United States of Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is objecting to a campaign, apparently funded by unions, which raises the theological question of whether Jesus would approve of Wal-Mart's policies.

I do enjoy the effort of some to suggest that profiteering isn't exactly Christian, but I think it never goes far enough. I know I heard and read dozens of times that a rich person has as much chance of reaching heaven as a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle. Whatever it means in terms of commerce as a fundamental means of organizing production and consumption, it's a fascinating notion for thinking about the nature of happiness and salvation (even for someone like me who doesn't believe in salvation).

So, while I chuckle whenever anyone makes fun of Wal-Mart, it seems to me the real message is to ask the reflective question of my own complicity. I didn't spend Thursday picketing in front of retail outlets; I spent Thursday roaming around inside them, buying goodies for Christmas. I'm involved.

Still, in all, hee-hee.

A brief note on December 7

I realize this is a couple days late, but I didn't get around to posting it on December 7th.

That afternoon I spent some time in my office, hitting the "next blog" button on the top of Blogger pages, to get an unscientific survey of what's out there. I kept coming across references to Pearl Harbor, since, of course, it was December 7th, the anniversary of the attack in 1941. But I didn't come across any references to December 7, 1975, which is the date of the invasion of East Timor by Indonesia, and the start of a campaign that killed, conservatively, over a hundred thousand East Timorese. The invasion is subject of media criticism controversy, since the story was barely covered in US news media, while the Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia were covered extensively. The key difference in the two stories, according to many media critics, was that Indonesia was a client nation of the US, and incidentally a major trading partner, and Cambodia was a communist bloc nation.

Anyway, here's a piece from Democracy Now about December 7.

Mainly relief

Yesterday I got divorced. It was messy; it was ugly; it was all a divorce should be, I suppose. So I'm relieved it's over, and I can get on with my life. There's plenty to say about how this is going to be perceived, who will say what about it or about me. The fact of the matter is that I walked away with a chunk less share of community property than was my legal right.

And what did I go and do, the very next morning, completely unable to restrain myself? I went and bought a new car! And here it is:

I've been wanting to make a joke like that for a looooong time.

Now we're getting somewhere!

Here's an interesting story on the government's lack of real measures of success in the so-called war on terrorism. Raphael Perl makes two vital points in the report discussed in the story.

First, any raw number presented as a measure of success doesn't have the context to explain its meaning. The number indicates something is being done, but that gives a potentially misleading picture, since "we measure progress retrospectively against what we've done. And of course since we've done some stuff, we've made progress."

That reminds me of a great Max Frisch story I read in an elementary German class in college, where a bureaucrat's day is detailed. The maxim of the man's action is "etwas muss geschehen" - something must be done. If that's your motto, then anything you do is an achievement, regardless of its effect.

But Perl makes another, more subtle point: what counts as a measure of success to the US government may count as a measure of failure to someone else - for instance, to an adversary. Is increasing defense spending a success? Is removing Saddam Hussein from power and reducing Iraq from tyranny to chaos a success?

What this points out, on a deeper level, is the unexamined, unquestioned perspective of US media presentations of the events called "the war on terrorism" (or, in Bushspeak, "the war on terror"). Reporting on "insurgency" in Iraq, for instance, as part of the ongoing "war on terrorism," only makes coherent sense under the assumption of the same set of beliefs about US motivations and interests that are presented by officials. The Iraq-terrorism connection is presumed, not demonstrated, and the constellation of these notions, repeated in media, cloaks them in "objectivity" and all the other virtues of contemporary journalism. It's a currency without credit.

**

Another item: Rep. Cunningham (R-Calif.) resigned after pleading guilty to accepting bribes. Cunningham said he was sorry, and that he was resigning because he "compromised the trust of [his] constituents." I hate to be picky, but since he had proclaimed his innnocence as recently as July, what Cunningham really means here is that he's resigning because he got caught compromising the trust of his constituents.

How can I tell whether the President is lying?

As George Carlin put it in one of his HBO specials, some people need practical advice. So, here's some practical advice concerning when to believe what President Bush says about Iraq: never. This will save you time and energy you might otherwise spend in vain, attempting to sort out what tiny germ of truth there might be in some dimly-lit subparagraph of a subsection of one of his statements; or trying to work out what, if anything, the President actually believes.

The current case: Not two days after raising doubts about John Murtha's honor and credibility, President Bush made protestations of his respect for Murtha. It turns out that calling Democratic critics of the Iraq war names didn't help calm anyone down. Go figure. But of course, this is the same President Bush who kept coming up with different rationales for attacking Iraq before finally just bulling his way forward, the same President Bush who declared that "you're either with us or against us" as a way of casting aspersions on the patriotism of anyone who criticized the Iraq war, the same President Bush who announced in May of 2003 that we'd won in Iraq. If there's anyone with less credibility in the US government, I think it might be Dick Cheney.

In fact, even in lying about his respect for Murtha, the President couldn't stop himself from lying about what he was lying about. Murtha called last week for a 6-month schedule to withdraw from Iraq. Republicans in Congress pushed for a vote on an immediate troop withdrawal, basically as a political stunt to force Democrats to vote against withdrawing troops, since an immediate withdrawal would be rather chaotic. In saying he respects Murtha on Sunday, President Bush imputed to Murtha the proposal for immediate troop withdrawal, as though Murtha supported it.

There's a principle of scientific reasoning called parsimony, which says that the simplest explanations of phenomena are the best. Its ancient precedent is called Occam's razor, named after the philosopher who gave us the idea that explanations of phenomena that posit the fewest causes or origins are the best. Applying this to the President's statements about Iraq, one would assume everything the President says is untrue, because it's simplest to explain his statements this way. And not only is it the simplest explanation, it's also most prudent: If what the President says (consistent with his pattern of five years) is a lie, then we are not tricked by it. If it is the truth, then there will be evidence that demonstrates its truth, and we are not harmed by disbelieving it. If we were faced with the still more logically vexing problem of what we might call "modal lies" (not direct lies, but lies concerning what the President actually believes to be true -- that is, lies about his state of belief rather than lies about the world or the facts), our vexation would be dispelled by our simply regarding everything that the President says to be untrue.

An utterly unrelated news item of note: Iran says it will not accept nuclear checks. Yes, but will Iran continue to accept nuclear Visa or nuclear MasterCard?

Revelations

Two stories in the last couple days related to the ways the Bush administration has inserted a heavily partisan political agenda into federal agencies. This isn't news: it was clear from the very beginning of Bush's first term that he intended to use federal agencies as political pressure groups. After all, he made Gale Norton head of the Environmental Protection Agency - a clear sign that EPA would be protected the environment for extracting industries - oil, natural gas, and mining. (She had been sued by the EPA when she was head of Colorado's bureaucracy overseeing mining there, because she had simply refused to apply pollution control laws on mining companies. Putting her in charge of EPA is like hiring a methhead to keep watch on the Sudafed.)

First, there's the story of the FDA having decided to prohibit over-the counter sales of the "morning after" pill before hearing scientific evidence. This isn't news. The administration's position on scientific questions is consistently the same: don't confuse them with the facts, they've made up their minds. The world is flat.

Then, there's this morning's news that Bush's appointee to be head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting used the post to attempt to interfere politically in the way public radio and television operated. Again, this isn't news: remember the GOP operative inserted into the White House media corps to ask softball questions? This is part of a long-standing pattern.

I suppose what bugs me about this is the notion that suddenly this pattern is worth paying attention to, now that Bush is a lame duck, and we're stuck with him for another three years and two months.

Now that that's over

It was a long night. We stayed up way past late, watching voting returns tabluate on the Secretary of State's web site. It looked like Propositions 76 through 80 would be defeated by midnight. But Proposition 75, the big one in my opinion, didn't settle into the "No" column until about 1:30. I was able, at that point, to go to bed, comfortable in the knowledge that I wouldn't be spending countless hours every fall gathering signatures on union cards granting permission to CFA to use members' dues for political action.

CFA is probably in a stronger position to bargain for a contract as a result. The solidarity built by the election effort has to help. Plus, we've proven again that we won't be pushed around, and that those who try are in for a fight.

I'm exhausted, but today is also the last day of my official working week. The election has me in a good mood, helped further along by the bright autumn sky, the kaleidoscope of leaves, and new strings on Bennett Cerf, my office guitar. I can handle a little exhaustion today.

Sick

I'm home sick today. I did drag myself out of bed this morning, to find something even more sick, but frankly not surprising. If I'm well enough I'll write about it later. I'm referring, of course, to my government's detaining, torturing, and killing suspects (and non-suspects) in a kind of spree of twisted, panicked reaction to the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Porn in convenient mint form

From a package of Velamints:

Go ahead, enjoy a special moment

Indulge yourself with rich, smooth chocolate, kissed by a refreshing breath of cool mint. Its unique square shape fits perfectly in your mouth. Feel it glide across your tongue and glide back again. Now, just sit back, relax and enjoy your smooth, chocolate mint experience.

Welcome to Velamints. Experience a world of smoothness in a little chocolate mint.

And don't forget to experience a world of smoothness in a cool and refreshing Velamints Peppermint.

Visit www.velamints.com

**


I still think I'm missing something about Velamints. I try, but somehow, I dunno, I just can't seem to get turned-on.

Anyway, one quick Google search later, the phrase "glide across your tongue" appears on numerous wine-tasting humor sites, where the joke is the same - wine-tasting as porn. There were also a few other blogs whose auteurs felt the Velamints box wrapper merited digital posterity.

Grousing about daylight saving time

Allegedly, daylight saving time (and it is daylight saving, not daylight savings time) serves the purpose of preserving hours of daylight around workday clock time, and a modicum of energy, at least in the summer. But I don't believe it, and I especially disbelieve claims that a majority of Americans like daylight saving time.

I don't know of a single person who likes daylight saving time. It's a nuisance to have to remember, more of a nuisance if you forget, and losing the hour of sleep every Spring is terrible.

Alternative sources of information suggest that daylight saving time was always the sick underworld conspiracy most clear-minded individuals believe it is. A cursory Google effort yielded no online source to cite here, but what I understand the theory to be is that manipulating clock time permitted a timing advantage for commodity brokers. I would also be inclined to believe it's a conspiracy to keep working people off-kilter. It's hard enough to organize, let alone when we keep having to change our clocks.

Oh, and by the way, the Bush adminstration has apparently decided to extend daylight saving time. Soon, we'll spend less of the year in "standard" time than in daylight saving time. Doesn't that mean we've just decided to make daylight the standard?

One of the great paradoxes about students

Tonight I've been reading 1-2 page responses I had students in my Philosophical Inquiry class write to Book III of Plato's Republic. Not every student wrote a response (a chronic problem in this class, which may be another student paradox to discuss later), but of the 15 or so I did get, every one of them had an interestingly different take on the reading.

Book III is where Socrates discusses the "myth of the metals," which is the "necessary lie" told to the people of the ideally just city in order to let get the people to accept the system. Socrates further explains the social status and role the ruling "guardian" class will have, and the communal focus of the entire effort. The ideal city is ideal in its overall justice, in Socrates' argument, and every group must play its appropriate role. There's a discussion of natural predisposition to certain tasks or traits, and the development of those traits, but this is only the beginning of Plato's long discussion of proper education for just leadership.

The papers have challenged the lie, challenged the restrictive class system, questioned the communal conception of justice. They've delved into the strange minutiae of Socrates' argument, asking why it would be necessary to exert such firm control over musical rhythm, for instance, or why only telling stories where the gods are good helps the guardians understand justice.

Now, here's the paradox. These engaged, interesting, provocative, thoughtful response papers have so far not corresponded to engaged, interesting, provocative, thoughtful class discussions. Unless I'm horribly mistaken, I don't behave in a way that discourages contributing to class discussion. In fact, I encourage it. I ask at the beginning of class what surprised them about the reading, what their impressions were, what they found important, but with few exceptions, despite their evidently having found something surprising, impressive, and important, they don't tend to speak up.

So I need to develop a further element to the response paper technique, and move from those papers into finding ways those papers can structure class discussion. Partly, I am absolutely sure, this is a matter of experience: students in my upper-division general ed classes, particularly Professional Ethics, make this connection and jump into discussion on this basis.

Re-working

It seems like I do a lot of stuff - all that teaching, university service, and union activity seems like a lot to do. I feel busy. Yet from one standpoint, I'm not working at all, because I don't have a lot of scholarly and academic writing coming out. This is a complex matter, for me.

I know what I value in teaching, university citizenship, and union activism. They are intrinsically rewarding to me, and I think they're important contributions to the university and the community. I try to teach well; I'm certainly motivated by a firm conviction in the value of the classes I teach and the validity of the curriculum and methods. I think universities are vital social and cultural institutions, far beyond their purely economic purposes of producing new tax payers and generating commerce, and so I place a high value on being an active member of the university community. Being involved in faculty governance and policy-making is for me an expression of commitment to the democratic ideal of education. As far as union activism goes, I don't see any substitute for it to protect the rights and interests of faculty from an administration that most often confronts the faculty as an adversary, instead of honoring faculty as knowledgeable and concerned experts.

The situation is different when it comes to scholarly and academic work. I spent a few years trying to fit into the academic philosophy world; I presented papers at conferences, published articles, pursued the most remote arcana, and above all else, maintained a continuous presence in what some people in my field call "the discussion." It was fun for a while, but the more deeply I got involved, the more removed from the everyday, the more I felt that there wasn't much point to a great deal of "the discussion," other than the rather arbitrary value placed on it by academics. I saw and heard a lot of weird behavior, from shrill denouncements of others as idiots, to the widespread problem of general social dysfunction. I watched what academia turned some acquaintances into, and how unrecognizable they became as the people I used to know, after, say, spending a year as a research fellow, or while they pitched their manuscripts to publishers.

This might seem like sour grapes, but I have to confess, I cooled to academic philosophy before it cooled to me. I had never had the most positive attitude toward it in the first place (ironically, I can at least partially blame a philosophy professor I had for that attitude, for it was he who convinced me that academics use jargon as a weapon and as a barrier). Not all of it, but more than I'm comfortable with, strikes as fiddling while the city is in flames.

I've been wondering lately if I shouldn't return to that kind of work to some degree. I do sometimes miss getting highly charged email, from people I don't really know, arguing forcefully on one side or another of some ongoing debate, and being part of it. For all their dysfunctions, academics do tend to care deeply about their fields, and jump into them with gusto. It's good for renewal.

The practical problem, for now, is that I can no longer leap into it as a purely intellectual and academic exercise. It has to be integrated into my life, which means into the everyday reality of being a teacher of general education classes, of being a citizen of the university, of being a union activist, and of course a private person. I want to find a way that the academic, scholarly work remains within the sphere of relevance of my daily life, and of the lives I come into contact with daily. I think that means, in part, that I don't want to get involved in writing something if I can't see why what I'm writing about would make a difference to my neighbor Marty, or would be significant to someone cooking risotto with morel mushrooms, or would reflectively inform my teaching practice, etc., etc. This is not easy, because the academic philosophy world tends on the whole to neglect, if not actually to dismiss, everyday life. In fact, academia tends to reward people for performances that require them to be neglectful of everyday life, or of teaching, or of being good citizens of the university. (This is something bell hooks wrote eloquently about in Teaching to Transgress.)

Oil

The Senate Energy Committee tacked an amendment onto a budget bill that would open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. This is after the Senate as a whole failed to pass a bill to do that, and it seems to be amended to a budget bill only for the sake of avoiding debate - the budget bill can't be filibustered. If that's not charming enough, consider this:

Under the drilling plan, ANWR's 1.5 million-acre coastal plain would be opened for energy exploration. As much as 10.4 billion barrels of crude could be recovered from the refuge's coastal plain, according to government estimates.

10.4 billion barrels of oil is nothing. Domestic use of oil was over 20 million barrels per day in 2002. (See the chart from the department of energy.) At 2002 levels of use, we'd burn up all the oil in 520 days. This isn't a terribly far-sighted policy, even if environmental damage is ignored. But there remains a large sector of US policymakers, and I suppose of ordinary folks, who have yet to accept the notion that there is a limited amount of oil, and that we're running out of the stuff we can get cheaply. If we factored in all costs related to preserving access to oil, it wouldn't seem that cheap, either.

News from the rear

Somebody hit my car. It happened over a week ago, overnight, in the parking lot outside the Apartment of Earthly Delights. We were walking off to campus, and passed Mr. Car, with his left tail-light broken and the bumper out of skew. It's nothing terribly serious; the turn signal and backing lights still work, the bumper sticks out by the left wheel about half an inch. But this morning at 9 we had an estimate done. 1200 bucks.

My collision deductible is $500, and since this was a hit-and-run situation, I doubt they'll let me out of that. What bugs me is it's somebody who lives right near me who did it.

So I don't know whether to get it fixed. Pending some fascinating litigation, I might be in the market for new wheels, and it makes little sense to me to put money into this repair. It's just a Neon, for crying out loud.

The 9 am start time for the estimate - half an hour away in Modesto - is significant because I taught in Stockton last night, after getting back from the CFA Assembly Sunday at 2 pm. Since Friday afternoon, I've been unrelentingly busy, or asleep. That used to be normal for me, but not in a while, and I've gotten used to treating myself better than that.

Anyhow, the Assembly was a good gig. I met with the subcommittee on faculty governance and lecturer recognition, chaired a productive meeting, and got some good ideas for the next moves in that biz. Saturday Lauren came to the Lecturers' Council meeting, which was interesting. Sunday she came to the Assembly general session, at which I was elected to the elections committee (they run the union's elections, which seems like a fun gig).

The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!

My friend Jim "Pericles Was A Schmuck" Williams will remember, since I won't, the origin of the running gag between us (running gag #308, I believe) of calling one another on the phone to announce "The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!"

As a rule, I recall nothing. Life's easier for me that way. It's not a very useful interpersonal skill, but it provides terrific plausible deniability and is sometimes the source of a nice cheap joke in class. But I have vestiges of memory, and as far as that goes, I think the "The new phone book's here!" gag began when a new phone book actually arrived at someone's premises - and here I'm already hazy, but I think it was after moving in.

In any case, it's actually true: the new phone book's here. This is auspicious, we're hoping, because for 15 months Lauren and I have fielded approximately 5 calls on an average week asking for the Hilmar Portugese Fish Market, or its apparent proprietor, Carmen. It seems our number used to be theirs. Lauren went so far as to look up their new number, and we've both memorized it, so when the inevitable call comes, we can helpfully provide the proper info. It's a public service we provide at absolutely no charge.

Once, someone informed Lauren that she had found the number (our number) in a current edition of a phone directory for Turlock and vicinity (it's about an inch thick), including Hilmar. On another occasion, the phone company called us to see if we were interested in adding new business services to our account.

(Way back in Pittsburgh days, I had a problem with calls asking for a woman who apparently owed a number of people a significant enough amount of money that they pursued her for it. This has been less unpleasant, but more persistent.)

In any case, the new phone book, indeed, 's here, and we're hoping that the corrected number will reduce the hours we spend trying to explain the switcheroo.

Here, chickies chickies chickies!

I roasted our first chicken of the fall season last night. We've gotten into a habit of buying only organic and/or free range chickens to roast. The fowl processing industry is notoriously - well, foul, and for this reason I avoid birds from the major processors. I don't know if there's any guarantee that a free-range or organic chicken hasn't been left to soak in a vat of chicken blood, guts, feathers, and excrement, as is apparently often true at large processing plants. On the other hand, I do feel confident that an organic chicken hasn't been fed in a way that is likely to lead me to have, say, an extra beak.

I should make chicken stock this evening. I should be doing that now, instead of wasting my time writing this. But I should also be preparing for classes tomorrow, too. I've got Plato to teach in my Philosophical Inquiry class, and we all know how difficult he is. He never listens. It's so tediously typical of the dead.

I've read all my Pro Ethics students' response papers, which were uniformly good. I should, if anything, be writing about what's going on in class. But no: chicken.

Brain like oatmeal!

It started on Saturday morning. I woke feeling lightheaded and slightly feverish. By the time we left for the campus unions picnic in the afternoon, I just about pulled over so Lauren could drive. But the picnic seemed to restore me, and I felt like all would be well...

until Sunday, when I felt much worse. I spent most of Sunday with my head lolling around on my neck like it was on a slinky, and my consciousness barely connected to my head. But I didn't decide to cancel classes Monday until Monday morning, and I didn't decide to cancel Monday night's class until Monday afternoon. Thus I probably inconvenienced all my students to the maximum extent possible.

They could hardly have been more discomfitted that I, however, because throughout this spell I've had the weirdest dreams. Last night it was trying to get off a plane in Pittsburgh, but somehow leaving behind all our stuff, then heading to a cheap hotel that had no bathroom, just the facilities right there in the room, in the kitchenette. Almost every dream I remember had to do with travel or performing, and several of them were lucid. Perhaps I've gone mad. How could I tell?

The Fridayest of All Possible Fridays

There's a guitar in my office now. I've just been playing a tune I call "A Piece of Pie" while reading my pal Jim "The Most Optimistic Man In America" Williams' non-blog of today.

In the non-blog, Jim (aka "Imj") accuses Al Franken of losing his edge, turning away from his oath of satire and toward rather pedantic and ego-invested demonstrations that Franken=smart and Bush=dumb. I haven't heard the Franken radio schtick, so I can't judge that. But obviously, you can't remain funny very long if your act consists of telling people how dumb George Bush is.

But the main thing I got from reading the non-blog this morning was that Jim (aka "Mij") has found a way to turn his deficit as a speller into a font of gags. Throughout the non-blog, he variously mis-spells the name of Bill O'Reilly, plugugly of Fox News - on purpose, of course, to humorous effect.

Possibly coming soon to this space: Fresh ranting about rude shop clerks. Lauren was trying to order a book at our local Borders yesterday, and received rather snotty attention from the book info chick. I may have been overreacting, since I had been getting an overwhelming hard sell at a guitar shop earlier that day. Perhaps this is the American commercial world's response to declining economic prospects: make consuming actually painful.

Knowing right from wrong

Returning to my office from a class discussing the link between autonomy and understanding, I found a news item about whether Lynndie England, the Army clerk photographed abusing Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, was competent (Jury asks if Lynndie England knows right from wrong). A little sample:

England's lawyers are arguing that because of these traits, she simply complied when abuse ringleader Charles Graner, 37, her boyfriend with whom she has a child, told her to pose with the leash and in other photos that caused worldwide outrage.

Graner, now serving a 10-year sentence for his leading role in the abuses, said on Thursday that he was acting properly to control prisoners by stacking them into a naked pyramid and by putting a leash on one mentally ill Iraqi.


The judge declined initially to ask the question, which stirred up a legal's hornet's nest, because the defense is not arguing that England was criminally insane and thus could not tell right from wrong.

"She had the ability to know right from wrong," military defense attorney Jonathan Crisp told the judge outside of the presence of the jury. But "she did not believe it was wrong because of the trust she placed in Spc. Graner."

England had originally pleaded guilty to seven counts of abuse during a trial in May. But the trial's judge negated the plea deal after hearing evidence suggesting that she thought she was following orders from a superior and thus may not have known she was acting wrongly.

I am especially intrigued at the suggestion, implicit in the ruling of the trial judge in May, that following orders is sufficient reason to doubt that England could distinguish right from wrong. It would seem that not only is "just following orders" a valid and exonerating excuse for misdeeds, but that following orders is an act that cannot be judged by standards of right and wrong. The argument can be restated: If one intends one's action to follow an order, that action is neither right nor wrong. It is simply order-following.

Her defense argument rests on nearly the same principle. She could distinguish right from wrong - and hence could not excuse her actions by claiming to be criminally insane. However, she may not have been able correctly to distinguish right from wrong because she was following orders.

A general rule in the morality of responsibility is that any person with the rational capacity to distinguish right from wrong bears responsibility for right and wrong action. The excuse of "only following orders" has been rejected on the grounds that an order does not cancel out the responsibility to judge independently whether the order is right or wrong. War crimes prosecution following WWII hinged on this, for instance.

Here, the arguments are working in a new direction. It's not her responsibility to act rightly that's in question. Nor is it her rational capacity in general that's in question. Somehow, it seems, the act of following an order cancels out judgment. The reports coming out of this trial suggest a legal/moral move to excuse her, not from her actions, but from making judgments. It's rather mind-boggling.

Bob Dylan - Positively 4th Street

Just lyrics today. This song has been coming to mind a lot lately.

Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan

You got a lotta nerve
To say you are my friend
When I was down
You just stood there grinning

You got a lotta nerve
To say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on
The side that's winning

You say I let you down
You know it's not like that
If you're so hurt
Why then don't you show it

You say you lost your faith
But that's not where it's at
You had no faith to lose
And you know it

I know the reason
That you talk behind my back
I used to be among the crowd
You're in with

Do you take me for such a fool
To think I'd make contact
With the one who tries to hide
What he don't know to begin with

You see me on the street
You always act surprised
You say, "How are you?" "Good luck"
But you don't mean it

When you know as well as me
You'd rather see me paralyzed
Why don't you just come out once
And scream it

No, I do not feel that good
When I see the heartbreaks you embrace
If I was a master thief
Perhaps I'd rob them

And now I know you're dissatisfied
With your position and your place
Don't you understand
It's not my problem

I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
And just for that one moment
I could be you

Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You'd know what a drag it is
To see you

The personal is political

In my Professional Ethics class this morning, I had my students brainstorm proposals for restoring trust in professions. Three groups of students emphasized the need for personal "connections" or "relationships" between professionals and clients. This was interesting, because the question as I raised it was a social, political question - at least, I thought it was.

Their responses reminded me of heated graduate school discussions of the role of intellectuals in public life. I remember Leigh Clasby (as she was at the time) citing Plato's "Seventh Letter" as a convincing argument that political change could only be effected by changing persons' hearts and minds. I've gone back and forth on this. I am pretty sure that I couldn't make an argument in what passes for the public dialogue nowadays that would change anyone's mind. For one thing, that so-called dialogue consists mainly of people shouting at each other (this was part of Leigh's case against public politics, as I recall). Additionally, a public is a half-step away from being a mob, and mobs can't be rationally convinced of anything. But most significantly, only in personal or private dialogue can assent be authentic, since only in those circumstances are peculiar social pressures to conform absent.

I doubt any of my students had all that in mind when they were talking about this this morning, because they didn't seem to have a rationale in mind for connecting the personal relationship to building trust in the profession (I pressed them for reasons to think a personal connection would instill trust, and I think that threw them for a loop. Sometimes playing the Devil's Advocate hits a dead end. Ah well). I'm not sure I get it, either. I'm not sure whether we have to buy the personal political angle to believe that the personal connection of a client to a professional will enhance trust.

Perhaps we should be suspicious of this as a move toward subjectivizing political questions. Perhaps this personal connection notion improperly narrows our attention to individual experiences, even preferences, as though what makes a trustworthy profession (as a whole) is beyond our capacity to understand or to promote. I mean, my having a good working relationship with my lawyer doesn't in any obvious way improve the status of the profession of law. I might spread his good reputation, but that pertains only to him.

It's largely on the basis of those personal experiences that we judge professions and professionals. That strikes me as wrong. When I think of how different, even diametrically opposed, two students' stated experiences of my classes can be, I hate to think that their opinions form the public perception of higher education.

(A footnote to this: The second section of Professional Ethics, in the afternoon, the students focused very differently, on the need for public education. Some interestingly diverse discussions today.)

Schwarzenegger announces re-election bid

"Kids! Arnold eat kids! Feed me kids! BWAAAAGH!"

Learning from the fine folks at Safeway

This is a bit of a shaggy dog story, but it's bugging me, so here 'tis.

We just went out to buy flowers and some other items, and brought with us an accumulation of plastic grocery bags to drop off at one of those convenient recycling bins stores have out front these days. But we ended up at Safeway, which has apparently taken there grocery bag recycling bin away. We brought the bags in, and at the checkout stand asked if they still recycled. The clerk (one of the Safeway regulars, who recognizes us even though we have gotten out of the habit of going there) said they'll take them, and had me set them on the bagging spot. The bagger then took them, got sort of vague directions where to take them, and ended up bringing them to a cart and setting them in there before finding more explicit directions. As we walked out, we overheard another clerk asking where they came from, and when the bagger said we had, the clerk said, in sarcastic tones, "oh, thanks. This isn't our garbage!"

One reaction: bitch!

But another: Why was this such a problem for these Safeway employees? It seemed that they couldn't deal with our wanting to recycle. It really struck me as though they couldn't be bothered with it, and couldn't imagine why anyone would bring bags to a place that claims to recycle them.

So, I need to find a way to achieve a more charitable outlook on my fellow human beings, my fellow Californians, and especially my fellow Central Valleyites before classes tomorrow. It won't do for me to walk in with this kind of attitude.

We know the semester has begun

We know the semester has begun because we have already been exhausted by our paces. What I can't figure is who these people think they are to interrupt our relatively calm and sedate existences with these "requirements" and "work" and "meetings."

Dan Bratten and I held a CFA chapter lecturer meeting today, and I would call the results encouraging. The lecturers who came were upset about being overlooked in the new campus president's raise, and had their own concerns to add. We easily filled our two hours with useful discussion. I think we did a decent job of explaining where things were, and how we're dealing with the issues. I hope this is the beginning of more involvement from the rank-and-file.

Towards the end I made the difficult request that those present bring two more lecturers each to the next meeting. This is hard for me, because I'm actually a shy person (appearances to the contrary notwithstanding). But I realize, especially tonight, that I can't help lecturers on my campus unless they're willing to commit themselves to the idea that as a group we can change things. They may be shy, too, but we have to set that aside, because there's something more important than our moment-to-moment comfort.

Lauren is making beef stock for beef-veggie soup tonight. I want to sit in the appropriate chair and play my guitars. But duty calls, I suppose. Who are these people?

To blog and blog not

I'm contemplating another go at this form, while I wait for my savory gorgonzola-fennel-olive tart to bake. I quit writing this way a couple months ago, partly out of boredom, but mainly tiring of the blog being used behind my back in ridiculous ad hominem assaults.

I never felt good about that decision. Why should I let anybody else spoil my fun, when fun it is? Screw them.

Lauren and I had a good evening and day in Sacramento, at the CFA meeting for lecturers. I had to run a session with my co-chair about the work of the Faculty Governance and Lecturer Recognition Subcommittee, which was a stressful prospect, but went well. Lauren is getting more informed, enthused - though maybe righteously indignant is a better word for it - , and is contemplating getting more involved.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I'm raising a little hell with the chapter concerning a proposal by our new campus president to raise tenure-track faculty salaries. My co-rep Dan Bratten put it well in an email message to the chapter folks, saying that leaving us out effectively puts lecturers in a secondary pay schedule, something CFA has steadfastly opposed because it would undermine the contractual provisions for salary for everybody.

Sic transit hoi polloi, to mix metaphors as well as dead languages.

Notice anything? I'll give you a hint: I haven't said anything about it being September freaking 11th.

Supreme Court prediction

The obvious thing to predict is that President Bush will whine incessantly about Senate Democrats not being fair to his nominee. This is his way of handling any and all criticism or question. You're either with him or against him.

But I'm willing to put good money on this: Bush will nominate someone relatively uncontroversial. He won't dare give anyone obviously good reasons to object, so the nominee will not be Alberto Gonzalez. Nor will it be Paul Wolfowitz, nor John Bolton. I don't think he'll play a shell game with the nominee either, because that backfired on his dad. It'll be someone the Bush people consider a safe bet.

Now, of course, they'll name Eichmann.

How can it be the end of June already?

I figure it's because June has 30 days, which in turn is because of that rhyme, you know the one, April showers bring May flowers, but what do May flowers bring? No, that's not the one. It's the one that goes "A, B, C, D, E,..." No, it's not that one, either.

I think it's the end of June already because I've spent the last three weeks with a hematoma, and haven't done as much hiking or otherwise moving about as I'd intended. Nor have I done as much reading and philosophizing. We've been reading together, just nothing in the philosophy genre.

I've been playing Maggie, my Seagull 12-string guitar, a great deal. Lauren continues on her home beautification quest, and is, as of present writing, organizing a closet. She has already hung a wall with drapes, and we've put up a couple shelves, one of which I regard as precariously lashed to the living room wall with anchor bolts. I don't trust those things.

In all, then, I'd characterize my state of being as in a holding pattern. This must be incredibly thrilling and insightful for the throngs who have begun now to - well, to throng, I suppose - to my blog from the Modesto Bee web site.

I don't subscribe to the Bee. I used to. I started every morning with the miserable habit of drinking my first cup of ridiculously strong coffee while reading the Bee and listening to music. The reason this was a miserable habit had a lot to do with my life in general at the time, but also had something to do with the Bee. Like many newspapers of the day, the Bee is a cut-and-paste job composed of wire service reports and press releases from various official sources. There is scarce little actual journalism going on in the US any more. Very few papers maintain a staff of reporters who go out and track down stories, content instead to let the news come to them, in the form of whatever official line someone wants the public to swallow. (By "line" here I mean, mainly, lies.)

On the few occasions something has actually happened on Stan State's campus, for instance, I've found the Bee's coverage profoundly lacking, often in facts, but always in substance. I don't blame the reporters covering the university specifically, because they've always simply done their jobs - and their jobs, like most in the newz industry, are not to investigate and report what's going on.

But the predominant reason I came to loathe the Bee so much is the editorial page, especially the letters to the editor. It's been a while, and I'm out of the habit, so I might as well tell this story, which some people have found amusing. I got so fed up with the Bee's habit of printing the worst-argued letters that I decided to send them a few gag letters. The first one I wrote under the name "Donald Anatidae." I forget what Donald was upset about - I think it was the right-wing slant of most of what gets printed in the editorial page (and that's true, by the way - the whole "liberal media bias" charge is in fact nonsense, carefully crafted and effective nonsense). They printed the letter despite the fact - or perhaps because of the fact - that it was poorly written, just one step above gibberish. Plus, anatidae is the scientific name for ducks.

So after they printed Donald Duck raving incoherently about right-wing media bias, I decided to get bolder. I wrote a letter complaining about the damage done throughout history, and in the present day, by Christians and Christianity. I signed the letter "Fred Nietzsche." This should probably have been a give-away: someone somewhere at the Bee should have noticed the name, connected the dots, and realized I was using the name of the notable anti-Christian German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

After that, I became more emboldened, but they never printed another letter from me, whether I was writing sensibly or not, under any name, even my own. And now, I'm on their list of bloggers in the area. I get the sneaking feeling they identified me without checking out what was in my blog, and now the first stuff anybody could read is all about my vasectomy, my hematoma, my guitar, my apartment, and my brief stint spoofing the Bee.

Haven't blogged in a while

The Modesto Bee emailed me today to ask permission to link from their site to my blog. I can't imagine why.

I've been out of commission to varying degrees for three weeks now, because I'm suffering complications from a vasectomy. I've got a hematoma. It hurts, it's uncomfortable, and it has put what is sometimes known as a cramp in my style, or a wrench in my works, or a kink in my armor, or some other such phrase (pick yer favorite, or collect the whole set!).

I did buy a 12-string guitar, a lovely pink-twany Seagull, who so far is called Maggie. I even brought it down to Harbor City this weekend, where we were for Lauren's mom Allison's party celebrating getting her teaching credential.


Life goes on, in short. And while I have a screed in the works, I think I'll wait, it being 6 o'clock, my loveliest Lauren about to sew, the evening crawling in. I'm working on a tune I'll probably call "As the Dust Settles" or "Once the Dust Settles," something like that.

Guitar and medical news

I've pretty much decided to buy a 12-string guitar. Today we went out briefly, looking for a game (failing at that), Augustine blacks for the Takamine (which we found), and to play a couple 12-strings at a local music shop, just for the sheer hell of it, and to relax and get my mind off my post-op condition (of which more below).

At the local music shop, where we did find my beloved Augustine blacks, there were a handful of 12-strings, including a battered, somewhat repaired Alvarez, a trio of Greg Bennett specials, and a Takamine. The Bennetts had a brassy, big sound, but not a warm and sweet sound, which I'm a sucker for, especially in 12-strings, ever since college, when I would swoon to my pal Jim ("The Most Optimistic 12-String Player in America") Williams' old Seagull. The Alvarez had that, and so, to an extent, had the Tak. But the Alvarez had been glued together after who-knows-what had befallen the poor thing. Lauren adored it. I played a couple of the songs I've written for her, and the one I wrote for Lance, and they just sounded lovely. They sounded plenty good, and a great deal crisper, on the Tak. But I didn't like the cut-away body or the pickup on the Tak, and the Alvarez... well, I just felt foolish about plunking down good money on a wreck of a machine. But I am now officially on the market.

I did get the strings home and restrung the old Tak. The key for the G-string tuning machine broke in my fingers as I tightened it. So I'm bereft of guitars at the moment, which is a shame. As has been unreported, playing music has become much more important to me again since Lauren has been in my life. I miss it when I can't play every day.

All this, really, by way of getting my mind off my pain. I had an outpatient procedure a week ago, and was not advised, I swear, that it would be over a week that walking, sitting, standing, bending, or in any way moving from one long-fought-for comfortable position would be so strongly contraindicated. (It's a common outpatient procedure. It causes discomfort.)

So who knows? Tomorrow night I may be reporting I've brought home an instrument. We should at least (if we remember) bring home strings for the violin.

The Bad Plus

Last night, we got a chance to hear the contemporary jazz trio The Bad Plus, on a double-bill with a classical pianist named Christopher O'Riley, whose claim to fame in the not-so-classical world is his transcriptions of Radiohead for solo piano. Whoever put the show together obviously thought that since The Bad Plus plays hot jazz versions of rock tunes (notably Iron Man, Heart of Glass, Smells Like Teen Spirit, and a song by the Pixies called Velouria - none of which did they perform), that it would work together on that basis. Eh. O'Riley is a classical pianist in style and performance, and never mind that he was playing Radiohead. It was transcribed for solo piano, and it wasn't, in that regard, anything like what The Bad Plus was up to. So the crowd was sparser than it might have been, and less hip than it might have been.

We had a blast, especially during The Bad Plus. Because of the light audience, we moved from our $20 nosebleed seats into gallery seats (I think they wanted $45 for them) right above the stage, above drummer Dave King. That was the right choice, because we got to see King toy (literally) with his drums all night. He used a penguin jangly toy, a cooking pot, and for their cover of Radiohead (from an upcoming Brit anthology of others doing Radiohead), E.T. dolls that made electronic whining sounds.

One thing had bothered me about The Bad Plus, which last night I decided was a reason to like them all the more. I was imagining jazz critics trying to write about them, and wondering if they're charlatans or serious. What I mean is that they choose music, and perform in a style, that is more like a rock band, and since jazz critics and audiences tend to be snooty (it's America's Classical Music [TM] after all), I wondered how they take to the raucous beat-down performances of Iverson, Anderson, and King. When King pets the side of his drums with a cooking pot, is he just screwing around, or is he doing something musically important? Last night, I decided, whether or not he's screwing around, he and the rest of the band are playing music they are enormously passionate about, and that's what counts. King attacks furiously, Iverson moves between what looks like deep self-critical introspection and effusion, and, as Lauren observed, Anderson looks like he's in love with his bass.

We got home before midnight from San Francisco, and today we've handled some basic work and school fiddly bits, before a planned trek to Yosemite tomorrow for a day trip, tromping around up there. The rest of the week promises - absolutely promises - lack of movement.

Difficulty relaxing

So this is Wednesday, June 1, 2005. I see; I get the picture.

I've been having the most bizarre difficulty getting out of the mindset and posture of the semester, specifically of the end of the semester, specifically of the stress and strain of the end of the semester. It reached a culmination point last night, I hope, when I scrubbed the living beejeezus out of the reflectors from the stove burners. This after spending the largest measure of the afternoon baking and cooking.

Meanwhile, Lauren was sewing. Her attempt to relax is being organized around taking up new projects, and to that end we've bought the stuff for her to make a dress and a shirt (both for herself), a duvet cover for both of us, and a scarf for me.

Why it should be hard to relax is easy to figure. It has been the longest, strangest, most delightful year of our lives. We're tired, and we're tired of the creeping feeling of being watched - that is, by people we haven't specifically invited to watch - and that means precisely what I mean it to mean, and nothing else, and put that right back where you found it, mister! Bad dog! Bad, bad dog! No no no!

In other news,

Every time I see him explain away the actions of the Admin with that stupid goddamned smirk on his face, it becomes more apparent that he is, at heart, a four-year-old who enjoys saying "poopy."

So says my pal Jim ("The Most Optimistic Man in America") Williams, and he's on to something. Occasionally, Imj (as I call him sometimes) can be quite eloquent, can give voice to the unspoken, can impose order in the chaos of contemporary social life.

My other friend (yes! I have at least 2 friends!) Bob has started a blog, which I haven't explored in depth as yet.

Evidence that I'm still grading, or something

It came up in the car on the drive up to Sacramento. It was one of those moments of kizmet that pop up in the non-sequitir stream of commentary on long drives, between curses directed at aggressive drivers and asides pointing out the beautiful, the strange, and the silly. I can't quite remember precisely how it came to this point, but it did: The terrorists may already have won.

I don't mean that in any political sense. I mean that when the new TV Guide sweepstakes comes out, it will inevitably be mailed to a Mr. Al Qaeda, in a big gawdy quasi-official envelope declaring in big red letters: "GRAND PRIZE WINNER!" Underneath, of course, it will bear the usual disclaimer, "If the code number on your official entry form is selected at random."

So yes, indeed, the terrorists may already have won.

All of which leads me to think that somebody in Homeland Security (Heimatssicherheit in the original German) should be identifying an address to begin a massive campaign to undermine funding for terrorist operations, by sending a constant barrage of unrequested magazine subscriptions and other junk mail offers to them. Imagine the time and energy it will take away from planning attacks, if they're constantly on the phone to Wine Spectator, or Hustler, or Field and Stream, trying to stop a subscription. ("No, no, you don't understand. We are not hunting and fishing enthusiasts! We do not want your decadent magazine!")

Rally

Lauren and I took time out of finals week to go up to Sacramento to join a few thousand of our closest friends to protest Governor Schwarzenegger's continuing campaign against education, nursing, and public safety. The news stories from papers across the state all resemble The San Francisco Chronicle story (a fact which holds its own lesson): all understate the crowd size considerably, all tell a story of conflict between the Governor and a group of vocal protestors. This discourse decontextualizes, for instance, by referring to competing claims about whether the Governor promised to fully fund schools according to Prop. 98, and competing claims about whether his budget does fully fund schools (he did make the promise, he did reneg on the promise).

Standing in the heat, yelling, chanting, hearing the speeches making our case, all felt very good, but it was also terribly exhausting. And today, back into the fray.

Resistance

Grading papers forces me to confront anew the difficulties of a semester. This term, I decided to push for open dialogue as much as possible, and did everything I could to make that happen. Of course, it didn't work all the time. When it did work, notably in Professional Ethics, the students took initiative, thought things through, brought their own ideas and experiences to bear, and respected differences of opinion and the dialogue itself. When it didn't work, I am fairly convinced, the students didn't find a way into the dialogue, or the spirit of the dialogue. I am at a loss why, because I do believe my approach didn't vary all that much between classes.

And I don't say this to single any class out or to assign blame to any group of students, nor to assume blame myself. bell hooks desribes a class that didn't work in Teaching to Transgress. She concludes that teachers can't create dialogue all by themselves, that it takes the response of students to make it work. Obviously true, but hooks seems to evade the issues of (a) whether that means it's the students' fault when a class doesn't become dialogical, and (b) to what extent a teacher can, after all, make it work. She also isn't terribly specific about how to make it work.

What I tried to do this semester is threefold. First, I tried to take as much grade-pursuing pressure and behavior out of the courses as possible, basically by making them easy to pass, and frankly, easy to ace. The goal there is to turn attention away from the need to produce a pleasing performance and toward the material under consideration itself. Second, I tried to show myself to be an interested dialogical partner pursuing knowledge along with them, rather than as a possessor of knowledge monologically presenting it to them. This is an attempt to be honest about the nature of philosophical inquiry, specifically its openness to revision, reflective reconsideration, etc. It was also an expression of my changing attitudes, beliefs, and understanding of life, the universe, and everything. It was also an attempt to invite students to be part of the dialogue, not to assume they will be fed the answer I'm expecting back from them, and to take responsibility for contributing to class discussion. Third, I tried to keep the tone light, which is something I usually have done anyway. Even when the course material gets into dark areas - issues of death and dying in Pro Ethics, for instance, or the existential dread of choosing in the Intro class - I attempt to inject levity of some sort. Mainly, this is because I am funny. But it's also a deliberate and conscious technique.

Anyway, these don't always work. Sometimes people don't get the jokes. Sometimes people don't get the point. Sometimes people seem to deliberately obstruct me, or others, or even themselves - which is mystifying. The most mystifying thing is when I'm taken absolutely wrongly: when I'm taken to be lording knowledge or power over my students, or something like that. This is deeply weird given my demeanor in class. I believe I make the classroom open to saying just about anything. The only limit I impose is that you should take philosophical points of view seriously, not be dismissive.

But that's what it appears to boil down to in many cases of abiding resistance to dialogue: an absolute refusal to consider that philosophy may be relevant, that something other than one's own point of view and habit of thought may be significant. That may be the point at which bell hooks' account is most pertinent.

Penumbra

Last night we went to the annual reading and celebration of the release of Penumbra, Stan State's literary and art mag. Lauren has two poems in this year's issue, and decided she would read.

She absolutely stole the show. It turned out that Lauren was the last one to read, luckily for everybody else. She read "A Letter to My Lover, while waiting for a Northbound to pass," complete with rhythm, complete with sway and swing, complete with line breaks that she used to give herself a backbeat. Hubba hubba. It was a very sexy reading of a very sexy poem. I think five people stopped her on our way to the parking lot, after two or three came up to her at our seats, all glowing with praise, richly deserved. I think that was the poem that my pal Jim ("The Most Optimistic Man in America, in a Miata") Williams responded to by asking me, basically, if I was going to be able to deal with Lauren being a poet, and a better one. Well, yeah!

On the way home, Lauren wondered how inspiring her performance might have been. She was hopeful that everyone went home in right randy states.

Judges and filibusters

Far be it from me to accuse Senate Republicans of being over-aggressive. I don't really need to accuse them of anything, because moves like banning filibusters in order to get 10 crazed judges appointed aptly demonstrate it. The news as reported lately (see, for instance, Heated senate showdown opens on judges) completely de-contextualizes the situation. For instance, it's not reported in this story, nor, I'll bet, in 90% of the stories on front pages of newspapers today, that while Senate Democrats are filibustering to stop 10 Bush appointments from being approved, Senate Republicans, controlling the Judiciary Committee, stopped numerous Clinton appointments to federal judgeships, simply by not considering the nominees. (See Senate Rules Meltdown for more context.) The stories also fail to point out that close to 170 of Bush's appointees have been approved, and that the federal bench has its lowest level of vacancy since 1990.

It almost sounds like Republicans are seeking absolute authority to do anything they want, in Congress, in the judiciary, in the executive branch. Checks and balances? Not for them, not when they hold the majority.

Impervious to irony

Courtesy of my pal Owen Kelly, who shared this at the Society for Phenomenology and Media conference (Owen teaches in Finland): America We Stand As One. Owen claims that this says something deeply meaningful about American social reality. And maybe it does.

How to go to conferences

I actually wrote this yesterday, but since getting in last night at 11:20, I let it wait.

Often the best things that happen at conferences don't happen at the conferences. I've only learned how to enjoy the setting of a conference over the last few years. I've learned that the way to get the most out of conferences is to do two main things: (1) find the right bar, go there, and stay there as long as everyone else does, and (2) spend some time with another conference-goer or two checking out the locale.

Obvious, I know now. But I had had such an angst-ridden posture, really a defensive one, that I didn't get into the right frame of mind.

One thing missing at the Helsinki conference was the right bar. For one thing, Helsinki was so incredibly expensive, but also a difficult city to be a tourist in, I'd say - at least, to be a typical American tourist, or at least me. But Oregon's coastal towns boast a generous helping of good pubs, and the one we found served local brew on tap, including a dynamite stout that the conference probably bought a keg of over the days. The wait staff were ridiculously nice, which threw me. (That became sort of a theme - everywhere we went, the clerks, cashiers, waitresses, etc. were all terribly, not to say suspiciously, nice. Dave finally asked at the Malt Shop in Manzanita, Oregon for an order of whatever medication the waitress was taking. Myself, I looked around the place, and thought, well, why wouldn't you be nice in a place like this?)

When SPM went to Helsinki in 2003, I ended up spending my last day wandering the city on foot with my friend Paul. Along the way we checked out an international fair at a park in the middle of town; found a store selling odd decorative and art items, mainly from Russia; and ran into Lars, who had hosted the conference, because we had blundered into his neighborhood. This year's conference ended Friday evening, and today I spent the afternoon on the Oregon coast with Dave and Owen, wandering along the beaches, checking out caves and such (at low tide, since they're inaccessible other times).

So now I'm in the Portland airport, waiting out my flight to Sacramento, to be followed by the long drive home. I'm exhausted, but mostly eager to be home.

Stuff going on

Busy.

Lauren and I went to see the university's production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead last Friday - one of my favorite plays. This was her first time seeing it, my second. It was well done, especially Roque Berlanga's Rosencrantz. I thought the last half of the second act and beginning of the third lagged a bit, but that can happen. As Lauren pointed out, it's gotta be hard to inject a lot of energy into dialogue about inevitable doom.

Saturday I tried writing more on the paper I'm presenting to the Society for Phenomenology and Media on Thursday of this week. I'm nowhere near satisfied with the paper. I leave tomorrow for the conference, up in Oregon, which I face largely with dread, to be perfectly honest.

After that, there's only one more week of classes, a disturbing number of papers to read, and then the school year will be over. I would like to spend a week going for walks every day, whenever we feel like it, to wherever we feel like going, for however long we like, alternating walking with cooking, playing games, reading, and a generous amount of blissing out (which is not a euphemism per se).

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy flick

Some context: I don't go to movies often. I don't enjoy the experience, and I tend to be hyper-critical of movies. I'm also a big fan of Douglas Adams, especially, as I suppose would go without saying, of the Hitchhhiker's trilogy.

Lauren and I had read the first four books in the trilogy together just recently. I hadn't read them in years, and it was wonderful to get back into them. At his best, Adams' writing tickles my brain in a very particular way that pleases me tremendously.

So we were sure to go see the movie when it came out, and yesterday, opening day, there we were, at the matinee. Lauren was guardedly optimistic; I was prepared for it to be bad. You see, we'd been reading reviews of the thing days before. The balance was on the negative side, but it was clear that some of the reviewers who panned it either didn't understand science fiction or didn't understand Adams. One actually criticized the film's plot for not making any sense - clearly this person hadn't read the book. Those who had were often upset that good lines were omitted or rewritten, with the effect of making them less funny. The positive reviews were often odd, too. Some of them were just enthused that it got made (there's a long history of failed attempts to get the project off the ground, beginning in the early 80s). Others seemed to be speaking in opposition to the harsh criticisms, offering that Mos Def wasn't too bad as Ford Prefect, for instance, or that the way they handled Zaphod Beeblebrox's having two heads could have been worse.

So we went to see it. It was pretty bad. Almost none of it retained Adams' sense of the strange, almost none of it retained his sense of humor. The best bits were the sections from the book and the visual effects of the Vogon constructor fleet and of Magrathea. The opening credit sequence, featuring a song-and-dance number that many critics decried vehemently, was actually kind of fun.

The two main problems are these. First, nothing that happens in the movie seems motivated by anything. Adams' stuff relies on exposition - provided humorously by the book's narration in the original radio series, by that and additional text in the books. His jokes are not generally one-offs. Adams' versions of the events sketched in the movie are driven in a particular direction, arbitrary or disjointed as that sometimes is. All that is missing. If you didn't know the book, you wouldn't understand what was going on, basically from the beginning. If you did know the book, you wouldn't understand why they did what they did with it.

But above all, the very worst thing about it, is that it just wasn't funny. There were bits that were amusing, but I think I laughed once, quietly.

Ain't nobody here but us chickens

I roasted a chicken tonight. Hot damn, I love roasting chickens. Tonight's was a free range hen courtesy of Trader Joe's, which came out splendid. I also made mashed potatoes, and put together a little salad replete with my first ever batch of croutons (an excuse/opportunity to use up a drying baguette).

It has been an intense, soul-searching weekend. We've both been under stress lately, the end of the semester looms, and on top of it all, up pop the occasional ghosts from lives past.

Mainly I remember being 20-21, driving around Charlotte in my 1978 Honda Accord with the paint sandblasted off ("The William F. Buckley, Jr." after the columnist), noting as I went by certain corners that person(s) with whom I had a past could be right there and I could happen to cross paths with them. I remember a sometimes overwhelming sense of the place being haunted. The one thing I liked about the experience was the exhilaration of potential danger or conflict.

Conflict never ensued. If it had, it would have run its course, as these things do. This may seem machismotically stoic, but I think it's true nonetheless: most things run their course. Even curses obey statutes of limitations. And what I still possess from those weird tense days is a set of memories, most of which are pleasant enough, and a few of which focus on the perfect freedom one can only experience at 20-21, in an old junker, driving in warm afternoon sun with all the windows down and good music on the stereo, with one's first tastes of Pyrrhic victory, craziness, politics, emancipation, and wine on one's lips.

I learned there aren't really any ghosts. There's just jerks in white sheets saying "boo."

The fine art of sneering

I've concluded, after some time spent studying the matter, that sneering is a subtle act, requiring a finely tuned sense of minute and evanescent social interactions. Most of the sneering I've been watching hasn't been terribly impressive, so for what it's worth, here are some dos and don'ts:

DO:

* sneer in concert with others
* face the target of the sneer
* combine the sneer with whispered snide comments to someone next to you

DON'T:

* sneer at someone further than 10 feet away
* sneer at someone who doesn't care what you think of him/her
* sneer at someone who is feeding you
* attempt to sneer and smile as if warmly at the same time in an effort to mask the sneer

I think that if you follow these simple guidelines, your sneering will improve vastly. You're welcome.

Meanwhile

It's been another ridiculously busy week. Lauren had a paper to write and a couple tests. I had appointments upon appointments, union stuff happening, etc. By last night we were quite well prepared to do nothing, which we utterly failed to do: we went to my colleague and our friend Val's birthday party. It was a potluck affair, and for it I made a gorgonzola, red onion, and asparagus tart (food porn forthcoming). She had originally planned a small gathering, but apparently kept expanding the guest list until, during the height of events last night, there were in fact 6.6 million people there.

I am now the duly elected and first lecturer rep to the CSU Stanislaus Academic Senate. So next fall, unlike the previous 4 falls when I was the rep from the philosophy department, I'll do something completely different with my Tuesday afternoons, and go to senate meetings again. Sometimes I enjoy listing the different things I've gotten myself into: Academic Senate rep, IRB member (I think I might be vice-chair), Campus Community Building Committee member, CFA lecturer rep from Stanislaus, lecturer subcommittee on evaluation member, lecturer rep to the Contract Development and Bargaining Strategies committee, chair of a new lecturer subcommittee on faculty governance.

So there.

CFA Assembly weekend

So, as of this morning, I am now a member of the California Faculty Association's Contract Development and Bargaining Strategies committee, or CDBS. I ran unopposed for a seat from the Lecturer's Council, so I wasn't permitted by union rules to give my speech, which would have mentioned that my chief qualification is that I can see de b.s. clearly.

The rest of the Assembly was a bit of a disappointment. For one thing, there was more than the usual amount of highfallutin' speechifying, and less than the usual strategizing. We heard two speeches in the Assembly about the political future of the public good in the state. They were fine, but I had a feeling of being preached to as a member of the choir. But there were some interesting notes I'll have to get back to later.

Mainly, I think these kinds of events are scheduled for odd year spring assemblies because that's when we elect officers, the board, and CDBS - the policymaking core of the union. The last time I was there for this, there were many more contested seats, and a lot of conflict and political wrangling. This year there was much less of that, at least surrounding voting.

Plus, I've been working long hours lately, and I've got more appointments, meetings, and so on than I'd really like coming up.

But tonight, we're getting some relaxing time. Lauren is cooking corned beef; we've watched the King of Iron Chef semi-final, and plan on more audiovisual entertainment, because we can. So there.

It could be worse... It could be raining.

The worst part of my job is grading papers. In a typical semester I have 4 classes of around 30 students each. If I have each class write a couple papers that I have to grade, that's 240. The worst part of grading is not, however, the quantity of work.

I get frustrated, eventually, when I hit a patch of papers written in order to complete an assignment and nothing else. When students think of writing papers as merely something to get done and over with, as a chore, they write pretty lousy papers. I would hope that the act of writing a paper could be something more than a hoop to jump through, but I haven't found a way yet to make that sufficiently clear, or to produce assignments that elicit a more interested response. I fantasize about grading papers that each take a unique and provocative position and make new and vivid sense of the student's ideas and experience.

It's not much to complain about, really, and I'm not really complaining much. It is a problem in my life, one for which I'd love to find a solution.

Compared to what could be happening to me, I don't have much to complain about in general. This realization came to me in full force while watching an episode of Farscape with Lauren last night, and considering that (so far as I know) there's nobody trying to take my planet hostage or destroy it, nobody torturing Lauren to find out where I am, and I don't have to travel into an alternative reality to try to find out where she is from alternative versions of my friends, meanwhile having to watch what might be an alternative version of her get killed by my nemesis,...

It's practically Stoic wisdom: there's nothing on Earth that can happen to you that can't be helped by doctors or lawyers.

Celebrity deaths, Bill Buckley

I've been out of the news loop for a while, having abandoned the Modesto Bee last summer, and having chosen not to subscribe to a paper since. Recently, however, I was rummaging through comics on the Yahoo news feed, realized they now allowed you to have comics on your main Yahoo page, and also noticed you could add columns as well. I added Bill Buckley's.

I've been reading Buckley since I was 14. The habit peaked in high school, when I would read his column three days a week while I was delivering newspapers.While I was in college, I became addicted to his PBS show, Firing Line. I even named my first car after him - the William F. Buckley, Junior. But along about then something happened to the Buck. His dad, WFB Sr., a spy, was killed. Buckley seemed to lose a bit of his stamina, then some of his cussedness, then some of his wits. Firing Line went from an hour to 30 minutes, and often the show drifted into chatter. He even hired Michael Kinsley, the weenie editor of New Republic, to ask questions. So, sadly, I lost interest.

No sooner did I add Buckley's column to my Yahoo feed, but this first item comes up: A Farewell. "Yikes!" I thought, "Buck's quitting!" But no, it was worse. Buckley, good Catholic boy that he's always been, was saying farewell to the Pope. But worse still. Buckley's account of the Pope seems only to say that he was charismatic. That flash of light in the Pope's eyes Buckley noticed in Havana that hot day, he doesn't ascribe to the divine, but to nothing grander than the Pope's being Pope.

Now, I would be among those who'd agree with Buckley's assertion that what makes people famous is fame, and his implicit argument from this premise that what makes someone Pope is being Pope, but I find myself disappointed. If I agree with Buckley's next column, I'll have to dump him. There's no point in there being an agreeable Bill Buckley.

Coincidence?

Spring Break ends as of this morning. We're not amused by this. Yesterday was the start of so-called Daylight Saving Time (sic: it's Daylight Saving Time, despite what people call it). We're even less amused by this. Is it only by chance that the two events fall together? Perhaps I'm a bit nervous, maybe even slightly paranoid, but I do in fact believe that both are the actions of a vast conspiracy involving the Illuminati, international petroleum corporations, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, the Federal government, Bill Gates, the Trilateral Commission, and the University Educational Policies Committee - Subcommittee on Academic Calendar.

Yesterday we cleaned the Apartment of Earthly Delights. It wasn't unclean. Our desks had gotten messy and there were the occasional things that could be in better places, a little dusting to do. So it's gone from being not-at-all-not-clean to being rather clean indeed.

Meanwhile I baked a focaccia bread with some herbs in it - basil, sage, but mostly parsley and rosemary. This was to accompany home-made fettucine with bechamel sauce and chicken. Though I slightly overcooked the pasta, otherwise it was probably the best batch I'd ever made. Lauren was extremely pleased with the way the chicken and sauce tasted and felt - the chicken not overcooked as it always seems to her to be in yer typical Itie slop house. I hypothesized that this was because I had roasted the chicken, two days prior, to an absurd degree of perfection and juiciness. But we didn't pursue this line of inquiry far.

This weekend we also finished Life, the Universe, and Everything and began and finished So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. It had been far too long since I'd read Douglas Adams. I'm holding us back from Mostly Harmless, the fifth (5rd) book in the trilogy.

For now, it's off to fight the good fight against the great and evil conspirators.

Newz!! Congress to intervene in Pope case

[This'll be timely for approximately 2 hours, but heck.]

REUTERS. Calling to order a special session of Congress, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex) and Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn) have challenged fellow law-makers to "protect the unprotected" in the case of Pope John Paul II.

The Pope has been admitted to an Italian hospital for the third time in three weeks, suffering complications from a series of illnesses. In addition, a nasal feeding tube implanted in the Pope two days ago has begun to cause the infection such extraordinary medical treatments almost always cause in the very sick and dying.

"This is a matter of principle," Frist explained. "We cannot sit by and let the Pope be victimized by Italian medical meekness." Frist called for "immediate action" by the US Supreme Court to hear the case to keep the Pope alive "by any means necessary."

Responding to reports that the Pope had already settled the matter, having provided in a living will that all possible medical means to keep him alive should be employed, Frist said, "that goes to show that we must act now. Time is short."

DeLay added, "if we can't protect the lives of those whose lives would otherwise be protected, then whose lives can we protect?" During the last days of Terri Schiavo, when Congress intervened to call for a 5th hearing by federal courts, it was revealed that DeLay had decided to pull the plug on his father.

Responding to charges that Congress has no authority, nor indeed any interest, in the Pope's case, DeLay said, "That's a matter for the courts to decide. I'm no authority on law."

Meanwhile, in Rome, the Pope lay dying, but peaceful and serene. After having the Stations of the Cross read to him, he reportedly asked to see his favorite film, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.