Mi Casa Esta Sucio!

Mneumonic devices I used to learn Spanish vocabulary today:

- poder: sounds like POTUS, the president is a capable dude who [helps] make laws-->to do/to make
- miedo: it's a small cute-sounding word, cute little girls scare easily-->fear
- pedir: sounds like peddlers, peddlers are always asking for your money-->to ask
- escoger: sounds kinda like escargot, which I would never choose to eat-->to choose
- quejarse: it's jarring when people complain a lot-->to complain
- firmer: a firm deal needs a signature-->to sign
- poner: when you pwon someone you put then in their place-->to put
- traer: traders bring goods from here to there-->to bring
- bastante: when you call someone a bastard it means you've had enough-->enough
- fracasar: when diplomacy fails there's gonna be a fracas-->to fail
- alegrar(se): sounds like allegro, which is a word I like, liking stuff makes me happy-->to make happy (this one was a stretch, clearly)
- demorar: I find delays demoralizing-->to delay
- coger: [dirty] old codgers are always trying to grab at you-->to grab, to catch
- debajo de: to be debased is to be lowered-->below/beneath
- encima de: exema is on top of my skin-->on top of
- junta de: ...junta is the NEXT TO worst form of government? I got nothing-->next to
- cambiar: I hate that they changed the blagues tordant on Carembars-->to change
- tal: something that's a TALl order is probably going to be SUCH a pain-->such, such a
- suelen: Americans often sue people-->often
- despues: Despite knowing it's wrong, I always procrastinate, procrastinating is putting off til later-->later
- pelear(se): P-Lazer had lazer guns, guns are for fighting-->to fight

Frozen Spiderweb Leggies

Learnin' how to embed stuff. And spending way too much time on my professional development project. Sigh.

Where High Theory and Fan Fiction Meet

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?

...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

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

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

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:

- 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 or sauce."
- On Anne Wysocki's reference to a major literacy studies scholar: "The shout-out to that legacy is particularly loud 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 in persuading outsiders of the superiority of their fashions and tastes and disdaining those fashions and practices at which that persuasion becomes too successful." (Footnote to this sentence: "Q: How did the hipster burn his tongue? A: He drank his coffee before it was cool.")

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We Were All Thinking It

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

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

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.

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

Slide!

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)

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

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

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

"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

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

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

"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.