My life is now complete. A bird pooped on me today.

I was at Prof. Kerber's house for a cookout with the other supervisors for the Oneida Workshop dig. As we were sitting around talking after dinner (I believe I was telling them about my possible Watson/Fulbright application to study indigenous involvement in heritage management in New Zealand), I felt something hit my shoulder. I figured it was a leaf or a seed of some kind, so I reached back to brush it off. But leaves and seeds generally aren't wet and gritty.

This morning I slept in way too late by accident. So I really shouldn't still be up.

I just read a really good article:
Cowgill, G L (1975) “On causes and consequences of ancient and modern population changes.” American Anthropologist 77: 505-525.
Well, it was good for me. It's not exactly something that's going to astound the lay reader. But I was very pleased to see such an eloquent demolition of the use of "population pressure" as an explanation for social change. And he made the excellent point, which I've been trying to make for a long time, that social change isn't based on what's best for society, it's based on what's best for the people in power. Or what they think is best, at any rate. So yes, I'm an anthropology dork.

Mr T. vs. Cats
Ah pity da foo who don't take off every zig.

Since there's really no point in disparaging Up and Reveal any longer, and given the amount of digging I've been doing lately, I have decided to put clay, roots, and large rocks in the Kiosk.

I just found out that last week, the Board of Trustees voted to change the name of Colgate's sports teams from "Red Raiders" to just "Raiders." No longer will our team's name not match our team's colors (maroon and white). Oh, and there's the whole racially insensitive to Native Americans thing. But we still have the stupid torch mascot. Prof. Kerber (who told me about the trustees' decision) said that when they got rid of the Native American mascot picture, they were planning to change the team name and mascot to "Red-tailed Hawks." But one Trustee blocked it, because "I don't want my school's teams named after a critter." So they got the torch instead. I suppose the torch wouldn't be so bad if it was a burning and pillaging type torch (since raiders like to burn and pillage), but it looks more like an olympic torch. Well, not Sydney 2000's wacky postmodern torch.

I'm working on figuring out this postgrad fellowship stuff again today. But it's not going so well, because I'm not even sure if I should be doing this.

First off, I feel like I have too little time and not enough direction. I'm still in a very exploratory stage, which I should have finished in the first half of the summer at the latest. My problem, of course, is that I didn't start even considering fellowships until Christine, being a Fullbright winner and convinced, for reasons that defy all obvious facts, that I'm smarter than her, badgered me into it.

I'll probably wind up doing a second geography degree if I go on one of the British Isles university fellowships (Marshall, Mitchell, Schupf). It's the only thing I'm really prepared for (much as I would like to take, for example, geology or philosophy to broaden my horizons, I don't have any credentials there whatsoever), and it's much easier to justify, given the strength of the discipline in Europe as opposed to America. But I'm still poking around at other things. Today I saw that Oxford offers a joint modern history and politics degree, and my immediate reaction was "ooh, that would be really neat to learn about" -- never mind that I have no qualifications beyond a 100-level Australian History course in Wollongong and my commentaries for The Maroon-News. The number of universities to consider is huge, and I don't know the first thing about how they stack up beyond that Oxford and Cambridge are considered the top two unis in the English-speaking world. And that fact means I shouldn't bother seriously considering them. Because, to be honest, I don't have fellowship-calibre credentials. My GPA is good, but it's not a 4.0, I'm active on campus, but I'm not the leader (and certainly not the founder) of any organizations. I haven't pioneered any initiatives or made any mark that will remain visible on campus after this May. So it seems like maybe I should cut my losses and do a good job of looking at US grad schools (which I haven't even started thinking about), since I have a good shot at getting into one of those.

And I wonder if I'm going about this all wrong. I seem to be taking a very selfish (though I'm sure completely typical) tack on this -- "I want a fellowship, so what kind of program can I come up with to win me one?" It seems like a better approach would be more along the lines of "I have this idea for a project, how can I get the resources to do it?" I think too much of what I do is motivated by a desire to prove that I'm better than I really am. And although the selection committe doubtless does a pretty good job of deciding what the best projects are, I have this worry that I could win with an inferior project by virtue of talking it up so that it sounds better than it really is. I have a real history of completely revising (and scaling down) projects after the design has been approved, from my Eagle Scout project to my research this summer.

I even have issues with whingeing about it like this -- I know I'm profoundly lucky just to have the leisure to seriously consider applying for a fellowship. I'm sure anyone who isn't thoroughly blogged out after the thon and is reading this is probably shaking their head in disgust.

Amen, brother.

OK, I have no idea why I can't get these different pieces to sync up properly. I'm going to take a break from all this sound editing now. Maybe tomorrow I'll be able to get things to work. But I do have a preliminary version of the Dirty/Clean Song, for you to listen to so you can make fun of me for not having basic musical skills. Everything you hear is derived in some fashion from the two sound files Amanda made for me last week.

This sound editing is both more fun and harder than I anticipated. And it doesn't help that my musical knowledge is about nil.

Sound editing trial programs downloaded. Work on Dirty/Clean Song beginning. And just for the heck of it, more "linkylove" for Amanda.

Gah. Today is looking to be a total waste, work-wise. I got up at a reasonable time and finished reading the book (Archaeology With Ethnography: An Australian Perspective, which is more interesting than it sounds) I meant to finish last night. And I used that as justification for spending three hours online. On the plus side, I learned all about Unitarianism. Well, not all, but more than I knew before. It will take me at least another two hours to learn everything there is to know about Unitarianism.

It's been bugging me that people with non-css-compliant browsers (like Netscape) won't be able to see my site properly. Mostly what I'm worried about is the background image. SiteMeter's report is inconsistent. So if you can't see the picture of the guy flintknapping at the top of my sidebar, let me know. If enough people can't see it, I'll switch to the marginally less attractive but non-css alternative.

Today I got a letter from home. It was very short, just a few lines asking when I was coming home, and saying that my mom had deposited my paycheck (deposit slip included in the letter). The weird thing about it, and the reason I'm mentioning it here, is that it was written on Senator Jim Rhoades stationery. It's even got a picture of the capitol in Harrisburg.

18 hours until the 24-hour blogathon. I'm not participating (this blog didn't exist by the signup to blog deadline), but I feel like I ought to plug it anyway. I'll be watching Dave and Rabi grow tireder and weirder. And then I get to send money to the Huntington's Disease Society of America and the Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. Should be fun.

There's something really disturbing about the fact that in this live version of "Why Does The Sun Shine?" that I found, they state that "the heat and light of the sun are caused by nuclear reactions between estrogen, estrogen, estrogen, and more estrogen."

gah. I just got drafted to help do registration at the Empire State Games until midnight.

A Mystery Solved

Or not solved ... it can't have been a single archer. What about the feathers that people saw coming from that icy knoll? It's a conspiracy, I tell ya.

Crap. I don't know enough about the Kennedy assassination conspiracy-mongering to do a proper parody.

So many things to talk about...

First, the happy stuff. I whittled a squirrel today.

Second .. well, I can't talk about the second. Not online, at least. Maybe later.

Third, my plans to attend the Upstate Brunchmeet are becoming shakier. I had counted on staying at Michele's apartment the night before the Brunchmeet, then taking the bus to Ithaca. Then I'd stay at her house again the night after, since I can't move in to Cushman until Saturday. But today Michele emailed me and told me her plans have changed and she won't be in Hamilton for that week. Crap. Now I need to find some other place to stay, if I want to make it to Brunchmeet.

Fourth, poke the bunny.

A comment on an earlier post by April-Lyn has reminded me of one of my pet peeves: Christians selectively quoting Mosaic law to justify things that, as far as I'm concerned, violate the spirit of Jesus' message. She mentioned "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," but there's also a popular verse condemning homosexuality.

For one, Mosaic law was only supposed to apply to the Israelite people. Second, it seems a bit hypocritical when these same people go around violating other Mosaic laws, like the prohibitions on pork and charging interest, or the command to give your firstborn son to God. And most important of all, there's a little story in Acts 10:9-23. God comes to Peter and basically says, "You're worrying about sticking to the law at the expense of actually following the spirit of my message. So just forget I ever gave you those rules."

My friend Suzanne avoided telling me she had become a Wiccan for quite some time, out of fear that I would hate her for it and think she was going to hell. I think the thing that bothers me the most about that is that her fear was far from unfounded. There are too many people who skim the Bible for quotes instead of actually trying to understand what it says.

Today began with a bad omen. As we were approaching the Dungey site, the radio station took it upon itself to play "Come On Eileen" for us. Just mentioning this fact has gotten it stuck in my head again. Must turn on some Splashdown...

Today was the day the reporter from the Christian Science Monitor showed up. She was escorted the whole time by the Oneida Nation's media relations guy, who has to be present anywhere Oneidas are being interviewed, so that he can cut off questions and responses that tread on sensitive ground and could create political complications for the Nation. But apparently there was an oversight. One of the girls working at the project is the daughter of an Oneida Clan Mother, but for some reason is not enrolled as an official member of the Oneida Nation (we couldn't figure out how she could be not enrolled yet still allowed to participate in the dig). So she was not allowed to be interviewed. A few years ago she was on the dig and was interviewed by a local paper. When her name showed up in the paper, she was kicked off the work crew.

But somehow neither she nor the media relations guy realised that there would be anything wrong with her giving an extensive interview to the CSM reporter. But all the other kids knew. Dana and Ali, the two working on my pit, complained extensively about the fact that the reporter was conducting a forbidden interview. They also complained that the reporter was spending too much time interviewing the boys (which makes a certain amount of sense, as Dakota was the one who was most interested and most successful), and implying that there were ulterior motives to her interviewee selections.

This evening I was headed to Tops to purchase milk, and I encountered a jazz concert on the lawn of the Baptist church. When I arrived they were in the middle of some mediocre song I didn't recognize. I stuck around a bit, and the next song they played was Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't". I was pretty excited, as I love Monk. Then they played Horace Silver's "Song For My Father" -- one of my favorite songs of all time. It was at this point that I realised I was becoming inexplicably giddy about the whole affair. Unfortunately I could only stay for one more song (another Monk tune) before I had to go.

Thought the first: Why is it so &^%$ hot???? The weather report said it was supposed to be a high of 79 tomorrow. But in my room it's at least 90 right now, at 1 in the morning. And we already had our rainstorm, so the front that was supposed to cool things off has already passed through.

Thought the second: I went outside to cool off a bit (ha ha) and I saw the neatest thing. I wanted to videotape it and send it to Rabi so that she could describe it properly, because I know I'll never do it justice. It was pretty hazy out. As I looked down Broad Street, I could see a green glow coming from somewhere behind the roof of Gamma Phi's porch. As I watched, it turned yellow. Then red. Then green again.

Thought the third: The woods is horizontal, and the field is vertical. Everything in the woods is spreading out sideways, trying to create the biggest surface to catch the most light. The plants on the forest floor make this floating platform an inch off the ground, threatening to swallow up any small objects you might drop there. Even the trees send out their branches sideways and grow big flat leaves. But in the field, everything is growing up up up. Each stalk of grass or thistle or Queen Anne's lace has its own narrow column of airspace, and it jabs straight up through it. Anytime anything branches, it's a Y instead of a T. I feel like I should take my sketchbook and my conte crayons along tomorrow and record it, but I know I won't get it right, especially if Siobhan and Vanessa and Jason are all watching.

I think I need some clarification of that last post, since nobody ever seems to understand what I mean (I've made this argument elsewhere before).

We often use "evil" to mean "very wrong." But in a philosophical context, I use "evil" and "wrong" to describe two different concepts. Acts can be right, wrong, or neutral (in various combinations of various degrees of those elements), depending on their contribution toward the ultimate goal of the most net benefit for the most people for the longest period of time. Motivations can be good, evil, or selfish (in various combinations of various degrees of those elements). An act is good to the extent that its rightness makes it more attractive to the actor. An act is evil to the extent that its wrongness makes it more attractive. And an act is selfish to the extent that its benefit to the actor (regardless of whether it is right or wrong) makes it more attractive.

Missile defense is like wearing a belt with suspenders.

Aside from the derogatory nature of calling the Bush Administration "Bushies," the article has it right. I suppose I wouldn't call support of missile defense "theology" -- implying, as he does, strong belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary -- either.

I also wonder about calling Saddam Hussein "evil." Sure, he's a terrible leader who has deliberately done a lot of horrible things to the people of his own country and other countries. But I don't think that necessarily qualifies him as "evil." To me, evil is doing wrong for the sake of doing wrong. I would suspect Saddam is not oppressing his people because he thinks it's wrong. He's probably doing it in spite of the fact that it's wrong, or because he thinks it isn't really wrong.

I can't be certain how Saddam thinks about his treatment of his people. But almost 21 years of observing human nature suggests that he rationalises it somehow -- "It's wrong, but it's necessary to ensure my absolute power over Iraq," or "It's wrong, but I get a kick out of seeing them starve," or even "It's not really wrong, because opressing people is part of a ruler's job." Any of those are horribly wrong, but not precisely evil.

Wow, that's quite a tangent from one offhand remark in the article. So yeah, missile defense is a waste of money.

Today was the first exciting day of the Oneida Archaeology workshop.

Most of the time we spent at the Shako:wi Cultural Center, doing an orientation for the kids. Professor Kerber went over the very basics with them -- what is archaeology, how is it different from history, when did the first people come to North America, and so on. One girl insisted that we can't possibly know for certain that humans and dinosaurs never coexisted. Which I suppose is technically true, but given the 61 million year gap between the last dinosaurs and the first humans, I think we can take a wild guess.

Then we went out to Dungey to see the area that we begin excavating tomorrow (provided it doesn't rain). It turns out cows came through one section of the site and ate the flags we put out on Friday to mark where we wanted to excavate. The cows didn't seem terribly happy that we were on their side of the electric fence.

The other supervisors seem to be a pretty cool bunch. I already knew Vanessa from University Church. Jason, who I met for the first time on Friday, seems to be a good guy. It's a shame Colgate waitlisted him and made him head for the University of Kansas. He's also extremely knowledgeable about the archaeology of this area. It's really weird to think about how little I really know about Upstate New York archaeology, or American archaeology in general. I only lived in Australia for five months, but I know more about precontact Aborigines than about precontact Native Americans. Thurston and Lambert Farm are just names to me, but I could ramble for hours about Lake Mungo and Malakunanja II. I couldn't name an influential Haudenosaunee archaeologist, but I have intelligent opinions on the work of a dozen Australians.

Anyway, to wrench this post back on topic, the final member of our team is Siobhan Hart '99. She also appears to be a great person, and I'm very jealous that she got to spend the last two years making Harvard's Peabody Museum, the largest collection of Native American materials outside the Smithsonian, NAGPRA-compliant. If I can get over the fact that the pronunciation of her name makes it sound blatantly French to me, all shall be right with the world. Or at least with the ability of the four supervisors of the Oneida Archaeology Workshop to get along.

I also tried to practice again today. My lips were still dead from yesterday, so that didn't work so well, but I did get to walk home in the rain. Summer rain is a great thing.

Breakthrough In Global Warming Talks Isolates U.S.

"Almost every single country stayed in the protocol," Olivier Deleuze, the chief European Union negotiator, said. "There was one that said the Kyoto Protocol was flawed. Do you see the Kyoto Protocol flawed?"

Granted, they had to weaken a number of provisions to get an agreement. Countries can now claim extensive credits for good forest management in order to ease their emissions reduction targets. And at Japan's insistence, the penalties for noncompliance were dropped. But it is a definite step forward.

To quote Deluze again: "I prefer an imperfect agreement that is living to an imperfect agreement that doesn't exist."

I should be in bed now, considering that I have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow to go to the dig.

Today I learned that going for a month without practicing your instrument is a bad idea. I finally dragged my trumpet up to Alumni Hall (the archaeology lab is the best place I've found for practicing, since the actual practice rooms aren't open in the evenings. I hadn't lost range, or volume, or tone so much as I lost endurance. After 40 minutes, I could barely squeak out "When the Saints Go Marching In" in C major. I need to practice much more regularly, considering band camp is less than a month away. Don't want to embarrass myself in front of the new folks, who are all probably much better than I am anyhow (although it's not hard to be better than me -- you'd think I'd have some kind of skill after 12 years playing this thing...)

And Amanda .wav-ified the .ram of q'ili q'anra. So as soon as I get some free time, I shall begin constructing the Dirty/Clean song.

"I was struck by how easy it is to talk with President Putin, how easy it is to speak from my heart, without fear of complicating any relationship," he [Bush] said.

- From Reuters

I was telling Gary about the archaeological dig at a 17th-century Oneida site I'm starting tomorrow. He asked, "did they have nintendo?"

Things were not looking so bright for the future of the Dirty/Clean Song. I had failed to find a way to convert a .ram file to a .wav. And I'm thinking that may be the point of putting things in .ram format. Bah. Foolish RealPlayer.

Q'ili q'anra. Mana q'anra. Q'ili q'anra. Mana q'anra.

Then, Amanda came to the rescue. She managed to make a decent sounding .wav of mana q'anra by way of a tape recorder. She went to bed before she could do q'ili q'anra (and you need both dirty and clean to make the dirty clean song), but the possibility of creating the dirty/clean song is now alive and well. Huzzah!

RealPlayer: count yourself lucky. If it were not for the intervention of Amanda, you would be in the kiosk as we speak.

The tax refund checks are in the mail. And so are millions of "sorry, try again" letters to people who don't qualify. The government spent $34 million to let people know they won't be getting a refund. It sounds like an awful lot of money to spend to rub it in poor folks' faces, but maybe they expected to spend more than $34 million answering inquiries about "why didn't I get a refund?"

For a while I thought the anti-globalisation movement was maturing.

I was really pleased with the FTAA protests in Quebec a few months ago. The violence was minimal, as was vandalism. The protesters showed up en masse, made their point, and left the city pretty much intact. And it worked. They didn't stop the FTAA -- but it would have been naive of anyone to thing they would. What they did gain was respect. People saw a thoughtful, respectful anti-globalisation movement with legitimate concerns about the consequences of unfettered global capitalism. The leaders meeting for the FTAA summit recognized those concerns and made what was at the very least lip service to addressing them. This is a good deal better than the violence and violation of basic rights that characterised the WTO meeting in Seattle or the S11 protests in Melbourne.

I'm certainly not saying that all or even most anti-globalisation protesters are violent and lawless. It is unfortunate that in this movement, like any other, the extreme minority is the one that shapes public opinion. But that public perception is what the movement needs to attract support. In Quebec, passions were held in check enough that people could see the good side of the movement.

I had high hopes that the protesters at the G8 summit in Genoa would learn from the successes of Quebec. But apparently not. In the first day of protests, Carlo Giuliani attacked a police vehicle with rocks and a fire extinguisher. An officer, doubtless fearing for his life, shot Giuliani and backed the vehicle over his body.

Neither side is innocent in this situation -- the protester clearly violated the law and any reasonable moral standard by attacking the police like he did, and the officer clearly overreacted (and is expected to face manslaughter charges). But Giuliani has become a martyr for anti-globalisation violence. Protest leaders are now calling for a halt to the summit because of the death.

The violent faction is shooting the anti-globalisation movement in the foot. They're turning what could have become a dialogue between two legitimate ideas about how the world should be into a war. Rather than aim for a mutually acceptable agreement between the two sides, the violent wing is insisting it must be all or nothing, one winner and one loser. But I don't see how the disorganised and low-budget anti-globalisation movement can win this war.

Ick. You know it's too hot and humid when your posters start falling off the wall.

I hope this works. If not I will look quite the fool. Why is it that only a few fonts (Times New Roman, Arial, and Courier) look like anything else but crap when you apply them to small text on the web? I want my Garamond, dagnabbit!

This morning I headed out for a visit to Dungey, the site I'll be excavating for the next two weeks. The excavation is a workshop that Prof. Kerber runs for the Oneida Nation. In theory, that means the grunt work will be done by 12 kids, about 15 years old, from the Nation. The rest of us get to supervise. There will be a fair bit of supervision -- in addition to myself and Prof. Kerber, we'll have a local guy who just graduated high school (named Jason), fellow Colgate Class of '02 person Vanessa Lee, a '99 graduate of Colgate who is doing graduate work in archaeology at UMass Amherst, and two people from the Oneida Nation.

Today's project was to mark the spots where we're going to dig the shovel test pits. We found the old pits from past years, and used those to orient several new transects and stick flags at 10-meter intervals. It should be thrilling.

The bigger news, though, is that the Oneidas have succeeded in attracting some national media attention for the dig. The workshop, which has run every summer since 1995, has always gotten very good coverage in local papers (Utica Observer-Dispatch, Syracuse Post-Standard, Mid-York Weekly, etc.). This year they somehow talked a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor into showing up. Prof. Kerber is worried because the reporter is coming during the first week, and he hadn't intended to open up any excavation units (where we usually find the most stuff) until the second week. Now I feel like I ougt to start reading the CSM so that I can chat knowledgeably with the journalist (and it would be really nifty if I remembered any of his or her other stories). Having written that, I realise that I'm experiencing an impulse to suck up to a random reporter. How pathetic.

In other news, I've been speculating on what it would be like to be a spoiled child raised by the federal government:
"Mom! Uncle McCain won't give me a soft money donation so I can get some ice cream!"
"Grampa Cheney, can I come play in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge with you and your friends? I promise I won't fall in the vast untapped oil reserves!"
"But I wanna do embryonic stem cell research now!"

Colgate's server is fixed. Huzzah!

I just got spam advertising "the only website with green news and opinion updated daily." And by "green" they clearly were referring to the party, which I do not support, despite my admitted environmentalist sympathies.

Out of curiosity I clicked through to the site, only to discover that the "tc" in tcgreens.org stands for "Tompkins County" -- the home of the city of Ithaca and Cornell University. I don't know why, but this amused me to no end.

(is it just me, or is the latest post not publishing?)

And at long last, the Persson steps are fixed! Today they finally got rid of the traffic cones and caution tape that were blocking the lower doors, and the railings on both sides of the stairs are done. Now once they finish painting rocks on the outside of the Library porch (yes, they're painting rocks instead of putting actual stone facing on the building. Don't ask me why), the work on the hill will be done.

I've been listening to this a lot lately. Hooray for bagpipes.

Zeke (my youngest, non-REM-obsessed, brother) told me today he got to do some flintknapping at summer camp. Now he'll be gloating or something. Bah.

Since my brother had to pipe up in ReBlogger with a Stipe reference, I have decided that the inaugural inhabitants of the kiosk will be REM's latest two albums, Up and Reveal. Even Fables of the Reconstruction at least had "Can't Get There From Here," but with Reveal you just come up empty-handed.

Today I learned to program a macro in Photoshop. It's not actually difficult, but it's something I didn't know you could do. So now with the click of a button I can make an image resize to 150 dpi and 480 pixels across, save as a jpg on my zip disk, and close. And I did that with around 250 images. Oh what fun.

I'm currently experiencing the joy of trying to teach someone html over IM. (Incidentally, the fact that IM won't let you send anything between angle brackets, while not crippling since I can substitute parenthesees, is irritating.) Yesterday Sarah Compter IMed me and basically said "I want to make a web page, but I don't know how." So I talked her through getting an Angelfire account and setting up a page. The thing is, she wants to do all kinds of nifty things that are no problem for me, but that are rather difficult to explain to someone who knows nothing about webpage building.

For example, she wasn't satisfied with a <h1> for her title. She needed it to be in Curlz font, with a shadow. So I had to try to talk her through taking a screenshot of Word and cropping it down to a title graphic. Then she put in a background image, and she wanted her text to not overlap the dark blue sidebar of the graphic. Since the sidebar was too wide to be taken care of with a <blockquote>, I had to prefabricate a table with a 100-pixel blank cell on the left for her.

I like helping people with stuff, so I shouldn't be whingeing. It's just frustrating not to be there with the person to explain things and easily see what they're doing wrong.

The Onion updated today. I'm debating whether I should stay up to read it.

After spendng all day working on this instead of doing the actual work that they're paying me to do this summer, we have blog. Oh joy. Now all that remains is to fill the kiosk. If you're reading this, let me know by submitting your kiosk vote for peer review through the handy link at the end of this post. To help you get an idea of what kind of thing belongs in the kiosk, here are a few helpful kiosk quotes:

"Kiiiioooosk! Kiiiiiiooooosk! Kiiiiiiiooooosk! You suck!"
"Hey kiosk, I talked to your mom last night. know what she said? You suck!"
"Goalie (<--), kisok (-->)! Goalie (<--), kiosk (-->)! Goalie (<--), kiosk (-->)!"
"Hey kiosk, it's Tuesday night, and you can't score!"

OK, this is about as non-ugly as it's going to get for the moment.

Let's put up a link so I can see what color a non-visited link turns out...

This is text. That's all it is -- just a big ol' block of text. Yup, it's text upon text upon text. I'm putting all this text here so I can see what things will look like if I have a lot of text. And to do that, I need a lot of text. So I'm typing out a while crapload of text. I can say "crapload" because this text is my text. This is a test of the text. Test is almost the same word as text, but text has that k sound in it. But you don't write it with a k, because that would be tekst, which isn't a word. You write it with an x. However, if you were following the rules they use for translitterating Maya, x wouldn't make that ks sound that you hear in text. It would be an sh sound. Xibalba, for example, is pronounced Sheebalba. So if you were Mayan, you might think text was pronounced tesht. That would be amusing, but it would be incorrect. Because the real word is text, pronounced with a ks sound for the x. Text text text. Say it with me, boys and girls: "text."

We're getting a fair amount of text here. This is good. Text is good. I need text to help me test my template. Template starts with T, just like text, but other than taht they don't really have much in common. I need a template, too. But I also need text. Lots and lots of text. I'm going to post this now, because I think I have just about enough text for my purposes. Oh yes, my purposes that require text.

(A bit more text.)

My wolverine ate your badgers.

Nothing here but the ugly template.