Anna Washenko

"Daria: So it turns out that my life up til now has been a sham. I can’t write. I can’t..."

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:03:40 -0500

“Daria: So it turns out that my life up til now has been a sham. I can’t write. I...

"Zen is less the study of doctrine than a set of tools for discovering what can be known when the..."

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 14:48:56 -0500

“Zen is less the study of doctrine than a set of tools for discovering what can be known when...

I’ve been watching “The Guild” this past week...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 22:28:54 -0500

I’ve been watching “The Guild” this past week and I must say, as a newer gamer, I appreciate so much about it.

I grew up in a house with zero video games, and was of the belief that people who played them were just losers. You know the stereotype. Now that I have started gaming, I’ve been impressed by how much more there is to this type of entertainment.

Sure, there are some truly nasty people who game, just as there are nasty people who knit, or dance, or wrestle, or play poker. Yes, the community is flawed and still has some serious growing up to do.

But just watch this video of Todd Howard’s keynote speech at DICE 2012. (No seriously, watch it.) The amount of thought and analysis that he and his studio put into storytelling, structure, and experience is no different than if they were making a movie or writing a novel.

World of Warcraft is a pretty astonishing creation. The game has been around for almost a decade and the art still looks amazing. It has millions of players of all levels of skill and obsession. It knows exactly how to tease you with carrots. It reinvents itself. It’s funny. It’s fun.

I like that “The Guild” is willing to acknowledge the good and bad about gamers. It’s an honest (and hilarious) portrait.

A Library for the Subway

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 09:28:26 -0600

A Library for the Subway: scribnerbooks: INGENIOUS!! counterpunches: A trio of students from...

Occasional eavesdropping is the best part of working at a coffee joint. Right now, there’s a...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:13:48 -0600

Occasional eavesdropping is the best part of working at a coffee joint. Right now, there’s a...

Why 'Mass Effect' is my favorite video game I've never played

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 13:22:51 -0600

Okay, that’s a slight overstatement. “Mass Effect 2” was one of the first games I...

21 emotions for which there are no English words

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:20:47 -0600

21 emotions for which there are no English words: This is lovely.

Jay-Z lyric or line from The Great Gatsby?

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:08:08 -0600

Jay-Z lyric or line from The Great Gatsby?

"Idle dreaming is often the essence of what we do."

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 12:41:39 -0600

“Idle dreaming is often the essence of what we do.” - Thomas Pynchon (via NYT)

Neuroplasticity

Thu, 27 Dec 2012 14:43:33 -0600

This is my new favorite word. I started reading “The Shallows,” which is highly...

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the..."

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 01:48:51 -0600

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at...

uchicagoadmissions: Indiana Jones Mystery Package We don’t...

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 11:04:06 -0600

uchicagoadmissions:

Indiana Jones Mystery Package

We don’t really even know how to start this post. Yesterday we received a package addressed to “Henry Walton Jones, Jr.”. We sort-of shrugged it off and put it in our bin of mail for student workers to sort and deliver to the right faculty member— we get the wrong mail a lot.

Little did we know what we were looking at. When our student mail worker snapped out of his finals-tired haze and realized who Dr. Jones was, we were sort of in luck: this package wasn’t meant for a random professor in the Stat department. It is addressed to “Indiana” Jones.

What we know: The package contained an incredibly detailed replica of “University of Chicago Professor” Abner Ravenwood’s journal from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark. It looks only sort of like this one, but almost exactly like this one, so much so that we thought it might have been the one that was for sale on Ebay had we not seen some telling inconsistencies in cover color and “Ex Libris” page (and distinct lack of sword). The book itself is a bit dusty, and the cover is teal fabric with a red velvet spine, with weathered inserts and many postcards/pictures of Marion Ravenwood (and some cool old replica money) included. It’s clear that it is mostly, but not completely handmade, as although the included paper is weathered all of the “handwriting” and calligraphy lacks the telltale pressure marks of actual handwriting.

What we don’t know: Why this came to us. The package does not actually have real stamps on it— the outside of the package was crinkly and dirty as if it came through the mail, but the stamps themselves are pasted on and look like they have been photocopied. There is no US postage on the package, but we did receive it in a bin of mail, and it is addressed to the physical address of our building, Rosenwald Hall, which has a distinctly different address from any other buildings where it might be appropriate to send it (Haskell Hall or the Oriental Institute Museum). However, although now home to the Econ department and College Admissions, Rosenwald Hall used to be the home to our departments of geology and geography.

If you’re an applicant and sent this to us: Why? How? Did you make it? Why so awesome? If you’re a member of the University community and this belongs to you or you’ve gotten one like it before, PLEASE tell us how you acquired it, and whether or not yours came with a description— or if we’re making a big deal out of the fact that you accidentally slipped a gift for a friend in to the inter-university mail system. If you are an Indiana Jones enthusiast and have any idea who may have sent this to us or who made it, let us know that, too.

We know this sounds like a joke/hoax… it’s not (at least, from our end). Any hints, ideas, thoughts, or explanations are appreciated. We’ve been completely baffled as to why this was sent to us, in mostly a good way, but it’s clear this is a neat thing that either belongs somewhere else— or belongs in the halls of UChicago admissions history.

Internet: help us out. If you’re on Reddit (we’re not) or any other nerdly social media sites where we might get information about this, feel free to post far and wide and e-mail any answers, clues, ideas, thoughts, or musings to indianajonesjournal@uchicago.edu (yes, we did set up an email account just to deal with this thing).

Dave Brubeck was one of my favorite musicians. There are two...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 13:11:07 -0600

Dave Brubeck was one of my favorite musicians.

There are two particularly strong reasons for this. The first is that I remember dancing around my parents’ house as a kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old at the youngest, to the entirety of “Jazz at Oberlin.” Much as I love “Time Out,” both as music in its own right and as a wild experiment, “Jazz at Oberlin” is the one that to my ears really captures the best of Mr. Brubeck. Twenty years later, I know the album inside and out and never tire of it.

The other really strong memory is when my family watched Ken Burns’ “Jazz” documentary. There were a handful of interview clips with Mr. Brubeck, and the one that still gives me chills doesn’t have anything to do with music. It was about racism. He talked about having seen a black man who’d been whipped, his back crossed with lacerations, and how he knew in his gut that what he saw was wrong. Nobody could watch him speak about that experience and doubt for a second that this was a really good, sincere man.

When my dad made me a compilation of the best 500 songs of jazz, he included three tunes by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. One of them is probably my favorite take of one of my favorite jazz standards. It’s the final track on “Jazz at Oberlin” and it’s glorious. I could try to articulate why I particularly love Mr. Brubeck’s playing, but I’m just going to listen to this song a few times through the day.

I rewatched “Singing in the Rain” over the holiday...

Sun, 25 Nov 2012 17:28:29 -0600

I rewatched “Singing in the Rain” over the holiday weekend and it remains one of my all time favorite movies. This may be my favorite dance number ever put to film. There are other big contenders, of course, but somehow this goofy little piece does something magical for me that few others do.

A public service announcement

Mon, 19 Nov 2012 10:33:25 -0600

This morning during breakfast, I learned that a young woman in the dance scene was killed in a drunk...

National Novel Writing Month

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:23:24 -0500

I’ve decided that this will be the year I return to my fiction roots. That means...

The strangest thing about freelancing so far is how meaningless time is. Not in an existential,...

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 17:39:00 -0500

The strangest thing about freelancing so far is how meaningless time is. Not in an existential,...

Advice from 1820 about beating the blues

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:28:15 -0500

Advice from 1820 about beating the blues: Who knew some people were so perceptive about mental...

Last Wednesday afternoon, I learned that Tecca.com was shutting down. I wrote for them for only five...

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:54:50 -0500

Last Wednesday afternoon, I learned that Tecca.com was shutting down. I wrote for them for only five...

irisblasi: The New York Times Book Review: Any literary genre you simply can’t be bothered with? ...

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:38:58 -0500

irisblasi: The New York Times Book Review: Any literary genre you simply can’t be bothered with? ...