Let's Go Mets

I don't blog about baseball very much. And, being the superstitious animal (be it monkey, penguin, or Panda) that I am, I certainly don't want to jinx anything, but the Mets are in the playoffs for the first time in six years. Despite losing two of their best pichers to season-ending injuries (Pedro Martinez, one of the best pitchers ever, is out at least 8 months, Orlando Hernandez injured his calf jogging in the outfield the day before he was supposed to start Game 1) the mets have won their first two games against the dodgers and only need one more win to the series and move on to the NLCS -- probably facing the St. Louis Pujol-- i mean Cardinals. Last night, i got no work done, because i was sitting at home watching Tom Glavine, a 40 year old pitcher, throw six shutout innings, and Julio Franco, who's 48, beat out a double play ball to first base. It was fun to watch - and made more fun by the constanbt text messaging back and forth between me and my brother, reminiscent of our email exchanges during the 2004 NLCS when the Red Sox came back from an 0-3 deficit for the first time in baseball history to beat the Yankees and move on to the world series. It's sad that Martinez and Hernandez are hurt, and i don't know how far the Mets can go with out them, but they're doing a pretty great job thus far and it's fun to watch.

Damn I'm Old Department

This was five years ago.

Who the hell is David Marks?

After the speeches, participants formed a line about three-quarters of a mile long and 10 people wide. United Students At Yale organizer Abbey Hudson '03, Proto, Local 34 President Laura Smith and Marks led the procession carrying a banner that had "Hope Not Fear" printed across the front.

Columbia Revolt (The Sequel)

Last night, when Minuteman Project co-founder Jim Gilchrist came to speak at Columbia University as a guest of the Columbia College Republicans, a group of students stormed the stage holding a banner proclaiming "There Are No Illegals," a fight ensued - those who rushed the stage claim that they were attacked by the republicans, and Gilchrist was rushed away as the attendees chanted antiracist slogans (and called Gilchrist a pinche culo.)

The myth of the university as a neutral ground on which armed fascists should be welcomed as distinguished guests, though the people they terrorize are coded as good enough only to clean floors or serve hamburgers lies at the center of many of the loud condemnations of the protesters that have thus far circulated - and the video embedded on the site linked to above shows one young republican referrign to his fellow students in a manner which is, frankly, racist -- as "animals" inapable of the sort of rational dialogue we all know that conservatives are so quick to engage in.

The Minuteman Project is an armed paramilitary vigilante organization. It is racist, premised upon metaphors of invasion and reconquista which construct the immigrant as corrosive monster, unnasimilable other, and welfare queen. I will not claim that Gilchrist has no place in a university - I have never been convinced that the university as happy bubble of tolerance was either a particularly useful metaphor or a particularly true one - universities are implicated in structures of racial difference in complicated and profound ways - but I support the efforts of folks at Columbia to counter his hatred and fascism with banners and bodies. No one is illegal.

Welcome to the ICE, bitch!

The most ridiculous scene in the oc season 1 comes not during the whole oliver arc but instead during marissa cooper's drunken pill popping slow mo collapse when she's in the bar in Tijuana. The camera slow pans across the wall and the faces of exoticized and demonic Mexican men - constructing the racialized other as menacing, mute scenery. It's one of the most racist moments i've seen on

television - worse than Seinfeld. And then came Survivor Race War, which i'll admit to never having seen, but which i anticipate becoming the subject of innumerable undergraduate cultural studies seminar papers for the next decade or so. Ok, back to work.

The kentucky river cases ruling is finally made public, removing millions more workers from union eligibility.

Wal Mart and Flexiblization of Retail Workers

Greenhouse/Barbaro piece here. Walmart internal memo here.

I'd say something insightful but I'm too hungry. The whole secular fast thing really isn't working for me that well right now - i'm too stressed out and hungry to think straight.

So I think i'm going to break my fast and eat something and then try to get some work done.

Lev, stoic

Thirty seconds later i noticed the bird shit all over the back of his sweater.