It's been a long time, but I once used to teach my classes and go home. I had other things on my mind then, like trying to hustle more classes to avoid falling even further into abject poverty, and limit intimidating phone calls from people I owed money to. This weekend I've been missing those days.
I am now deeply involved in many aspects of my stupid university. When I'm not teaching classes, I'm involved in the academic senate and on the senate executive committee, I do faculty rights representation for the union, I join book clubs and sometimes facilitate discussions, and I'm also involved in the AAUP. I know several faculty who do as much or more, but mainly, they do less. I understand why.
I know my level of involvement causes stress, and I know my motivation for being so involved is not entirely healthy. Anxiety seems to be self-sustaining, constantly reproducing the kind of alertness that makes everything appear to be threatening.
And then last week, two major sources of stress became serious objective threats. My anxiety level reached Threat Level Busey at once. I feel vulnerable, exposed, and low on energy. I don't want to keep having arguments in my head when I'm trying to sleep, and waking up with them raging again. I don't want this crapola affecting daily life like this. Dinner should not be a daily crisis.
I know my friends have my back. I know I have support. Generalized anxiety means that I can't trust that I have support. I can't even trust that I can support myself.
Kinda awful.
Showing posts with label madness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label madness. Show all posts
Sunday, February 28, 2016
Thursday, November 08, 2012
nano nano nano nano nano nano nano
Hey kids! It's National Novel Writing Month!
Is Doc Nagel engaging in this madness? You betcha! In fact, I'm writing a contemporary, quasi-autobiographical Don Quixote, crossed with Samuel Beckett and Charles Bukowski. For folks that know me very very well, this will make real and terrible sense. I think it's a little alarming to my Loveliest. Working titles have come and gone: Peripatetic, Peripatetics, Picaresque, Walk, and now, for what seems to be the settled version, The Solipsists. (Two solipsists walk into a bar...)
But to hell with it. I'm just jumping in, and whatever happens, happens. I'm having a good time writing about cats and walking.
I'm writing it in fragments, all in first person, that include letters, entries in a diary, and direct narration. There are two main characters, who have the same name, both have cats with the same name, are both in relationships with a woman with the same name, and who both have a best friend/cousin of the same name. At first, I had a hard time distinguishing the two main characters, their narrative voices, or their life stories. Then they became very clearly distinct, and now, they're losing distinction again. So, everything's going along swimmingly.
I am not sure their paths will cross. I kinda doubt it. So far, none of the identically-named cats, friends, or lovers are identical persons.
And this'll creep y'all out: so far, the lover has appeared on one single page. I know whose lover it is, and approximately when in his life she appeared, and disappeared, and when this event took place, but otherwise, of her(s), I've been entirely silent. This disturbs me, but it's how it is.
There's more madness. I wrote and recorded a song last night, when I meant to be writing, that I am calling "Quixotic." It's a whole lotta John Fahey goof.
There's yet more madness, but you don't get to see it.
Is Doc Nagel engaging in this madness? You betcha! In fact, I'm writing a contemporary, quasi-autobiographical Don Quixote, crossed with Samuel Beckett and Charles Bukowski. For folks that know me very very well, this will make real and terrible sense. I think it's a little alarming to my Loveliest. Working titles have come and gone: Peripatetic, Peripatetics, Picaresque, Walk, and now, for what seems to be the settled version, The Solipsists. (Two solipsists walk into a bar...)
But to hell with it. I'm just jumping in, and whatever happens, happens. I'm having a good time writing about cats and walking.
I'm writing it in fragments, all in first person, that include letters, entries in a diary, and direct narration. There are two main characters, who have the same name, both have cats with the same name, are both in relationships with a woman with the same name, and who both have a best friend/cousin of the same name. At first, I had a hard time distinguishing the two main characters, their narrative voices, or their life stories. Then they became very clearly distinct, and now, they're losing distinction again. So, everything's going along swimmingly.
I am not sure their paths will cross. I kinda doubt it. So far, none of the identically-named cats, friends, or lovers are identical persons.
And this'll creep y'all out: so far, the lover has appeared on one single page. I know whose lover it is, and approximately when in his life she appeared, and disappeared, and when this event took place, but otherwise, of her(s), I've been entirely silent. This disturbs me, but it's how it is.
There's more madness. I wrote and recorded a song last night, when I meant to be writing, that I am calling "Quixotic." It's a whole lotta John Fahey goof.
There's yet more madness, but you don't get to see it.
Friday, March 16, 2012
I am an advertisement for myself
Every spring I teach a course I designed, called, unwieldly enough, Human Interests and the Power of Information. It is half philosophy of technology, half post-structuralist critique of contemporary media and techno-science, and half political and sociological investigation of everyday life in the siliconized world.
Every spring when I teach it, I have a different emphasis. This year I thought I was going more in the direction of the techno-science and knowledge discourses business, but after reading Baudrillard yesterday to prep for class today, I just had to write some stuff about it. This is part one.
In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard makes several pronouncements about media, the most provocative of which may be that media implode meaning and the social, and simulate sociality through the constitution of the masses. That is, instead of a social life characterized by exchange, mediated lives take place among an amorphous mass culture. I believe Baudrillard takes many cues from Marshall McLuhan throughout this phase of his work, and this particular claim can be illuminated in reference to McLuhan’s view that advertising homogenizes society (in pursuit of the goal of coordinating and maximizing consumption). A homogenized society is, for Baudrillard, not a society at all, but “the masses,” and the consumption he claims the masses do is not prompted by advertising, it is the consumption of advertising itself.
This latter is obviously true: the “brand benefit” of most consumer products, especially of mass quality, is the brand image itself. It’s what makes Levi’s Levi’s, an iPhone an iPhone. (Apple is the most valuable corporation in the world, and one of the most highly groomed, protected, and prized brands.) How this destroys meaning and the social is less clear, at least at first.
On one level, Baudrillard could be saying something like this. Since what we consume is the advertising, what we spend our social lives on is the exchange of signs “branded” by advertising. Social life among “the masses” as constituted by media, is characterized by an exchange of asyntactic messages, signs that have been branded, and the sameness of all those messages means that they cannot mean anything. None of us has anything to say, except for what our branded, consuming existences provide for us to say, which is to say, the endless repetition of media messages.
Meanwhile, and borrowing a bit from McLuhan again, as well as the history of audience research going back to Lazarsfeld in the 1920s, the brand images and advertisements themselves are adjusted for maximum impact through market research, focus groups, and so forth. There’s a continuous feedback loop from the advertiser to the target of the ads and back to the advertiser.
If one were to look at this without considering the human activity of exchanging signs, where we would be the conduits through which the signs are exchanged, rather than living creatures with the capacity to communicate (an assumption that fits rather well with Baudrillard’s notion of the destruction of meaning and sociality), then the exchange of signs takes place as follows:
Advertisement-Consumer/Conduit-Consumer/Conduit-Advertisement
This suggests that we could characterize the activities of each node in the system of linguistic exchange formed by this circuitry as follows:
Advertising-Advertising-Advertising-Advertising
Meaning - linguistic, narrative meaning - is swallowed up by the ultimate form of media, the form of advertising, which is ubiquitous. Every term in the lexicon has been unhinged from any sort of referential or representational meaning by the reshuffling of the signifier deck by advertising. We can't speak of anything - love, art, truth, iced tea, war - without speaking in the terms of advertising.
Practically everyone who reads Baudrillard claims he's being hyperbolic on these points. I'm not so sure. If language is the foundation of meaning, and if language is irrevocably and always already altered by advertising, then the basic concept we each have of love, art, etc., and the basic ways we utter love, art, etc., are in advertising language. (It's important to keep in mind Baudrillard's insistence that it's the form of advertising, not what we take to be advertising, that matters.) Advertising speaks to us about who we are (constituted consumers), and gives us the terms to address one another as who we are (constituted consumers).
Thus, the "catastrophe of meaning" which leaves the masses in a state of "stupor," of "fascination."
Not content with that, Baudrillard drops a mention of computer language into this analysis, claiming that it will liquidate advertising and displace it. (The book was published in French in 1981.) What I want to do is see what a Baudrillardian interpretation of contemporary silicon technology would look like. Now that we have mobile bodies targeted by and targeting everything at once, in what sense is advertising obsolescent?
Every spring when I teach it, I have a different emphasis. This year I thought I was going more in the direction of the techno-science and knowledge discourses business, but after reading Baudrillard yesterday to prep for class today, I just had to write some stuff about it. This is part one.
In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard makes several pronouncements about media, the most provocative of which may be that media implode meaning and the social, and simulate sociality through the constitution of the masses. That is, instead of a social life characterized by exchange, mediated lives take place among an amorphous mass culture. I believe Baudrillard takes many cues from Marshall McLuhan throughout this phase of his work, and this particular claim can be illuminated in reference to McLuhan’s view that advertising homogenizes society (in pursuit of the goal of coordinating and maximizing consumption). A homogenized society is, for Baudrillard, not a society at all, but “the masses,” and the consumption he claims the masses do is not prompted by advertising, it is the consumption of advertising itself.
This latter is obviously true: the “brand benefit” of most consumer products, especially of mass quality, is the brand image itself. It’s what makes Levi’s Levi’s, an iPhone an iPhone. (Apple is the most valuable corporation in the world, and one of the most highly groomed, protected, and prized brands.) How this destroys meaning and the social is less clear, at least at first.
On one level, Baudrillard could be saying something like this. Since what we consume is the advertising, what we spend our social lives on is the exchange of signs “branded” by advertising. Social life among “the masses” as constituted by media, is characterized by an exchange of asyntactic messages, signs that have been branded, and the sameness of all those messages means that they cannot mean anything. None of us has anything to say, except for what our branded, consuming existences provide for us to say, which is to say, the endless repetition of media messages.
Meanwhile, and borrowing a bit from McLuhan again, as well as the history of audience research going back to Lazarsfeld in the 1920s, the brand images and advertisements themselves are adjusted for maximum impact through market research, focus groups, and so forth. There’s a continuous feedback loop from the advertiser to the target of the ads and back to the advertiser.
If one were to look at this without considering the human activity of exchanging signs, where we would be the conduits through which the signs are exchanged, rather than living creatures with the capacity to communicate (an assumption that fits rather well with Baudrillard’s notion of the destruction of meaning and sociality), then the exchange of signs takes place as follows:
Advertisement-Consumer/Conduit-Consumer/Conduit-Advertisement
This suggests that we could characterize the activities of each node in the system of linguistic exchange formed by this circuitry as follows:
Advertising-Advertising-Advertising-Advertising
Meaning - linguistic, narrative meaning - is swallowed up by the ultimate form of media, the form of advertising, which is ubiquitous. Every term in the lexicon has been unhinged from any sort of referential or representational meaning by the reshuffling of the signifier deck by advertising. We can't speak of anything - love, art, truth, iced tea, war - without speaking in the terms of advertising.
Practically everyone who reads Baudrillard claims he's being hyperbolic on these points. I'm not so sure. If language is the foundation of meaning, and if language is irrevocably and always already altered by advertising, then the basic concept we each have of love, art, etc., and the basic ways we utter love, art, etc., are in advertising language. (It's important to keep in mind Baudrillard's insistence that it's the form of advertising, not what we take to be advertising, that matters.) Advertising speaks to us about who we are (constituted consumers), and gives us the terms to address one another as who we are (constituted consumers).
Thus, the "catastrophe of meaning" which leaves the masses in a state of "stupor," of "fascination."
Not content with that, Baudrillard drops a mention of computer language into this analysis, claiming that it will liquidate advertising and displace it. (The book was published in French in 1981.) What I want to do is see what a Baudrillardian interpretation of contemporary silicon technology would look like. Now that we have mobile bodies targeted by and targeting everything at once, in what sense is advertising obsolescent?
Monday, August 01, 2011
5 reasons Americans should want the economy to collapse completely
Now that the debt deal has passed, promising more restrictive domestic spending and not much economic hope, it's time for the good news about the US economy. The good news is, it looks like the economy is going to get worse again! Here's why Americans should not only embrace this fact, but get ready to delebrate!
(1) The economy is what makes Americans have to go to their lousy, stupid jobs. Americans hate their jobs, and hate their rotten scumbag bosses. If the economy completely collapsed, these problems would go away.
(2) This one is a little complicated. The US economy is driven entirely by consumer spending on credit. That means the economy depends on people getting into more debt, and banks getting richer and richer (I'm looking at you, HSBC). If the economy tanks, the banks go with it. Sure, last time the federal government bailed out the banks -- but if there's a strict spending limit and no new revenue, obviously that's not going to be an option. Bye-bye, banks!
(3) Because the US economy depends on consumer spending, and most of what we buy is crap made in China, the US economic collapse will weaken Chinese economic power. In fact, it may be the last, best way to restore US economic independence from China!
(4) As the economy collapses, more retail giants like Borders will go into liquidation - and pass the savings on to you!
(5) Economic collapse will bring about unpredictable shortages, skyrocketing prices, inflation, deflation, and utter fiscal chaos. This will allow savvy Americans to make a killing on the inevitable Fiscal Chaos Futures & Derivatives market!
(1) The economy is what makes Americans have to go to their lousy, stupid jobs. Americans hate their jobs, and hate their rotten scumbag bosses. If the economy completely collapsed, these problems would go away.
(2) This one is a little complicated. The US economy is driven entirely by consumer spending on credit. That means the economy depends on people getting into more debt, and banks getting richer and richer (I'm looking at you, HSBC). If the economy tanks, the banks go with it. Sure, last time the federal government bailed out the banks -- but if there's a strict spending limit and no new revenue, obviously that's not going to be an option. Bye-bye, banks!
(3) Because the US economy depends on consumer spending, and most of what we buy is crap made in China, the US economic collapse will weaken Chinese economic power. In fact, it may be the last, best way to restore US economic independence from China!
(4) As the economy collapses, more retail giants like Borders will go into liquidation - and pass the savings on to you!
(5) Economic collapse will bring about unpredictable shortages, skyrocketing prices, inflation, deflation, and utter fiscal chaos. This will allow savvy Americans to make a killing on the inevitable Fiscal Chaos Futures & Derivatives market!
Friday, February 25, 2011
temporal anomaly
Late last night, as it started to drizzle, I stood looking out and down on the townhouses that form our complex. Newly wet, in the orange-yellow haze of the dim streetlights, they looked very little but enough like the condos my friend Doug lived in in Northern Virginia almost 20 years ago. The feeling of looking down through the rain was not significantly but sufficiently like my Card Lane, Pittsburgh pastime, peeking out the big front windows of our second-story apartment. I felt very strangely as though all this time hadn't passed, and this wasn't Turlock, California, or 2011.
I've gone through a hell of a lot since leaving Pittsburgh in 1998 - several career crises, three major depressive episodes, an ugly divorce, involuntary home-ownership, an unpleasant number of feline deaths, the entire freaking Presidency of G.W. Bush. How can it feel as if nothing has happened, as if I'm still back there, back then?
The feeling was so strong, it was very hard to accept that I actually am here, or that any of that time really has passed, or even that I was around for its passing. My sweetest tried to help me shake it off, looking straight at me, touring me around the apartment to show me the guitars, the kitchen, the rooms we sometimes call the Room of Requirement and the Chamber of Secrets, finally pointing out that Alexander and Arthur, die Überkätschen, the Flying Kittois Brothers, 35 pounds of compressed silliness, have only been here three years.
So I guess the date on the calendar means that it really isn't 1998 anymore, nor 1992. Where the hell have I been?
I've gone through a hell of a lot since leaving Pittsburgh in 1998 - several career crises, three major depressive episodes, an ugly divorce, involuntary home-ownership, an unpleasant number of feline deaths, the entire freaking Presidency of G.W. Bush. How can it feel as if nothing has happened, as if I'm still back there, back then?
The feeling was so strong, it was very hard to accept that I actually am here, or that any of that time really has passed, or even that I was around for its passing. My sweetest tried to help me shake it off, looking straight at me, touring me around the apartment to show me the guitars, the kitchen, the rooms we sometimes call the Room of Requirement and the Chamber of Secrets, finally pointing out that Alexander and Arthur, die Überkätschen, the Flying Kittois Brothers, 35 pounds of compressed silliness, have only been here three years.
So I guess the date on the calendar means that it really isn't 1998 anymore, nor 1992. Where the hell have I been?
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
brief report of ongoing madnesses
Classes start in two days, and my schedule for the semester is not finalized. Consequently, I have opted not to put my syllabi together for the classes that might still be canceled. So there could be a little confusion as the semester starts.
Lauren is in surgery even as I write this. It's nothing major, it's outpatient, but still, it's surgery. Thanks, I'll tell her you said so.
I've drafted a paper, have another one to get done in a week, and have the revision of the AAUP paper to get started on.
Now for a political note. You may have heard various neocons pitching a return to the gold standard as a way to ... um ... to do something or other. Partly, they think that if the US returned to the gold standard, the federal government would not be able to run deficits because the federal reserve bank would have to stop printing money. From what I know about economics, I believe the basic flaw in their plan is that it simply isn't conservative enough.
After all, money doesn't grow on trees, not even paper money, which isn't even paper in the first place! (And let's not get started on the tree-hugging envirofascist movement!) For money to have real worth, it has to be based on a real, tangible thing. Fiat money isn't based on anything at all, except a social and political convention and the exchange value of goods, services, and labor. Labor obviously isn't tangible, and services aren't physical objects either, so that leaves goods, and we all know that a currency based on the exchange value of goods wouldn't be viable because we wouldn't ever know how much any goods would be worth. Right? Right?
A gold standard would give us a straightforward way to know the real value of everything, as compared to a certain quantity of pure gold. A laptop computer is probably worth its weight in gold, say, but my year's labor is worth, I dunno, say an ingot. I don't know how much an ingot weighs, but I figure, something like that. I'd carry my ingot to the Safeway and exchange it for groceries, get some return weight of gold back, and thus our economy would continue to flow freely, and we could all rest in the comfort of knowing that we really knew what things were worth.
That's the theory, anyway. But as I said, it's not conservative enough. If you really want a solid standard for money, you have to go back further in history, before the gold socialists took over. What we really need is a return to the beads and carved bones standard. You're welcome.
Lauren is in surgery even as I write this. It's nothing major, it's outpatient, but still, it's surgery. Thanks, I'll tell her you said so.
I've drafted a paper, have another one to get done in a week, and have the revision of the AAUP paper to get started on.
Now for a political note. You may have heard various neocons pitching a return to the gold standard as a way to ... um ... to do something or other. Partly, they think that if the US returned to the gold standard, the federal government would not be able to run deficits because the federal reserve bank would have to stop printing money. From what I know about economics, I believe the basic flaw in their plan is that it simply isn't conservative enough.
After all, money doesn't grow on trees, not even paper money, which isn't even paper in the first place! (And let's not get started on the tree-hugging envirofascist movement!) For money to have real worth, it has to be based on a real, tangible thing. Fiat money isn't based on anything at all, except a social and political convention and the exchange value of goods, services, and labor. Labor obviously isn't tangible, and services aren't physical objects either, so that leaves goods, and we all know that a currency based on the exchange value of goods wouldn't be viable because we wouldn't ever know how much any goods would be worth. Right? Right?
A gold standard would give us a straightforward way to know the real value of everything, as compared to a certain quantity of pure gold. A laptop computer is probably worth its weight in gold, say, but my year's labor is worth, I dunno, say an ingot. I don't know how much an ingot weighs, but I figure, something like that. I'd carry my ingot to the Safeway and exchange it for groceries, get some return weight of gold back, and thus our economy would continue to flow freely, and we could all rest in the comfort of knowing that we really knew what things were worth.
That's the theory, anyway. But as I said, it's not conservative enough. If you really want a solid standard for money, you have to go back further in history, before the gold socialists took over. What we really need is a return to the beads and carved bones standard. You're welcome.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
menu!
I think any good dinner party should be followed be recovery time. I may never eat again. Below is the menu, in French, of course, because I'm silly like that. I'll post pics some time.
The first entrée course, "tiramisu" savoreux, is basically insane. I had the idea to make something that looked just like tiramisu, but out of savory ingredients. Instead of ladyfingers, mine had thin slices of foccacia. Instead of painting those with espresso, we concocted a mixture of reduced balsamic vinegar, melted bitter chocolate, and various spices. The sweet marscapone layer was replaced with a cheesy custard layer made with fontina, mozzarella, and blue cheese. The top is the intensely silly bit: instead of shavings of chocolate or sprinkled cocoa powder (as per the dessert), I sprinkled the top with minced black truffle, grated nutmeg, and a teeny bit of cocoa powder. It looked exactly like tiramisu. Insane.
The best dish was, in my estimation, the second entrée, salmon fillets marinated with sesame oil and crushed coriander, seared up, and served with beurre françoise, a French butter sauce with cream and chicken stock and a couple tablespoons of parsley.
The dessert was pear halves oven-braised in a bed of grapes and sweet wine, with the braising liquid reduced to a thick syrup and drizzled over the pears. Freaking awesome.
Much wine was drunk, much merriment was had, we didn't get to bed much before 2 am. Nothing like an 8 hour meal to prepare one for a busy academic year.
Here's the menu:
Amuse gueule
amandes rôties
noisettes rôties
tarte d’oignon et fenouil avec gorgonzola
tarte des champignons avec parmigiano reggiano
tarte de Swiss chard et gruyère
Soupe
velouté des épinards
Entrée
“tiramisu” savoureux
Salade
Entrée
saumon avec beurre françoise
Entr’acte
sorbet de citron et lavande
Plat principal
London broil aux herbes de provence avec legumes d’été grilles
Dessert
poires rôti avec raisins
And here is the recipe for the tiramisu. Madness.
Savory “tiramisu”
Base: foccacia strips
Schmear:
balsamic vinegar reduction:
½ cup balsamic vinegar
pinch of sugar
a few drips of fruity booze (apricot brandy, e.g.)
Vinegar in pan, medium-low heat. Add sugar, booze, stir. Reduce to thick syrup
chocolate sauce:
1 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 tbsp chicken stock
2 dashes cinnamon
1 dash red pepper (cayenne)
2 grinds white pepper
8 specks of clove
Mix vinegar reduction and chocolate sauce: 1 part reduction to 2 or 3 parts chocolate
Custard:
2 egg yolks, beaten, sprinkled with generous pinch of flour, beaten in
2 cups of milk
3 oz. crumbled blue cheese
5 oz. grated fontina
5 oz. grated mozzarella
several grinds of white pepper
several gratings of nutmeg
Heat milk in saucepan over medium heat. Meanwhile, separate egg yolk, beat, add flour, beat. Add some of the nearly-boiling milk, dribble by dribble, to the egg, while whisking. Pour egg-milk mixture slowly and evenly into milk pan, stirring with whisk. Whisk vigorously, allow to thicken. Add cheeses, Kirsch, pepper, nutmeg, and allow to thicken until it resembles pudding. Take off stove, pour into thick glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap, chill in fridge.
Topping/garnish:
Minced black truffle
Grated nutmeg
Foccacia strips in dish. Shmear. Add custard. Layers can be achieved: Foccacia, shmear, custard. Then top.
The first entrée course, "tiramisu" savoreux, is basically insane. I had the idea to make something that looked just like tiramisu, but out of savory ingredients. Instead of ladyfingers, mine had thin slices of foccacia. Instead of painting those with espresso, we concocted a mixture of reduced balsamic vinegar, melted bitter chocolate, and various spices. The sweet marscapone layer was replaced with a cheesy custard layer made with fontina, mozzarella, and blue cheese. The top is the intensely silly bit: instead of shavings of chocolate or sprinkled cocoa powder (as per the dessert), I sprinkled the top with minced black truffle, grated nutmeg, and a teeny bit of cocoa powder. It looked exactly like tiramisu. Insane.
The best dish was, in my estimation, the second entrée, salmon fillets marinated with sesame oil and crushed coriander, seared up, and served with beurre françoise, a French butter sauce with cream and chicken stock and a couple tablespoons of parsley.
The dessert was pear halves oven-braised in a bed of grapes and sweet wine, with the braising liquid reduced to a thick syrup and drizzled over the pears. Freaking awesome.
Much wine was drunk, much merriment was had, we didn't get to bed much before 2 am. Nothing like an 8 hour meal to prepare one for a busy academic year.
Here's the menu:
Amuse gueule
amandes rôties
noisettes rôties
tarte d’oignon et fenouil avec gorgonzola
tarte des champignons avec parmigiano reggiano
tarte de Swiss chard et gruyère
Soupe
velouté des épinards
Entrée
“tiramisu” savoureux
Salade
Entrée
saumon avec beurre françoise
Entr’acte
sorbet de citron et lavande
Plat principal
London broil aux herbes de provence avec legumes d’été grilles
Dessert
poires rôti avec raisins
And here is the recipe for the tiramisu. Madness.
Savory “tiramisu”
Base: foccacia strips
Schmear:
balsamic vinegar reduction:
½ cup balsamic vinegar
pinch of sugar
a few drips of fruity booze (apricot brandy, e.g.)
Vinegar in pan, medium-low heat. Add sugar, booze, stir. Reduce to thick syrup
chocolate sauce:
1 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted
3 tbsp chicken stock
2 dashes cinnamon
1 dash red pepper (cayenne)
2 grinds white pepper
8 specks of clove
Mix vinegar reduction and chocolate sauce: 1 part reduction to 2 or 3 parts chocolate
Custard:
2 egg yolks, beaten, sprinkled with generous pinch of flour, beaten in
2 cups of milk
3 oz. crumbled blue cheese
5 oz. grated fontina
5 oz. grated mozzarella
several grinds of white pepper
several gratings of nutmeg
Heat milk in saucepan over medium heat. Meanwhile, separate egg yolk, beat, add flour, beat. Add some of the nearly-boiling milk, dribble by dribble, to the egg, while whisking. Pour egg-milk mixture slowly and evenly into milk pan, stirring with whisk. Whisk vigorously, allow to thicken. Add cheeses, Kirsch, pepper, nutmeg, and allow to thicken until it resembles pudding. Take off stove, pour into thick glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap, chill in fridge.
Topping/garnish:
Minced black truffle
Grated nutmeg
Foccacia strips in dish. Shmear. Add custard. Layers can be achieved: Foccacia, shmear, custard. Then top.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
privacy
Is your garbage private?
The press release today from the CSU Stanislaus administration suggests that CSU Stanislaus Foundation Executive Director Susana Gajic-Bruyea's garbage is private. The press release omits the information that Gajic-Bruyea is also Vice President for University Advancement - that is, an employee of the CSU, with an office in the CSU Stanislaus administration building. That's important, because the administration is claiming that the Foundation Board and the university are really separate entities.
It's important because, in the press release, the allegation is presented that the allegedly non-existent document state senator Leland Yee acquired outlining some of the details of the university's contract with Sarah Palin was discovered to be missing from Gajic-Bruyea's recycling bin in her office.
AFTER Leland Yee's press conference, in which documents related to the Palin fund-raiser were presented to the press, the university's Vice President for Advancement (who also serves as the Executive Director for the Foundation Board) looked through the recycle bin in her office for the relevant pages of the contract, and found that they were missing. The university has launched an investigation into, basically, who could have stolen documents from the recycle bin...
Here's what I imagine happens to my garbage and what I pitch into the recycle bin in my department office, in my narrow-minded rationalistic conception of the world and causality: I imagine that people take it away and recycle it, or take it to the dump, as appropriate. When I return to my office days after having thrown something away, and find that it's not there, my first thought is not that it's been stolen. I'm not generally surprised when documents I put in the recycling bin aren't there afterwards. That's because, to me, a recycling bin is a place to put things I expect other people to take away and recycle, and a garbage can is place to put things I am throwing away that I expect other people to take away and compost, burn, or put in a landfill.
Do I retain a privacy right, or property right, or any other kind of right over the things I thus discard?
What could be the basis of the assertion of such a right? Do I have it only if I've discarded or recycled something the discovery of which is embarrassing to me? So, can I throw away, hypothetically speaking, gloves I've worn while committing a crime, and when these are later found in my trash, assert that my trash can is, as it were, my confessor, and throwing my bloody gloves in the trash tantamount to a protected confidence?
Let me offer another analogy. Let's say I've just shot Tony Danza to death in cold blood. (I most certainly did not. This is the kind of thing some philosophers like to call a thought experiment.) I then throw my pistol into a dumpster. Someone finds my pistol, and police begin an investigation, using the pistol as evidence. Do I have, at that point, legitimate grounds to say that the pistol I threw away was my private trash, not meant for anyone else to have, to see, or to use against me in legal action?
Let's say I throw the pistol away in my office (which is a place of public accommodation, where I have very little right to privacy). How legitimate are my grounds to say this is private material of my own?
I'm not at all sure I've got a good analogy going here, but I suppose I was seduced by the trope of the smoking gun.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
welcome to CSU Ionesco
I love absurdist drama - have since I saw a terrific high school production of The Bald Soprano, as part of the North Carolina high school theater competition. (My play, Escape, was being performed by my school, so I went to the regional and state competitions.)
I never wanted to exist inside an absurdist drama, but now I do.
So, the university turns 50 this year. Celebrations are planned for the summer, including what the university Foundation Board is billing as The 50th Anniversary Gala fund-raiser, starring Sarah Palin (presumably as Mrs. Smith). When this was announced, there was a tremendous backlash, some of it about Palin, but much of it about how the Foundation Board came to this decision, how it would be paid for, etc.
Ready? Here we go!
Under California law, the Foundation Boards of all public universities and colleges are not subject to the California Public Records Act. The Foundations are considered separate entities to that extent. Public money is used by Foundation Boards - sometimes a lot of it - and their purpose is, on paper, to support the public university, but the Foundation Boards themselves aren't public.
The Board has come under fire for choosing Palin, and the inappropriateness of her as a speaker at a public university has been pretty embarrassing to the university. People snicker about it.
When state senator Leland Yee filed a public records act request for documents regarding Palin's contract with the university, the Foundation Board told him there weren't any. Then they sent email to the campus assuring us that no public money was being used. If it's not immediately clear to you how you can have a contract without any documents, or how you can have a record that you're not spending public money on an event without any documents, then you're still sane and sober. Let me push you a little further into our madness.
At a press conference today, Yee broke the story that last week, during the university's spring break, and during furlough days when university employees are not working, employees of the Foundation Board were on campus, shredding documents. Documents related to Sarah Palin's fund-raising event. Including the contract.
And then they put the shredded documents in plastic bags in a dumpster. Where some students found them.
Our Foundation Board has oversight and approval authority over everything printed with the university logo on it. When I requested business cards, they had to approve them - not the issuing of them, but what was printed on the card. This is in order to protect the public image of the university.
Let's recap: Act One. Foundation Board needs to promote and protect the image of the university. Enter Sarah Palin. Snickering. Act Two. Deny existence of documents that aren't subject to public scrutiny in the first place. Shred them. Toss them in dumpster.
It's not that way, it's over here! It's not that way, it's over here! It's not that way, it's over here!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)