Cartoonist Roz Chast has been a staff cartoonist for the New Yorker since 1979. She likes to list things alphabetically to help her fall asleep at night. With all the anecdotes, I’ve never heard of this one. As much as I’d like to try it out, I hope I don’t have to.

No Parking 10am-3pm Mon-Fri

However, invisible people are apparently allowed to stand whenever they want.

Portrait of 149

“Where did this come from?” I asked Rob – who lives there, spilling some Beast foam on his Adidas.

“It’s a site called rasturbation.com” I didn’t hear it right. “Like masturbation, but with an ‘R’,” he tells me.

“Ohh.”

You just upload a picture and choose how big you want it. This one is 10×10 – all you’ve got to do is staple or tape all the pages together and voila – you’ve got your portrait. And it’s cheaper than a poster, that is, if you print it on campus. Just try not to get caught rasturbating in the computer lab.

So of course when I get on to my computer I enter rasturbation.com into my browser, assuming this seemingly new-age artform is hosted by some bohemians creating a website based on some wordplay (who does that anyways?) Turns out, the aforementioned site doesn’t exist, and the correct spelling is rasterbation.com, and the tiled artform has been around for years. (Almost makes me think of the museum scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.)

*

. . .

This might become pretty popular. It might even replace tapestries as the most common piece of room decor and also as the most flammable textile to be hung from a wall.

Was born in 1910 in Dobson, North Carolina

Attended N.C. State, majoring in Business Administration and writing for the school paper, the Technician

Moved to Ithaca in 1942 to take a job (The building next to Viva Taqueria is named after Park).

Began a Communications Consortium, controlling seven television stations, seven AM and seven FM radio stations, as well as a number of publications.

At one time, Forbes listed Park as one of the forty richest men in the U.S.

Park sat on the Board of Trustees at Ithaca College for a number of years and the school was named after him in 1989.

His likeness can be seen in the lobby of the school – near the coffee kiosk towards the stairs.

Park himself

But take a closer look, down at the wrists.

double-wristing

A watch on each hand. Take Forbes’ word for it – the man was wealthy. But philanthropic, too. Since 1997, The Park Foundation has left over $12 million in scholarships to help over 170 students.

Johnson

This museum has a few permanent collections of art, as well as constantly-changing contemporary collections. But the main attraction at the Johnson is the view. High up on Libe Slope, the fifth floor of the museum offers incredible views of Ithaca and the surrounding areas. The lake, downtown, the hills, and surrounding campuses are spectacular yet humbling.

Cayuga

Being Cornell, though, I thought some of the art would be elitist, high-brow, somewhat snooty and incomprehensible for someone not well-versed in the field of art history. I went to the top floor for the view, but when I scoped out some of the displays, all I saw was this:

bubble bubble

I thought you could pick one of those up at the Commons – don’t know why you’d have to go to a museum to see it.

Then, there was this naked chick:

Exhibition(ist) A

Get some clothes on, hippy.

Turns out that the famed Johnson Museum is no exception to the liberal lifestyle that is nearly normalized in Ithaca. Anyways, if anyone knows of some REAL museums in the area, let me know.

-People bitching on their facebook status about snow

-People constantly updating their facebook status (how about instead of doing that 8 times a day, you get a life instead? just a thought)

-People who write long statuses and or notes on facebook in which they try to bring up serious topics and seem wise (instead of seeming wise, you seem quite, quite douchey)

-People who end their sentences with questions.  I’m trying to have a conversation, not be interrogated here.

-Everyone overusing the word “extreme.”  How is everything extreme?  It makes no sense people, I doubt that my  deodorant is  extreme, but the label says it is.

-Night classes

-Bandwagon fans who all of a sudden love sports teams that they cannot name more than one player on (yes, USA hockey fans, I am talking to ALL of you)

-People who break up and get back together all the time (just pick something and stick to it, you aren’t Ross and Rachel)

-People whose only source of humor is quoting movies, let’s get some original material people.

And finally, my number one pet peeve lately………………

-2nd Floor letting TONS of underage kids in.  Has anyone else noticed this?  When we were younger we had to wait to get into the bars, now that sleazy bouncer at 2nd floor (you all know who Im talking about) is letting all these underage kids in.  It makes the bar more crowded and makes it harder to get a drink (it’s already hard enough at 2nd floor as they have the SLOWEST bartenders in all of Ithaca, hey bartenders stop hiring your girlfriend and hire people who know how to make a damn drink and be snappy about it!). Plus as someone who is of legal age, seeing the annoying juniors in the bar who think they are soooo cool because they are in the bar drives me to drink even more which wouldn’t be a problem if I could get a damn drink in that bar.

That’s what is annoying me this week.  What’s annoying you?  Comments people, let’s make this a weekly thing.

I’ve noticed many fellow pedestrians are reluctant to cross the street when a car is coming. They’ll wait for all cars to pass, then advance. I guess I’m audacious when I don’t break stride going from the path next to the pond to the parking lot. Doing this has caused a lot of drivers to honk at me, swerve and give me the finger, or get their car spit on.

Driver’s ignorance has made me so upset and fearful for my own safety that I’ve considered stopping at Public Safety and requesting that a sign be put in the crosswalk. Then, I realized, I’m a driver too. I stop for pedestrians in crosswalks – hell, I’m one myself most of the time. Calling attention to the intersection of Farm and GEB wouldn’t be helping anyone – it would just be getting more drivers in trouble on a campus where, when you’re behind the wheel, you better hope a campus cop isn’t anywhere near and that he has no reason to pull you over.

What’s going on here? The ignorant drivers aren’t the problem. And besides, it’s fun, as a pedestrian, to exercise control over a car.

But when the opportunity to take a course at Cornell called “Understanding Beer and Wine,” I knew I couldn’t pass it up. So I filled out my paperwork, and IC’s paperwork, and Cornell’s paperwork. Then I enrolled in the class. When I read that we had to bring four glasses for sampling each class, I knew thought this course was for me.

But then came the second week of classes. Our syllabi had been handed out and the summary of the course had been explained. I found myself listening to professors explain proteins binding to starches and some other scientific vernacular that was over my head. The history and cultural aspects of beer and wine-making is all very interesting – those notes are detailed and thorough. The scientific notes on the other hand lend themselves to doodles and jokes about how over-my-head half of the course matter is.

When it came time for the test I studied hard. More so than I study for most tests I take at IC. (I don’t take tests at IC anymore, if anything I write papers.) An hour two days before, three hours the night before, and another two hours the morning of the exam weren’t enough.

The test was hard. I was as prepared as I could have been. And worst of all – we didn’t get any samples to take the edge off.