AAAAAHHHHHHH!

[lapsedmodernist]

am in midst of finals hell.
this is my day today: wake up
read for linguistic class
write some of bourdieu paper
procrastinate on the internet
watch the breakfast club
write end of bourdieu paper
do transcript for linguistic class
talk to claire
start on paper for linguistic class
read "constructing panic" for paper.
very bad book to read at the moment.
am imbued with meta-panic.
am missing the song i used to listen to during finals my sophomore year in college, cake's "the distance"

Comments

[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

Wow, linguistics. I really didn't like that class when I took it. De Saussure made me laugh the first time I said it with a horrific French accent, but after a semester...blech. Oh, and my name's Matt and you don't know me (at least I hope you don't). I'm procrastinating studying for my Medical Anth. final right now. Good luck with your finals, mine haven't e'en started yet and I'm not really looking forward to 'em

Re:

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

ahh, are you a fellow anthro sufferer? where do you study? i am not big on linguistic anthro either but for some reason the powers that be in my life keep making me take it. yuck. i have to write my paper for visual anthro now. good luck with procrastination, i am an expert in that field, i know some very advanced techniques. and no, i probably don't know you, although i do know a disproportionately large number of matts.

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[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

I'm a junior at Drew University (tiny L.A. school in New Jersey). I'm an (Cultural) Anth. major with an Archaeology minor. They're the two fields that interest me the most. Also, it's a happy coincidence that my school only offers 2 linguistic courses, 3 physical anth courses, and a kajillion (at least) archaeology and cultural classes. I've lived in NJ my whole life, so unless you've been here, I stick with my guns and say I don't think you know me.

-M

P.S. I'm disproportionately large, myself. I'm 6'5 and only 200 lbs

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

heh. LA school in new jersey? i can't imagine anything more scary. plus LA already has a jersey of its own, it's called the valley. i've heard of drew university though, it's kind of a frat/party school, no?
so what specifically interests you in cultural anthro and archaeology? i thought i was going to be an archaeologist for a while, worked on a dig in israel for a couple of years, but it's harder to switch out of it than to dabble in it, so it made more sense to go the cultural route.
judging from your livejournal usertag you're a poe fan? poe is good peoples. her first album is still my favorite, though her second is really neat conceptually. then again maybe you are not a poe fan and have no clue what i am talkign about. in that case i apologize. as i do for the twitching eyes icon, they don't signify anything, i just get a kick out of them.

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[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

Ya, I'm a Poe fan. And as for the LA thing, that's my bad. I meant Liberal Arts...heh. Drew isn't much of a frat school, being that there aren't any. There are pretty big parties; if you can consider a party big on a campus of 1600 students.
As for Archaeology, I've got a thing for history. I'd love to do archaeology but I can't help but feel it's in vain at this point. I agree with what you said, though. It's not easy to branch out from.
What school do you study at, and what fields are you into?

[(Anonymous)]

archaeology is not dead! well, no more than usual. besides the exciting new applications like garbageology (i am serious)...well, there is always ethnoarchaeology and still many unanswered questions to be answered...esp. in colonized areas...which if you go back far enough is pretty much everywhere. i enjoyed my time on digs. plus it's more lucrative than straight up anthro because you can do contract archaeology which actually pays pretty decently.
i'm a grad student at NYU. i went to alittle college called oberlin (also really small) for undergrad...i used to study bio anthro, behavioral ecology type stuff but now i do sociocultural, i want to do research in paraguay, i'm interested in sex and monogamy/polygamy systems. are you just studying anthro while in college or do you want to do more with it after??

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

whoops, that last post was not meant to be anonymous

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[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

I've heard of Ethnoarchaeology, and I found it a bit frustrating myself. Working backwards is well and good, but you won't ever _really_ know if the method you used is correct.
I've also heard of Oberlin. I had an ex who went there. It seems like a nice school, and I try my best not to judge it by her :) As for NYU... I grew up 45 minutes from New York, and Drew is only 30 away.
I'm deffinately going career with anthropology. In fact, I'm planning my honor's thesis nowish (which serves as a remarkable distraction from finals). I'm going to do a Critical Medical Anthropology/Ehtnography of people with piercings and tattoos to see why they got them, for what reasons, problems with medical care, etc. I'm thinking to actually do much of the fieldwork in the City. My advisor considers me a case study for this ethnography. Don't know why...
Come summer, I'm going to do what I can to go on a dig. I'd like to go somewhere in Europe, but I have a feeling I'll wind up in the southwest. My real interest, archaeologically or otherwise, is in Scandanavia. If you want to IM me, my SN is ZooStationBreak (it's a U2 thing).

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

true point about ethnoarchaeology...still, in some way i regard it a one of the more practical manifestations of anthro...i guess it all depends on methodology anyway. if you are doing postprocessualist archaeology that gets really annoying a lot of the time, at least for me. but on the whole i am drawn to cohesive theories, i am a not-so-closet universalist. actually my pet dream is bridging bio and cultural anthro in a way that is not being done currently (i did my M.A. in bio anthro). southwestern archaeology is really different from both old world and new world...the political issues involved (with bureals and repatriations) are much more in your face which can be good from an ethical standpoint but can be frustrating in other aspects (i.e. finding a burial mound only to bury it again). i would love to do a dig in greece but it's close to impossible for non-natives to work there...*sigh*
medical anthro is good stuff, too. the professor that i do research for is a medical anthropologist and she does lots of interesting stuff with construction of mental disorders, etc. not exactly my cup of tea but interesting for general education.
so what's your tattoo of? i've got 5 myself...they are addictive.
oh yeah, my AIM name is lafemmnica

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, and who do you know who went to oberlin? it's a small place, maybe i know them.

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[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

Here name was Sarah Mullen, she would've graduated last year. As for the tattoo, it's a viking design. I modeled it after a pendant found in a burial date at 982 AD in Sweden.
I'm glad, in a sense, that I only had to deal with NAGPRA through readings. I couldn't imagine having to rebury a site because of a supposed theory of descent. Bah.
Post-processualist, and most post-modernists, make my head hurt. I avoid them at all costs
what are your tattoos of?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oksy...tattoos...one on top of my back is three chinese signs going vertically that mean "writing on the body", one on the bottom of my back of a japanese lotus in black. fuschia and green, one on the side of my neck, japanese sign for horse (my year) an ohm on my forearm and this design that i sort of lifted from the UCSD anthro webpage and modified a bit, it's a profile of a woman crouching with a bow and arrow, it's like a cave painting, so i have it done in theclay-brownish color, and it has inscribed into it the word "aletheia" which is kind of intraslatable form greek but the closest approximation is that it means
'truth through illusion". i have plans for a couple more, including an aubrey beardsley illustration from "la morte d'artur" and a hobo sign for "keep going"...but alas i am a broke starving graduate student in the middle of finals at the moment.
if you do southwestern archaeology you probably will have to deal with NAGPRA...and they are sticklers for protocol...i interned at the natural history museum in chicago a few years back, in the anthro dept. and they have shelves and shelves of artifacts covered up with blankets under NAGPRA regulations, so you can only imagine what it's like on actual sites. on one hand i have to agree with it b/c it's all part of the repatriation process and we have to respect that and not be ethnocentric fucks but i would find it frustrating. not that we did not have problems in israel. we had hasidic jews throwing stones at us because they thought we were handling jewish remains. we kept explaining that they were philistinian, not jewish. *sigh* i like postmodernism a lot when applied to literature and theory but i find it frustrating and often ineffective for anthropology. postprocesualist archaeology is even worse.
don't think i know that girl from oberlin, but there were so many saras...and her first year would have been my last one...
are you going to get more tattoos?

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[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

More tattoos? Of course! I'm planning to get an Omega (because I'm a fatalist by nature) with the astrological symbol for Leo, my sign, threaded through it. I may get more, but that's the next one. I'm fine with one piercing (left eyebrow). I'm not surprised you don't know Sarah. She had really, really long brown hair and played the harp, if that jogs any memories. I loved Malory's Morte d'artur, what illustration were you thinking of getting?

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

the illustration i am thinking of is one of the square lithographs at the beginning of each chapter, it has a man and a woman reclining in the forest, i imagine it must be lancelot and guinevere. i really like it, i was thinking of getting it on my shoulder/bicep, but i'd have to find an arist who is very good at thin detailed work. we'll see. it might not be for a while--i just got the lotus one a couple weeks ago.
do you know what the viking pattern means? it's funny, lots of archaeologists i know get tattoos of stuff from sites or cultures they are studying. like sherds or mayan glyphs or scarubs, etc.
i am kind of over piercings, meaning i won't get any more. i have the standard multiple ear piercings, and nose. i used to have a tongue ring but i took it out.
do you know this website? http://www.bme.freeq.com/
you should check it out if you don't, it's a pretty cool body modification zine.
is that your dog in the picture?

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[angryjonny.livejournal.com]

Heh heh. I've cited from BME more times than I can count for my CMA class. The questionable veracity of the user's stories is more than made up for by the personal nature of them, I think. I'm glad to hear you removed your tongue piecing, those are the most trouble,so my research says :p
The tattoo is a design called "Thor's hammer". It's allegedly supposed to keep the wearer safe from natural disaster and the ilk. The reason the design sparked my interest is because it had a celtic knot in the middle of it. The vikings founded Dublin, Cork, and many other Irish cities, so I got this to rile a few Irish friends as well as for the Anth. behind it.
That's not my dog, in fact, but my sister's. I really like him. He's spunky, playful, and actually hugs people. I'll look for you online tonight, I'll be eager to be distracted from my Medical Anth readings

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

well the BME stories are much like personal interviews...all personal self-representation have the possible downfallacies (yes, it's my own word i made it up by myself) must be addressed in any ethnography. plus they are so much fun to read. speaking of tattoo designs there is an amazing book called "symbols, signs & signets" by ernst lehner with over a 1000 designs from different cultures, from alchemy to japanese family crests to mexican deities. all of my friends get their tattoos out of my book, it's quite funny.
do you have any nordic/viking ancestry or you just liked the tattoo for the design?
i am writing a paper about mocumentaries and i will be on line on-and-off unless i die of academia-related ennui.