What in the hell …

Why does Jesus hate Minnesota?

Today’s weather description:

Bitterly cold. Partly cloudy. Dangerous wind chills may approach -25F. High -1F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph.

Right now it’s -7, feels like -28. (For folk who use celsius, that’s -21, feels like -33.)

Check this out -

Issued by The National Weather Service
Minneapolis, MN
4:29 am CST, Wed., Jan. 14, 2009

… WIND CHILL WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 12 PM CST FRIDAY…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN TWIN CITIES/CHANHASSEN HAS ISSUED A WIND CHILL WARNING… WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 12 PM CST FRIDAY.

TEMPERATURES TODAY WILL ONLY MANAGE TO REACH TO AROUND 12 BELOW ZERO TO 4 BELOW ZERO. NORTHERLY WINDS OF 15 TO 20 MPH TODAY AND TONIGHT WILL DEVELOP WIND CHILL READINGS OF 30 BELOW TO 40 BELOW ZERO. OVERNIGHT LOWS TONIGHT WILL DROP TO NEAR 30 BELOW ZERO TO AROUND 20 BELOW ZERO. DURING THE OVERNIGHT HOURS INTO THURSDAY MORNING… WIND CHILLS WILL TUMBLE TO 35 BELOW TO 45 BELOW ZERO.

SOME MINOR IMPROVEMENT OF THE WIND CHILL VALUES MAY OCCUR AS WINDS DIMINISH TO UNDER 10 MPH DURING THE DAY ON THURSDAY. IT WILL STILL REMAIN VERY COLD WITH DAYTIME HIGH TEMPERATURES ONLY RISING BETWEEN 5 BELOW TO 10 BELOW ZERO. WIND CHILL READINGS WILL PLUMMET DOWN TO 30 BELOW TO 40 BELOW ZERO ACROSS EASTERN MINNESOTA AND WESTERN WISCONSIN AGAIN THURSDAY NIGHT INTO FRIDAY MORNING.

A WIND CHILL WARNING MEANS THE COMBINATION OF VERY COLD AIR AND WINDS WILL CREATE DANGEROUSLY COLD WIND CHILL VALUES. THIS WILL RESULT IN FROST BITE AND LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA OR DEATH IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN. IF YOU MUST VENTURE OUTDOORS… MAKE SURE THAT YOU DRESS IN LAYERS… AND WEAR A HAT AND GLOVES.

And the 20s. And 30s. [Still have to return to that other post and put in the Foner quotes…]

Finally got around to reading some stuff on disability studies and disability history I’ve been meaning to look at [I am perpetually behind, curses]. Notes will come later. For now, a bit of poking around online turns up the following which I throw here as a reminder to come back to them and see what I can see. (more…)

It’s … well, you know … a twofer! Like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, or when a band covers the Motorhead version of the Ramones’ song R.A.M.O.N.E.S. (I saw the Space Invaders do this one time, it was pretty awesome; I would in turn really like to cover the Space Invaders’ cover of The Gambler). Like as in two-for-one.

All of which is to say I have two unrelated things I want to talk about and I find my self-imposed blog post naming convention a bit unwieldy for my purposes just now. (Though I also feel like self-made conventions should be stuck with, in general, hence my not just discarding it here.)

Those two things - a bit more on real and formal subsumption, and a bit on precarity. (more…)

So my youngest brother tells me my grandma used to make this for him and my other brother. She never made it for me. What the fuck. Unfair, I tell you. Since I’m an adult and all, I can make my own damn food (take that grandma!). I just made a vegetarian version of it. Hell’s yes.

Here it is.

Take two vegetarian hot dogs. Cook them. Cut them in half long-ways, not completely but just enough to fold them open. Put a thin slice of your favorite cheese down the length of each dog. Put both dogs on one piece of bread. Cook some vegetarian bacon. Set one to one and a half strips of bacon on each dog. Bake or microwave the whole shebang just a bit, to get the cheese a bit melty. Serve with ketchup.

It was awesome. It sort of made my mouth hurt, in that too much sugar/too much grease kind of way. Hurt, but hurt so good.

I’m totally going to have a hot dog party.

I heard about the TV signal conversation stuff pretty late, like Jodi did, though I think I had heard before she did. Apparently there’s now some call to push back the date for the end of analog TV broadcasting. I’m unclear on the details, I just had the radio on in the background while doing some housework, I mostly leave the radio on to soothe my anxious dog. Anyhow, my gut feeling on the TV thing is to simply want to shrug. I mean, I’ve got netflix and plus there’s hulu.com and youtube, so I can watch all the publicly available TV I want. And even if I got a new TV and stuff, I still couldn’t watch the Mighty Boosh because it’s not on TV here (and just got taken down off youtube, damn it). And then there’s web-specific programming, like this excellent show I just discovered, The Guild. That’s not to say the TV conversion is a good thing, I don’t have strong opinions on it but I suspect it’s unfair and crappy for folk with less money, as are most things. I just mean that for me and my household, maybe we don’t need a converter box, we’ll just unplug from broadcast TV except as mediated through services that let us control our own viewing. Plus I’m probably buying an XBox360 and Rockband 2, in which case I won’t have any other interest in watching TV. (Okay that’s a lie. I’ll still totally watch TV. I just don’t need broadcast TV to do that.)

So for christmas my dad paid me back for the rock climbing stuff I bought (shoes, harness, chalk bag), which gave me a bit of extra cash. I decided to spend some of it on some punk CDs I’ve been meaning to get for a while - an album I used to have by Manner Farm but lost somehow, another Shot Baker album, and one by The Feds. I used to see The Feds at the Fireside Bowl and they were always really good, if memory serves they did a split with The Marshes, who were also real awesome (I’ve currently misplaced my copy of their excellent album “Fledgling”, which I’ll have to buy again if it doesn’t turn up). I fucking love this music so much. Even though I sometimes forget that. I had the thought tonight as I was unwrapping the CDs that there’s a similar quality here to what I had/have in mind in the discussion I had with Eli and Eli about academic radicalism, and to what I have in mind generally with regard to politics and movements. Punk is primarily, and at its best, a non-professional culture, driven by interests and not monetarily compensated commensurate to the effort and costs expended in producing it. To my mind that’s a virtue, mostly. I’m too tired and sick to draw out the specifics of the analogy to politics and intellectual life, plus I need to take my dog for a walk, but it’s probly obvious anyway.

Okay, an end to suffering or whatever, but you know you just said that to score points. Deep down, you know what you really want are some more comics.

My very cool very smart very nice very pretty very funny friends Sara and Tom produce some great comics. Look at Sara’s stuff on line, buy Tom’s stuff in paper. Actually, buy Sara’s stuff too. And while you’re at it, look at more of Tom’s online stuff.

Check me out, I know some people with talent.

[Begin prefatory hand waving/]
So I got this book from the library, Embracing Risk, edited by Tom Baker and Jonathan Simon. I haven’t had time to read it. I just read the introduction and it’s really good, like it’s going to be really useful to me in relation what I’m trying to think about regarding workmen’s compensation and so on. And since it’s going to be useful of course the damn thing is due back to the library. Curses. (more…)