January 20, 2006
Remind Me Always to Bring the Camera
Things I would have photographed at school, had I only remembered to bring my camera:
The poster headlined, "Need Credit?" which depicted a person in scuba gear, underwater, weaving a basket. Yes, thanks to a joint effort by the Art and Physical Education departments, you, too, can earn 1 credit hour in underwater basket weaving at New Mexico State University.
The staff-only restrooms in the building where undergraduate advisement occurs. These had apparently been a men's and a women's originally. The plaque--you know, with the little icon and the Braille and the word "men?"--outside the men's room, however, had been altered. Pasted over the dude icon was a black-and-white photograph of a woman in crisp business attire, in slacks instead of a skirt, carrying a sensible handbag. The word "men" had also had the letters "Wo" prefixed to it . . . in Liquid Paper. Some days I just freaking love women. Also, be advised!--Apparently the undergraduate advising center at New Mexico State has no male employees and/or a lot of small-bladdered female ones. I'm totally making a special trip back over there to photograph that plaque, if only because I think this woman might get a bitter kick out of it.
In another women's room on campus, a sticker with contact information for a rape hotline had been affixed to the inside of the stall door--and half peeled-off of it, whether by an overzealous janitor or just by someone who didn't want to think about rape while on the toilet, I don't know. Anyway, someone else had come along and filled in the missing/torn-off words with permanent marker, including the missing phone digits. Excellent.
The ugly fugly ugliness of the campus in general. Hey, I don't mind. This is what happens, kids, when you matriculate in pot-smoking and blowing off classes in junior college: You wind up at an ugly university. I can't walk around the campus without my inner landscaping architect throwing a tantrum at all the burnt grass everywhere. This is the DESERT. Put in some freaking CACTI. And ROCKS. There is no excuse for the yards and yards of burnt grass and the buildings, oh man, don't get me started on the buildings, please, we'll be here all day and into next week. Just know that they are Very Very Bad Indeed, although nothing, no building anywhere, can top the one housing UT-Arlington's School of Architecture. I would show you a picture of it, but guess what? I can find no picture bigger than about 80 x 65 pixels on the UT-Arlington web site, and do you know why that is? Because even the university must know, deep down, that this is the ugliest building ever erected by any human being anywhere in the history of mankind, and yes, I have seen Stalinist architecture. This building would make you LONG for Stalinist architecture. I'm telling you. I nearly changed majors at UT-Arlington to architecture, but then I saw that building. Imagine if all the Mechanics and Aerospace engineers worked out of a building shaped like a penguin. Would you feel confident they had anything to teach you about aerodynamics? Exactly.
Posted by Ilyka at January 20, 2006 05:33 PM
in navel gazing
If its not too cumbersome, bring that camera everywhere. You never know when something might come up.
STOP it. Stop making me laugh so hard.
I want to see that building now.
Oh, god, yes, photograph that plaque and I will totally make it worth your while. Whatever that means.
Things that I have seen recently that made me wish I were the sort of person who brought a camera everywhere: the Japanese food court place in the San Francisco airport that served SPAM SUSHI, I shit you not; and the International Brotherhood of Broilermakers, which is located right near my office. Really.
"Spam sushi" is apparently big in Hawaii, of all things, so I suppose it figures it would eventually reach the mainland. I used to get searches for that phrase all the time because I'd linked some post someone else wrote about it. Now I will get more, I guess.
I am trying to imagine how spam sushi came to be. "Hmm...what's a good idea for a new type of sushi? What type of food should we strap, with a piece of fresh seaweed, to a block of fresh rice? Fresh fish? Fresh vegetables? No, wait, I've got it - how about a piece of processed meat that has been in a can for the past two years? YES!"
SPAM sushi is probably a way to serve the Japan Alps sushi specialty of raw horsemeat.
http://sushi.textamerica.com/?r=854532
You probably can't serve raw horsemeat legally in the US. It's pretty indescribable, but it is not even close to SPAM. Except perhaps in the disgust factor.