Hey y'all-

Last time I said we're back - this time, we're live!

That's right, the Res Gestae has finally (finally!) made its way back online as of this issue - you can find us at our new website, www.theresgestae.com. (We claim no responsibility for what you will see if you accidently type ".org" instead.) Hooray!

There are few things scarier to a student journalist than researching school censorship. No, really.

It is still winter in Michigan, though the sun has come back and the temperatures are warmer. (Warmer but not warm. I am looking at you, people who are wearing shorts in 40 degree weather.) The cold in the air still bites into skin, especially when the sun goes down, but cabin fever is setting in and the sunlight is tempting. The semester is well under way, and the work is piling on as we head toward finals. Illness and stress run rampant through the law quad. It's time to get away.

In my last column, I talked a bit about using the "Getting Things Done" system to keep on top of your overflowing inbox. Believe it or not, some people actually found the article useful (I am flattered and shocked) and are holding me to my promise of further GTD goodness, so that's the plan.

Gourmet, edited by Ruth Reichl.
Michaela: Besides being my favorite author of non-fiction, Ruth Reichl happens to be the editor of my favorite cookbook. I can spend a lovely afternoon rifling through this book, then rifling through my kitchen, then back to the book, trying to decide what to cook. This book is pure recipes - there are almost no discussions of ingredients, and absolutely no pictures. So it's a good value. I love this book because all the recipes I have ever made from it have come out fantastically, but I also sort of hate the book because I never seem to have all the ingredients it calls for. It almost always wants fresh herbs, some obscure spice, or more butter than I keep around the house. Or a specific cut of meat that's a pain in the neck to find. You could be flexible and substitute things, but that's not how you achieve stunning success. By the time I figure out what I have the ingredients to cook, or commit to going to the grocery, it's usually too late actually to cook what I've chosen. So, then it's back to the drawing board, which for me is usually the Joy of Cooking. Even so, a day spent imagining all the wonderful things I could cook is usually a day well spent.

One of the great contributions of the past decade to the social theory of the Internet is John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, which states that the proliferation of "Shitcock!"−shouting "Total Fuckwads" on the Internet is the natural result of giving relatively normal people anonymity and an audience. I submit to you that there's a related, parallel theory that explains or at least describes the behavior of otherwise circumspect people who use their Facebook status messages in order to share things they would never dream of sharing with a group of people that often comprises best friends, sworn enemies, forgotten acquaintances, and that guy they dated and contemplated marrying but who then slept with their French teacher at their graduation party.

Q: What's a firkin and why does Ashley's keep e-mailing me about them?

Traditionally, the term "firkin" referred to a small wooden cask for storing and serving beer in the UK. Over time, the wood was replaced by aluminum, and the word came to refer to any 9-gallon beer cask. (For reference, a typical keg is 15½ gallons.) The real significance of firkins to beer fans is the not cask itself but what's inside: firkins, unlike kegs, contain "cask" ale, also known as "real" ale.

The Law School Prom takes place in just a couple of weeks, so Kicking it Old School decided to look into the RG archives to see what sorts of parties and dances Michigan law students have planned and attended over the decades. Issues of the paper from 1957-1959 provided a few gems, including this one. The Crease Ball seems to have endured for a while--KiOS has seen references to it in many an old RG. KiOS also hopes it's true that one could have a date served a subpoena by a police officer. Not shown here is an ad for Crease Ball tickets noting that the first 150 people to buy tickets would "receive a card entitling them to a free 'clean and crease' of a pair of pants at the Kwick n' Kleen." Does anyone need a plank in a platform for an LSSS run?

We've basically given up on telling everyone to calm down.

No truly, we mean it.

It's not that we don't want folks to chill out about grades and the grade curves in general; we realize that, given the current job market, that's about as likely as a mythical Admin class wherein the majority of students actually received a grade.