pinchy dot org.

If there’s anything cooler than a dress made of discarded umbrellas, I’d like to know what it is.

(Is that better, Jake? I mean, it’s no breakdancing robot, but…)

It’s not too often that a news story makes me sit straight up in my chair and yell unprintable things at my computer, but this one managed to do just that: Schwarzenegger wants to raise fees for UC graduate students by 40 percent. That would be the second 40 percent hike in two years.

Reading this part of the article didn’t make me any happier:

In his State of the State address Tuesday, Schwarzenegger proposed capping annual student fee increases for the state’s university systems at 10%, but did not specify whether he was referring to undergraduate or graduate students.

In his speech, the governor spoke of the necessity of ending what he described as the “boom-and-bust cycle of wildly fluctuating fees with a predictable, capped fee policy” for college students.

“And we must limit fee increases to no more than 10% a year,” Schwarzenegger said. “Like our kindergarten through 12th grade schools, our colleges and universities must also share the burden of the fiscal crisis.”

Late Wednesday, a spokesman for the Department of Finance said Schwarzenegger was referring only to undergraduate students when he proposed a cap on university fee increases.

Oh, so that was what he meant. For a minute there, I thought the governor was just a goddamned liar.

Retrocrush is a huge collection of links to information about advertising, fashion, music, photography, design, and all sorts of other stuff from the past. I didn’t spend much time there, since five minutes at that site could easily turn into three hours; of the links I tried, though, by far the best was the collection of 1920s advertisements for the Chicago Rapid Transit Company. Sadly, there are no reproductions available of my favorites, but you’re welcome to buy this original for me.

Apple’s new slogan for its iLife suite—which includes software for creating DVDs, music, and photo libraries—is “It’s like Microsoft Office for the rest of your life.” I cannot think of a worse fate.

Happy New Year to one and all. I made numerous resolutions for 2004, none of which I will share with you, my beloved readers, because I don’t want to be mocked when I fail to fulfill most of them.

I got my first haircut of the new year today from a very crabby woman. She was so crabby, in fact, that the next person waiting for a haircut decided to wait for the next stylist rather than deal with her. (Or maybe my haircut was so bad that he was scared off. I honestly don’t know; I wasn’t that happy with it, but I dislike my hair even when everyone else says it looks fine. Sometimes I dream of hacking it all down to stubble, but the result, I suspect, would frighten small children.)

My brother and I went to Vancouver between Christmas and New Year’s, so maybe I’ll post something about that in a few days. I’m waiting to see if any of my pictures turned out decently. One never knows with a Lomo.