Moth mob

DU QUOIN, Ill. - Things got hairy for parody singer "Weird Al" Yankovic as a flock of unwanted fans rushed on stage during his performance at a state fair in southern Illinois.

Green moths swarmed the Grammy-winning recording artist, some nesting in his trademark long, curly locks.

"My band asked me if I could find a concert where we would be attacked by insects," Yankovic told his audience Wednesday at the Du Quoin State Fair. "I said I would see what I could do."

Story here.

Go to Zell

We received our phone pamphlet in the mail today. I can't justify calling it a phone book; I am not exaggerating when I say I've received magazines that were considerably thicker. Yellow pages and white, combined, total fewer than 90 pages. Welcome to small town America.

The white squirrel I referred to previously has a friend; I saw two of them today, while I was sitting in the park reading Lirael. One sat high up in the oak tree I was leaning against and threw acorns down at me for a period of two minutes or so. The white squirrels are apparently a Thing at Oberlin; the alternative sexualities newsletter is (or was) called the White Squirrel, apparently because "this population seemed somehow representative of the LGBT community at Oberlin: sometimes seen, sometimes not, but always there, throughout Oberlin's history, enriching the community and contributing to the uniquely wonderful and magical essence of Oberlin." Um...go squirrels! Stretch that metaphor!

Democratic senator Zell Miller's tirade at the RNC yesterday may have a positive effect beyond alienating potential Bush-voters: over dinner I suggested that K. use him as an example for her course on conversion in the ancient world, which begins tomorrow. Something happened to Zell, something that turned him from the keynote speaker for Clinton at the 1992 DNC and a potential running mate for Gore into the frothing maniac we saw last night at the RNC...who still considers himself a democrat. K. thinks she might be able to use his "conversion" to illustrate the difference between self-identification with a group and the group boundaries perceived by the society, and the problems that causes for scholars, and the scholarly debate over whether non-religious conversion is really the same animal as religious conversion. She claims to be able to segue from Zell to Constantine, too.

Edit: link to the tirade is now fixed. Thanks, metasilk!

This Slate article is a nifty look at Zell's conversion, and one of the comments to it frames his conversion in explicitly religious terms, which made me feel clever for suggesting the link:

Again, the message is pretty clear for both parties: the Democrats are so far left and the Republicans are so far right, they're losing touch with mainstream values, which is why there is this wave of seeming apostasy. Conversion or heresy is playing a big role in this campaign, perhaps because, in no other campaign in recent memory have the two teams, I mean political parties, been so clearly entrenched. And perhaps because, rather than discussing issues, this campaign is shaped by the politics of faith, fear and superstition. Nothing unusual there, but it may help to explain some of the miraculous conversions.