thought i'd celebrate the end of my work-imposed web exile by posting this lovely little article. if you ever wondered what the effects of "non-lethal projectiles" look like...this is it. (a short explanation: oakland police fired on protesters at the docks today after giving them all of two minutes to disperse. several longshoremen not involved in the protest were caught in the police assault and confirmed that officers acted hastily.) for a wide variety of reasons, this sort of news makes me extremely nervous -- possibly because it's the only sort of news, outside of the incessant yay-us-we've-got-another-palace, we're hearing lately. even today's reports of lawlessness in basra were jauntily headlined (by the times at least) "liberation and looting." whee.

in other news, there's snow on the ground here today. unbe- -inglievable. this is by far the latest spring i've ever seen here in swarthmore, and it's depressing as hell. walking up to campus today, i spent time checking out the sad, iced-over magnolias and the wilted daffodils, and generally mourned the loss of one more good day of beach-sitting. senior week had better be absolutely perfect after all this.

final question: when is nudity oppressive? (answer: when it's the kind of nudity that's involved in public sex.) sager was this past saturday night, and as usual it was completely over the top. too crowded. too hot. too much. but i was having a good time until i realized i couldn't go anywhere and not be treated to the sight of several people having sex on the dance floor. it wasn't actually that many people (in fact, i could name them if i chose...which i don't), but they kept migrating. now, i like sager. i think that for the most part it's good harmless gender-twisting fun. but sometimes i wish it could be a little more about cross-dressing and a little less about sex, if only for the sake of all the poor people whose affect toward the former is going to be irreparably affected by the latter. because...whatever obvious inappropriateness goes on at sager inevitably gets presented as if it's sponsored by the entire queer community. this is a problem in itself, and well worth fixing, but i'm not sure it does any good to pretend it doesn't exist.