Jack-O-Lantern

*evil laughter*

It's in the Trash Can

As I went to throw my paper towel away in the women's restroom in the Huber Arts Center, I was a bit taken aback by a sign on the trash can. It read, NO BABIES. I was shocked; my sensibilities were offended. On another sign I saw someone had scrawled 'distasteful' underneath it, to which someone had responded, 'art'. Hmmmm, I think posted words on trash cans are pushing the definition of art.

...and if I think about it, art is new, art is uncomfortable, and art is unable to be bound by transient boundaries.

...and if I think about it, poking fun at throwing away babies is inappropriate in it's own right.

I haven't really decided whether I think the sign is classified as art and therefore important social commentary, or rather blatant, unsavory, juvenile words. One way or the other, it got me thinking.

Then I decided to take a photo of it in the bathroom, so I could blog about it. Gosh, I'm glad no one saw me do that. That would have been weird.

Subservient Chicken

Oh my holy word!

Burger King wins creepiest mascot award again. First it was The King and now it's the chicken. Actually, I'm not so sure it's the chicken, or if it's what the chicken will do.

"Have it your way" Go to www.subservientchicken.com

I can't believe I didn't stumble onto this site earlier, when it has been around since 2004. It wins most disturbing on the web. Whatever you type into the box, the chicken will do on camera. I probably spent an hour yesterday torturing the chicken.
A few of my favorite commands:

Jump
Play dead
Shake your tail
Sit on the couch
Eat McDonald's (ha ha ha)
Lay an egg
Do a cartwheel
Take off the chicken suit (he didn't like that one)
Riverdance
Fly
Kiss me (don't worry he'll only make out with the pillow) but...
Kiss (he'll give you a peck)
Pose
Turn off lights
Moonwalk
Hide and Seek

I just wonder how much they paid the guy in the suit?
I hope it was enough to salvage some dignity. Right.

Mr. Crabby

Ok. I just love this picture from my fall break at Wallops Island. And I could not not post it.

Say hello to the famous Maryland blue crab. He won't pinch. I promise.

Fulbright

Finally! I got everything sorted out with my Fulbright Application before the Oct 19th deadline, and my part is all done. Now it's up to the big whigs. They hold my future precariously in their hands. Let's hope they don't squash it. Ha.

I applied for an English Teaching Assistantship to Argentina for the 08-09 year. We will have to see how it goes. Last year's stats were something like 122 applications for a meager 15 spots. Maybe everyone studied those horrible odds and redirected their applications to Uruguay?? Wishful thinking, eh?

I'm hoping-- really hoping that I'll get it. No Shippensburg student has ever received a Fulbright (at least within the past 15 years), so perhaps that will give me an edge. I'm sort of a minority, right? I think it would be so awesome to teach English in a country I have always dreamed of visiting. Plus, a Fulbright grant is freakin' prestigious! It is sponsored by the US Department of State. I'm confident that I'm extremely qualified for the position. We'll see what the review committee thinks. Oh. Wish me luck!

Oysters in the Chesapeake

More about my Fall Break. The one day we rode out from Deal Island in Maryland on a boat with oyster watermen and another boat that was doing an oyster census. We watched as a giant claw thing scraped the bottom of the ocean floor to collect the shellfish. With evey dip, they only collect a few acceptable oysters. They have to be at least 3 inches, not have and spat (basically baby oysters) on them, and of course, be healthy and alive in order to keep them. Tons of the oysters are plagued by diseases, and the men who have been doing this job for generations simply can not survive on this livliehood anymore. The number of watermen and oysters decrease every year.

And then, on a less depressing note, we ate raw oysters. Yeah. Actually, it wasn't so bad. Without chewing, it just tasted like a lump of salt water going down. Tasty.

Good bye little oysters.

Wallops Island

My fall break rocked! Like I said in an earlier post, we took a trip to Wallops Island to participate in a celebration of Rachel Carson and do some marsh clean up. The weather was gorgeous and we had a good time. The first night we went to the Baltimore Aquarium. Saturday, we presented our lovely poster on Rachel Carson at the Fish and Wildlife Service and kayaked from Chincoteague to Assateague. *no wild pony sightings* :(

Sunday we cleaned up the marsh in the morning finding giant nets littered everywhere. We got muddy digging them out (and got attacked by blood thirsty mosquitos). Then in the afternoon we went to the beach. Haha. Playing in the ocean was so much fun. I remember my freshman year spring break when we got hit with a freak snowstorm, and here I was in the ocean during this FALL break in OCTOBER. Awesomeness.

I'll post more later.

Why a Walmart Wedding?

Ok, this is ridiculous. A couple got married between the aisles of a Wal-mart store on Saturday in Ohio. What kind of crazy people want to get married in the very store that they work and shop in? Is this brainwashing? Did Walmart pipe fairy dust through the vents? Why do people treat retail outlets like holy sanctuaries? I have a real problem with this.

They should've gone for Vegas and an imitation Elvis.

The story on Yahoo News.

Fall Break

Tomorrow, I am off to Wallops Island, Virginia for 5 days as part of my honors colloquium class in service learning. We are going to count oysters, ride in kayaks, present a poster on Rachel Carson, smell like fish, do some kind of service project, go to the aquarium in Baltimore, MD, visit Chincoteague (and hopefully the ponies) among other stuff. We are going to be working with the Marine Science Consortium. This should be an experience. An environmental one. I'm excited, it should be fun. Not something I'd usually attempt. Whooo, fall break!

English as a Foreign Language

Errrrr. Gross. McDonald's Flesh Drink. I'll pass.

And the travel one. Good Luck! Has the pilot been drinking again?

Enrish has a bunch of messed up English language products and signs. This is why native fluency is such a valuable commodity. Nobody wants a Flesh Drink.

Those New Yorkers

I think I heard about this website, Overheard in New York, on an episode of Six Degrees that was on ABC last year, but that was canceled mid-season. I actually liked it too--or at least the idea that everybody is interconnected by at least 6 completely random links.
But anyway, the website is an interesting idea. People living in New York City send in snippets of conversations that they have overheard from strangers during their day. I think the only conclusion is that there are many New Yorkers who are mean, weird, don't believe in privacy, and lack intelligence. See for yourself my random sampling (of ones that have PG content).

Coworker #1: Is it just me, or are the rats in New York getting smaller? Seriously!

Coworker #2: Maybe you're just getting bigger.

Tourist man: Pardon me, officer, can you tell us where Orchard Street is?

Cop: See that naked Chinese guy?

Tourist man: Ummm...Yeah.

Cop: Walk down to him and make a left.

Tourist man: Um, thanks.

Cop: No problem.

Drunk girl: Kool-Aid is my most favorite drink in the whole world. When she moved in, it was like great, because it was like, "You love Kool-Aid, too? Awesome, we're going to get along great." But then it ended up, she tried to kill me with a steak knife.

Man: How much for two double-A batteries?

Bodega worker: The good ones or the one-dollar ones?

Man: The dollar ones.

Bodega worker: One dollar.

Man: I'll take two.

Bodega worker: That will be two dollars.

Man: Two dollars?!

Pilot: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm just going to power off the plane for a minute and restart it. Kind of like control-alt-delete on your computer.

Girl #1: As Shakespeare once said: "Thou shall not kill."

Girl #2: No, that would be God.

Holy Water

In reading the BBC news awhile ago, an interesting article popped up. The title read, Fake holy water warning 'working.' So what does that mean? In the UK they were doing inspection to see if vendors were selling 'fake' holy water because this variety of water can be filled with arsenic and nitrates. The 'fake' water is described as Zam Zam (from a well in Mecca) water but it isn't really from there. The article states, "The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia forbids the commercial export of genuine Zam Zam, so we have no idea of the true source of the water which ends up on the streets of the UK."

I should think people concerned with buying 'fake' holy water only have more problems than they can handle. At least the 'real' (note the quotation marks) holy water won't poison you if you drink it.

See the article at the BBC website.

Graveyard

Last week my fiction class (man, I get a lot of inspiration for this blog from that class) walked to an old graveyard on Prince Street up from the university. Our assignment was to look at a gravestone and create a short character sketch based off of nothing more than the name on the tombstone. Actually, some of the stones were so old the names had weathered away; I think most of the people buried there lived in the mid 1800's.

So, anyway, our whole class is sitting in the graveyard writing in our notebooks, when suddenly, in the church right beside us, the door literally bursts open and out comes a coffin draped in an American Flag. They were having a funeral service at the church right by where we were using the graveyard as a class project, and a lot of older people started filing out of the door while they were loading the casket into the Hearse. We all felt so bad. At least they were going to another site to bury the poor man so we didn't desecrate the funeral too much. Geez, that was a horrible day to look at gravestones.

Car Smileys or Frownies

You know how they first came out with mood rings and then moved on to digital AIM smiley faces? Well, now they have advanced to the point of Driving LED Emoticons to share your emotions with the rest of world according to ThinkGeek. You can stick a lovely glowing representation of your mood in the back window of your car. Now every driver can know to ride on the brakes for awhile when behind a frowny face car. I love the disclaimer, "May not be legal in all states. Check your local laws before use." Do people really buy stuff like this? And what would you do if the emoticon changed in the middle of road? Was it something I did?

Funny Pics

I stole a few funny pictures from the FunnyHub.

The polar bear one is my favorite. Noooo, don't do it, Billy.

Obviously, this means I'm procrasting from doing something.