Day 1, Part 1: Stayin' Alive (in the airport)

Good morning! I am writing this from the airport. JetBlue, a seriously awesome airline, provides free wireless in its terminal at Kennedy. The terminal also has Jamba Juice, so I am pretty happy right now.

I was not, however, happy about 20 minutes ago, as I battled my way to the front of the security screening line in what looked like a scene from "300".

I'd heard some horror stories about new screening procedures, between the thwarted Christmas Day underpants attack and the guy who walked through the sterile gate at Newark. So I left my house at 5:00 am for an 8:30 flight. When I arrived at the security line, it was already madness. People who had arrived two hours before their flight were still stuck in the line, and were nearing hysteria. Meanwhile, it looked like nobody was actually getting through the checkpoint. We all stood there for a good ten minutes before somebody came to shuffle up the lines.

Then, it completely degenerated. People will usually stay in lines, if that's the clear expectation. Once they started taking down the ropes, it became a cattle drive, only with really vicious cows.

Miraculously, I was pushed to the front by two very strong and angry men behind me, who were attempting to make their 6:30 flight to Jamaica (it was 6:20 at this point). Once there, the TSA worker demanded that I remove my sweatshirt, and didn't seem to understand that if I did this, I might be arrested for public indecency. Finally a rational person behind the x-ray machine arranged a pat-down for all the sweatshirted people, which we found much preferable to being forced to put on a show for the gazillion people in "line" behind us.

The actual screening looked the same to me, so I can't really explain the insane delay. When my items rolled out the other side of the machine, though, someone else's jacket and belt were in with my shoes. As far as I could tell, the workers were unable to locate the man, who will now be cold and have trouble holding up his pants. The good news is, somebody else will be able to purchase the jacket and belt, along with other stuff, at this place.

One hour until boarding. Time to stock up on Jamba Juice!

AHA-Bound

Happy New Year, all!

Just a reminder that I am headed to the American Historical Association Annual Meeting, held in wonderfully not-freezing San Diego. The conference is January 7-10, and I will be live-blogging as much as possible. At the very least you can expect a nightly update, though pictures will have to wait until I return to my trusty desktop.

The AHA Annual Meeting's theme is Oceans, Islands, Continents, all things I enjoy. For those who may be interested in perusing the program, it can be found here. I'm going to try to rope my fellow graduate student attendees into reporting, so between all of our eyes, nothing will be missed!

Professional conferences are funny things, shrouded in mystery. I was recently asked, "What do historians have to say to each other that they need to have a three-day-long conference?". Hopefully by the predawn hours of Monday morning, I will have the answer to that, along with many fun and fascinating anecdotes. Stay tuned!

If Only It Were True!

So I've circulated a couple of surveys about grad student stereotypes, among other fascinating things. I'll be giving you all the official results sometime in the future, but I'm jumping the gun to make this post because a) I have a really great visual, and b) there is one stand-alone stereotype that every person surveyed so far had pretty blistering things to say about.

And that is, that we're a bunch of lazy bums.

See exhibit A:



While I can't speak for the 12th year of the PhD, December is better known as the Deadline Dance of Doom and Death. How many pages can you write in a day when you have swine flu? How many books can you carry from the library, through the snow, up the many hills to the overflow lot where the grad students get to park? It's the same premise as "American Gladiators", except in "American Academics" we don't wear the sparkly costumes, and most of the time we're not suspended from monkey bars.

One person surveyed had no time to wrap any gifts, and went the "it's under the paper bag!" route. Another student, spared from the survey but not from inclusion in this post, was, at deadline time, seriously considering buying all Christmas gifts at highway rest stops on the way home.

So to all the people who received post-it notes and highlighters in their stockings -- and were excited about it -- I salute you! Get down with your never-stop-reading selves, and Happy New Year!

No Two Front Teeth For You: Santa's Revenge

Sometimes Santa really gets it right, and other times, you wonder what he must have been drinking to think that thing was a good idea (note: it wasn't milk). The only good thing about bad presents is that they usually become pretty funny once enough time has gone by, and then you can laugh about it.

Usually. Sometimes your gift is a pet mouse that gives you scabies. Then everyone else laughs, but not you.

I've received a few whoppers of poorly-chosen gifts*, but nothing like these people, who collectively have some serious good-gift karma due them after receiving half a roll of tube socks, a spoon-pin, and a "European bathing suit".

So here's hoping you got everything you wanted, and if you didn't, that at least you made out better than the Something Awful folks.

*The "best" of these was a key, with no explanation to what it opened, which, drove Type-A me nuts for months before I gave up and purposefully lost it.

The Former Bishop of Turkey is Near!

So here's your dose of holiday cheer, from me! Your chicken soup for the post-exam soul. I held off posting this until Christmas Eve, but you have a good 48 hours to listen to it over and over again until you're finally drowned out by "Deck the Halls".

I have to hand it to David Sedaris, who, while discussing the topic of Christmas, manages to make fun of the following things: Michigan, the Dutch, Spanish "tapath" [tapas], Turkey, virtually all children, and ostensibly, blind people. Sound good? Click through to the YouTube audio file. It's a three-part extravaganza.

Merry Christmas Eve! I hope none of you are about to be kicked and carted off to Spain in the near future.

Top Ten Reasons to Go AWOL

So I'm back from my semester off...of blogging. Don't worry, I was plenty busy reading about epistemology and trying to learn how to say "where are all your documents about slaves?" in Portuguese. In addition, I wanted application season to be well underway before returning to my post. So next semester you can expect a lot more chicken soup, and I'm hoping you all still have souls at the end of this semester.

A few things to look forward to. I will be live-blogging from the AHA (that would be, the American Historical Association) grand-high annual meeting, held this year in the balmy San Diego. This should be fun for everyone. Especially if the side-trip to Tijuana goes according to plan.

Also, stay tuned for my reviews of several films about college life in a hysterical countdown of stereotypes. Should we all be very, very afraid of our professional futures? I'll let you know.

But I'll leave you with these amusing tidbits. TIME went majorly nuts with Top Ten lists for 2009, covering everything from Top Wizards to Top Things You Didn't Know about Hanukkah. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Top Ten Ye Olde British Criminal Trials
Right up my alley!

Top Ten Toy Crazes
I remember all of these except the ones from the 80's, which I've repressed.

Top Ten Disney Controversies
Finally, "Song of the South" is going to be dealt with.

And for those who enjoy dumb people getting busted, this one's for you.
Pure awesomeness.

Enjoy these time-sucking top ten lists, and have a great holiday season!

The New Western History

I will pay more attention to this blog in a week when school starts; I am still under the delusion that summer is not "school time". However, I couldn't help passing along this little doozy which found its merry way into my inbox this morning.

Hee! Take that, Turner.