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?