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.

the stuff beneath the city

So, Dr. Gym-Partner and I went to the antique bottle show yesterday to sniff out some informants/interviewees. Like countless other collecting cultures, it was basically a flea market for expensive old junk. We met several collectors and dealers of antique bottles, and discovered that there are two ways into the business. There are those who buy their bottles and those who go outside and find them. We want to talk to the people who go out and find bottles. What a strange hobby: digging through old trash dumps. Perhaps the most surprising thing for me was to find out that these dump-diggers can find so many old bottles (phamacist bottles, liquor bottles, canning bottles, soda water bottles). Also surprising are the varieties in size, shape, and color. We met one digger who sells his finds so he can afford to buy torpedo bottles (round-bottom soda-water bottles that were designed that way to stay on their sides, keeping their corks moist during long overseas shipping journeys). I had no idea there was all this stuff beneath the city.

But under the city isn't the only place one can find old glass. We met another guy who told us that there are two kinds of bottle hunters: diggers and divers. This guy's hobby is diving in rivers, where he routinely finds Civil War-era beer bottles (I think he called it Three Piece Ale), "new" bottles from 1910-20, and the ocassional French wine bottle from the early 19th century. As he read the surprised look on my face (how do you know where to look?) he summed up his theory. "As long as people have been drinking," he siad, "they've been drinking by the banks of rivers."

We plan to starting getting interviews this week--the sounds of shovels digging and cars driving by should produce a nice ambience for the stories of these modern day treasure hunters, these local archaelogists of the junk trade.

skanky modernist

I woke up a while ago with this lingering visceral dream-fragment of someone screaming at me that I am "nothing more than a skanky modernist!" Part of me hopes they are right.

dig it

In just a little while I'm going with Dr. Gym-Partner to an antique bottle show. We learned about the show last weekend while riding our bicycles through the city. We saw two men digging a big hole in someone's yard, so , naturally, we stopped to ask them what they were doing. Turns out that the neighborhood was built over an old 19th century dump, and the two were digging for old bottles. Letting the guy talk more, as he showed us an old hand-blown gin bottle, we found out that there was a local club of bottle diggers and a bottle show (I guess they sell them to collectors) this weekend. Anyway, Dr. Gym-Partner and I decided that it would be a fun project to make an audio documentary about Urban Bottle Digging. And collector cultures are always a fascinating hoot, anyway.

I'd love to play this topic off of jo(e)'s interest in urban nature and literature. The beauty that awaits beneath the urban surface. From dump to lawn to treasure trove.

the root of my uncertainty

As I've been roasting away my winter veggies, I realized that there is one in the mix that I am having for the first time: the rutabaga. Realizing I do not know how long said root should roast, I tried consulting the world famous researcher, Google. What it returned to me was more than I could hope for. Did anyone know that there is an organization called The Advanced Rutabaga Studies Institute (see here)? I wonder if they offer post-docs? Maybe in the literature and rhetoric of the rutabaga, the economics and geography of rutabagas, or trends in rutabagativity? There truly is a niche for everything.

Blackboard iTunes Shuffle Hour

In an attempt to do blogger correctly, I am taking a break from working on my classes' Blackboard sites to report on the current status of my iTunes shuffle-mode next 10 songs.

now: Off With Your Head (Sleater-Kinney)
2. Song for Kelly Huckaby (death cab for cutie)
3. Superhumans (The flaming lips)
4. Take you on a cruise (Interpol)
5. Evonce (Thelonius Monk)
6. The View (Modest Mouse)
7. The Sutcliffe Catering Song (Pavement)
8. Broadway (Old 97's)
9. The Ids are Alright (Guided by Voices)
10. Can't Stand it (Wilco)

BTW, for those of you keeping score at home, I finally have the winter vegetables roasting away in the oven. I probably have enough for 8-10 people, though. Those damn winter vegetables are huge. I fully plan to grill the lambchops, too.

spam poetry, part one; or, cartographic profit

Have you ever looked at those spam emails full of gibberish text? Usually they accompany solicitations for reduced mortgages, cheap software, erectile dysfunction medicine, and horny housewives. Well, embedded in the randomly-generated gibberish that is meant to elude spam blocking software is a hidden treasure trove of poetic utterances. These 2-4 word phrases continually evoke (for me at least) insightful concepts or poem titles. I took the name of this blog from one of these. Here is a short list of great spam poetry that I hope to use in a generative manner at some point:

circular ethos glass
art predisposition
carcinogen hideaway
arisen mediocre
upstart emigrant denunciation
kinesthesis breakthrough
befogging feminism cheesecake
orthodontist teet
chimpanzee fieldwork
newlywed still leeward
fried bourbon
persuasion bootleg
atrocious pinscher cutlet
cruddy oneupmanship clause
hermes lichen confidante
doorkeeper network
tansy inventive hymnal
glasgow taxicab
querulous rapture standby
gastrointestinal corporate fort
cutesy puny pepsi tomatoes
eighth handyman
cartographic profit
escalate dogmatism
comrade catalogue

orion through the live oak

Urban living usually cuts me off from some of the simple joys of nature. The little, unexpected ways that nature asserts itself become these precious image-moments. As I had coaxed my thin-blooded dalmatian outside with a biscuit--to use the bathroom on a chilly night--I looked up, and saw framed in the moonlight, Orion through the live oak.

meticulous slacker

I keep finding evidence to support my claim that I have mild cases of both OCD and ADD, the result of which makes me meticulously unable to follow through on my plans. Today, for example, I was like a failed version of profgrrrl. I planned to grill lambchops with cilantro-mint sauce and roast some winter vegetables. Then, wash it all down with a nice micro-brewed IPA. Instead, it was frozen pizza and a can of Miller.

the fragile academic psyche

I can't believe how lame I am. I check my blog more often to see if anyone has posted a comment than do I log on to post something new. This must be some deep need for a relationship to readers that is as different as possible from editorial boards, list serves, and others in the real axis of evil. Again, though, the whole internal point of blogging for me is to free myself from obsessiveness and paranoia about writing. (the external point is to join this strange community of anonymous academics who I am surprised to find myself caring more about than most of the colleagues I share a hallway with).

wicked randomness

I was thinking about blogging today, and about what to write (reminding myself that I will never allow this to become another stressful writing situation), and then I saw jo(e)'s post about underwear and the unique venue a blog provides, and the wicked randomness of blogging topics. In jo(e)'s case, the silly randomness of bra-ordering (in several senses) gave way to a somber and hopeful reflection. The message I ultimately came away with was to just let fly with the randomness while blogging. I can order my thoughts, like jo(e)'s bras, when I'm damn well ready.

So,

A kid I knew in university, who looked like a young Elvis, is running for chair of the DNC. (and I'm still shooting for tenure-track. Not tenure, but tenure-track).

I just got the two new Bright Eyes CDs in the mail, before they hit stores next week. I'm strangely impressed with myself for always being one step ahead of alternative college chicks, musically at least. Yes, I saw Iron & Wine before they were on the Garden State soundtrack and Death Cab for Cutie before they were on MTV-U.

Every time I go to the gym (three times a week with colleague/friend), MTV-U is on, and they only have a rotation of about 15 songs.

At the gym, I am stunned at the freakish strength I now have (perhaps the Samson hair???), as I can bench press over 10 times my age in weight (pounds).

Why do dogs like to eat cat poop? Why do I let something that eats cat poop lick my face?

One of our dogs is deaf. She knows tons of hand signs. It is so funny how she will refuse to look my way if she doesn't want to "listen" to me.

My non-smoking Mom had half of one of her lungs removed this past Spring due to a tumor. They found it when she was x-rayed for arthtritis in her shoulder. My sister's ex-smoker fiance started chemo and radiation yesterday for stage 3 lung cancer. They found the tumor after it pinched a nerve and paralyzed one of his vocal chords. Please do all self-exams regularly.

I saw a duck in a tree last night. And a rooster lives in my neighborhood.

I wish I knew someone who had tivo--I want to know if it's worth it.

I had to take partner's titanium powerbook G4 to the Apple store for service--the hard drive won't mount. The people who work service at the Apple store have the best job title: Mac Genius.

Half of my department are partners. No, that sounds wrong. There are four pairs of romantic couples in my department, and that accounts for half of the department. Yes, but doesn't it sound wrong anyway?

This new Bright Eyes album (I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning) sounds great so far.

I need to create some descriptive yet cute code names for partner, colleagues, and others in my life.

The Chinese take-out place around the corner from our house gave us one of those Chinese retaurant calendars over the holidays. How kitcshy!

I don't like to plug brands either, save one exception: John Fluevog Shoes.

What's funny is that I swear there was all this other stuff I intended to write today. I was just thinking about it earlier while walking our dogs.

baptism by fire

That's how the semester has gotten underway. The first week ended with our faculty meeting to choose which candidate to make an offer to. Worst case scenario was theme for the day. First, the vote was a tie. Then there were harsh words levied, feelings hurt, non sequiturs flitting around like blackflies, colleagues being assholes, veiled threats, power plays, and a defector from the "good" side thinking he could save the day (somehow, save the day by leaving his compatriots flapping in the proverbial breeze).

Now, it's time for week two. Guess what? There's another faculty meeting on Friday. This time to decide on offers of graduate student admissions and fuunding. How many hopes and dreams will be dashed because of a polarized, warring faculty? I may sneak in a video camera. Perhaps there's a market for Scholars Gone Wild videos.

hiring day

I'm off to my department this minute to attend a faculty meeting. The agenda is to make an offer to one of the people we interviewed this week. What a long and tiring first week. When is Spring Break?

the academy, my delilah?

Before the start of the 2002 Spring semester, I went to a place like Supercuts and received a close-cropped $8 cut in about 4 minutes' time. In the second semester of a Visiting Instructor (= more classes and less pay) position, I made a vow to myself, a pact of the will. I announced to my partner (tenure-track in same department, and really the only reason I had a position at all--so what reason do I have to bitch and moan anyway) that "I will not cut my hair until I have a tenure-track position!"

It has now been three years since I've had a haircut. Many of you will be impressed that I have been diligent in its care, using all sorts of long-and-curly-hair-specific shampoos and conditioners. During this time, my reputation among the students has grown and I've begun to find the return of my writing voice. Like Samson, is my vow the key to my power? Is the academy my Delilah? Will giving myself over completely to the academy result in a betrayal. Will I end up having my eyes burned out with hot pokers, chained to a grist mill? Is that what I want so badly?

OK, so that's a bit dramatic. I guess my point is that these little superstitious choices can take on a narrative life of their own, spinning into the fabulous, the ridiculous, or the comic.

who knew?

I definitely feel nerdier. I must have messed up on the test somewhere (how nerdy is that concern?)

from the pet peeve files

I don't know why this drives me nuts as much as it does, especially since I subscribe to the belief that pragmatics, usage, and understandability are more appropriate ways to judge language than by rigid, formalized rules. But, I hate it when someone writes (it bothers me more on page/screen than in speech) that he or she is going "to try and do something." The conjunction is unwarranted and nonsensical. Rather, people are going "to try to do something."

the silly things we do

If any of you readers are psychologists, or psychoanalytic literary critics, maybe you can tell me if I'm trying to transfer responsibility from myself by using the royal we in my title. Just like I made my previous post all about me (relationally) while claiming that it was all about everyone else.

I just sent a mass email to my class, regarding a room change, and used the date "Tursday."

A student looking for a directed study told me he was interested in studying Emily Durkheim.

I'll tell you later about my pact involving hair and the tenure track.

one down

OK, I made it through the first full teaching day of the semester. What I usually thought was a day all about me turned out to be a day all about everyone else: scores of students wanting to add into my classes, a few special needs students, two TAs who are (understandably) intimidated to address a group of 150 students, two dogs needing to be walked and fed and played with and loved, nervous job candidate making it through the second day, second job candidate needing picked up at airport, several colleagues wanting the full scoop on candidate two after my rush-hour car trip with her, phone call to little brother in marriage falling apart (yes, wife not letting you see your little kids since before Xmas is not cool; no, sharing apartment with other separated woman is not cool). 15 hours of stress. I need to sleep: tenured colleague/buddy/workout partner picking me up at 7:45am for trip to gym before next job presentation, meeting with TAs, course preparations, dinner with job candidate, and (finally, hopefully, desperately) some TV time with Lost and Alias.

and, they're off!

I hit the ground running today, as Spring semester aught-five commenced. I was on campus for most of the day, and was able to complete all syllabi, make all copies, start to organize my Blackboard sites, chit chat with most of my colleagues, and take care of departmental business. I didn't make it to the rec center, though. I figure I can give myself a little grace period for figuring out a solid working (out) schedule.

I need to start work on what I hope will be a wicked fun conference presentation. All of the panelists will create audio essays and audio responses to stock questions. The respondent will craft an audio response, and a good-humored tech person will direct the whole presentation. At least it should break up the monotony of some of these panels.

the writing cure

When I was in high school, I'd write when I needed to. For reasons unknown to me, and commented upon by teachers for reasons also unknown to me, my sentences and paragraphs all came together relatively free of semantic and syntactical errors. I didn't pursue creative writing, letter writing, diary keeping, or any other great skill-honing crafts. I actually never started writing for fun until I was out of my undergraduate program (which was also the time that I started reading things I figured I had missed in college and before: Faulkner, Nabokov, Dostoevsky, Hurston, and similar fare). It was a year or so out of school, after traveling and moving around, that I started writing letters to people--in a way that was usually more fulfilling for me, and always just a riot.

Then, I entered an MA program. I was still surprised to hear that my writing was "good," "cogent," "fluid," "readable" and such. But, writing was not a problem--even as it became a chore, which means it became an object of procrastination, which means that a tiny little wedge of despair had been gently inserted into the process.

Then (brief biographical aside), I moved to a huge city, taught some community college, moved to a smaller city and taught some more CC, and finally entered a PhD program where I was longing to write and to express myself. Well, I felt so alive during coursework, and I finally was more thrilled than confused to hear that my writing exhibited some talent. Enter, of course, preliminary exams, prospectus, and diss. Somehow, in a matter of only about 2 years, all of the joy of writing and thinking and reading and living-the-critical-life was sucked out of me. What I have not been able to understand, though , is that, as the fun and spark was replaced by doubt and despair, I was still given the highest accolades and embarrassingly positive feedback from committee members who are important-names-in-the-field.

Since then, all writing has been a struggle. I get the creepy crawlies in my flesh and on my skin as I search in vain for the right clever phrases and bone-jarring insights. They never come, of course. Yet, I send out the occasional essay that has received more excruciating attention than a journal article ever should. And I get back the mixed reviews and the rejections that can't quite explain what's wrong, and the resubmissions that are returned as the editorships change hands. And the doubt and despair becomes the sickness that consumes me.

And just when I feel that the case is terminal, that writing will never be fun, that I am doomed to this malaise and this unhealthy relationship to what once was a fun craft, I decide that I should take a crack at this blogging business. I mean, if millions and millions of people can sign up every day and just do it, then certainly I can too. And maybe, hopefully, writing can be fun again, and the insights may start to flow again, and I can find the me that I lost along the way. And like a sulfur spring, maybe soaking in the blogosphere, and writing for me more than others, will be my cure.

in the zone or in a haze?

The new semester is about to start and I'm feeling very positive about it. I feel so calm and collected that it's freaking me out a bit. Usually I micromanage my syllabi (and overstock it) to the point that everything is in its neat little place. This usually results in having to cut and paste and edit everything on the fly. So, this semester I've produced "loose" syllabi--and it makes me happy. Of course, maximizing contingency and emergent themes should freak me out. But it hasn't. And that sort of freaks me out.

vital statistics

Number of dogs my partner and I have: 2

Number of dogs who sleep in the bed: 2

Number of times dogs were up before 6am this morning: 3

Average number of times per week one of the humans ends up on the couch: 6

Number of courses I'm teaching this semester: 2

Days until they start: 6

Number of syllabi finished: 0

Number of T.A.s in my auditorium-sized class: 2

Days I have left to get them the syllabus, according to my promise: 0

Number of my T.A.s who probably have a better publishing record than I do: 2

Number of projects (writing and domestic) I wanted to complete this break: 6

Number completed: 1

Number given half-hearted attention to: 1

Number of candidates my department is interviewing next week: 2

Number of tenure-track positions I hold: 0

Number of tenure-track positions I've been interviewed for: 0

Percentage less my salary is than second-lowest paid department colleague: 27

Percentage of $1000 faculty bonuses I received last month: 0

Amount of retroactive 4% faculty raises I received last month: 0

My department rank this year in number of student credit hours taught: 2

My rank last year: 1

Type of computer I use: iMac

Book I'm currently reading: The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America

Favorite magazine: Harper's

Band playing right now as I write: Neutral Milk Hotel

why the title?

When I started setting up this blog, I ran into the two contradictory impulses (some would say neuroses) that seem to run my everyday life: the need to have everything just so and the inability to finish things. I think I must have a combination of obsessive compulsive disorder and adult ADD. Anyway, I stressed out over coming up with a good name that reflected my personality or my academic work or my clever ability to play with words or my self-congratulatory knowledge of cultural minutiae. Then I just decided that I needed something, anything, so i could get started here. I sometimes jot down funny phrases that I find embedded in those spam mail gibberish messages--something that is full of shockingly beautiful sets of adjacent words. So, I found one of these lists and decided I would name my blog after the first one that sort of struck me. I think I saw "kinesthesis breakthrough" first, though I also saw "befogging feminism cheesecake" and "arisen mediocre" at about the same time. The one I picked seemed more encouraging for some reason.