While we're at it...

The Washington Post (Woodward) confirmed Vanity Fair's report that Deep Throat was none other than W. Mark Felt, which begs the questions:
Who has read All the President's Men?
Who has seen the movie of same name?
Who has read All the King's Men, on which the title was based?
Who has heard of W. Mark Felt?

I'm a yes on the first three. Btw, everyone should read King's Men over the summer if they haven't already. It was phenomenal, at least as I remember it from 9th grade. Couldn't put it down (although I suppose that was true of most books at the time).

My suspicion was always that Buchanan was it because he seemed to be in the right position, it would be totally against his personality, and he was the only leading suspect not to have denied it. It sucks that we didn't get to see the obituary one day and then the banner headline "Deep Throat is Dead" the next day, but whatever. It was fun while it lasted.

Michael

FYI and Roll Call

FYI: People are still posting on the TASP 03 blog for the Cornell TASPs. We will not, can not, lose touch.

Roll Call: Who still reads this thing? How often do you check? Why aren't you posting more? I have direct evidence that about half of us read the blog at least occassionally. Comment, or I'll get Olga to recite a poem on your answering machine.

Michael

Doin' alright, gettin' good grades, my future's so bright i gotta...

wear shaaaaaaades!
I now have a job selling imitation designer sunglasses in a kiosk at the Clarksville mall. I love it. When I'm not getting paid to people watch, I get the satisfaction of stacking boxes and wiping lenses. Thursday, I sold twenty-two pairs in four hours and got a raise. Does anyone else have a job they love (or don't love)? Rock on, TASPers.

Team Summer Grammatology Fabulous

If e'er your tongue was taught and twisted
Sore and struck and sundry mist'd
And in whose midst you yet enlisted
Sultry muse by sign subsisted!

Thus, dear TASPer, do repent
Those vagaries of mind relent,
For messr Derrida long has spent
Long weary nights o'er these thoughts rent.

So, take up your books, your spare found pences
A succor to your long dulled senses
For grammar's naught but walls and fences
Forever mired in parts and tenses

Yet of fair lingua we must inquire
And to Derrida now aspire
As Spivak hence has shared our ire
With her new notions sure to sire

It's time again to rouse your intellect for the lazy summer. Thus we present to you a seminar of sorts. The text will be Derrida's Of Grammatology translated by Gayatri Spivak (a T-house alum). The seminar will consist of reading and essay assignments (optional, of course, but highly recommended) with peer review and perhaps Masha consultation. We’ll also do online or phone chats, depending on turnout. If you're interested, send an e-mail to Michael at bara0051@umn.edu. The first assignment is to get a copy of the book, read the editor's preface, and write a brief response describing your expectations, or reacting to any aspect of Spivak's analysis. It will be due June 25. We hope you’ll join team-summer-grammatology-fabulous. It should be a blast.

Sincerely yours,

Alex and Michael

Freakish resemblance

The guy second from the left in the photo on the main page for the National Forensics League looks eerily like Paul. Could it be...? Maybe my memory is just fading.
www.nflonline.org

My Life: An Update, through Rose Colored Glasses, in List Form

1. Selected as commencement speaker for graduation. I'll be speaking on the topic of difference, and, particularly, cooties. Very tasp-inspired, though it's citation free.
2. One of two Youth Marshals for city parade this July. Get to ride on a horse-drawn carriage and wave.
3. Done with U of MN classes, so all I really have left in school is the senior band concert, senior honor recital, and graduation, for which my brass quintet is playing. Lots of music.
4. Speaking of music, final jazz concert of the year went fantastically well. I got to do the final cadenza on the exit music, to great applause. It was a bugle call (the one they use for horse races) in rubato time with a plunger mute, accentuated with a long flutter-tongue tone and a whimper of a high apostrophe. Couldn't have planned it better had I tried. Too bad it wasn't in the recording of the concert (just exit music).

Until later,
Michael

a meditation on dna suspended in ethanol

Dear Taspers,
I am about to lie down in bed and close my eyes on the final day of one chapter of my life: I have completed high school. Today was a strange mixture of things. We seniors did not know what to do with ourselves. How would we spend our final lunch? Our last day in Calculus? Our last 45 minutes? Most people simply wandered the halls and talked. In Biology, we isolated DNA from cheek cells and put it inside necklaces. It was strange to watch the feathery white trail of DNA float up from the cell-lysing solution into the ethanol. I knew that that clump of white was, in some peculiar sense, me.
For the past two months, my two best friends and I have been preparing a three man performance of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)". Tonight, we played to a crowd of nearly three hundred for what would be our final theater performance of high school. The experience was profoundly beautiful. The crowd was made up mostly of our family and friends and other people who cared deeply. With every laugh and clap, we felt their absolute and unwavering support. A small group had given so much to this play. Even after, I still feel the impression of their given pieces. When we left stage for the final time, our doublets and tights drenched with the sweat of a job passionately done, my friends and I faced each other and sighed. I know what true love is.
In the final hour of the day, the school tv station aired a special show dedicated to the class of 2005. In it was a montage of "Remember When?" clips in which I was shown reading the school announcements as a sophomore, a sophomore 6 inches shorter and 40 pounds heavier. Some people asked if it was me in there. Others told me that they had forgotten how I was before. As my biology teacher so philosophically stated, "things change."
As I drove home from the play, I got to thinking about my high school years and how I would assess them in years to come. My acending cloud of DNA came to mind.
Perhaps I am not completely defined yet. But I am still able to look back at where I was and what I have become and be tickled to watch my individuality rise out of the ether. I am becoming and have become, as I'm sure all of you are as well. May you all ascend as far as the sky will let you until you exist, defined and shining peacefully against the varied landscapes of your lives.
Much love as always. You are the shine of my eyes.

que se sigan subiendo,
josh

Calling attention to a previous post

Okay, I have obviously not yet learned to use this here blogger machine, and accidentally published my last post as a draft. Hopefully it's been corrected by now. I just wanted to make sure everyone read it. Is this a big enough hint? Come. We'll barbecue and eat watermelon and do other things that can only be done in Chicago...

Invite

Who wants to come to Chicago this summer, specifically on Saturday, June 11?(Though you're welcome anytime...) I'm having a big party, which is sure to be thrilling, and all the more for the presence of any of you all. It'll be at Lake Michigan, which is all pretty and stuff, and there'll be food...what else can I say? I think Conan Liu will be there, which makes the whole shebang extra cool for all involved. Come.

Bryon and I got to thinkin'...

When is everybody graduating?

Do comment, or I'll throw a poem at you.

A Happy Event

Mike knows that one of my friends won the Intel science competition this year – and since then, he has repeatedly appeared at school in a suit with his commemorative pins attached to his lapel (and once with the medal dangling from his neck). It seems that I, as well, am about to be awarded my first piece of bling: I’ve been named a Presidential Scholar and will be receiving a large roundish piece of metal from our beloved president sometime in June. Sadly, I won’t have a chance to bandy the medallion in front of my classmates (not that I have that sort of vanity); high school will be over well before I go trippin’ down to DC.

I’m curious if anyone knows any of the other Presidential Scholars. If you do, perhaps we could be introduced? The state-by-state list is online.

So later next month (I think it’ll be the last weekend in June) I’ll probably be in the capital, assuming I'm allowed to travel, my trip paid for by the government’s dollar. Schedule permitting – the program might have us on quite a tight leash - I would love to see our dear DC-area Taspers (provided they don’t object too much to my odious presence). It’s been too long.