HVCC students:

there is a copy of the class book in the Marvin Library on reserve in the basement and a copy in the EML office, Brahan 035.

St. Rose students:

I am mailing a copy to the library!

Sorry it got to be so late and we never got to look at the book in class.

Dear Ho-Sook,

The bracelet that wrapped the green felt that wrapped the Claritin has helped.  I must confess, I will not use the Claritin because I have discovered other ways to combat sinus pressure that are less harmful to my nose, but the magic bracelet included has helped me:

1) get an apartment
2) get job interviews

At job interviews I  do not reveal to the future employer that I have a magic bracelet in my satchel, but I do believe that as a good luck talisman it is doing its job.  For this I thank you!

Yes, I am in New York City now hustling to find employment in this recession!  In an hour I am going to Touro College to find myself as a writing tutor, perhaps?

Hopstop.com,

Thomas Wilk

I woke up this New Year to the sounds and spirits of tiny Japanese children seeping in under my door. They told me to touch my hands and head to the floor and Yama Yama. They told me that fuzz and funk were rightfully theirs and had Nirvana been as inspired by spirits of Yamasuki instead of Os Mutantes the world would have spun differently. The content of their canorous riddle remains a mystery to me, but I decided that I would follow this Kono Samourai down this Franco-Japanese rabbit-hole.

What really happened, is that back in France, 1971, Jean Kluger, (a French funk, disco, afro-pop, and beat producer) called up Daniel Vangarde, (father of a member of Daft Punk), and together they composed pop songs that a French children’s choir would sing. Part-education and part-cultural-petrie-dish, Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki, began as a dance, and became a European cult wonder. Fuzzy guitars, wah-wahs, 70s organs, bellbottom flutes, and small stone bass compose pop wonders and a children’s choir garner east-sploited melodies. A real black-belt Judo master ululates. Altogether though, they are spirits, no?

Other delightful twists in the world of 70s European funk: Kluger’s label Biram recorded Black Blood performing a version of Yamasuki’s Aieaoa and later three models heard the song in an African night club and would go on to record a dancehall hit of this song. Models three would go on to become Bananarama.

Delightfully noted: according to the UK’s B-Music, the Kluger/Vangarde pair had other language-phile undertakings in the works, a Russian holiday-camp album called “Casatchok,” for example.

The Fabulous World of Yamasuki is the planet that the Polyphonic Spree call collect, but never get an answer. If Yamasuki were touring now, Brian Wilson could join and mime playing a keyboard.

Wake up this new year with the spirits of Yamasuki!

Final credits to come…

Title of the semester goes to Sarah Smith with “The Pledge of Oppression,” referring to her paper arguing that “under God” should be taken out of the pledge of allegiance. She opines that you would feel uncomfortable if someone made you pledge allegiance to Satan, so why should someone have to pledge allegiance to God?

Now what is even stranger on this out-of-order day is that Sarah just walked into BTC 309 to pick up her paper as I wrote her name and God/Satan in the same sentences… AND! THEN! Someone, somewhere, took control of one of the lab computers, remotely, and started playing a powerpoint presentation on Molecular Biology. The computer just came alive! Weird Day!

Well, in a couple short hours, if it’s not canceled, I’ll be on a bus to NYC to hopefully secure a new apartment! Ciao ciao!

Thomas: “That sure is a Rensselaer Christmas accoutrement.”

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Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

That’s what unhappy people do.

Although people who describe themselves as happy enjoy watching television, it turns out to be the single activity they engage in less often than unhappy people, said John Robinson, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland and the author of the study, which appeared in the journal Social Indicators Research.

While most large studies on happiness have focused on the demographic characteristics of happy people — factors like age and marital status — Dr. Robinson and his colleagues tried to identify what activities happy people engage in. The study relied primarily on the responses of 45,000 Americans collected over 35 years by the University of Chicago’s General Social Survey, and on published “time diary” studies recording the daily activities of participants.

“We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”

rest of the article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/health/research/20happy.html?em

H V C C writes
Looking out over Wendy’s
My bus better come.

B T C baby
Marvin Library class trip
Brahan Hall oh 3 5.

Somebody’s phone rang
I said turn that darn phone off
Podcast for mad points.

Research paper blues
Existential crisis time
Up late eating snacks.

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