Kip Austin Hinton

why does utsa have no school spirtit? football team is an obvious one, as they said. but that isn't all. many schools with no football (gonzaga, william & mary, case western, seton hall, university of chicago, uc san diego) have plenty more "School spirit". other differences: 1. time - utsa will never, no matter how much time passes, be as old as yale, columbia, or even young schools like a&m or ut austin. can't catch up in time. a pemanent obstacle. 2. location - the campus is too far from the city. this makes it hard for non-students to connect with events (like they do when the spurs win a championship). nearly every "patriotic" school is right in the middle of the city or small town. 3. housing - students don't live on campus. only a handful, really. so there is not a core of fans who are saturated in utsa life 24 hours a day. any "spirit" schools has a huge number of on campus students, faces with spirit building activities multipl...

balancing plates i'm trying to do so many things. and a few get lost by the wayside. i needed to have this book review turned in on april 5, but i couldn't get it. too complex. too long. too much to digest, i didn't feel i understood ("reclaiming the local in language policy and practice", suresh canagarajah, ed.). so how the hell was i gonna explain it to others? in a peer review journal, especially? they would send it to some profe to read, she's just gona send it back and say "what is this, written by some grad student?" and it will turn out that, yes, it was written by some grad student. on deadline. balancing many many plates. a few well balanced, a few about to spin off and smash, huevos rancheros and all, onto the grimy tile floor. that's the floor of the screen of the kitchen of the restaurant of my brain, in case you aren't psychic and had not divinado my metaphor. i'm thinking of the tables as my projects, i keep putting in orde...

watching DMBQ last night. at tacoland. they are in this continent, this state, for SXSW. and graced us san anto residents (we who are too lazy to make the drive to austin and tolerate the masses) with a show. and kicked my ass. they rocked like they didn't care. but i could tell they did, because the drummer was so focused. serious. stern. and she bowed so gratefully when they had finished playing, when the last song terminated with a sort of ad hoc drumset surfing over the crowd. the drummer in her chair, bending over as not to hit the ceiling. the snare, tom, cymbals arranged and floating in front of her, each guided by different hands. me, i became the vocalist with the microphone that didn't work right but had enough reverb to not matter (and even if all their equipment had failed, going a capella they would have still stunned us) the mop-hair ceiling-kicking guitarist strapped his gas mask on my face. with some sort of weird ass metal implement where the air filter goes, c...

too perfect i know you know that feeling of something too good to be true, but you don't want to question it because you know, if you do, you'll find it's all just bullshit and that ain't so appealing, it ain't good to try and push it 'cuz revelation gets us reeling, so i don't question just who i am or if this could be it, all is taken at face value when everything's too perfect. abcbcacabcbc but that's not exactly right. it is a sense of understanding truth beneath prima facia. that i, we, perceive perfection because our "realistic" expectations weren't high enough. way i see it, we put up with too much bullshit in the past (flip side of that, i handed out too much of my own bullshit, too). the constant bullshit numbed our senses. desensitized insensitive senseless. so the matter is just recalibrating, readjusting the scale. to accomodate (sp?) the fact that this is off the charts. perfect? heck no. just damn near it, and getting even...

[myspace] this thing lists me as an "aquarius." and yes, according to some arbitrary designation, my birthday is within the time period that fatalists call "aquarius". thing is, it's right there with actual basic information, like my name and age and gender. aquarius is nothing about me. that's not an absolute identity, it's an imaginary word about an imaginary constellation of stars. stars that are millions of light years from each other. and which already have burned out by the time their light reaches us. yet there it is. as if it were important. as if i chose to inform the world (or the virtual world, anyway): that among the most basic information on me, you MUST first know i am an aquarius! nevermind my personality, hobbies (cooking, guitar, poetry, politics, languages, mexico, beer), passions, job, school, or whatever. before all that, more important than everything else, i am aquarius. i can't even remember what imaginary character traits are ...

[excerpt from email to my sister] about the idea of friend, this kind of forum makes a re-definition of it. reminds me a bit of summer camp, when yo become a "friend" of someone, spend practically every waking hour together, then never see each other again after camp is over. of course that doesn't happen with everyone, and there are exceptions, but many people go through such relationships. and yes, there are people on here who (the page announces) have "200 friends!" and according to the definition used on MySpace, sure, any of these people are my "friends". but in reality, we are not enemies, but we don't hang out together. to me, a friend is... if i would give her/him a ride to the airport on my lunch break, she/he is a friend. so my point is, i remember ty's friend jason. but i'm not giving him a ride to the airport. -------------------------------------- after reflecting, i actually decided i probably would give ty's friend a ride...

[myspace] so this seems like a cheapening of the word "friend." unlike in reality, to be a "friend" on this website requires disturbingly little commitment. or recognition. just click here and -- boom, you've made a new "friend." someone i've never seen, spoken to. like walking up to a stranger and starting an intimate conversation, calling her/him a friend. to do that in reality, well, you'd count as the freak on the bus, right? the one nobody sits next to. but do it on MySpace? you're "popular." like magic, like Brak (on Space Ghost Coast to Coast, circa 1995) telling everyone about his "imaginary girlfriend."