The Wayback Machine - http://web.archive.org/web/20050208105020/http://www.livejournal.com:80/users/chrisellis/
Vanitas Vanitatum!
Currently Reading The Return of the Native / Rising Up and Rising Down / A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali / Positively Fifth Street / Sister Carrie May 2004
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Wednesday, May 5th, 2004 06:30 pm
True Story

A professor here was contacted by one of the major daily newspapers in Chicago to see if he would be able to provide the paper with his reaction to the upcoming movie "Troy" and an analysis of how historically accurate the movie is.

Hmmm...

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Saturday, May 1st, 2004 12:47 am
No more Bob Edwards.

Suck.

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Wednesday, April 14th, 2004 07:28 pm
American Idol Request

Apparently the American Idol people are singing their favorite songs from movies tonight.

Suggestion: someone should totally sing "The End" from Apocalypse Now and knock that Titanic song on its ass.

Instantly awesome prime time TV!

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Tuesday, March 16th, 2004 12:47 am
Went to Oregon for the weekend and had a great time in Eugene visiting Laura and hanging out in the beautiful weather. Got tons of great food throughout the trip as well.

Ended up flying ORD-SFO-PDX on the way out. The segment to SFO was overbooked and I was able to pick up a voucher for a free flight as well as a confirmed seat in first class for the next flight, which incidentally was overbooked as well. Thought about bumping myself yet again and taking another voucher, but decided that I wanted to get to PDX without too much trouble. Spring break is a great time, if only for the countless opportunities to rob the airline industry blind (assuming you're willing to wait around in airports for a little bit longer).

Should be good times with totally crammed flights to and from LAX coming up shortly.

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Friday, March 12th, 2004 10:17 am
Resolution

Easy way to remedy this whole gay marriage debate:

Reclassify "traditional marriages" as civil unions in the eyes of the law. If marriage is sacred, then why is it within the bounds of the law in the first place? Marriage may not stand within the scope of a "separation between church and state" matrix, but I think it often resonates with a kind of spirituality standing outside the bounds of governance.

Extend right of civil unions to everyone.

Everyone's equal. Everyone can then pursue marriage in their own private and meaningful fashion.

Don't know how likely it is for this happen, but it's worth throwing out ideas when we're all clamoring for equality.

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Thursday, March 11th, 2004 12:03 am
21

Yup.

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Wednesday, March 10th, 2004 12:45 am
Spent the day at work mailing out books to foreign organizations with names that are really hard to spell. Of course, it's definitely not confusing to people who know the language, but when you're a poor kid without any comprehension of German, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, or Danish, those ridiculously long words with umlauts and hard consonants do not look fun to type up on address labels, if not anywhere. Well, at least I got the job done. As an added bonus, I now know that "bog" means "book" in Danish.

Also heard about the series of Dylan concerts over the weekend. Wish I could have gotten tickets for one of those. Oh well.

Hope UCL hurries up with approving my application so I can get into the courses I need next year.

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Tuesday, March 9th, 2004 02:28 am
Dear Middlemarch,

You are such a good book but writing a fifteen page paper about you does not sound like fun.

Help me out.

Thanks.

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Tuesday, March 9th, 2004 12:48 am
I rediscovered the artwork of Oskar Schlemmer today after seeing a 1924 Japanese woodblock print that looked very similar to images like the "Bauhaus Stairway" painting. It's understandable to see how the print was influenced by the Constructivist style coming out of the USSR, but still bizarre considering how a print so similar to Schlemmer's stuff predates his paintings by roughly a decade. Makes my mind do weird things to consider the influence of political and artistic sympathies at the time. But also cool considering that I rediscovered Schlemmer after seeing his stuff for the first time in Vancouver, BC three years ago.

I also really need a few books of Thomas Struth's photography. There's one fantastic photograph of his at the Cochrane Woods Art Center and I've been meaning to look at more of his stuff ever since I saw it.

Should have been an art history major.

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Monday, March 8th, 2004 12:30 pm
By next Friday, I must:

Write the remaining five pages of my art history paper and make edits.
Write the remaining two pages of my Late 19th Century American Realism paper and make edits.
Write at least ten pages of my 19th Century British Novel paper.
Go to Los Angeles and then to Mexico.

Gotta have goals.

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Sunday, March 7th, 2004 10:19 pm
Four years and we get this?

You'd think that Modest Mouse could have put together a much better album given the fact that they had four years to do so. It's not terrible, but it does feel pretty empty at times. The track mixed by Wayne Coyne: ouch. "Blame It...": ouch as well. Good tracks exist, but I'm not sure what kind of staying value they'll have.

I hope that this is just a fluke and isn't symptomatic of a malaise for albums coming out this year, especially with The Decemberists, Wilco, Built to Spill, Sufjan Stevens, Mirah, Spoon, et. al on the way in 2004.

In other news, I recently found out that the fabulous Original Pancake House (of Portland, Oregon Capitol Highway fame) is not only a Pacific Northwest chain but a national chain. Even more bizarre is the fact that the pancake house on E. Hyde Park Boulevard in Chicago (practically down the street) is one of their franchises. How did I miss this? I always assumed that calling one's pancake house "original" was merely a convention.

Chalk up another Chicago restaurant specializing in saturated fat and other such diet-friendly goodness.

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