So This Is What I Do

I'm at it again: writing papers based on almost entirely primary source evidence. It's so much more fun and interesting than looking through secondary source material (stuff that was written about other stuff, to over-simplify it) writing the page number, and giving credit to the person that does it.



So, because it's more fun, I sit in front of a light-emitting screen and sift through newspapers on a microfilm machine. This is fantastic in small doses. However, I'm going on hour number four of it, and my search has turned up surprisingly little evidence. The objective? To analyze newpaper advertisements searching for ways in which women during the early-mid 1940's were encouraged to operate under war industrialization, rationing, and general traditional gender role flip-flopping. While good evidence has been hard to come by, I keep seeing ads directed at women saying that something is "so easy to wear," typically in reference to wool something- or- other.



QUESTION: Don't ya just put something on? The ability to wear something is not the issue (unless we're talking about the armor of God: that stuff'll just fall off if we're not careful.) Rather, it seems to me that whether or not you can do ANYTHING in it is the question. What the heck is "garbandine?" Terms like "bodice" just confuse me.


As you partake in my boredom while August issues of the New York Times scroll unfruitfully before my eyes, think about this...



What if humans were actually called slugs? what if we renamed the two species right now, because those are the species names that were actually intended in our creation? Would they If you were a human, how would it feel to get salted by a slug?



This is just a taste of the micro film room at WWU. Where the university setting turns otherwise intelligent slugs into mere humans in the process of being salted.

Life is good, by the way. Confusing, busy, but entertaining. Thank goodness it's almost summer.