Are You Freakin' Kidding?!

Washington University shuts down End of Communism memorial. Because reminding people about the horrors of the gulag & communism's obscene death toll is "too offensive". WTF?



(Twitter pics here of the protest which seem fairly typical in terms on on-campus protest outrageousness)

Link to full post.

Moving Notes

So, I'm in the final throes of my moving preparations. Hopefully, by this time next week I will be forevermore done with apartments. In the process of cleaning, packing, etc, I've noticed several things:

1) I am the kind of person who packs their rock collection more carefully than their breakables. Which is completely reasonable! Those rocks are the unique outcomes of millions of years of geologic history than I can never hope to duplicate. I can always go to Pier One if I break a vase.

2) You become attached to the strangest things...like my largest Tupperware bowl. This thing is ancient. It went with me to college. This was the first large "serving bowl" I ever owned. When I went to place it in the give-away pile, I almost couldn't do it. To appease my guilt, I used it one last time to make green-bean casserole. Still, I feel like I'm abandoning an old friend.

3) WHY DO I KEEP EVERY SCRAP OF PAPER THAT PASSES THROUGH MY HANDS????!!!!! I had notes from Junior High School classes, fortune cookies from I-dont-know-when, passing notes written between my friends from freshman year of high school. WHY?! I went through several garbage bags just getting rid of all the crap.

4) I buy a lot of blankets. Somehow, I did not realize this until I cleaned out my linens cabinet (it's amazing how many blankets you can cram into that tiny little space). I know I do not need 7+ afghans...Somehow I must attempt to remember this when I am confronted with them in the store.

5) Culling my book collection resulted in some odd choices. I have no problem ditching romance novels but I will rarely part with a science-fiction book even if I hated it (*cough*"Looking Backward"*cough*). However, the hardest choices were the older books that I've had since I was a child. I went through a Joan Lowery Nixon stage when I was like 10 & I still had them. All those crap Junior High School reading books like "Light In The Forest" are finally gone. But I just couldn't part with "Terror In the Tomb Of Death" or "The Reluctant God".

6) In a fit of nostalgia & practicality, I cooked my last full meal in my apartment tonight. If you can call dumping anything vaguely Asian from the fridge & pantry into a pot, adding sesame oil & soy sauce until the bottles empty, putting it in high and hoping for the best "cooking". It was tasty though.

Link to full post.