Matters aren't helped when a colleague starts going on about how we need to contact the suppliers to get the original machine repaired. That's as maybe, but there is this annoying woman in reception who wants her computer back right now, and that kind of thing really doesn't help at all. Suppliers are kind and considerate people, but they can't resolve the problem in ten seconds.

It's days like this that make me wonder why I bother.

Lixz

Patty is someone who would be a lot happier if she would stop pretending to be so happy all the time. She offers the cheese because she thinks she *should* be that kind of maternal person who gives her daughter's friends yummy cheese. The truth is, though, that isn't quite Patty.
Good point. We see a lot of Patty trying to be something she's not - the party for her parents, the Weekend, the whole fiasco with Boyd.

Compare Patty with Rayanne and the cheese to the milk or food (it's important, but I forget which!) she gives to Rayanne later, and to Jordan. Patty can be quite maternal and caring when it's a person she understands in some way
It's milk. Maternal symbolism ahoy!

Mainstream doesn't mean one-dimensional, you know. How are Brian and Jordan *not* mainstream?
Brian is too smart to be part of the mainstream. Kids can't relate to kids that clever. Jordan is closer to mainstream, but he has been held back twice, enough to cut him off from his peer group.

Cory
Brian lies, outright, to Delia, in Life of Brian, adding him to Angela as people who lie. . .
And, on my analysis above, a pattern of subtle lies and giving false impressions from Patty.

Does this make Angela and Brian, being imperfect in teh same ways, more perfect for each other? In incriminating Brian (who I love, btw, but want to physically beat throughout LOB) have I disproved my theory of the discordance imminent in an Angela/Brian convergence?
Figure in the possibility that Angela might fake love for Brian, while secretly lusting after Jordan.

Next topic, quickly.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field:

But there was one part I thought was awfully weird, and I wanted others' opinions. I think (actually me and Emily were talking about this the other day, so it's not just me) that Shobi underestimates the extent to which Rickie has already come out to his close friends, long before he talks to Delia. Without saying the words "I'm gay," I think Rickie has already come out to Rayanne, Angela, and Brian.
As far as Angela and Rayanne go, I assume Rickie knows it's obvious to both of them that he has (or has had) a crush on Jordan, and he admits openly to both of them that he has a thing for Cory Helfrich.
Reviewing the Pilot (as one does at times like these) it seems clear that Rayanne either knows or really, really suspects already.

Am I off the mark here in thinking that Angela and Rayanne should have never needed to ask--indeed, that is would have been kind of weird if they had done so?
I don't think you are. I think of this as the reverse of the Chandler effect. There's a running joke in Friends that has lots of people incorrectly putting Chandler straight into the gay list. No-one ever made that mistake with Rickie.

This has piqued my interest in a personal question, mainly for those who met or knew me in the 90s. Was anyone surprised when they heard I was gay? Responses off list, if you prefer.

What seems even more bizarre is how worried Rickie seems in Shobi's #23 about Brian knowing he is gay. Do you actually need to be more explicit than: "I mean, do you realize, how much easier my life would be...if I could just like her back? I mean, Brian, this could be my chance. To be straight." (That, of course, is what Rickie says to Brian in In Dreams.)
That's saying it in twenty words, not one.

I'm not saying the Rickie-Delia scene isn't a big deal in In Dreams. I think it's a big deal for two reasons:
1. It is important to say the words "I'm gay" out loud to another person for the first time.
2. It is important that Rickie feels comfortable coming out to a relative stranger (even if he wants to be closeted to the world at large more generally).
Right, right, in that order. Trust me on this.

But I *don't* think a third reason, which I think some people believe makes this scene more important, is valid: 3. It's meaningful that the person to whom Rickie is most explicit is not one of his friends.
It makes it easier, it gives practice in saying what everyone knows. But it's strangers that need to be convinced in the end.

What do people think?
Lots of things. Butter is better than marge. Newark airport is a dump. Lixz is a jolly wise person. And she's made some great points.

It's really, really, insanely hot. Officially 28, but very humid and the wind is a hot one. Cold front moving through tonight can't come quickly enough.

And a very good AMANDA SHOW (Nickelodeon, 1998). About half the show is consumed by Moody's Point, a closely-observed pisstake of Dawson's Creek. It's funny in all the right places, right down to "Chicken Soup For The Tortured Teenage Soul."

College lifeEmily:
yup. she keeps asking how I think I'm going to fit everything into my dorm room (not to mention the car on the way up)
What, she wants you to fit the car into the dorm room? Even worse, she will now I've mentioned it.

and then telling me I should bring, like, 5 bottles of shampoo.
No. One will suffice. Any more will only get lost / stolen / broken / lie unused.

rent a van to take me up.
No, this indicates you're taking enough for a small house, not a dorm room. If it won't fit in a decent-sized car, it's too much.

Elizabeth Wrigley-Field:
It's all fairly fragmented. So the first thing I want to do with all the contacts I plan on making is establish an infrastructure for uniting those movements, and bringing the other political clubs in under one platform as much as can be done. (The first potential problem is that one important plank of almost every reasonable political club at NYU which tries to be remotely non-narrow is establishing a Latino Studies department, which I don't agree with. I'm going to see if I can talk people out of it.)
A) Why is such a department required? Can it not be served out of (say) Social Sciences?
B) Why is there a groundswell of opinion in favour of this?
C) Why is there not a department at this time?
D) Why have previous attempts to create it failed?

Answer those and we're away.

My main goal is to make an organization which, while staunchly left-wing, is very broad in scope.
Are we talking economic left-wing - redistributive tax policies, significant state intervention - or social left-wing - pro-choice, freedom of speech, against government murder? It is possible to be a "left-wing" group while only fitting one of these criteria. The UK government is proving this right now, being slightly economic left-leaning but hugely authoritarian.

One problem I face in general with statistics is that in the non-math departments it's nearly all applied, and in the math department you learn the mathematical bases for the formulas, but I'm not sure anywhere is going to adequately cover the theoretical bases of statistics.
From my experience, it's not possible to teach the mathematical concepts behind the formulae without covering the theory. Whether this is done in one large course, or two smaller ones, is another matter.

So yes. I begin prepared.
Yes, but what are you going to do *after* lunch?

Things BrianishElizabeth Wrigley-Field:
Yup, I'm with you here. In fact, I think Harvard in particular is the place for Brian. Which reminds me...where do you think the rest would go?
Ack, we need something like Paxman's Ranking of Independent Centres of Knowledge here. I can discuss placings within the PRICK, but this will make sense to about five people here.

[reads on, spots the Lixz Inimitable College Evaluator]

There's a lot of cultural baggage tied up in the PRICK, and the LICE. So I'll just use this as an excuse to throw in lots of RDAs (Really Dodgy Acronyms) and move on.

I guess it's sort of normal, when you're 15, to have a deference to authority figures in any case, even if in some ways you're rebelling.
There's a small hard core of 15 year old boys who have gone beyond that minimal deference. They're the squeaky ones that get all the grease.

Yeah, why does Brian know a way in? Hypotheses?
The innocent guess is that he's discovered it by accident, or been shown it by a kindly caretaker, as he's not going to abuse the knowledge.

The not so innocent guess is that he's responsible for the breach in security.

*Do* Rickie and Rayanne understand about extra credit?
Perhaps they don't understand it as well as Brian, but it's something they can relate to. "It's for extra credit" - the average student isn't expected to understand it, so R&R shouldn't feel slighted because they don't get it.

On:onElizabeth Wrigley-Field:
Why don't Patty and Graham have more of a social life? Patty has Camille, Graham has Neil. Patty does things for her parents, and Graham later gets Hallie, though that's work-based. Is this to keep the show from getting too complicated? Are we to assume they have friends we just don't see? Or do they not do that much outside of their family and some people (like Camille) who are practically family?
I'd suggest that G&P have a wide circle of friends; Patty seems to be at ease at the parents' meeting in Guns and Gossip, suggesting she's on nodding terms with most of the people there (though not Amber) and firmer friends with more.

I also have to remember that this *is* a television drama, with just the right number of principal players to span the episodes. Adding more of a social life for the parents would have to reduce other scenes, and tilt the balance of the series.

Why don't we see any cafeteria scenes after the Pilot? (Am I forgetting any?) If the cafeteria is as symbolic as the Pilot suggests, wouldn't they have use for it later?
But cafeteria scenes are *so* cliched. The best dramas eschew them - how many cafe scenes were there in Buffy? Or in recent Daria?

The Goal Rush (ITV / ITV2 / ITV Sport) For the last few years, this has been Football First, the show that gives all the goal flashes and all the sendings off, even in the middle of the commercial breaks. Now that it's airing the final whistle on ITV, the show has sponsorship, and loses the picture-in-picture during the breaks. And it begins by spending forever discussing a couple of matches in detail, rather than the rolling scoreboard that has been the format's trademark. All in all, this is nowhere near as good as it ought to be.

The Substitute dissected Elizabeth Wrigley-Field:
Why does Jordan leave when Vic says they'll be discussing him in his absence? I don't think he's that insecure about being discussed, is he? I think it's uneasiness as a result of confusion -- he's never seen a teacher like *this* guy. Is it also curiosity? I remember that wasn't my impression watching the tape. (Transcripts, sadly, get you only so far.)
He doesn't leave. This is the whole point. In the first three minutes, Vic has been honest and open and everything that a regular teacher isn't. Compare and contrast with Angela's opening monologue.

I do really like Erin's analysis, though, of the title.
Angela stops substituting other people's analyses of someone for her own. This is probably the single biggest step to maturity that Angela takes all series. Witness the halting confrontation between Angela and Vic over throwing the paper out the window at the end of Act I. Angela is repeating her parents word for word, and is floored by Vic's response. Compare with the row with Foster at the end of Act IV, where Angela is arguing for herself, and actively shuts up her parents.

With a whole class of kids not paying attention or whatever at the beginning, how does Vic know to zero in on Jordan so fast? I mean, clearly Vic's biggest redeeming quality is the way he actually notices Jordan's illiteracy, but how does he do it so fast?
Jordan brings himself to Vic's attention by trying to jump class. Then he would have turned something in for the Lit. That Jordan doesn't contribute in class raises Vic's concerns further. The rest is professionalism.

I do like Vic's "unfair advantage" line. Who asks a rhetorical question and then says "Good question" in response to what *they* just asked?
Weaver waves hand, and realises from where he got the habit.

How does Vic change his socks? The transcript has the line, but it doesn't say and I don't remember.
We don't see. Rayanne just points it out.

Did anyone ever analyze Angela's fable?
I think someone did, about six years ago. Personally, I think it's a work that defies analysis.

I love Graham's "Get your own" line. He usually gets the best lines.
I think this one looks better on paper than on screen. Graham goes on to share the reading.

In the bathroom scene, it's one thing for Sharon and Rayanne to agree to collaborate, but when Angela comes in and refers to "your [Rayanne's] haiku", suddenly it means they are collaborating to mislead Angela. Is this meaningful? I can see why Sharon doesn't want Angela to know--the sex thing and all, even though they don't really explore that dynamic until Pressure, plus I believe they're still a bit shaky with each other at this point. Does Rayanne let Angela keep believing it out of fairness to Sharon, or because she also wants Angela to think she wrote it?
Both R&S reckon it's in their best interest to maintain the facade; Sharon wants to hide behind the cloak of anonymity, and Rayanne wants to maintain her pretence of being experienced. This may also be strong evidence that Rayanne isn't as experienced as she likes us to think.

Angela's use of "Good question" - well, I think she is copying Vic (she certainly talks about him enough), but she also said it to him first, I believe.
Nope. From the transcript.

Vic: Why did I do it. Good question. I did it to clear the slate. I did it to wake you up. I did it to do *something*. To find you. And now, guess what, here you are. Wide awake. Right in front of me. I mean. Wasn't that worth it? I mean, that, um, ah, poem. That, ah, Oak tree poem.[laughs] That was yesterday.___What are you going to write today.
Angela:__Good question.

Angela's question "How can you say it's unacceptable if no one's allowed to see it?" doesn't make any sense to me.
Makes perfect sense to me; Angela's asking - in a slightly convoluted way - what the heck Foster thinks he's playing at. Also note how Foster refers to Angela as "the young lady right there," and doesn't make the link when he's talking to Graham. He doesn't even know his own students' names. My head of a school of 1100 took pride in knowing all the pupils names by October.

Angela calls him Vic; Jordan calls him Mr. Racine. Does this mean anything?
Jordan calls him Mister while Foster is in the room.

Why was Jordan in the office?
Good question. I'd hope Jordan was having a discussion about his future academic career. Realistically, not a chance.

Also, the transcript says Graham notices him leaving. I'm sure this means Graham remembers him when he shows up
Almost certainly.

Compare Vic's "Amanda" to Jordan's "Angella" (with two "l"s). She corrects Jordan, not Vic. Jordan's is the result of an actual problem (illiteracy) and Vic's is actually not knowing her name.
Maybe he's making a subtle point, by deliberately getting her name wrong. Too subtle for me to figure what it is.

What are the implications of Angela's acknowledging Brian's right not to like Vic? It seems that may actually be a change in her, a more sophisticated acknowledgment that the world is not black and white
As I theorised earlier, a sign of maturity from Angela.

Dimitri calls Angela "Miss Chase" and Brian "Brian." Another example of Brian's being the school-wide teachers' pet, Mr. Dimitri losing his formality as he's confronting an unexpected issue (resistance from Brian), or unmeaningful coincidence?
The teachers don't get that Brian really doesn't rate them. That's contempt on Brian's face; Dimitri probably feels pretty low himself. Note how he doesn't decline outright a copy of the Lit, merely defers "maybe later."

Mr. Foster doesn't seem like as much of an asshole as I'd remembered.
He doesn't know his students names or appears to care about their progress. That makes him a pretty huge failure in my book.

Principal Foster is fair to Angela in the last scene.
He's denying her the glory of being a martyr. Game, set, match Foster. Blighter.

SALFORD beat the Royal Academy of Music in the 2000 first round, falling to local rivals UMIST in the second.
LEICESTER appeared the previous year, beating City on a tie-break, Selwyn Cambridge by a mile, before being soundly beaten by Oriel Oxford in the quarters.

A slow game, there appear to have been many questions edited out as the first picture round comes as the 4th starter - it's usually around the 8th. Leicester are comfortably ahead, but Salford pull back well in the second quarter. Salford finally takes the lead just before half time, thanks to captain Marc Hudson's buzzing. It's one way traffic after that, Salford winning 155-130.

Noteworthy: Hudson's score - 8 starters, one penalty, 91 points. Also that Leicester got nine starters right, but just 8/26 bonus questions. That, I think, is where they went.

New episodes of Weakest Link Daily this week, on BBC2 at 1715. We start on Monday with the Welsh Special, arising from insults that that country took when host Anne Robinson appeared on Room 101.

Just two episodes of Countdown this week, Tuesday and Wednesday.

MASTERMIND is to return to the television screen, four years after its last appearance. The BBC production will air on the Discovery Channel, and be hosted by Clive Anderson (host of Whose Line Is It Anyway?)

We don't usually run with silly quotes from US Republican leader George Bush. Partly because he is nothing more than the leader of the opposition party in a foreign land, and partly because if we ran one silly quote, we'd be pressed to run them all, and that would take forever. However, this one made us think of our favourite current television show, and the thought of Bush meeting Buffy - and being beaten up by Buffy - gladdened our hearts. "One of the interesting initiatives we've taken in Washington, DC, is we've got these vampire-busting devices. A vampire is a--a cell deal you can plug in the wall to charge your cell phone." Where's Mr Pointy when you need him?

A large group of sharks is spotted off the Florida coast. Tourists are reported "scared" and "alarmed" by the presence of Great Whites, Lesser Greys, and Minuscule Mauves. Scientists are lost for a snappy explanation of this congregation, which gives us this week's Top Five.

Top Five Reasons Why The Sharks Are Off Florida:
5) They were going to visit Mexico, but *someone* forgot to buy a waterproof map.
4) It's the height of summer. Why shouldn't the sharks go to Florida, along with the rest of the planet?
3) They're taking advantage of a great new promotion by Basking Shark Robbins ice cream.
2) Haven't you heard the free music festival, starring the Average White Shark.
1) Florida? They want to provide a lesson in counting. One tourist eaten. Two tourists eaten. Ha ha ha ha ha.

NATO commits forces to keep the peace in Macedonia. They'll be close to colleagues in Kosov@, and will ostensibly perform a similar disarming mission. The Macedonian mission is time-limited to 60 days. The deal is part of a settlement between the Macedonian government and rebel Albanians. Other terms, including constitutional reforms expanding the rights of the Albanian minority, might not pass, which could encourage the rebels not to disarm. If the reforms do become law, the rebels might not turn in their good weapons, as happened in Kosov@, where Albanian guerrillas appeared to have disarmed but later shipped weapons to their counterparts in Macedonia.

Last weekend saw commemorations for the 40th anniversary of the Berlin Wall. That edifice was built by East Germany to keep imperialist West Germany from invading, and not to keep the East Germans in that side of the country. We thought about where other walls might usefully be built, then saw news of more suicide bomb attacks by Palestinians in Jerusalem. Then we noted that not one attack has come from Gaza, where there is a border fortification that looks like a wall to us.