I teach philosophy for a living, but it's more serious than that. I have a Ph.D. in philosophy. I read philosophical books. Philosophy is entangled in my life in all kinds of ways.
I'm also involved in this thing called academia, which is best described as an institution. In this institution are a whole bunch of academics. What are academics? For purposes of this entry, they are people who spend oodles of time interpreting the world as if it belonged to their own academic discipline, or to some academic discipline. They also spend oodles of time talking and writing about academia, and for some reason I read some of this stuff, for instance, the Chronicle of Higher Education's multi-authored blog called "Brainstorm." For the most part, I'm not sure why I read this. If you take a look at it, you'll ask the same question, I bet.
In addition to academics, academia is populated by other people whom academics think of as being "students," or "staff," or "librarians," or "adjuncts" (that is, other faculty who have no job security, few or no benefits, little or no autonomy over their labor, etc.). Academics develop presumptive characterizations of the lives, attitudes, behaviors, and motivations of these people on the basis of their being identified as one of these types. Students, for instance, are or should be people whose primary interest and central life pursuit is study.
I know, I know, it's hilarious. It gets funnier, though, because as a result of these presumptions, academics are continually stunned to find, for instance, that college students don't read much for pleasure. What next? Will surveys reveal that students aren't actually riveted to their seats by faculty lectures? Or that students don't regard faculty as brilliant sages? Maybe students even drink to excess from time to time!
Is there an explanation for this?
Obviously, I don't buy the neo-con bullshit that labels academics as "elites." Academics have no real power, and no real wealth. They couldn't drive a political agenda if all the reins of power were handed to them. They don't even have the ability to generate acolytes. The germ of truth in this otherwise slanderous stereotype is that academics behave with fairly astounding, and blinding, self-importance. Sometimes it's truly obnoxious, but for the most part it's expressed in mundane ways the Brainstorm column makes painfully evident: constant amazement that the world doesn't correspond to the well-reasoned conceptualization developed by highly trained minds.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
good economic news!
really! kinda! if you turn it sorta this way...
At long last, Federal Reserve Bank chairman Ben Bernanke has something positive to say about the financial and economic situation: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won't go belly-up. We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief, now that the housing mortgage market is safe.
Or, no, wait. What happened is that the Federal Reserve Bank, which is not part of the Federal Government, but sets fiscal policy for the entire country, has gotten a promise of more bailout money (that is, tax dollars from you and me) to shore up the very troubled $5 trillion in mortgage holdings owned by Fannie and Freddie - which in turn are independent corporations established by the government to guarantee home loans.
It's like the FDIC, which insures bank deposits in case of bank failings. If FDIC doesn't have sufficient funds to guarantee that magical $100,000 per depositer in a failed bank, the federal government will pretty much have to pony up the needed scratch, because, if they don't, the whole system could collapse (in principle; I'm not suggesting that this is imminent, because, as Phil Gramm has noted, we wouldn't want to become a nation of whiners. That's just like us ungrateful peasants. Housing market collapses, jobs evaporating, inflation booming, energy costs soaring, and we complain about the government not stepping in sooner. What do we expect, anyway? The government has been telling us all along that there's no danger of recession and that the fundamentals of our economy are all strong. Now that they aren't, we have the nerve to start whining. "Waaah! I don't have a job! Waaah! They foreclosed on my over-priced only-chance house and now I live in a tin can! Waaah! Waaah!" Suck it up, America! Go back to work, or, if you don't have a job, go get one. If there isn't one, go back to school to get re-trained. If you can't afford college, get a student loan. Borrow your way out of debt and bankruptcy. It's the American way!).
Saying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren't going to fail anytime soon is like saying the defense department is reasonably assured that they'll get funded next year.
Still, it's the first piece of good economic news we've had in a while, so let's celebrate. I'm thinking of taking out a loan, myself, as nothing more than an expression of my economic and political self-determination. Wooo!
Or, no, wait. What happened is that the Federal Reserve Bank, which is not part of the Federal Government, but sets fiscal policy for the entire country, has gotten a promise of more bailout money (that is, tax dollars from you and me) to shore up the very troubled $5 trillion in mortgage holdings owned by Fannie and Freddie - which in turn are independent corporations established by the government to guarantee home loans.
It's like the FDIC, which insures bank deposits in case of bank failings. If FDIC doesn't have sufficient funds to guarantee that magical $100,000 per depositer in a failed bank, the federal government will pretty much have to pony up the needed scratch, because, if they don't, the whole system could collapse (in principle; I'm not suggesting that this is imminent, because, as Phil Gramm has noted, we wouldn't want to become a nation of whiners. That's just like us ungrateful peasants. Housing market collapses, jobs evaporating, inflation booming, energy costs soaring, and we complain about the government not stepping in sooner. What do we expect, anyway? The government has been telling us all along that there's no danger of recession and that the fundamentals of our economy are all strong. Now that they aren't, we have the nerve to start whining. "Waaah! I don't have a job! Waaah! They foreclosed on my over-priced only-chance house and now I live in a tin can! Waaah! Waaah!" Suck it up, America! Go back to work, or, if you don't have a job, go get one. If there isn't one, go back to school to get re-trained. If you can't afford college, get a student loan. Borrow your way out of debt and bankruptcy. It's the American way!).
Saying Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac aren't going to fail anytime soon is like saying the defense department is reasonably assured that they'll get funded next year.
Still, it's the first piece of good economic news we've had in a while, so let's celebrate. I'm thinking of taking out a loan, myself, as nothing more than an expression of my economic and political self-determination. Wooo!
Monday, July 14, 2008
thinking out loud
I'm working on a project on silence, for a paper for the Society for Phenomenology and Human Sciences. I've finished working through a book by Bernard Dauenhauer called Silence, which was helpful. I have some fundamental differences of opinion with Dauenhauer about the meaning of silence. But I'm also noticing, reading along, a more fundamental difference, that is very hard to come to terms with.
Phenomenology is a philosophical approach that attempts to describe and analyze lived experience and its meaning, tracing from that up towards the constitution of objectivity, reality, theory, and even truth. I like to think of phenomenology as the attempt to account for how it is that there is meaning, a world, others, objects, reality, theory, or truth for us. It avoids the positivist presumption that there just is reality out there, and all we try to do is match our concepts to it - naive realism.
But phenomenology, no less than any other philosophical approach, is deeply, tacitly, committed to a philosophical notion of rationality and experience. It's a slippery problem, but I don't think it's impossible to do something about it, even though it seems endemic to the "discipline" of philosophy.
The problem is what I am tempted to call the philosopher's fallacy, namely, the assumption that experience at all levels is fundamentally about, fundamentally for, and fundamentally directed toward the cognitive, theoretical achievement of rational sense of the world. One reason I think this is a fallacy is that philosophical writing from Plato onward has always made a point of distinguishing the philosopher's pursuit of truth from the ordinary person's vague, derivative, or distorted picture of reality. (In many cases, this is expressed frankly in terms of the philosopher's superiority to ordinary people.) Only rarely does a philosopher mention that the ordinary person's picture of reality suffices for the ordinary person. Alfred Schutz notes that, especially in the modern world, the ordinary person's picture of reality contains completely unreflected contradictions, and that these contradictions themselves aren't a problem.
So, going back to phenomenology, it shouldn't be taken for granted that experience really does have this cognitive trajectory. Plus, if philosophers would spend some time being honest about their daily lives, they might notice how little of their own time is spent in pursuit of truth, and how much of it is spent undergoing summer heat or immersed in CRT radiation. I might even argue that most of what we experience isn't about or for anything remotely cognitive in that rationalistic sense. I eat potato chips because they're salty, crunchy, oily, and go well with peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, not for the sake of the truth.
Another way to look at this that I've been thinking about is that the philosopher's fallacy reduces our being to our cognitive being, and takes us out of the animal world we also live in. Now, perhaps we can't directly enough communicate with the non-human world to be able to philosophize with bats, cats, or even dolphins and chimpanzees (some of us would prefer bonobos, but they're probably not into philosophy). But does that give good reason to conclude that non-humans don't experience the world as meaningful, too? Or that our experience and its meaningfulness is so very different from theirs, that we we need concepts like reality and truth to describe it?
This last point has come to mind because Dauenhauer analyzes silence from a totally anthropocentric stance. Silence is, he says, an "active human performance." That puts the entire description and analysis under the categories of the signifying, the symbolic, the human-cognitive, the meaning-as-truth-pursuing. If pressed, I suppose I'd grant that Alexander and Arthur (5 month old kittens) don't have conversations, and so don't enact silence as anticipatory of someone else's utterance. I might even grant that kittens don't utter. But can they, do they, enact silence as anticipatory and (as Dauenhauer later calls it, in reference to Merleau-Ponty) interrogatory ways, standing silent before the world? Perhaps they don't then speak of the world, at least, not in ways that correspond to human speaking. But can they, do they act meaningfully in the world?
More to the point, for what I'm trying to write: Can human silence not be less than cognitively directed toward that sense-making, rational thinking? Even if it can't be outside of the realm of the meaningful, and can't be entirely disconnected from utterance (as Dauenhauer's account has it, and I think he's right, at least about human silence), must it be interrogative in its end?
Or, to quote Satchel Paige (apparently): Sometimes I sits and thinks, and other times I just sits.
Phenomenology is a philosophical approach that attempts to describe and analyze lived experience and its meaning, tracing from that up towards the constitution of objectivity, reality, theory, and even truth. I like to think of phenomenology as the attempt to account for how it is that there is meaning, a world, others, objects, reality, theory, or truth for us. It avoids the positivist presumption that there just is reality out there, and all we try to do is match our concepts to it - naive realism.
But phenomenology, no less than any other philosophical approach, is deeply, tacitly, committed to a philosophical notion of rationality and experience. It's a slippery problem, but I don't think it's impossible to do something about it, even though it seems endemic to the "discipline" of philosophy.
The problem is what I am tempted to call the philosopher's fallacy, namely, the assumption that experience at all levels is fundamentally about, fundamentally for, and fundamentally directed toward the cognitive, theoretical achievement of rational sense of the world. One reason I think this is a fallacy is that philosophical writing from Plato onward has always made a point of distinguishing the philosopher's pursuit of truth from the ordinary person's vague, derivative, or distorted picture of reality. (In many cases, this is expressed frankly in terms of the philosopher's superiority to ordinary people.) Only rarely does a philosopher mention that the ordinary person's picture of reality suffices for the ordinary person. Alfred Schutz notes that, especially in the modern world, the ordinary person's picture of reality contains completely unreflected contradictions, and that these contradictions themselves aren't a problem.
So, going back to phenomenology, it shouldn't be taken for granted that experience really does have this cognitive trajectory. Plus, if philosophers would spend some time being honest about their daily lives, they might notice how little of their own time is spent in pursuit of truth, and how much of it is spent undergoing summer heat or immersed in CRT radiation. I might even argue that most of what we experience isn't about or for anything remotely cognitive in that rationalistic sense. I eat potato chips because they're salty, crunchy, oily, and go well with peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, not for the sake of the truth.
Another way to look at this that I've been thinking about is that the philosopher's fallacy reduces our being to our cognitive being, and takes us out of the animal world we also live in. Now, perhaps we can't directly enough communicate with the non-human world to be able to philosophize with bats, cats, or even dolphins and chimpanzees (some of us would prefer bonobos, but they're probably not into philosophy). But does that give good reason to conclude that non-humans don't experience the world as meaningful, too? Or that our experience and its meaningfulness is so very different from theirs, that we we need concepts like reality and truth to describe it?
This last point has come to mind because Dauenhauer analyzes silence from a totally anthropocentric stance. Silence is, he says, an "active human performance." That puts the entire description and analysis under the categories of the signifying, the symbolic, the human-cognitive, the meaning-as-truth-pursuing. If pressed, I suppose I'd grant that Alexander and Arthur (5 month old kittens) don't have conversations, and so don't enact silence as anticipatory of someone else's utterance. I might even grant that kittens don't utter. But can they, do they, enact silence as anticipatory and (as Dauenhauer later calls it, in reference to Merleau-Ponty) interrogatory ways, standing silent before the world? Perhaps they don't then speak of the world, at least, not in ways that correspond to human speaking. But can they, do they act meaningfully in the world?
More to the point, for what I'm trying to write: Can human silence not be less than cognitively directed toward that sense-making, rational thinking? Even if it can't be outside of the realm of the meaningful, and can't be entirely disconnected from utterance (as Dauenhauer's account has it, and I think he's right, at least about human silence), must it be interrogative in its end?
Or, to quote Satchel Paige (apparently): Sometimes I sits and thinks, and other times I just sits.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
civility in public dialogue
Civility is the last refuge of a scoundrel.*
Lately I've been leafing through the Association for the Study of Higher Education's Reader on university and college management. It's recommended by Marc Bousquet, author of How The University Works, his trenchant, decidedly one-sided, and in my view almost entirely accurate analysis of the day-to-day economic and social relations of production in US higher education. Bousquet recommends reading the ASHE tome (it's 600 pages) to see how administrators have learned to think about higher education institutions.
One major theme is an eerily Hobbesian notion of higher education as a wild state of nature, an anarchical tumult in need of leadership, direction, and control. That basic ideological move puts the reader in the position of interpreting everything that takes place on a college campus as the result of a manager's having worked out some method for reining in the wild impulses of the folks roaming freely across the campus (faculty and students) and turning them toward some productive purpose. So, anything that appears to that reader as contrary to that reader's chosen purpose, that reader's direction and control, appears as an outbreak of anarchy and wildness.
One way this manifests itself in the everyday life of the institution has been bugging the shit out of me for a couple years now: calls for "civility." It never fails that faculty statements of dissent - even when they are logically and dispassionately composed - are met with replies from administrators calling for more civil discourse. (I will leave aside for now the actual content of administrator's responses, which in my opinion most often tend to be disingenuous when they aren't completely evasive or dismissive.) It's annoying when administrators complain that faculty are being shrill or disruptive, but I'm most appalled at the accusations that faculty are being overly argumentative or confrontational. Academic discourse is argumentative and confrontational. That's what academic conferences are all about. It's not the most socially pleasant behavior, I confess, but it's part of how we're all trained to act.
In any event, the call for civility is clearly a thin veil for a quite different discursive agenda. On one level, it's a scolding to the naughty boys and girls in the faculty who backtalk. On another, it's another form of evasion. It's also a revoltingly passive-aggressive act, a dismissal of the issue on the basis of an alleged objection to the tone of voice. Most importantly (and this is something I don't think all my colleagues quite dig), the demand for civility is an imposed restriction on discourse, with a broad, ambiguous meaning and power-effect. It attempts to restrict not only what one says, how one says it, in what forum and in what context, but also who speaks, when, how often. The demand is to meet the criterion of civility called for by the one demanding it - a criterion always left unstated (this is the key to the ambiguity of the power of the demand). It attempts to determine the speakable and the unspeakable, the (legit) speaker and one spoken to (and of). All of which is why it's the most popular item in the catalogue from Althusser-Foucault Power Tools.
I should point out I'm not referring to any particular incident of the last couple years. This is a trend, in political dialogue as well as in university governance (how many times have we heard politicos calling for more "civility" in Congress - as though how politely they address one another is as important as whether they're voting to spend federal money on continuing a hopeless military campaign, for instance). It's akin to the way appeals to the value of "free speech" are used to push a political agenda - but that's another story, I suppose.
*Apologies to Johnson.
Lately I've been leafing through the Association for the Study of Higher Education's Reader on university and college management. It's recommended by Marc Bousquet, author of How The University Works, his trenchant, decidedly one-sided, and in my view almost entirely accurate analysis of the day-to-day economic and social relations of production in US higher education. Bousquet recommends reading the ASHE tome (it's 600 pages) to see how administrators have learned to think about higher education institutions.
One major theme is an eerily Hobbesian notion of higher education as a wild state of nature, an anarchical tumult in need of leadership, direction, and control. That basic ideological move puts the reader in the position of interpreting everything that takes place on a college campus as the result of a manager's having worked out some method for reining in the wild impulses of the folks roaming freely across the campus (faculty and students) and turning them toward some productive purpose. So, anything that appears to that reader as contrary to that reader's chosen purpose, that reader's direction and control, appears as an outbreak of anarchy and wildness.
One way this manifests itself in the everyday life of the institution has been bugging the shit out of me for a couple years now: calls for "civility." It never fails that faculty statements of dissent - even when they are logically and dispassionately composed - are met with replies from administrators calling for more civil discourse. (I will leave aside for now the actual content of administrator's responses, which in my opinion most often tend to be disingenuous when they aren't completely evasive or dismissive.) It's annoying when administrators complain that faculty are being shrill or disruptive, but I'm most appalled at the accusations that faculty are being overly argumentative or confrontational. Academic discourse is argumentative and confrontational. That's what academic conferences are all about. It's not the most socially pleasant behavior, I confess, but it's part of how we're all trained to act.
In any event, the call for civility is clearly a thin veil for a quite different discursive agenda. On one level, it's a scolding to the naughty boys and girls in the faculty who backtalk. On another, it's another form of evasion. It's also a revoltingly passive-aggressive act, a dismissal of the issue on the basis of an alleged objection to the tone of voice. Most importantly (and this is something I don't think all my colleagues quite dig), the demand for civility is an imposed restriction on discourse, with a broad, ambiguous meaning and power-effect. It attempts to restrict not only what one says, how one says it, in what forum and in what context, but also who speaks, when, how often. The demand is to meet the criterion of civility called for by the one demanding it - a criterion always left unstated (this is the key to the ambiguity of the power of the demand). It attempts to determine the speakable and the unspeakable, the (legit) speaker and one spoken to (and of). All of which is why it's the most popular item in the catalogue from Althusser-Foucault Power Tools.
I should point out I'm not referring to any particular incident of the last couple years. This is a trend, in political dialogue as well as in university governance (how many times have we heard politicos calling for more "civility" in Congress - as though how politely they address one another is as important as whether they're voting to spend federal money on continuing a hopeless military campaign, for instance). It's akin to the way appeals to the value of "free speech" are used to push a political agenda - but that's another story, I suppose.
*Apologies to Johnson.
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
cat tower project
Well, we built a floor-to-ceiling cat scratching post and climbing tower. It was much less than half the cost of buying one, including buying tools. I took about 10 hours for the two of us, totally inexperienced, to build it, and that includes doing all the cutting, carpeting, and so on. Not bad. Here's a photo journal of the construction process:
stuff to build it
They played on the tower for about an hour last night and a little this morning, before it got hideously hot. Siesta time now.
stuff to build it
box construction
nailing the box together [the box is ridiculously overbuilt, with supports in the four corners and around the hole in the top, where the 8-foot 4x4 post goes]
carpeted interior, two doorways for kitty egress/exit/ambush
carpeting exterior of box
Alexander helping out
Arthur helping out
what would we do without their carpeting supervision?
or without Arthur's quality control?
luckily, it passed
They played on the tower for about an hour last night and a little this morning, before it got hideously hot. Siesta time now.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
fifth of July
Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of Lauren and I cohabiting. We celebrate three anniversaries, in fact, but to me, the fifth of July is most important.
July 5, 2004 wasn't the best day of our lives together. I had spent the previous week moving my effects out of a household that had been broken for longer than I care to think about, and myself out of a relationship that had been broken at least as long. Lauren arrived late that afternoon with a carload of her stuff, moving out of another unhappy relationship. We were both terribly excited, which masked some of the overwhelming stress and uncertainty. It was a tough way to start a life together, but we made it, and created a beautiful, delighting life.
In retrospect, that says a lot about how we love one another and why suddenly it's been four years together. We've had a tremendously happy time together, most of the time. But also a lot of terrible times, a lot of sad and distressful times. This isn't earth-shattering. Everybody goes through difficulty. The beauty and delight abide, always.
What keeps coming to mind for me lately is that no matter how stressed, paranoid, upset, angry, confused, or certain of doom I have been, of all the people in the world, Lauren always gives me hope and joy. The hope and joy she gives make it possible for life to be open, free, meaningful, and make it possible for me to fight the good fights I have to, and to smile. That hope and joy, and grasping hold of that hope and joy, of the possibility for happiness, is what the fifth of July represents to me.
July 5, 2004 wasn't the best day of our lives together. I had spent the previous week moving my effects out of a household that had been broken for longer than I care to think about, and myself out of a relationship that had been broken at least as long. Lauren arrived late that afternoon with a carload of her stuff, moving out of another unhappy relationship. We were both terribly excited, which masked some of the overwhelming stress and uncertainty. It was a tough way to start a life together, but we made it, and created a beautiful, delighting life.
In retrospect, that says a lot about how we love one another and why suddenly it's been four years together. We've had a tremendously happy time together, most of the time. But also a lot of terrible times, a lot of sad and distressful times. This isn't earth-shattering. Everybody goes through difficulty. The beauty and delight abide, always.
What keeps coming to mind for me lately is that no matter how stressed, paranoid, upset, angry, confused, or certain of doom I have been, of all the people in the world, Lauren always gives me hope and joy. The hope and joy she gives make it possible for life to be open, free, meaningful, and make it possible for me to fight the good fights I have to, and to smile. That hope and joy, and grasping hold of that hope and joy, of the possibility for happiness, is what the fifth of July represents to me.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
guess it's summer
One lull later...
Been down to LA and back. We went down to LA for fresh air. The smoke from the wildfires was so thick last week that you really couldn't see down the road. I went for a typical lengthy summer walk one morning, and was sick the rest of the day. The weather in LA was lovely, the skies blue. Now we're back. 'sokay.
NHL free agency period began July 1. Penguins losing key players left and right.
This morning I rooted through my Yahoo bulk message folder, and found two comments sent by my loyal readers had been sent to purgatory. Yahoo email either is or ought to be notorious for misdirecting mail as spam and spam as mail. Anyway, straightened that out.
Results aren't in yet, but I've been fooling around with alternate guitar tunings. I was playing them on an old beater I bought for my office, and was getting a tad sick of the way it sounded. I brought it down to LA with us, played it in all kinds of odd tunings, retuned it to standard, played at Lauren's grandmother's weekly Saturday family gathering, and complained every so often about the sound and the difficulty of the action. I started talking about wanting a better 6-string steel string guitar.
On Sunday, after retuning it for the sixth or twelfth time the D string snapped. I restrung it, which turned out to be an ironic act, because Monday I finally decided that enough was enough, and we took it to a Sam Ash in Torrance and traded it in on a spanking-new Takamine.
I am now the proud owner of said guitar, which hasn't a name yet. I'm getting used to the sound and the feel of a steel 6-string, because although it's the most common kind of guitar, I've had least experience playing them. It's like a new toy. No, I suppose it is a new toy.
Been down to LA and back. We went down to LA for fresh air. The smoke from the wildfires was so thick last week that you really couldn't see down the road. I went for a typical lengthy summer walk one morning, and was sick the rest of the day. The weather in LA was lovely, the skies blue. Now we're back. 'sokay.
NHL free agency period began July 1. Penguins losing key players left and right.
This morning I rooted through my Yahoo bulk message folder, and found two comments sent by my loyal readers had been sent to purgatory. Yahoo email either is or ought to be notorious for misdirecting mail as spam and spam as mail. Anyway, straightened that out.
Results aren't in yet, but I've been fooling around with alternate guitar tunings. I was playing them on an old beater I bought for my office, and was getting a tad sick of the way it sounded. I brought it down to LA with us, played it in all kinds of odd tunings, retuned it to standard, played at Lauren's grandmother's weekly Saturday family gathering, and complained every so often about the sound and the difficulty of the action. I started talking about wanting a better 6-string steel string guitar.
On Sunday, after retuning it for the sixth or twelfth time the D string snapped. I restrung it, which turned out to be an ironic act, because Monday I finally decided that enough was enough, and we took it to a Sam Ash in Torrance and traded it in on a spanking-new Takamine.
I am now the proud owner of said guitar, which hasn't a name yet. I'm getting used to the sound and the feel of a steel 6-string, because although it's the most common kind of guitar, I've had least experience playing them. It's like a new toy. No, I suppose it is a new toy.
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
heroes
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
23. Heroes. I just love 'em.
George Carlin's death has me thinking about heroes, strangely, because in the grand scheme of things, Carlin wasn't a hero of mine, though he was close. I respected him a lot, and to me, he was incredibly funny. He was at the center of a landmark free speech/obscenity case, but wasn't really a participant - more the occasion or object.
I don't tend to regard heroes as paragons of virtue, or necessarily morally righteous. This is lucky for me, because I don't think any of mine would pass a virtue/righteousness test. I'm just whipping this out, so I might glaringly omit someone, but let's see if I can list them.
Lenny Bruce. Lenny was not only involved in a landmark free speech/obscenity case, but the only person ever convicted of obscenity in the US for any performance or publication not containing pornographic images (depending on your perspective, I suppose). His final appeal was granted posthumously. In any case, Lenny's act, and to a large degree his everyday behavior (if reports are, in the main, honest), focused on the moral contradictions of American culture and social life, by which he was in turns amused and horrified. And he made it all funny, until he stopped being funny. Lenny Bruce is such a hero to me, I even like his stuff after he stopped being a comic and became Lenny Bruce instead.
John Fahey. For my money, Fahey's guitar playing is the weirdest there could be, not because his playing techniques were particularly odd, but because his musical sensibilities and impulses were fundamentally crackers. I wouldn't say I aspire to play like Fahey. I don't think I'll ever be as good (even though Fahey wasn't really a technical virtuoso), but I'll never be that creative. Fahey also wrote bizarre, if not actually insane, rambling quasi-autobiographical screeds, some of which are published as a book called How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Almost everything Wright said about architecture, especially his own, was either an outright lie or self-promotional puffery. I don't care. He was reportedly mercurial in his relationships with other people, often instantly enraged by loved ones, employees, and employers. I don't care. He blithely ignored clients' design requirements or preferences, and imposed his own style, proportion, and uncomfortable furniture on them. I don't care. His places are drafty and they leak. I don't care. I can't go near or into a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright without feeling whole, solid, ready, aware, lively, and inspired. They don't have to be particularly similar for this to happen, either: Fallingwater packs a huge wallop, but I feel much the same at the Marin County Civic Center.
Julia Child. I cut my teeth on Julia Child's cooking shows on TV when I was a kid. One of my earliest satirical ideas was a spoof of her shows, combined with Monty Hall's old joint, to be called Let's Bake A Seal. Her actual life story is pretty amazing. She was a defense intelligence agent after World War II, fell in love with another defense intelligence agent, who ended up stationed in Paris (I think under cover). So she played housewife awhile, got bored, and went to the Cordon Bleu cooking school. They came back to the states, and eventually she started teaching people to cook on TV. She made mistakes, she dropped stuff, and she wrote and showed you how to fix things when things went wrong. She was a brilliant cook, fearless but not flawless, and her recipes always work (even if they cheat somewhat).
John Meyer. After a year of being thoroughly bored in eighth grade, my junior high school put me in the higher level courses, which I think were called GT classes, for ninth. So it was that I had 9th grade US history with John Meyer, late morning, in a trailer out behind the main classroom building. In that trailer, he taught a lesson one particularly stifling hot, humid late spring morning, by turning the classroom into a sweatshop, dividing the class into production lines, and requiring us to manufacture "Happy Books." This was too much for the upper-middle-class white girls to handle, and the complaints came in from their folks. They hated him. I had a sudden realization that I wanted to teach for a living. I had AP European History with him in high school, which wasn't as revelatory, but was still one of a handful of classes that were taught by people who showed any respect at all for the emerging intellects of the students.
Tom Waits. If I could write lyrics like anybody I chose, it'd be like Tom Waits (and I suppose Kathleen Brennan, since they write most things together). If I could make music any way I liked, I would make music like Waits' - not the particular style, not all the racket, but the sheer fuckitity of his approach. He described what he started to do with music around 1990 or so as taking away all the stuff that's obviously musical, and making music out of what's left over. I admire the bejezus out of that. I wish I could do that. (Sometimes it happens when I teach, I think. It's cool as hell.)
Of course I've had other heroes, mainly hockey players like Mike Palmateer, but that was as a kid. I suppose some people outgrow having heroes at some point. I haven't, and I don't think I will (Fahey just became a hero a couple years ago).
23. Heroes. I just love 'em.
George Carlin's death has me thinking about heroes, strangely, because in the grand scheme of things, Carlin wasn't a hero of mine, though he was close. I respected him a lot, and to me, he was incredibly funny. He was at the center of a landmark free speech/obscenity case, but wasn't really a participant - more the occasion or object.
I don't tend to regard heroes as paragons of virtue, or necessarily morally righteous. This is lucky for me, because I don't think any of mine would pass a virtue/righteousness test. I'm just whipping this out, so I might glaringly omit someone, but let's see if I can list them.
Lenny Bruce. Lenny was not only involved in a landmark free speech/obscenity case, but the only person ever convicted of obscenity in the US for any performance or publication not containing pornographic images (depending on your perspective, I suppose). His final appeal was granted posthumously. In any case, Lenny's act, and to a large degree his everyday behavior (if reports are, in the main, honest), focused on the moral contradictions of American culture and social life, by which he was in turns amused and horrified. And he made it all funny, until he stopped being funny. Lenny Bruce is such a hero to me, I even like his stuff after he stopped being a comic and became Lenny Bruce instead.
John Fahey. For my money, Fahey's guitar playing is the weirdest there could be, not because his playing techniques were particularly odd, but because his musical sensibilities and impulses were fundamentally crackers. I wouldn't say I aspire to play like Fahey. I don't think I'll ever be as good (even though Fahey wasn't really a technical virtuoso), but I'll never be that creative. Fahey also wrote bizarre, if not actually insane, rambling quasi-autobiographical screeds, some of which are published as a book called How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life.
Frank Lloyd Wright. Almost everything Wright said about architecture, especially his own, was either an outright lie or self-promotional puffery. I don't care. He was reportedly mercurial in his relationships with other people, often instantly enraged by loved ones, employees, and employers. I don't care. He blithely ignored clients' design requirements or preferences, and imposed his own style, proportion, and uncomfortable furniture on them. I don't care. His places are drafty and they leak. I don't care. I can't go near or into a building designed by Frank Lloyd Wright without feeling whole, solid, ready, aware, lively, and inspired. They don't have to be particularly similar for this to happen, either: Fallingwater packs a huge wallop, but I feel much the same at the Marin County Civic Center.
Julia Child. I cut my teeth on Julia Child's cooking shows on TV when I was a kid. One of my earliest satirical ideas was a spoof of her shows, combined with Monty Hall's old joint, to be called Let's Bake A Seal. Her actual life story is pretty amazing. She was a defense intelligence agent after World War II, fell in love with another defense intelligence agent, who ended up stationed in Paris (I think under cover). So she played housewife awhile, got bored, and went to the Cordon Bleu cooking school. They came back to the states, and eventually she started teaching people to cook on TV. She made mistakes, she dropped stuff, and she wrote and showed you how to fix things when things went wrong. She was a brilliant cook, fearless but not flawless, and her recipes always work (even if they cheat somewhat).
John Meyer. After a year of being thoroughly bored in eighth grade, my junior high school put me in the higher level courses, which I think were called GT classes, for ninth. So it was that I had 9th grade US history with John Meyer, late morning, in a trailer out behind the main classroom building. In that trailer, he taught a lesson one particularly stifling hot, humid late spring morning, by turning the classroom into a sweatshop, dividing the class into production lines, and requiring us to manufacture "Happy Books." This was too much for the upper-middle-class white girls to handle, and the complaints came in from their folks. They hated him. I had a sudden realization that I wanted to teach for a living. I had AP European History with him in high school, which wasn't as revelatory, but was still one of a handful of classes that were taught by people who showed any respect at all for the emerging intellects of the students.
Tom Waits. If I could write lyrics like anybody I chose, it'd be like Tom Waits (and I suppose Kathleen Brennan, since they write most things together). If I could make music any way I liked, I would make music like Waits' - not the particular style, not all the racket, but the sheer fuckitity of his approach. He described what he started to do with music around 1990 or so as taking away all the stuff that's obviously musical, and making music out of what's left over. I admire the bejezus out of that. I wish I could do that. (Sometimes it happens when I teach, I think. It's cool as hell.)
Of course I've had other heroes, mainly hockey players like Mike Palmateer, but that was as a kid. I suppose some people outgrow having heroes at some point. I haven't, and I don't think I will (Fahey just became a hero a couple years ago).
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
but now for some lighter news
People living under rocks may not have heard yet that California's Supreme Court ruled that everyone, regardless of gender or sex, should have the right to marry any other consenting adult. Same-sex marriages became legal as of 5:01 pm yesterday.
As a result, my loveliest and I have come out of the closet. Yep, we're married. We've been married for just over two years. Lauren tells the compleat story in her blog, so go read that. It's okay, I'll wait here...
Dum dee-dum, dumbledy dum... Hmm.
Hoo-hah shamma-shamma tiddle-ee-dah. Whum-pa pah-dee-oo-skiddly-doo-dat spah! Oobly-scoobly-oo-bap-sh-bim-
uh... Shit, I didn't expect you back so soon. It's so embarrassing getting caught in the middle of private scat singing.
I still have grave misgivings about the institution of marriage. I didn't think much about the discriminatory practice of legal marriage versus domestic partnership until about 7 or 8 years ago, when voters in California approved Prop 22, "The Defense of Marriage Act," which was a purely symbolic act defining marriage as between a man and a woman. No county in the state was permitting same-sex marriage, so the proposition didn't change anything. It just gave a bunch of assholes the opportunity to be assholes.
My long-term objections to marriage have been less related to justice. I have never wanted to be married, in part because of my iconoclastic allergy to social institutions generally, but in larger part because of what I regard as the baggage of tradition that comes along with it. Marriage is just too culturally heavy. When you are introduced as a husband, for instance, a whole string of additional characteristics, roles, attitudes, and ways of relating are presumptively attributed to you. Sure, some particular person, who knows us well, would know that we don't play our roles quite straight, but the cultural norm and the general expectation is that "married" fits both persons into neatly, unproblematically defined categorical boxes.
(As long as I'm confessing to being married, I might as well also confess that I generally take out the trash, pay the bills, file the taxes, and I'm the primary bread-winner. On the other hand, I'm also the primary bread-baker, as well as cook, kitchen cleaner, and vaccuumer.)
I resent being put in a box. (This is one of my most cat-like characteristics. If I want to be in the box, I'll go get in the box myself. I don't need the likes of you putting me in the damn box! Now gimme some damn catnip!)
Now that California isn't discriminating against people when it comes to marriage, there's less of a pressing reason to hide the fact that we are married, and moreover, there's an opportunity to make the point, again, that this discrimination is immoral. Plus, same-sex marriage isn't entirely safe yet. A group of maniacs is trying to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to ban same-sex marriage.
As a result, my loveliest and I have come out of the closet. Yep, we're married. We've been married for just over two years. Lauren tells the compleat story in her blog, so go read that. It's okay, I'll wait here...
Dum dee-dum, dumbledy dum... Hmm.
Hoo-hah shamma-shamma tiddle-ee-dah. Whum-pa pah-dee-oo-skiddly-doo-dat spah! Oobly-scoobly-oo-bap-sh-bim-
uh... Shit, I didn't expect you back so soon. It's so embarrassing getting caught in the middle of private scat singing.
I still have grave misgivings about the institution of marriage. I didn't think much about the discriminatory practice of legal marriage versus domestic partnership until about 7 or 8 years ago, when voters in California approved Prop 22, "The Defense of Marriage Act," which was a purely symbolic act defining marriage as between a man and a woman. No county in the state was permitting same-sex marriage, so the proposition didn't change anything. It just gave a bunch of assholes the opportunity to be assholes.
My long-term objections to marriage have been less related to justice. I have never wanted to be married, in part because of my iconoclastic allergy to social institutions generally, but in larger part because of what I regard as the baggage of tradition that comes along with it. Marriage is just too culturally heavy. When you are introduced as a husband, for instance, a whole string of additional characteristics, roles, attitudes, and ways of relating are presumptively attributed to you. Sure, some particular person, who knows us well, would know that we don't play our roles quite straight, but the cultural norm and the general expectation is that "married" fits both persons into neatly, unproblematically defined categorical boxes.
(As long as I'm confessing to being married, I might as well also confess that I generally take out the trash, pay the bills, file the taxes, and I'm the primary bread-winner. On the other hand, I'm also the primary bread-baker, as well as cook, kitchen cleaner, and vaccuumer.)
I resent being put in a box. (This is one of my most cat-like characteristics. If I want to be in the box, I'll go get in the box myself. I don't need the likes of you putting me in the damn box! Now gimme some damn catnip!)
Now that California isn't discriminating against people when it comes to marriage, there's less of a pressing reason to hide the fact that we are married, and moreover, there's an opportunity to make the point, again, that this discrimination is immoral. Plus, same-sex marriage isn't entirely safe yet. A group of maniacs is trying to put a constitutional amendment on the November ballot to ban same-sex marriage.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
horrible news item
Well, this is just unspeakably awful. I don't have anything to say about it, it's not about me in any way, except that I live in Turlock, and I'm not prone to fits of anonymous pathos in any case. But it's striking, and it's leaving a kind of rottenness in my head, and so, I decided to share this story of totally revolting inhumanity from the Modesto Bee.
Before you click on the link: this ain't a joke. It's just horrible.
Before you click on the link: this ain't a joke. It's just horrible.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
weather report
We have two side bets going on this summer's weather. We've each picked the number of days we predict the temperature to reach or exceed 100 degrees, and we've each picked the number of deaths that will be blamed on heat. I realize the latter is ghoulish, but it's a way of coping.
Historically, the Central Valley could count on around 14-18 days of 100+ degrees every summer. Last year there were 28. The year before there were around 25. This year it's looking like it's going to be the hottest summer ever recorded here. Yesterday was the fifth day of 100 degree weather already, and this isn't the hot part of the year.
Meanwhile, the Gov issued a drought emergency last month, after the driest spring ever, and has now issued a state water emergency. What this does is allow for quick transfers of water from municipal systems that supply residential drinking water into the aqueducts and canals that serve agriculture. So the "water emergency" plan is a plan to find ways to use more water, not conserve it.
If you think there's an ironic twist to this story that I'm about to reveal, then DING DING DING! You win!
The Central Valley is the agricultural heart of the state, and in some ways of the nation and the world. To achieve this, in what is basically an arid seasonal grassland, the rivers that feed the San Joaquin are all dammed to form a tremendous series of reservoirs. Those reservoirs feed canals, generally open trenches, that stretch down the hills into the valley, which ranchers and farmers tap to flood irrigate. Flood irrigation is an ancient, inefficient method of watering crops by, as the name suggests, flooding the ground with water and letting it seep in (in this climate, this means a whole lot of evaporation loss, but that's another story).
The irrigated water seeps through the ground, waters the parched roots of almond trees and tomatoes and whatnot, and eventually reaches the groundwater table. This used to be just a couple dozen feet down, but after droughts in the late 80s and early 90s, it fell to just above its record low, where it has remained, through wet and dry years, ever since (it recovered somewhat during the huge El Niño year, but has sank rapidly since). Up and down the Valley, municipal water departments dig wells to tap the groundwater to feed to residents as drinking water. So you see the pattern: dam the rivers, irrigate the fields, the water sinks into the groundwater, it's pumped up, and we drink it (the health implications of our drinking this water are another story).
In other words, the water emergency declaration allows rapid transfer of water from the municipal systems, pumping groundwater up from wells dug to reach the water table which is replenished by irrigation of crops from reservoirs, and we're doing this because there's not enough water in the reservoirs. Not only will we be depleting the groundwater by tapping it to supply agricultural irrigation that we rely on to supply the groundwater, but we'll be recirculating the groundwater through all the petrochemicals that the ag biz dumps onto crops out here!
This will all work out fine, of course, as long as we have 5 or 6 winters in a row of well-above-normal snowfall in the Sierras - a pattern of weather that we can count on every 50 or 60 years or so.
Historically, the Central Valley could count on around 14-18 days of 100+ degrees every summer. Last year there were 28. The year before there were around 25. This year it's looking like it's going to be the hottest summer ever recorded here. Yesterday was the fifth day of 100 degree weather already, and this isn't the hot part of the year.
Meanwhile, the Gov issued a drought emergency last month, after the driest spring ever, and has now issued a state water emergency. What this does is allow for quick transfers of water from municipal systems that supply residential drinking water into the aqueducts and canals that serve agriculture. So the "water emergency" plan is a plan to find ways to use more water, not conserve it.
If you think there's an ironic twist to this story that I'm about to reveal, then DING DING DING! You win!
The Central Valley is the agricultural heart of the state, and in some ways of the nation and the world. To achieve this, in what is basically an arid seasonal grassland, the rivers that feed the San Joaquin are all dammed to form a tremendous series of reservoirs. Those reservoirs feed canals, generally open trenches, that stretch down the hills into the valley, which ranchers and farmers tap to flood irrigate. Flood irrigation is an ancient, inefficient method of watering crops by, as the name suggests, flooding the ground with water and letting it seep in (in this climate, this means a whole lot of evaporation loss, but that's another story).
The irrigated water seeps through the ground, waters the parched roots of almond trees and tomatoes and whatnot, and eventually reaches the groundwater table. This used to be just a couple dozen feet down, but after droughts in the late 80s and early 90s, it fell to just above its record low, where it has remained, through wet and dry years, ever since (it recovered somewhat during the huge El Niño year, but has sank rapidly since). Up and down the Valley, municipal water departments dig wells to tap the groundwater to feed to residents as drinking water. So you see the pattern: dam the rivers, irrigate the fields, the water sinks into the groundwater, it's pumped up, and we drink it (the health implications of our drinking this water are another story).
In other words, the water emergency declaration allows rapid transfer of water from the municipal systems, pumping groundwater up from wells dug to reach the water table which is replenished by irrigation of crops from reservoirs, and we're doing this because there's not enough water in the reservoirs. Not only will we be depleting the groundwater by tapping it to supply agricultural irrigation that we rely on to supply the groundwater, but we'll be recirculating the groundwater through all the petrochemicals that the ag biz dumps onto crops out here!
This will all work out fine, of course, as long as we have 5 or 6 winters in a row of well-above-normal snowfall in the Sierras - a pattern of weather that we can count on every 50 or 60 years or so.
Monday, June 09, 2008
california [kăl'Ä-fôr'nyÉ™], n.
California is a series of paint spills and beautiful, opportunistic cruelties along the West Coast of North America.
Sunday, June 08, 2008
what's that thing?
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
24. Clean kitchens. I just love 'em.
We're down in LA to visit, just around my loveliest's ma Allison's birthday. I roasted a leg of lamb with some potatoes for a belated birthday dinner tonight, and just spent a few minutes scouring the roasting pan. Cleaning a kitchen is satisfying work, for me, because I spend a lot of time making kitchens need to be cleaned. But mainly, I love a clean kitchen.
The roasting pan in question I had propped up in the sink to soak several hours ago. While generally tidying up after our 6th pinochle game of the weekend, I decided to clean the last of the dinner stuff, including the roasting pan. I needn't have. But sitting there on the edge of the sink, it gave me a look that said "Tomorrow morning, I'll be sitting in this sink, and someone waking up - maybe you - will see me sitting here, and I will look so forlorn, so filthy, so recalcitrantly in the way of the faucet, that you'll regret ever having roasted that so-called leg of lamb in me." So I Brilloed the heck outta that roasting pan, leaving the sink, if not clean, at least emptied of dirty dishes and pans.
I especially love a clean kitchen as a thing to walk into in the morning, in search of some form of caffeinated beverage and some form of bread product to call breakfast. Things in place, things clean, things ready to go - this is a special kind of bliss.
24. Clean kitchens. I just love 'em.
We're down in LA to visit, just around my loveliest's ma Allison's birthday. I roasted a leg of lamb with some potatoes for a belated birthday dinner tonight, and just spent a few minutes scouring the roasting pan. Cleaning a kitchen is satisfying work, for me, because I spend a lot of time making kitchens need to be cleaned. But mainly, I love a clean kitchen.
The roasting pan in question I had propped up in the sink to soak several hours ago. While generally tidying up after our 6th pinochle game of the weekend, I decided to clean the last of the dinner stuff, including the roasting pan. I needn't have. But sitting there on the edge of the sink, it gave me a look that said "Tomorrow morning, I'll be sitting in this sink, and someone waking up - maybe you - will see me sitting here, and I will look so forlorn, so filthy, so recalcitrantly in the way of the faucet, that you'll regret ever having roasted that so-called leg of lamb in me." So I Brilloed the heck outta that roasting pan, leaving the sink, if not clean, at least emptied of dirty dishes and pans.
I especially love a clean kitchen as a thing to walk into in the morning, in search of some form of caffeinated beverage and some form of bread product to call breakfast. Things in place, things clean, things ready to go - this is a special kind of bliss.
Thursday, June 05, 2008
another silly meme
At some point, this blog will return to usual programming. The Pittsburgh Penguins lost the Stanley Cup Finals to the Detroit Red Wings, 4 games to 2, last night. Sad ending to an incredibly inspiring season for arguably the team with the greatest young talent in the NHL. They'll be back, in some different configuration. We're just hoping our favorites stay with the team. Some will.
Anyway, this meme has been stolen from No Celery, Please. It doesn't seem to have a title, so I'll call it
Yet Another List of Random Factoids About a Human Being,
In this Case, Me
Accent: Midwest/Northern, altered slightly by natural mimicry and living in North Carolina (8 years), Pittsburgh (8 years) and California (*GULP* nearly 10 years).
Bra size: I don't know. I'll wear a skirt, among friends, but I've never gone full drag.
Chore I hate: Dusting, especially books and bookcases (allergies).
Dad’s name: Carl Richard
Essential make-up: Everything I say is essentially made up.
Favorite perfume: Home-brewed bay rum after shave!
Gold or Silver: Silver.
Hometown: Born in Toledo, raised until 13 in Maumee, Ohio.
Interesting fact: I was, at the time, reportedly the youngest person to earn a Doctorate in Philosophy at Duquesne University.
Job title: Lecturer, Philosophy Department, Cow State Santa Claus
Kids: Pets: Two four-month-old kittens from the same litter. Alexander (Alex, Brutus) and Arthur (Bruno, Honey Bear), a.k.a., The Smothers Brothers, a.k.a., The Katzenjammer Kids, a.k.a. The Flying Kittois Brothers, a.k.a., Boodahs, Monsters, etc., etc.
Living arrangements: Rented town house, 4 litter boxes (trying to work that down to 2)
Mom’s Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio.
Number of apples eaten in last week: None. It ain't friggin' apple season!
Overnight hospital stays: None. Hah! Been in the ER a coupla times, once as a kid with a 105 fever.
Phobia: Lightning. Tremendously socially anxious from time to time.
Question you ask yourself a lot: What am I forgetting?
Religious affiliation: Joke answer: Recovering Catholic. Earnest answer: [empty set]
Siblings: One older brother, one older sister.
Time I wake up: Teaching days: 6:30 am. Non-teaching days: depends on the Katzenjammer Kids.
Natural Hair color: Brown.
Vegetable I refuse to eat: I detest Brussels sprouts and lima beans, beets.
Worst habit: Self-loathing
X-rays: Sure, what've you got?
Yummy food I make: How much time have you got? I make a ton of different dishes. Last night: pasta with tomatoes, cannelini beans, olives, fresh basil, feta.
Zodiac sign: Leo, of course.
Anyway, this meme has been stolen from No Celery, Please. It doesn't seem to have a title, so I'll call it
In this Case, Me
Accent: Midwest/Northern, altered slightly by natural mimicry and living in North Carolina (8 years), Pittsburgh (8 years) and California (*GULP* nearly 10 years).
Bra size: I don't know. I'll wear a skirt, among friends, but I've never gone full drag.
Chore I hate: Dusting, especially books and bookcases (allergies).
Dad’s name: Carl Richard
Essential make-up: Everything I say is essentially made up.
Favorite perfume: Home-brewed bay rum after shave!
Gold or Silver: Silver.
Hometown: Born in Toledo, raised until 13 in Maumee, Ohio.
Interesting fact: I was, at the time, reportedly the youngest person to earn a Doctorate in Philosophy at Duquesne University.
Job title: Lecturer, Philosophy Department, Cow State Santa Claus
Living arrangements: Rented town house, 4 litter boxes (trying to work that down to 2)
Mom’s Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio.
Number of apples eaten in last week: None. It ain't friggin' apple season!
Overnight hospital stays: None. Hah! Been in the ER a coupla times, once as a kid with a 105 fever.
Phobia: Lightning. Tremendously socially anxious from time to time.
Question you ask yourself a lot: What am I forgetting?
Religious affiliation: Joke answer: Recovering Catholic. Earnest answer: [empty set]
Siblings: One older brother, one older sister.
Time I wake up: Teaching days: 6:30 am. Non-teaching days: depends on the Katzenjammer Kids.
Natural Hair color: Brown.
Vegetable I refuse to eat: I detest Brussels sprouts and lima beans, beets.
Worst habit: Self-loathing
X-rays: Sure, what've you got?
Yummy food I make: How much time have you got? I make a ton of different dishes. Last night: pasta with tomatoes, cannelini beans, olives, fresh basil, feta.
Zodiac sign: Leo, of course.
Friday, May 30, 2008
true and false things about me meme
me, meme-me-me-meme!
The rules of this game are very simple: list 10 odd true facts about yourself, along with 5 odd lies about yourself. Mix 'em up. Serve. Then let readers identify which are the true and which are the false. My loveliest done done it, so now I'm gonna done do it.
1. I became a philosopher in order to impress a woman.
2. I had a paper route in two different states.
3. I've never had a single guitar lesson.
4. I've never had a single cooking lesson.
5. I went to college by accident.
6. I don't really have any phobias.
7. I don't really have any fetishes.
8. My feet are size 13 A, with absolutely no arch.
9. An opthamologist once said that pictures of my astigmatism should be used in textbooks--as an example of just how bad it can get.
10. I never eat breakfast.
11. I dressed grunge six years before anybody knew there was grunge.
12. I loathe eggs but love a lot of foods/sauces made with them.
13. Chewing gum gives me a headache (nevertheless, I sometimes chew gum).
14. I go through periods where I really dislike chocolate--and others where I really love it.
15. I never lie about myself.
1. I became a philosopher in order to impress a woman.
2. I had a paper route in two different states.
3. I've never had a single guitar lesson.
4. I've never had a single cooking lesson.
5. I went to college by accident.
6. I don't really have any phobias.
7. I don't really have any fetishes.
8. My feet are size 13 A, with absolutely no arch.
9. An opthamologist once said that pictures of my astigmatism should be used in textbooks--as an example of just how bad it can get.
10. I never eat breakfast.
11. I dressed grunge six years before anybody knew there was grunge.
12. I loathe eggs but love a lot of foods/sauces made with them.
13. Chewing gum gives me a headache (nevertheless, I sometimes chew gum).
14. I go through periods where I really dislike chocolate--and others where I really love it.
15. I never lie about myself.
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
where the hell have I been?
Our buddies Christina (alt. X-ina) and Guerin got hitched this weekend at Ironstone Vineyards up in Murphys, CA. After 100 degree days the week before, it was overcast and drizzly this weekend, so the weather was perfect for an outdoor wedding.
It had the usual snafus weddings have. It started about a half-hour late, which meant that the song we wrote for X-ina, "Christina Sorting Records," played 3 times. It was scheduled as the music for the pre-processional seating of VIPs. The DJ played it promptly at 4, but nobody was ready, so he played it again, and then again once everyone had finally taken their places.
Ironstone has a pretty joint, and they make a couple exemplary wines, from grapes that don't grow on the premises. Ah, the California wine industry. Nothing could serve as a better example of our state, which is actually a series of misconstrued legends, lies, deceptions, and cruel acts of hucksterism.
It was a gorgeous wedding. There was wine a-plenty. Underage drinking. Drunken passes at newly-met acquaintances. Dancing a-go-go. No cake for the bride and groom. Photographers and videographers scattered like bits of confetti all over the place. "Just married" paraphernalia attached to their car. The bridal suite decked out in naughtiness. Lost items. Items left behind and picked up by random relatives and friends. And when we got home, my loveliest decorated their front door with toilet-paper streamers and, I kid you not, toilet-paper bells with clappers and a toilet-paper flower.
Now I'm grading. I've read a handful of Contemporary Moral Issues finals today, their due date, and this is strange, because it's only a handful, and it is now nearly 6 pm and I'm missing around 2/3 of their finals. They also had a question-and-answer journal on the assigned articles, which was due last Wednesday, and I'm missing 2/3 of those as well. Students, notoriously, don't follow instructions. I've thought of simply no longer giving instructions, and taking the Zen approach of accepting as their work whatever they decide to turn in, and applying evaluation criteria to it accordingly.
It had the usual snafus weddings have. It started about a half-hour late, which meant that the song we wrote for X-ina, "Christina Sorting Records," played 3 times. It was scheduled as the music for the pre-processional seating of VIPs. The DJ played it promptly at 4, but nobody was ready, so he played it again, and then again once everyone had finally taken their places.
Ironstone has a pretty joint, and they make a couple exemplary wines, from grapes that don't grow on the premises. Ah, the California wine industry. Nothing could serve as a better example of our state, which is actually a series of misconstrued legends, lies, deceptions, and cruel acts of hucksterism.
It was a gorgeous wedding. There was wine a-plenty. Underage drinking. Drunken passes at newly-met acquaintances. Dancing a-go-go. No cake for the bride and groom. Photographers and videographers scattered like bits of confetti all over the place. "Just married" paraphernalia attached to their car. The bridal suite decked out in naughtiness. Lost items. Items left behind and picked up by random relatives and friends. And when we got home, my loveliest decorated their front door with toilet-paper streamers and, I kid you not, toilet-paper bells with clappers and a toilet-paper flower.
Now I'm grading. I've read a handful of Contemporary Moral Issues finals today, their due date, and this is strange, because it's only a handful, and it is now nearly 6 pm and I'm missing around 2/3 of their finals. They also had a question-and-answer journal on the assigned articles, which was due last Wednesday, and I'm missing 2/3 of those as well. Students, notoriously, don't follow instructions. I've thought of simply no longer giving instructions, and taking the Zen approach of accepting as their work whatever they decide to turn in, and applying evaluation criteria to it accordingly.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
landmark 361st post
Last night, the kittoises slept almost through the night. When I woke to the alarm (a cd player alarm; the Monkees, I swear to it), they were curled up on us, sweetly sleeping. As usual, Alexander immediately woke when he saw me moving, and as usual, Arthur was the first one downstairs in the kitchen to beg for breakfast. But they didn't wake me up, at 5, or 4:30, by jumping up and down on top of us wrestling and biting each other (and us). This morning is also the first morning in the past week when it was actually chilly (we've had record temperatures until yesterday).
From this I conclude: the kittens are heat-activated.
But that's not what I meant to write about. No, that would be
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
25. Notes sung in the "dog register." I just love 'em.
Last night we went to the Cow State Santa Claus Chamber Singers (a.k.a. Daniel Afonso's Elite Republican Guard) concert. These are the top-shelf choral singers on campus, and they never fail to impress. Last night they were a little bit impressiver than usual, particularly the altos. Altos tend to sound weaker in choral groups, in my experience, but this group are quite strong. My loveliest (a one-time soprano-trapped-in-an-alto's-section) suggested that it's hard to find traditional college-age students who are strong altos, because altos develop later as voices deepen.
In any case, a couple of the numbers featured extremely high notes from first sopranos, which is just about my favorite thing that ever happens in choral music. The more the sopranos have to reach, the more I like it. They weren't hitting Ds or anything, but there were definitely a few As, and I believe a B or two.
I don't know what it is, exactly. I feel those dog notes in my bones. Perhaps I'm a dog. Perhaps, as Afonso once suggested to me, I have a sadistic urge focused on sopranos. Well, so did Mozart, so neener-neener, sopranos!
24. Musical dissonances. I just love 'em.
There wasn't as much of this as there sometimes is, but there was a smattering in Eric Whitacre's "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine," an uplifting (hah!) modern piece in which the choir evokes dreaming, flying, wind, and machines, and the siren call of the will to fly.
Dissonance may not be a word Whitacre, or anybody who knows anything about music, would accept as a description, but by it I mean a tonal tension that sounds like something weird has happened to the piano. I love those moments because I love the feeling of being on the verge, or about to be shoved off the cliff, or about to let go of the rope. I only love that feeling in music, art, literature, philosophy, and theater, and I don't just love it, I have to have it, or I don't feel like anything very important has happened.
Like the Bach piece they did last night. Bach, it struck me, is just like Leibniz. Music is a universal language, Bach's concertos and whatnot are generated by a Leibnizian calculating machine, and each piece in Bach's Werke is the perfect solution generated by the machine. Bach is just the mechanic. Contrast Mozart, who is just like Kant: everything perfectly rational, but also sublime and beautiful, and he swears up and down that's the same thing, and he can prove it, if you'd only sit down and listen, honestly, he's got the whole thing worked out, it's, you know... this!
Okay, seem to have wandered a bit. Last day of classes. Wooo!
From this I conclude: the kittens are heat-activated.
But that's not what I meant to write about. No, that would be
Doc Nagel's Top 100 Things
25. Notes sung in the "dog register." I just love 'em.
Last night we went to the Cow State Santa Claus Chamber Singers (a.k.a. Daniel Afonso's Elite Republican Guard) concert. These are the top-shelf choral singers on campus, and they never fail to impress. Last night they were a little bit impressiver than usual, particularly the altos. Altos tend to sound weaker in choral groups, in my experience, but this group are quite strong. My loveliest (a one-time soprano-trapped-in-an-alto's-section) suggested that it's hard to find traditional college-age students who are strong altos, because altos develop later as voices deepen.
In any case, a couple of the numbers featured extremely high notes from first sopranos, which is just about my favorite thing that ever happens in choral music. The more the sopranos have to reach, the more I like it. They weren't hitting Ds or anything, but there were definitely a few As, and I believe a B or two.
I don't know what it is, exactly. I feel those dog notes in my bones. Perhaps I'm a dog. Perhaps, as Afonso once suggested to me, I have a sadistic urge focused on sopranos. Well, so did Mozart, so neener-neener, sopranos!
24. Musical dissonances. I just love 'em.
There wasn't as much of this as there sometimes is, but there was a smattering in Eric Whitacre's "Leonardo Dreams of His Flying Machine," an uplifting (hah!) modern piece in which the choir evokes dreaming, flying, wind, and machines, and the siren call of the will to fly.
Dissonance may not be a word Whitacre, or anybody who knows anything about music, would accept as a description, but by it I mean a tonal tension that sounds like something weird has happened to the piano. I love those moments because I love the feeling of being on the verge, or about to be shoved off the cliff, or about to let go of the rope. I only love that feeling in music, art, literature, philosophy, and theater, and I don't just love it, I have to have it, or I don't feel like anything very important has happened.
Like the Bach piece they did last night. Bach, it struck me, is just like Leibniz. Music is a universal language, Bach's concertos and whatnot are generated by a Leibnizian calculating machine, and each piece in Bach's Werke is the perfect solution generated by the machine. Bach is just the mechanic. Contrast Mozart, who is just like Kant: everything perfectly rational, but also sublime and beautiful, and he swears up and down that's the same thing, and he can prove it, if you'd only sit down and listen, honestly, he's got the whole thing worked out, it's, you know... this!
Okay, seem to have wandered a bit. Last day of classes. Wooo!
Monday, May 19, 2008
still further evidence
Oh, good grief! Do you have any idea how much strain seeing cuteness like this simply does not cause? Can you imagine the degree of pain and suffering we do not face as a result?
Then again, Arthur has developed a fascination and talent for attacking and biting hands, because he has not distinguished (a) human from kitten flesh, nor (b) calming petting behavior from exciting combative behavior.
Then again, Arthur has developed a fascination and talent for attacking and biting hands, because he has not distinguished (a) human from kitten flesh, nor (b) calming petting behavior from exciting combative behavior.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
a good read
This afternoon I read a handful of the last response papers I'm getting from my two classes of Contemporary Moral Issues for the semester. The purpose of the papers is to have my students focus on the main idea the author develops, and to say what they think about that idea. Very frequently, the papers offer unsolicited commentary on the article's style.
My students apply a set of aesthetic criteria to the articles that are a little vague to me. According to these criteria, an article must be "a good read," which has characteristics like being simple, using a limited and familiar vocabulary and simple sentence structure, avoiding ambiguity, and being interesting or amusing. There's nothing necessarily wrong with these standards, even though some of them are totally subjective. Obviously an article has to be intelligible to its audience, and it certainly should make some kind of interesting point. Often, though, my students desire that everything they read be written in a style and at a level that will be immediately transparent to them, and that they will not have to strain to understand. It's "a good read" when it fits all these criteria.
I'm not saying my students don't care, or aren't smart. They try to work through essays that aren't "good reads," even if only because they're required to. They do learn vocabulary. But their judgments of what makes an essay valuable or worthwhile doesn't have as much to do with whether the argument is cogent or whether it presents a perspective or concept that's valuable, as that it be subjectively pleasing in all these ways.
My students apply a set of aesthetic criteria to the articles that are a little vague to me. According to these criteria, an article must be "a good read," which has characteristics like being simple, using a limited and familiar vocabulary and simple sentence structure, avoiding ambiguity, and being interesting or amusing. There's nothing necessarily wrong with these standards, even though some of them are totally subjective. Obviously an article has to be intelligible to its audience, and it certainly should make some kind of interesting point. Often, though, my students desire that everything they read be written in a style and at a level that will be immediately transparent to them, and that they will not have to strain to understand. It's "a good read" when it fits all these criteria.
I'm not saying my students don't care, or aren't smart. They try to work through essays that aren't "good reads," even if only because they're required to. They do learn vocabulary. But their judgments of what makes an essay valuable or worthwhile doesn't have as much to do with whether the argument is cogent or whether it presents a perspective or concept that's valuable, as that it be subjectively pleasing in all these ways.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Dyson
People who read this blog (I could name approximately 3) know of my predilection for freshly-vacuumed carpets. With a fluffy cat and two long-haired hippies living in the house at the time, vacuuming was more than a hobby.
A couple months ago a pair of Kirby door-to-door hacks came by, gave us a demo of the honestly astounding cleaning power of the Kirby, and tried to sell us a Kirby do-it-all machine for the bargain price of$1500 $1200 $1000 cash. They were competing, they said, to try to win Kirby vacuums for themselves, to advance in their salesforces, and to compete for a vacation prize. This, it turns out, is a scam: the vacuums they sell door to door, the demo models, are generally rebuilts, and their stated sticker price, which ranges from $2000 to $2500 (our dudes said $2500), are huge premiums over Kirby's suggested retail of around $1200.
Anyway, the machine impressed, though we made a quick Google search of the vacs while the demo guy was shampooing our living room carpet, found out the scam, and didn't bite. We did, however, come to a chilling realization of the gross inadequacies of our Dirt Devil Jaguar. More research suggested that Dyson's machines are at least in the running with Kirbys for performance standards. My loveliest's family swears by them. So we've been talking about getting one.
Doc Nagel's Heap of Things
26. Dyson vacuums. I just love 'em.
Last weekend we saw the Dyson Slimline on big big sale at the local Kohl's, while there looking for something completely different (I wandered a bit). They were out. We got a rain check. I was disappointed, but whattayagonnado?
Today, I decided to bring out the ol' Jag to clean up while Alexander and Arthur were at the vet's being neutered (successfully; Arthur is, of this writing, woozy as all heck and complaining, and Alexander is, typically, resigned to the whole thing). I wasn't getting any suction, which is the whole point, if you will, of vacuum cleaners. So, as usual, I assumed that a clog of cat fluff and human hair, along with Arthur's kittie-litter-redecorating detritus, had developed in the beast. I cleaned all pipes, tried again, and still nothing.
What I wish I had said: It's dead, Jim.
What I actually said: Well, it looks like you and Lancelot finally got your revenge against the vacuum. Good boy, Lance. A posthumous kill.
So, we plied the Internets looking for someone who would sell us a Dyson on the quick, and found out, to my surprise, that Target sells them, for competitive prices. Gots it. And boy, howdy. This thing sucks.
I vacuumed the upstairs, and the stairs themselves, and overfilled the dust tank. The stairs look like they're coming out of a terrible dirt hangover, all kinda disheveled but managing to stand up on their own and smile wanly at the sun.
Perhaps I take vacuuming a little too... existentially.
A couple months ago a pair of Kirby door-to-door hacks came by, gave us a demo of the honestly astounding cleaning power of the Kirby, and tried to sell us a Kirby do-it-all machine for the bargain price of
Anyway, the machine impressed, though we made a quick Google search of the vacs while the demo guy was shampooing our living room carpet, found out the scam, and didn't bite. We did, however, come to a chilling realization of the gross inadequacies of our Dirt Devil Jaguar. More research suggested that Dyson's machines are at least in the running with Kirbys for performance standards. My loveliest's family swears by them. So we've been talking about getting one.
Doc Nagel's Heap of Things
26. Dyson vacuums. I just love 'em.
Last weekend we saw the Dyson Slimline on big big sale at the local Kohl's, while there looking for something completely different (I wandered a bit). They were out. We got a rain check. I was disappointed, but whattayagonnado?
Today, I decided to bring out the ol' Jag to clean up while Alexander and Arthur were at the vet's being neutered (successfully; Arthur is, of this writing, woozy as all heck and complaining, and Alexander is, typically, resigned to the whole thing). I wasn't getting any suction, which is the whole point, if you will, of vacuum cleaners. So, as usual, I assumed that a clog of cat fluff and human hair, along with Arthur's kittie-litter-redecorating detritus, had developed in the beast. I cleaned all pipes, tried again, and still nothing.
What I wish I had said: It's dead, Jim.
What I actually said: Well, it looks like you and Lancelot finally got your revenge against the vacuum. Good boy, Lance. A posthumous kill.
So, we plied the Internets looking for someone who would sell us a Dyson on the quick, and found out, to my surprise, that Target sells them, for competitive prices. Gots it. And boy, howdy. This thing sucks.
I vacuumed the upstairs, and the stairs themselves, and overfilled the dust tank. The stairs look like they're coming out of a terrible dirt hangover, all kinda disheveled but managing to stand up on their own and smile wanly at the sun.
Perhaps I take vacuuming a little too... existentially.
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