Holiday 2007: The "Sir" Tour

I love to travel, especially because I get to challenge gender expectations around the world. Whether it's the "m'sieur" in Paris or the "sir/ma'am/whatever" in Mississippi (okay, that last one happened to a friend of mine, not to me...but it's a good one), language fails me in the honorific. Soooo..... this year, the first "sir" of the holiday season:

Dec 16, 11:30 a.m. Mountain Time: At the "Que Bueno!" Mexican grill in the Denver airport. I'm en route to Missoula with a 2-hour layover. On a scale of 1-5, this mishap was a "1," really, since the cashier auto-corrected before he got to the "r" in "sir," so it was really a "what kind of soda do you want, siiii(r)ma'am?"

But the tacos were good. I wonder if the beef came from a boy or a girl cow.

Seriously, it's Bingo night here in Toledo, Oregon. I've already won a plate of cookies baked by the high school home ec teacher.

In the magical land of green chiles...

The view for much of the time here in Albuquerque.

Albuquerque pt 1

Maybe I need a new hat?

First Sills...now Pavarotti?

Okay, if death comes in threes, a lot of still-living opera icons need to be extra-careful these days. Sigh.

Random crow thoughts (and meet my daemon)

Well, it's true I'm a great fan of the corvid family--crows, jays, magpies. By the way, has anybody not read Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy? Because seriously, it's one of the best things out there.

Another great thing having to do with Corvidae: Joni Mitchell's "Black Crow," from her 1976 album Hejira.

... In search of love and music
My whole life has been
Illumination
Corruption
And diving, diving, diving, diving.
Diving down to pick up on every shiny thing,
Just like that black crow flying
In a blue sky...

Look, Ma, no hair.

I cut my own hair this last week. The LAW, in her way, approved: "It doesn't look nearly as bad as I thought it might." Seriously, though, I thought how hard can it be? Use a #8 on top and a #4 on the sides; that was my compensation for my lack of expertise (when I have someone else cut it, it's a #7 and a #2). Besides, good gel can fix a variety of ills.

I've been reading pulp/thriller/detective novels: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's "Pendergast" series: Relic, Reliquary, Dance of Death, Cabinet of Curiousities, etc. A couple by Elizabeth Sims, including Holy Hell; T. Jefferson Parker's Blue Hour and Red Light.

And that's just in the last week.

At the same time, I've been trying to finish up my part of a paper I'm writing with Jonathan, so I've been re-reading Donna Haraway and cursing my brain for its slow, pudding-in-a-lint-trap behavior on matters professional.

An excerpt, to show I care:

To explore this phenomenon, we will bring together two key discussions in contemporary composition studies: (1) emotion, affect, pathos; and (2) the extent to which our students (and we, ourselves) are “cyborg,” to borrow from Haraway. In looking at the intersections of these topics, we will explore how today’s writers might make sense of subjectivity(ies) and literacy(ies) in the new media era. To what extent do we attempt to colonize students’ subjectivities through insistence on old technology/ textual models? To what extent is this colonization a preemptive strike against cyborged subjectivities more fully coming into being? What we want is a strong sense of how we discuss, with our students, technology and subjectivity in ways that extend beyond the cool critical thinking skills we can develop with videogames, or the *** of working with iMovies. Indeed, we want to push for something more, a (dare we say) humanistic, but still critical, approach to technology, particularly the new communications technologies.

Earworm play

My brother John and I compete to see who can get the most wretched songs stuck in the other person's head. Not by singing--mais non! We can just type lyrics at each other over MSN Messenger. We are cursed, it seems, with lyric recall and a propensity for phonological loops. The winners today:

1. Morning Train, Sheena Easton
   My baby takes the morning train / He works from nine till five and then / He takes another home again / To find me waitin' for him
   [Note: honestly, this is the champion earworm. It wins every time.)
   
2. Sad Eyes, Robert John
   Sad eyes, turn the other way / I don't wanna see you cry / Sad eyes, you knew there'd come a day / When we would have to say 'goodbye'
   [Note: this is especially fun if you get the key change in at the end)
   
3. Nobody, Sylvia
   Well, your 'nobody' called today / She hung up when I asked her name / Well, I wonder / Does she think she's being clever (Clever, ooh, ooh)
   
4. Jesus Loves the Little Children
   

Cheese, Grommit!

Brin de paille. A cheese that, to translate from the back of its little package, "surprises everyone with its melting heart and the finesse of its aroma." It comes on a round of wood, atop a little bundle (brin) of straw (paille). Air it out, smear its melting little heart on some crusty coarse bread, and you will have a new love in France. It's like butter's sexy older sister.

Below, from YouTube, "Le chat avec un brin de paille!" You'll get the idea.

Last night, we took a long walk, from our apartment here in the 13th arrondissement down to the 5th, where we had dinner at the Foyer Vietnam (my current favorite Vietnamese restaurant); and then down to the Seine, crossing at Pont Neuf; then going down to the river itself on the right bank, since it's plage season in Paris. That's right, two miles of beach constructed next to the Seine each summer. In the evening, it's not particularly full, but the people who are there are making the most of it--artists crafting fabulous sand sculptures (next to the sculpture, a box with a few hopeful euros and a handwritten "MERCI" above); kids playing in big temporary fountains; a group with guitars and a hookah.

We're off to Honfleur for a couple of days. A revoir (until Wednesday).

Enough with the catching up, already.

So we've been back in Paris for about a week--long enough to imbibe in more cider and crèpes at the Crèperie des Pecheurs, to go to an exhibit of Pierre et Gilles' work at the Jeu de Paume in the Tuileries, to wander around the inside of Notre Dame in the dark (they were showing a movie), to watch a black swan puff up threateningly at a groundskeeper in the Jardin des Plantes, and to take all sorts of cramped sweaty rides on the Metro.

Whew. Got all that? I figured I should fast-forward since we're leaving for Honfleur tomorrow and I'll be away from the blog until Wednesday, and then I'll have to catch up again, and, quite frankly, time's wingèd chariot keeps me hopping.
Pierre et Gilles: Oh, my, they are queer, outrageous, sacrilegious. It was one of those exhibits for which the gallery posted a warning about the potential to have one's sensibilities offended. How could I resist? Even more cool--the artists were at the gallery the day we visited, being followed around by a film crew. We joined the entourage and got to listen to them being interviewed. I will say that it's a bit odd to be in the presence of people who are in the same room as their self-portrait entitled Homo erectus (yes, imagine). But by that point, we'd gone through several rooms of their work; the male member had been, shall we say, demystified rather thoroughly. And still, my sensibilities hadn't been offended! I was disappointed.

Carcassonne

vendredi 13 juillet

Carcasonne was hot, windy, dusty, fabulous. We caught a 9 a.m. train from Gare St. Roch in Montpellier, and within just over an hour, we were ensconced in the Place Carnot, at a café, fortifying ourselves with lots of coffee and panini (apparently, the street/semi-junk food of choice in France) in order to make the walk up to the old city. Carcassonne is proud of its ancient history of outsider-ness, its very embodiment of the Occitaine (from which came the "Aquitaine") against the Gaul, the langue d'oc (Languedoc) of southern France against the langue d'oil of Paris (and therein, the southern "yes"--oc--against the northern "yes"--oui). From that last example, you can probably guess who won the official language war. Of course, the Pope launching the Albigensian crusade in the 13th century to wipe out southern resistance to Parisian rule helped ...

I think that the Occitaine's still a little pissed about that.

From the official site, here's a lot of pictures, and here's a better history than I'll come up with this morning.

I'm it!

I've been tagged by Gregory.
The rules:

1. Players offer eight random habits/facts about themselves.
   
2. If you're tagged, you need to write your own blog about your eight things and post these rules.
   
3. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to tag and list their names.
   
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
   

My Random Stuff:

1. I still have five baby teeth.
   
2. I type 100 wpm.
3. I used to collect X-Men comics, and I think boxes of them are still stored in the closet under the stairs at my parents' house.
   
4. I've owned eleven cars in my lifetime, including several old VWs, a Vega, a Pinto, a '65 Mustang, a couple of Fords, a Datsun pickup...
   
5. I almost always have a song stuck in my head.
6. I'm thinking of adding on the LAW's last name as a sort of second middle name (like a lesbian confirmation name!)
   
7. I have a scar above my left eyebrow that I got from cracking my head open on the eaves of my house (I was 10 yrs old).
   
8. I haven't worn a skirt in 14 years.
   

People I'm tagging:

1. Christi, who would write the most fabulous blog in the world. Look alive, number 5!!
   
2. Brian, who really needs a blog of his own, because he thinks deep thoughts and is also a funny guy. No, not quite in that way.
   
3. Terri, who reads a lot of blogs, and a lot of books, so surely she has plenty of time to write about blogs and books, too?
   
4. The Simpleton
   
5. Donna
   
6. Jonathan
   
7. Sofido, which should count as three.
   
8. Chloe and Robert
   

Catching up, parts 3, 4, 5...

Minou, a prince of a cat, who occupied Sharon's apartment and who charmed me instantly.

Montpellier, de 9 juillet à 12 juillet:

The dorm room was even less than one expected, in terms of size at least. Our room was designed for two people--two people who really, really like each other, since the bed was barely wider than a single and had just one long pillow. The LAW and I managed, but those conference attendees who'd reserved rooms with colleagues were a bit alarmed ("My God," said one, "I like my colleague, but the bed is too small for even just me to fit in. If we share, I'd roll over and kill her."). The bathroom, as another colleague put it, was one of those "ass-in, front-out" affairs, manufactured in one piece. At any moment in the bathroom, one was in constant simultaneous contact with the toilet, the sink, and the shower curtain. "Stupid, stupid bathroom," I took to saying.

N.B.: Yes, I know that hotel rooms (and dorm rooms, and apartments) are generally much smaller in Europe, at least in my price range. I'm just saying--this was an extreme in spatial economy.

After that, and after going to the mostly deserted Place de la Comédie, where we stumbled upon a young woman pissing in a planter outside the Opera, watched a number of drunk/crazy men play in the fountain and follow female passers-by across the square, and were assaulted by insistent accordion players and their tambourine-holding, begging-for-change accompanists, I found myself channeling Bette Davis in Beyond the Forest: What a dump.

As we discovered more of the city, my opinion changed, and it turned out to be a good week. First, for the food: we ate twice at the same restaurant asiatique with its charming waiter, electric green and pink cocktails maison complete with a speared lychee as a garnish, the spring rolls (rouleaux de printemps), etc.; twice at the same Italian place, the Café Délice, with its ravioli with gorgonzola, or its gnocchi in Roquefort (and always a pichet de vin rouge); and once at this fabulous hole-in-the-wall named Le Tomate.

The "fabulous" here is the fish soup--I wish we'd had time to go back a second time just for the soup:the bouillabaise Languedoc, saffron-scented, tomato-based, served in a cheap steel tureen and with a bowl of shaved parmesan, a bowl of rouille, and a pile of giant croutons. How to eat: No, no, don't dump it all together and shovel it in your mouth; take a crouton, plop some rouille on top, add some parmesan--then drop the thing into your bowl of soup, where you'll leave it until the crouton softens. Then shovel it in your mouth.

The second reason to like Montpellier: the company. We had a lot of fun with Sharon. More on all of that later.

Catching up, part 2

Okay, the chronology is messed up; after the day at Café Jade, you'll remember, there were two days at the Louvre, then another day traipsing about, and then on the 8th of July, we took the train to Montpellier

dimanche 8 juillet: Montpellier
Take the 4 from Odéon to Chatelet, switch to the 14 to Gare de Lyon, look for voie 'A,' voiture 16...

On the train, the LAW reads something scholarly and I doze with my iPod on. I'm listening to a Librivox recording of The Prince. I have the LAW listen to part of it and we laugh about how Machiavelli's take on the French government (prince and barons) could be applied easily to departmental (and university) politics.

...

The landscape is lovely: acres of sunflowers (les tournesols); an occasional field of lavender; chateaux; old stone farmhouses; white horses; a sustained glimpse, in the distance, of the Massif Central. The train ride is 3.5 hours long; I sleep through two hours of it.

...

In Montpellier, Sharon heads for the apartment she's been staying at for the last month and we get tickets for the tram (blue line--Mosson). We're to meet up later at the central square, the Place de la Comédie, for dinner (the picture above is of the opera house on Comédie).

At our tram stop (Boutonnet), we get out and realize that we've reached the end of any useful information that the conference organizers might have provided. We know, that is, that the dorm is a 5-minute walk from the tram stop, but not in what direction.

This situation calls for the French "système D," that is, a cobbled-together "system" of luck, self-reliance, guesswork, and stubbornness that each person in France must develop for him/herself. Apparently, the French are so used to the official channels of information not working--if by "working," one means for the individual rather than for the staggering French bureaucracy--that système D has become a situation-specific version of c'est la vie, or (for the Doris Day fans out there) que serrà, serrà.

In this case, we must develop a système de trouver la dortoire, which we do by (1) wandering for 10 minutes, baggage in tow, and then (2) flagging down a student, who helps us with the luggage and points out the accueil, or welcome station, where we get a key and an envelope of meal tickets.

Catching up, part 1

So here I am, back in Paris after a week away and reconnected to the internet world thanks to my friend Marie-Paule's wireless connection; let me back up to an earlier time.....

Café Jade, 4 juillet 2007, 13:55

Une crème et une farandole des fromages.

Je suis seule. The LAW went to meet Sharon at noon and I hung out in one of the Gibert bookstores for an hour or so. Two Tintins to complete my set (I think), plus several other bandes dessinées, and a three-pack of Moleskine paper pads. After that, some wandering, and then some more wandering--back and forth in the Latin Quarter; over to Ile St. Louis and back; past the Crèperie des Pecheurs, which I thought about visiting on my own. Really, though, I just wanted a café to sit at. And so, I'm now outside Café Jade on rue de Buci, looking out, resting my tired feet. It is almost 2 p.m. and I think I have exhqusted my capacity for solo adventure today. Start small.

My coffee is here. Note to self: remember to order une grande crème. I wish I had a cigarette.

...

First, a drop, suggestive; then another, to confirm. Then the downpour, blowing sideways rain under the café awning, and we all scurry inside. I'd hoped to 'rent' an outside table for a while; now it seems I'll leave somewhat sooner.

The farandole is here and quite lovely, by the way.

The Café Jade is supposed to be trendy, urban, edgy. The waiters wear tight black t-shirts and jeans, and the Jade's decor is black with red, yellow, and blue chairs, plates, lettering on the walls...a muted primary palette.

The walls: all the vertical spaces are covered with names--how does one's name get picked?--of the ultra- or even ur-hip. Freud. Jackson Pollack. Lucian. Helmut Newton. Max Jacob Corneille. Diego Rivera. It is an international mix--international male, that is. Not many women's names on this new Pantheon; even when edgy, it seems, the French have their canon.

I'm eating my cheese under the auspices of Jackson Pollack (all caps, 18-inch letters) in yellow, Henri Michaux (all caps, 6-inch letters) in blue, and a host of others.

The cheese is quite fine (oh my, this camembert is ripe), the coffee lukewarm, my shoes very wet.

It's hard to mope in the Louvre, really.

Six hours of looking at the sublime in the Richelieu wing. More on that later; I've left my thumb drive with pictures back at the hotel, and am soon off for a second day at the Louvre. Last night: we schlepped a huge suitcase up to the 13th arrondisement to store it in Marie-Paule's apartment. After aperitifs in the apartment, we went to a small corner restaurant called L'Olivier de Saint-Marcel. If you go to that link, look closely at the intersection of rue Jeanne d'Arc and rue de l'Hopital--that's sorta kinda where we'll be staying after we get back from Montpellier next weekend.

Today, I'm listening to Sills; at the moment, the iPod plays her very tender "Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben," from Mozart's Zaide.

Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben,
schlafe, bis dein Glück erwacht;
da, mein Bild will ich dir geben,
schau, wie freundlich es dir lacht:
Ihr süssen Träume, wiegt ihn ein,
und lasset seinem Wunsch am Ende
die wollustreichen Gegenstände
zu reifer Wirklichkeit gedeihn.So sad.

m'abbandona in eterno a sospirar...

I just found out that Sills is dead. If you've never heard her in Roberto Devereux ... well, you should. More from Paris later; I'm off to mope in the Louvre.

Oy!

On Continental #10 to CDG. We left Ontario two hours late--got to Houston 10 minutes before our flight was supposed to take off. We ran for a minute, then the LAW yelled down one of those kamikaze carts. Aaron, our lovely driver, got us from C30 to E18 just in time...we were not _quite_ the last to board. Au revoir!

FW: France!

All packed...and ready for a month in France. I'm hoping to finish a draft of my graphic novel while there. We'll see...after all, I'm going to be pretty busy, what with eating all that fromage et les croissants...

Cool website for Saturday...

Audio files of books in the public domain! LibriVox.

And now I'm off to get a suitcase because tomorrow, I am off to France.

Hanging out at the vet's while Morrigan gets her Rimadyl refill. In the next exam room, Tucker the Beagle apparently has a foxtail up his nose (and a thermometer up his bum).

Ever been called one?

You should at least have the t-shirt!

Nutcracker
by
shehun

Get this custom shirt at Zazzle

Detroit's Neon Birth Canal

The neon light-and-sound show at the airport was one of the more technologically sophisticated elements of this year's Computers & Writing conference. Don't get me wrong--some computers worked, the wireless was hooked up, and the projection system in our presentation finally was up and running some 10 minutes in. Overall, I had a good time in Detroit: dinner with Donna that redeye-flight-fatigued first night; great conversations with Cindy; helping Jonathan get pictures for one of his blogs; a far better hotel than I deserved for the low, low price; and free margaritas from the Cuervo grrls (yes, there are pictures) at Xochimilco.

I take it all as a reinforcement of this idea: what matters in tech, and tech conferences, ultimately, is the people. Really. Doesn't that just warm the cockles of your heart? And what are cockles?

C&W, again

Here, a visual representation of a textual representation of a fantasy representation: Shehun, my old DaMOO character. I miss DaMOO. I'm on SecondLife (in the cheap seats), but it's not the same (duh). This .gif was part of the hypnotic Captain-and-Tennille performance that we gave: Jonathan speaking, me accompanying with image, repeated image, text, repeated text. Iteration.

C&W parts 2-3

Okay, I PROMISE I'll write about Detroit, even though most of you have probably heard my schtick on the sad, sad Motor City. But first:

Part of what Jonathan had to say:

But what I have been missing (and longing for, not just not finding) in our recent pedagogical discussion about new media and the communications technologies is a strong sense of how we are having, with our students, discussions about technology and subjectivity that extend beyond thinking about what kinds of cool critical thinking skills we can develop with videogames, or how neat it is to have students make iMovies to practice a variety of rhetorical skills. Indeed, I want to push for something more, a (dare I say) humanistic, but still critical, approach to technology, particularly the new communications technologies. Specifically, I want to advocate that we interrogate much more forcefully than ever before, both amongst ourselves and with our students, the dense interconnections between technology and subjectivity.

And part of what I had to say:

What is the place of the sexual self, the somatic body, in rhetoric and writing? We are most comfortable with discussions of identity that are accessible to analytic language. That is, we like to talk about things that can be talked about. The feedback loop inherent in this system necessarily elides considerations of the body and of sex, that most persuasive of human endeavors. The dilemma is how we are to talk about non-discursive rhetorics, since, as Laurie Anderson once said on a similar topic, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” We have also, since Aristotle’s time, steered away from discussions of the so-called “inartistic proofs,” and one might argue that it is this very realm of the inartistic that we find many of our pleasures. The other dilemma is how to value something that we can’t analyze in our analytical-discursive field.

My sense is that answers lie outside of our field, in visual arts and computer animations, in immersive technologies that demand full and embodied participation from writers and readers. But even there, we only can hope to surround the body’s argument—not speak it. At the same time, this very surrounding, or immersion, might give us a clearer sense of our available freedoms, with the hope of adding to that number.

But we didn't get to say what we had to say...more on that later.

C&W pt 1: After my

C&W pt 1: After my dog got me up @ 5 a.m. yesterday, I worked until 8 p.m., caught a redeye @ 11:45, and hit Detroit @ 9:30 Eastern. Yawn.

Working on my C&W paper

Really, I just want to be Laurie Anderson. Or have coffee with her.

Nothing says Spring like...

...proctoring a comprehensive exam.

Things you never learned in your doctoral program ...

(and you refuse to learn now, on the job):

1. committee work will suck your life out through your eyeballs
2. you can't "liberate" anyone--not your students, not yourself, not the bag of SunChips stuck in the machine
3. people will always complain about bad writing (student OR high theory) because that's easier to do than to actually read something
4. you'll never get enough sleep
5. "hammerheads" and "redeyes" are the best coffee drinks, but not after 4 p.m., because you need to ...
6. get more sleep
   

High holy days

Yes, 'tis the season--this week marks the anniversary of my coming-out (23 years ago). I'm celebrating with wall-to-wall meetings at work: prep for the University Curriculum Committee (UCC); the UCC itself; Grad Council; thesis students; department Graduate Committee; a dozen other I'm forgetting; etc. Maybe I'll persuade the LAW that this momentous season deserves an extra-friendly date.

Last night, we had dinner with Charybdis and Mr. Charybdis. Now I'm trying to figure out whether the charbroiled shrimp or something else caused my, hmmm, active dreams: (1) all of my caps and fillings were falling out and my back molars were dissolving; and, later, in a separate bit of entertainment (2) I was pulling long gobs of stuff from my throat, after discovering I was possessed by a demon--and that this was the only way to exorcise him.

So this morning I'm just bemused by the broken and evil things my subconscious thinks might emerge from my mouth. But really, maybe it was the shrimp.

By the way, favorite new music discovery: Kathleen Edwards, whose performance I caught on Austin City Limits the other night as I was flipping through channels looking for Mission: Impossible reruns.

The best (but LATE) sight of the morning

So don't you think that, with all the advanced tech, we could at least have COFFEE during the 12-hr fast before routine bloodwork (okay, and the pee-in-a-cup test)? I mean, can't the machines account for the caffeine that I need just to get the blood moving?

Finally!

If only this were required reading.

What I'm up to these days, part II ...

... oh yeah, and yesterday, the main sewer line backed up into my tub.

The only cool part of this event (really, it was cool) is that the plumbers had this camera they sent down into the pipes so they could see the roots. Really, it was like watching a colonoscopy on House. Sort of.

What I'm up to these days...

(an illustration of my latest emails)

Dear Mayor Riddell:

I'm attaching the following complaint (which I've sent to the Better Business Bureau, the Yucaipa Chamber of Commerce, and the police department) to provide background information to this issue. What I am writing you for, specifically, is to complain about a frivolous 9-1-1 call.

Basically, what happened is that in the course of a dispute over a transaction at a local business (a pet grooming place), the groomer called 9-1-1 in order to intimidate me. This incident happened sometime between 1 and 2 p.m. at Pampered Pet Boutique, located at 33527 Yucaipa Boulevard #C4, Yucaipa, CA 92399. If anyone listens to the tape, you'll hear her saying "oh, it's not an emergency," and then staying on the emergency line for another minute before saying "never mind, they're leaving."

When I was demanding a partial refund (or even an explanation) of a fee--a demand that was *not* threatening, or assaultive, or even particularly combative--the staff at the business below talked louder and louder, moved closer to me in an effort to physically intimidate me, wouldn't listen to me, and THEN said that my demand was "harassment" and dialed 9-1-1. The call was made by Stephanie (I think that's her name), the groomer at that business, and it lasted for a couple of minutes. I would like someone to inform Stephanie that she shouldn't tie up police resources in order to threaten her customers.

While the actual business dispute shouldn't concern you (I'm cancelling the charge and letting my credit card company deal with Pampered Pet Boutique), I'm very concerned, as a San Bernardino County resident, that *anybody* in a local business makes a frivolous call to 9-1-1 and ties up that resource (even for a *minute*) in order to threaten a dissatisfied customer. If such a false call to 9-1-1 is against the law, as I believe it is, then I'm sure that I (and a witness) would be willing to formally complain.

The Rockefeller Center Zamboni

A rare sighting of this lovely creature in its native habitat.

The view in Atlanta. On my way home from CCCC, I'm noticing how tired I am. Good conference--although, as usual, the best stuff happens somewhere other than official sessions. Travel tragedy: I left my favorite hat somewhere (prolly O'Lunney's Pub) and lost my favorite leather gloves.

Free internet access--like socialized health care, a fabulous thing if you don't mind waiting in line. Note to self--writing teachers are computer hogs.

Cyborgy

Breakfast in New York. I'm testing out mobile blogging--yep, dear reader, this post is from my cellphone.

I don't know why, but it's worth watching.

Hey, it's finals week. I must rely on others' creativity.

Just in time for CCCC

And you?

My Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English

15% Upper Midwestern

10% Midwestern

5% Dixie

5% Yankee

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Wait, you mean I had to come back?

New York was great. Good food, lots of people wearing black, and snow. I did manage to finish my paper (it had to do with immersive technology, representation, and post-cyborg ironies...trust me), and so earned my scholarly keep. The LAW and I strolled around her old stomping grounds (NYU) and almost crashed an Official Event, but I nixed it once I saw the Ukrainian folk dancers in native costume. I just couldn't do it.

One highlight was the Museum of Modern Art--more specifically, Van Gogh's Starry Night, which I managed to see in its lovely thick-paintiness just before MOMA closed and they kicked us out. I didn't realize it was there, and had wasted entirely too much time downstairs looking at idiocies like Martin Creed's "The Lights Going On and Off." Yeah, right. My next piece, for which I hope MOMA forks over tens of thousands of dollars, will be, hmmmm, "Sometimes You Step in Sticky Things," quickly followed by "The Room Smells Bad," or my signature piece "The Lights Go Off and You Get Hit With Pillows for No Reason," all of which would add to Creed's postmodern protest against "things" and "consumerism" and also explore "the qualities of 'nothing.'" What a crock of s***. Oh wait, that's my next piece.

Start spreadin' the news....

That's right, New York/New York. I'm presenting a paper that I'm still in the process of writing.

So I took a job compatability test and found out that I'd be great in a job involving things rather than people. But what if I just think of people as things? Does that count?

Seriously, though, raspberry farming and writing comic books up in the wild northwest looks pretty good. I'm not sure that I can convince the LAW (who'd have to bankroll the endeavor) of the value of this new life.

I'm here.

Where are we going, and what are we doing in this handbasket?

Snow in Redlands, California? Mais oui! Things are funky with the weather, so much so that the U.S. government might even start snapping their fingers and believing in Global Warming (see "Better late than never"). One wonders, really, if "late" or "never" really counts, but of course, one is cynical. In related news, the Brit scientists have reset the Doomsday Clock to show that we have moved two minutes closer to our eternal midnight.

On the bright side, I finally finished Richard Dawkins' The Ancestor's Tale (all about evolution!) and am comforting myself with the idea that at least twice in the last billion years, life (mostly) got wiped out and rebounded....slowly. Once the giant reptiles vanished, our little nocturnal shrew-like ancestors made mammalian hay with the whole thing. What happens when we (the new giant reptiles) blow ourselves up? My money's on the cockroaches.

And speaking of giant reptiles, I've moved on to reading Eragon.

My favorite part of the MLA convention...

My friend Jonathan and me--balls, balls, balls!

Sometimes, the best thing about the day is the diner you find yourself in.

So winter quarter is less than 48 hours old. Yesterday, they closed campus because of high winds (so I had some extra time to finish reading schedules and syllabi); today, cleanup ensues--there are several downed trees and lots of trash blown about.

Today's adventure, on a personal note, was of the locking-myself-out-of-the-house genre. "No problem," I thought. "There are spares." Then I remembered that all of our spares were inside the house, since we had regathered them from housesitters and friends upon our return from Boston. Our dogsitter, the intrepid Marianne, wasn't answering her phone. "In the meantime, no problem," I told myself. "I'll just scale the fence and get the spare from the back house."

And so, with a boost from the front-porch bench (all 75 pounds of it, which I dragged to the side of the house), I got on top of our 6-foot cedar plank fence (yes, the gates were also locked), jumped down, and went out back. Dear reader, you already know this--there was no spare key there, either.

I climbed back over the fence to hang out with Morrigan, who was leashed to the front door waiting for me. Marianne appeared, let me in, and I came in to work.....after some salutary eggs and pancakes at DJ's with my friend Hossy.

at left: the view from DJ's

Fun at Blogthings

My Pirate Name Is...

Dirty Jack of the Baltic

What's Your Pirate Name?

Done, done, done!

I finished the essay ("Lesbian Spectacle and the Disruption of Desire") at 7 p.m. Pacific Time and emailed it away. The LAW has read it and pronounced it intelligible, and she approved my decision not to end the piece with "And we all know Paradise is chock-full of lesbians." Too bad.

It was good to finish it--I think I've proven to myself that the brain still works in interesting ways, although I'll have to beat the lobes back into their cold, conjoined torpor by Monday, when Winter Quarter starts.

Just what is a "chock," and with what does one fill it?

A new turn.

I'm trying to re-focus myself. Really, what I want to do is reach a level above "Dan Quayle" in my Civilization IV game, but I suspect that obsessive gaming will not help me finish the article that's due this week. An excerpt:

Again: any techne of lesbian sexuality will do well to embrace the Spectacular as a force that makes fleshly bodies temporarily readable through its sustained jumbling of representation and desire. I won’t rehearse decades of psychoanalytic and/or French feminist and/or poststructuralist thought here, but instead offer one small proposition that we might agree upon: the body—the fleshly thing that carries us around, this ugly bag of mostly water, as Gollum would have it—is never really our own, never in existence apart from representation and desire. Perhaps we can express this relationship thusly: our self at its most simply speakable or readable is comprised of ratios between the nodes of Body, Representation, and Desire, much like the classic rhetorical triangle of speaker, audience, and subject.

Now if I could just remember how to write complete sentences so I could finish the other 18.5 pages.