A veritable Indiana Jones
Before I left California, I went to Target to buy in bulk shirts I wouldn’t care about destroying when August rolled around. That is, if I survived long enough for the shirts to be destroyed. I rather had the idea that I would be gone before the shirts showed any sign of wear at all.
The shirts all had different colors. One of the shirts had the appropriate descriptive color “DIRT.” Which, really, is perfect for what I’m doing now. Because I’ve got dirt on me all. the. blessed. time.
But it doesn’t matter. I was getting pretty excited at the end of the program in Rome because coming here would mean that I would not have to worry about what I looked like most of the time. Not that I did that in Rome, but there’s something exciting about not caring if my jeans have lost all shape and resemble potato sacks more than pants.
I am now happy (kind of) to report that I have not worn my lucky ring consistently in a while, and I no longer slap anything onto my face in the morning when I wake up at 5:15 AM. That’s right. The day starts any time between 5:15 AM and 5:44 AM when I bust out of bed to get to the dig rig at 5:45 AM with 8 other people to be driven to the Roman military base we’re excavating at the northern part of the island.
You have to understand that most of the 9 of us, aside from the coordinator and the director of the program, are beginners hacking away with picks, trowels, and shovels. The minute we’re handed a shovel or a pick, our eyes get as big as saucers and our heads are immediately filled with visions of intricate marble mosaics found complete, lying in the ground with an “X” labeled above it, indicating that this is the final resting spot of the military sergeant’s mosaic that once adorned the room where he signed all those important papers.
Well. That’s what my head used to be filled with. I’m more inclined to think that everyone else’s head is filled with visions involving my thick head, a big dull rock, a sharp pick, and a deep hole with a stone casket inside it.
We dig until 10:30 AM. The first day I found 4 hours of this digging to be near lethal. My rear is still woefully sore from awkwardly wedging myself in between rocks where only Gumby could be expected to hold a position for more than 10 minutes at a time. However, I’m now finding this part of the day to be by far the more enjoyable part. The rest of the day, until 1:45 PM, is lab work. But more of that in a second.
The hole I am currently working on is nothing exceptionally special. STE-06-589. It is located right next to the soldiers’ rooms near the door to one of the rooms. I am digging in a canal where there is a lot of pottery. Normally, you’d think pottery is a big deal, right? You go to all those museums where they have large, complete jars with grand labels next to them proclaiming the importance and historical complexity of each and every inch of the artifact. You realize that yes, someone went through a ton of painstaking labor to put that sucker together, but lo and behold, they completed it, and it is now sitting happily out of context in a museum. What you DON’T realize is that there is a WHOLE lot of stuff that is around it that is simply not as important. For every piece of pottery that is over 8 inches large you find 10,000,0000 pieces of pottery that is 1-2 inches long.
This canal I’m working on right now looks like someone projectile vomited pottery into it. Pottery is EVERYWHERE. You can’t dig 3 seconds without hitting pottery. And the best part is that none if it really matters in the grand scheme of things, because there is pottery EVERYWHERE else on the site.
So for the moment, that's all you're getting. I'll tell you alllater about the gold jewelry and the skeleton I revealed by kicking a couple of pebbles over the other day, but I have to get going because we were rewarded for finding something important today, and we start work at 7 AM tomorrow. You know what that means? BOOGIE TONIGHT!
"Indiana Jones, this is one night you'll never forget. This is the night I slipped right through your fingers. Sleep tight and pleasant dreams. I could've been your greatest adventure." ~Willie
posted by adrianne @ 4:14 PM
4 comments
4 Comments:
What period of Roman history is this all from?
-- Bruce
My jaw drops, as it is now filled with jealousy of Adrianne.
Adrianne! The dig sounds great - find a pottery shard for me!
Also, you're right in the neighborhood now (well, relatively speaking).
Have fun!
Okay don't hate me for posting this huge thing, but you HAVE to read it. Szeretlek, A.
Joel Stein: Elmo Is an Evildoer
The self-obsessed Sesame Street Muppet is destroying all that is holy on children's TV.
Joel Stein
August 15, 2006
ELMO REFUSED to be interviewed for this column. I consider this to be a supreme act of cowardice. And it doesn't surprise me one bit. Elmo is an annoying tool.
Yes, I know that children love Elmo. But children are idiots. That's why we don't let them have jobs. Could you imagine an office full of children? They'd spend all day telling dumb jokes and talking about their poop. It would be like it was before women entered the workplace.
"Sesame Street" — which still has sharp, funny writing — is being destroyed by idiot cuteness. Not only is the patronizing, baby-talking Elmo usurping most of the hour, but "Sesame Street" — which debuted its 37th season Monday — added its first new female Muppet in 13 years: the sparkly haired, tutu-wearing, button-nosed, pink-skinned fairy goddaughter Abby Cadabby. Her shaky magic skills get her in situations she needs to get bailed out of, like the anti-"Bewitched."
Plus, she's got that creepy, throaty, little-girl Lindsay Lohan kind of voice, and a Paris Hilton-esque catchphrase: "That's so magic." When I watched "Sesame Street" in the '70s, the human cast and the Muppets were quirky adults who didn't talk down to me with baby voices. Now the human cast gets almost no airtime, and the show is dominated by Elmo, Baby Bear and, now, Abby Cadabby — preschoolers enamored by their own adorable stupidity.
The lesson they teach — in opposition to Oscar, Big Bird, Grover or Bert — is that bland neediness gets you stuff much more easily than character. We are breeding a nation of Anna Nicole Smiths.
I am not the only one who hates Elmo. Vernon Chatman and John Lee, the creators of MTV2's dark "Sesame Street" parody, "Wonder Showzen," think the evil red one is destroying the show.
"Elmo doesn't grow. People show him something and he laughs. He doesn't learn a lesson," says Lee. "It's the exact opposite of what old 'Sesame Street' used to do. Elmo has been learning the same lesson his whole life, which is that Elmo likes Elmo."
Chatman, who refers to Elmo as the Jar Jar Binks of "Sesame Street," worries that Elmo teaches kids to care only about themselves.
"Elmo is just a baby-voiced, self-obsessed character who is only concerned with Elmo," says Lee. "He just passively observes things: 'Elmo is looking at a sandwich. Elmo is eating a sandwich. Elmo is crapping out the sandwich and writing his name on the wall with it.' " The last celebrity to so obsessively refer to himself in the third person was Richard Nixon.
Whereas Count Von Count markets math and Oscar markets the acceptability of negative emotions, Elmo, brilliantly, just markets Elmo, leading him to be the show's cash cow, or whatever misshapen animal he's supposed to be.
I question not only Abby Cadabby but all of Elmo's associates. You may recall that Elmo testified before Congress about music education. But you may not remember who requested Elmo's appearance: Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, now in jail for taking at least $2.4 million in bribes. I'm not implying that Elmo has taken dirty money, but these are the kind of people Elmo surrounds himself with.
I understand that "Sesame Street" has to compete in a Nickelodeon-Disney Channel-Wiggles-Pixar universe. In fact, the new episodes start with " 'Sesame Street' is brought to you by the following … " and then, instead of gently mocking consumerism by listing letters and numbers, they actually show real spots for McDonald's, Beaches resorts, Pampers and EverydayKidz.com — the last of which apparently helps children spell only if they want to be rappers.
I desperately don't want the show to go away, so I know they can't afford to run the "Elmo accidentally drank bleach and died" episode. Instead, they need to simply take Elmo and his buddies and give them their own hourlong show for the idiot spawn. Then put Luis, Gordon and the cool Muppets on their own half-hour "Classic Sesame" for the kids who will one day actually contribute to our society.
Whichever of the two shows you watched would serve as a convenient litmus test for the rest of your life. "Which 'Sesame Street' did you watch?" will be code on college applications, Internet dating and job applications. Blue and red states will be divided not by presidential choices, but by Grover and Elmo.
If we can't save all the kids, let's at least save the ones who can master speaking in first-person. The rest we'll use for reality TV stars.
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