This Degree Goes To 11

Where High Theory and Fan Fiction Meet

2011-11-13T16:24:00.001-06:00

Five months of intense rhetorical study, and yet it took an afternoon of reading fan fiction to trigger the realization that I am and always have been firmly on the rhetoric-as-dialectical side of things. Goes to show, I guess, how very important a role extra-academic experience and thought plays in developing systems of belief about the world.

This is a particularly interesting epiphany for me as I suspect it'll help me put into words some of the annoyance I have with overly Aristotelian views of rhetoric - in which knowledge is only employed, never created. And also to reconcile the view of logic as a dominant/superior mode of persuasion with the importance of local situation. But then...I guess the remaining sticking point then is persuasion. Dialectic is by nature not persuasive. And I do think rhetoric is. Is it simply a midpoint, a question of attempting to persuade while also remaining open to the influence of identification? Hmm. Might (and I can't believe I'm typing this) have to dip into Perelman again...

What's the opposite of an eye for detail?

2011-11-13T00:21:00.001-06:00

...so it appears I've had my timestamp here set to Pacific time? Or maybe just some of the entries? Goddamnit. Now years from now when I try to use the timestamps from these posts to make an arguement about the pattern of my work habits I won't have a leg to stand on.

This is a small matter, I recongize. But still. Annoying.

Life After Prelims

2011-11-12T22:20:00.001-06:00

So I passed. Cue great rejoicing. Although really, all I felt at the time was this distant, unreal sense that it was over and that no one would make me do it again. But I'm thawing out and waking up now, in part simply due to the passage of time but also through my slow reintegration into the world of the living. Here's a brief look at some of the things I've done since Wednesday afternoon that I probably could not have done before:

* Had friends over to hang out and drink wine.
* Put in contact lenses to teach. (My students were adorably/annoyingly confused by this change - "can you just like, not see, or are you wearing contacts?")
* Happy hour and last-minute dinner with fellow comp/rhet-ers
* Spoken to my immediate family on the phone 5+ times.
* Spent the night somewhere other than my own apartment.
* Made an extensive set of playlists for things like Singing Along, Rediscovering Classics, and Rocking Out.
* Cleaning. Hours of cleaning. Totally overhauled my room and brought the bathroom back from the brink of alarming. Words cannot express the catharsis.
* Had a major singalong while doing aforementioned cleaning.
* Began constructing a list of my favorite Community episodes. (Harder than one might think!)
* Big celebratory dinner out with friends and drinks and delightfulness

And that's not even touching all the things I did in the two weeks between passing in and the defense that I could not have done before finishing the essays. It's been a really...expansive few weeks. I'm reclaiming my life, my time, my priorities, and it's still unclear how they'll be redistributed. But I'm not to worried. I am so much more alert to what and who is around me, so much more able to reach in and put a hand on the core of myself...I don't know. I can't quite explain it. It's like before, I couldn't contextualize anything that happened to me in the personal realm with any depth or accuracy. I had truisms and gut reactions, but that was about it. And now I once again have intuition, hindsight, educated speculation, and confidence with which to assess events.

Confidence. God, I've missed you. Confidence isn't even the right word exactly. It's...the sense of myself. The knowledge I've built over 27+ years of who I am and what I can (and can't) do. What I'll always be and what could change over time. It's similar to what I felt on my road trip summer of 2010, just in a lower-key and less dramatically exciting vein - that slow realization that everything I was before is still there if I reach for it. I can't head off on a major adventure now like I did then, sadly - but it seems like I'll find other ways to accomplish the same kind of breaking with status quo that may be just as effective. Things to collide with that highlight the rest of me, the parts that have been in cold storage for the past 5 months. I love new people and new situations. I am energized by the right kind of challenge to my non-academic abiities. I am not as uptight and old and inexorably set on the path to traditional middle-class academic life as I might sometimes feel or fear.

I'm still the same as I've always been. If anything I'm better - just out of practice. I can have what I want. I can surprise myself. I can be the friend/daughter/sister/niece I want to be. And I can win battles no one's even expecting me to fight in.

But bottom line: I'm alive again. And it's going to be awesome.

The Big D

2011-11-08T15:33:00.000-06:00

Defense is tomorrow at 1pm. I actually...can't wait. Well I mean, I can - still gotta type up an opener and some ref notes. But I'm ready for this. Bring it.
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And now, for the record's sake, my paraphrasings of the questions I was sent as prep:

* What role do binaries play in my own answers (V/V, Acad/public, lit/oral, theo/prac, etc)? BC dude girl, you talked about them a lot.
* What's the value of imbalance? How would I reply to challenge that rhet/ped/etc are most "generative" when out of balance?
* Why "Contemporary Writing" as a term/label?
* Is print comp conservative by nature?
* What's up with Design as rhetorical?

It's become clear that this is the darkest timeline

2011-11-02T00:06:00.000-05:00

From a GChat convo with Justin S. tonight:

Justin: Heh
I miss 9-5, no lie
You get shit done
And more importantly
Then you're done
me: yup
for this reason my holy grail is a strict personal schedule
so i could once again feel entitled to relax fully that was at established times
...that's the worst thing i have ever written
18 year old me is crying her face off right now

Things I've written in my prelims essays:

2011-10-23T23:49:00.000-05:00

- On how abstraction facilitates comparisons between systems of discourse:"It allows the comparing of apples to apples,without the confusion of having to account for whether they came from pie orsauce."
- On Anne Wysocki's reference to a major literacy studies scholar: "The shout-out to that legacy is particularlyloud in her essay."
- Working title of my third section: "Modern Playout: The (Rhetorical) Voyage Home
- On examples of pure persuasion-based rhetorical acts:"Hipster culture is another example, based inpersuading outsiders of the superiority of their fashions and tastes anddisdaining those fashions and practices at which that persuasion becomes toosuccessful." (Footnote to this sentence: "Q: How did the hipster burnhis tongue? A: He drank his coffee before it was cool.")

We Were All Thinking It

2011-10-17T23:30:00.000-05:00

From a FB convo tonight:

justin: i don't really understand the virtue of "surviving" a zombie apocalypse anyway

justin: that's like, the definition of a pyrrhic victory

justin: you understand they won't have iphones then, right?

Prolific

2011-09-18T14:01:00.000-05:00

So I've been wanting to get my livejournal printed and bound for awhile now, and so today, as a means of putting off work, I took the initial step of running it through LJBook's pdf creation app (which can then be edited and submitted to one of numerous online book publishers). I figured it would be too long for one volume, so I set it to include everything through graduation - the first four years I had it.

...that shit is *1100 pages long.* More than 375,000 words. I knew I wrote in it a lot as an undergrad but daaaaaaamn. By comparison, the next four years take up a mere 187 pages - granted I moved my public blogging here in the middle of that time and also did a lot of paper journalling for awhile in there too, but still. Wow.

Adventures in Analogies

2011-09-17T16:54:00.000-05:00

Being pleased instead of upset when mistaken for younger than you are : growing up :: feeling creeping horror rather than pride/elation when you realize your paper is going to be much too long : becoming a grad student

Sigh.
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Two-year anniversary in the Kingdom today (this account - I'm pushing a decade in total). Two years of wasting dramatic amounts of time and a not-insignificant couple hundred bucks or so in pursuit of cultural references, line-drawing aesthetics and completionist joy.

Worth it. Totally worth it.

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Text I just received from Kyle: im going to start telling people i live on the kanye westside so it sounds cooler

Writing is slow today - can you tell? I'm not sure why...out of practice probably, which always sends me relapsing into bad habits. How can it take so much time to write a totally reasonable 25 pages of answer when I already know exactly what I want to say?? It's so irritating.

Time to read me some inspirational Elbow quotes (helpfully listed on a sticky on the inside cover that I drew up last time I was having this issue), make a plan of attack, drink some more of this smoothie for energy and rally up.
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11:20pm. I'm calling it. I don't feel like I have nearly enough pages to show for my day, but I do have some - 6 to be precise, plus a solid pre-version of maybe 2/3 of the next one. I'm starting to see where I'll have to make cuts and where I need to allow time for more significant reshaping of material from my initial draft. I'm also getting a sense of where I'll be spending my limited strong-claim capital and where I'll be dressing up lit review in new clothing.

Wow I'm cracked out and tired and hungry and verging on incapable of recalling basic vocabulary. I need to step awayyyyyy from the keyboard - or at least the act of typing words, especially ones related to my draft.

2011-09-15T18:56:00.001-05:00

I've become increasingly and somewhat uncomfortably aware lately of the extent to which I think in status-sized chunks.

Slide!

2011-09-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

The events of the past week or so are making me increasingly convinced - or perhaps more accurately, resigned to the fact - that Brandon Flowers is my spirit animal.

Adventures in Drafting (for 100 - to be clear)

2011-09-14T22:28:00.000-05:00

It's a small thing, but it gave me a real sense of satisfaction to set up Thunderbird to send/receive emails for my E100 admin job. Despite my whole "digital writing = gist of my professional interests these days" thing I can be slow at updating software, adding new applications and programs to my daily routines, and other such tech-for-daily-living endeavors, so when I do take the time and initiative it feels good - and oddly empowering, especially when the directions fall a little short and I have to troubleshoot a little via instinct. I may not be a digital prodigy but damn it, I was brought up in a tech-friendly house and I am much more computer literate than I give myself credit for.

Spent an hour or so today doing my students' first writing assignment to use for all-class review tomorrow. It took more time than I expected even though I was pretty good about not revising as I went and just writing down what came to me - probably good to know in terms of assessing the workload I'm handing out. And it was enjoyable. The task was to "use your own life as evidence to research/explore a concept about writing." I chose the idea of writing as a means to an unknown end, and wrote about discovering that the reason I love writing in a journal/blog is because of the occasional yet amazing moment when you write your way into a truth or realization about yourself, the world, whatever, that you didn't have before.

But perhaps most interesting about the process was how heavily audience and rhetorical context shaped what I wrote. As instructors we're always lamenting that our students write for us, wishing they'd write for a wider, more specific and realistic audience - or even just write what they truly think. But it's kind of impossible not to consider audience, even when (as in this case) it's a piece that's supposed to seem written for a different imaginary audience (an instructor) than its actual one (my class). It wasn't even conscious (though vaguely so at times). But I wrote a very different essay than I'd have written for myself, or even for a 201 class. There are obvious sides to this - for example, I plan to tell them I wrote it at the end of class and so it can't reveal anything too personal or too authority-compromising. But more subtle ones too - I chose a different voice than I probably would have otherwise, wrote with a different sentence flow (lots of creative-runons, mounting clauses, etc). And then since it was for an all-class review, to model the idea of their first workshop Tuesday, I used a structure and a selection of points that doesn't fit as neatly, doesn't all seem totally relevant, to give them plenty of traction. I wasn't deliberately making it bad, by any means - just steering my SOCish writing away from connecting up points and towards making new ones. And such.

Anyhow, it was fun and interesting and a great way of putting off prelims for another few hours. Which I have *got* to stop doing.

Semester's going pretty well so far (aside from the "not enough prelims time" issue). Still enjoying being back on a schedule. Appreciating the arrival of fall (though it's accelerating a bit fast this week - don't rush it, Weather, it's officially summer still til the 22nd). Hoping to pick up some social slack and starting seeing people more regularly before long.

It could be a good term. I'm optimistic.

omg wtf xkcd

2011-09-11T23:52:00.000-05:00

Hovertext: well, sex is like a velociraptor: despite your movie-fueled lifelong neurotic obsession, unlikely to be found in your house.
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Now that it's getting cold out I'm remembering how annoyingly cold my fingers get when I type for extended periods in a house below 68 degrees. Though the semi-numbness from the chill does distract from the tingly-numbness from my compressed nerves. Look, I know I keep whining about this, but it's really fucking annoying. You know how if you *really* hit your funny bone - not a slight ding but the full-on slam into something that feels so incredibly not-good that you'd almost rather be in actual pain than have that feeling - the tingling in your last two fingers and the twinge in your elbow linger for a good while afterward? It's like that except in both arms any time I type for more than half an hour at a time. So. Lame. I'm getting an MRI next week (for reasons that aren't clear to me, but whatever), but I know that it'll boil down to "do these exercises and take Advil," only one of which I'll actually do on any regular basis, eventually leading to God knows what other kinds of issues. So yay.

In other news - I never thought I'd say this, but I really did enjoy reading my students' first papers. Why is that so surprising, you ask? Because they were personal narratives. With other components as well, but still - largely personal stories. And they were interesting (for the most part anyhow - this isn't MagicLand where everything is perfect and I have six ponies to pull my bejeweled carriage and a cushy tenure-track job)! I have some sharp-ass kids this semester.

First weekend back in the game

2011-09-11T22:41:00.000-05:00

Ten years ago today I walked into homeroom after Senior Assembly just in time to see the second tower fall. My memory of the scene is incredibly vivid - particularly Mr. Raymond watching, how he was standing, his complete fixation yet lack of visible outward emotional sign. (This incredibly vivid visual recall of the moment of realization is something I know is incredibly common, and is one of the things that fascinates me most about 9/11 from a public memory perspective - that despite the incredible attention paid in academic work to the visual impact of media images, for me and many others the most vivid and personally "iconic" image of the event is relatively banal.) I remember seeing the first crash on TV while in Bio and laughing, everyone thinking it must be some stupid lost pilot in a Cessna. I remember wanting to feel it more deeply/seriously than I did, but really just reacting to the drama. How little I knew. How young I was.
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I'm reading through my long rambly draft of my prelims question to prepare for my meeting with Christa tomorrow, and it's actually kind of encouraging. I had been dreading it, but it turns out there's really a lot of good stuff here. And it reminds me that I often am capable of being a pretty damn good writer. Which in a time where I'm feeling pretty insecure about my ability to finish this shit and pass, is a welcome feeling.

It was a remarkably full/eventful weekend. [Aside - I have *got* to kick this habit I've fallen into of using slashes rather than making relatively simple word choices. It started in late spring in an effort to facilitate faster drafting, but it's gotten out of control.] I did a very respectable amount of work while also having two major social nights (each of a very different flavor to boot). After an August of the same monotone lethargy-tinged shit over and over day in and day out this is a nice change, but also an adjustment. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that tomorrow starts another whole week full of activity, obligations and social potential. But while it's a change it's one I welcome. I'm tired, sure. But I'm alive again. The rhythm of the semester is cutting through the paralyzing influence of anxiety and grief - and for that I'm thankful.

Even if such liveliness, both personally and professionally, can sometimes be a pain in the ass..

From the Journal of Don Draper

2011-08-26T19:01:00.001-05:00

"She's a sweet girl, and she wants me to know her. But I already do.

People tell you who they are, but we ignore it. Because we want them to be who we want them to be."

It's like spotting a mythical beast

2011-08-20T18:52:00.000-05:00

The feeling that comes from slowly but surely gaining from my prelims a picture of the evolution of my discipline and the threads within it is really a wonderful one. If only that characterized the process (which is not so far-fetched given than it's, you know, the whole point of the thing) rather than panic, mental strain and isolation.

Coda to my Deneuve Post

2011-08-17T01:05:00.000-05:00

Just grabbed a used copy of Belle de Jour on Amazon (with Prime shipping no less!) for 2 bucks. It's the first DVD I've bought in almost 8 months. It reminds me of the more or less forgotten (or, perhaps more accurately, sidelined) pleasure I get from buying in "hard copy" the movies and shows I truly love - immediately on checking out I was driven to go back and search for Les Choiristes and Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
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And edit: Umbrellas is apparently so out of print a used copy is cheap at $22? Lock up your copy, Mom and Dad - that piece of knowledge is probably enough to kill my last objection to appropriating it.

Well this explains a lot

2011-08-09T03:07:00.000-05:00

"I always like new things, and I like meeting new people, and it will be in AMERICA. So this is good." -- My rationalization for going to graduate school circa May 2007. Taken verbatim from my journal.

May the Odds be Ever in Your Favor!

2011-07-31T23:17:00.000-05:00

So as someone who recently read all three Hunger Games novels back-to-back (during that whole "family crisis that really makes reading for prelims tough" period of the summer), I have to say that the casting report, as listed on Wiki, seems pretty amazing - down to Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket. And I can't believe I'm even saying this, since I actually didn't think the books were that good outside the raw concept and some innovative details and in fact that they suffer from a distinct lack of sexuality in terms of their ability to connect with the teenage experience (now where was I? oh yeah), but I kind of can't wait to see who they cast as Finnick Odair - the sexy, trident-wielding, fetish-for-madness, 24-year-old victor who looms large in books 2 and 3. And I'm a bit ashamed of myself for it, needless to say.

Also - I'm still torn between embracing and hating Jennifer Lawrence. On the one hand, she's taken some bold roles and so far seems to be doing her best to steer clear of the overt objectification so many Hollywood starlets her age fall into. On the other - bitch is 20 YEARS OLD. How dare she?!?!

Random Thought from a Hot and Sticky Writing Day

2011-07-20T23:38:00.000-05:00

You know, I love Blink 182's "I Miss You." I did the first time I heard it years ago at AU and I still do. I find it heart-wrenching, actually - which seems like the last phrase you'd use to describe a Blink song, especially from a 2011 vantage point, but it's true nonetheless. It's so starkly emotional, so straightforward, with the contrast between the deeper mellowed first verse and the more Blink-ish rasp of those following...

I don't know. It gets me. It feels so sad. Hopeless before she even hears it.

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In news closely enough related I decided to append it here rather than devoting another tiny post to it - I've decided to add "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" by Neutral Milk Hotel to my list of all-time favorite songs.

The Perils and Peculiarities of Online Dating

2011-07-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

So it's no secret that I've been dabbling in online dating for the last year or so. I feel like there's not much stigma left attached to it at this point - especially in this town, where it increasingly seems you can't find a single person between 25 and 32 who hasn't at least signed up for an account at some point or another. As I've realized that I've come to be more or less entirely OK with admitting I've played with it and sharing some of my experiences and/or opinions of the practice as a whole.

And most of those experiences (the ones that make for interesting sharing anyhow - no one wants to hear about how, for example, I once froze up so badly during a date that I literally could not make conversation about anything but television shows for almost two hours) somehow come back around to that fact itself - namely, that within the borders of the greater downtown area pretty much everyone and their mother (perhaps literally in some cases?) is on OKCupid.

[I feel I should take a moment here to say that while I sign on to OKC semi-regularly to browse my messages and sometimes the profiles of people who send them or are suggested to me, I haven't used or viewed it as a serious means of meeting duded for like 6+ months now. This is for two roughly equal reasons: A) I'm not enamored with the format of meeting someone one-on-one for the first time in a more-or-less formal date context where you're both more or less explicitly evaluating the romantic-relationship potential of the other, and B) it requires an energy, excitement and time investment that I simply haven't been able to invest in non-work pursuits for awhile now. So all this crossover? It's from occasional mostly voyeuristic browsing and a handful of dates dating back at least half a year.]

This density of use and the possibilities it creates for odd crossovers manifested itself only gradually. . For example, within my first three or four months on the site I went on dates with two dudes who both worked at the same (very large) company in town. "Huh..." I thought to myself at some point after my date with the second one, "wouldn't it be weird if somehow they knew each other and discovered they'd both been out with me. Weird." This seemed to me unlikely, both then and in retrospect, but given how OKC charts and almost gleefully displays viewing and contact statistics not at all impossible.)

I've come to see however in the months since then that this is an OKC/IRL collision so distant and with such minimal power reach back to me as to be almost adorably quaint. Because within this strip of city - everyone you know is looking at your profile right now. Or near enough as makes no difference. You may or may not ever see the effects of that - but probably you will. You may not be looking for information about the personal, sexual, or daily lives of people you know when you're running through QuickMatch - but you're going to run into some probably 2/5 times. You may never ever message that dude whose profile you cruised while tispy and bored at 2am last Wednesday night, but that won't stop you from recognizing him at the next TAA event and remembering that he's looking for a woman who wants to take latin dancing lessons with him at Monona Terrace this summer.

Because this isn't Facebook here, my friends. OKC profiles and questions cover a lot deeper ground, get more personal, get more graphic, get more revealing - ethically, sexually, personal-history, and otherwise. Sure, one can argue that you know what you're getting into and as adults we should act according to the risk we're willing to incur in terms of these potential inadvertant OKC/IRL collisions - and I do keep that somewhere in my mind when filling out questions and such. But it's also an environment that breeds a somewhat deceptive sense of, if not anonymity (the picture is more than half the game, for God's sake), then at least comfortable detachment from the eyes of people IRL. Because after all - you can't be searched for by name. Most of the people you know are probably already in stable relationships (those bastards) and have no reason to be on there. And it's a mutually-assured-embarrassment kind of thing if you should run into someone, which further cushions the sense of risk. So before you know it you're admitting in writing that your job really is slowly destroying your ability to enjoy life and that you could maybe imagine a scenario in which you'd have sex with someone you otherwise hated.

And so when those crossovers do happen, there's a fairly potent "...oh my god" kind of feeling. Here's a partial list of OKC/IRL collisions I've experienced in roughly the past 4-6 months (so like, half the time I've been on there):

- Running into the profile of the fairly adorable but married dude who did the home renovations for the family I nannied for my first two summers here and used to chat with frequently there and discovering in this manner his (presumed) divorce. (Guess that explains the visibly increased fitness level I noticed when I passed him going into the Secret Beer Store a few weeks ago.)
- Apparently being listed as a Quiver match for someone from my grad program - particularly awkward as we were barely friends at the time as it was.
- Having an ex-student with whom I've stayed in touch realize that his first-ever OKC message back in Dec (a month before I had him in class) was in fact to me. I cannot impress how narrowly I feel I dodged the World's Most Awkward Semester bullet here.
- Mentioning to a student this spring that I'd gone on a blind date recently with someone who worked locally in the same general business field on which she'd recently done a project - only to have her ask his name and then reveal that he was her husband's employer. Her: "Didn't he get a divorce really recently?" Me: "Yeah maybe I don't know SO what are you doing for your next project?"
- Attending a social function of people my own age to which I was attached only by one person (whom I knew only slightly) and realizing that the reason so many of the people there looked familiar was because OKC regularly suggested them to me as matches.
- Meeting a pair of fun and friendly dudes in a neighborhood bar, having OKC use come up casually in conversation; one of them then falls silent for 15 seconds while looking at me fixedly, then says "I've got it - [my user name], right?"

This is a selection of the most notable. I could keep going. And of course all that's not to mention the all-too-frequent times I run into people I've been out with in the grocery store, on campus, at the corner bar...or even avoid certain places entirely to prevent such run-ins. And when you consider that really, only one of my dates ended on an actively negative note and all but that and one other on reasonably non-awkward ones - I feel there's a lot to support my theory that (for many people at least, myself very much included) using OKC in this town does far more to breed awkwardness than to breed romance.

Which, I mean, is not the worst thing. There's part of my that finds it kind of hilarious, and maybe even (slightly) welcome, in this day and age of fiercely locked down FB profiles and aggressively monitored Google results pages. And should I ever have an experience that really throws or mortifies me, it's easy enough to trim back on the offending material. And one thing typing this post and crystallizing these realizations has done for me is made me realize that there's a part of me that enjoys the evidence that there are all these little threads (however random, awkward or of questionable compatibility with my professional life they may be at times) connecting me not only to this city but specifically to other people of my age and in my somewhat transient and unsteady life position. That I have an actual life here that extends beyond my work and into the community -with all the complication, mundane or otherwise, that that implies.

That said - I do not see myself going on an OKC date anytime real soon. Shit's a little too close to home already. ;-)

Thanks a lot, Emily

2011-06-21T22:53:00.000-05:00

Forget ever hearing the tune without also hearing these lyrics - I may never stop having them stuck racing through my head. (Do I secretly find this fact deliciously geeky? Yes. Am I therefore fully pleased about this? No.)

Some Thoughts from A Really Scattered Weekend

2011-06-13T00:04:00.000-05:00

- The girl two machines in front of me at the gym today had a ridiculously nice ass. Like the Platonic ideal of what a white girl's ass should be. To quote Ron Burdgandy, I wasn't even mad, just impressed. I was tempted to tap her on the shoulder and ask what her strength routine is but I decided in time that that was kiiiind of creepy so I abstained.

- Big shout-out to Dmitri for drunkenly hassling me about learning and using the multi-touch shortcuts on my new computer. Because man, they are amazing. It's not quite as "how did I live without this?" as when I first switched to a Mac and learned about keyboard shortcuts, but it's definitely increased the ease with which I navigate documents, especially in terms of web surfing and reading long articles. It's a good reminder to me not to be a secret Luddite who never upgrades her software because learning about all the "improvements" is too much of a pain. Turns out calling them "improvements" is not merely a scam to make you reboot - software upgrades are useful! (See also: my giving numerous students higher grades on presentations because I didn't realize that the reason their powerpoints looked so much better than mine was because they were using a version that didn't predate the Bush administration.)

Also - considering how much money I didn't have I paid for this thing, it only makes sense to get as much out of it as possible.

- Holy crap my back is sore. (Doo-dah, doo-dah...)

- After a successful (almost too much so) day at the mall with Marshelle and Jessie, I realize the reason I feel like all my clothes are boring and plain is not in fact because it's hard to find any other kind these days, but merely because I almost never go shopping anymore (and when I do, for the past year or so it's pretty much exclusively been at Target).

- I've been starting to think that the question of whether or not a given dude has any potential traction as someone who'd fit well with me (and vice versa, of course) is not in fact as difficult to shed light on as I've been feeling it is for the past year or so - but simply a matter of asking myself if I could imagine him working at a Tarsa family Christmas. Not necessarily instantly fitting in like one born to the role (I'm looking at you, Tom Harper) - just that the idea of them there doesn't make me wince in discomfort. I feel like much wasted time in my romantic history could have been avoided if I had realized this earlier on. But then - such is youth.

- Writing that last point started off being about dudes but definitely ended up being about my family. And has made me realize that I really miss them. I think a lot of my distance from them over the past year or so is more a defense mechanism than anything else. I can't see any of them more than a few times a year at this stage in my life. There's nothing I can do about that. I was brought up to value opportunity over geographical fidelity, and my life to date reflects that. But damn - sometimes I wish that was not among the family values (especially the ones I got an extra-large dose of as the oldest) and we'd all settled down within an easy drive of home. (Which would still be in New Hampshire in this fantasy, btw.)

- This weekend has completely fucked my sleep cycle and is threatening to set off my anxiety issues about falling asleep. Joy. Hopefully I can drag myself out of bed early enough tomorrow to start repairing the damage.

- Some really great, productive reading and thinking for my prelims question this weekend - somehow, between the not sleeping and the staying out too late and the shopping excursions. Looking at a few theoretical approaches to the word vs image question in regards to meaning-making and then finishing with what amounted to a practical-minded and applied consideration of the same issue by Edward Tufte (whose Beautiful Evidence I am 100% assigning next time I teach 201) was incredibly useful. It highlighted the benefits and shortcomings of both theoretical and practical approaches to the question (and all questions, I guess) - both from a scholarly standpoint and a pedagogical one.

And less convolutedly - if you're looking for a good starting point for thinking about how to begin bringing multimodal work into your teaching (or your own writing), this is a really great book to check out. It's by no means perfect - its focus on quantitative content doesn't always result in a clean map onto Humanities writing, and he's kind of a jackass at many points. But by jettisoning all the anxiety about the word-vs-image hierarchy and simply asking "how can we use the visual to present evidence in as effective and beautiful a way as possible?", he's able to come up with some truly incredible ideas and illustrations of them.

Ode to Catherine Deneuve

2011-06-08T00:58:00.000-05:00

She's amazing for some many reasons. Her acting is strong, her choice of roles varied without being crazed and directionless, her presence and sense of self constant. But perhaps what I find most notably remarkable about her is the way she's let reality touch her beauty at nearly every stage of her career.

For example, tonight I saw her in Potiche, a cute fairy-tale account of a bourgeouise housewife in her 50s reinventing herself in the light of new-wave feminism. And unlike so many American actresses of her age, she looked her age. And yet still beautiful.

But her beauty-as-reality extends as far back as Belle de Jour, probably the role in which she was most highly sexualized. Take this frame - you'd never see such openly real depiction of a film's sexual heart today:

Her body looks real - something unheard of today (even in European cinema, I would argue - at least among ingenue shots).

...as I'm writing this I realize that much of what I'm arguing is as much or more about the conventions of the times or the region as about Deneuve herself. But because I find her so incredibly beautiful, so talented, so strong an onscreen presence, it heightens the effect for me. She's gorgeous at all ages even when she looks less than contemporary-Hollywood-perfect. And I find that both engaging and oddly empowering - like a look behind the veil.

I got to get myself a copy of Belle de Jour.

Snapshot from Maurader Life Overseas

2011-05-18T16:03:00.000-05:00

Jamie: haha you know how tom and jim have insane amounts of wool/

me: yes

Jamie: one time they found a stray cat

Jamie: and brought it home because it was miserable

Jamie: and it just sat and stared at the wool shelves

I scream, you scream

2011-05-17T18:50:00.000-05:00

Theorizing about whether or not the ice cream truck in my neighborhood sells drugs and if so how and what kind has recently become kind of a significant preoccupation with me lately. [Edit 6/14: This is like the worst sentence I've written in awhile. I was going to edit it but decided to leave it because it's almost humorous in its badness.] For those of you who've never seen this thing, this is less idle a speculation than it would be with most ice cream trucks. For one thing, this thing is *ancient.* I think significant portions of it are actually made of wood, it's so jury-rigged and generally all-around ghetto. In other words, it doesn't so much look like this:

As like this:

Now imagine that baby but a model about 20 years older, painted a sickly light blue/grey with some kind of paint that's demonstrably not intended for automobiles, with "ice cream" hastily stenciled on both sides and the roof. That's more or less what we're talking about here. But I haven't come to the best part, the clincher that makes theorizing about its potential secondary wares so inescapable: roughly 3/5 of the time, it's playing Christmas carols.

The weirdness that brings is upped even further by the fact that I first heard it come around this year in like, late February or early March - some time in there when it was clearly and fully still winter. But also clearly and fully not Christmas either. Let me tell you, when you're 3/4 through a Wisconsin winter and nearly insane for some sign of spring's approach, there is nothing more surreal than seeing that symbol of golden summer afternoons, an ice cream truck, amble past while loudly playing "O Come All Ye Faithful." Now that it's the ice cream truck's natural season, it's been coming around more frequently - but still playing carols at least half the time, if not slightly more. I'm also not sure I've ever seen anyone buy from it (though I'm sure they must).

All of which adds up to it being impossible not to imagine this baby peddling drugs. And like, more than just a little pot - it's so bedraggled and worn-looking, so kind of half-assing its efforts to appeal to children (presumably, were it a legit ice cream sales venue, its target audience), so bereft of the lazy yet heartwarming colorful sloppiness of a stonermobile, that it's got to be something darker - more along the lines of meth. (Though admittedly that might be the 25-odd episodes of Breaking Bad I've watched in the past 5 days.)

My current operating theory is that it plays Christmas music to signal that it's open for non-ice cream related business. Because honestly - why else would you play Christmas music from your ice cream truck in May when you could be playing "Camptown Races" or "Farmer in the Dell" or any number of other chimey staccato renditions of classic non-seasonally themed favorites? Shit's got to be some kind of code.

In other news, prelims reading begins full-time in 6 days. God save me. Maybe I should look into buying some of that ice cream meth.

Note to Self: Do it Right the First Time

2011-05-17T17:47:00.000-05:00

So when I got my new computer I was (understandably, I think) too eager to start poking around on it and experiencing its amazing new speed and clarity and much louder speakers and such to transfer my files properly; rather than use Migration Manager or whatever the hell it's called, I simply used a portable drive to ferry over my music, photos and documents wholesale. This worked fine in the short term, but cut out all the associated information with my photos and music - playlists, play counts, events, etc. And as I am a huge packrat when it comes to personal records of all kinds, this has been annoying me. I've actually managed to put off plugging my iPod into the new machine so as not to lose the old playlists and settings. And for some reason, I decided that this afternoon was a good time to import all those settings and such.

It's a huge pain. Half the time the directions from Apple are ambiguous about whether a particular transfer technique will preserve the info I want (play count is a particular bitch in that regard), and the other half my old computer just isn't up for the task. Below, a selection of my thoughts on the process:

- How cute and somewhat twee that Apple has updated the Energy Saver light bulb icon to be a compact fluorescent.

- This is so easy. Well, not for what I want to do now - but it would have been if I'd just looked up how to do it in the first place. Goddamnit.

- Wait, is this going to make duplicates of all the files I already imported? All 67 gigs of them? Shit. [rushes off to move iPhoto and iTunes libraries to alternate locations]

- ...4 and a half hours?? Fuck that noise. I'll run it while I'm at Benoit's thing tonight.

****

Things I Learned This Winter (a selection)

2011-05-06T22:40:00.000-05:00

- I am a compositionist first and a rhetorician second.

- A truly awesome pair of shoes can make you feel better about everything in your wardrobe and are 100% worth investing in.

- "Oh well, it probably won't make much difference anyhow" is NEVER the right attitude to take on insulating your apartment.

- It's also a bad position to adopt towards paying parking tickets on time, letting your registration expire, and eating Valentine's Nerds and Hot Pockets 2 meals a day for three weeks.

- My instincts are usually right when it comes to ebay auctions, when I don't need another drink, and men. Just, you know...fucking learn to listen to them.

- Polo will always knock his water over. It doesn't matter where I put it.

- Renee + me + Plan B = never a bad idea. Except when I'm not listening to that second instinct above.

- I kind of really do have a boner for digital writing. I'm where I belong.

- Many of my academic insecurities could be lessened if I would just make more time for reading in my field. (Cue prelims!)

- I'm happier when I pay my bills on time.

- I enjoy myself some genre fiction from time to time, but round about the 10th book in a row it stops being a refreshing change and starts being a rut.

- Don't put 3/4 of your winter clothes away after the second 60+ degree day in April. This is a huge mistake and will result in your wearing the same 4 outfits for the next three to five weeks. (I cannot stress this one enough. I've been all "damn...I have *no* clothes" for weeks now, and tonight when I went to finish the job I was like, "oh...that's why.")

- No matter what their official titles may imply, my professors are not really all that interested in giving me personally tailored advice or mentoring outside the obligatory.

- Getting some time in outside is incredibly good for my mental health, even if it's very very very cold out and hard to make myself do it.

- My writing is good. But it could definitely be better, and for that to happen I'm going to have to work at it.

- It's always a good idea to brave an epic blizzard for a Snoop Dogg show.

- Remember how you used to listen to music all the time - walking, on the bus, working, writing, walking? Do that again.

- It's hard to un-care for someone once you open that door.

- People exist who think you are genuinely good at your job.

- You may be considerably above average at winter driving, but you're decidedly mediocre at knowing what to do once actually stuck in a snowbank of some kind.

- Relatedly - I have some pretty sweet neighbors scattered through the nearby blocks - friends and semi-strangers alike.

- Wisconsin winters are incredibly hard on me. I know blaming Mother Nature is the world's biggest cop-out and I'm not saying I couldn't do more to mitigate their effects. But looking back on the past 12 months the correlation between the quality of my mental state and general lifestyle and the season is too strong to deny - winter Fucks. Me. Up.

And so I'm that much happier it's spring. It's waking me up, and I'm excited to start a new phase, where what I'm learning is less about enforced work and disappointment and cold and more about passion for my field and possibility and Ralph Lauren photo shoot-esque outings on Mendota.

Life's not so bad. I need to be more positive. There's a lot on the horizon worth being happy about.

I've got 99 work-related tasks but finishing my prelims list ain't one

2011-05-02T21:12:00.000-05:00

Because that shit is D-U-N done. Just gotta meet with Christa to get the official okay on sending it out to be approved at the meeting this Friday. Feels good. Now I just have to track everything on it down - which, counted individually, would probably put my task count actually at or over 99. But such an itemization would still not include any bitches, so I feel the allusion stands.

I'm rich! I'm a wealthy miser!

2011-04-30T17:34:00.000-05:00

I got both my tax returns and my paycheck last week, and checking my account for the first time since - wow. I have not had that much money in my checking account that wasn't immediately needed elsewhere in a long time. I know the feeling of wealth and security is *completely* illusory as this money has to last me through the summer and part of September to boot, but still. Let me bask for a second.

*bask*

Knowing this moment was coming, I decide a week or two back that I was going to capitalize on the feeling of having "means" by doing all the things that I've been putting off stupidly for ages now because they cost money and I rarely have any I'm willing to part with for things that aren't monthly bills, food/booze, or enjoyment. So once I get this whole "end of semester" nonsense behind me, here's a selection of the exciting things I'll be using this faux-windfall for:

- taking both my cats to the vet for checkups (neither has had one since before I got them and as I would probably cry so much I'd look like the guy from Indy 3 who drinks from the wrong cup if anything happened to them that I could have prevented by providing regular and responsible vet care, this seems like a Thing Worth Doing) (also I'm pretty sure Penny's had a cold since November at this point)
- stocking my medicine cabinet - I'm down to my last palmful of Ibuprofen and that's about it. And I can't tell you how depressing it is that I'm excited about doing this.
- getting new running shoes so my knees last another few years
- getting a single pair of cute multifunction summer shoes because I have not bought such a thing in 2+ years now and the gladiator-style sandals I bought then now look like they might have belonged to an actual gladiator.
- changing the oil in my car (and possibly getting it a tune-up as well, but since I am 100% sure they'll then tell me they need more money to fix things, I'm not sure I have the guts)
- paying an overdue UW parking ticket for which my registration was revoked by the state more than 6 weeks ago
- paying UW-Plattsville for a copy of Multiliteracies for a Digital Age that I have never been able to track down and which I've been getting increasingly menacing letters about for months now
- filling my gas tank to the BRIM (if only so you all can benefit when prices inevitably drop the next day)
- getting an eye exam and buying new contacts. So I can seeeeeeeee.

...wow. How lame a list is that. But hey - at least then I can start the summer fresh, with (nearly) all my affairs in order.

The quirks of buying local

2011-04-28T00:03:00.000-05:00

I realized tonight that I've come to characterize the four local liquor establishments I frequent very much by their staff - more so than by selection or even price. There's the one staffed by jocular adorable middle-aged men, the one staffed by hipsters, the one with the primary clerk who's a regulation hottie, and the one where all the cashiers are disaffected high school girls.

If only the one less than a block from my apartment wasn't the one with all the hipsters.

I'm seeing more spinning wheel than cursor over here

2011-04-25T22:09:00.000-05:00

My new computer cannot get here fast enough. Ever since I ordered it in the wee hours Friday night it's like a veil has been lifted from my eyes and I see that life with my current one is and has been for months now like being nearsighted but never having had glasses: you have a vague idea things aren't working quite as well as they could be, but can continue to live with it because you don't really realize just how shit things are.

Right now I'm like a nearsighted person who's been to the doctor and looked through the proper set of lenses in that flippy-lens machine/mask thing, but is still waiting for her glasses to arrive. The scales have fallen from my eyes (oh mixing metaphors) and man - my computer is *awful.* SO slow, SO loud, SO prone to rebooting itself one out of every 5 times I close it.

Home Improvements

2011-04-21T21:03:00.000-05:00

So I just had one of those moments where I realized that I've unconsciously crafted a life for myself that in many little quirky ways (and some less little and less quirky ways) adheres to the values and habits of my own family - specifically in this case my mother. (This is a totally random opener, I'm aware.) Moments like this are almost always positive for me - they make me feel good about the adult I've become, about how my background has stayed a part of me through it all (even if I sometimes feel like there's nothing left to me but work, my love for my cats and a growing case of OCD about neatness).

What was it you ask that triggered this feeling? Scissors. Or more specifically, the realization that I own three pairs (four if you count the kitchen shears) - and thus can always, always find a pair when I need them. This felt surprisingly good - like realizing you've unconsciously managed to live up to some small but significant parental expectation. Which I guess is kind of what it is. Like Grampa and his perennial insistence on always having a flashlight in the car (something that's become a staple family in-joke at this point), always putting the scissors back in their place so they are they for the next person is something I remember being a thing growing up. Except the reason I likely remember it is because no one ever did it. Like, ever. So it was always hell finding some when you needed to wrap a gift, clip an article, cut a tag. (This is why I have the incurable habit of ripping my tags.) So as a result our house eventually just had scissors more or less everywhere. Junk drawer? Ancient slightly rusty black-handled scissors that looked like they'd been around since prohibition. Top drawer of the sewing machine? Slick uber-sharp heavy-duty mauve-handled shears that Mom would kill you if you didn't put back. Drawer of the huge heavy metal desk in the basement? More old-school metal ones. My top right desk drawer? Normal paper-cutting scissors. Kitten's room? Some safety scissors. Sewing basket? Embroidery shears.

...I'm digressing. And possibly exaggerating somewhat. But the point is: today I needed scissors twice in quick succession, and was able to quickly locate a pair in two separate locations, right where they belonged - and then I instinctively put them back. And it made me feel good about the life I'm building, a reassurance that there's always going to be more making me up than the last three years, and that graduate school is temporary but being a Tarsa is forever.

And thank God for that.

Thoughts while working

2011-04-18T21:15:00.000-05:00

April 7th
- Wow my back hurts. Words cannot express how much I regret missing that Groupon for the massage place across from the Coop.

- A student today reaffirmed my recently slipping belief that the vast majority of students see anything below a B as an actively bad grade, which makes me feel better about my grading this year. I've been trying to toughen up my standards but I still sometimes worry I'm too lax - but if it is in fact true that most of them are upset at receiving a C (rather than indifferent with a splash of "darn," as I'd been starting to think), then my usual spread of a few in the 90-95 range, a few in the 72-78 range, and the rest in between puts my course about where I'd want it to be in terms of difficulty and standards. Not that every assignment every semester plays out in that range, of course. But the point is - I'm much less afraid now that I'm either too hard or too easy.

- I'm loving this weather. Is spring finally here??

April 18

- HOW did it take me this long to start using Zotero?? While I don't quite have the hang of how best to use it yet I can already tell it's going to save me a lot of time. That is, unless I become unreasonably anal about how everything is organized and waste hours arranging things for no reason aside from my own neurosis.

- My search for prelims readings just turned up an article entitled "Review Essay - The Internet."

- ...wow. So the Council of Writing Program Administrators just put me through literally 10 attempts at making up a password secure enough to be deemed worthy of defending my WPA conference submission form and the like - strictest most annoying standards for a password I've ever encountered in a civilian context. And then when I finally found one and finished registering, they promptly sent me an unencrypted email containing my new super-secure password plainly written out. Amazing.

[sings] Just blog-post while you work, doo dee doo doo doo dee doo...

2011-04-06T18:37:00.000-05:00

Some work-related thoughts!

- "Of course, those students, like students today, say that they aren’t influenced by advertising (or song lyrics or any other aspect of popular culture that one attempts to bring into focus so it can be studied)." - Judith A. Wooten, on the popularity of asking students to analyze ad jingles back in the 80s. I found this quote today in Judith Wootten's 2006 CCCC address, and god damn it's the gospel truth. It's like once you ask them to analyze how something's going about fulfilling its goals, they instantly regard all such attempts as inherently flawed and ineffective, regardless of whether it was written by FDR or Charlie Sheen on a coke binge.

- How did I forget for so long what a bee I have in my bonnet about the limited role given to student voices in comp pedagogy scholarship? Oh wait - because I realized that unless I put in some massive reading time to back myself up it was too risky, as nothing pisses people off like being told by an unremarkable grad student they're irresponsible and exploiting their discourse position.

- This week feels really weird, with everyone gone for CCCC (Cs/ C's/Sees/Seize/ however the fuck one best expresses that in brief). Tomorrow and Friday especially - it's very strange to have nothing on Thursday except teaching, and two Fridays in a row without a staff meeting? I feel like I'm in BizarroDepartment.

- Some of my students did amazing work on this last project. True, I might have wished that the best project didn't forcibly remind me of my online dating experiences, but I suppose one can't have everything.

- Scene from my office hours today:
Me: "So I think that's pretty much it...do you have any questions for me?"
Student: "Yeah - what's on your shirt?" *points directly at my chest*
Me: "...Ben Folds."
Student: "Cool. Now I can stop staring."
*awkward pause*
Me: "...alright then, see you in class."

2011-03-14T22:30:00.000-05:00

Facebook and Mechanical Perfection - On Faina's response to crediting her with discovering DamnYouAutoCorrect.com:

2011-03-08T22:56:00.000-06:00

First comment to Faina (actually published): I strive to keep the balance between me and everyone else as close to 50-50 as possible when it comes to contributing to that project.

Second comment to Faina (only published here because it was that much too shaming): ...which can take effort, since my spending 3-4 minutes constructing the above sentence in order to subscribe to my increasingly particular aesthetic mechanical demands is becoming more and more typical.

...I'm not even going to tell you how long it took me to format the title of this post and determine if portions of it should be placed in the body instead. I think I'm being haunted by the Ghost of Current-Traditional Rhetoric.

Priorities

2011-02-09T14:20:00.000-06:00

I'm watching the first episode of The Walking Dead (itself a commentary on my priorities) and amidst the zombies, mayhem, shoot-outs etc I find myself most in awe of how incredibly warm and pleasant the weather there looks. That seems like the most unrealistic thing.

Practice Spontaneous Acts of Quasi-Humerous Passive Agression

2011-02-08T14:04:00.000-06:00

I know I'm probably in the minority here, but I'm going to go on record as someone who kind of loves heated gradlist discussions. I'm a big fan of their increased frequency lately, and if someone doesn't make a Follies sketch about that shit it'll be a damn shame.

Just Like Old Times - Plus Cats

2011-02-03T15:27:00.001-06:00

Sitting at my desk commenting on papers and listening to Jamie on Radio Clash. Oh, memories.

I've been here awhile, huh? Weird.

The Absence of the Picture of Dorian Grey

2011-01-19T22:37:00.000-06:00

The empty space over my bed - or more precisely, the question of what belongs in the empty space over my bed - is starting to feel vaguely symbolic. I'm not sure what that means exactly... it's both mildly unsettling and a bit affirming. A sign that my life has a plot, even if I'm not able to see what it is.

Why I Will Always Love Kingdom of Loathing: An Example

2011-01-14T19:06:00.001-06:00

Epiphany comes but twice a year

2010-12-12T22:36:00.000-06:00

Today I had one of those awesome moments of clarity that allow me to pretend for 10 months of the year that I secretly enjoy the end of the semester. I still have 17-20 pages to write, but I can see the entire path now, all the way to the end. I know where I'm going. It came late this term, but damn it still feels good.

I also discovered that Mike's syllabus requests a "20 to 30" page paper rather than 25 pages, as everyone's somehow come to believe. This was a joyous discovery, and led directly to the aforementioned flash of insight.

I will finish. There will be a life after this semester. It sounds stupid, but it's like driving in a lot of fog - everything feels less oppressively endless if you can see where you're headed.

[sings] "99 Horrible Tasks on My List, 99 Horrible Tasks..."

2010-12-08T21:12:00.000-06:00

Take a few down, deal with their shit, still plenty of horrible tasks on the wall!

So I finally "[went] to the motherfucking bank like an ADULT," as Ali of hyperboleandahalf would say, and (surprise surprise) it turned out to be relatively painless. To my delight, my first instinct about the mystery charges proved correct - they were not mine. Apparently sometimes banks make adorable little "keying errors" and clear checks from your account that were not in fact written by you. This is what happened to me, leading to overdraft charges and overdue payments for those charges...but while it was a bit time-consuming, the man who helped me was very nice and dismissed all the charges, so I will not in fact have to ride my bike home for Christmas. (I did think he should have been a bit more apologetic, though - I mean, the name on the check was "Dominic Daniels" or something, pretty clearly not me.)

I also managed to get some smaller-scale things done today despite having very fragmented time chunks, something I don't usually excel at. I read the relevant essays out of a book I just got for papers, wrote up feedback on 4 of 5 student presentations from yesterday, wrote my WC records for tonight (it's slow)...not too bad. When I get home I will endeavor to write up the last presentation response, then go to sleep because damn I've been staying up too late.

So several major stresses are dealt with now, leaving me that much more energy for paper-writing goodness. I might even be able to get into a groove this weekend where I can enjoy the process a little. We shall see.

[sings] "I Saw Five Hundred Thousand Tasks Come Sailing In, Come Sailing In, Come Sailing in..."

2010-12-07T23:12:00.000-06:00

- Just cited my professor in the paper I'm writing for him. Here's hoping I'm correct in thinking his is not one of the articles I grossly misrepresented in my annotated bibliography, since I pulled the text from there...

- I fucking hate not having a parking space. I've literally paid more in tickets than I would have to get a spot. I need to do something about this. Anyone have a driveway/garage spot I can rent for the winter? (Bonus points if I can pay in cookies, hugs or stimulating discourse on visual rhetoric.)

- So while I'm slowly working to distance myself from my self-assigned title as the Worst Graduate Student of All Time, I'm falling deeper and deeper into the pit of being the Worst Adult of All Time. See: unpaid parking tickets, unspeakably stressful UW Credit Union debaucle, failure to have bought AN single Christmas gift, the fact that upon waking this morning and realizing I had eaten the last of my Candy Cane Kisses my first thought was "dammit, what the hell am I going to eat for breakfast now?", etc.

- I have still not watched the film upon which the bulk of my aforementioned paper's argument will rest. My draft currently starts with "[insert stuff about the scene where he walks btwn Towers here.]" That scene is the basis of my whole case.

- I discovered that Penny's recent gastric distress was almost certainly due to her new habit of eating my hair elastics. Guess that's a good reason to follow through on my constant resolutions to stop leaving them all over the house.

- It's been a year since I wrote a long paper so I might simply be forgetting (altering my own memory of the historical narrative, if you will - which you shouldn't), but I do not recall having this much trouble organizing the initial presentation of my idea. Sheesh. Turns out situating yourself in a scholarly context is complicated. Yeesh.

- [A bit later:] ...okay. I might have dramatically underestimated what I have to say for Mike. For the first time EVER, I think I have too much theory and context to present and not enough of my own ideas. I might not have to come up with a new argument for Christa - I might just split the idea further and make Mike's paper entirely about framing the kind of images I'm looking at and Christa's entirely about Man on Wire and what it's doing with 9/11. Maybe. Because I am looking at some serious length issues here.

Fucking ideas. And standards. Bah. I'm going to Woodman's.

(A second later - How is all that typing only 2 pages long???????)

It's the Most Christmasy Time of the Year!

2010-12-02T19:35:00.000-06:00

Alright. As of 7:32 CST today, Becca's Christmas season has officially begun - I'm listening to "All I Want for Christmas is You" for the first time this year.

(Aside - in addition to starting my season, this song also reminds me of Ryan Whalen, and how he once put this song on at a party at his place in like, mid-October or something, and we all went insane and danced and sang our faces off because it was the Best Idea Ever.)

It's a bird, it's a place, it's A GRADUATE STUDENT!

2010-11-18T16:04:00.000-06:00

So now it's 11/16 and I'm STILL furiously annotating - while also grading second portfolios, trying to avoid a major Teaching Fail in these final weeks, and living on almost literally nothing. Seriously, I need to go through the month's expenses with a comb next week because I have *no* idea how this check went so fast. I mean, that's not true - it was overpriced wine, eating out and Chicago. But still.

And now - Superpowers I currently wish I had:

The Power to Stop Polo Overturning his Water Glass! Weak start, I know. But it's driving me insane. Background - the two of them have always loved drinking out of people cups. I don't really understand the allure it holds for them, and it appears to be independent of cleanliness; no matter how clean and new the water in their bowl and how old the water in the glass, they go for the glass every time. They've broken a good number of them this way, by knocking them off tables and such while trying to stick their heads down far enough to get to the liquid. So a few weeks ago, I decided to stop fighting it and give them their own "cat glass." (Really what happened was that I left a pint glass of water on the floor and they practically danced a jig around it every time I was in the room, so I decided to just let things take their course.) I top it off whenever I think of it, they stay better hydrated, we all win. Except that Polo cannot stop knocking the fucking thing over. Not once in the first two weeks, but now it's like, every day. And I don't understand it at all. I've seen it happen enough to have a decent sense of it - he drinks, stops, bats at the glass with a (huge, huge) paw, drinks some more, bats some more, until BOOM! it tips. And somehow he's surprised. I have no clue why he keeps doing it - I'm leaning towards a theory that he's got depth perception issues like that dog in Clean Slate, but that would make his uncanny ability to jump onto crowded side tables without knocking shit over a legit superpower on its own, so who knows. But it's getting old.

The power to shake my students just shy of silly with my MIND! This isn't a unique wish. And a lot of them are doing great - honestly, it's probably more me than them. But come the fuck on, guys. We're in this together. It's an odd group - the majority of them are really great, unique, interesting people, but somehow there is *no* sense of community, all very fragmented and kind of "..."

The power to not be such a pushover in regards to my personal life! Awhile back, I realized dragging myself through a fog of misery created by my inability to stop hoping things with Cesco would somehow work out was probably not very good for me, and took the shockingly proactive step of cutting him out of my life entirely. He was not a huge fan of this, but I thought I'd been clear it was really best for me. And yet magically here we are six weeks later with me helping him revise his CV and essays for grad school applications. I suppose it's not, you know, shocking that I would do this; Brad's training has reduced(/elevated, depending on the day) me to the point where I have an almost Pavlovian response to people who are writing applications for anything - I'm like the Lassie of writing tasks. Plus Lord knows I'd like to see him once again living 800+ miles away from me. But I'm still kind of at a loss as to how he wrangled me from complete radio silence into exchanging lighthearted CV-themed banter within the space of less than a week. To channel Ron Burgundy - I'm not even mad I'm just impressed. Mad will come when I read his personal statement and realize all over again how much the universe conspired to fuck me over on this one, but even then it will be largely channeled at myself. It's the painfully ironic romantic clusterfuck that just keeps on giving, I guess.

The power to make money appear in my checking account! I literally cannot patronize any of the seven hundred-odd Madison establishments that only take cash because I have a balance of 5.92. It's just wins all around for me right now. Christ.

The power to go back in time and sign Leigh and I up for presentation dates that aren't December 1st! I'm sorry, but asking me to give an even vaguely formal presentation about my final paper three full weeks before said paper is due is just ridiculous and unreasonable. It's asking us all to engage in a collective act of fantasy - Mike will pretend it's sane and logical to ask us to present work that clearly, absolutely does not exist yet, I will pretend that what I'm saying actually forms part of some existing seminar paper-esque piece of work, and my classmates will pretend they care. It's just pure farce designed to put me in my grave early and ensure that stress makes me as annoyed by and annoying to my family over Thanksgiving as possible.

The power to remember where I'm allowed to park my car on a given day! Seriously Madison, what the fuck is up with your parking regulations? Come on. Though I've discovered that the alternate-side thing may not be as awful as I'd expected - but it's still annoying.

Maybe I should ditch this little white rental on the interstate

2010-11-16T21:08:00.000-06:00

[Note: Started this like over a week ago. Oh Becca - can't even finish blog posts on time.]

Oh man. My life may have highs and lows in terms of interest/enjoyment level, but it's alllll maxed out for sheer content. Yikes. Daylight savings has begun - and as always, this is when the semester kicks it up a notch.

Not all in a bad way though. The trip to Chicago for Ben Folds with Nora and Nathan was pretty epic, and worth the effort that went into the planning. We made good travel partners - nice, easy dynamics, and the best parts of traveling with three people. Three's tough sometimes - we all know the adage - but I think that when the balance is even among the three people, without one dramatically stronger or weaker bond, it's pretty much the ideal group size, especially for small experience-based trips. Five's getting unwieldy, and you won't get to talk to everyone, and everyone ends up feeling like they missed something. Four inevitably becomes two groups of two. But we made a good trio.

There may have been a bit of confusion arriving in the city (Becca forgetting where the directions she printed actually took us, parking on the wrong 300 block of Ohio and consequently forfeiting $14 for parking). But there was tasty Indian food for dinner, and a great show. It's funny...seeing a Ben Folds show isn't quite like seeing other people I really like. It's in part because his body of work is so huge that you don't go in hoping for one particular favorite, since A) you likely have too many to pick and B) it's hopeless. Yet you can depend on hearing a good chunk of the classics - all of the big ones post-Suburbs, really, at this show. The nostalgia factor is really what makes the magic though. Like most people there, I've been listening to Ben Folds since before I could drive. And then once I could, it was Rocking the Suburbs in my jury-rigged stereo. I (or rather, the audience) am on the cover of his live album giving him the finger. Three of his songs have served as crutches during breakups over the years. And now he's partnered with my favorite author on the latest addition to the canon. He looms large for me. And though we've all got different Foldsian narratives, it's the same for everyone. Maybe you love his songs because you've been fired, had an abortion, been advised not to join the armed forces by a parent, had a friend take a shitton of acid and spontaneously convert to Baptism. Or maybe not. But we've all been in love, all been dumped, all found life incredibly nonsensical yet moving at some point or another, and at a good number of those points Ben Folds provided the soundtrack. So when you see him play...it's not so much about that specific show as it is with other bands.

Which meant I wasn't phased by some of the technical fuckups (nothing terrible, but limited how well his voice came through sometimes), or the fact that it's clearly unnatural and (at least now, at the tour's outset) somewhat tough for him to sing words someone else wrote. It was still awesome. And of course not everyone was quarter-lifers like the three of us. I saw some snowy peaks in there, and the guy behind us was practically a child. (His face when Ben played "Underground" in the encore was priceless...he was like, "what is this and why the hell is it being played where a major hit should go?") Not a huge crowd for the venue, which meant all was civil and we had a good view. And I was reminded why I always make the New Year's resolution to see more concerts: it's because they're awesome.

Post-show we hit up the Violet Hour, a lounge/bar that in daily life would be far too swank for me but is perfect for occasional drop-ins and makes me feel cool, because apparently anyone who's got taste remotely like mine has been to and loved it. I'd been once before with Maeve and Co., right at the end of MA spring, and while I had a great time, the fact that I was coming off a major life change or two and miiiight have been dressed like an elementary school teacher kind of limited the magic.

We had to wait about half an hour to get in, which wasn't unexpected - but I'd forgotten the way lines like that, even ones consisting of groups, tend to wait in relative silence. I hate that - not that that'll be a surprise to anyone. It's boring, and in addition we were all in danger of sobering up and falling asleep, which would have been tragic. So we all rose to the occasion and played 20-odd minutes of "Kill, Marry, Fuck" at a quiet but not inaudible volume while waiting for admission into a major Chicago hot spot. (The looks we got from both the couple behind us and the host when we turned to theorist groupings were truly priceless.) Once inside, we settled into a lively conversation that covered everything from Marxist theory (naturally, with Nora there) to 9/11 to college hijinx. We also consumed some of the best cocktails it's ever been my privilege to drink. And I might have made us do whiskey shots. We ended up more or less closing the place out, then catching a cab (such luxury! I'm going to be living on Ramen for the rest of the month) (not like I wouldn't have been anyhow) back to the hotel and crashing immediately despite Nathan and I's intentions to catch Nora up on some major YouTube classics.

Woke up a bit worse for wear, Nathan drove us home, he and I are obsessed with the a cappella version of "Effington," we stopped at a creepily middle-America Dairy Queen in Janesville, all crashed when we got back to our homes. Great weekend. It reminded me that adventures can actually be better now that I'm old.

And then of course despite being certain I'd be too busy and tired to go out Sat night, I ended up at the Mason with the larger gang until 2:30. And regretted it not at all. I'm a lucky girl in my friends.

I did manage, through what feels like Herculean effort on my part but was probably just reasonably Fear-motivated catch-up, to finish my entire academic to-do list for the weekend. Of course, I wrote it with an eye to making it modest and actually doable given my plans, but still. Small victories and all. It's going to be a rough week until Wed is over, then will just be the usual "OMG it's mid-November fuck"-style week. Things are both helped and hindered by the fact that I'm incredibly excited about my VisRhet final paper - I just want to work on it. But of course I have no time to do so - or rather, what time I might be able to scrape up is needed for the 25-source annotated bibliography detailing not my research for the paper but "the conversation" I'm entering. Yes this is good for me blah blah, but it can't help but feel chafing when all I want to do is run with my topic.
----------

Lucky Guy

2010-10-17T21:59:00.000-05:00

Turns out Dexter is a much better fit for my current mood than Community, funny as that show may be. See, Community is too relatable and too alarming - too many jokes about Britta being old, the charms of sexual tension, the joy of a life where getting a D in Spanish is your biggest concern. Dexter though - it works. It's unrealistic in just the right way, takes place in a setting I've visited but never known, and revolves around a dude with no feelings - exactly the quality in which I desire lessons! I tip my hat to you, Showtime. Way to come through.

Well this is surprising

2010-10-16T20:50:00.000-05:00

I'm proud of myself.

This isn't something I find myself noticing all that often anyhow, but the fact that I'm feeling that despite having spent most of yesterday eating three days' worth of food while watching 20 episodes of Community is especially surprising. (And I wish I was exaggerating either of those numbers, but I am sadly not.)

I'm not doing perfectly. I still sleep too much, watch too much TV, drink too much, don't read enough for class, never cook. And that all gets me down a lot, because I know I'm capable of doing better than I have been. I can take better care of myself, work harder, make more adult decisions (in quality and quantity). And that's all still true now, at the end of this week.

But things are looking up all the same. I worked out twice, I started really thinking about final papers, I went and talked to someone about my teaching insecurities, I drank less. And I made an very difficult decision about my personal life and stuck to it - even under duress. I also mailed back an RSVP card the day I got it. That's big.

What I need to remember is that I'll never be doing everything perfectly. So what's important to notice is the improvements I *am* making, the good things I find ways to do anyhow. People close to me have been telling me this for a few years now, but I'm starting to believe that I really can frequently be too hard on myself. But it's important to give myself credit for the things I accomplish, however small - because if not, that's how I end up believing I can't do anything.

I actually had a nightmare the other night about this - in which I had a paper rejected from an undergraduate research symposium on picture books and fled weeping into MBD's office pleading for affirmation that I wasn't in fact just an experiment in - and this is 100% true - "the restorative power of rhetoric." The "nightmare" part is clearly just how mortifying it was that I had done this at all, since it was one of those dreams that felt suuuuuuper real. Ugh.

So. Yes. I need to be less negative about myself and remember I'm not entirely a weak-willed fuck-up with no work ethic. I can make changes, I can have good ideas, I can be strong enough to stand up for what's best for me.

And I can eat like "a fat girl trapped in a thin girl's body" as Justin famously put it, and I can appreciate the genius of Community. (Even if I sometimes wish a little too deeply that my life looked more like that - god, so much cleanly resolved drama! And so much entertaining sexual tension! It's like my dream world, except in Colorado and...well, at community college. But who knows - with this market, I'll be lucky for Prof. Slater's job.)

Thoughts from today

2010-10-14T21:51:00.000-05:00

1. The clock turned to 9:00 just as I looked up at it to see if I needed to go to the liquor store. God damn Madison and their stupid laws.

2. I went to the gym today! (This was #1 until the wine thing. Friggin' A.) I'm genuinely proud of myself. I've been saying I'll go practically every single day for weeks now, but last night I was like "...alright, you can do better than this, Becca." And so I went. Even though I almost had a panic attack in the locker room because I'm getting anxious about my own work and my students are crushing my spirit in every way and I hadn't worked out in ages and was scared I'd be shockingly weak. And as pretty much anyone including myself could have told me, it was great. I'm not even as criminally out of shape as I thought. So Imma try and make that a thing. Going again tomorrow...

3. As mentioned above, teaching is kiiiiind of killing me lately. I feel like I've spent a quarter of my waking hours this semester commenting on papers, I've genuinely spent hours and hours planning and preparing for this class - but lately it's just...not good. There's a few kids who just are clearly not taking the class seriously, a lot of them aren't reading, and this week I just...couldn't think of what to do about it, let alone what to do *with* them in class. Sigh. I just emailed their grades on the first paper back though, and I suspect that the attitudes of some of them will change fairly quickly. Surprise! Just because I said I'm always willing to work with you because I want you all to do well does not mean I'm going to give you an A for slapping five new sentences in your draft and calling it a revision - especially since 3 of them are run-ons. Sheesh. I know I'm chill in class, but come on.

4. As a result of #3, I'm not commenting on any of their (new) drafts tonight. I can't handle any more right now. I need them done by Monday night, but that's doable even so. So soon I will call it a night and attempt to pretend the beers in my fridge are something other than Pabst. Pabst Light. (Stupid, stupid Madsion...)

5. My cats are particularly awesome lately. They often cuddle, but lately it's just been a whole new level of affectionate adorableness. And I was incredibly pleased by all the attention they got at my party last weekend - especially from AK, who validated me in a huge way by saying that Polo smells particularly good for a cat. Though I'm less charmed by Penny's new habit of opening and closing the cabinets loudly in the middle of the night. We've been Scotch-taping them so far but that's not a viable long-term solution, so I'm going to have to go around and screw child locks into them all at some point. Because I've just got SO much time on my hands that I needed another home improvement project.

6. I still need stuff on my bedroom walls in a major way. I bought some frames cheap at Target to work on the problem, but the major issue - above my bed - remains unresolved. And I'm not happy with the furniture layout yet either. The bed's new spot is good, but now I think I need another night table to create some symmetry. And another lamp for it. The windows also need at least a basic white curtain. I'm still not sure how best to do it with the three of them together, but I'm leaning towards a basic valance and two extra-long white tie-back panels. When this will all happen I have no idea, but it's a semi-priority...I don't like not liking my bedroom. At least 2/3 need to get done this term.

7. Community is hilarious. I'm working through season 1 and I'm so hooked. I find it strangely realistic for something so over-the-top...taken alone, all the characters are eerily plausible. Except Senor Chang. And the dean.

8. Going to NH for Thanksgiving! I'll be gone a few days longer than is responsible, but I haven't had a Thanksgiving with the entire family in a long time, so I'm excited.

9. I think at this point I have to just accept and embrace the fact that there's something about Brandon Flowers that I am powerless to resist. Or his voice and general musical aesthetic, anyhow. His solo album? Couldn't tell you if it's actually any good. Don't have any favorite tracks so far, after 4-5 listens while working. But I know I don't not like it.

10. I still need to buy those damn Ben Folds tix

Back in Business

2010-09-14T20:10:00.000-05:00

So I'm currently sitting at my brand spanking new (and oh so artfully assembled) desk, eating pineapple out of the can with a side of tortilla chips, a glass of wine at my side, taking a break from commenting on my first round of student papers. And you know what? It feels kind of good. Sure I'm behind and have tons to do, but...I know how to do this. And I know what needs to be done.

I am so incredibly pleased to have a desk again finally - and a desk that makes me happy no less. I haven't had a chance to organize it or anything, but it's still nice. Ideally it'd have more drawers, but since I've got a mostly empty bookshelf right next to it, I should be able to improvise something. While I might have been able to find something cheaper, it would have meant waiting still longer to get one, and as a person who does 75% of her work at home, I couldn't wait. Plus even though this one isn't exactly my Platonic ideal of a desk, it's attractive and new and feels good to me. Danny Sexton once justified spending some huge amount on bed linens (which makes him sound hilariously unlike the guy he in fact is) by telling me that since you spend 1/3 of your day in bed, it's somewhere you should really love being. Though I still haven't bought those $400 sheets, I have always remembered that, and it definitely guided me in my decision to splurge a little and get something new. (The fact that at 26 a low-end IKEA desk is still a splurge is a lament for another post.)

But yeah. I still have some unpacking/organizing to do in the study, but having a workspace at home that I like being in is really nice. I've even got a sweet nickle-plated Pixar lamp (http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/60146764) to make me look extra-legit. So in six weeks or so when 90% of my time is split between seminar rooms and this study, I'll at least be comfortable, well-lit and trendy.

So...maybe I'd like this to be 1/15th of the male population's Bible

2010-09-10T01:24:00.000-05:00

Oh Don Draper. Even though you're violently antitype as well as antihero, I still kind of want to go on a bad date with you.

Though I mean, any fool could do it, right?

Also, as stated on Facebook, steps one and two - and hell, maybe also three and four - apply equally well to performing in grad seminars.

----

In other news - not to jinx things, but I'm feeling shockingly stable and decisive about both my personal and professional life. Which is remarkable considering it's been years since both were at such stages of upheaval. True, this is largely because I had no professional like until I came to UW and therefore have never before articulated a connection between them in this fashion, but still. Let me bask in my moment. Lord knows all I'll have to bask in for the next 9 months is Brad's loving displeasure about my inevitable failings as an employee and the warmth of knowing that I put myself a year behind to join a field I'm slightly better at but understand vaguely if at all.

...this post just became the definition of taking what you can get. But even so - I got unmistakeably angry up in someone's grill this week. In BeccaLand, that's a gold star no matter how you cut it.

Plus, Adam comes tomorrow. So even if I could hardly call it the best week ever, it's had a lot going for it.

...and despite some guilt about not working much for school yesterday or today, I find I feel something very close to happiness. For reasons I created myself. Plus the realization I have some sweet friends.

It's a wonderful life, girl. You might even end up a Capra film with the last scene intact.*

*Incalculable Becca points if you know the reference and are not also Jamie Anderson.

Not Martha yet, but...baby steps, baby steps

2010-08-29T15:00:00.000-05:00

So not to jinx it, but I think I've become a neat person.

Even though I've been trending this way for a few years now - really since graduation - it still kind of shocks me to realize this. But yesterday evening as I tidied away a camera, a camera cord, a box of crayons and a coloring book because they were "cluttering up" my living room, it hit me that I've been regular and persistent about keeping my living space very tidy for four straight months now. It's beyond habit - it's just how I've become. If my house is not clean, I can't deal.

Now, this is not to say I'm a clean freak. With my cats and my schedule, that is still unattainable. But I feel I now can honestly say I Live Like a Grown-Up. I don't think everyone has "cleans house regularly and does not tolerate clutter" as a large part of that designation, nor do I think everyone should. But I grew up in a messy (and admittedly comfortable and much-loved) house, and even though I was the laziest and worst child ever at helping with cleaning it, it did leave a mark on me in some way. I think because I felt guilty about not cleaning I've made the act part of my definition of responsibility - if I'm responsible for myself and doing it well, my house should be clean.

We'll see how this goes when school starts. But I'm optimistic. It makes me feel good, damn it, to clean everything and then enjoy my nice apartment. And I love where I live, so that helps too.

Will I next conquer my incredible inability to remain organized? Stay tuned...

Movin' On Up...

2010-08-13T12:56:00.000-05:00

So the vacation of 1135 is in full swing now, and while it's just as annoying a task as ever, I've reached the point where I'm not really stressed about it anymore. 90% of my stuff is packed, I can see I have enough boxes, half Andy's books are moved to his new place...basically the way ahead is pretty clear, and I feel confident we'll finish in plenty of time. (Well - that we'll finish in time. Plenty might be pushing it.)

Now the only thing really dragging on me is Saturday. Up at 7:30 to pick up truck, having to drive and park a 16' truck on Madison's tiny streets, moving Renee out and in, moving anything left of Andy's out and in, moving the few things of Gwen's left out and wherever, moving my stuff out, finding a place to stash the truck overnight, finishing the (likely significant) cleaning remaining over here, and getting to sleep in time to not wake up a half-dead shell of a person so that I can finish this horrible process by moving in to the new place. Also - moving Polo. Bah. (Though Virginia is awesome and has offered me use of her second bedroom to house them for the night, bless her.)

I had my big Sad Moment about the move when I got home last night...walking in to this torn-apart chaos storm and realizing that no, I don't really live here anymore. I had a great, great year in this apartment. I loved it, put so much work into it with Andy, loved being here so much I basically became a shut-in, brought the cats home here for the first time, threw my first surprise party, had my first custom curtains made up for it...I loved it, and I'm sad to go. The new place is going to be great, no doubt, but it's not home yet, and this was. It's definitely not all bitter though - living here showed me I can in fact live like a (quasi-)adult, and hammered home even further how much happier I am when I live somewhere I like.

So onward - to a new neighborhood, new roommate, new place. Without the memories, it's true...but with amenities I thought I'd only see after tenure, the Weary and loads of awesome people just around the corner, and with all sorts of new decorating possibilities.

It's time.

Holy Relatives, Batman

2010-07-26T15:31:00.000-05:00

The following is the text of an email I received from my grandfather today:

"Fifty Years of Math 1959 - 2009 (in the USA )

Last week I purchased a burger at Burger King for $1.58. The counter girl
took my $2 and I was digging for my change when I pulled 8 cents from my
pocket and gave it to her. She stood there, holding the nickel and 3
pennies, while looking at the screen on her register. I sensed her
discomfort and tried to tell her to just give me two quarters , but she
hailed the manager for help. While he tried to explain the transaction to
her, she stood there and cried. Why do I tell you this? Because of the
evolution in teaching math since the 1950s:

1. Teaching Math In 1950s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5
of the price. What is his profit ?

2. Teaching Math In 1960s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is 4/5
of the price, or $80. What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1970s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is
$80. Did he make a profit?

4. Teaching Math In 1980s

A logger sells a truckload of lumber for $100. His cost of production is $80
and his profit is $20. Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 1990s

A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and
inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the
preservation of our woodlands. He does this so he can make a profit of $20.
What do you think of this way of making a living? Topic for class
participation after answering the question: How did the birds and squirrels
feel as the logger cut down their homes? (There are no wrong answers, and if
you feel like crying, it's ok. )

6. Teaching Math In 2009

Un hachero vende una carretada de maderapara $100. El costo de la
producciones es $80. Cuanto dinero ha hecho?"

...what the hell am I supposed to do about this? Like, not necessarily in an "I feel like I have to take action!" sense. Because frankly, one incredibly depressing conversation with him about his views on the Arizona law in which he repeatedly insisted his views were not at all racist and I was ultimately reduced to responding solely through sarcasm which he completely and utterly missed and led my mother to chastise me severely later on was enough. It's just so incredibly weird to me because in all other respects he's an incredibly progressive guy. He barely blinked an eye when my brother came out (and like the *entire family* except me knew years before he was told), he's got an affectionate-head-shaking attitude towards my father's extreme religious commitment, and he was incredibly supportive of my grandmother starting her own business in the 60s and of women's rights in general. But refer to someone as African-American in front of him and you'll get a 5-minute speech on how annoying that term because "they" only invented it so they could grab up all your tax dollars. Like...how does that happen? Is being in the workforce for 50 years so soul-crushing that it inevitably leads to this kind of blatantly economics-motivated myopia? Are racist views on immigration a little-known side effect of lupus? Beats me, but it's made for some hella awkward moments at family gatherings recently. (And also given rise to an inside joke between me and my siblings that must sound so off-color if you don't realize it's making fun of my grandfather and not minority groups.)

Anyhow. I should definitely be packing or working on my syllabus right now instead of writing this, but whatever. I failed so completely at most of my summer objectives that I feel like I've reallllly got to come through with my resolution to blog/journal more. I wrote 1300 words on a Stickie last night between 1 and 2am alone. Go me!

Songs I Forgot to Mention

2010-07-26T01:56:00.000-05:00

"Past and Pending," The Shins: Never fails to make me feel peaceful in my life, if only for five minutes and twenty-two seconds.

"Electric Feel," MGMT: The theme song to my trip to LA, the best vacation I've ever had. I could count on my fingers the number of times I've listened to it since then - it's a wonderful song, but it evokes the feelings of that trip so strongly that I'm reluctant to weaken that power by invoking it too often.

"The Dream of Evan and Chan," Dntel: Can't believe I forgot this the first time around. How can a song be both a perfect account of the sensible nonsense that is the most vivid and emotional of dreams and also so incredibly universal? It's always perfect until something rings to bring you back to this world of concrete and pragmatism. "I won't let go, I won't let go/even if you say so oh no..."It's a wrenching anthem to snooze buttons, essentially - the heartrending description of why you wish you could have slept just a few minutes more, why you tried so hard to stay asleep a little longer. To the best kind of dreams - the ones that inspired Inception, the ones that serve as the subconscious spark to the castles you build in the air when you just can't read anymore and need to lean back in your chair and shut your eyes.

I think it's telling that at this current place in my life, these three songs evoke the strongest emotional response of any of those I've listed in this blog - the three I forgot. This actually could serve as a litmus test for how well people know me - putting a finger on the reason the songs that move me the most did not get discussed in my initial posting.

...well, maybe "the strongest" is in itself a little strong. Because now I'm listening to "Alone in Kyoto" and lord in heaven do I wish I could Delorean myself back to that evening. I might have felt even lower then than I do now, but at least it was a low that held a future inside it.

I Solemnly Swear I am Totally Awesome

2010-07-17T21:38:00.000-05:00

From GChat:

Jamie: you, madam, really know how to take an idea and run with it

...four years later, and I've still got it. Miss those guys so much.
------
Also, on a totally unrelated note: One of my major, major pet peeves is when TV or movies show people enhancing images in a way that's COMPLETELY unrealistic. The best example I can think of off the top of my head is in FlashForward, where the FBI image tech enhances a frame of a man in a baseball stadium taken by a stadium security camera from the other side of the field enough to see the ring on his finger. I mean what the fuck. Even my 4-year-old cousin knows how megapixels work. Come on.

However, I just watched The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and was pleasantly surprised to see the main character coax hitherto unnoticed detail from an old photograph in a more or less realistic way. I think he even uses iPhoto (apparently the Swedes love Apple stuff, btw). I knew the scene was coming and was all primed to call bullshit (or "shenanigans" as my new blog obsession would say), but it actually looked like something one could recreate in real life.

The whole movie was like that, actually - eerily real-looking. The actors are handsome/pretty when appropriate. People have pockmarks, wrinkles, signs of aging - even the "sexy" female characters. And on and on. Given the nature of the film, this lends everything a suuuuper creepy sense of possibility. Hollywood take note.

How does "Dr. Rebecca Murphy" sound?

2010-07-17T03:04:00.000-05:00

Oh. Hells. Yes.

Sorry NPH, but you've been dethroned. (At least for the time being - let's be realistic here.) I'd be all over this man in the hottest of hot seconds. Yikes. I'm actually thrilled I had no clue he was going to be in the movie - I was so excited I almost squealed when he came on.

I mean no I didn't! I behaved in a demure and totally cool way as is befitting the future wife of such a tall, dark and hunky dude.

Oh yeah - all the non-Cillian Murphy bits of Inception were awesome as well.

Music Affairs: Albums that are Made of Awesome, Part I

2010-07-16T17:23:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: Don't interpret the following long and self-indulgent stroll down my musical memory lane as an indicator that I think I'm so interesting and cool that you'd all want to read a novella about my taste in albums. I just really enjoy thinking about this kind of thing lately and having a record to look back on later. And it's cathartic as all hell.

I guess that applies to my entire blog - and most people's, I would hazard. I could and likely will eventually write a meta-esque entry about how I think keeping a journal is the best thing since sliced bread, but for now - albums!

-------------

Looking at the list now, even this half, I'm thinking I should arrange them in some kind of order. But that's a lot of cutting and pasting for this lazy girl, so I'll leave it as it is - in the order I thought of them. Part II forthcoming.

Rufus Wainwright, Release the Stars: Yet another album I came to love in Limoges. It's interesting to me how many albums there are from my year there on this list. Songs too, really. I think it's because I spent like 40% of the time I wasn't sleeping or working walking around the city listening to music. I spent more time listening to music in those 10 months than in any other, and it shows on both lists. The moral is clear, I guess - want to find music you adore? Listen to a lot! - but somehow I haven't gotten back on that wagon. Anyways...kind of like with Crane Wife, Release the Stars doesn't necessarily have my favorite Rufus songs on it. In fact, it positively does not. (BTW, in no real order: "Poses," "Do I Disappoint You," "Greek Song," "Beauty Mark"...ok there are way too many to list, but "What a World" is probably tops.) Part of the reason this album has such a place in my heart is because it's clearly not his masterpiece. Yeah, there's some impressive stuff here. For example, "Do I Disappoint You" is a really, really complex and impressive track; I seem to recall reading that it has an ungodly number of tracks and that the Roofster himself mixed them all as well as writing all the instrumental parts. "Between My Legs" (though I vaguely recall critics being down on it) is a different style for him that, through its complex layers of tracks and rising and falling energy and engagingly weird lyrics ("...and I'll shed a tear between my legs" - what. the. fuck). But unlike Want One or Want Two, this album sticks in my mind not as the vehicle for a few great tunes, but as one whole thing. Which is to me what defines a favorite album. Yes there's the inevitable "Nobody's Off the Hook" or two, but (and I'm quickly realizing this is almost as much a function of how I approached the album as of its contents) when at the end of any given song from this album, my brain fills in the beginning of the next track and is shaken for a fraction of a second when I realize that no, you're not listening to the album, the next song is actually "Shake Your Groove Thing." But I love Release as much for its musical merit as for its nostalgic mystery - even if there are for sure some weaker spots. (I mean, it's not Sam's Town - see below.)

Fiona Apple, Tidal: Hands down one of the most formative, influential and beloved albums of my life. I forget if she gave me a copy or if I bought my own, but either way it was my friend Laine who got me into the album. And we *loved* that CD. It was perfect for us at the time - musically rich, controversial (see: "Criminal" video, aka the sexiest music video of all time), and FULL of emotional songs about dudes. And as will come as zero surprise to most people who know me, I was *constantly* emo about some dude (usually my first bf, upon whom I was "totally crushing!" for years). And Laine was too. So between us we must have "OMG I've been listening to [insert song] all day because it TOTALLY sums up things with [insert dude]" over at least 2/3 of the album. I think possibly even the song that I realized later is blatantly about the time she was raped. So that's weird. But I do genuinely love this album for its own sake. Her voice is so beautiful, and the songs just kind of...wash over me when I listen to it. It's stilling and stirring all at once. I sang "Never is a Promise" in my school's big talent show senior year, and various others for various other concerts...they're good solo candidates because they make it so easy on you. The emotion is written right in.

Pete Yorn, Musicforthemorningafter: Imma come right on and say it - I love Pete Yorn. I love him. I even loved Nightcrawler, despite it's being *incredibly* uneven. I know a lot of people are like "meh, another singer-songwriter," but I love his voice and I love his lyrics. And his guitar. And his sexy, sexy hair. True story: I *finally* had tickets to see him this fall and then forgot until the day before that it was a Tuesday and I had to work in the Writing Center. *sob* Like many of these, it combines genuine musical appeal with good associations; I bought this album my first summer in college, a summer of waiting tables, hanging out on the Cape, and feeling independent. They also played it in Tryst (my favorite DC coffee place), so it smacks of evening work sessions and delicious, delicious chai. The MOST delicious chai. And everyone knows that's what gives an album staying power.

The Postal Service, Give Up: For sure on of my Desert Island Discs. There's so much going for it, especially to me personally: opens with a song about DC, light and easy to listen to as background, good lyrics, and original (or it was at the time). And perhaps most importantly, it was (along with Yoshimi and the Garden State soundtrack) music I fell in love to. I actually stopped listening to it for almost a year for just that reason, but that only gave it staying power. And despite the nostalgia factor, it has really aged well for me. Back then my favorite tracks were "Nothing Better," "Natural Anthem" and "Such Great Heights;" now it's "District Sleeps Alone" and "Brand New Colony" all the way. God, "District." I'm still not sure I entirely understand what it's about ("And I am finally seeing/That I was the one worth leaving"...what exactly does that mean?) but damn can it fill me with slightly melancholy-tinged peace every time. (But my all-time #1 Postal Service song is "The Dream of Evan and Chan," which is possibly the perfect song and, I am realizing now, a glaring omission from my earlier music post.)

DC Talk, Jesus Freak: Yeah yeah I used to listen to contemporary Christian music and even had a subscription to CCM back in the day. A lot of the music I liked back then was crap I would not be caught dead having in my iTunes library let alone in my ears. But I actually think Jesus Freak is a pretty sweet album. And I'll admit it - I still occasionally listen to some stuff off it. "In the Light" is a great 90s song! Plus I have soooooo many fond memories of watching Tim King playing it at youth group and feeling the Spirit/lusting after him. (Sometimes I think as much as 30% of my religious fervor back then was just repressed longing for all the *incredibly* hot Christian dudes with whom I was constantly surrounded. Man they were smoking. But as a result I've come to associate any guy holding a guitar with enforced abstinence.) It's exactly what a Christan album should be - fervent, stirring, and secular-sounding enough to be relateable for people under 30. I mean, they manage to rap the story of John the Baptist in a way that isn't (entirely) laughable. It might even be a better verse than those of "Empire State." (It also refers to the Pharisees as "tripping," which I adore.)

Maroon 5, Songs for Jane: The position of this album on the list is tenuous, because GOD they overplayed it. However, the musical boner I had for this when it came out would make Lexington Steel blush, so I felt it had to be included. I used to go out for drives at night just so I could listen to it (since that was back when I could fill my gas tank with the change I found in the couch cushions). And it's full of great tracks - it made them famous for a reason, I feel. "She Will Be Loved," despite being so overplayed my ears bleed anytime it comes on, is beautiful. True story: right after they played this when I saw them at 930 Adam pointed out a couple that had been making out through the whole song; we all thought he was going to embarrass them horribly, but in fact he said he dug it, and that's why he wrote the song. (I too may have fogged a few car windows with that baby playing.) And I still work out to "Harder to Breathe" from time to time - by FAR one of the sexiest songs I can think of. And then there's "Sunday Morning." And "Not Coming Home." I couldn't contain my love for this album and pushed it on everyone I saw; I actually have a memory of giving a mid-40s gas station attendant the hard sell. (Who am I kidding - I do that kind of thing all the time. See: the Kindle, my hairstylist, living on the East side, minoring in Comp/Rhet, etc.) The best part is that I got into them like ten minutes before they blew up, which put me in the rare position of being able to play Musical Elitist. For all my scorn of those people, I completely understand them - the warmth I feel inside when someone I've loved blows up is both shaming and incredibly sweet. Also, to use an Andyism: Adam Levine looks like someone I'd like to go on a bad date with. So. Hot. Jamie and I went through a period sophomore spring (aka The Best Semester Of All Time Ever For Serious) where we watched the video for "This Love" conservatively once a day for two weeks.

Gavin Degraw, Chariot: Now here's someone I was legitimately listening to for ages before he got big. And though I know he's not an artist who gives my musical taste a lot of cred, I will freely admit to thinking he's sweet. (Though his newer stuff is less impressive.) I saw him open for Maroon 5, then went out and bought his CD immediately the following day because I could not get "Chariot" out of my head for love or money. And like nearly all the albums on this list, nearly all the tracks are really strong. And of course, at the time there were two or three of them that made me all "oh em gee, this totally describes some aspect of my current 19-year-old life!" (I'm looking at you, "Follow Through.") He's also really great live - big smiles, makes his audience feel involved and loved, funny, and just generally looks like he loves what he's doing. (Except for the time he played at the AU student center, when he was not nearly as into it. I lost a little love then, but it's hard to blame him - at that point he was at the height of his popularity, so I can see how playing for an audience of 100 college kids in a glorified food court might not get the adrenalin pumping.) [Edit: So I just realized I left out my #1 story about Why Gavin Degraw is a Cool Dude: when I saw him at 930 the second time, he waited around after the show for at least 2 hours so that everyone who wanted to could meet him. At this time I had a *major* crush on him, bigger than I have ever had on a musician since. Like, rivaling Jessie's love of Andrew Bird. So when I met him I tried to play cool, but my friend Kate outed me and was basically like, "she's playing it cool but in fact she wants to have your babies." And I was like "...yeah, it's true. I even did The FanGirl." Which he then asked me to demonstrate (rapt look, one hand on heart and the other extended towards the stage, usually while shrieking). Upon seeing this he laughed, gave me a huuuuge hug and a heartbreaking smile and ruined me for other men. So that's why he rocks.]

Writing up this list has really highlighted how much the death of Napster changed my music habits. The fact that you downloaded single songs as opposed to albums meant that when you fell in love with a new artist and wanted to dl all their songs, you didn't necessarily end up with any complete albums - and it certainly was not in order. So while I absolutely loved Elliot Smith and listened the crap out of many, many of his songs, I never had a sense of his work as being albums. Same goes for everything by Ryan Adams that's not Rock and Roll, a lot of Ben Folds, pre-Keep it Together Guster (which will be making an appearance in part II), every Beyonce track I've ever had, and on and on. God. Napster was the shit, wasn't it? It also makes me realize that I should go to more concerts. Like I needed reminding.

Next time: the rest of the Limoges collection and the Summer of Love, plus a few newbies. And the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, oddly. But I stand by it!

You know what song I hadn't thought about in ages but is still one of the sexiest ever?

2010-07-14T17:42:00.001-05:00

"Criminal." Daaaaaaaaamn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFOzayDpWoI

Note to Self:

2010-07-13T21:50:00.000-05:00

Never be unemployed again. Seriously. You're nigh-on useless without firm-time-sensitive responsibilities to fulfill. For fuck's sake.

Oh So Educational

2010-07-12T15:27:00.000-05:00

So I was ~~killing time~~ relaxing this afternoon by reading through the archives of my new favorite blog, 2birds1blog, and I found this entry about a sex manual written in 1969. The whole post is worth a read, but my favorite nugget is this one, from a section about male homosexuality:

Isn't homosexuality kind of dangerous?
Homosexuals thrive on danger.

"S and M"? What does that mean?
Technically, sadist and masochist. Literally, trouble. Those who combine homosexuality with sadistic and masochistic aberrations are among the cruelest people who walk this earth. In ancient times they found employment as professional torturers and executioners. More recently they filled the ranks of Hilter's Gestapo and SS.

Now, I'm aware this is depressing and more than a little sick, but...admit it, it's also kind of hilarious. Especially because I have a gay friend who's slightly into BDSM and the mental image of him in an executioner's hood, medieval-style, makes me laugh to the point of tears.

But the best thing about this is that I too own a laughably outdated sex manual by David Reuben, MD. It's slightly more up-to-date, having been published in 1974, but it is still so. Incredibly. Funny. It answers questions such as "what kind of surprises come with nipple-pinching?" and "but *why* do adults masturbate?" This thing is for sure making an appearance at the next Happy Hour I host. Hours of fun.

But the real cherry on top here is how I got ahold of the book: I stole it from the Jail Reading Group donations bin. I'm not exactly proud of this fact, but come on - how could you not??? The cover alone informs me that it's "the most important contribution to my sexual happiness," penned by the author of "Any Woman Can!" If that's not good salesmanship I don't know what is.

Happily AU After

2010-07-10T19:04:00.000-05:00

So I'm about to go clean my apartment and myself so as to be presentable for people tonight, but I have something to say that can't wait -

Maeve is the greatest. The. Greatest.

The greatest what, you ask? There are so many answers to that question. The best hostess. The best interior decorator. The best at performing well in academia and corporate America. (Honorable mention for EV here.) The best shopping buddy. And the best friend I've got within 1200 miles.

Now, Maeve is always all these things. But I appreciate them extra right now because I just got home from a 2-night trip to visit her in Chicago. And what a trip it was. Despite making the plans with me at the very last second, Maeve arranged to "work from home" Friday and spent the day shopping and gossiping with me, as well as staying up late Thursday to fill me up with delicious food and her brother's wine. And...the whole visit was just so, so much fun. Maeve and I don't visit nearly enough considering how close we live, and every time I see her I think how much we need to get together more. I'm hoping this will be the trip that finally gets that all the way into my thick head, and I think it will be - I'm already planning a follow-up to this visit (possibly with a friend or two in tow? stay tuned...)

However, the #1 reason Maeve wins the Friend of the Month (possibly Season or even Year, depending on how her carpet and sheets recover) is because of how incredibly solicitous, gracious and chill she was when I woke her from a sound sleep by scratching timidly at her door at 1am last night, then whispering "Maeve? I'm SO sorry...but I kind of threw up ALL OVER your apartment."

Of course, I don't remember her being any of those things at the time. But she was still all those things - even making gentle and well-deserved jokes at my expense! - this morning when I woke up on her couch. I actually laid there for 30 minutes or so debating whether or not I could get away with leaving a note and some money for a carpet shampooer and sneaking out to avoid the inevitable mortification. But then she and Pete woke up, Pete went out for liquids and McDonald's, and the choice was made for me. Like I said, she seemed genuinely willing to laugh about it, and in retrospect it is pretty hilarious now that the cleaning part is (mostly) over.

I'm going to place 30% of the blame on Pete though - mostly because I can, and because I love quantifying things like blame. We'd all been drinking together on the back deck and I was fine then - Maeve actually was the one who faded first, heading to bed. But I really wanted to go for a walk, and so Pete went out with me. And took me to a bar.

I can sympathize with being destination-oriented; I used to be that way myself. And Pete doesn't know me that well, and couldn't have known I would insist on us doing a shot after our drink. However...the last thing I needed was what one typically finds in a bar. And it's after that ill-advised Kamikaze that things get reaaaaaaally hazy, nauseous and ultimately tragic. I mean, dude. I've thrown up before - I'm a 26-year-old ex-frat groupie. But not since college (or possibly once or twice early MA year when we were all acting like we were in college). And never, ever in a room whose floor is covered in anything but linoleum tile. For realz. And I've never needed someone to clean up after me. Ever.

But if the milestone had to be crossed, I'm glad it was with her. Because if that story's going to be told, at least it's by someone whose version makes me sound like a cute and forlorn 6-year-old, not the aging boozehound I'd inevitably be if the story was being told by, say...Justin.

Oh God I'm glad it wasn't Justin. He makes my momentary drift onto the shoulder of 95 into a brush with almost certain death at the hands of a mortally incompetent female driver, so God knows what would have happened here. Plus he'd have had no idea how to clean the carpet.

So yes. I had a wonderful, mature, heart-warming escape from Madison with Maeve this weekend that concluded by chowing down on double cheeseburgers and fries with my hungover best friend in the Midwest and her even more hungover boyfriend. Epic.

And PS - want to meet this wizard of awesome? Pick a weekend, baby. Because she's planning a huge party at the end of the summer and has extended an open invitation to all my Madison buddies. Because she's the coolest ever. BECCA AND MAEVE 4 LIFE!!!!11

Convince Yourself That Everything is Alright

2010-06-26T17:48:00.000-05:00

'cause it already is.

It doesn't quite belong on the All-Timers list, but "For Nancy" is a pretty epic song in my personal music history. Suggested by Jefferson, began my still-strong love affair with Pete Yorn, explained a song reference I'd wondered about for ages, led me to "Undercover," which was a major track on my Limoges soundtrack.

Plus, talk about words I should live by.

----

Cape party was fun. Less crazy than I'd expected, but still really fun. There was running around shirtless in the rain (not on my part, but on others'), a host on stilts, beer margaritas (which, honestly, tasted like normal margaritas to me - which is fine in my book), and people I hadn't seen in awhile and was happy to catch up with. Also, after talking to Paul and Andrew about their experiences at Burning Man and shooting Jamie a text, I think there's a chance that the vow we made sophomore year to go together someday might actually be carried out next year. After all, she's finally moving back, back within a single day's drive of me. We *have* to do something epic to celebrate her first year back.

Been reading old LJ entries. Makes me feel nostalgic, yes, but also good. While many of the entries do highlight just how painfully naive I was about the world, they also remind me that despite losing some of that naivite and growing up, I have not become a different person. I'm the same Becca I was then - I write journal entries more or less the same way, I react to things in fundamentally the same way, the same kinds of things make me happy now that made me happy then. I'm just older now - and better at a lot of things as a result.

Go summer. Still gotta find something to drive my daytime hours, but really...I'm getting a lot of what I needed most anyhow. Gotta stop staying up until 3:30 writing and having dance parties in front of my mirror though. It doesn't help with the whole "getting up at a reasonable time and doing stuff" thing.

Coming Up Milhouse

2010-06-26T02:14:00.000-05:00

The last few days have been really great.

Like every year in Madison so far, this summer is not unfolding the way I imagined it beforehand, but in a way that actually ends up being better for me. (Not necessarily better, though.)

And I really want to hit a Mallards game with people. Gotta make that dream a reality ASAP.

...Wow

2010-06-23T02:51:00.000-05:00

So I have already had trouble sleeping soundly (due to seeing a motherfucking earwig on the floor next to my bed), and it seems now I may have trouble eating too. Because I found one tonight *on my kitchen counter*. As in totally within reach of crawling into my crackers, popcorn, cereal, etc. And that...that is Not Cool. I've already been jumping hugely when I feel any brush on my skin (which is tough when your hair has just grown to shoulder-length), and I am dehydrated because the pitcher I use for water has an open spout, meaning I can't trust it.

Do I know all this is insane? Kind of. I honestly feel justified in my fear of dumping food on my plate and seeing bugs crawl out of it - even though the apt is so clean it's received unsolicited compliments to that effect. But I know also that they're harmless...but...I'm fucking freaking out.

Called and left a message at the Apt company - if only to give me the support to call again tomorrow. Because now I know they know I'm having a problem, so it's easier to call about it.

God. GOD. Why couldn't I have just been afraid of clowns? So much less likely to appear than earwigs. Way more avoidable.

Argh,

Il pleut dans la rue

2010-06-21T19:41:00.001-05:00

I love summer thunderstorms. Even if they make Polo abandon me to take shelter under the bed.

Oh My GOD

2010-06-18T16:48:00.000-05:00

How did I forget how much I hate bugs? Holy God, I hate them. It's my most irrational and childish fear, but I've never been able to shake it. I actually have made more progress with spiders than with bugs; I can handle spiders (up to a certain size) now, but oh man....

Five minutes ago I found an earwig ON MY PERSON in my apartment. And I'm still *freaking out*. Like, legitimately and actually unable to relax because I am now terrified there will be another one.

I need to get ahold of myself and nip this in the bud, because when my fear of bugs gets out of hand, it's baaaaad. When I was about 5 I wouldn't eat any food I couldn't clearly see all of (in case it contained bugs) or drink from opaque cups, or drink any opaque liquid. Because of bugs. In college I had a bug freakout and couldn't sleep for like 4 days because a bug might crawl on me. It's *so* stupid, and I'm try- [pauses to slap head and examine a phantom itch for signs of bugs] - trying to tell myself that logically, 99.9% of bugs liable to turn up in my apt are harmless and at worst going to give me a little sting like a mosquito (they don't bother me for some reason). But...God I hate them.

Anyhow. If anyone has tips for keeping bugs out of my apartment, send them my way. Please. For my sanity's sake. I'm going to do a little Googling, but if I read too much about it (especially earwigs, which are THE WORST AND MOST HORRIFYING bugs ever) I will probably not be able to eat, sleep or exist in my apartment ever again.

*deep breath* It's fine. You're fine. You've only ever seen one here, the place is super-clean, relax. Please.

Almost Like a Time Machine

2010-06-14T19:06:00.000-05:00

So I stumbled upon this blog post recently, and wow. Talk about songs that I kind of love but haven't crossed my mind in years. The picture of the lead singer she gives is especially disturbing. But somehow I still respect his assertion that he can never be my woman. Maybe even more, really.

Music Affairs Pt I: Never Played Out

2010-06-13T16:30:00.001-05:00

While I was on my trip, I had a conversation with my sister about the songs we never get tired of. That no matter how many times we listen to them, they're never tired and always awesome. They're not necessarily your favorite songs of all time (though some of them may be on that list as well) - just the ones that are in it for the long haul. I really only have a handful that make top-tier there - but I'm ok with that.

The List:

- "Sparks Are Gonna Fly," Catherine Wheel: Come on Daisy don't drown me this time. The ultimate gym song, and really just great any time you want to feel a little edgy and a little sexy. It wasn't among their few modest hits - weirdly, all those are kind of soft-at-the-edges rock ballads. But I've loved this song for almost a decade now, and still never get tired of it. By far among my favorite songs - maybe even the top spot.

- "Semi-Charmed Life," Third Eye Blind: I've loved this song well over a decade. I remember having it stuck in my head during one of the PT sessions for Cardigan, so at least since 8th grade. It's kind of crept up on me - it was never a song I loved passionately or couldn't stop listening to, but as time has passed, I've realized that I just never, ever get tired of it. I'm always psyched when it comes on, it's perfect for singing along with, everyone knows it (and even if they don't love it, they almost certainly don't hate it - how could you?), and while it doesn't get old, it also evokes a different time. Late 90s rock FTW. [Also, I just looked on iTunes and found that this song is significantly less popular than "Jumper." How can that be?!? Stupid people and their not sharing my cultural judgments.]

- "Mr. Brightsides," The Killers: I remember exactly where I was when I heard this song for the first time - sitting in Trixie in the band parking lot at West, waiting for my brother to get out of school. I was freshly back from studying abroad, and trying to catch up on American music that wasn't "Survivor" or "Love Don't Cost a Thing." The Killers have a lot of songs I really dig - I'm one of like, ten people who loved "Sam's Town" - but "Brightsides" is the home run. Something about the way it rises and falls, how even the nonsensical lyrics ("turning snakes into the sea?") add to the sense of pain and resignation. Maybe it's the resignation that seals the deal - not a lot of songs out there memorialize the bitter acceptance stage of rejected love.

- "The Church of John Coltrane," St. Jude's Infirmary: Talk about obscure. Jamie introduced me to this song while I was in Limoges; though we have never verified personally, apparently it's the only great song the band has. But what a song. Eerie and haunting, great use of organ, awesome build-up of energy and emotion culminating in possibly the best spoken-word interlude of all time (in a heavy Scottish accent no less). That's actually how Jamie sold me on the song initially - she told me that one of the lyrics was "We're a Capra film with the last scene missing." If I'm ever unlucky enough again to have a relationship end badly (which, let's face it, is virtual certainty), I hope it looks like that line.

- "The Crane Wife Part I & II," The Decemberists: Though it was "July July" that gave me Decemberists fever (again, thank you Jamie), this is the one that has the most staying power. It's not that's it's my favorite of their songs - they've got so many great ones I'm not even sure I could pick a favorite. But this is the one I'm always in the mood for; it stirs me every time I hear it. It might be that I listened to it a lot before the first time Jamie, Tom and I were together in Oxford, right after he was accepted. I would put it on repeat and go through my daily errands in Limoges, picturing the three of us together running around Oxford, and it made me happy. I think something of that clings to it. And it's also another one that does a great job building intensity - in both halves.

- "Marching Bands of Manhattan," Death Cab for Cutie: My love of Death Cab really snuck up on me. By the time I downloaded my first DCC album Give Up had already been one of my all-time favorite albums for a few years, but for some reason I never moved on from there until Limoges. And while I love almost all of Plans, this is the clear standout. Like "Brightsides," I find it almost desperately sad, but also incredibly beautiful. I was at kind of an emotional crossroads when I first heard it, and the outro really hit me; it didn't exactly make me feel better, but it made me feel, which was enough at the time. Plus, it's just good advice, you know?

- "Alone in Kyoto," Air: On one of my visits to Jamie, I ended up (for a lot of stupid reasons I won't get into) booking my return flight two nights after she had to leave for vacation. Rachel was kind enough to put me up for the last night, but she couldn't meet me until like 8:30. Desperate to see the back of Oxford, I took an early bus to London and spent the day wandering around. (This was less awesome than it sounds because I had to carry my not-insignificant duffel bag the whole time.) By late afternoon I was tired and somewhat sad; the end of my Oxford trip had not gone well, and I felt humiliated and very aware of my personal flaws. I ended up on the riverbank outside the Tate Modern around dusk; I remember staring out over the Thames at the greyness of the city until I so cold I had to get moving again. And that's when I put on "Alone in Kyoto." And...and everything I remember after that feels different. I remember walking along the river, past an old-fashioned ship, across endless open courtyards, through crowds, with the interiors of everything around me glowing as the sky outside turned from grey to navy to black. The feeling that I was 22 and alone in London became wonderful and precious, rather than awful. And the music was a major part of that, as much as the time of day or the scenery; every time the song neared the end, I started it again. It's one of the best and most treasured memories I have from that year, maybe because I so rarely feel any of the things now that I felt then: young, alive, peaceful, like everything had yet to happen. I try not to listen to "Alone" too often now; like smoking a clove at dusk or the smell of Old Spice, it can take me back to a specific place very clearly, and I don't ever want to lose that place.

There are a few others that come close, and a whole bunch that might have made it had I been able to exercise any restraint when I first heard them but which I overplayed, to the point that they still retain that tinge of exhaustion ever years later. They will probably get their own list at some point, though probably without such extensive commentary. Same for albums - while I'm not a purist about albums and pick and choose from them with impunity, there are a handful that stand out. (One of which, weirdly, is the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack. Oh the power of nostalgia.)

I'm interested in what's on other people's lists - what are your Inexhaustibles?

A Few General Things

2010-06-11T17:17:00.001-05:00

- I like the new Design options Blogger's got. Probably will be fiddling with those a bit for awhile.

- Why oh why is the interface for MadCat so (as Dan Savage might say) leotarded? Seriously, do you *really* need me to enter my ID number three times in order to request a book? Why isn't the once enough? Especially if I'm logged in remotely! And why is the System Search so unnecessarily slow, and why does it display that completely unnecessary first page?

- In case it's not clear - today I requested a metric fuckton of books from the library. Vacation is officially over.

- I also listened to at least twelve Savage Lovecasts during my 60-odd hours of driving last month. Also a lot of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" - shit's hilarious. I kind of want to go to a taping now.

- Still obsessed with The ArchAndroid. A tip of the hat to you, Andrew, for recommending it.

- I really want a job. That's not childcare. I'm going to try to find some to apply to this weekend. I don't really *feel* like having a job, but I know if I could find one I'd be happier. And not starving in a gutter come mid-August. Anyone got any ideas? I'm thinking retail or coffeeshop. Or anything that pays where the average age of employees is no more than 30. Can't be too picky.

- On that note - NO clue how I'm going to scrape up a security deposit and first month's rent if/when I find a new place. Even for a modest place that represents at least 2/3 of my current assets.

- My GOD my cats shed a lot. How did I forget this fact? Also I appear to be allergic to them again. Awesome.

- Every summer I think to myself around this time, "Surely this is the most annoying and inconvenient combination of construction projects the city could have chosen." And every year I am surprised to find that no, it can be more annoying. Or at the very least, at the same level as previous. Closing Park St at University? Making the road in front of the Union one-way? Shoot me now. I've got to get on fixing my bike. Though probably the most annoying project to me personally was the first summer, when they tore up the entire fucking road in front of my house - not just like, for resurfacing. They dug down into that shit like 5 feet. SO annoying. Just leave the roads to rot and let me jar my aging car to death in peace. Thanks.

- Madison is really beautiful, though. I took a leisurely walk through Tenney park yesterday, and it's really gorgeous here. In summer anyhow.

- It's kind of nice to be back. Back with my own stuff, back catching up with Madison people, back talking shop after 2 (or 3) (or 4) glasses of wine. Though it'll depend a lot on how the job search turns out, I can definitely see a routine coming together for the next few months, and it's not a bad one. I'm pretty pumped about a lot of the reading I have to do - a sign if ever there was one that this jump to C/R was a good one. Thinking about the theory section of my Lit prelims list was enough to make me break into hives. And a cold sweat. And a bottle of Xanax.

- That said...I do kinda want to take another trip this summer. Even just back to the East Coast to help Ben move. So again - hope the job thing comes through.

You can take the girl off the East Coast....

2010-06-08T20:39:00.000-05:00

But you can't take the East Coast out of the girl.

95's the only freeway for me.

East Coast Road Trip: The Educational Inventory

2010-06-04T20:56:00.000-05:00

Sweet things I've (re)discovered this trip:

- ribeye steak
- fresh wild strawberries
- little cousins in sunglasses
- freshly painted nails
- sibling sympathy
- shopping (with restraint, naturally)
- The joy that is Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor
- roof pools
- old college friends
- flipcup
- gradual tanning lotion
- lying out
- city summer nights
- metro systems
- public health
- public health professionals
- Sam Summer
- old high school friends
- New Hampshire in late afternoon
- childhood friends
- family friends
- weddings
- Panera
- Janella Monae
- DVR
- long drives
- short drives
- Washington Heights
- podcasts
- Savage Love
- This American Life
- Wait Wait Don't Tell Me
- big city life
- late nights
- early mornings
- dancing
- stomping, pouting and/or creeping
- AU Park
- small dogs
- The Boondocks
- jersey sheets
- breakfast outside
- house parties
- high heels
- wholesale beverage warehouses
- copper sunglasses
- Marshalls
- beer of many shapes and sizes
- the fact that I am, in fact, 26 at heart. Maximum.

- ...did I already mention the Eleventh Doctor?

So since I didn't pay any taxes this year, does that also give me some kind of super-immunity to death?

2010-04-15T19:13:00.000-05:00

Bad: Using your 2008 W2 to fill out your 2009 tax return, resulting in a $3000 inaccuracy in your income and requiring an amendment.

Not so Bad: Discovering that amending is not only fairly easy, but that you get another 113 bucks!

If I wasn't a Liberal already, this year's tax return would really have done the trick.

Liveblogging "Lost" [Spoilerz, clearly]

2010-04-06T20:04:00.000-05:00

8:00 - If they kill Desmond I will LOSE MY SHIT

8:01 - So my *tentative* guess is that the reason ol' Whit has been keeping Pen and Des apart might turn out to be because Desmond has some special/inevitable link with the Island, and he was trying to protect her. Also, I'm tired of his being so one-dimensional.

8:03 - First break and no flashes! Could this mean this week is waste-of-time-free?

8:04 - And back. Yes Jin, it makes perfect sense to just stand around while they threaten to fry Desmond like that guy who is now a hamburger.

8:05 - Faraday reference! Also, it's your own fault you've never met your son, you dick. Also - don't anyone ask what he means by saying everyone will disappear! Because that would be crazy!

8:06 - Lamest. Explanation. Ever. No wonder none of the castaways are grad students. We would NOT stand for this questionable rhetoric.

8:08 - AHHHHH! HE FLASHES! I KNEW IT! Totally called this like a month ago.

8:10 - Why does everyone on this show remind me of my uncle? Maybe it's all the planes. Also - is he a Whitmore flunkie? And who is that driver?

8:11 - I wear my sunglasses in a tinted-window car/So I can, so I can...

8:13 - I want a Kindle. These twee little hipster ads have worked on me.

8:15 - Looks like this episode is going to parallel the post-blast one. And OMG it's all coming together! Faraday and Charlie and Des - Oh my!

8:16 - Can you say "heavy-handed?"

8:18 - ...can you say "heavy-handed?" Though it's cute that Charlie is in love with Claire again.

8:20 - OH MY GOD. He had a near-death and he saw Claire? Does that mean she's dead? (Also - overlap with Flashforward much?)

8:20 - Fuck on a stick I love Desmond. Even douchey heartless Desmond. But it's not his fault 'cause Penny apparently was never born.

8:22 - HIJINX!

8:23 - Fuck. Me. Shit just got real.

8:26 - Fucking storm. I am now sitting right next to the antennae, at a really awkward angle to the TV, and it's still skipping from time to time. Teach me not to go to Jevin's.

8:27 - That Friskies commercial is fucking trippy.

8:29 - Aww, no full-frontal chest? Tease. But now he looks like old Des again.

8:30 - Is that like me listing "Biddy Martin" as my emergency contact?

8:31 - MRIs are really boring. I wish I'd had awesome hallucinations in mine.

8:32 - Jack attack! With his awesomely bad hair.

8:33 - I didn't know this episode moved to an HCW stairwell!

8:34 - It's Exposition Charlie! "None of this matters!" Amen Charlie, amen. My feelings about the parallel universes exactly.

8:38 - Mrs. Hawking = still a raging bitch. Or IS she?

8:41 - Oooo! Happenings! She still is in control of everything!

8:42 - Oh. Em. Gee. Don't try to keep Des and Pen apart, you fool. Love conquers all!

8:43 - Ahhhhhhhhhh.

8:47 - "V is for survival"?? Not last I checked.

8:48 - So he saw Charlotte. Why do they all see their loves? It's working, but it seems sappy.

8:49 - Is Desmond still his Constant?? Also, I love seeing Normal Faraday.

8:53 - Ah...the "grass is greener" idea. And - wow. How does he know? What did he see?

8:56 - AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! And now the stadium!! Why the Jack parallel?

8:57 - She's training for the race maybe - why? For ol' Whit's approval?

8:58 - Thank God that wasn't the last scene, where they stare at each other.

8:59 - Ahhhh! Sayid'd!

8:59 - Jigga wha,,,?

9:00 - Coffee! Juliet's dying words! But obviously something will prevent his making the date.

9:01 - The manifest??
----------

Wow. So I haven't been that into this season, especially not the parallels, but this episode...damn. 100%. Why is it that Desmond always, *always* has the best episodes? This had everything - references to old plotlines, connections with the on-Island plot, real progress towards an ending...I mean, to make me wait until this far into the season to even vaguely care about the flashes was poor, but I'm not considering stopping watching and letting eps stack up until the finale like I had been. I care again - and they did it all in a flash sideways.

Ok, show writers. I believe again.

...also - called it! I knew Desmond's flash to the past when the hatch blew was the same thing that's been going on this season. Devoting too much brain space to a TV show FTW.

[PS - Elizabeth Mitchell is so fucking hot. I might start watching this bullshit show just for her.]

Bad NBC, Bad!

2010-04-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

Granted I'm no connoisseur of late night TV, but...Jay Leno is not funny. Like, not even medium-low funny. Not even if I was a Conservative.

EDIT: He just commented that "Scientists say that drinking too much soda can cause sexual dysfunction in men...[well duh,] that's why they're call SOFT drinks." Is Late Night always this lame?

A Significant Milestone

2010-03-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

Today I wrote three pages of my incomplete paper, originally due last December! And they are even the FIRST three pages, meaning I managed to write an introduction without an accompanying mental breakdown for the first time in almost a year now! Only 14 to 17 more pages to go until I complete the one-year degree program I came here for three years ago!

...actually, I'd probably settle for 12.

Growing as a Scholar My Ass

2010-03-27T18:09:00.000-05:00

I really hate that ever since I became seriously invested in my work it's become impossible to write without major anxiety attacks. Everyone who was annoyed in the past by my ability to write a lot very fast - take comfort in the fact that the tables have turned COMPLETELY.

Upgrades

2010-03-26T15:47:00.000-05:00

As of today, those who seek to "reach my telephone," as they say, will be reaching me on a device that's at least making a nod to not being 100 years behind the times.

Behold: the Samsung INTENSITY!

I wasn't aware they'd take to naming phones in the same manner they name cars; my last model was VX5300 or some such anonymous thing. It's unclear what is so intense about this particular model - perhaps its red color? Its clever look-at-me-I-was-just-a-USB-cord-now-I'm-a-charger accessory? Its slide-out keyboard? I'm pretty sure all these things have been standard for awhile now. But as my own middle name is similarly incongruous with my actual personal traits, I can't really hold it against it.

Other things that have apparently happened without my noticing: friendly service agreements. I have to admit, I rarely read the damn things, and when I do it's a brief scan. But I'm highly paranoid lately (like, really - I haven't even sent back my census form because I read some nut job online saying they collect our DNA off the envelope for a huge database and it's so far too much effort to close it another way - not that I *believe* that exactly, but I've been reading a little too much Harper's and...anyhow), so I read much of the Verizon one today. And they've become oddly jovial. Very "we're here to help!" and "we'll do all that's reasonable, because you're a human being like us!" Also, more and more of the info (say, what data they collect about my calls and how its used) isn't in the policy itself but only linked to elsewhere. And of course, my concern about my rights wasn't powerful enough to visit a separate page.

Anyhow. I should be writing my paper for Morris (to say nothing of the one on "Goblin Market" that I'm frankly looking forward to starting in order to finish it and drink the Veuve I've promised myself for doing so) but it's Spring Break and the house is a mess and I have a new phone and I like cleaning, so...yeah. Not so much writing. Soon I will shower and dress for GROAN, get nicely drunk with my peers/friends/collegues/etc, and christen the new phone with some drunk dials to college friends. Just because it's joining me at a point in life where I call no one except Glass Nickle and my immediate family doesn't mean it shouldn't ever get to have any fun.

I'm excited for this break. Work to do, yes, but getting that weight off my shoulders will do more for my stress levels and general well-being than any trip ever could.

I'm also perversely excited to do a Spring Cleaning. What has happened to me? I actually enjoy cleaning when I feel like I have the time, that I'm not doing it in order to put off more odious school-related work. The house has been creepy towards dirty for awhile now...neatness has been okay, but I need to pull out the vacuum and get in some corners and such. And do laundry. And figure out how to cheaply and quickly make the bedroom not clash horribly - we bought an awesome new bedding set recently, but since it is black/white/fuchsia and the rest of the room is all warm green tones, something needs to be done. And my parents are coming the weekend after break, so I want it to look nice when they see it for the first time.

Alright. On to other things. Yay!

March Forth

2010-03-23T21:15:00.001-05:00

It's spring early. I like that. Though I feel a bit guilty saying so, having just attended a book discussion about global warming.

The discussion was interesting for a number of reasons. One is that it was the first discussion I've been to at UW that A) was predominantly grad students and B) counted me as the only Humanities representative. It was largely agro/soil grad students, with a few from Law. Really interesting to experience, because while everyone (or everyone who spoke up) was in favor of environmental conservation and reform, everyone still reacted very differently to the book.

Which brings me to the other thing that was notable (to me). Though there was a lot of good discussion of perspectives, points, factual basis, etc, I was the only one who seemed interested (or at least, interested enough to bring it up) in the book as a rhetorical object. Reading the book (Soil Not Oil by...someone) (I just got it today and skimmed its 144 pages), I was overwhelmingly drawn to questions of intended audience and argument structure, both of which seemed problematic. As one girl put it, the book seemed written for "the ignorant cheerleader" of environmentalism - lots of facts to back up green views, but no argument that could hope to sway an opposing view. It managed to combine the two problems I see most in student theses - both not arguable AND lacking analysis to support claims.

But no one else cared much about this. Which is fine. It was just a very illuminating disciplinary moment - where people's straightforward, common-language interests in this easy-to-read book were clearly delineated by field. This isn't surprising - just one of those things I knew abstractly until tonight, but now have seen in action.

It was nice - I'm glad I went. Contact with other grad students FTW.

...I had other things to say but now Andy is home and I'm tired of typing. I'm hoping to write more here in general though...I used to write in my Livejournal extensively, almost every day, and I miss both having that outlet to unfold my thoughts and having a record of what I was doing. Today I quite literally had trouble remembering what I did yesterday; combined with the fact that I often feel like I'm wasting my 20s on jumping useless academic hoops and procrastination I'm too stressed to enjoy, it seems like keeping a closer record of how I spend my time and I how feel about it could only help, whether as diagnosis tool or comfort.

Also: wine is delicious. And I really hope tonight's Lost didn't suck.

Random Thoughts

2010-02-26T22:52:00.000-06:00

- Though i maintain that we were given an absurdly small time frame given the substantial (and unclear) expectations, i'm really proud of what i managed to pull off for my recent class project, and very happy to now have those skills.

- Someday it will be warm again. Or so they tell me.

- Entourage is an entertaining show to the perfect (for now) degree - something i enjoy watching, but am not so interested in that i can't stop.

- i really, really love my cats. thought i loved my first dog, Maggie, a lot, but she was my whole family's pet, so it wasn't quite the same. i had a false alarm a few days ago that Polo had run out of the house (in fact Andy had shut him in the closet accidentally), and...i was really frightened. maybe i won't have children.

- i have already had my first legitimate nightmare about prelims. Yay.

- Having the "i" key on my computer broken and needing to cut & paste it every time is really annoying. Especially since i'm much too lazy to cut a separate letter for the caps ones.

My trip to Office Hours

2010-02-03T19:33:00.000-06:00

in haiku for your viewing pleasure:

Me:

"So, um, professor,
i do not have twenty hours
to learn photoshop."

Him:

"Hours? really? i
could have sworn it was twenty
minutes. Shit. My bad."

AMAZING Discovery

2010-01-28T18:14:00.001-06:00

If I use the brush from my dustpan to "sweep" my carpet, the cat hair comes RIGHT off.

Formerly I would spend 25 minutes with the cat brush painstakingly pulling it all out. This is revolutionary.

Why can't I ever discover time-savers like this for schoolwork?

"Literally, a grapefruit."

2010-01-25T15:50:00.000-06:00

Maeve is coming to visit this weekend!

I am so excited. I haven't seen her in a year and a half, so this is well overdue. Hurray! I see tasty food, shopping trips, wine and girl talk in my near future...

Books I've Read This Break

2010-01-02T16:50:00.000-06:00

- The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbary
- Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby
- The Dream-Woman and Other Stories, Wilkie Collins
- What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, Daniel Pool
- When You Are Engulfed in Flames, David Sedaris
- Persuasion, Jane Austen

I'll Be Home for Christmas

2009-12-23T23:19:00.000-06:00

I'm happy.

It's a little after midnight, and I'm sitting on the old striped couch that once belonged to my grandmother and is now a fiercely guarded family treasure (despite its objective hideousness). The woodstove is blazing merrily in one corner, and in the opposite corner is the tree. All nine stockings - Mark, Melissa, Juliette, Gabriella, Mom, Dad, Ben, Kat and me - are hanging along the walls beneath the windows. An electric train runs around the base of the tree, and inside its track and along the walls are all the presents - predominantly for the little ones, J and G, but some for the rest of us too.

I'm so happy.

It's wonderful to be here in my uncle's house in NH, our two families together for Christmas. I've always been very close with my uncle, and since he's lived here for nine years it feels familiar and like home in a way no where else does now. And since it's not *my* family's house in NC, where I'm never fully comfortable or settled and where I regularly get lost coming home from routine shopping trips, I'm relaxed in a way I haven't been at Christmas since...since the last time we spent it here. My cousins (Juliette is 3, Gabriella is 2) are unbelievably adorable.

My grandparents not being here also makes a difference. I feel guilty saying it but it's true. I love them both very much, but they create stress for the rest of us in a huge way. Last time they stayed with my family in NC, this exchange occurred: G - "Is there any more pinot grigio?" Me - "No, sorry Grampa, it's gone." G - "...disappointing." So while they are in our thoughts and missed, it makes for a much, much more easygoing holiday season.

I don't know what it is. Maybe it's that I'm officially done with the most demanding semester since fall MA year. Maybe it's that I feel like I real person again and not a mechanical grad student shell of my former self. Maybe it's being reminded that there's parts of me I still really care about that are not in Madison.

There are downsides. I've barely spoken 10 sentences to my parents - not for any real reason, just how it's happened - my sister is a closed book I'm not entirely sure I want to/am ready to open, and I've yet to leave the house to go anywhere but the mall. But even so - I'm very happy, and I find myself smiling at even the most insignificant tableaus. Once upon a time I was naive enough to love my family so much I thought we were perfect, with a perfect dynamic. This year is by no means a return to that, but it makes me feel like, various dysfunctions aside, there's really something here.

Realizing your family is loveable and comforting despite their dysfunctions: isn't that what the holidays are all about?

The silver linings

2009-12-19T00:04:00.000-06:00

Today was utterly lamesauce in every way except for these things:

- Andy and his constant gold-star-winning

- seeing Abby and Lindsey for the first time in ages, even if we didn't get to have dinner

- randomly acquiring, at tiny tiny odds, a tiny plastic Naughty Sorceress in Kingdom of Loathing

I realize that this last makes me a really big dork, all the more so because I've posted about it here, but I don't care. That shit made my day. It's really the small things that get you through this time of year.

And I thought I'd be done by now. Silly Becca, unrealistic dreams are for undergrads!

2009-12-14T19:59:00.001-06:00

I'm losing steam. I still have to finish Russ's paper - by tomorrow evening at the latest. I have to do some major work on my proposal for Deb. I have to grade 35 papers.

Sigh. Oh well, things aren't nearly as dire as they were a few days ago, when I had 6 hours to write a presentation (which I thought was 20 minutes but was in fact 12, a misconception that actually proved useful), then 8 hours to write my entire proposal draft (didn't happen, clearly), and finally 4 hours to write a conference-length paper (admittedly from a very thorough outline, but still a grave, grave miscalculation on my part). I suppose it could have been worse - at least these 18 hours weren't consecutive.

If only there wasn't so much enjoyable stuff I wanted to do in the next few days - dinner with various friends, shopping on State Street, Christmas movies...the fact that I have to work a writing center shift tomorrow night also does not help. Though let's be honest, the time would have been eaten by the holiday party anyhow.

It's the most [expletive] time of the year

2009-12-03T20:36:00.000-06:00

...well, not really. But kinda.

It's always an odd juxtaposition, Christmas and end-of-semester. I spent most of today reading about propaganda and children's literature while listening to the "Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown" soundtrack. It actually wasn't a bad day - I'm at the point where working on papers is less stressful than not working on them, and I like my topics well enough to make research tolerable. I'm feeling more in control of the whole "papers" situation, and while I'm by no means close to where I should be in terms of completing stuff on time, I am confident I can finish in something resembling a timely fashion.

I'm making more of an effort to be in the Christmas spirit this year. The last few years I felt like I missed the season almost entirely, which sucked. So this year I want to decorate more - I put up lights last night - listen to more holiday music, maybe go to a concert, watch some classic specials...when will I do all this, you ask? Well, since all my papers (theoretically, in the magical ideal dream world my professors apparently inhabit) have to be in by the 13th (and hopefully *will* be in by the 15th or 16th) I have three or four days in town with only some grading to do, in which I can hopefully get in a little Christmas cheer. We'll see.

Taking organizational problems to a new level

2009-12-01T12:27:00.000-06:00

From The Overland Mail, 1948:

"So far as India is concerned the story of the mail service commences with the history of the Hon. East India Company, that famous trading corporation of seventeenth-century English Merchant Adventurers who in course of time secured India for the Empire, and in studying the career of Waghorn, a native of Kent, we should do well to bear in mind the observation of Charles Grey in his entertaining book "The Merchant Adventurers of London," that the mariners of the East India Company seem almost without exception to have hailed from Chatham, Deptford, Limehouse, Rotherhithe, Rochester and Wapping."

Ohmigodohmigod

2009-11-30T00:45:00.000-06:00

What the HELL is going on with my writing process???? And of course it's like trying to fall asleep...once you starting worrying about it consciously it becomes ten times harder to do.

Lame. Lamelamelamelame.

But a Step in Which Direction Exactly?

2009-11-23T20:32:00.000-06:00

Today I realized that there's been a percentage flip in my clothing choices each day: where I used to go for cute over comfort 75% of the time and comfort 25%, I now do the opposite. If that.

I'm not sure what, if anything, this means about my current life situation. I think I shall choose to interpret it as a need for more cute clothes and shop accordingly on Friday. Mostly to stave off the creeping panic fed by the cats and my growing shut-in lifestyle that I'm going to wake up 70 years old any day now.

Random Notes

2009-11-20T18:41:00.000-06:00

- My writing center shifts have been going well lately, despite having 9 hours/wk these past three weeks instead of six. The CRC shifts have been slow, which is ideal because it lets me do some reading and sometimes give the people who do come some extra time; the Wednesday night shifts have been a good balance of reoccuring meetings with people I've enjoyed helping (an early-30s elementary school vice principal with a great project idea but cutely afraid to start writing his lit review for fear of making a mistake, a cute and incredibly smart Chilean woman doing a PhD in development studies whose English writing skill amaze and shame me), undergrads coming in for various papers, and no-shows. Fridays have been similar. It's a small thing, but it really makes me happy when people come back to see me - unlike working with students, you don't usually get to see the result of your work with WC students, whether or not you actually helped them, so their coming back can be a nice affirmation. I mean, they wouldn't come back if it wasn't helping, right? Except this one kid, poor guy - I keep trying to help him with papers for this one English class, he's been to see me and a few other WC people like 10 times for that class and he's still doing so poorly he needs extra credit. I think that's a personal problem between him and the prof though - and I don't deal with personal problems. (What's that from?)

I love working in the writing center.

- My cats, though I love them still, are beginning to annoy me as well. Polo's gotten really bad about getting up in my business when I'm trying to type. From a recent email to Jamie: "He's got two approaches: The British Colonial Technique, where he just barges right onto it with his enormous self and tries to gain territory with sheer attack power, and The French Colonial Technique, where he lies down riiiight next to it and lolls his head onto the side of it so he's not actually *on* it but his fur is obstructing two columns of keys, then slooooowly edges over. He's like "you don't need that W, do you? Wouldn't you rather have MY HAIR ALL UP IN YOUR GRILL!" Lately he'll even nip our fingers if we try to type while we should so clearly (in his mind) be petting him. Considering the number of pages I have to type in the next...oh, 25 days or so (approx 60, not including student paper comments), this is poor timing on his part.

Also, though he's by no means a glutton, he is causing food problems in our household. Since I'm both lazy and not good at remembering to do things (ie, the VS return sitting all packaged and everything in my closet, ten million other things), I just fill the food bowls and forget about it until I notice they are empty. This seemed to work fine, but for the past few weeks I've been thinking that Polo's gaining weight and Penny's losing it; yesterday I decided this was definitely the case. When he sits up with paws in front, there's about an inch more cat on either side, and Penny is getting Aiko-sized. So, though it is a pain, I'm going to start feeding them seperately. I'm not so worried about Polo losing weight, he's far from problematically fat (he's a *big* cat), but he shouldn't gain more, and Penny should. So tonight I gave them wet food, gave Penny more, and brought her and the food in the office with me until she finished. We'll see if I have the follow-thorugh to keep this up.

- I need to work on final papers. It's not even that I don't want to - I just haven't and must.

- Getting excited for Thanksgiving at Jevin's! It's my first Madison Thanksgiving, and I am looking forward to it suddenly. It's not that I was not before, but I hadn't realized how *close* it was. And then driving Kevin home we got to talking about turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and garlic mashed potatoes and a cheese course and loads of wine and OMG it's in five days. FIVE. DAYS. It's going to be so awesome. I kind of wish I had a t-shirt: "Thanksgiving 2009 - The Last Supper." It being "last" because after that (well, and the post-TG shopping Friday) life ends and lifeless, slavish devotion to school begins. But til then, give me gravy and fill my glass.

- I work late now a lot more than I used to. Meaning now the trick is reclaiming the day, not the night. Why can't I get it right and do both?

- Bought my Xmas tix! NH the 20th - 31st. I am really, really excited, and a little nervous...you can never go home again, after all. It's been 2 1/2 years, I know things have changed there, I've changed...will it be just wonderful or a little painful too? Even the first drive...arriving at MHT, drive past the Executive, get on 93 and take it to the Macy's exit, down Meetinghouse past St. Elizabeth, through the five-way stop, past Jeb's, left on 101 down, right at Vista to Wallace...then past the Benedictine Land (my God, the Benedictine Land), the turn for Adam's house, Shirley Hill (my God, Shirley Hill...) into Goffstown, then on past Sean's and Tim King's and finally to my uncle's house. I've worked hard to miss NH less, to move on and make WI my home, to grow up and in doing so accept that the past can't stay in the present, but damn...it's gonna be good to know that just because it's not around doesn't mean it's not there.

Also - my cousins? Friggin' adorable. I absolutely cannot WAIT.

- Blogging is a great way to procrastinate.

Good Deal

2009-11-17T19:07:00.000-06:00

So today is a good day.

I've been feeling kind of "????" about the coming end-of-semester craze. Usually I collect paper ideas for classes throughout the semester, and by around this time know what I'm writing on for everything. This year though, I had zero clue about any of them until recently. I had some vague subject ideas - "Cranford and...foreign things" - but nothing close to focused. And I was getting a little freaked.

But these past 4 or 5 days, things have really been coming together. Turns out that when I get myself in gear, I can do things! My Russ abstract got the go-ahead; yet again I'm writing about the issue of children and agency - but this time through propaganda! (Analyzing it...not writing it.) As so often happens, I wrote myself into an idea, and then into being excited about it. I was dreading that paper, but less so now. I picked and read a bunch of my review book for Susan. I wrote a short paper for class tomorrow that I'm pleased with - it's different from how/what I usually write for classes, and that's a nice feeling, doing something new. My meeting with Deb, Tim and Leigh today was miraculous - I went in with like, almost literally nothing, and by talking through what I'm interested in doing and getting ideas and feedback, I ended up leaving with a solid idea for my project. (I'm going a proposal for a study about how students' tacit learning of written genres is affected if they feel that the genre in question has an expiration date for being useful in their lives. And Deb is so cool - I asked her if there might be a way to frame it so I could carry out the study as my project for her class next semester; she said she didn't think it was really related to literacies, but that she'd definitely be happy to have me do it if I wanted to, if I thought it would be productive. Yay supportive teachers excited about my research!)

I bought tickets to NH today! I am so excited. It's like...there are definitely specific people and places I want to go, but I'm almost more excited about just driving around and seeing the places that were once so much a part of my daily life. Elm Street, South Willow, Meetinghouse, the Vista Foods plaza, the drive down Wallace Road between my uncle's and Bedford...man, it's been so long. I was there very briefly in July '07, so it's been 2 1/2 years. It'll really be great.

So yeah. I'll probably be back to freaking out tomorrow or something, but right now things look almost doable.

Change of Opinion

2009-10-24T22:36:00.000-05:00

This is relevant in no way I can think of to anything, but it's interesting to me, so ha. The benefits of running one's blog like a dictatorship never end! Though I prefer to think of it as a non-parliamentary monarchy.

Anyhow. I'm sitting here eating Ramen noodles, drinking a beer and watching Coupling - standard Saturday night when Andy is out. Coupling, for those not in the know, is like British Friends, except with lower production values and slightly more explicit jokes. It's one of my favorite shows, and I've been savoring the remaining few I've never seen.

...actually, the rest of this post was going to be too inane for words, so we'll drop it.

In lieu of that - description of my cats battling. Polo's been hanging out inside a paper bag we leave out for the purpose lately, and right now he and Penny are having it out over rights to said bag - she'll run into it and stare out at him, then run at him suddenly, they'll slap hissily at each other, and then it repeats - only with a lot of seemingly purposeless dashing about. Sometimes it looks boring to be one of my cats, but tonight it looks friggin' sweet. I want to engage in bi-weekly Battle Royales for supremacy over my domain! And I'd also like to do it with a clawless opponent so I always win. Though his enormous size advantage evens it out some.

Grading: Pt 4

2009-10-24T17:20:00.000-05:00

32.5/35

Thoughts: Okay, I'm ready to be done. I have done almost literally nothing for any of my other classes since I got these things, I had a plagiarism alert that took an age to settle, and I am tired of writing about the same issues in 32.5 different ways.

Also, I hate my prelims list. And all books. And blah. Who am I to maintain optimism in the face of grad student life?

Grading Pt 3

2009-10-19T19:03:00.000-05:00

18/35

Okay. I'm beginning to sour on this process. Not so much because of the act itself, but because it's fucking up my life. Did I do any reading for this week yet? No. Not even the classes I had today. Because I was grading. Have I edited my list? No. Because of the grading. Did I have a good lesson plan for class today? See above.

On the plus side, this section will go faster because I made up a handout off the problems in the first one, and now I can say "see handout on this" rather than explaining 15 separate times that a good thesis is one that's not obvious the first time through the text.

Grading: Pt 2

2009-10-17T16:16:00.000-05:00

15/35

Current thoughts: Still not hating it. I think only having two sections helps with that a lot - since the overall task is manageable, I don't dread it as much. Patterns are developing for sure; there are three main problems I keep seeing over and over again. I'm making notes for a handout that talks about the things (why or why did I not go over the MEAL plan before this?), and for another that gives examples of good theses, readings, etc from their peers' papers. I've just started assigning grades to them as I go, and need to go back and give grades to the others. So far there are probably two or three As, and only a handful of out-and-out Cs. One of which I feel no compunctions about giving, too, which is nice. The last paper I did was astonishingly good - also nice.

I'm beginning to flag though...not thrilled about the last three in this section, which I want to finish before dinner at 7:30. And then the other section. Though I am interested in comparing the two, I suppose.

On an unrelated note - still a bad idea to mix wine and liquor. Just in case anyone was wondering.

Grading: Pt 1

2009-10-14T21:11:00.000-05:00

8/35.

Current thoughts: Grading is incredibly time-consuming, but so far pretty interesting. It's interesting to see what Tim's lectures, my teaching, the handouts I gave and their own ideas give rise to. And honestly, though most of them (quite naturally) don't grasp how to write a literary analysis, I'm surprised by the extent to which they touch on valuable and thoughtful points - even if they lack the ability to develop them.

More to come. If reports are true, almost certainly downhill. But I remain hopeful that my current obsession with pedagogy will pull me through.