriend and I take together has been reading a play that questions suicide, and a coworker of ours has been reading up on the philosophy of suicide for another class. The first song that came on the radio when we were driving to Durty Nelly's last night was about the topic. Maybe I am just pricking my ears up a bit more when the word comes up after a friend's mother's coworker sadly committed suicide last weekend. I wonder if there is something unusual going on astrologically, or just a creepy energy bouncing around. Did the Lunar Eclipse set something off? Because it's starting to get a little weird. It seems an uneasy balance for so many good things to be happening when we are all thinking about such a sad occurrence.

I'll be getting back to work now, but I hope everyone has a good day and hopefully I'll find a minute to post a Friday Creature tomorrow.

Posted by Spike at 02:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 15, 2008

Friday Pooch

Spotted this hairy fellow at Rock City back in October when all the family was in town. The lighting was good and I was determined to catch a Friday Creature that day, but the dog's people kept out maneuvering me. I think dear boyfriend helped me pounce on one of the few photo ops I got!

More lucky shots at the Friday Ark.

Posted by Spike at 03:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 10, 2008

Anonymous Vs. Scientology, Or Why I'm Sad I'm Not In London

This makes me sad I'm not in London.

Also covered here
and some background info on who's involved is at this blog.

I MISS ENGLAND.

Posted by Spike at 09:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 05, 2008

Ants In the Pants

It seems every school I've gone to in Chattanooga has been built smack dab on top of one of the sandy spots that the infamous Chattanoogan ants love so well. Maybe Chattanooga is just one giant ant hill, I don't know. But it was one of those lovely little movie moments when I was sitting on a couch at UTC working away on a history paper just now. I turned back to my laptop and saw a single ant meandering up my screen. So I flicked it off. A few minutes later, I flicked one off my arm. A while longer and I opened my book and had to flick a third ant off one of the pages. Just as I was wondering when the last time someone threw down an ant trap was and trying to remember if I had seen an errant Subway cookie floating around yesterday, the bug man happened to come in armed with his tank of deadly chemicals. It was the best timing ever. Nothing is grosser than a hoard of tiny bugs, especially when it seems I'm sitting in their couch.

Just for the record, I seem to really attract ants. Last year my apartment had endless swarms of them, the largest of which was particularly well-timed to descend on my desk at the exact same moment I was trying to stop three-feet of boiling hot water from pouring out of my ceiling. Then in Oxford over the summer, vast numbers of absolutely nauseating flying ants appeared all over the walls of the cottage for no apparent reason. I'm beginning to wonder if my obsession with ancient Egypt as a child has angered some Egyptian pharoe still cranky from what Moses dished out, dying for a little insect vengeance of his own.

Posted by Spike at 03:37 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

February 03, 2008

Puppy Bowl?

here's some highlights from Animal Planet's Fourth Annual Puppy Bowl. Just from the clips I linked to, it looks like some kind of bizarre Youtube joke, but as the NY Times points out, it's apparently incredibly popular, and as I discovered watching the clips, oddly addictive. Them puppies is just so darn cute! Still, I can't help but be bemused by the NY Times article, which reads almost like something from The Onion simply by virtue of the topic.

Posted by Spike at 10:41 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

Deadheads for Obama

"The Nation -- All those rock stars and celebrities backing Barack Obama are not only targeting the youth vote. In a bid for a decidedly older demographic, The Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh says the band is reuniting for a "one-time-only event in order to lend support to Senator Obama leading into the crucial 'Super-Tuesday' series of primaries.""

The concert will stream live on the fourth (tomorrow, Monday) from Iclips.net right through the link.

Rest of the story here at Yahoo News.

Posted by Spike at 09:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack