What prospectus?

I've been a little lax with the posting lately, I know, but I've been terribly distracted these days by my prospectus. For those non-academics out there, the prospectus is basically your dissertation proposal. It explains what topic you are going to research, why no one else has done it your way before, and how you're going to go about things. In my department, the prospectus is a 20-30-page paper that is presented to the department at a public 'defense.' Although my colloquium (i.e. public defense) is not until December 10th, I'm supposed to turn in the paper itself at the end of this week.

It hasn't been going very well. I've been struggling a lot with the paper and ultimately with what I want or need (future career-wise) my dissertation to be. I'm still not exactly sure that I know what I'm doing, or that I'm at all happy with what I have produced at this point.

So what did I do last night to clear my head?



Yes, that's right. I went to see Megadeth!
The show began on an interesting note with one of the opening bands. They'd set up these frames with fabric stretched over them to cover stuff behind them on the stage - identical frames were posted at either side of the band. At first I couldn't figure out what the image was:



And then it became clear that it was an image of a dead, mutilated woman, in a flowing robe, arranged poetically on the ground.


I love when people say there is no such thing as the 'male gaze.' It's bad enough in hip-hop, but I'd forgotten the physical violence associated with the 'male gaze' so frequent in metal. I officially loathe the band Suicide Silence.

But anyways, the person who I don't loathe, is this guy:


Dave Mustaine! Snarling champion of my ninth grade year!



I used to watch the video for 'Sweating Bullets' over and over and over in 9th grade: that was back in the day when you'd have a blank VCR tape in the machine so you could super-fast hit 'record' whenever one of your favorite songs came on MTV. It was unreal to see Megadeth standing in front of me, in real life.

Dave Mustaine is a god. Look, he even has a Guitar of Light:



Today I'm still partially deaf, my throat is hoarse from screaming, and my body aches like I'm decrepit. In other words, it was aaaww-suum! *singsong voice*


I went with Dallas and Brian. Afterwards we had midnight bacon-cheddar-cheeseburgers. Now it's noon and I'm wondering how I'm supposed to start coherently writing. I think I might just watch 'Sweating Bullets' a few more times instead.

Blue Devil of Denver

I was just reading about Denver Airport's controversial piece of public art, the Blue Mustang. A bunch of people want it removed because it's scary, and people don't like 'scary' when they're about to get on airplanes.

They say it looks like a demon.

Which is why it's so awesome! DUH!

How totally badass is it that Denver has a piece of public art that looks like it should be on the cover of a metal album?! I feel like Ronnie James Dio should be sitting on it's back with a big glowing sword.

Coolest work of public art, EVER.

Broken Laptops and Trouble for Bloggers

Blogging is a bit difficult when your laptop looks like this:

This post was intended to act as an explanation for my not posting lately, but I have to say I am struggling, fighting, trying my damnedest not to turn this into the 'Why You Shouldn't Purchase Dell Laptops' Post. It's very hard to resist explaining how 'System Restore' and I became best friends; how the Blue Screen of Death has begun to follow me around like an annoying but plucky sidekick; how 'Delete Partition' has become part of my normal day to day vocabulary, when previously I had no idea what a partition even was. I really don't want to explain how I am now intimately familiar with the music Dell plays when you're on hold. I have no interest in describing how when you relinquish control of your computer through Remote Access, the way your mouse moves on its own accord is spookily reminiscent of PC Poltergeists.

Sure, my laptop is less than a year old. It's just very mature for its age. New hard drives - enh, been there, done that. New operating systems - old hat. My most recent fiasco? Apparently Dell screwed up with its video cards, which are embedded into the motherboard. This means that not only does your computer screen suddenly fragment into happy rainbow lines of many colors, but it can also cause operational problems...you know, like making all of your Program Files disappear.

But whatevs.The maintence man who came to bail me out today said that, while Dell is not admitting it out loud, the video cards are failing en masse. It may not sound like a big deal, but it means that Dell has to send techs out to replace not just the video cards in thousands of laptops, but the motherboards and sometimes the actual screens as well.

This scenario is oddly familiar to me, since I formerly owned an Averatec laptop. These had faulty motherboards and the input jack for the electrical cable was totally wonky. This is the type of bad design that not only makes your computer stop working, but starts melting plastic and causing ominous smoke tendrils to rise up out of the side. If the logical step from 'smoke' is to 'fire,' then yes, my last laptop caught on fire. As did those of a kagillion other people, some of whom I knew.

This is not mine.

So perhaps this isn't a rant against Dell, but against laptops. I love them dearly, I would die without them, if they ceased to exist, my life would not be worth living. But sometimes, on the bad days, Old Faithful the Desktop Computer starts to acquire a golden glow that's not just due to nostalgia. That golden glow might rather be related to halos, and heaven, and salvation. Perhaps the Laptop needs some smiting, since recently, in my mind, the Laptop is quickly becoming: