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Noooo! Say it ain’t so! Converse has officially filed for bankruptcy. Another integral part of my alterna-teen image bites the dust. R.I.P. good friend.

Someone wrote an excellent response to the article about ND’s rising tuition. Would somebody like “Rudy” still be able to attend ND today?

I wish finals had been postponed while we were at Notre Dame. That would’ve been fun.

A theology professor from my University wrote an article examining SUV’s (sport utility vehicles, or “utes” as my Aussie would call them) from a Catholic moral standpoint. This is the sort of thing that I really LOVED about going to a religious school. Even though I didn’t share their beliefs, I still got to look at issues (even mundane ones!) from an entirely different perspective.

Attention all SUV owners: Todd David Whitmore examines them in relation to Catholic social tradition and comes to the conclusion that they’re all about image and not about safety. Which isn’t exactly a genius concept or anything, but I liked the unique approach. Ahhh, Notre Dame.

Huh. Not only is the University gearing up to make significant repairs to the Stadium, but they’re also suing the architect and engineer to try and get them to foot the bill. I guess that water leak at the first game was more serious than we thought…

I agree with all of Max’s comments about teachers having favorites, and I’ll just add one more thing. I’ve got several friends who currently teach high school, and I get the impression that “favorites” are sometimes the only thing that keeps a teacher going on a bad day. When my buddy Andrew is struggling through another freshman Geometry class with a room full of obnoxious 15-year-old boys, it’s vital that there’s at least one student in the room who can be counted on for a smile of commiseration and an answer to keep the discussion going. It’s got nothing to do with the student’s grades or athletic ability and everything to do with their attitude and respect for the teacher.

As you might have noticed, I have resisted the urge to comment on that fiasco… except to say that I think blocking all Clinton’s last executive orders is a damn dirty trick. The man hasn’t even been in office for a week and already he’s pandering to corporate interests at the expense of America’s natural resources.

I enjoyed Gina Arnold’s Salon article about “Badass girls on film”, but I thought that the comment about “latent lesbianism” on Buffy showed her ignorance a bit. There’s actually explicit lesbianism in the show in the form of Willow, but she was never the ass-kicker that the article describes. Arnold wants to claim that by labelling tough girls like Xena and Gabrielle “dykes”, it makes their feats seem less threatening to men. But she includes Buffy in that group, who (while SMG might well be attractive to women) has always been 100% boy crazy. In fact, I think Buffy (the character) is so popular because she’s this tiny little heterosexual waif that defies convention and kicks ass. Willow’s relationship with Tara is completely different, though, and neither of them look anything like the stereotypical “dyke” that Arnold presents. It’s like she read an article somewhere linking “Buffy” and “lesbian” and just threw that little comment in without bothering to check with anyone who actually watches the show.

Whoa! Some guy has a million Atari games to sell! If only I had managed to save my aunt’s console from the family garage sale…