Sunday, April 11, 2004
OK, I'm sick and I have a lot of work to do. But a short blog is here, so no one can yell at me about not updating.
The LEO (Lecturer Employee Organization) strike apparently was quite big... lots of teachers (mostly LSA, not art school, alas) went on strike, and lots of students went on strike. There were huge notices all over the ground, written in chalk, saying things like "Don't go to class! Stay in and sleep for social justice!" or "You don't like that class anyways! Stay home and support LEO!" All of this, at 8 am, was terribly tempting, but to class I went.
Oh, if you're not at Michigan, the teachers were striking because the University has this policy where they only hire lecturers for one year. So there are some people who've been teaching for 10 or more years, but have no job security from one year to the next. They also get paid less than high school teachers. It's an awfully raw deal, and I am a LEO supporter, but I am also paying out-of-state tuition to go here and I'm sure as heck not going to miss class unless I'm quite ill.
The strikers up at the art school were marching around by the front door... people kept coming in to class all shell-shocked after having been yelled at and made to feel bad about going to class. After a bit people realized that the back door was open, so everyone (including me) just went in and out the back. The protesters apparently didn't realize this at any point during the day.
I had managed to avoid them all until I went to the busstop after class to go back to Central Campus. Alex came charging across the street and started good-naturedly haranguing me about having gone to class (he's in my class, and had missed the quiz we had that day, the protesting git).
Once back on Central I went to Starbucks to get some work done. This meant walking through the Diag (the main quad on the campus). The majority of the strikers were in the Diag. It was madness. There were tons of people with signs. There was a big crowd standing in front of the chemistry building chanting something in spanish. There was an even bigger crowd standing in front of Angell Hall chanting LEO chants and playing a marching tune on some trumpets. Good times.
Anyways, a lot later in the day the entire art school had a 'Peace March' (don't ask) with signs made by 2 very pissed off CFC classes, run by the guest artist lecturer for the week. I left rather early with Brandon. Marching is one thing, but we don't hold with hippie chanting.
That's about it for interesting things that have been happening. Have some Links of Excellence to make your time spent on the Internet more worthwhile.
This animation is only so-so, but I really like the song that goes along with it. Good stuff.
This is absolutely amazing. You listen to it for a little bit and you think, Hey, that's kind of neat, they made some music with that crap Windows sound program. Then you listen to it longer, and it gets more and more amazing. Excellent stuff.
If you're just sitting around killing time, this game is wonderful. It's creative, it's well done, it's tricky yet do-able. I approve. Takes a while to play, though, so it's only useful if you've got a lot of time to waste.
Here we have a cat song and animation that's just retarded enough to make me love it. Yeah, there's not really much more to it than that. It's pretty old, so I may have posted it before, but I was strolling through my old bookmarks and recalled how much I was amused by it.
And here's another kitty song and animation, this one by b3ta's very own Rob. We all love him to bits, of course, but I have to admit that the man can't sing. It's OK, though. Kittens! My favorite bit is the ickle siamese kitten saying "I promise for the last time no more booze".
One last link. This is Fancyteeth, the deranged world dreamed up by b3ta's Mr. Mantlepies and subsequently bought by some british tv channel. Is it surreal? Yes. Is it awesome? Yes. I love them all, but my personal favorite is 'Le Cafe'. Er, these are all done in Flash, so they might take a really, really long time to load if your computer isn't that good or your internet connection isn't that fast. But they're definitely worth it. (Corey, if you're reading this, you would love these)
Gah! Work time!
4:56 PM
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