a pre-emptive strike

dear friends,

on behalf on the person who had to read that incoherent paper you waited until the last minute to write, i offer the following:

Some Bad Arguments for Grade Changes:

I’ve always gotten As
I have As in all my other courses
I need a higher grade for grad/law/med school admission
I need a higher grade to keep/get a scholarship
My friend (who took the course last year/who’s in the course now/who has 7 degrees) read the paper and said it was good
I did a lot of research
I had another paper/exam/presentation due the same day
I know I did badly on the final exam, so I need to do well on the essay

Note that none of these focus on the actual content of the paper and the arguments presented therein.

if any of my little fucker students come to me with one of these i'll go completely scarface on them. i'm not above taking marks away for whining, simply out of spite. i assure you that i am full of spite. it's the time of the year where i am so stressed that i am drinking malibu and diet coke while writing assignments.

cam

where is my mind?

dear friends,

i have been contemplating two bitter blog posts-- one about how cool mcgill used to be based on some fun stuff i found on the mcgill archives site and another about complaining to your ta- about essay marks.

but i am basking in the afterglow of last night's super-badooper awesome pixies show, and will therefore stop right now. bitterness will return tommorow. i should remain pleasant through to the end of desperate housewives!

i wish i could spend sundays with you,
cam

all the dirt on mcgizzle

dear friends,

as most of you know i am a ph d candidate in the department of sociology at mcgill. i hate the place.

visit this website to find out all the historical dirt. especially scroll down to faculty purges. go go sociology.

and specially thanks to sociology-liam for finally tracking down the book that has been circulating around the rumour mill for a year. my christmas reading is things which are done in secret.

i adore all gossip, even of the academic variety,
cam

ps- it is sociologically interesting. gossip is part of my work.

the 8-track or record player of my generation?

good bye old friend, at least children will not be sticking grilled cheese sandwhiches in you anymore

dear friends,

it has come to my attention that the vcr has died. this makes me glad that i only own three or four things that can be played in vcrs. (one: the boy who could fly, two: new kids on the block hanging tough live concert, three: short tape of extreme sky flyer adventure at canada's wonderland. and four: breakfast at tiffany's). i have not been able to locate by b-a-t since a certain julia robert's fan moved out of the little yellow house. just saying. but it makes me sad that in the same way i made fun of my dad for listening to 8-tracks that some day my progeny might make fun of a vcr. i doubt it will make the same transition as the record player. i doubt that hipsters will embrace the vcr in the sameway.

kind of dated but i feel alright.
cam

possibly even worse than the 90 minute csi miami

dear friends,

so, i watched the 90 minute csi miami/ humvee commercial two weeks i go. i vowed it would be the triumphant end to my watching/mocking of "h". i would boycott the show from then on. as it turns out my boycott lasted zero weeks and i watched it this week.

i promise however i will not be seeing national treasure, or "the movie about the treasure map on the back of the dollar bill starting that ass-hat nicholas cage".

i can't believe this review. barf.

back to the work,
cam

things that are delightful....

meet ms. molly coulthard-o'neill

dear friends,

three things have delighted me today:

0ne- this picture sent to me by molly's mom.
two- the fact that subway toasts their bread
three- that mr. nibbleybites has not been seen since i started operation dryer sheet. that's right dryer sheets are scientifically proven to get rid of mice. totally causal. totally.

good night,
cam

sad

dear friends,

whenever i see or hear about this i just want to cry. i cannot imagine anything sadder in the entire world.

hugs,
cam

goodbye friend

dear friends,

sad pre-bed news tonight. old dirty bastard has died. his cover (duet with macy gracy) of don't go breakin my heart will be played many times over in memorium.

odb actually became vocabulary for me. i once struggled with telling a dear friend i thought he'd gone odb. i saw parallels in the fine line between insanity and genius, between homeless-schitzophrenic and rap star. how do you tell a friend that they've gone odb?

lesson: being odb means death far too young. so, hug the odb in your life.

cam

have you ever made soup out of pumpkin seeds?

dear friends,

do you think the man above is trying to capture my heart? i sure do. on thursday i am going to see mr. devendra banhart, and now for your enjoyment, i offer a lyrical sampling:

oh there's a lot of love, but not the kind i need. haveya ever made soup-out-of pumpkin seeds. there's a lot of skin and flesh i never should have seen; there's too many half-ways-in-betweens. there's a lot of stays, i think i wish i'd done; there's a lot of leaves my true love gave to me; there's a lot of birds that people like to draw; there's a lot of sees, i wish i never saw.

you can read more about him in an interview he did with the montreal mirror . i am very much looking forward to the freak-folk extraveganza. if you live in the montreal area you should check him out at salla rosa on thursday. [and by you, i mean sofi and priscilla, but also you]

last night's hidden cameras show was also a delight. as was skipping school today and eating bagels with chicago-kim and lukas. not so much a delight is the work that i am currently avoiding.

hello sunshine? where the hell are you. i am cold,

cam

lethbridge punk, i'll get you back someday

dear friends,

i have been overcome with work of late. i shall now bore you with some of the highlights:

* reading dark threats and white knights. it is about canadian peacekeeping and somolia. one check in the interesting column. it uses critical race theory to deconstruct just about everything. one check in the no-thanks you po-mo crazy column. i also have to meet this woman. i am trying to come up with a brilliant question with a little bite. this is mostly because i am being forced to attend this talk (v. my previous committment to facilitate a workshop on gender and leadership in eastern europe for the mcgill centre for research and teaching on women). i am remarkably easily motivated by spite.

* reading durkheim and marking papers on marx's views of religiousity, next week marking more papers on suicide.

* preparing application packages for princeton, unc, arizona, virginia, harvard, yale, berkeley, columbia, notre dame, boston u and studying for that mofo, the gre.

* feining work enough to remain employed by a certain crazy political scientist. although in fairness i really enjoy reading about parenting.

* writing a paper based on original quantitative analysis on the canadian culture war

* working on an event history analysis of factors contributing to joining voluntary and religious associations with special reference to the life course. panel data is a real bitch to find. and i have found a decent data set. that is were the lethbridge punk thing comes in... but i will elaborate no further to save my future career.

grad school is so cool,
cam

one hour, seven minutes, and counting...

this is seth cohen, he may be in high school on television but i still love him. don't you judge me

dear friends,

first, i would like to thank the three of you who have called or emailed to wish me a happy oc premiere day. it has afterall been a long time coming. so many questions. will teresa keep the baby? (is there really a baby? is it ryan's baby?) will ryan leave orange county? what about marissa? bah! who cares about marissa! where was seth going in that sail boat? and when is anna coming back to bust up him and summer?

the oc music is one of my fave parts of the show. here is a link to a dead on chartattack.com review. (you'll need to scroll to the bottom). and, for the record the only video file on my computer right now is the episode of the oc called "the goodbye girl" which features that airport scene (been there!) and the nada surf cover of "if you leave". i cry every time. and i am so not a cry-er. i am a "what is this salty discharge? only when angry cry-er"

i hope you are making the time to watch,
cam

last night i went wonky

dear friends,

just a brief post following a late night watching the election. no one except a democratic partisan and possibly pollyanna did not see this coming. perhaps i am biased by the fact that i study the way religion influences electoral behaviour. you can't do that in the united states without studying ohiomom17 and southernbaptistminister33.

i often am accused of being a bush supporter because i think senator kerry is a dickweed. but i really i am just sympathetic to american orthodox catholics. here is an article by george weigel who i studied with this summer. there is a culture war in america. ask james davison hunter. ask robert wuthnow or ask anyone who votes according to their moral beliefs. i am currently doing some analysis on the canadian data for my electoral behaviour class. i will post and interpret all my graphs and regressions here. wait for it.

in sum, don't blame the voters of ohio or the south, understand them. and democratic partisans make sure you choose yourself a leader that isn't such a dickweed next time. i don't know if the good lord wants W as the president, but i suspect he doesn't reward those who invoke his name insincerely. and, religion aside the people didn't like him or his crazy wife either.

i heart elections, regardless of outcome.
cam