Roommates

Interesting article about the science of assigning a roommate in college. One thing stuck out:

Leslie Marsicano, Davidson's associate dean of students, said a good match is essential because most students these days have never shared a room with a sibling.

When I entered college, I had only rarely shared a room (as the only girl in my family). When Stuart was born, he stayed in my room for a bit in his crib, but all the rest of the time I always had my own room (complete with The Empire Strikes Back posters and pictures of William Katt all over the walls), and I was fairly unusual in that sense--most of my college friends hadn't enjoyed that level of privacy.

One thing I used to enjoy was when spontaneously my brothers would gather in my room, the "neutral zone"--as though it were a social center of some kind, they would hang out in my room chatting with each other. I always liked that.

My friend Barbara will be living with me for a couple of months. She's coming this weekend--probably on Sunday. She's awesome. She's moving up here to work for CourtTV, and needs a place to crash while she gets her bearings and learns the city, and then she'll find a place of her own. I have to rearrange the living room to make room for her.

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Doug and I did the protest march thing yesterday. We left my apartment around 2:30 and got to 34th and 6th around 3:00, where we saw some sort of nerve-wracking stuff. We could see a bunch (like maybe 10-15) anti-protesters across the way, holding up pro-Bush signs, and then apparently there was some sort of skirmish, and a couple of paddy-wagons pulled up. At one point the police ordered everyone standing inside the barricades onto the sidewalk, which meant that suddenly a lot of people were rushing toward us. That was--yeah--a little nerve-wracking. The crowd was saying things like "the whole world is watching you" and "there are children in there!" which made my eyes roll. I gotta say, I hate it when people play the "think of the children!" card. I was also irritated when some protesters were yelling at the cops "WE pay YOUR salary." That really rubbed me the wrong way. If you actually see some police brutality, then fight it, but until then the cops get a lot of sympathy from me. They're paid shit wages, half of them were murdered on Sept. 11, and no, since you probably don't work, you don't pay anyone's salary. Apparently though the march was generally quite peaceful, and we saw almost the only dust-up (there was a float set afire, or that caught fire, in front of Madison Square Garden).

There were some great slogans, though. My favorite was the tall, skinny, languid guy in a sheer dress and a g-string, holding up a sign saying "Anti-Bush, Pro-cock." In fact there were many clever plays on the name Bush. Another great one was a little doggy, to whose leash was attached a button that read "I pee on the Bushes." It's nice to see a politically aware doggy--so many of them are apathetic and disaffected these days.