all cable news is now fox news

I'm going to have to stop watching the 24-hour news channels if I'm going to remain sane through the next year. I am nearly in disbelief at the extent to which CNN has started to morph into Fox News. There seem to be only two sorts of stories: sensationalist breaking news and smirking contemptful advocacy. I just saw a white panic segment about Mexico "moderated" by (I am not making this name up) Kitty Pilgrim. The segment follows the structure that used to be isolated to Fox: frame it in terms of a predetermined judgment, smirk your way through the interview with the person representing the view of the opposition (but present the interviewee as a straw man), then end by commiserating with the second and final interviewee who simply validates the point of view of the interviewer.

An abbreviated example concerns the white panic of illegal immigration (i.e., poor people with a better work ethic than white Americans who are willing to work shitty jobs in order to help their families survive), specifically Vicente Fox's aggressive (progressive?) stance at trying to persuade American lawmakers not to build a giant fence across the border.
1. Kitty frames the issue as "shameless"
2. She shakes her head and rolls her eyes through an interview with a representative from a PR firm Fox hired, all the while asking questions in full panic attack mode. She fails to listen to a relatively complex and detailed argument about historical, economic, and social trends and structures.
3. She abruptly ends the first interview and goes straight to commiseration mode with an equally white-panic-oriented congressman and they shake their heads and perform outrage that a foreigner could dare tell America what to do (implying, I guess, that nations should not meddle in the affairs of other nations--which, of course, is even more ironic than the name Kitty Pilgrim).

In other news, Michael Bloomberg said this about the striking transit workers (who can only strike for a better contract by breaking the law): No one should be able to break the law in order to make personal gains. I'm glad he wasn't a leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

why is Bruce Willis after me?

the current miscellany:

1. Why is it that end of the semester grading brings out the worst procrastination in me? The level of aversion is unparalleled. Rather than simply replacing grading with time-consuming tasks like cleaning up my office or doing chores, instead I give a wholesale rejection to the task and replace it with doing nothing at all.

2. I had a dream the other night that Bruce Willis was trying to kill me.


3. It has finally gotten cold enough around here to wear a sweater!

4. I started reading The Ongoing Moment, by Geoff Dyer, yesterday and came across a line that I need to adapt and place somewhere in every future article that I submit for blind review:

I suspect, then, that this book will be a source of irritation to many people, especially those who know more about [name of subject] than I do. I'm sympathetic but, if we're to make any progress at all, there's one type of criticism I'd like to rule out of court straightaway. This is the 'But what about X?' or 'Why didn't he mention Y?' charge of inadmissible omission. Can we agree, in Whitman's words, 'that much unseen is also here', that it's not necessary to discuss--or even mention--every [instance of topic ever produced] in order to learn something interesting about [topic]? I hope so, because the person doing the learning is the person writing the book as much as the person reading it. The driver is along for the ride too. (7)

5. I've decided to remove all academic books from my nightstand. From now on it's reserved for fiction, Harper's, and the Utne Reader.

6. I love it when students get riled up and offer passionate comments without that sense of disinterestedness that masquerades as decorum in the classroom. I just wish it wouldn't all hinge on a wrongly interpreted passage.

7. It has been almost 4 years now since I last had a haircut (when I swore to myself I wouldn't cut my hair again until after I had obtained a tenure-track position). It has also been four years since I've written on topics that I know and care about, as opposed to trying to reinvent myself as what I think I need to be to get the t-t position.

8. I have a ton of grading to do today. I think I feel the need to do the laundry and the dishes and some yardwork instead. No, I absolutely promised that I would return these papers by tomorrow. But , I saw some algae on the wall outside and the dogs need walked (and probably bathed). I guess I could always get on the blogs . . .

she may not have a fancy name, but she's got mad skills

Thanks to Julie for her javascript tutorial and randomizer script! Now my blog's changing surface features can help make up for the lack of compelling content. Hooray!

Now I have 10 mastheads. Just reload the page to see another.

dr. m needs all the accoutrements

Seen at Scrivenings.

According to google, I need the following:

a bit more flesh
some juice
to feel loved
dependable adults in my life
open lines of communication
a neck massage
a loving single or two parent family who will accept me
to focus on new trends
close ups of the face that are well lit
to learn that there is a man for every condom
to go shopping
to lie down after two days in bed
to go on with my life
to understand that I will stand before Almighty God
photographs of both sides of the animal
something which is inventive and new
to work on my own now
to get back on the air
to discover and write my stories
to read more frequently
assistance in developing fast and accurate word recognition strategies
to just be a recluse for awhile
to obtain
to contact Eunice for more information
some Rustoleum
a job that keeps my mind busy
floorspace
free play time, too
another attorney to help me get on with this
a favor from a real estate developer
to go ahead and work
to feel safe and secure in order to ask for assistance
to calm down before NASCAR black flags me
help with my daughter who is being spoiled rotten
a strong male role model
it all
some good material to write about
no scientific basis for my work
a family that is consistent in its expectations
understanding and patience
to take this as a wake-up call
more athletic/play shoes
to change my image
a wife
to be spanked
to keep my fee consistent
all of the accoutrements
his rest
to pick up some milk
to become reacquainted with the world again
some expert help
24 hour monitoring
to be honored today, tomorrow, and always
your support

friday stencil blogging

wednesday sign blogging

wednesday door blogging

This is the point in the summer when my brain becomes all jelly-like and I feel it is best to just look at some pictures. These doors are from the Williamsburg (aka Hipsterville) section of Brooklyn.

wednesday graffiti blogging

nerdy feminist sex workers

Here's an intreresting article from indymedia about rich college students who are part-time sex workers ("hobby whores"). The rub (no pun intended) is that they pimp themselves over craigslist. One of the women in the story is a urine fetish specialist.

Here are some key moments in the story:

"They began with lower-caliber jobs like massage and run-of-the-mill cleaning. They soon realized that they could get away with quicker jobs if they only eroded their boundaries. 'It takes two seconds to pee on someone, and three more seconds to get their money and leave,' said Phoebe, the hardest part is pretending its normal for me to do it."

"Like 70% of the workers on the report, the girls want to abandon the business eventually for legitimate career plans. In the meantime their biggest fear is neither rape nor the police, but their parents. 'I dont care who knows it. In fact I kind of like talking about it,' said Phoebe,' 'But if my parents find out Im fucked."

bouillon de culture questionnaire

Since James Lipton will likely never interview me (nor will Will Farrell), I thought it was about time that I answered the questionnaire made famous by Bernard Pivot on Bouillon de Culture:

1. What is your favorite word?
Cattywampus.

2. What is your least favorite word?
Debt.

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
The need to experiment when I don't know an answer to something.

4. What turns you off?
The ideology of "paying your dues."

5. What is your favorite curse word?
Fuck.

6. What sound or noise do you love?
Ocean waves.

7. What sound or noise do you hate?
Car alarms.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
Graphic design and/or starting an independent record label.

9. What profession would you not like to do?
Surgery.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
"First round's on me."

the secret wisdom of students

I love it when a student writes something seemingly simple which actually cuts through a lot of the denisty of theory and gets to the bright, shiny point. In the middle of an essay exam answer (about the relationship between rhetoric, the free market, globalization, and US power) one student tweaked the invisible hand metaphor this way: "the hidden (secret) hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist."

thursday penis blogging

Made you look!

hee hee

sunday anhinga blogging

Our street is a circle that runs around a pond that used to be used to water cattle on the way to the port before the neighborhood was built in the 1920s. Now, the pond attracts a lot of bird life.

thursday chicken blogging

rooster and ducklings, originally uploaded by dr. m.

This is our neighborhood rooster, Layne, tending to some ducklings this afternoon.

biography of phobias

The end of the semester seems like the perfect time to reflect briefly on my personal relationship with the world. What better way to do this than via the things that freak me out?

1. Fear: Choking on food. Source: I remember getting freaked out by choking after learning about it and the Heimlich maneuver in school. I used to dream both about choking and about not being able to Heimlich someone who was choking.

2. Fear: brain tumor. Source: In my high school Thanatology course (i.e., death and dying), we watched a documentary about someone with terminal cancer. I remember that the film was about a woman who had some sort of brain cancer. She had lost all of her hair and the side of her skull had caved in. The caved in skull freaked me out.

3. Fear: lightning. Source: I now live in one of the most active lightning areas in the world. When Yidg and I were on campus for the first time (getting IDs and all that) there was a storm and a professor was struck dead. People are struck dead every year. And we get a lot of sudden thunderstorms. You should see the frantic sprint I will take from car to front door when it is storming.

4. Fear: murky bodies of water. Source: there are two from my formative years. The first was the movie Jaws. This has to do with not being able to see the things in the water that will take a big bite of flesh off my body. The second one (another source of nightmares like choking) was what seemed like endless warnings in the 70s about swimming in ponds or lakes and getting caught in the underwater plant life and drowning. So, I guess this is two fears: drowning and getting eaten by aquatic wildlife.

5. Fear: being an untalented scholar. Source: the disparity between getting heaps of praise and high expectations in my graduate program and the reality of high volume rejections/mysterious requirements of blind review journal publishing. From this dissonance between praise and rejection, I have developed a fear of writing.

updated to add:

6. Highschool fear: herpes (pre-AIDS). Those sex ed classes freaked me out about herpes. Because it was permanent and painful and you had to wear it on your face like a badge of shame (and that was the good kind of herpes).

the medium is the message; or, whither the shame of formality?

Several people among our academic blogging group has expressed frustration at the gibberish shorthand of text messaging that has increasingly overtaken student emails that seemingly shoul dbe more formal. So, to extend the discussion, I submit the following email that I received today 2.5 hours after my final exam ended. It was sent, of course, by someone in the class who failed to show up.

Quoting a student who I think is in a position where formality is paramount:

"hello.

im sry to announce but i just realized this mornign that my early morning exam overlapped with yours, and i thought i would finish early and then come to take yours, but i didnt, and i didnt know wat to do, then i had to turn around and have an exam from 1-3 so i couldnt notify anyone. is there any way possible for me to make up this exam?? thank you so much for understanding."


I would like to add that the final exams scheduled at my time slot were only available for courses that met at 11:00 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So, the only way I can see that there was a conflict is if the student was taking two courses that were scheduled at the same time (barring, of course, a teacher who decided to make up his or her own exam schedule).

If you don't have the time or energy to actually spell out full words (I will and always do forgive the occassional typo),. it becomes very hard to take you seriously. Sry dude, you need a bttr stry.

Scrivener makes my life easy

My Unitarian Jihad names are (depending on my overall mood):

The Broadsword of Mild Reason (good days)
The Atom Bomb of Moderation (bad days)

SOSSM and definition of kinesthesis

People visited my blog recently via the following searches:
#1 idiot
Kathy Acker
cops can't dance
emily durkheim (yes, the lesser known sister; she's about as famous as Jesus' little brother Gabby Christ)
micro burst weather
horsecock
lightning brand canning jars
kinesthesis (10 people came to me after searching for the definition of kinesthesis. I think that I will actually post a definition of kinesthesis below so that their searches are completed more efficiently).

kinesthesis n. 1. The sensation of movement in the body, sometimes referred to as "muscle sense." The perception of such sensations. The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau Ponty discusses this phenomenon as proprioception, or a perception of one's own body (as a distinct object of and for experience, thereby to be distinguished from the brute physical reality of one's own body that Gilles Deleuze calls "The Meat"). Also , kinaesthesia and kinesthesia. 2. ~ breakthrough n. the name of an academic blog that, to borrow a phrase from a blogging mathematician, is "not too thinky." Though the proper name of this blog was derived from a list of gibberish in a spam email, the author of this blog became smitten with the suggestiveness of the phrase and its implications for the possibilities of discovery and the pursuit of new paradigms of bodily movement and experience.

now the chronicle of higher ed is ripping me off

In early February, I wrote four posts that I called the "academic neuroses files" (see Willy Loman Syndrome for an example). Today, Professor Yidg shows me the March 4th Chronicle Review, in which a couple of hacks published a few "advanced symptoms for advanced degrees." I'm incensed! Such blatant theivery. And in the Chronicle of Higher Ed! Where is the outrage! The OUTRAGE!

Well, I think I've stumbled upon another academic neurosis, Original Spin: the obsessive, nearly paranoid need to try to take credit for coming up with ideas that have clearly been thought-up, rehashed, and recycled endlessly; well, certainly longer than you or I had even thought about being an academic. Sufferers will defend their false and faulty claim more vociferously than they will pursue actual original work, turning to the teachings of the Sophists, Self-helpists, and Spin-doctorists as a last-ditch effort to live up to the ultimate measure of academic success: being interesting. Original Spin is really a global malady, as it seaps into the afflicted's overall perceptual environment. Luckily, original spin is similar to the chicken pox, as nearly everyone will catch it at some point. Most people recover fairly quickly, with little scarring. Experts note that it's much better to catch it early in one's career than later on when it can be quite dangerous.

the stupidity of cleverness

Perhaps a lesson for Liberals is buried in the observations of Horkheimer and Adorno: "One of the lessons of the Hitler period is the stupidity of cleverness. How many were the expert arguments with which Jews dismissed the likelihood of Hitler's rise, when it was already as clear as daylight. [. . .] And in any case, according to the clever people, fascism was impossible in the West. Clever people have always made things easy for barbarians, because they are so stupid. It is well-informed, farsighted judgments, the prognoses based on statistics and experience, the observations which begin: "I happen to be an expert in this field," it is the well-founded, conclusive statements which are untrue."

Continuing, "The medium of traditional bourgeois intelligence, discussion, is in decline. Even individuals can no longer converse, and know it; that is why they have turned card games into a serious, responsible institution that calls on all their powers, so that although there are no conversations, the silence goes unheard. It is no different on the big stage. A fascist does not like to be spoken to. When others have their say, he takes it as an impudent interruption. He is impervious to reason because he recognizes it only in concessions made by others."