Braving the risk of exile from my adopted community (and perhaps Western NY) I must proclaim the following:

Superdawg kicks Zweigle’s pasty white-hot bootie!

Admittedly, being at heart a Long Islander, I’ve never quite understood the White Hot. But I’ve always thought Rochester Street Meat was the best I had ever had. Then came last night. Behold the Superdawg:

• A poppy-seed bun! Get that through your head! POPPY SEED BUN!
• Neon Green Relish!
• Chopped Onion!
• Piccalilli (Green Tomato)!
• A pickle!
• Hot, Sport Peppers!
• and just a pinch of celery salt!
• All served on a bed of Superfries!

This experience has led me to a new social theory:

Superdawg + Vanilla Milkshake = Happiness

Seriously, Zweigles is going to have to step it up to compete. They’ve been resting on the Rah-Cha-Cha mystery meat hot sauce thing for too long!

humorous aside: the blogger spell check keeps wanting to replace Zweigles with “seagulls.”…

on second thought that might not be so funny after all.

This may be old news. I came across a cool little web ap that has a Gojira (that Godzilla for all you round eyes) style monster do battle with tanks and planes with your web page as a backdrop.

For example

• Oh No! They trash my page
• Then head over to LJC

Give it a shot, append you’re favorite web address (including the “http://”) to this url:

http://bunnyherolabs.com/dhtml/monster.php?ref=

In other news, I’m fighting a cold. Student Health has informed me that it’s a virus and I just have to wait it out. The problem is that it’s reeking havoc with both my sleeping patterns and concentration. Neither I can afford to screw with. On the plus side, if nothing else, it’s allowed me to catch up on some reading for pleasure. Since text books typically require too much focus, they’re not the best solution for sleepless nights. Instead I’ve been working on my backlog of other books. I just finished Neil Gaiman’s Coraline. My goal is to start a book log here when I have a moment so I can keep track of what I’ve read.

One of the aspects of my program is that I’m only allowed to officially take three classes a quarter. In the preceding post I referenced the fact that I’m actually sitting in on five classes, three taken for grades and two audited. Which ever classes I audit will not make it on to my transcript, as I don’t receive a grade in them. So part of what I have to do is decide which classes will look the best on my transcript (in the event I decide to go for a PhD).

Which leads me to a switch that I’m making a little late in the process. Originally my three were going to be:

• Language in Culture II (aka Metapragmatics: the revenge)
• Crowds and Publics
• Rewriting the Past: Memory, remembrance and Memorial

However, I’m going to be switching the third slot to Social Psychology. In part I think it’s because I’m netting out somewhere in the space between Anthropology and Social Psychology. If that’s the case, then it’s more important for me to have the Social Psych on my transcript. Also Rewriting the Past, while useful for my interest in memory creation (which ties back to an interest in the generation of personal histories, which in turn ties back to Kodak), has thus far been a bit of a clunker. It’s focusing heavily on psychoanalysis. I have a lot of issues with the application of psychoanalysis to social (read as group) phenomenon as it really seems a tool geared for individual analysis. And so, right now, that class seems to be built on some dubious assumptions.

In the five years I was involved with kodak.com’s birdcam, I never once saw one of the Peregrines actually catch prey. It’s something I’ve always wanted to see, but always seemed to miss by a few moments.

This afternoon I watched as a large bird flew into a tree here on campus. I stared at it for a few moments thinking “Wow… that’s a big pigeon.” Then my brain kicked in and I realized I was staring at a hawk. Not able to identify by myself, I called Drea, who is an expert at these things. Slowly I edged to the bottom of the tree it was in as I described it’s features to her.

Suddenly it took off, flew into the ivy covered wall of a building no more than ten feet away, and lighting fast, emerged with a small bird in its talons!

With total disregard to snow and fellow pedestrians, I chase the hawk to a nearby fire escape and watch as it tears into it’s dinner, feathers flying everywhere. All the while I’m relaying a description to Drea. She successfully ID’d it as a Cooper’s Hawk.

So I’ve finally seen a raptor take prey in the wild. While it wasn’t a peregrine, its still a cool start. My great regret… no digital camera to take a picture. I need to get one. I keep looking at the Kodak DX7590… I’m a company man, what can I say. Hey guys (you know who you are), any chance of a price drop in the near future?

The storm that left Hyde Park with about five inches of snow has moved on to Rochester and it leaves me feeling rather connected to my friends back there. I had never really thought about weather patterns before in that way. But it’s somewhat comforting to know that the weather that froze us here is currently freezing friends a couple states away.

BTW guys, its still snowing here.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are definitely hell days this quarter. My schedule is all but locked, I’ll post it tomorrow. Now back to the reading.