I am retarded

Okay, I know it's not politically correct to use that word, but there's a time and a place. Especially if you grew up in the Boston area - certain things are just wicked retahded, end of story. It's the only way to describe them. Let it be.

So why am I retarded? Well, as you may have noticed, I couldn't figure out how to label my posts. Not such a big deal, but have the fun is in the title. In my first year of grad school at NYU I co-wrote a statistics paper with another graduate student - my roommate Ashley - entitled "What have you got to do to get a female CEO around here? Commercial Corporations and Glass Ceilings: Institutional Mechanisms and the Public/Private Divide." The paper's not that great, but if you just saw the first page you might want to read it. Our clever use of word play might pique your interest. Similarly, we have an informal contest going on in the department to see who can get the most creative form of punctuation into his or her dissertation title. Sarah's got a head start with her article "Bioethicists [Micro]Sort® It Out: Sex Selection and the Maintenance of Authority."

Beth had e-mailed about the laptop bags (a search which continues to vex me), so I asked her to share her wisdom. Turns out a title box just pops up for her. So I had a gander on the "settings" tab and after looking for, oh, about 30 seconds I found a field called "Show Title field". The drop down menu next to it has 2 options - Yes and No. Quick fix. Now my archives won't look like word jumbles.

But on the retarded issue. It should never be used as a derogatory label for someone who has an actual mental disability, if for no other reason than because it lacks imagination. I hope that one day the mentally challenged can reclaim this slur, much in the way some lesbians have reclaimed "Dyke," and someone can walk into special education classroom and ask, with deep affection, "Where my 'tards at?"