Eldrad must live

Wow, it has been a while since I posted here! (Over a year, actually.) I've been mostly active on other sites - primarily Facebook but some tumblr and AO3 - but I've recently found myself thinking a bit about LJ and getting all nostalgic and wanting to get back to it, even as I know that much of the community I loved about LJ has now scattered to the four winds. Sigh. And of course that brought Dreamwidth to mind, which I'm hoping may yet turn out to be the new LJ, community-wise. (Leave my delusions illusions!)

So, I'm figuring I will try to update both this and my LJ more frequently (probably crossposting), as I have met some awesome folks through LJ especially that I don't want to lose.

So what is new in my life? ( Cut for tl;dr )

So, what's new in y'all's lives over the past year?

Saw the most painful commercial yesterday while hanging out with rathershady and courters28. A woman is going to a sub place, where the person behind the counter enumerates all their virtues: fresh dough, grilled meat, fresh produce...

She stops him with, "Shhh...you had me at fresh dough."

>_<

Also, every time I see a UMKC TV ad, I gag involuntarily. This is probably due to the smug bastard who was our commencement speaker and his vomitaceous (I made a word!) speech that was larded with PR slogans. "A great place to get a life," bleah.

Speaking of the good ol' alma mater and commencement speeches, the dean of arts and sciences there recently got outed for plagiarism in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Apparently he delivered a commencement speech at UMKC a couple of years ago that lifted large chunks from another commencement address delivered by Cornel West.

Now, I'm not a big fan of plagiarism. It's bad, obviously. However, I do feel that it should be punished equally. I fail to see why Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin have sailed along, merrily ignoring their plagiarism scandals, but genre authors and journalists are excoriated for it. I suppose we hold genre and newspaper writing to a higher standard than the supposedly well-researched "academic" writing. By the same token, why is it OK in history books but not in a commencement speech by a historian?

Do I think it's bad that the dean did this? Totally. Do I think it's likely that he didn't actually write his own speech, and that the actual plagiarist is some University Advancement stooge with a stick up his ass? Yes. Is the dean going to be brought down by it? Much as I hate to say it, probably yes. Which is a shame, because, though he seems like an officious little prick personally, he's actually been a really good dean. Not to mention that my stepdad's press is directly under said dean, and so faces the possibility of a new, much less friendly ultimate boss. x_x

Anyway, of course the inevitable academic shitstorm is sure to ensue. ( More academic ranting )

Some links about the above brouhaha:
- A blog post by the person who tipped the Chronicle off
- The Chronicle article (requires a subscription to view)
- An article from IsThatLegal.org on the subject
- An article on the History News Network about the issue and the dean's response on HNN
- An article in the Kansas City Star...
- ...and in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Whew. Now that my vitriol's spent, here's a funny animated gif (from pekeana). I post it because I love the word "mesbian." XD