(Becuz sometimes ya just feel like bitching!) 1.The touristas in their mini-vans/SUV's/over- sized gas-guzzlers/& winnebagos (if yr house is that nice/then STAY HOME -- don't drive yr home all over the damn country!) who insist on doing 40 mph on a main road while they rubberneck in search of "that restuarant we ate at last winter... It's on Tamiami Trail, somewhere near here...". 2. All flatbed trucks on the road for non- comerical use. (Like that loud-ass jingle says/ "The South loves trucks...') Becuz the people driving them are invariably never hauling anything bigger than their own fat asses. And Mom & Dad insist on riding in the cab while the kiddies &/or the dog are in the truck w/nothing to prevent them from crashing into my windshield if they have to stop suddenly. Argghh , I HATE those irresponsible LOUTS! (Sometimes/there are so many of them on the road you can't even change lanes to avoid driving behind them!) It is illegal in FL to have passengers riding in the back of a pick-up/but I've never seen the cops ticket anyone for it. Although some guy recently got a 10-yr sentence after his kid was killed in an accident becuz he had her riding in the back of his truck. Why not let Daddy ride in the back & put the kids in the cab w/Mom where they'll be safe? Why not buy a vehicle that actually has enough seats for everyone in yr family? Why not have the cops out stopping these idiots & ticketing them/instead of putting up random checkpoints to pop drivers w/no insurance? (Supposedly/as many as 25% of FL drivers are uninsured. But I've never heard of anyone who died from driving an uninsured vehicle.) This from a state whose legislature just recently approved an official 'Choose Life' license plate... 3. Women (It is always women. I've never seen a man at the movies alone w/his baby) ) who take infants to the movies & don't have the courtesy to remove them to the lobby when they start to cry. IF YOU CAN'T AFFORD A SITTER /STAY THE FUCK HOME & WAIT FOR THE VIDEO! Babies can cry at any time for any reason -- eps. w/that Dolby Surround-Sound blasting in their little ears. If yr kids aren't old enuf to talk/they aren't old enuf to be at the movies Period. 4. People who pay by check in the supermarket. GET WITH THE PROGRAM -- USE YR CHECK CARD! This is usually oldsters who may be technophobes. But if they aren't scared to use a credit card/they shd they be afraid of using their Visa Check card? But NOOOOOO -- they insist on doing their weekly grocery shopping AT NITE (even tho' they have the whole damn to day to shop while the rest of us are at work) & paying w/a check. Which they don't even have the courtesy to make out ahead of time/so all they'll have to do is fill in the dollar amt. at the register. Then they have the nerve to stand there & DO THE MATH TO BALANCE THEIR CHECKBOOK ON LINE!!!!! Small-caliber/easily-concealable pistols were invented w/these people in mind. But there wd be all those witnesses... [Anyway, thanks for letting me vent. Anybody want to add to the list?]

5. turn signals people, i can't enforce this strongly enough. they indicate that you are about to turn and in which direction. turning them on after initiating a turn, as thoughtful as it may seem, is of no use to the other drivers.

6. people who confuse archaeologists with paleontologists. (only annoying to these two types of people) 7. people who refuse to dance to music they haven't heard a million times before. 8. people who say that my favorite reggae band sounds like Lenny Kravitz.

9. people.

llama, in am having to be deeply involved with and dependent upon archaeologists in my work. what else should i know so as not to inadvertently offend any of them? i cannot offend the native americans, nor the current property owners, now the database makers are touchy. who is left for me to offend? is being inoffensive yet effective worth it all? what if a cultural site also has mammoth or other paleo remains beneath, or in conjuction? (such things exist nearby) who gets jurisdiction? i have to decide, so help me out here, please. and what is wrong with lenny kravitz? i know nada of his music, if any, but the rest of him is to die for. yum. should i get hold of some good archaeology jokes? is that an oxymoron? i'm shirking my goat raising duties for this agita? keep saying, "it's the $$$, it's the $$$".

when I was a paleoanthropology major in college, a good joke (that wouldn't apply to anyone actually working in the field) was: q: what did the anthropology grad say to the business grad? a: "you want fries with that?"

You have to work with archaeologists? I'm sorry. ; ) How not to offend archaeologists: #1: (this is the big big one): have respect for the archaeological record. If you have ever in your life went "pot-hunting" DO NOT mention this. Some archaeologists can get really touchy about folks who loot sites. #2: don't run out of beer. that's pretty much it. I guess if there's faunal remains, a paleontologist might be a member of the team, but a lot of archaeologists who examine sites like butchering spots know a lot about faunal remains, and they would probably be looking at the bones for signs of butchering, tool-making and what-not. I would think that the two types would work together, but i think that arch's would get first dibs at examining the bones for cut marks, etc., unless the paleontologist volunteers to do that part of the work. You can generally trust the arch's to excavate the stuff, they know how to handle what they're studying. Are you dealing with prehistorians or historical archaeologists? I can't speak for the folks you're dealing with, but generally you don't have to worry about offending archaeologists. There is nothing wrong w/ Lenny Kravitz, except for how he basically takes on the styles of '70s artists, such as Hendrix, Zeppelin, etc. and I happen to think that the reggae band i follow around when I can sounds a million times better. I fully admit my bias here.

mmmmm Lenny mmmmmmm

10. people who don't stick to the original topic of a message board.

10. Unavailable as an option on caller id. If I'm paying for the goddamned thing to let me reject anonymous calls, then it's not doing me much fucking good if all solicitation and bill collection calls are fucking unavailable. I would like to know the distinction between anonymous and unavailable. I think it has to do with payola...I pay to blow them off, they pay to not be rejected by being categorized as anonymous. I ignore the calls anyway, but I hear the phone ringing and, a la pavlov, I get up and go stand over it until it stops (drooling, of coure). Who's winning? The fuckheads at the phone company.

10. the #11

10. when people feel the need to talk to me while they brush their teeth. 10. Y2K as default discourse in awkward situations. 10. the term "post modern"

10. people that talk to me when I'm brushing my teeth 9. people

Waitaminute, Sem... <<(this is the big big one): have respect for the archaeological record. If you have ever in your life went "pot-hunting" DO NOT mention this. Some archaeologists can get really touchy about folks who loot sites.>> What do you mean by 'loot'? When some White guy w/more degrees to his credit than a thermometer travels halfway around the planet/ digs up ancient artifcacts & claims them for the British Museum/that's 'archaeology'. But if I dig up a couple of pot fragments or the remains of a knife on vacation in Mexico/& take them home to display in my crib/I'm 'looting'? I thought the rule was that whomever put forth the time & effort to dig up the goodies got to claim them. Which is why the great museums of Europe & America are chock-full of cultural artifacts (that's archaeology, right?) & fossils (that's paleontology, yes?). Because indigenous peoples in non-Western countries never thought to carve up the earth in search of ancient ruins & animal remains. Or do the goodies belong to the country where they were found? Is there some sort of int'l. archaeology/palentological treaty that outlines who has the rights to what? ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. Neighbors. I pray for the day when I can buy my own island/or move to a large estate someplace where I will NEVER AGAIN have to listen to other people's music/other people's arguments/other people's dogs barking or babies crying or cars refusing to start in the morning.

14. or the neighbours bonking 15. that naked lady that lives over the next door neighbours back fence

R.C.: You're confusing 19th century-early 20th century archaeology (or looting) with archaeology today. Archaeologists are guilty of being elitist at times, but we are trying to correct this. Arch's differ from looters in that the inforamtion we learn about the past from the sites we study have helped us all understand what really went on in the past. It's helped dispell stereotypical images of, for example, slave lifeways as being totally dependant for everything on the planters, whereas arch's have found that enslaved Africans could and did organize their own support systems within their own society, with its own distinct meanings for the objects they owned. There is so much that isn't written down about the past that is important to know, and if somebody with a metal detector and shovel comes along and just digs like crazy, then the record of the past is as surely destroyed as if you burned a packet of Sojourner Truth's letters. So, arch's today differ in that we are trying to correct our mistakes. Arch's need permission to dig, and the artifacts almost always go back to the region they originated from, usually to a local museum or historical society. Looters dig without permission and often sell what they find on the black market. We are making archaeology more acessible to the public, we cooperate with indigineous peoples in promoting their history, and we add valuable information to the story of humanity on this planet. What do looters do? They hid that information by destroying the oppurtunity to learn from the artifact. I'm starting an epic post here, so I'll stop, before slacker gets too pissed. (Although I have lots more info on such issues as artifact repatriation, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the British Museum controversy, etc...)

paleontologists don't leave the bones in africa, do they? for example, where is don johansen's "lucy," the 3.5 million-year-old australopithecus afarensis skeleton he picked up in, god, where was it, olduvai gorge, tanzania, in the late '70s or early '80s? I bet it's in berkeley.

hadar, ethiopia. 1974. sorry. still can find her current residence, though. top sites are creationist-evolutionist debates. jesus.

ok. I will shut up. maybe these paleoanthropologists aren't total assholes after all. At the end of November D.C. Johanson discovered at locality 288 the partial skeleton of a tiny female hominid, which was nicknamed "Lucy." The 1975 field season brought even more hominid remains, this time at Locality 333. This locality has been interpreted as evidence for the catastrophic death of a group of hominids. The 333 site yielded, by the close of excavations during the 1976-1977 field season, hundreds of hominid fossil fragments derived from at least 13 individuals representing all ages. All of the Hadar fossils were returned after study to the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, where they are permanently housed.

I think Lucy is back in Africa. The bones tend to go back, even ones that are 3.5 million years old. There's some top notch facilities in Eastern Africa, and I think Donald Johansen lives there full time. I know Richard Leakey does. I don't know, ask a paleontologist, I specialize in nineteenth century metal production sites. Although no one seems to believe me, Archaeologists are becoming a lot more sensitive to keeping their objects of study in their countries of origin. You can thank the UN for a lot of the work. Do a web search for ICOMOS for more data. Let's get back to the thread: #23: attacking someone's career based on outdated information. Like calling a southern farmer a slave owner, because that's what they were in the Antebellum south.

Who does that? People are capable of making the distinction btwn owning a plantation during slavery & owning a farm w/hired workers in the present. But there are present-day folks who are the descendants of Southerners who had 'slaves in the family.' WHich they shd own up to. And thanks, Sem for the update on archeologist etiquette. Altho' I truly think that anything I choose to dig up & keep -- vs. selling -- shd belong to me. Providing I took it from some random spot & not the site of someone else's dig. And that I'm willing to do the research to find out abt my find/once I get it home. Why shd you guys get all the goodies?

(I was using the farmer as a theoretical situation, to illustrate the absurdity of...never mind.) Well, the problem is, if everyone goes out and digs randomly, then pretty soon all the evidence is gone we need to understand the past. Where I live, for example, was the source for copper for cultures such as the Hopewell people. Copper artifacts from here have been found in southern Mississippi and perhaps even in Mesoamerica. However, we really don't know very much about the people who mined the copper because so many modern folks have gone out in the woods with their metal detectors and dug everything up. There are very very very few sites left here that have anything left on them. Another example, perhaps better to visualize, is Chaco Canyon, where at some of the cliff bases the ground is literally covered with pottery shards. If everyone who visited there said to themselves, "well, what's the harm in taking a couple?" they'd be all gone in no time flat. If you like digging, why not volunteer on a dig? Lots of universities have field schools where they also accept volunteers to help out. There are even vacation packages that feature excavation with archaeologists as the main activity! I had hardly any volunteers this year at my dig, and I was wishing for more, not only for the extra hands, but because I enjoy sharing the thrill of archaeology with people who wouldn't get to know it otherwise. AS for the goodies: We encourage that they be put on display for everyone to see. THis doesn't always happen, because the money for that is just not there a lot of the time. ALso, the majority of archaeologists don't have a hand in deciding what gets done with what they find. I personally would like to see a great exhibit made from the artifacts we found this summer, especially since there's a museum practically on site, but I don't get to decide that. That's the big problem: trying to find a way that isn't difficult to share archaeology with the public, like it should be. I swear we're trying.

OK, but let's just go ahead for the sake of argument and assume that the need to "know the past" is one created by academics, ok? I know we're all doomed to repeat it and all that shit, and sure I'd like to know where the Anasazi went (space ships, right?). But I see absolutely no way that visiting the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History (or the NAU Museum, or ANY OF THEM) helps me figure out who to vote for. Or how to pay my blasted bills, or any of those daily concerns. Sem, you need to make a stronger case about the importance of the record before it's sanctity becomes hallowed anywhere outside the Ivory Tower. The ancient grains shit is the best case I've ever heard, and I don't think it came from your academic tribe. I personally would never grab shards, because they're on someone else's spiritual stomping grounds and they have a significance in that way that I would be pissing on (or else I could get infected by chindhi (sp.?) and up needing a sing). But, you know, what if I'm tramping around in the Mountains somewheres and I stumble across a jutting rock that looks -- well, like a man-made found item not a man-found found item. Just and edge, but maybe it's a buried site...Do I call the Snarkaeologist (just a joke, Sem, please don't think I mean to wound) hotline, or is it ok to kinda remove lose debris with my fingers, treasuring the joy of discovery, the connection with the past, and above all the singularity of the experience (as in, it's a treasure JUST FOR ME...not the physical thing but the experience) for a coupla minutes before my herdbeast conscience takes over and I cease and desist and notify the proper authorities? I mean, the case for importance has to be pretty good to deny that feeling to someone, or make 'em share it with a bunch of brainiacs with whisks, no?

I'm glad that all the artifacts and fossils (and reproductions thereof) I've seen in museums, books and on film were given to academics and didn't illegally end up in someone's private collection. if the academics get them, chances are more people will get to see them and study them than if random wanderers find them (and then perhaps illegally sell them to rich private collectors). trying to make the case for turning this stuff in would be like making a case for returning a wallet with a bunch of cash in it. um, because it's the right thing to do?

I guess. But sometimes the stuff you guys find has a lot more cultural significance to the folks who used to inhabit that land than to the general public. Even if theose folks are now displaced. I agree that museums provide a tremendous educational resource for the public. But my beef is/shdn't the people w/an historical link to those lands get 1st refusal rights to whatever anyone finds? If you're digging up ancestral artifacts that belong to peoples that still exist/why shdn't those pottery shards or bones go back to the Indians or Mexicans or bush people or whomever -- if they want them back?

# fortytwelve see what has happened here i guess i'll give, and go with the flow. my neighbors yard is full of dog poopy. dig that.

Whenever anyone mentions 'Lucy' I get that Gary Larson cartoon in my head... hehe

Ok, since I got back from the Archaeology conference, I can respond again, being the only archaeologist here at sorabji. R.C.: Most countries have laws stating that anything found by archaeologists stays in country. Of course, if you're digging it up without permission, you're obviously not going to stick to the law and keep the stuff where it belongs... In this country, in fact, artifacts DO go back to the affiliated tribe. In fact, the Navajo Nation has its own archaeologists (yes, They area NAvajos as well) who pretty much get involved with most of the important sites in the SW. Ok, here's another argument for why indiscriminate destruction of the archaeological record is bad: Archaeology allows groups with little political power to say " Hey look, here's our influence right here. Look at the evidence - even though it's not in your books, we were here for a long time." If that gets bulldozed, then how do we know about the parts of our past that never got written down? Or some of the trends that help us understand where we got today? Soemthing I've always argued for in archeology programs is a public relations course. We had a little bit of that in our Heritage management course here, but a real in-depth examination of how to best present information to the public would have been better.

I don't know if she's even on TV anymore, but ABC's Carole Simpson. She sounds like a robot. Annoying voice. Like alot of radio dj's. Ugh.

we have to make a finding, based on field surveys, historical research and local lore, that there are no artifacts before you can even get a permit to dig, landscape, mine, build anything. the local native americans have their own archaeologists (mi-wuk, mono, yakut) and they refuse to let us know where anything might be, however if we purposefully or accidentially discover it, even though the FIRST thing we do is consult them, all hell breaks loose. with that and the number of dumped bodies (excluding the recent murders) it is not unusual to find stuff. even if there are no grave goods, and it looks to the coroner like somebody just put old uncle henry in the back yard, we still have to go through the whole process. this can be used to defer development for years and years and years, and that's why we do it, although respect for the remains/findings/feeling (we use the word "feeling" in the text of the law) is the rationalization we officially use. sometimes it is not clear to me what is most valuable, the actual stuff, or its meaning. you can still have the historical significance without the stuff, right? now i have to think about this, every day (well, every other day). a female mammoth was found down in the flats very recently. intact, as far as they know . llama, you probably heard about this; there wasn't much more than a blurb on the news here. the photo was astonishing, the tusks looked perfect, like an artist rendering, but it is real.

Is it because you're working with federal funding? Sounds like section 106 of the Historic Preservation act. I totally sympathize with what you're dealing with. Ask those archaeologists if they are RPA (Registered PRofessional Archaeologist). If they are, threaten to have them removed from the Register of Prof. Arch.'s, because they are most defininately not acting in a professional manner if they won't tell you where the sites are. It's all so much easier if there's a plan in place for dealing with cultural resources, however, no one seems to want to spend the time to do that (and it annoys me to no end). Here's another weed: fuck head archaeologists who won't cooperate with construction projects.

Why not fuckhead developers who insist on turning ever acre of available land into subdivisions? I say Bravo for Sec.106 of the HPA! People move to place like where Sheila lives becuz they don't want to be surrounded by zillions of upscale (or downscale for that matter) tract houses w/manicured lawns as far as the eye can see. They want space & peace & quiet & nature. If finding a mommoth will keep the developers from breaking ground there/I say that's the upside to extinction.

Right on R.C.! There should be a rule that no new housing can be put up until all of the substandard and vacant homes in our cities are repaired and occupied. Especially Detroit.

AP 376 4 4i apv-- US-Major Mammoth,0490 04-01 7:14p BC-US-Major Mammoth,0490 Reservoir digging unearths mammoth bones, other ice age fossils AP Photos LA105-106 By ROBERT JABLON Associated Press HEMET, California (AP) - Digging for a new reservoir in Southern California has uncovered a huge array of ice age fossils, including a mammoth that may be the best-preserved bones of the elephant ancestor found in the region, experts said. "It's huge," Eric Scott, a paleontology supervisor for the San Bernardino County Museum, said Wednesday of the fossils. "It's going to rewrite North American paleontology." The mammoth's yellow curving tusks, teeth, lower jaw and other bones were found Monday at the site of the Eastside Reservoir, a 4.5-mile-by-2-mile (7-kilometer-by-3-kilometer) expanse of raw, scraped earth in Riverside County, 75 miles (120 kilometers) east of Los Angeles. "It's certainly the best-preserved we've found," Scott said. "There could be a lot more of this critter." The museum is overseeing state-required fossil research at the reservoir, a dlrs 2.2 billion project scheduled for completion by the end of the year. Thousands of bones have been dug up since construction began in 1993. While the area today is a mix of dry desert and farmlands surrounded by hills, it was cooler and greener during the ice age 50,000 to 11,000 years ago. Mammoth, mastodon, sabertooth cats, horses, camels and many now extinct species wandered the site in Domenigoni Valley, which was lush with ponderosa pine and manzanita, Scott said. "There's not an assemblage of animals like this anywhere for this time period, not just in the inland valleys, but in California and even perhaps the western United States," said Kathleen Springer, senior curator of paleontology for the museum. Paleontologists have also found bison, sloth, North American lion, dire wolves, bears, badgers, weasels, peccaries and deer. The mammoth bones appear to be from a female in her mid-20s, a "sub-adult" to very young adult who died 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, Scott said. Scientists will take the bones to a laboratory to try to determine whether the mammoth had a disease or injury, and will look for tooth marks that might indicate she was killed by a predator. The find was the latest in an area that is surprisingly rich in fossils, especially those of mastodons, a smaller, more primitive elephant ancestor that lived at the same time as mammoths. However, most of the finds have been individual bones or fragments because an ancient stream scattered and dismembered the bodies. Scott said bones from about 10 mammoths and 30 mastodons have been found, prompting researchers to nickname the area "The Valley of the Mastodons." Mastodons have been found in the better-known La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, but nobody suspected they would be found so far inland.

>Thousands of bones have been dug up since construction began in 1993. >While the area today is a mix of dry desert and farmlands surrounded by hills... On a global basis/do you know how rare it is to have a valley with desert AND farmlands together/nestled within a mountain range? Sem must know -- how many other places can you find an ecosystem like that? None -- at least not on this continent. But the only reason anyone found the mammoth is becuz some greed-driven developer was digging up the place. I dunno much abt the digging disciplines/but I assume folks like Sem spend a lot of time studing geology & geography & records of climate changes/in order to determine where the most fertile digging-grounds are. And I know from the La Brea tar pits that Cali has a wealth of fossils & extinct critters available under the earth. That land shd've been off-limits -- purchased by the state as a public resource for educational ventures/in the same way that we have national parks & forest preserves. Who knows what previously undocumented human or humanoid remains might have been destroyed while the back-hoes & bulldozers were going at it? Maybe Cali. can get Bill Gates to buy that land/if Microsoft Encarta gets the exclusive rights to the dig photos. But nobody shd have the right to build houses over those artifacts/fossils/etc. Even I can see that.

I hate Sandra Bullock

we can only use properly certified and registered and licensed archaeologists in our research and evaluation, but because the Indian Nation is a separate country, literally a separate country from us we have no jurisdiction at all, ever, over what happens there. If they don't want to certify their archaeologists, they don't have to. and if they don't want to let our certified ones on their land, they don't have to. in my county, the general plan has a Cultural Resources Element, and that is what they hired me to administer. It provides for protection of anything over 50 years old, anything, so we cover not only biofacts/artifacts but that diner where you might have gone after the prom in 1946. They have a wonderful vision and stewardship program, and i'm happy to be part of it. this is a precious place, and fortunately the director of planning "gets it" as mark would say. she has the discretion granted by the governing body to form policy that supercedes each individual case, so that in this jurisdiction the conservation related laws, not guidelines, laws, kick in before anything bad happens. or at least that is the goal. and they pay me to make it happen. yay.

"Getting it!" I want you all, every single one of you, to do me a favor and check out the "ClueTrain Manifesto" at the following URL. I am not going to hypertext it since there have been problems with that. http://www.cluetrain.com/ I have signed it, but of course you should evaluate it before signing in faux-lemming enthusiasm (real lemmings do not run off cliffs in droves, as we all know). I have also had an exciting exchange with one of the creators, Chris RageBoy Locke. I now looooooove him.

Sheila - Couldn't yr office offer the I.N archaeologists certification? Just review their credentials & be willing to make allowances for the that fact that they might have more job experience than university training. Like when colleges give 'life experience' credits. If they accept the certification/that wd solve the problem. Seriously -- this isn't an Affirmative-Action thing. It's a cultural recognition thing. If it's their ancestral lands & they control them/you really can't bitch abt them wanting to be in charge of the digs. It's the outsiders who are demanding certification. If you make the process easy for them/but fair in terms of not handing out credentials to just any fool w/a spade/I think you shd be able to come to workable arrangement that benefits everyone. And I think you wd have have excellent negotiation skills to handle the sit-down process.

no

thanks for the cluetrain and rageboy links. corporate america needs to be taken out back and slapped around until they get their shit together enough to communicate with us as humans instead of mindless consumption units and braindead worker drones. i've e-mailed the cluetrain/rageboy links to the president and vice president of my company.

16. (but I've lost count) Commerical websites that offer "a risk-feee100% money-back guarantee" on their products. Yet when you e-mail them for more info. on their product/no one bothers to respond. Which means that "money-back guarantee" ain't wortt the pixels it's posted in. 17. Search engines. Becuase they're stoopid. 18. RIAA & NMPA & the greedy record lables who are opposing MP3. I'm trying to find a site that offers MP3 recordnings/so I'll have stuff to listen to while I'm online besides the usual stuff in my collection. In a matter of months/I'm sure they'll have stamped out MP3. The Int'l. Lyrics Server has already been shut down by the corp. musclemen.

17. Search engines. Becuase they're stoopid. AMEN!!!!!!!!

#18., 42., 27., whatever is is by now: Adults who act with out thinking about anyone else... ESPECIALLY the children they should be caring for. One time, stopped at a stoplight, i looked over at the car next to me. Inside were a bunch of so-called adults, with a few kids. They "adults" were smoking up a storm, with all the windows closed, right in their kids' faces [they couldn't have been more than 7, 8 tops]. Not only that, but none of the kids were buckled up - they were just bouncing all over the place. Another time, I was at the movies - Juracic [how do you spell that?] Park 2. Down the aisle from me was a woman with her little girl [about 5]. The little girl got understandably frightened when huge dinasaurs came on screen trying to eat people, and started crying. Instead of comforting her at all, her mother slapped her and told her to shut the hell up. There should be laws against these kind of people.

(its Jurassic) I watching Starship Troopers in Seattle and noticed this family downthe row from me. They would shield their kids from the co-ed shower scenes. Later, I'd heear them remarking to their kids: "Wow, did you see that bug tear that guy in half? That was cool!" And people wonder where serial killers come from.

Yes, but oftentimes/the kids BEG their parents to take them to see these movies/swearing that "We won't get too scared. Mommie. We're not babies! We wanna see the dinosaurs!" every time the t.v. comercials come on (which prominently featured the very scary Raptors). I don't know at what age small children stop being scared of large animate objects/on screen or in real life. I imagine it varies from kid to kid. But after standing on line for 45 min. & forking over a wad of $$ to take my kid to see a movie she'd begged for (not to mention the additional $$ spent on snacks)/I wd've slapped her into next week too if she started crying in the middle of the damn movie. Then again/maybe that's just a Black parenting thing.

Serial killers come from giant bugs? I can see that.

Yeah, Dahmer, Bundy, Son of Sam, all those guys, it wuz GIANT BUGZ, supersonic aluminum nazi hell creatures from inside the hollow earth, they followed 'em around and told 'em to do STUFF, like steal slurpees when they were kids and sacrifice small animals to them, only when they got bigger, well, the size of the sacrifice had to get bigger too, you see, and... I'm sorry, what were we talking about?

Sem - didja hear? They found a 500-yr old perfectly preserved mummy in Argentina. So well-preserved there was still blood inside the heart! So, are you going to fly there & report on it for Sorabji.com? I think His Markness has a small but well-endowed Grants & Funding Office hidden somewhere within this palace.

serial killers don't come from giant bugs. they come from the pacific northwest.

Sounds cool, I'll try to find out more from the ol'web - Have you seen any photos of those Chinchorro mummies that just sitting on the hills down there? Pretty spooky, but cool as all hell. "Great Jerky, Professor!" (Dahmer actually came from Pennsylvania, didn't he?)

most of my high school classmates annoyed me to no end. is there any chance that they've changed? should I go to the reunion? I have been trying to talk a high school buddy into being my date. we went to this upper-middle-class 95% white (and 4% asian) pacific northwest suburban public high school. it sounded good until I got email from my parents about the postcard I got about it. it named the people on the reunion committee. suddenly it was less this idea of the funny high school reunions I've seen in movies and more the idea of getting together with those particular stuck-up people that I happened to go to high school with. yuck. do I really want to pay to relive these memories, plus drag my dear friend, who has since gone on to a much better life as a field organizer for the national gay and lesbian task force, into it? I had thought that the people from my high school would be the ones reading the messages sent to the email address on the postcard. but instead my message was answered by the dorks who run the reunion company. I told them I am not reachable at an american mailing address and would prefer to receive information via the internet. also, thinking I was writing to the people from my high school, asked if they thought the majority of attendees would still be "provincial, small-minded homophobes." they said they'd keep sending stuff to my parents' address, and they didn't answer the other question. I have no doubt that out of a graduating class of 500, some of those people must be interesting. but I think they might be least likely to attend the reunion. did anyone here go to their high school reunion? how was it?

my ten year high school reunion is this summer. am i going? no chance in hell.

Mine's next year, and I don't really see the point, unless you lie outrageaously about what you do. ("The last ten years? oh, nothing much, I organized hit squads in Bolivia for a while, then went and infiltrated the Knights of Malta. Guess what? They chose Popes by whose got the biggest schlong!")

I've never been to a single h.s. or college reunion. Any of those folks who mattered to you in a real & lasting way are probably still part of yr life at present. So you don't need to go to a reunion to touch base w/them. And who wants to see all the other misc. people you haven't thought abt in years? I say Skip It.

serial killers come from the pacific northwest? that's where i'm from. maybe that puts me at a greater risk of being one.... wahoo!! thanks, you just brightened my day!

Mmmm...skittles! Taste the rainbow!

Schools here don't have particular reunions for each graduating class (in fact, there isn't such a thing as graduating high school). A couple of years ago our school had it's 50th jubilee, so since both me and hubby went to the same school, we decided to go and see who else turned up. Turned out most of the people there were much much older, but it was cool to see some of my old teachers again. They organised us into decades, and gave us coloured ribbons to wear, so we could see who we should and shouldn't recognise. I think I counted about 10 other people from our decade out of about 300 who went. RC is right about the true and lasting friendships though, as I still keep in touch with a number of close friends from school. Ironically, they only became my friends in my last year, before that we were streamed into different classes and barely knew each other.

the end of the age