"They cannot conquer forever."
-Frodo, LOTR IV.6

Good news.

Americans — by a 16-point margin, 51 to 35 percent — now say the country should go in the direction in which the Democrats want to lead, rather than follow Bush. That's a 10-point drop for the president from a year ago, and the Democrats' first head-to-head majority of his presidency.

The Republican Party is feeling the pinch as well. The Democrats lead them by 14 points, 51 to 37 percent, in trust to handle the nation's main problems, the first Democratic majority on this question since 1992. And the Democrats hold a 16-point lead in 2006 congressional election preferences, 54 to 38 percent among registered voters, their best since 1984.

Independents — quintessential swing voters — prefer the Democrats' direction over Bush's by 51 to 27 percent, and favor the Democrat over the Republican in congressional races by 54 to 31 percent (the latter result is among independents who're registered to vote.).


Think this GOP fatigue can hold out til November?

If we don't get attacked, maybe.

:)

Not totally irrelevant...
Llamas live in Peru.

Am I crazy if I find this incredibly funny?

The king of procrastination tools, facebook.com, has a new feature called Pulse, which compares the most commonly listed preferences at your school to those of the rest of the facebook community. As a consumer and sometime mocker of popular culture as well as an anthropologist and (let's face it) a Yale snob, I was fascinated by this.

Music:
How mainstream Yale am I? The Beatles topped the Eli list, which also contained my listed favorites Radiohead, Dylan, U2 and the Shins. Also, I like all the other bands on the list. While I was actually suprised how much overlap there was with the pooled schools list - where are the rappers? - the differences still spoke volumes. Incubus, Green Day and Sublime...are we in 1998? And who's Fall Out Boy?

Movies:
Once again, I am so Yale. LOTR took the top spot, only making 8th on the combined list. These lists had fairly little in common. Most notable was the absence of raunchy or dumb comedy on the Yale list: Zoolander may be stupider than Wedding Crashers, Old School,Anchorman, and Napoleon Dynamite, but it's Yale's only preferred laugh-fest other than Office Space, which made both lists and should not be grouped with the aforementioned films. What makes Zoolander so appealing to Yalies? Is it the mockery of stupid, beautiful people? Hmm.

T.V.:
Woah! Suddenly the playing field is equalized. And of course, not owning a TV or watching it that much when I did own one, I'm a little left out in this category. I'm shocked that The Daily Show only came in 8th on Yale's list, but not that it didn't register in mainstream America. Why do we all watch the same TV but not the same movies?

Books:
Ah, literature - Yale's chance to demonstrate our intellectual tastes by selecting, um, Harry Potter as our favorite read. These lists differ surprisingly little, with the notable exceptions of The Bible as No. 3 on the collective list, and Yale's slight bent towards classics (Austen, Heller, Dostoyevsky) at the expense of light fare like Angels and Demons and The Notebook. Interestingly, Tolkien shows up on the masses list but not Yale's, despite the former's enthusiasm for the movies.

Clubs and Organizations:
This is not really a category in which valid comparisons can be made, since most college groups go by school-specific acronyms. But the lists are telling nonetheless, especially the national one. Frighteningly, College Republicans ranks eight spots higher than College Democrats. And at the top of the list is the job "Lifeguard." Who knew?


Hometowns:
Finally, I understand. The Yale list couldn't have surprised me less. But to think that Houston is number one on the whole facebook and L.A. is only number 10...now I see where all those Will Ferrell fans are coming from.

Eye-opening. My tastes in general ran so similarly to the rest of the Yale student body that I couldn't conceive of any other world. Certainly not a world where The Bible, The Notebook, and the lifeguard rule the school, and Bob Dylan and Jon Stewart are obscurities. I feel bad for them. But I feel worse for the country.

I find the end of this LAT blurb amusing. "You're a rancher," the questioner said to Bush. "A lot of here in Kansas are ranchers. I was just wanting to get your opinion on 'Brokeback Mountain,' if you've seen it yet." The hall filled with nervous laughter as Bush smirked.
"You would love it," the questioner persisted. "You should check it out."

I'm sure he would. Heh heh. Actually, this goes for eveyone, not just Bush -- it's an excellent movie. Catch it before it rides away with the awards season. Though Crash affected me more personally, and is being largely overlooked even for noms. Ah well.

On a completely unrelated note, why on earth doesn't donkey rhyme with monkey? I mention this because Richard Burger said "dunkey" today and I realized that there's no reason not to pronounce it that way. Also wierd: Richard Burger, Tom Tartaron and Andrew Hill are the only people I've met who pronounce "huge" and "human" "yuge" and "yuman," and they're all Yale Anthromen. I actually asked Tom about this and he was unaware that the other two pronounced it that way, so I guess it's not just a Yale thing. We thought it might be a regional thing, except RB is from NY, TT is from OH and AH is from the UK. So go figure.

I'm getting really impatient with the slower members of my Spanish class. For the love of God, ll is pronounced "y," but just one l is not! To put it in terms you would understand, it's like how "tortilla" doesn't rhyme with "tequila." Now I know how I looked in Calc. Sorry Zach McKinney.


How much do I love Gourmet Heaven?

(----------------------thiiiiiiisssss much!--------------------------)

Why I Don't Hate MTV
You know what was a damn good show? Daria. That was a good show.

Conversations That Didn't Happen, But Could Have, Part 1
(Scene: in my bedroom as I'm putting on my coat, shoes, etc.)

Hajera: Hey Erica.

Me: Hi Haj.

Haj: Off to class?

Me: Yeah, (spoons something out of a jar) Great Discoveries .

Haj: ...what is that?

Me: Great Discoveries in Archaeology.

Haj: No , no -- what are you doing?

Me: Oh. (looks down) It's coffee.

Haj. You're EATING coffee?

Me: Last I checked, it was edible.

Haj: You know, honey, most people drink it.

Me: It's instant. (Holds up the jar). See, it dissolves in your mouth...

Haj: You're insane. Have fun in class.

***

As the title suggests, this exchange didn't actually take place. But if Haj had walked in the room around 2:26 this afternoon, it probably would have.

Brill Yant.
Now Playing: "Marakesh Express," CS&N
Green Bucks and Scam

Time For an Angrygram!
Today at the Peabody Museum I handed out T-shirts at the poetry slam for the annual MLK Day celebration. It was amazing. Som of these people are so brilliant - I wish hip-hop music today would speak out about the real issues of African Americans as wittily, cuttingly and movingly as the performers did. What a great thing.

Unfortunately, the experience was marred by the ignorance of whoever put a replica of a large Olmec head on near the stage facing the audience. For those who don't know, the Olmec was Mexico's first civilization, famous for their "colossal head" sculptures. Because of the "African" features of many of these heads, early 20th-century scholars supposed that the Olmec were Africans who had sailed to Mexico and brought civilization to the Native Americans. Today, no serious student of archaeology belives this. For one, there is no real archaeological evidence to support it. Secondly, the facial features of some indigenous Gulf Coast Mexicans are similar to the Olmec sculptures, reminding us that there is more variation (genetic and phenotypical) within broad "racial" groups than between them. Finally, the artistic conventions of a culture do not necessarily reflect the people's appearance. The Olmec also made figurines that look about as Asian as the colossal heads do African.



However, the belief in the Olmecs' African origins has lingered on, especially in many radical African-American circles. A simple Google search reveals a plethora of articles deploring "the denial of black history" by mainstream academia. Yet these same pseudo-scholars are guilty of the very act they deride, robbing Native Americans of their legitimate heritage.

I am amazed how prevalent this view is. At the Yale Repertory Theater in 2004 I saw a production of King Lear set in ancient Mexico, featuring an all-back cast and a giant Olmec head as a prop. Not what I would have chosen (why not just set the play in Africa?), but I'll grant them creative liscence, since it's theater. But the Peabody Museum of Natural History?? Frankly outrageous. I can't decide whom I should email about this without sounding racist. But in all honesty this should never have happened.

Other ancient civilizations have been hijacked by Afro-centrists as well, including Ancient Greece. The real tragedy is that to this day the black community has been so sidelined in our modern civilization that they feel the need to legitimize themselves by (subconsciouly perhaps) seeing history through a distorted lens. And this is an area where the white establishment can make an effort. When classes on the ancient Nubian civilization are widely taught, when people remember that (news flash!) Egypt is in Africa, and when the African origins of the entire human species are fully accepted and appreciated, maybe Afro-centrists will no longer stoop so low as to rob Native Americans of their own culture history. I have a dream that next year the Peabody auditorium decor, rather than endorsing fabrications, will glorify the very real and fascinating African past that all of us ultimately share.

The North and the South
Now Playing: "Weight of My Words," The Kings of Convenience
Congratulations to Chile, which just elected its first woman president. Congratulations to the U.S., whch is now officially more backward than Chile. And wasn't it South Africa that just legalized gay marriage? Oy.

Of Sloshed Strangers and Peruvian Politics
Now Playing: "Anytime at All," the Beatles: the Form of the rock band
So about last night. Ha ha ha ha ha! Definitely got invaded by non-archaeo grad students. Like eight guys I'd never seen. Not sure how that happened. But the beer is gone. Like frickin' magic.

Mm. And I forgot I had a 9 am class today because of Martin Luther King. Now perhaps I'm being a bit unfair to the good Doctor, but simply put he is the reason why I rolled bleary-eyed into Inca Culture and Society after having inhaled some instant espresso in hopes of recovering my normal depressants-to-stimulants ratio. For the record, I recovered. And I'm really glad I remembered class, because Prof. Burger told us the inside story behind the Yale-Peru artifact controversy!!! He even told us his opinion, which he has been forbidden to share in newspaper interviews. And he told it in a beautifully informative, entertaining, and roundabout way.

Do you want to know what he said? Well I'm sworn to secrecy. HA!

Anyway, now we have a three-day weekend (hence the Monday classes on Friday morning). I'm sipping the dregs of the leftover chardonnay and trying to plan an art project for "Arts and Evironment Day." I'm thinking of doing something involving newspapers. Haj inspired me; she's taking a painting class and I'm jealous. Anyway, it should be relaxing and full of joy.