Relief Goods from Presidential hopeful's ad campaign.
MANILA, PHILIPPINES—In the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana, every school, NGO, and company did what they could to bring relief goods to the thousands of victims whose lives had been devastated by the storm. Numerous medical missions went out everyday, as did missions to deliver relief goods to people who had lost their homes, food, and clothing. Philippine and U.S. military troops were also involved in the relief efforts.
The people I spoke with during my trip said that in the first few weeks this was no easy task. Despite the major efforts of people at home and abroad, victims were still struggling to get the resources they needed to survive the flood. Desperate survivors often swarmed missions in the most affected areas. Even volunteers required bodyguards, as victims shook their vans and cars, attempting to steal relief goods for their own starving families.
What did some Philippine Presidential hopefuls of 2010 see in this heartbreaking situation? As some of my readers might have noticed, I have hardly expressed much optimism when it comes to the current Philippine administration. Honestly, when this typhoon hit, I thought politicians were more likely to pursue a photo-op than a substantive effort to demonstrate their preparedness for dealing with natural disasters.
In our last post we brought you a quesadilla shaped like a pumpkin. Now we bring you dishes that contain actual pumpkin! As it gets progressively colder outside, it's only natural to crave hearty and warm comfort foods. The leaves fall and warm days are less frequent, and suddenly there's an excuse to fill your house/dorm/apartment with the smell of pumpkin. Pumpkin pie is a classic staple for any festive dinner table, but there are so many other options for a good-old can of pumpkin. We started with a toasty and decadent Pumpkin Bread Pudding. And since we had some pumpkin leftover from this endeavor, we decided to use it again the next morning for Pumpkin Pancakes with Sautéed Apples.
Pumpkin Bread Pudding
(adapted from Gourmet by smittenkitchen.com - Cara's favorite food blog!)
1 1/2 cups whole milk (Or 1 cup heavy cream plus 1/2 cup whole milk)
3/4 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin
1/2 cup sugar
2 large eggs plus 1 yolk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
Pinch of ground cloves
2 tablespoons bourbon (optional)
5 cups cubed (1-inch) day-old baguette or crusty bread
3/4 stick unsalted butter
wesleyan.edu Are you Wesleyan?
Are you Wesleyan?
Do you contemplate infinity
for the fun of it?
Do you have a new favorite book every week?
Do you quote Hume, Hegel, and Homer…
Simpson?
If you were an automobile
would you be a converted hybrid?
Do neuroscience, dance and history
seem like a logical combination?
Do you surf the library?
Do you find patterns in complexity?
Would you stay up all night
to make friends for life?
Do you expect to spend your whole life
learning?
Are you Wesleyan?
--Our new Admissions home page
After seeing this nauseating trivialization of the entire Wesleyan student body on the new Wesleyan.edu, a strange, disorienting feeling overcame me. Walking around campus, I experienced a new tingle of camaraderie and joy with every passing face. I felt one with my fellow students in a way I never have before. “You’re not nearly as much of a cliché as Admissions thinks you are,” I thought, as someone hurried by. “Neither are you!” I thought to another. “Or you, or you, or you!”
The above poetic rendering is probably not what the adults who run this place think of us. At least, I hope not. This is obviously targeted towards high school kids who can’t yet understand what Wesleyan is actually like. So, perhaps it is more offensive to the intelligence of high school kids than it is to us. But I’m not so sure.
I know, for one, that my 17-year-old brother wouldn’t “dig” this. What exactly is the message, here, that Admissions is sending? It's pretty clear: We’re philosophical, we like to read books, we’re liberal, we’re hip, we’re interdisciplinary, we like to party, we’re dedicated intellectuals.
Sounds pretty good, right? But add all these things together (plus the infuriating tone) and we come off like a bunch of grade A douchebags. Read »
Stereogum.com
The new music video for the Flaming Lips' "Watching the Planets" reminds me a little bit of Where The Wild Things Are...except instead of a handful of monsters parading through the forest, it's dozens of butt-naked twenty-somethings, and half of them are on bikes. The track, which is off of the Lips' new album Embryonic, is among the noisiest and freakiest things the band has done in years, and the video suits it perfectly. It's like a Bacchic ritual filtered through the Flaming Lips' endearing quirkiness. Keep an eye out for the enormous womb-ball (perhaps inspired by the album's title), and Lips frontman Wayne Coyne, who ends up as nude as the rest by the video’s end.
In case it's not obvious, this clip is extremely NSFW (or class, for that matter).
Check it out at NME.
www.wesleyan.edu
Quick, everyone go to www.wesleyan.edu! The new Wesleyan website is up as of today and it's quite different than the old one. Currently the redesigned pages include the homepage, Admissions web site, and several major pages including About, Academics, Campus Life, Alumni, Parents, and Offices & Services, but a recent all-campus email from ITS informs us that this is represents only the initial phase of a larger redesign effort:
These pages are only the first to be changed to the new design. This begins a major transformation of the Wesleyan website that will continue throughout 2010. All departments and sub-pages will be converted to the new design and content management system over the coming 12-18 months.
Quick reactions:
Aesthetically, the new layout is undeniably snazzier and has a more modern feel than its old incarnation.
That said, the site now appears to be entirely geared toward outsiders. Look at the tiny portfolio button at the top of the page. This is barely noticeable, whereas before the e-portfolio sign-in box was very prominent. Where is the library button so we can quickly find books in Olin? It looks like you have to click on the tiny "Offices & Services" button up top and then when you get to that page scroll down to the right to find the library link. These aren't huge problems, of course, but they are inconvenient.
It's fine that the school wants to give a better sense of Wesleyan to potential applicants and donors, but they shouldn't forget the students and faculty who use the site every day. We don't want to wade through promotional material every time we want to go to Caleb. If they fix these sorts of things up, the new website will be fine.
New York Times On the block
This week, Sesame Street celebrates its 40th anniversary—forty years of counting, spelling, and singing. The excitement surrounding this event reminded me of an argument I had over the summer. My friend’s little sister was sitting in front of the tv, engulfed in an episode of Dora the Explorer. Watching Dora try to protect a baby jaguar from tumbling boulders, I fell into a similar trance. But while the story was exciting enough, something seemed wrong. Everything felt too sterile and one-dimensional for children’s television. The biggest issue was the music. Condescendingly simple, the synthesized harmonies sounded as if they had been written by robots. The lyrics were patronizing not in their repetitiveness, but in their lack of substance; the songs only served to reiterate obvious developments in the plot. I tried to convey these problems to my friend, but he seemed unshaken and said that it had been the same when we were kids. I’ve since decided that his assertion was utterly incorrect.
Its true that our generation can be overly prone to nostalgia. When talking about the 90's, we tend to romanticize the joys of pokemon and beanie babies and grunge. In writing this article, I became concerned that I would fall prey to this same emotion. But, as it turns out, these songs from my childhood are just as incredible as I remembered. These were written and sung by people who clearly cared about music and understood its power. The show may have been geared towards children, but these songs are for everyone. In the face of wesmaps and gen ed requirements and discussions about social constructs, these classics take me back to a simpler time. Even apart from their nostalgic value, they’re remarkably funny and thoughtful and beautiful.
Possibly my all-time favorite. Read »
www.myspace.com
Get a refund for your taco-flavored pizzas and post-colonial concept albums (see below), because there’s a new force in the Wesleyan music scene that’s giving all its hip-hopponents a run for their money. That’s right, I’m talking about Wesleyan’s favorite supergroup, the valiant Duchampion.
Prior to this past weekend, I had disregarded the vast majority of the predictable musical happenings at Wesleyan with any healthy hipster’s dose of apathy; however, after incessant urging from my fellow audiophiles and sound enthusiasts, I finally witnessed the legendary Duchampions perform at Eclectic this past Friday. And indeed, it was a phenomenal show, though it took me some time to adjust to their unprecedented approach to music.
What is so startlingly unique about this fresh-faced band? Well, before Friday evening, all I had been told about Duchampion was that they were a veritable Wu-Tang-Clan of the Wesleyan campus, featuring an all-star team of Wes ’10 musicians; given this description, I found their music to be a refreshing twist on the aforementioned Clan. This was by far the most unconventional hip-hop show I’ve ever witnessed. Read »
http://illuminati.org.nz Are the Illuminati behind the apocalyptic swine flu vaccine? Probably.
Some of our more astute readers have undoubtedly noticed a definite pro-vaccine bias at the Blargus. In recent weeks we have unabashedly encouraged our readership to get H1N1 vaccinations as they become available. However, in the interests of balanced journalism, I can’t resist posting these signs, which were spotted in Klekolo World Coffee on Court Street. The work of a man who goes only by Bob, the posters denounce the swine flu vaccine as a population control tool of the satanic New World Order. With powerful rhetoric and extraordinary syntax, one flyer states of the vaccine that “it is all free it won’t cost you anything only your soul.” Another handwritten sign encourages readers to search on Yahoo for “nwo” in order to learn the dire truth: that 60% of the population will die from the vaccine. Truly chilling.
Most people are likely to denounce these fliers as either an elaborate joke or the work of a genuinely crazy person. But what everyone seems to be forgetting is that Obama is the Antichrist! I for one plan to refuse all swine flu shots, tear out my government-implanted mind control chip, and stop serving Satan once and for all. I hope you will, too.
disneydreaming.com I googled "guilty pleasure" and this is the first picture I got
At the end of my last column I said I was going to write about how guilty pleasures don’t (or at least shouldn’t) exist, and I will do just that: The Rocktimist’s word is his bond. But frankly, it’s sort of hard to make this argument, because the concept of the guilty pleasure is pretty ridiculous on the face of it. We’re not 16th Century Spanish monks, and we shouldn’t have to say 600 Hail Marys and spend a week on a bread and water diet just for thinking My Chemical Romance wrote some kickass songs:
So obviously we should de-couple guilt from pleasure and proudly defend what we like in the public sphere (and if you don’t like “Dead,” I’ll fight you whenever). Now, I’m walking a fine line here, because I firmly believe there is good music and bad music, and I don’t want to say that everything’s equal in terms of quality. I’m just saying that if you like something you should stand up for it, because there is, and always has been a great deal of value in the uncool.
images.google.com 99.99% of people infected with Avian Flu die.
10. Multiculturalism
The great trick of the liberal establishment, this epidemic currently infects more than one million people a year.
9. SARS
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome never really made it to North America--yet.
8. Colonialism
The great threat of our time.
7. The Plague of Hugs
More and more children are turning to this sickening display of affection, putting their friends and parents in danger. There has been a huge media uproar, which has slowly slowly stemmed the tide in a war we seem unlikely to win.
6. Anthrax
Osama bin Laden currently owns the world's entire stock of anthrax. Case closed. Read »
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