will to blogger

Ok, so the Nietzsche reference isn't really relevant here, but I'm trying to will myself back into action. My cold has gotten progressively worse over the past 4 days, so the only reasonable thing to do is to will it away at this point. I will start with something simple, the upcomig 10 songs shuffling on my iTunes:

Ghost of a different dream, by guided by voices
Army of me, by Bjork
Yanqui go home, by Camper Van Beethoven
This is New, by Wilco
Easy/Lucky/Free, by bright eyes
Bride and Bridle, by The Long Winters
Keep on Runnin', by Cat Power
Sweet Caroline, by Niel Diamond
Bad Mouth, by Fugazi
Champagne from a paper cup, by Death Cab for Cutie

[editor's note: Death Cab For Cutie, whose leader also leads The Postal Service, has a live EP coming out on Tuesday. Details can be found here.]

Being chronically late on the memes, I will provide some grossly abbreviated items.

Three Things I've Done that you probably haven't:

1. Taught philosophy at the Jet Propulsion Labratory
2. Made out with twins, at the same time
3. Read A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari 4 times

Three Things I Haven't Done that you probably have:

1. Seen Gone with the Wind
2. Owned a car in the past 10 years
3. Read Hamlet

I said a while back that I've set up a system for playing vinyle records through a preamp and a mixer and into my computer. I've been converting all of these 7" singles I've gotten with indie music magazines into digital format so I will more likely listen to them. However, I've also converted some other strange things that I'll be able to use in my impending audio essay/performance for an upcoming conference (the piece will be about Bush and God and Voice and Machines). Recent audio additions from vinyl include a self-help record from the 50s, Earl Nightingale gives you the strangest secret; a biology/physilogy record that accompanies a plastic model of the human body, "The Talking Torso" (1968); and the Don Ameche version of "Co-Star: the record acting game--you act scenes oppopsite your favorite star" (1976). There are some great soundbites to be pirated from these gems for maximum auditory effect.

Anyway, I'm willing myself back to action. I hope to catch up on my blog reading, too. And I'll be skipping tomorrow's faculty meeting (hooray!)

#1 idiot

I just read this in the latest Harper's. One of the selections is titled Poetry Slams, and is a translation of three political poems published in North Korean literary journals. Here is my favorite, "#1 Idiot," by Youngbin Han (trans. Yunhee Lee):

Hey Bush,
You're famous, Mr. American President.
You're really an idiot.
Not just an idiot; you're a swanky idiot.

If they gather all the idiots under the sky
and have a contest to decide who is the real idiot,
then you should hurry and enter the contest.
I'm sure you'll win first place with no problem.

You know, idiots are usually thick-skinned
and don't feel embarrassment,
a sign that shows their stupidity.
So in this respect you are truly born stupid.

When you go to the ranch to rest for a month on a whim,
you are using the talent of yours
that no other idiots could ever have.
If there is a judge who doesn't know that,
he must not be a human from this planet.

Your greatest talent is
your audacity to start a fight with us.
Do you envy the audacity of the tiger moth
that flies into the fire not knowing
he's going to be burned to death?

There are so many different kinds of idiots,
but nobody will dare compete with you.
You have no equals
so you are surely the #1 idiot.
Ha, ha, ha, the #1 idiot is
President Bush of the U.S. now.

_______________________

Now, some parts of this poem are better than others. I welcome discussion, analysis, or critique. Personally, I thought that the "must not be a human from this planet" line was a bit sophomoric, and really did not further the rhetoric, imagery, or flow of the work. The big swinging dick moment (the fifth stanza) is also a weakness: the pissing match rhetoric reproduces the very idiocy that the author seems to be criticizing. Finally, I love the childish glee of the "ha, ha, ha" moment at the end. This is part of the poem that conjures a basic pathos of the temporary glee resulting from hurling an insult.

I'm sure that the those of you who are poets and literature professors might have something more substantial to add. And others, like the Bitch Doctor, may argue that Larry Summers or someone else deserves a fair chance at #1 idiot.

So, who should be nominated for the category of #1 idiot?

conversations with my dogs

Me: Stop eating your poop! That's disgusting!
dog eating poop: munch munch, pause, look at me, look at poop, take one more bite, walk away.

Me: stop barking like an idiot!
dog barking like an idiot: pause, grumble, grumble, growl, BARK . . .
Me . . .Sto-ahahahahp it, stopitstopitstopit!!
dog: looking at me like I am the one barking like an idiot, lies down on ground, sighs, looks at me, BARK BARK BARK!

Me (as dog is flailing around on leash): would you cut it out? please. you're embarassing me. Stop fucking around.
Me (remembering this dog is deaf): giving the sign for "stop fucking around" over and over.
dog (doing some sort of lunatic dog yoga): acting crazy, brief pause, quick stop, into crazy eyes, back and forth, into grab the leash with your mouth and shake with the might of entire body, stop, sit down, lick butt. Repeat.

Me (at 4am): what do you want? don't you dare try to tell me you are hungry. I mean it--go back to sleep!
Me (again remember this dog is deaf): arrrgh! wah wah wah! stop licking me. Ouch! you just scratch off half my face!
Me (after 20-30 minutes of this): OK, fine, let's go get your breakfast.
Me (5 minutes later): I can't believe you are sleeping like a baby--but could you please get off me?

Me: stop smelling me.
dog: sniff sniff, pause, head cocked to one side, sniff.
Me: I love you guys. ya bunch of weirdos.

Edited to be in memory of Lowkey, Dr. Gym-Partner's Great Pyreneese, who died today. We'll miss you, big guy

academic neuroses files (part four)

Ailment: Lookatmeitis
Manifestation: all forms of communication

Case Study: Subject starts a blog and then is very surprised to realize after only a couple weeks that he is worried if anyone is reading. Should there be more comments? Should subject be doing something to network and build relationships? Are people linking and blogrolling? Do they see how clever he (thinks he) is? Subject is not sure how to understand new information about self: he is needy for attention, or validation, or some kind of positive contact related (even if in pseudonymity) to others of his ilk. Nice blogger seems to take some interest, seeming to understanding subject's innate insecurities. He starts blogrolling others, gets a sitemeter, starts commenting to others, and is overwhelmed that he is starting to make some new writerly/readerly relationships with said ilk. Though he has trouble keeping up with and reading as many blogs as he wants to every day, he checks out a post by New Kid about the different kinds of academic blogs/bloggers, referencing a blogger whom subject has not yet stumbled upon. Subject follows a link to Arete, who (how fortuitous!) has recently written a post that is a guide for new bloggers, which follows a hilariously juvenile-mundane photo of found (anti-) art. Guidebook addresses blogging form of lookatmeitis and wisely reframes the ailment as a failure of practical communication. Subject is even more happy to see that sagacious veteran blogger is doctoral student in field very similar to subject's own. Subject appears to be less down of academy at present time.

Edited to apologize that I don't think I know how to do the trackback thing correctly, as evidenced by the link to "guide for new bloggers," which went nowhere when I checked it.

academic neuroses files (part three)

Ailment: Shit Midas Disorder
Manifestation: Publishing

Case Study: Subject believes that every publishing project he touches turns to crap. Ailment made acute presentation when subject received news that ambitious edited collection (the complete manuscript of which had been with excited acquisitions editor of major publisher for one full year) finally was rejected on the grounds that it "fell outside the scope of their general lists." Subject is further distraught/confused because reviews were positive. However, subject is getting all to used to strong reviews being coupled with rejections, which slowly takes toll on former joy at research and wanting to (to use the parlance of our time) "engage in discourse." Subject exhibiting some symptoms of Eggs in One Basket Disease, as he thought that payoff from huge amount of labor put into this project would take him one step closer to being viable as possible future candidate for possible tenure-track position in department he is indentured to. Also showing signs of Sour Grapes Disorder, making flippant and unreflective proclamations about the state of academic future. [analyst note: Real blame may lie with the inherent flaws of blind review process for humanities research, a journal system overburdened with increasing publishing requirements for tenure (and even for initial jobs), and a publishing structure that favors conservative research or brand name institutions or insider information or academic nepotism].

academic neuroses files (part two)

Ailment: Willy Loman Syndrome (formerly known as Hopeful Karma Disorder)
Manifestation: there will be a big payoff in the future if they like me

Case study: Subject (dr. m) has self-taught skills at web design and maintenance, obtained through reading source code and playing around with free trial html editing software before buying fancy web software studio. He cut his teeth on making websites for Dr. Yidg and Performance Artist Friend (both of which were given complete re-designs after skills were honed). Also made website for digital performance collective of which subject is a member. Having confidence, and hoping to score future favor with academic cohorts (a low percentage idea at best), subject has redone academic department's website, created website for tenured-colleague's institute, and (just this past week) coded and designed another tenured-colleague's media-rich essay for on-line publication. The latter turned out to be time-intensive tenfold of subjects original estimate (and, in humble opinion of subject, presents the essay in a way more interesting manner than prima facie content suggests). Subject, who has been toiling (thankfully and grovelinglily) as underpaid Visiting Instructor--benefits: yes; bonus and raises: no--thinks that such donation of creative and technological gifts will result in positive countergift [analyst's note: subject seems to be well-versed in, yet delusional about contemporary application of, research on gift logic by Mauss, Bataille, Derrida, etc., and thinks that moral reciprocity of countergift has now been put into play]. Though surface talk from "those in charge" has expressed effusive desire to secure more permanent academic job security for subject, the past three years have seen, in turn, no permission to search for a line, an unsucessful search for area unrelated to subject's work, and a possibly-successful search for other unrelated area. Subject, who attends all faculty meetings, has yet to hear anyone suggest a need for any position remotely related to subject's area(s) of expertise, yet somehow harbors hopes that an obscure non-grant-securing, humanities-based position will eventually (nay, magically) appear. Subject seems mostly unaltered in delusions, even after hearing early this day that probable ridiculously-high-paying non-university-alternative-job for-which-he-has-serious-insider-contact is "in a really slow period right now, so it doesn't look good." Subject appears slight bitter, but (inexplicably) remains hopeful that good things will come to those who are helpful, committed, and likeable. Analyst thinks subject is precious, and wishes the best for the poor bastard.

from the academic neuroses files (part one)

Ailment: chronic self-doubt
Manifestation: they must have made a mistake

Case Study: Subject (dr. m) has not been blazing a trail of publications, though many people have (had?) high hopes for him. Nevertheless, subject receives unsolicited email from editor of an exciting international on-line journal saying subject's name was given to him as a good person to place on journal's editorial board. Sceptically, subject goes to journal website to find list of editorial board members, where he spots the name of his dissertation advisor and several well-knowns, such as Judith Butler. Surely there has been a mistake. But, subject writes email and attaches CV (as requested) accepting the honor of serving on this board. Chronic Self-Doubt (CSD) sets in further when, one week later, no other contact has been made from editor (saying something like "welcome on board"). Subject's conclusion is that mistake in fact has been made (the realization coming after editor sees CV) and that editor hopes that subject will simply forget this little email exchange ever happened.

brought to you by the letter F

From The Future Dictionary of America:

fauxkward adj. combination of "faux" and "awkward." Falsely awkward. Qualities such as false humility, fake shyness, and pseudo-goofballness can all be termed subclasses of fauxkwardness. Most often seen in stammering movie actors (Hugh Grant, when not playing a baddie) and not-really-klutzy actresses (Julia Roberts, when playing anyone, including herself), but possibly also seen in alleged world leaders (Bush II, when reading his script very carefully).

floorganization n. the use of the lower inside surface of a hollow structure for the arranging and stacking of paperwork.

Froon's Law n. a mathematical equation that reduces to quantitative certainty the desirabilty of any micro- or macroeconomic activity. Also known as the Unified Theory of Enough. Revolutionary for its harmonizing of free-market growth and innovation with sustainability and equitable wealth distribution, Froon's Law accurately determines the point at which the opportunity for profit ceases to be a constructive agent of innovation and becomes instead destructive in social, environmental, or other terms. [blogger's note: this definition is abridged, as it carries on for another full page about Holistic Quantitative Tables, Elementary Rapacity Coefficients, twig-and-berry mines, long blond moustaches, and a global Culture of Enough]

anonymous public art (cops can't dance)

When living in a city, it is always nice to see space used for public art. But the public part of public art is often too tied up in political decision making or too representative of local power (as opposed to local publics). This is why I have become increasingly fascinated with anonymous public art--art that has neither benefactor, nor permit, nor commission. I first took notice of this while visiting friends in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn (1st Brooklyn Stop on the L train from Manhattan). You know how kids often tie old pairs of shoes together and then launch them onto power lines and phone lines? Well, that's what I noticed in Williamsburg, except someone had been making shoe-shaped plywood cut-outs, painting them in all forms of elaborate sneaker designs, drilling holes and lacing them together, and then flinging them up on the power lines: small, colorful, public statues dangling 25 feet above the ground. What interested me was that a mundane cultural activity had been transformed into a subversive aesthetic one.

Also in Williamsburg there is a person who contributes to anonymous public art by transforming local detritus. This person picks up objects that have been left outside as junk, takes them away, and then proceeds to make paintings on the objects (boxes, signs, broken pieces of furniture, etc). The cool part is that this person then returns the completed painting to the spot in which it was originally found. Then, people will simply find paintings on junk sitting aroud the neighborhood. This person does sign his or her work with a one-word name, but I don't remember what it is.

I always thought it would be a good writing project to pursue, but I've never figured out how to frame it or even how to proceed. Regardless, my interest was reawakened when I recently saw an odd-shaped painting attached to a traffic sign near my house. Someone made a painting on plywood, drilled holes in it, and bolted it onto the metal post holding up a speed limit sign. It has been there a month, and I hope to find more. The best thing is that it has gotten me conditioned to look for art among the streets.

I suposed most would consider graffiti to be anonymous public art, and I do as well. For some reason that seems like almost a canonized form, and has given me less interest. Nevertheless, I want to share a favorite piece of simple graffiti that I've seen on my weekend bike rides through the city. Near a run-down bar, whose sign advertizes "best booty in town," there is a nondescript red door on a nondescript yellow building where someone has written "cops can't dance." It cracks me up every time I see it.

---

I just picked up some food at the Chinese take-out place around the corner. I love the sentiment expressed on a hand written sign on the counter: "have nice every day"

From The Future Dictionary of America
media feed n. a bland, flavorless mush; easy to swallow, hard to stomach.

to do list: make to do list

I wanted to be sure to get in one last post on my first month of being a blogger. I think it is helping me quite a bit. Though I haven't been doing much academic writing, the blog has the old writing desire finally starting to rekindle. All those old essays and half-completed ideas are starting to flow. Hooray!

Also, I hope this doesn't sound corny, but this little academic blogging community often feels more like a helpful, hopeful, fun, angry, loving, joking, working, supportive community than where I am in most of my other life.

I hoped to write a better entry than this, but I cut one of my typing fingers right on the typing part. I was digging a hole with my bare hand in the garden, so I guess I brought it on myself. I know, I know, to be so lucky to be in the garden in January probably doesn't get me much sympathy.


OK, so here's my to-do list of things to write about in upcoming blog entries:
a list of jobs I've had
my interest in anonymous public art
my relationship with all the ideas in my dissertation
an ocassional political column (or politics meets pop culture)
indie music I'd like to plug
movie reviews if I ever see a movie again (next one on the shelf is the 1986 documentary Sheman's March)
my service-learning class and their yellow bike project

From The Future Dictionary of America

hyperchondria n. the state of feeling physically sound; an experience of total, thorough well-being, in which one has no physical or psychological complaints; a condition in which one feels superhealthy or superfine; an overabundance of health; in extreme cases, hyperchondria may indicate delusion, but the person will not want to acknowledge the problem. [I wish this on most of us in the psychic meat grinder of academe, but especially to new kid, just tenured, lucyrain, and others just trying to get through each day]

[And this one I dedicate to bitch, phd (because it exhibits her moxie]:
horsecock 1. adj. unnecesarrily large, to the point of being vulgar and unseemly. Steve insisted on driving his horsecock SUV throughout the gas shortage. 2. v. classless overcompensation. To make sure he acquired the autographed flak jacket, Donald horsecocked his initial bid at the charity auction.

acceleration + fatigue = kinesthesis breakdown

iPod as life metaphor
I always need at least 2 more hours to become fully charged.
I never have the right playlist when I need it.

the more I work, the more I feel behind on work
Why do I feel like such a slacker when I did all of this over the past 2 days?:
-work out at gym
-interview bottle diggers
-create a reading list on public memory for independent study student
-create entire schedule for service learning class campus yellow bike project
-and contact lists and group tasks for them as well
-update my Blackboard sites
-fix grades that were screwed up last semester
-take 30 minute nap
-do some blogging (more commenting than posting)
-attend dinner party for student who defended dissertation
-attend campus performance (politics meets art meets theater meets narrative)
-search out super-cheap DAT tapes for audio work
-create website (including six pages and seven images) for good friends' lesbian wedding
-buy more coffee beans from local roaster

It's because I didn't work on revising an essay I've been sitting on forever.
It's looking at me right now. All smug and superior. And inadequate.

where do they put it all?
My next door neighbors have an obsessed relationship with Ethan Allen. That big EA truck seems to be outside our house at least once a month. How much furniture can someone buy, anyway?

TV shows I watch whose central characters are women
Veronica Mars
Gilmore Girls
Alias

other shows I watch
Lost
Six Feet Under

favorite shows of all time
Northern Exposure
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The X-Files

TV show wish
That the Coen Brothers make a show for HBO

and . . .
(From The Future Dictionary of America)
condoleese n. a dialect of American English characterized by extremely precise enunciation, a highly specialized vocabulary, and the intention to deceive or obfuscate.

ineffable adj. 1. impervious to sexual intercourse. 2. not to be solicited for sexual intercourse.

irregardless adv. as of 2046, still not a real word, despite continued usage by basketball coaches. Basketball shorts, by the way, have gotten very small and snug again.

rumsfeld n. one who can stomach casualties.

electric bitters, electric joy

Just returned from the second part of our interview with the bottle diggers (radio documentary project). The whole time we talked to these guys (two brothers), they were digging a trench, sifting through the remains of an old city trash dump in use from 1895-1910, and pulling out all sorts of collectible treasures: bottles, marbles, pottery, porcelain, and glass syringes. It seems that the local doctors all made their own medicines, which were put in their own embossed medicine bottles. They were quite excited to find a few rare pieces: a sealed case gin and a bottle of electric bitters. These two diggers have done this for a couple of decades, and are part of a local amateur archeological society. Each brother has his own particular type of bottle that he collects (one miniature whiskeys, the other soda bottles in the "torpedo" style), and they are able to fund their own collections by selling most of what they find on their digs. Apparently, if you can find bottles that are cobalt blue, they are sure-fire sellers because ordinary collectors like to put them in their windows.

It was really great to be around the rhythm and excitement of the dig, and to see the digger's face light up with hope and joy when a bottle would emerge from a shovelful of century-old trash.

the vanity of self-disclosure

Movies or Albums I'm supposed to like but can't stand:
1. Citizen Kane
2. Thriller (Michael Jackson)
3. It's a Wonderful Life
4. A Clockwork Orange
5. Anything by Jimmy Buffet or the Eagles


Movies I've never seen and don't intend to
1. Gone With the Wind
2. Annie Hall
3. Serpico
4. 12 Angry Men
5. Rosemary's Baby
6. Ben-Hur
7. Fantasia
8. The Pianist
9. Patton
10. Rocky Horror Picture Show

the hidden beauty of the news

Looking through the headlines of today's paper, by removing them from any context I can glean several phrases that would make good band names, poem titles, or secret government operation names:

Baby no. 81
virtual campaign
meatpackers face
festival stampede
food inquiry
last digs
discrepancy remains
kumquat blondies
everyday exotic
king of frozen egg rolls
sizable expectations
versatile grizzlies
belligerent prisoner
drunken robbins
define "member"
couples drop
seal incites debate
return to arms
stricter dress
surprising analysts

This would be a fun exercise for a creative writing class if each student had draw one of these phrases out of a hat and write a poem, story, or causerie based on their random title.

i can't stop myself

more future dictionary entries:

puritangential adj. a form of argument used to obfuscate an important issue by diverting attention to an irrelevant one.

pulling a Lieberman v. [slang] to covertly run for office on the opposition ticket.

finally, the word I've been looking for for over a decade:

yidg n. one's romantic pair; older than a boy/girlfriend, less businesslike than a partner, more fun than a spouse, less gooey than a lover. Don't even mention "significant other."

journaleach

Another entry from The Future Dictionary of America:

journaleach n. the process by which the significance of an event or events is drawn out or emptied by excessive coverage in the print and broadcast media.

riding with Kathy Acker

Back when Dr. Partner was Partner, M.A., we attended an interdisciplinary conference at Duke University (she to present, me to see what conferencing was all about). Most of my favorite times related to conferences happened at this one, and all of my conference encounters with famous others happened there (except for the time that Ray Charles was staying in the hotel where a region conference was being held. Anyway, I don't think that my field has produced anyone actually famous). Anyway, here is the funny or memorable stuff that happened:

Graduate students picked us up at the airport (the conference was on campus, but the hotel was sort of far away). I don't know if they were supposed to pick us up (we being brand new doctoral students ourselves), but we somehow got lumped together with this postmodern novelist named Ronald Sukenick. He insisted that we be taken with him, as we were oblivious to who he was and the grad students were fawning all over him (in a rather gratuitous and embarrassing way). We kept running into Ron and he kept insisting that we stick with him and drink together.

Another strange author named Mark Amerika kept trying to hit on Dr. Partner.

Frederic Jameson bummed a smoke from me [I have been totally smoke-free for several years now], grunted at me, ripped the butt off of the smoke I gave him, and crankily sulked around.

The only person whose work I was closely familiar with (Michael Hardt) was there. He was so kind and generous as a respondent/discussant that I vowed to be that way with young scholars if I ever made it through my program.

On the last day, having missed a makeshift shuttle full of "lesser" conference participants, I was sitting outside the hotel despondent and bored. A grad student chaufeur pulled up to get his charge, a spunky, gritty, short-haired woman. Much to the chagrine of the fawning, star-struck grad student, Kathy Acker asked me if I wanted a ride in to campus with them. We chatted all the way in, making people-observations and joking around, while the litearture grad student tried in vain to ask critically astute questions about the author's work.

The insight I gained riding with Kathy Acker is that I never want to be someone who people suck up to. I think that Acker, like Sukenick, liked being met conversationally as an interesting person, not as an important author.

paradoxysm

From The Future Dictionary of America:

paradoxysm n. a sudden attack of understanding that allows you to hold sparring statements in your mind without feeling like you have to choose one side over the other (white/black) (wrong/right) (briefs/boxers). Instead, you are seized by the pleasure of ambivalence, of entertaining two well-founded ideas at the dinner table you've set in the middle of your small but capacious heart.

serendipitus populum

I love serendipitous connections among popular culture that arise unexpectedly through conversation. For example, jo(e) posted a comment to me in which she mentions Lucy from Peanuts, and a famous scene about dog germs. In hopes of finding a copy of the strip online somewhere, I do a search that lands me on one of those great quotes websites. There happen to be several quotes from Lucy Van Pelt (classic characters of American Literature??), including the following that gave me pause: "I never made a mistake in my life. I thought I did once, but I was wrong." Clearly, it seems to me, Charles Schultz was more than a simple cartoonist. This quote from Lucy is too close to the sentiments of the current president to be anything short of prophetic. I suspect that careful (no, meticulous) study of the panoply of Peanuts cartoons will reveal that Schultz is the American Nostradamus. Are we, the American public, the Charlie Brown to GWB/Lucy's snickering confidence game football-puller-away-er? Has anyone yet written Political Science According to Peanuts?

tongue theory

Tongue Theory (well, proposition): When waking to the experience of a tongue on and in one's mouth, it is better that the tongue belongs to one's partner than one's dog.

Tongue Law: it usually belongs to the dog.