———————– ** Fresh Green Beans ** ———————– Grown in Kansas. Eaten Worldwide.

I remember a few years ago I had to write an 800 word essay on an Allen Ginsberg poem called “My Sad Self.” Ginsberg was a weird, depressed dude and after three hours staring blankly at the page I was feeling pretty weird and depressed myself. While on the verge of tears, it finally clicked with me. I was overcomplicating things. Ginsberg’s poem was reflecting the importance of a place - the narrator’s home. This was easy. Ginsberg was telling the reader, in a non-overt way, why New York City matters; why the narrator should leave it behind, why he should love it and why the reader should even care in the first place. It wasn’t any more difficult than that. It was poetry from the gut, and it hit me hard.

It’s the same sort of reflection I found in reading the poetry of the Wakarusa Wetlands, which I guess is sort of like New York City for the Great Plains Skink or the Smallmouth Salamander. I’ve never been real interested in animals. I used to have some goldfish growing up, and for a brief period of time I held a small snapping turtle captive in our front yard. When I see a report in the New York Times on endangered wildlife I get a little sad … but not that much. When a historian lectures me on biodiversity I become drowsy, lethargic and hungry. I’m willing to bet others have a similar reaction. “So they want to build a highway through the Wakarusa Wetlands? Sounds good to me. Lawrence traffic sucks dude. Let’s go lift some weights.” That’s probably a typical reaction from a typical college student.

This is where the poetry comes in. Here’s one example of the poetry that has been so connected to the “save the wetlands” campaign. Others can be found in book Wakarusa Wetlands in Words & Image. Read this and reflect:

Roadkill

If you can’t put a bullet
through it, put a road
through it: that killing
only takes a little longer.
Name the road after what you destroy:
Haskell Highway
or Wetlands Expressway
The Wildlife?
They’ll be fine, stuffed
behind glass
in the steel and concrete
Nature Center, soundproofed
from the road’s roar.
The spirits? Who
believes that claptrap anyway.
not with a gun but
a bulldozer.
shoot, shoot.

-Brian Daldorph

 Daldorph is throwing daggers, and I can feel it. The final line is brilliant. Daldorph’s poem hits me the same way Ginsberg’s did. It makes me feel the magic of a place and why it’s worth saving. You don’t have to be a committed environmentalist to be moved by it. Like Ginsberg’s poem, the message is not overly complex. It’s simple and makes a point.

The poem is also apolitical, poignant and relevant. In others words, it represents a different type of way to talk about the environment in public. Poetry like Daldorph’s offers a competing narrative to the divisive political sparring that bogs down far too many discussions on environmental topics. In the words of Robert Frost, “poetry is what gets lost in translation.” People want to see and feel something. There’s a reason why everyone knows Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” (”they paved paradise and put up a parking lot”), but can’t quote carbon dioxide emission regulations or fuel economy standards. There’s a simple resonance to Mitchell’s words; the same resonance found in Wakarusa Wetlands in Word & Image.

A newspaper story loaded with numbers and jargon is just too distant - irrelevant even. There’s a place for factual regurgitation, but it’s not likely to connect with people the same way a verse of poetry does. Poetry is a small way to combat labels like “treehugger”, animal lover, hippie, and lunatic that get attached to those who get close to nature. With Daldorph’s poem you’re none of those. You’re just a human being and sometimes that’s enough.

-Vince Meserko

I was originally going to call my final post “The Death of J500 and the Rise of Burnt Orange” or something like that. I was going to perform an autopsy on the class, declare myself the leader of a new “orange movement,” unfurl a new banner with the official symbol for the movement (an eagle which would symbolize freedom) and then I’d tell you all to shop at the Big K. Instead I went with the “confessional memoir” title … so I’ll go ahead and confess. I very nearly dropped this class before it ever started. I remember sitting at home in early January and scrolling through the 347 page syllabus and thinking “hmm … perhaps I should end my collegiate career taking “introduction to dinosaurs” or “history of the Samurai” instead. I’m very very glad I hung in there. This class has been unlike anything else I’ve taken at KU. I think I’ve written that line in every “course reflection” paper I’ve ever had to do (”introduction to finite mathematics really changed my life!”) and I’m pretty sure I never actually meant it. This class had no textbooks, no formal lectures, no Powerpoint. We didn’t even use paper. We sat around a table and discussed, listened, analyzed, criticized, interrogated capitalism and learned about the intricacies of sex toys. We were lead by an instructor who didn’t claim to have all the answers and acknowledged early on that there was no truth. What the hell is this? Communism?

It was actually quite refreshing. I learn a lot better this way - when everything is up for grabs, and everything said or written is a little bit wrong in some way. That’s quite an intellectual challenge, but it was a lot more fun. As the course progressed, I found my own interests overlapping with topics from class in unexpected ways. The class blog was a great venue to illuminate those realizations. As someone who is neither outgoing nor very skilled at conversation, the blog gave me a chance to go bananas and rub shoulders with people I admire.

While Adam Werbach is an easy target for criticism, he absolutely has the right idea about how we can move forward. Environmentalism is dead - bury it with all the other -isms I say. There is no such thing as “environmental” things, only “human being” things. That’s probably the most important thing I’ll take away from this class.

Thanks to everyone. I had a great time! (begins openly weeping on keyboard).

I’ll leave you with a full YouTube version of MOFRO’s “Lochloosa” that was used in my project 2 assignment. Seems like a fitting way to close. Go see them when they come to Kansas City in July.

-Vince Meserko

I was taking a test last week and was stumped by this question. It was something like - Which of the following are “controlled” media? It then listed multiple choice options (company-produced brochures, advertisements, news releases, etc). I’ve been taught in about 3-4 journalism classes that media messages can be broken into these two subcategories. Controlled media being things that a company or organization produce themselves (brochures, advertising) and uncontrolled media being media channels like television, radio and magazines. Maybe I’m just bitter about having a hard time with the question, but honestly, there is no such thing as controlled media. It’s a myth whose phrasing is inherently biased against media skeptics or the media literate (not saying I’m necessarily either but I’m trying at least). This phrase seems to imply some magic-bullet one-way communications theory. That’s an archaic way of looking at communications. Sure, the company or organization is designing (”controlling”) the content, but they have considerably less control over how the media is interpreted and understood. These companies and organizations simply cannot effectively manage an entire population’s response to their messages. Human response is often uncontrolled and the human population isn’t a monolith.

These “controlled” responses can, however, help shape perception and their placement ensures some folks are left out of the discussion. Imagine if this slightly ridiculous Chevron commercial ran in Niger for example, where Chevron has been active in suppressing local dissent and complicit in tolerating human rights abuses. As this Worldmapper map indicates, this part of the world has severely limited access to television which further illuminates not only the importance of media access, but the recognition that access alone doesn’t solve the problem. It’s crucial for us to realize, for example, that SEER technology, discussed in class two weeks ago, is basically a marketing tool to generate positive brand experiences by monitoring blog topics and finding the influencers to generate a “viral” media campaign. We’ve got to realize we can use this wonderful technology in ways that don’t necessarily have to be used to produce commercial transactions. Better yet, let’s design our own technology like the developers and contributors at MAKE Magazine. It’s really up to us, as media consumers to understand how different mediums favor certain perspectives over others and that there truly is no such thing as controlled communication. I think this realization can go a long way in helping us separate the “green” from the “greenwash.”

Does anyone agree? Disagree? Is there a difference between controlled and uncontrolled media?

Worldwide television access map (courtesy of worldmapper.org)

-Vince Meserko

So those were some pretty tough dudes in the Sundance film we watched last week. I wouldn’t want to grapple with them in a back alley steetfight involving bare knuckles and/or weapons (although, if someone gave me a magnet I could probably do some damage to that one guy’s ear). I would, however, like to extend my hand to them and offer them a place in the global sustainability conversation and a place in my own personal eco-brotherhood. The ironworkers, carpet layers, plumbers, and roofers of South Boston represent a type of community ignored for too long among green decision makers. This is the sort of traditional blue collar “I want to get my hands dirty” work that seems at odds with the negatively (incorrectly) stereotyped view that the liberal bourgeoisie are the only community preoccupied with environmental causes.

These workers may have looked at the green movement from the perspective of a passive observer or a skeptical cynic, but show them what it means to their own work and there might be a marked shift in perspective. It becomes apart of what they do and is something they can feel and touch and marvel at when they’re done. It no longer seems unimportant. It also tells us about the nature of the work itself. There’s an age-old societal view that this sort of job is not satisfying, it’s a stopgap to something better or that it’s only reserved for those who couldn’t make it doing anything else. That ignores the fact that plumbers, carpet layers, roofers, ironworkes, steelworkers etc. might actually like what they do, and like anyone else with a job they like, they want to be as good at it as possible. If these workers see that the best way to do their job is to do it in a way that is environmentally-conscious the skepticism they may have had goes away and they might not even recognize it.

These workers have a genuine interest in how things are built, the resourcefulness of materials, and the mechanics of construction. Why not find a green initiative they can support that is in line with these interests and is cognizant of these values?

I don’t think the video is a wild unrepresentative example either. Clean energy, for example, is being seen as a way of actually creating more blue collar jobs as this Living on Earth spot demonstrates. This morning’s KC Star business section also had an interesting story about green-building projects in Kansas City. By far the coolest example of “blue collar going green” is this example from Wired Magazine of a hybrid-only repair shop in San Francisco’s SOMA district. It’s the prime example of green consumer products (hybrids) fueling green niche services (hybrid repair) that are being serviced by blue collar workers (the mechanics). Pretty cool.

-Vince Meserko

I’m always amazed at the way in which my classes complement one another, build on one another, challenge one another and inform one another. This class always seems to be at the center of those relationships. I’ll give an example. In public relations class we have begun to study effective tactical planning and strategic media use. Naturally, we have looked at real-world examples of successful PR planning. On Monday we watched a short video clip from the mid-1990s? from ABC News. The clip was a short feature story on McDonald’s’ campaign to help poor farmers across the globe find niche goods to sell at market prices in order to prevent them from having to resort to environmentally unfriendly ways of making a living (i.e. cutting down rain forest trees for logging etc.). I’m glad McDonald’s had such a system but it should also be looked at skeptically. I was a little troubled with how this clip was presented in class as representative of the “green branding” of McDonald’s - as if stories placed strategically by effective public relations practitioners make McDonald’s green. In this sense, the perception of social responsibility, the public relations facade, is more important than actually being deeply committed to environmental stewardship. McDonald’s has certainly done some good things, but rarely on their own. It took, for example, a vigilant activist initiative, the so-called McToxins campaign, to get McDonald’s to finally stop using styrofoam packaging. McDonald’s public relations representatives even claimed at one point that styrofoam was good for the environment because it helped aerate the soil in landfills.

My public relations class is committed to the philosophy of “values-driven” public relations (it’s even the name of our textbook), yet this example seems to ignore “values-driven” business. You simply cannot have one without the other. For McDonald’s to be truly “values-driven” they would have to adopt sustainability as a chief corporate interest, as much a part of their national identity as the golden arches logo and the Big Mac. They have hardly reached that point, as Paul Hawken acknowledges in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

I’m not trying to rip my public relations class (it’s a really interesting, well-taught class), but it worries me a little bit that this example was used as effective “proactive” public relations. Honestly, “proactive” public relations begins with ethical business, creating a socially responsible culture that values human rights and social justice. Creating that type of corporate environment is in itself good public relations. It’s not manufactured narrow-mindedly. It’s important, in my opinion, to study not just the mechanisms of PR but also learn public relations literacy so students can recognize the agenda’s that underlie the media messages they receive. Combining these two would ensure students are not just good at public relations but more informed and perceptive citizens. I’m trying to make myself more questioning and more aware of where exactly the news I read and see is generated. It’s hard and I’m not very good at it.

So how can we avoid being duped by greenwashing? Improving media literacy? Is calling greenwashing manipulative an overstatement? Is the McDonald’s example truly good PR and I am way off?

-Vince

Since this week we’ll be looking at strategic communication in the context of environmental media and business, I thought I’d spend this post looking at these forces through the prism of a wonderful book called Get Back in the Box by noted writer, lecturer, theorist Douglas Rushkoff of NYU. The main premise of the book is that business is so obsessed with out-of-the-box thinking and increasingly interruptive marketing that they have become divorced from what Rushkoff calls their “core competencies.” In other words, they don’t actually do the thing they do. Instead of pouring money into research and development companies divert funds to strategic campaigns or hire outside consultants to reimagine their enterprise rather than actually trying to make something good and useful - something that has value and solves real needs. In terms of environmental media, treehugger seems to be a textbook example of an online mediaspace that embodies the power of what Rushkoff calls “social currency.” Treehugger has been wildly successful because it offers a place where passionately involved members can go to pursue a common interest. Treehugger content itself, to use Rushkoff’s words, is a “medium for interaction.” Treehugger marketing and strategic communication may have helped their awareness level, but it was Treehugger’s own competency as a marketplace for interaction, education, and subtle activism that made it valuable to people. Treehugger is a good website and that’s why people visit it. That seems naively simple, but it’s a surprisingly elusive concept for many in business to grasp. Rushkoff brings up Patagonia as an example of a business whose commitment to their own values as an organization of environmental stewardship and ethical business managed to build up a culture around their products and weave their own passions into the operation. They’ve managed to profitable without compromising their own scruples or neglecting their original interests.

One of the things that made my work last semester with CReSIS so valuable was that the core “get back in the box” elements were already in place. CReSIS researchers were deeply committed to science and genuinely passionate about their work. To have that sort of culture already in place was inspiring. It would have been irresponsible “out of the box” thinking to suggest they reinvent themselves through a superficial “rebranding” or an ill-fated attempt at positioning them for media celebrity status. They weren’t made for that and quite frankly they were not interested in the first place. We asked Dr. David Braaten, CReSIS geographer, what his goals for CReSIS were. I expected something like “to be on the front page of the New York Times or featured on the Discovery Channel.” Instead, Braaten said his main goal was for CReSIS to master their latest radar sensing technology to effectively map the undersides of polar ice sheets. CReSIS was already back in the box without any of us knowing it. For the first few months of our project I think my group, and probably the whole class, were preoccupied with reinvention. We had advertising consultants from Dallas come in and talk about corporate leveraging to attain media status and “brand awareness” nonsense, as if making the CReSIS’ logo bigger on the scientists’ lab coats would make them better scientists. It was preposterous. We had to tweak the way we thought about the entire project. Eventually, our team decided to go with the slogan “visionary science that inspires” because we finally realized that in order for CReSIS to be successful it must continue to innovate and research and that that alone had societal value irrespective of how much publicity it got or prestige it brought to the organization. We seemed to forget initially that prestige and acclaim come by actually being good at what you do and offering something categorically different than research findings that currently exist. In essence our campaign was telling CReSIS to “keep being good at science.” After months of trying desperately to strike gold outside of the box we realized it might be better just to climb back inside and let CReSIS be CReSIS.

Here’s Rushkoff explaining the Jeffersonian origins of “out of the box” thinking and our current “new” renaissance:

-Vince Meserko

I enjoy eating food quite a lot. Especially heavily processed corn-based foods with unrecognizable, impossible to pronounce names. Food and drinks with caramel color, phosphoric acid, carnauba wax (what the hell?), confectioner’s glaze (huh?), and the always ubiquitous riboflavin (sounds like the name of a bad progressive rock band or a concept painting put together by Rhode Island art students). It may cause cancer … but it tastes great! Perhaps when I am stricken with terminal illness at the age of 40 I will look back and say “maybe that frosted cherry Pop-Tart wasn’t such a great idea.” In truth, I have experimented with organic food - mostly by accident. I remember going into Local Burger one hot September day to get a sugary fattening unhealthy chocolate malt and being taken aback by its utter lack of flavor. It tasted vaguely like chocolate, but I had to throw it away halfway through cause it tasted awful. If organic food becomes tastier I might consider eating it. Here was my diet for Monday:

Breakfast: Heaping bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and a Carnation Instant Breakfast drink.

Lunch: Barbecue Chicken and mangos microwaveable dinner with a side of some weird pasta concoction that contained spinach. Three glasses of Cherry Coke.

Dinner: Simply Asia pad thai noodles. Glass of Cherry Coke. Glass of carcinogen and additive-free organic water.

Late-night movie-time snack: 12 Kroger Always Save brand tortilla chips (I think it cost 9 cents for the entire bag) and some Tostitos queso dip. Also, a handful of Planters cinnamon nuts (limited edition!).

What does my diet say about me? Well, I have no ability to cook anything. I can barely use the oven. It looks like it was built in 1940. Our microwave is more modern and user-friendly. My food eating habits also demonstrate my laziness. Sometimes my grandma bakes me apple pies and chocolate pies and gives me Twix bars and Snickers and blow pops. That’s a fairly typical diet supplement to most of my meals. Something from grandma’s house. Then she’ll call me and relay with rapid-fire precision every ingredient that went into the pie (usually followed by a superfluous rehash of all the personal and family tragedies that occurred on KCTV 5 news that day). So, basically I do have a decent knowledge of what goes into my food courtesy of my grandma and her amazing graciousness. Beyond that I don’t really know. I only have so much time in my day to worry tirelessly. Ingredients in my Kraft macaroni and cheese meal ranks slightly lower than 1. post-college plans that don’t involve mops 2. the well-being of my old broken down dog named Lady who has bladder control problems 3. The new Black Crowes record 4. getting a haircut

In all seriousness, it is sort of frightening what things I eat on a daily basis and it cannot possibly be good to be deriving so much of our diet from corn. It also has economic implications. The Tyson food plant in Emporia just laid off 1500 employees caused in part by rising grain costs associated with the increased demand for corn to produce ethanol. Also, I HIGHLY recommend checking out Michael Pollan’s interview with journalist Amy Goodman on the radio/television show Democracy Now! conducted about a week ago. It’s pretty fascinating. It’s also available in podcast form which is how I get it.

I’m gonna go eat some Doritos now. (the Doritos people will probably find me now and comment on this post and then start sending stealthy marketing communication materials to me).

-Vince Meserko

My current trash situation isn’t really indicative of the norm. My third roommate just moved out to pursue what I think will be a successful career. During his short tenure with us he set astounding records for waste (terrible terrible stench too - I became interested in incense soon after his arrival). Before he left he threw away half his stuff and gave some of it to me. We are running out of room in our garage for all the trash he left behind. He threw away numerous cardboard boxes, an entire sack of fine expensive clothing, and some inspirational weightlifting posters. His computer is still sitting in our living room waiting for a large man to come and pick it up. I’m considering recycling it or selling it on Ebay. It’s astounding the things rich people throw away. Our previous roommate (yeah, we’ve cycled through quite a few - apparently my current roommate and I are not super fun to be around or something). Well, this guy, besides doing silly things like accidentally enrolling in classes at the Edwards campus, used to eat at Taco John’s 3-4 times a week. He ate every single meal at a fast food establishment and somehow maintained his weight of approximately 115 pounds. This produced an unbelievable amount of trash! Now there’s only two of us left and we do a pretty good job of keeping things under control. We produce about 20-25 pounds of trash between us a week which isn’t bad. He eats a lot of sandwiches and I eat a lot of Honey Bunches of Oats. I also inadvertently bought those Smart Ones Weight Watchers meals awhile ago. Now I eat them all the time. For dinner typically I eat chicken nuggets and possibly a canned vegetable. If I’m feeling adventurous I try a cheap box of “Thai” food, that Simply Asia stuff. (I’m still waiting for Simply Turkmenistan or Simply United Arab Emirates). Anyway, neither of us are wasteful or voracious consumers of anything. As echoed in much of the reading for this week, the real problem is our (U.S. population)’s insatiable need for things and the tremendously wasteful production processes that make help us fulfill that need. Neither one of us need a lot of things.

My trash is mostly cardboard and waste leftover from my Friday morning McDonald’s routine. As alluded to in an earlier post, every Friday for the past eight years I gobble down a plate of pipin’ hot McDonald’s flapjacks and 2-3 cups of pipin’ hot McDonald’s coffee. I get McDonald’s coffee 3-4 days a week. There isn’t much virtue in my vice, but the new McDonald’s coffee is great … and ultra-caffeinated. I can’t help but wonder though why McDonald’s needs to use so much styrofoam packaging. They agreed in 1987 to phase out styrofoam, but they still use a tremendous amount of it. It provides the “plate” and “lid” for my flapjacks. They do deserve some credit, however, for listening to consumer disapproval and at least trying to uphold bits of their corporate social responsibility statement.

While my roommate and I aren’t beacons of a zero-waste lifestyle, we do, however, have an almost militant adherence to recycling … and for good reason. Between the two of us we drink 4-5 12 oz. cans of Coke and Pepsi a day. I also have a very obsessive-compulsive relationship with newspapers. I read 6-7 every morning and stack them in the corner. I make sure the stack is perfectly even. When my roommate throws his UDK on the stack (making it uneven) I become furious. By the end of the week my newspaper stack is about a foot and a half tall and it all gets recycled. Sometimes I stare at the stack with a marveling gaze. We’re not perfect but we aim to try.

Here’s my garage:

The (in)famous newspaper stack - notice how uneven it is

Me being buried by trash

Me buried in trash and holding up engine coolant

-Vince Meserko

Isn’t it time vengeance became environmentally friendly? This is the conclusion I draw driving down Tennesse Street after a concert one night. At the show, a fraternity guy with a disproportionately large head had accidentally spilled beer on me, and because I have no discernible physical strength, I just sucked it up, dried myself off and groveled in the corner. I was in a pretty angry mood driving home that night so I started thinking of some payback schemes, like leveling all the fraternity and sorority houses in the student ghetto and building something cool like a roller coaster on the newly unoccupied land. The roller coaster idea seemed implausible, but I still liked the idea of leveling the buildings. The concept of a large open space in the middle of an aging broken-down neighborhood made this community the ideal setting for my proposal. Let’s turn the student ghetto into an ecohood. Ecohoods are environmentally sustainable neighborhoods borne from the ashes of depressed communities. The student ghetto is hardly a real ghetto, but it is slightly depressing that you only here about it after someone is hit by a car or a shadowy figure brandishing a knife has attacked someone on its dark streets. This community deserves a renovated image, and an ecohood can do just that. Ecohoods typically contain:

-Clustered homes to minimize land usage

-Recycled water systems that funnel sink and shower water to

community crops

-Extensive use of solar energy

-Water purification systems to decontaminate well water

-Greenhouses

-Community gardens fertilized by leftover compost

The vast unoccupied field leftover after the Greek houses are razed (14^th and Tennessee streets) is the perfect spot for community supported agriculture and sustainable farming. It can act as the ecohood’s centerpiece.

Cooperative housing units such as the Ad Astra House at 1033 Kentucky St. have already started experimenting with an ecohood sustainable design making them logical participants in a future ecohood. These sustainable communities are also becoming increasingly attractive options for students. An ecohood in Prescott, Arizona has become a popular housing alternative for college students unhappy with the dorms.

Ecohoods invite criticism because such an altered lifestyle can seem like a hassle or just another pilot project doomed to fail. In reality, these projects are the perfect avenue for engineering and architecture students (maybe even some of those displaced from our housing destruction) to apply their skills to practical problems. It’s ok if they’re in the pilot phase. While getting beer spilled on me does not make me a de facto urban planner, I know that if Ecohoods can work in Detroit, they can surely work in Kansas.
The appeal of ecohoods is simple: they are fun and they are populated by fun people with curiosity and ingenuity. Check out this guy at the ecohood in Prescott, Arizona:

While I’m half-joking about destroying the Greek housing on Tennessee, there is nothing comedic about the possibility of sustainable alternative housing in the student ghetto … or enacting a little eco-revenge.

More information: www.ecohood.info

>

Members of the Prescott ecohood get dirty with Mother Earth.

photo courtesy of: www.positivenewsus.org

-Vince Meserko

Well, I’ll start by giving a brief biography of myself. I’m a little bit older than most in this class. I’m *cough* 29 and have two kids, Bronson and Tyler (ages 10 and 12 respectively). My ex-wife Lydia lives in Boston with Bronson and Tyler. I miss them (and my beloved Red Sox!) but I’m adjusting to Kansas (and the Royals) well. After graduating from high school in Oregon and moving with Lydia to Boston, I became interested in environmental justice (and subsequently animal liberation efforts) after I noticed our local park’s bird feeder was inadquately serving the park’s burgeoning meadowlark population. The finches and the hornbills were gobblin’ up the good stuff leaving the meadowlark to scrounge around in the grass for crickets. After an intense letter writing campaign and phone calls to the parks and recreation department we finally got justice for the meadowlark. I’ve since dedicated my life to local and regional bird conservation efforts. This led me to a realization I still hold dearly. With a little sweat, tears (and bird seed!) anyone can fight the corporations … and win. As for my free time activities, I enjoy playing (semi)-competitive tetherball with my friends Otis and Desmond. We just got involved in a recreation league here in Lawrence. We call our team “The Ball and Chain Gang.”

As for my musical tastes, well, we’ll just say they are diverse. I like everything from late period Bee Gees to early Dave Mustaine-era Metallica. I’m also working on some of my own music. Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed reading my bio.

Ok, I made all that up. I just wanted to see if anyone would actually read this far. My real life is pretty pedestrian. I’m 22 and I grew up in Overland Park, Kansas. One time when I was 15 I got the 10 and under menu at Denny’s. I’ll graduate in May with a degree in journalism: strategic communications. I love strategic communications. It fascinates the crap out of me. I’m a huge fan of Douglas Rushkoff. He’s a brilliant dude and one of the foremost thinkers on media, strategic communications, cyberculture and dozens of other things. His newest book “Get Back in the Box” is one of the best things I’ve ever read. I also realized I never ever want to do this strat. comm. stuff as a career. It’s a terrible fit. For one thing, I’m not very skilled at conversation. Especially phone conversation. Leave it me to me to pick a major I love studying for purely academic reasons that I have no interest in applying to my post-college life. This is why I’m set on going to graduate school. Either that or I’m pretty sure there’s an opening at the KFC on 23rd street. It is my strategic communication work, however, that got me interested in this class because of the project with CReSIS last semester. The CReSIS project was alternately infuriating and enlightening and got me interested. This class is great. I learn a lot just by listening. You all know so much, and I don’t know that much so I do posts about facial hair. In my free time I am a DJ at KJHK 90.7 FM, the radio station here at KU. I do a blues/soul/funk show called The Jookhouse on Sunday mornings from 10-Noon. I’ve gotten to interview some vaguely famous musicians over the past year which has been a huge thrill. Sometimes they stay at my house during the Wakarusa Festival. The Jookhouse is probably the lowest rated show on KJHK so call in requests to make me feel like I have a huge audience. I am also the station’s Development Director. For the past couple of years I have been a contributing writer for CHALK Magazine. The magazine’s editor has a fascination with psychoanalyzing me so the last few stories I’ve written involve me going to psychics and getting tarot card readings and stuff. Here are some favorites:

Comedians: George Carlin, Bill Hicks, Doug Stanhope, Jim Gaffigan, Steven Wright

Music: Bob Dylan, Todd Snider, MOFRO, Wilco, The Mother Hips, Toots & the Maytals, old soul music, Hound Dog Taylor, BB King, blues, folk and alt-country. Thelonius Monk and John Coltrane.

Books: Anything by Jack Kerouac and Chuck Klosterman. A Confederacy of Dunces, A Fan’s Notes, and this one book my mom used to read to me about a kid who eats too many pancakes (I can’t remember the name).

Thanks. Look forward to getting to know everyone better.

-Vince Meserko