for those of you vaguely interested in the media management project i'll be doing this spring at medill, (not many of you i imagine, so i'll put the details behind the cut) we've received the info:

hanging out in my favorite cafe, i was waiting for my drink by the register while a man next to me was ordering what appeared to be several pints of ice cream. it appeared, by the expression of the lady helping him, that this had already been a long, arduous process. it was going something like this:

"uhhh, do you have quarts of ice cream?"

"yup, right here!"

dialing cell phone..."they've got quarts, okay? what do you want? okay, okay." hangs up. "i'll take a quart, of, uhh...vanilla, and....shit. hold on." dials cell phone. "what was the other one you wanted? okay, okay." hangs up. "and a quart of chocolate peanut butter."

the lady smiles and nods and goes to scoop the quarts, then comes to the realization that they don't actually have a flavor called chocolate peanut butter and informs the man as such.

"shit." dials cell phone. "they don't HAVE chocolate peanut butter...i DON'T KNOW, OKAY? they're OUT, or something."

and totally audible from the other end of the line, at least to me: "BUTJESUS, I WANT MY CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER!"

dude quickly hangs up. "i'll just get a quart of chocolate. plain chocolate. thanks."

in other news...if anyone is an expert, or, hell, even familiar with telecommunications law, i would greatly appreciate you contacting me. or if you even understand the following: Whether 47 U.S.C. § 201(b) of the Communications Act of 1934 creates a private right of action for a provider of payphone services to sue a long distance carrier for alleged violations of the FCC's regulations concerning compensation for coinless payphone calls.

seriously, what the fuck, law. what the fuck.

i see the crash hatred, which i expressed not so eloquently a while back, is thankfully spreading due to the fact that there are loud rumblings that it could win the best picture oscar this year. via amber, a couple excellent beat downs of the vapid film can be found here and here. quotes:

As your headline suggests, I wrote in the forum that Crash was among my least favorite movies of 2005 and called it "one of those self-congratulatory liberal jerk-off movies that roll around every once in a while to remind us of how white people suffer too, how nobody is without his prejudices, and how, when the going gets tough, even the white-supremacist cop who gets his kicks from sexually harassing innocent black motorists is capable of rising to the occasion."

and

I realize the academy has been making lot of wafer-bland Best Picture choices since the 90s ("American Beauty," "Shakespeare in Love," "A Beautiful Mind," "Chicago"), honoring films that are slick and entertaining and perfunctorily "smart" but not the least bit resonant, films that don't hold a candle to at least 10 or 15 English language films from that same year that didn't win....Yes, I admit, the movie's more primally exciting than, say, "American Beauty" or "A Beautiful Mind" or "The English Patient," and more superficially "edgy." But it's also dumber and meaner and uglier, an Importance Machine that rolls over you like a tank. And it's lazy and simplistically cynical about its central subject, race, in that it promulgates a false idea of how Americans express racial attitudes in public. Cowritten by Haggis and Robert Moresco, "Crash" directly contradicts what we know about how race plays out in the U.S. today, not just in Los Angeles, but all over. In the name of Big Drama, it ignores the chilling effect of political correctness, which compels everyone who's not a fringe-dwelling hatemonger or a person pushed to the edge of his or her rope to express racist thoughts in code.

ooh, and this is a good one as well. i just can't stop:

Haggis doesn't care about such distinctions because deep down he doesn't actually want to say something useful about the modern state of race relations. He just wants to be able to play with racially charged material and be acclaimed for his bravery.