trouble with priorities and valuesplus: I wake up with an argument in my head

Very late last night I suffered a sadly typical (for me) crisis of self-confidence, particularly, as always, related to what I do with my life. It goes like this: I am muddling through a teaching "career" at Cow State Santa Claus (as I call it, not to insult it but to play with the name of the institution). I am bemused to find that I've been teaching there nine years now. It's what brought me out to California, where I had no intention nor desire to live, especially not in the Central Valley. Since I started here, in my "temporary" position as what my campus alone among CSUs refers to as a "Visiting Lecturer" (it keeps getting ironicer and ironicer, don't it?), I've had the kind of teaching workload that makes any serious attempt at writing scholarly articles and books impossible except during summer. Nevertheless, I've been able for most of that nine years to keep my toe in a couple different academic philosophy circles, and I've had a couple ongoing philosophical/phenomenological research projects. None of that academic activity is sufficient, given the way the tenure-track job market in philosophy works, to put me in a position to challenge for one. In addition, I received my Ph.D. in philosophy in 1996, and the longer one is past the Ph.D. freshness date, the less attractive one is as a starting-level tenure-track professor. At least, that's what I believe, firmly, having been in academia and in the market.

Meanwhile, as has been documented in this weird public online journal, I've been putting a lot of energy into playing guitar, or rather, guitars. I've only picked up the guitar again a few years ago, and it's been unspeakably satisfying, especially learning the 12-string. I've written a handful of tunes, some of which I think are really good. Lauren has been turning them into songs, and it's been awfully damned cool recording our own stuff and giving friends copies of cds we've put together, even packaging them like albums. It's a small-scale way of living out a fantasy of being a musician (or, to use a term I hate for no good reason, a "recording artist").

Obviously, the more time I spend playing the guitar, writing tunes, recording them, futzing with the wacky German software that came with our cheesy USB-port pre-amp, the less time I'm spending on philosophical pursuits, and this summer I've spent only a very little time on those. The crisis of the night was over this. When I'm playing, I have the gnawing feeling I ought to be working on research and writing; when I'm doing research and writing, my mind often drifts back into music and the feeling I ought to be playing more. The result is that I've been feeling like I'm wasting my time, no matter what I'm doing, and that the summer (now already 4 weeks old) is drifting past. I should, I tell myself, stop all this nonsense and do something to pursue a goal.

It could be understood as a dilemma, a disjunct between two increasingly unlikely dream jobs. (This is probably a false dilemma, which should help me feel better, but doesn't.)

To get out of the Valley, away from Cow State Santa Claus, I'd have to ratchet up the academic work by leaps and bounds. Having been both in the philosophy job market and in academia, there are a lot of things I'd rather do, of which I'll provide a brief sample, for context: cut off bits of my fingertips while chopping onions; stab myself in the knee repeatedly with a dull Ticonderoga (Lauren: I've done that! Me: I think most people have); drop my 1928 Underwood No. 5 typewriter (which weighs about 25 punds) on my left foot, then drop my 1935 Royal "H" model typewriter (which weighs about 30 pounds) on my left foot.

And of course, there's simply no way on earth I'd be willing to do what it would take to make a living as a musician. I always suffer doubts I could be good enough (though that's probably silly, since a lot of people who do make a living as musicians aren't as good), but I know myself, my character.

In a way (and here's one very very unhelpful way in which this is a false dilemma), in both cases it's a question of my unwillingness to accept or deal in bullshit. Academia, academic job seeking especially, is absolutely overwhelmed by bullshit, coming from every imaginable direction (I've had the privilege of seeing it all on our fair campus - faculty making bullshit decisions, imposing bullshit criteria, giving bullshit evaluations; administrators making other bullshit decisions, making bullshit rationalizations for policies; higher administration giving bullshit explanations for why there aren't more tenure-track positions in the first place). The world of professional musicianeering I know much less about, but the chances of an obscure, fair guitarist and a very good singer who write folk-rock sorts of songs with often extremely bizarre chord changes making it, whatever that means, or even getting gigs, are absurdly remote. And I don't think I want to play "Stuck in the Middle With You" every night for a half-room-full of semi-sober geezers who sing the wrong words along to the chorus for the rest of my natural life.

We talked about this last night. Lauren assured me, as she always has, that I'm worthwhile as a human being, that I'm a good teacher, that my philosophical projects are valid, that I'm a good guitarist. This serves to remind me that we make a good life together, and that should be the only important consideration. If we can make a good life together when I'm stuck in the tenuous track of academia, when we're living in the Central Valley (motto: A Great Place To Leave; alternate motto: Not A Nice Place To Visit, But You Wouldn't Want To Live There), then what more could we realistically hope for? Ah, there's the rub: unrealistic hope. My false dilemma is predicated on being discontent with life, and feeling that it can't go on like this, that a change is necessary. In fact, I don't have to choose between my so-called career and my so-called guitar playing. So it seems at least on a bright midmorning in late June on a day that won't be too hot and I don't imagine I'll have too much bullshit coming my way.

Prepared as I always am for that eventuality, however, I woke up with an argument in my head. The argument concerns an ongoing discussion of the kind of work "temporary" faculty should have. There is a view, which I consider revolting, that lecturers are hired only to teach, and that therefore the only kind of work for which we should be recognized is teaching. In other words, although we may go out on our own and do research, publish stuff, go to conferences, serve on university committees, and so on, none of that really matters, because we're paid to teach. One of my first conscious thoughts this morning was that this notion is based on a preposterous concept of the division of labor in education. According to this absurdity, there is a tier of specialized "research" universities, where faculty are primarily responsible for developing what is often called "new knowledge," and then there are secondary and tertiary tiers where this knowledge is disseminated. This makes no sense whatsoever. Obviously, if I'm going to "disseminate" knowledge, that is, to teach, I have to develop two "new" knowledges: my own, and my students'. I have to know what I teach, after all, and if I'm teaching it, as a result of my teaching it, my students ought to know it too.

But what I really hit upon is how this view of the situation depends on an unexamined commodity form of knowledge. Knowledge, on this view, is something produced in a particular place by particular people, then sold, in little modular chunks, to be distributed down the line. On this model, I work in knowledge retail (discount). I don't know what "new knowledge" would mean otherwise. It's epistemologically bizarre, to say the least. (Now, I wonder, how can I parlay this kind of insight into an interesting topic of inquiry in the Theory of Knowledge course I'm slated to teach this fall?)

new tune, at long last!

We've finally started recording more stuff. The first thing I've decided to put up on Soundclick is a bit of fun called Mt. Diablo Windy Day Rag. Of course, it's not a proper rag. But I think it's snappy, and it is certainly a blast to play. The Soundclick page for it explains its inspiration. Mt. Diablo is part of the range to our immediate west, separating the Central Valley from the Livermore Valley and the Bay Area. The route you travel to get over there is through the Altamont Pass, so the area is commonly, and in my opinion falsely, called "the Altamont."

In any event, it's a hot guitar number. Perhaps people randomly crossing paths with my journal will check it out, and perhaps they will send others in the direction of the file.

By the way, it's a pretty good recording, made in our kitchen (which is more accustomed to being the place where we make food and beer). I think I'm getting a tad bit better at recording. It's also the first thing I've posted that I play on the Breedlove 12-string. Shazam.

I undergo a change of heart

My new Breedlove is having an unhappy night. The relative humidity in the House About Town dropped like a rock over the past half-hour, from 41% to 33%. The humidity outside is a steady 24%. But my Breedlove comes from Oregon, and wants to be at around 40-50%. I don't want my frets popping up, dammit!

I grew up in Ohio and North Carolina, where the humidity is so high you have to go swimming to dry off. One, perhaps the only, atmospheric trait of the Central Valley that I have heretofore loved is the low humidity. It still sucks when it's 110, but as they say, it's a dry heat.

Now I'm wishing it were more humid. It looks like we're gonna have to buy a humidifier. Or else build a very large humidor.

hotter in the city than it is in the summer

I've developed concern about the environment my new Breedlove lives in. It lives in the living room, next to the piano. It being the Central Valley, I figured it was likely to be too dry here. So I checked on this at the Breedlove guitar site, to find that the ideal relative humidity for my guitar is between 40% and 50%, or else it's between 45% and 50%, because the site has two different comments to make on this. It also notes that it was built at between 41% and 45%, so why it should ideally live in a somewhat damper environment, I don't know. We've made an inquiry.

Anyway, that led me to want to get a thermometer/hygrometer to check the environmental condition. Radio Shack sells one, but only one, that comes with a wireless extension so you get the outdoor temperature and relative humidity. It also comes with a barometer and atomic clock, so that it can, it says, predict the weather, but also keep totally accurate time (it checks in with the atomic clock in Denver, where we keep the time, every couple minutes, I think). This has the welcome side-effect that we can now monitor the outdoor temperature without relying on the national weather service. And this is good, for two unconnected reasons.

One is that the national weather service issues the temperature update 7 minutes before each hour. So you don't get up-to-the-minute temperature readings. That makes a difference especially between 9 am and noon, because it can rise several degrees over the course of a few minutes.

Second is that the national weather service's official Turlock temperature is taken at the airport (as it is for most locations). In the words of George Carlin, that's stupid, man, because nobody lives at the airport. Yesterday, the NOAA jokers predicted it would be 96 degrees in Turlock and Modesto. They recorded an official high of 100 degrees. We got a high of 102 in our yard.

It's been like that all year. The forecast calls for a temperature 5 or 6 degrees cooler than it actually gets, but the forecast remains unaltered. I figure the fact of the matter is that old temperature data skew predictions downward.

old habits

For years, I spent every morning with a mug full of ridiculously strong coffee and the Modesto Bee. Like much of my life, this activity was deeply disturbing, relentlessly disappointing, and the cause of ever-growing resentment. One of the main reasons for this was the Bee's always awful opinion page, particularly the dreadful letters to the editor.

This morning, checking the Bee site for today's temperature forecast (95) and yesterday's high (104), out of curiosity I checked the opinion page. I still do this from time to time, mainly when I'm expecting them to print something particular - a letter I've sent them, something related to the CFA or the CSU, etc. Today it was for the sheer hell of it.

Someone had written a snarky letter suggesting that since creationists believe the earth is only 6000 years old, we must similarly be wrong about half-lives of radioactive isotopes, so nuclear power should be regarded as safe, and we shouldn't worry about nuclear waste. Store it, our intrepid author suggested, by the Creationism Museum in Kentucky.

Someone else had written about obnoxious parents leaving a local middle school graduation after their kids' names were called off the long list, sometimes bringing their brats with them. Apparently something similar happened at the school's athletic awards ceremony.

Wait, hold it right there. The middle school has both a graduation and an athletic awards ceremony? I started to have a Paula Poundstone moment: why the hell are there so many ceremonies and awards? Why are we congratulating ourselves so much for so little? (It gets worse, of course. Paula was complaining about grade school graduation.) This seems to be a national trend, too.

For instance, yer local TV nooz probably tells you it's won some kind of award. It might start with their theme song and then a pan in on the silhouetted figure of the nooz anchor, while lights come up to illuminate him. "Good evening. I'm Smarmy Middleagedman and this is the award-winning Channel 9 Action Nooz. Our first story tonight: Drugs in our schools. But first, here's Perky Dingbat..." etc. The "award" is most likely presented by the corporation who owns the station. It's supposed to give an aura of prestige.

Which is why I'm so proud to announce that I have been named the recipient of the 2007 Groovetastic Award for all-round grooviness. This makes me a double award-winner this year, since I have previously received the Samuel Pufendorf Prize for Teaching Like A Mo-Fo for 2007. I'll be adding these to my syllabi for fall, of course, and having them printed on business cards (did you know practically all academics have business cards now?). I recommend this to anyone. In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that self-help and get-ahead type books already recommend it. I already feel more prestigious and deserving. It's good to feel entitled.

I graciously accept these awards and your applause. Thank you.

gig, LA, *&^@-in' hot

So last Friday we played a few songs at the annual Cow State Santa Claus staff picnic. I couldn't really tell if we went over well or not. It's not that kind of gig, frankly. It's only sort of a gig. People were attentive, at least. I suppose if you're playing at an employee picnic and more people are paying attention to you than to potato salad, you're doing okay. Still, our very first public appearance has been accomplished. Perhaps I won't be so damned nervous next time.

Immediately, and I mean immediately, afterward, we drove to LA to visit, and I mean visit. I believe firmly that no one has ever visited so ferociously before. We played umpteen hands of cards, engaged in commercial and entertainment activities that could have been lethal to mere mortals, went to Long Beach, we even went to the LA County Musuem of Art (LACMA).

LACMA had an exhibition of work by Dan Flavin, whose biggest claim to fame as an arteest is his use of flourescent light. We took a couple pictures inside the exhibition before realizing that it wasn't permitted. Oh well, what are they gonna do, sue us? Anyway, although my loveliest wasn't all that keen on the idea at first, she soon realized what I knew from previous Flavinations I've perused: he has a way of presenting light as art and architecture, and also in a way that challenges you to consider how flourescent light makes you see.

Yesterday we drove home, up the Crankster Freeway, evading all the brain-dead idjits who drive up and down the Crankster Freeway [coupla hints, folks: (1) it's the one on the right; (2) the little white dashes on the road? Those are lanes]. By the time we got to Merced, Eddie Jetta's outdoor thermometer said it was 99 degrees. It was fairly stuffy inside when we got home, and eventually I succumbed and put on the AC, which we'll definitely need today, since it's gonna be 100 degrees here.

To end on a more positive note, I decided last night that today is Unofficial National Turlock Butt Day. So enjoy your butt and the butts of others, with any luck without legal ramifications.

since finishing grading

"Vacation" is one of the sample labels Blogger offers bloggers for their blogs. It reminds me that, officially at least, I am now on "vacation." This apparently means a lot of writing, going many places, buying lots of fruit, and in general being incredibly busy.

Monday morning, filled with anxiety related to all sorts of things only some of which I might later write about, I prepared to wakl to campus to file final grades. I decided that I should wear my contact lenses so that I could wear sunglasses, it being bright and warm out. I promptly lost a lens down the sink. I haven't been to the eye doc for a couple years, so I was looking forward to going and getting, probably, new eyeglass lenses to replace the very badly scratched ones I've got, but now I suppose contacts will be in order.

I got up to campus to realize that I had forgotten the grade list for one class. It was printed and sitting on my printer. I phoned my loveliest and had her read the list. She was patient and caring. I realized I was still missing three final papers. This always happens. I wrote in Incompletes for those, made copies upon copies of everything, then filed grades.

I walked home. Lauren had been baking a surprise, something by way of helping soothe the petty wounds of the day. Grading always puts me on edge, and this other thing I've been dealing with shoved me quite hard edgeward, so I was teetering for much of Monday. I felt very loved. We took off to buy more fruit, hit the grocery store, etc. The prospect of fruit is always nice. That particular afternoon, however, without our being aware of it, had been declared Drive Like A Complete And Total Freak Day. Drivers whose apparent aim in life is to either snarl traffic or cause hazards bug the holy heck out of me, but they make Lauren exceptionally, not to say existentially, jumpy.

But we made it home. We had one of our favorite meals, then watched the Ottawa Senators lose game four of the Stanley Cup Finals to the goddamn Anaheim Ducks (as we call them in a good mood). That was disgusting. We rehearsed a few songs, one I've been uncomfortable with and therefore insisted on playing despite my frustration, and that made me very tense again. I felt my back and neck and jaw all clench (if a back or neck can clench), played the tune through, made mistakes, got further frustrated, did it again, grrr, grrrr, grrrrr. Apparently, this was unpleasant for my love.

I put away one guitar, upstairs in the Room of Requirement, then grabbed another and noodled with it a bit. Downstairs I heard the telltale clinking and general mumble of a kitchen being cleaned up and something be plated and set at table. It was by then around 9:30 or so, and all useful hours of the day had been exhausted. I hobbled downstairs, where Lauren presented me the dessert she'd made for us: little individual heart-shaped tarts with extremely pink pastry creme and strawberries. That made Monday evening much nicer.

Tuesday, which was yesterday, we decided enough was bloody well enough, and we split for San Francisco. The drive out was difficult because of the wind, but it was pretty. We went directly, and without any trouble, to Golden Gate Park, found parking, walked to the de Young museum (first Tuesday of the month admission is free, so we went there and told them deep dark secrets). There's some good modern stuff in the de Young, and that's what I mainly like, so that was good. We only took in the concourse floor, decided that it was late enough in the day to move on to find something to eat and that our legs were tired, and left for North Beach.

We again got there no problem, except for the woman who ran a four-way stop and nearly crushed us. Unfortunately, our favorite place in North Beach was closed, since (we found out) it closes every Tuesday, so we found another place, which was okay. I had penne with pancetta and spicy tomato sauce, and Lauren had spaghetti puttanesca that I dubbed The Saltiest Pasta Dish in History. I mean, yes, anchovies are salty, and yes, puttanesca has to have a lot of anchovies, but holy jumpin' was that some salty stuff.

There was no better way to cure that than to avail ourselves of the very last moments of Happy Hour at the San Francisco Brewing Co., just down Columbus. Thence to City Lights, thence back to the House About Town.

I could summarize the last two days in a word, if forced to by some bizarre provision of the USA PATRIOT act. If so, that word would be: Whoof!

received: a letter, and numerous papers

I got a letter from my friend Bob the other day. Bob gave up on blogs a little while ago, and I'll be removing the link to his in a moment. He doesn't want to spend time that way, because, in his view, it's not a very rewarding way to communicate. He wrote me a letter instead.

We've written a lot of letters to one another. For a while, I was a quite avid letter writer, sending missives out to him, to Bobo the Wandering Pallbearer, to my high school friend Anne, to my friend Nancy. I generally typed them on my old manual machines, for a long time on an early 60s Hermes 2000, pages and pages of stuff about my life as a grad student, but mainly trying to capture a mood and lived experience.

Compared to email, a letter is a very different thing, especially written out longhand in fountain pen (as Bob's was, in virtually the same nearly illegible hadnwriting he's had since we were kids). It's tangible. It has a feint smell to it. The very good paper it's written on has a definite feel, with an affective dimension. I'm writing him back, in my nearly illegible handwriting.

Partly this is contextual: Bob has been my friend for more than 30 years. We grew up together in Ohio, and when I moved away at 13, writing letters was the way to communicate. Regrettably, perhaps, I don't have any of those any more. A flood in Pittsburgh lost me several boxes of my writing, including about 1000 poems, a couple plays, a dozen or more journals, and almost all my letters. I stopped saving correspondence, and finally have become so much more comfortable with electronic versions of things that I don't particularly like printing out any of my own papers any more.

For one reason or another, for many people, email doesn't have the same feel to it. The medium, or the genre, or the format, or the phenomenon, feels quasi-personal, somewhat institutional. Everything in email looks like a memo.

Bobo and I turned that into a source of amusement, by way of using the memo format inappropriately. You wouldn't write email within an institutional context beginning with something like "Dear Unmitigated Bastard." At least, you wouldn't if you're a fan of employment. In any case, this carried forward a tradition of ironic mutual abuse that began in college and continued through grad school correspondence (and beyond).

I'm a fan of all of it. Each medium has its best uses, I suppose, and each medium has its own way of habituating language and expression. It's a great source of fun to be able to pick them up in turns, to undergo the different ways media shape language and thought, affect, address, tone, all of it.

I'm gonna keep blogging, too, I figure, though as blog this has little "bloggy" about it, and I definitely regard it as a publicly kept journal more than anything else.

As such, let me make one final personal note on the day, most of which I've spent grading final papers. That note is:
WAAAAAAAAH!

Why oh why oh why does grading hurt? I mean, these aren't terrible papers. There've only been a couple duds, which is a very low duddism rate. They've been fine, some even quite good, and a couple wonderful ones. Still, ow.

bird or bourbon attack?

I always make the same joke about this kind of thing, so perhaps if I put this stupid joke before public (more or less) scrutiny, I'll be free from the demon pun. The joke is, of course, that a bus driver in Connecticut reported being the victim of a wild turkey attack.

My favorite version of this lame pun was a gag signature to an email message to my pal Jim "The Most Optimistic Man in America" Williams, based on a Rolling Stones song: "Wild Turkeys? Couldn't drag me away!"

(The salutation/signature line gag has been a feature of our correspondence forever. I can't count the number of times I wrote to Jim for no reason other than to use a gag salutation or signature I'd come up with. The object of this game seems to be to generate complex multi-level allusive puns, or to abuse one another, which in some people's estimation amounts to the same thing. We do enjoy ourselves.)

fruit and music

As might be expected, the opinion pages of the Modesto Bee have been full of denials, rebuttals, confessions, challenges, and lamentations in response to the "news" from last week that Modesto (a.k.a. Motown, or in the very local parlance of the House About Town, Funkytown, or, especially in transit away from it, a place named by the phrase "No me Modesto") is the worst city to live in in the US.

So far, none that I've read (admittedly a random and unscientifically small sample) have mentioned the single most obvious thing Modesto has going for it: fruit. This is probably because you could live just about anywhere in California, including, say, Berkeley, Santa Barbara, Napa, Tiburon, Santa Cruz, etc., etc., and still get fantastic fruit. In that sense, fruit isn't a reason to live in Modesto.

However, the fruit is gorgeous. We're two weeks into cherry season, a week into apricot season, and we've had strawberries for quite a while already. Peaches and plums are around the corner. We'll pick the first cherry tomatoes soon. We've already had pounds of lettuce and Swiss chard, all from the little piece of yard my loveliest has tended so - er, tenderly.

I have no point. I have two more class days left this semester, and I have no point. I'm out.

Also in the Bee this morning was a review of the Modesto Symphony chorus performances of Friday and Saturday nights. I went Saturday and enjoyed it tremendously, although, like the reviewer in the Bee (none other than CSU Stanislaus' own Stephen Thomas), I was bothered at first by the lousy acoustics in the hall, and also thought there was something fishy going on among the violins in Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. The Haydn Dm Mass was tumultuous, as its name implies. Good stuff.

Yesterday we found ourselves fruitlessly searching for a second-hand bicycle, but fruitfully finding fruit, of which I shall now consume.

pasta, music

On Sunday (I know; this is belated) I made a pasta dish:

1/2 pound pasta (shells in this case)
14 ounces cannelini beans (white kidney beans; I used canned, cuz)
14 ounces diced tomatoes (also canned, without salt)
4 leaves of Swiss chard
3 cloves of garlic
1/8 tsp or so crushed red pepper flakes
a few gratings of nutmeg
herbs of one's choice (basil, oregano, parsley)
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil, add garlic, then tomatoes and chard, salt (keeps the chard green), then other stuff except pasta. Boil pasta separately. Stick these together. If you like, add some grated parmesan or some crumbled feta or sump'n. 'sgood.

Music: Tonight we went to hear the CSU Stanislaus Chamber Singers, or as I refer to them in a jaunty mood, (chorus director) Daniel Afonso's Elite Republican Guard. They were, as always, impressive. Especially impressive were pieces by J. Aaron McDermid and Morten Lauridsen, both featuring generous helpings of dissonance. McDermid's was based on a religious-themed text by St. Ambrose, and knocked my socks off. The Lauridsen stuff was based on Italian poems about fiery passion, and featured a weirded-up minor chord, which Lauren thinks was weirded up by adding a second to it (thinking about this in guitar terms, to me, that means they added a ninth). I'm a sucker for dissonance, I am. Holy jumpin'.

funkytown worst of all

Apparently, a book detailing life and livability of a few hundred US cities has ranked Modesto last. The Modesto Bee article focuses on local reactions to the news, and of course Modestans interviewed by the Bee didn't see anything so terrible. Even the author of the book seemed to tell the Bee that the situation was not all that dire.

And really, if you take away the disgusting hot summer, the pollution, low level of educational achievement, minimal cultural scene, lack of good jobs, lack of affordable housing, poor urban planning, poor health care, high crime rate, lousy traffic, and the fact that despite all this thousands of people commute 2.5 hours each way to good jobs in the San Francisco Bay area (thus contributing to the pollution and lousy traffic), really, it's not too bad.

If you ask one of those commuters why he or she lives here, I imagine the likely answers are (1) the housing market, as inflated as it is, is more affordable than the Bay Area, and (2) it's a safer, more wholesome environment in which to raise kids. The latter of these rationales is easily understood, because it's entirely false. People who believe that are, simply, wrong. They do not want to know, and in many cases would flatly reject, the facts. As for the former rationale, it is certainly true that the housing market here has been better lately: a mere $289,000 can get you a 1100 square foot bungalow in some less desirable areas. So people who commute 5+ hours a day in order to buy a house are, clearly, more interested in achieving the American dream (to wit: mortgage) than in health, well-being, and so on.

To set the record straight on at least one point, there is no truth to the rumors that Modesto city planners intend to embark on a major urban renewal project involving razing all structures in the county.

wackiness, in the form of academic senate debate

I've had a fascinating day taking Lauren for a crown (for her tooth, not for giving airs of royalty), chasing down antibiotics for another tooth of hers, reading Intro to Philosophy response papers on W.E.B. DuBois (and contemplating what they mean pedagogically), and attending a rollicking Academic Senate meeting.

I've been on the Cow State Santa Claus academic senate since - geez, since spring of 2000, I think. First I was the philosophy department senator, and, since the institution of the academic senate lecturer rep a couple years ago, I've been the lecturer senator. For a brief time, my life pretty much revolved around academic senate, as sad a comment as that is about my life at that time. I still really enjoy it, because I like policy arguments and the flow of discussion surrounding them, and because I want to be as much a part of the university as I can - full citizenship, as it were, even though in the minds of many around there I'm "only a lecturer."

Today we had second readings on the last resolutions of the academic year, and ran headlong into serious controversy about student attendance in classes. Right now, our university attendance policy is vague, to say the least. Reportedly, there have been difficulties, especially for student athletes, who have had faculty be completely unwilling to accomodate them when they have to miss classes for games. I don't know how widespread the problem is, and I've always been open to accomodating any student with what I regard as a legitimate absence, but since there is no policy about this, students have no recourse when faculty aren't willing to be accomodating.

It's a complex issue, and ultimately I jumped on a motion to refer the whole thing to the educational policies committee. The faculty at senate had too many questions about the rewritten policy we were considering, and even if they weren't all well-founded, or sometimes based on confused readings, it seemed like faculty wouldn't buy into the policy if we passed this one. A bunch of students came to the meeting, and I know they were disappointed with what happened, but I think it's for the best. An unclear or toothless policy wouldn't have helped them, and a policy the faculty regard as suspect or illegitimate wouldn't have helped them either.

The meeting threatened to get very nasty and personal, but the speaker of the faculty averted that. Lauren and I came home in a somewhat heated mood over it, and we hashed it out for a while. It annoys her when I defend the faculty privilege/right of making their own academic and pedagogical decisions, including classroom policies. Her argument is that this doesn't recognize students' academic rights, but I counter that with regard to pedagogy, students don't have rights. It's funny, because I don't know if I seriously believe that. I say things as though I have complete confidence in my beliefs, but there aren't many that aren't negotiable, especially about these kinds of things. I think more than anything I look for reasonably practicable principles, even if these are at some basic level arbitrarily determined - if we erect some concept, even if it's incomplete, not sufficiently inclusive, etc., we have at least something to continue arguing about. It's folly to think any of these concepts, principles, policies, or anything else will reach a final form or fit all instances. But you won't notice the instances until you've picked a background to contrast them with.

That's the essence of rational argument, isn't it?

alienation

Aside from being a relatively crappy sci-fi series, alienation is also an important concept in Marx's critique of capitalism in the early manuscripts. It's also an important part of my Intro to Philosophy class, at least today. (It's also an important part of a complete breakfast, but that's as may be.)

I mention it because Marx is a challenge to teach. Over the years, I've taught this passage from the 1844 Manuscripts 2.7 million times, give or take, and just about every time, there's a handful of students who dismiss his analysis out of hand. They tend to make one of two arguments that I find baseless.

One is that since the Soviet Union collapsed, we know that communism failed, therefore Marx was wrong. That could be true, if communism had actually been practiced in the USSR, and if communism "failing" meant that Marx's account of alienation was wrong. The first premise is false, the second begs the question.

The other dismissal is based on a rejection of Marx's implicit account of human nature. The argument is that Marx assumes (falsely) that human beings are naturally cooperative rather than naturally competitive; that is, that the basic tenet of capitalist and proto-capitalist political economy, the naturalness of acquisitiveness and Hobbes' war of all against all, are the true state of nature. This is much trickier, but I think dismissing Marx on this basis overrates the significance of the objection. Even if Marx has too optimistic a view of human cooperation, this argument ultimately fails as a dismissal of the account of alienation. For one thing, in that period Marx's fundamental theory of human nature focused on our being creative, consuming beings who are social. He attacks the presumption in capitalist political economy that greed and competition are natural, but he does not claim that we are naturally either greedy or altruistic. In any case, it's probably not a valid objection to the main line of the analysis of alienation.

My problem in class today will be compounded by the fact that the course is nominally about the good life, and here's Marx telling us about alienation. It's a sort of negative of the good life, and I'll have to not only explain alienation but try to tease out how it points to what the good life does consist of.

I'll probably end up talking about cooking.

happy landings

I'm less neurotic than other people I know. I'm not afraid of heights. I'm not xenophobic, nor claustrophobic. I do not fear abandonment or machines. When a plane is flying low over a highway, however, I do often contemplate that it could suddenly, either in an emergency or because the pilot chooses that precise moment to snap, land in front of me. So I'm pleased to report not having been on Highway 4 when a plane landed there yesterday.

The wonderfully ironic background to the story is as follows.

It was a traffic reporter's plane.
The reason it was flying over Highway 4 is because, over the weekend, a tanker truck hauling gasoline burned and caused a major interchange between Interstates 80 and 580 to collapse - an interchange used by hundreds of thousands of commuters daily, all of whom now have to find ways around it, "ways," I should hasten to add, with fewer than the 5 lanes in and out of town offered by 580.

In other news, now crystal meth comes in delicious fruity flavors!

Let me randomly add that Lancelot's tests indicate a probable kidney infection, and he's on antibiotics. Prognosis is good.

sick cat

Over the weekend Christina and Guerin came over for dinner, and Christina mentioned that Lancelot seemed much skinnier than she last saw him, which would have been about a month ago. He's had a bad few weeks, going from being a very pukey cat (he's always been) to being probably among the top 10 pukiest cats in town. I called the vet first thing this morning and we got him in later in the morning. They drew blood, examined him, and gave him some subcutaneous fluids. Of course, I was thinking back to the summer of 2001, when Morgan died of sudden liver failure (it was suspected at least), after a couple weeks of doing her brave best. I was crushed. Morgan was a wonderful cat.

Lancelot is a wonderful cat in his own right, and in the last couple of years, now that he's an only cat, he's come into his own. Still, I'm horrified that he'll turn out to be very sick. We find out tomorrow morning. He's nearly 15, for crying out loud.

Anyway, he's nowhere near as sick as Morgan was, and as happens, the subcute fluids have helped him feel better this afternoon.

So it was certainly a great boon to my mood to read the following on the package of the new sponge-scrubby thing we picked up at Target (punctuation and grammar uncorrected from the package copy; emphasis in the original):

"nothing beats the feeling of clean. when everything is bright and sparkly. when your life is spotless and the possibilities are endless. and just for a moment - sigh - everything is perfect. until it's time to clean again."

Target has commodified my dishwashing.

not allowed

Since the NHL playoffs are ongoing, a couple further entries to the list of those banned from the house from the hockey world:

* Mark Messier. Though he's retired and 46, he's still not someone I'd like to run into in a dark alley, or a well-lit alley, and especially not in my living room. Lauren frequently notes that, even in a neat well-pressed suit, he looks like he is going to eat your face.

* Darcy Tucker. I love watching Darcy Tucker play, because he gets a shark-eyed look and becomes quite clearly insane. He fights, he scores goals, he wreaks havoc.

the "Virginia Tech shooting"

Lots of people have said lots of things about the "Virginia Tech shooting." Even calling it that says something pertinent about why lots of people have said lots of things about it. It's turned into a media event - or maybe is practically from the start a media event. But it's not the media's fault.

Adam Felber put it better than I could.

What above all I have to say about it is that I'm terribly terribly glad we don't watch TV news.

abstinence makes the heart grow faithfuller

The breaking news is that abstinence education abjectly fails to decrease either teen sex or risky teen sex. The reason this is breaking news has nothing to do with the study results that draw this conclusion, because that would be the foregone conclusion of people thinking rationally about these problems. The real news here is that America is experiencing a crisis of faith!

If we would only believe hard enough, abstinence education would work, global warming would be "junk science," and Iraq would be taking strides toward stability and peace. Despite the continuous increase in our work productivity (i.e., profitability), it seems that Americans are losing ground in faith productivity. That's what this nation really needs: not more faith-based initiatives (where the bulk of the $120 million spent on abstinence education went), but a Federal Faith Initiative. Faith itself must be restored through a concerted government program before any of these programs can reach fruition. F.D.R. had his New Deal. The Bush Administration should pursue something like this, a New something or other - New... New... well, they'll think of something; they're good with names.

The millions poured into new federal government projects for Compassion and so forth, and earmarked for groups who proclaim a particular religious outlook (and/or who happen to have supported President Bush's campaign in 2000) have produced very little clear success. This is clearly because of the faith productivity lag. After all, how could abstinence education have overcome the fact that an estimated 90% of the target population has intercourse, unless enough of us believed that "just say no" would work? The Administration can lead the way, by refuting studies that deny the effectiveness of abstinence education and reaffirming their conviction that abstinence is the way to teach safe sex.

Speaking of "just say no," consider how badly the War on Drugs is going. If only we all got together and believed drugs would go away, clearly they would, and we would win the War without firing another shot.

As for so-called global warming, in this case it's obvious that once the rapture comes, climate change won't be an issue, so I suppose we needn't worry about believing it's junk science any more. This is good, because we'll need to concentrate our faith productivity on those areas where we can make a real difference: sex and drugs.

staying put for a bit?

We got back from LA in plenty of time for my loveliest to get to choir rehearsal. It was an unpleasant drive up the Crankster Freeway, the seasonal northerly wind gusting across the road and apparently pushing slower-moving SUVs with drivers talking on cell phones over into the left lane. I lost count of how many times I was cut off by someone in a large vehicle, or a semi rig, by the time we got to Earlimart (which is the halfway point, and also the name of an indie alt band.

So I'm more or less officially sick of driving up and down the Moose-forsaken central valley. On the other hand, I have developed a sudden and demanding craving for Yosemite, and also for letting a couple hours drift by while I watch ocean waves. Back in the car!

collective action

The tentative agreement between CFA and CSU is good news. It's good news, obviously, for faculty: we're tentatively getting raises we deserve, and tentatively won't have to go on strike. It's good news for the CSU administration, because a strike by faculty would be embarassing, especially given how much political pressure and scrutiny they're under. It's good news for students, because classes won't be interrupted, and because CFA didn't accept the ridiculous offer the CSU made, which was contingent upon CFA not speaking against student fee increases. CFA remains able to advocate for students and the good of the university.

Someone on the Lecturers Council conference call last night ut the matter well: this is good news not only for us, but for a public that has become more and more disaffected, been treated to ever-increasing exploitation and disenfranchisement by hierarchical power. The good news is: collective action works.

tentative agreement

CFA announced today that it reached a tentative agreement with CSU on a new contract. More on that later. It's latish, I'm still recovering from the road trip to Arizona and back, and I've got a lot of pent-up job-action-related energies, anxieties, and so forth that I suddenly don't know what to do with. So I'm going to take a chance on relaxation and sleep.

The CFA website reference page for the tentative agreement info, I've just noticed, is called "settlement.html." I wrote a tune by that name, that I haven't written a lyric for yet, but which I think will include the line "set everything on fire and split the ashes," or words to that effect. The song, it should be noted (no pun intended) has nothing to do with collective bargaining. It should also be noted that the lyric line I've just quoted has nothing to do with the terms of the tentative agreement.

The agreement looks, on the whole, like a CFA slam dunk. But much more. And more on that, too, later. (Think: musings on the power of collective action.)

brief update to the "no entry" list

As of last night, the list of people not allowed in the house has expanded by three:

* Kurt Russell
* Melanie Griffith

Both of them are very nearly terminally noxious to my loveliest. I confess to a higher threshold of tolerance for the Griffith, by which I mean I could probably permit her to use the bathroom on an emergency basis, if the only alternative was to have her avail herself of the mock orange bush in front of our place. Also, possibly, if lives were at stake, but I'm not entirely sure I want to be held to that.

* Quentin Tarrentino

Like some others on the list, I think this just makes good sense. I don't think he's necessarily a violent person, but that's not really the point. I believe he has an unhealthy fixation on - well, on lots of things it's unhealthy to be fixated on.

predilections

I have four somewhat strange predilections relevant this morning.

One is for mopey alternative music. I tend lately to rely on the very unevenly reliable All Music Guide to connect with music I haven't knowingly heard before. Following links from a band I like, say, Wilco, I end up finding bands somebody responsible for content on AMG thinks is "similar" or "influenced by," follow those links, and follow the links from there, until I end up with somebody really quite unlike the original band in most respects, say, [smog]. It's a game we could call Six Degrees of Michael Stipe if we were in a particularly jaunty mood, which, this morning, we're not.

Anyway, I found Grogshow through this method. I love me some Grogshow, I do. And through Grogshow to Winterpills, who are also pretty cool.

This music is not only a basic element to the soundtrack of my misspent youth, but also still musically potent to me, inasmuch as what I'm playing these days is often like acoustic 12-string folkized mopey alternative. I think so, at least. Finally, a label for my stuff!

Two is for conflict, especially of the fighting-the-good-fight variety. The CSU agreed to use the Fact-Finders Report as a "template" for 10 further days of bargaining to try to reach agreement with CFA on a new contract. Now, what could they do in 10 days that they couldn't have done in the last 23 months is not clear. And the Fact Finders Report includes not only the statement by the neutral third-party fact finder, but also CFA and CSU representatives. So agreeing to use the report as a template could mean that CSU is willing to continue to make their same tired baseless arguments as to why the $1.2 billion reserve they've built up can't be diminished by $100 million over 4 years to reach a settlement on faculty salaries.

This is a conflict I can feel really good about, because I have tremendous faith that CFA is right and CSU is wrong. In that respect, this conflict is rather like how I feel when the Pittsburgh Penguins play the Philadelphia Flyers. Whatever else I may or may not know about the world, I can say with certainty that the Flyers are wrong.

Which brings us to the third predilection, which is for playoff hockey. The NHL playoffs begin in two weeks, and for the first time since 2001, my beloved Penguins are going to be in them. They clinched last night by beating the Washington Capitals 4-3. Since January, no team has been better than the Pens, and their best players remain a core group that are all 24 or younger, which suggests that they're going to be at least this good for a long time.

The fourth? Extremely long road trips.

strike vote resuits!

CFA announced today that 94% of members voted to approve job action in our ongoing fight for a fair contract.

It can't be easy being one of those CSU administrators or trustees who continues to assert that only a small faction of faculty are upset about the CSU's contract offer, or that students won't be adversely affected by yet another fee increase, or that the CSU is on firm footing, but is underfunded, but has an excellent bond rating because of reserve funds equalling more than one third of the $2.5 billion annual budget, yet doesn't have enough money to spend $100 million over four years to fund faculty salary increases. At some point, the sheer number of contradictions you assert and try to think are true must get overwhelming. This is beyond a question of guilty conscience now. I am seriously concerned about the continued mental health of these administrators and trustees. Something's gotta give somewhere, don't it?

Proceed with caution in Long Beach, folks. Psychotic breaks are not pretty.

new recording

Last Monday I recorded an electric lead to a tune I've written for one of Lauren's mom's cats. I've been playing with the recording, moved the lead and rhythm parts around a bit, adjusted their tone, and posted it. I like it. It's named after my favorite way to greet said cat, which is Hey Stella!

busy weekend of entertaining

Today we foraged for the stuff for a couple evenings' fun. Tomorrow night: Val for dinner, which will be on the opulent side, because it's been a while. Saturday: St. Patrick's Day traditional dinner, this year featuring Christina and Guerin as our special guest stars.

Menu for Friday:

Portabella mushroom ravioli
Kohlrabi greens ravioli
(both prepared by Lauren, the kohlrabi from the pot on the patio, in a tomato sauce I made this afternoon)
Rack of lamb in a modified Perigueux sauce (truffles, demi-glace, madeira, Grand Marnier, butter)
Mashed blue potatoes
Salad from lettuces and snow pea pods grown in the back yard
Strawberry tart (without so much rat in it)

Menu for Saturday:

Guinness
Corned beef, boiled
Cabbage, boiled
Potatoes, boiled
Mushrooms, boiled
Irish whisky, either in Irish coffee (steamy, though not boiled) or straight, no chaser (hard-boiled)

Menu for Sunday:

Alka-seltzer
Coffee
Something light, like maybe a carrot

Forest Whittaker is not allowed in the house

Based entirely (not to say unfairly) on their performances, I have over the years decided that numerous musical and theatrical stars are not allowed in the house. I'm adding Forest Whittaker to the list after having watched The Last King of Scotland this weekend.

Obviously, I don't know Mr. Whittaker. He's clearly an intelligent and gifted actor, and I presume that he's not entirely miserable to work with (he's not famous enough to behave that badly). I also wasn't so entirely taken with his performance as Idi Amin that I gave in completely to the suspension of disbelief and was actually afraid. It's more a matter of the kinds of role Mr. Whittaker seems to choose, and in which he seems to excel. They bespeak, to me, a deep inner wellspring of violent emotion.

Forest Whittaker is under the total ban, along with many others. There is also a short list of famous people who are only allowed in subject to certain conditions, usually for our own protection. With that, let's revisit the list, accrued over time.

* Bjørk. Would she sit demuring in the corner, or dive for the liquor cabinet? Would she spend hours reading the titles of all the books in the place? Or break all the furniture just for the percussion? Would she steal the cat? Too unpredictable.

* Fred Willard. Actually, Fred is allowed in, but only in leg irons.

* Jeff Buckley. On a recent walk home, "So Real" came on my iPod, and as I entered I announced, "Jeff Buckley is not allowed in the house." Lauren's quick reply was to point out that, "Jeff Buckley is dead." "All the more reason," I said. He was weird enough alive.

* Robert Downey, Jr. This just makes good sense.

* Amy Sedaris. This was a controversial decision, because Lauren thinks Amy Sedaris is just about the cutest thing ever. But I know that's just another way she's incredibly dangerous.

* Alan Cumming. Actually, Alan Cumming is allowed in the house, but only on a short leash. Yes, I do mean that literally.

* Bruce McCulloch. This is probably an over-reaction, but especially in drag, Bruce was always the creepiest of the Kids in the Hall, and I've never fully recovered.

* Tim Curry. Clue almost restored his visa. Almost.

There are of course a number of other people not allowed in the house, and not all of them were born in either 1961 or 1965 (recurring dates in the list for some reason). Most of the others are less famous, with some exceptions. And then there are other people not officially on the list whom I would never consider letting in, some living, some dead (Augusto Pinochet springs to mind). I think it's good to maintain a list of this sort just in case.

life, liberty, and the pursuit of hoppyness

Lauren and I bottled the new stout yesterday. This is the beer that boiled over on the stove, twice. This is the beer that scalded Lauren when we poured the hot wort (unfermented beer) into the glass carboy through a funnel. We had three or four false starts siphoning the stout into a plastic fermenter we use for bottling.

It's also a dark, smoky tasting stout, at least at this point in its still raw state. Time will tell ultimately, but for now, this may either be called *^@#in' Stout or the Stout of the Apocalypse.

This weekend was also the date of a kitchen mishap involving a food as innocent as a portabella mushroom. As I was removing the mushrooms from the oven, I somehow burned my thumb on the baking sheet, through a pot-holder. It gave me a 1/2 inch square blister on right next to the little bulby pad part of my thumb. It's not very painful, but it's disconcerting to hold a guitar pick with it or shuffle cards (two things I do oftener than most people). I'm about to see how it might affect my teaching.

Later: Why Forest Whittaker is not allowed in the house, along with a brief current list of others who are either banished or who are permitted entry only under specified conditions.

merit

One of the issues under dispute between the CSU and the CFA is so-called "merit pay." It's a nice example of the whole dispute, and of the whole of the difficulties in the CSU-CFA relationship.

It begins with the language we use to describe it. "Merit pay" sounds innocuous at worst. It probably sounds like a way to encourage and reward good work. If you oppose a "merit pay" program, the very words make it sound as if you're against the idea of rewarding good work.

Among the many problems with what CFA prefers to call "discretionary pay" is that "merit" is not satisfactorily defined. What makes a good faculty member? What specific marks or characteristics would describe faculty "merit"? My view is that faculty work can be meritorious in many different ways, and that defining it in any set of terms narrow enough to work contractually would leave out a great deal of the meritorious work faculty do. (Not that the CSU proposal bothers to define "merit." Indeed, one reason CFA is so deeply opposed to it is that CSU won't set out the criteria contractually. It raises probably valid suspicion that what counts as "merit" is what some administrator decides is merit - hence our term, "discretionary pay.")

One of the main objections CFA has with "merit pay" programs proposed by CSU has been that there is no real recourse if a faculty member doesn't receive the additional pay. If you believe you're more meritorious than someone else, but that person gets the pay increase and you don't, perhaps you can appeal to the President of the campus, but that's the person who awarded the raise in the first place. The chances the President will reverse himself or herself and give you the raise approximate zero.

Another problem is that the previous "merit pay" programs have been disasters, both in terms of the impact on faculty salaries and morale, and as programs to administer. The CSU has agreed with CFA that previous discretionary pay programs have been unworkable. Once a faculty member's base salary is changed by adding discretionary pay, that faculty person is no longer on the regular pay scale, and all the calculations painstakingly made to produce predictability in faculty pay across the 23 campus system goes kablooey. There's 23,000 faculty in the CSU, and discretionary pay makes it impossible to keep track of how much they ought to be paid. (And of course, another one of the reasons cited for the unworkability of "merit pay" is that merit isn't defined. As Chico says of Harpo in Duck Soup, "he gets mad because he can't read.")

There's a myth of meritocracy in corporate models of labor and capital, and it makes no sense to believe it. Executives, whether because of their role or because of some genetic proclivity, value compliance and fealty. If given discretion to pay some people more than others, executives who have the opportunity to reward faculty with more pay will use that discretion to reward characteristics they value.

The oddest thing to me about all this is that what's truly meritorious, in the sense of what a person has earned, would seem to be what a person achieves through work. In other words, work is what is meritorious. I think that's a reason labor unions make sense to me: collective bargaining implicitly recognizes that work is what should be paid, and so people doing similar work should get similar pay.

not something I usually mention

I didn't get to watch the Pittsburgh Penguins beat the Philadelphia Flyers today, to sweep the season series 8-0, because NBC doesn't think it's important to show a national TV audience the most exciting player in the league, Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby. In fact, Crosby wasn't the star of the game. Erik Christensen was.

Christensen is coming slowly into his own as an NHL forward, and today he scored two goals in regulation to lead the Penguins to a tie, and overtime, against the Flyers. Each of his goals were quick snap shots, which is his best shot. It's vital to shoot quickly to score goals in the NHL, because almost everyone is almost always in ideal defensive position, and you get about 1/4 of a second to get a shot off. He does this consistently, when he's shooting and playing well. Fastest gun in the East.

But what really impressed me watching the highlights streamed from the Penguins website (click on "Game Recap" in the box on the right lower half of the page) was his shootout goal, where he made a move that, in the current argot, was "sick." It really was sick, by which I mean astounding.

Now I can't stop saying what a sick move it was, and I feel vaguely stupid about that. Strangely enough, "stupid" used to be the term for the kind of play that is now called "sick." I'm not sure which is worse: feeling stupid about calling a play sick, or feeling sick about calling a play stupid. But what really matters, for the time being, are two things: (1) Erik Christensen's sick move, and (2) death to the Flyers.

been busy; strike vote next week

A couple weeks go by, and it's like a couple weeks go by!

On one level, it doesn't seem like a lot has happened. We went to San Diego, I gave my Schutz talk, and we came home. It's been a regular week this week, meaning I've been at a couple meetings, done some organizing work, taught, and so on. I'm starting work on the big perception project that I hope will turn into something nifty for the Merleau-Ponty Circle conference. In any case, it's something I've been meaning to do.

Last night, however, what I really needed to do was to record some good demo versions of the new tunes, so that those can start building into actual songs. A couple of the tunes seem done to me. The one has a verse part, a chorus part, a bridge, and a second bridge/coda. It needs no new bits. The others might, but I haven't had much time or energy to play with them, which makes me feel bad. (My priorities in life do not give me pause. They just frequently leave less time than I'd like for playing guitar.)

So I set about to record some tracks last night after dinner, which seemed a perfectly fine thing to do. Lauren sat in the Room of Requirement with me, sewing and spilling wine all over her desk, which seemed a perfectly fine thing to do. Little did we know.

I record using a pre-amp plugged into the USB port of my laptop, with either a mic or a line from the amplifier plugged into the pre-amp. It's a simple setup and it gives decent results. So there I sat, making a couple takes each of the new tunes. I was pleased enough with the results. I listened to one of them on my iPod on the walk to school this morning, and it sounds just fine (its current working gag title is "Exorcise for your Health").

Meanwhile, the CFA strike vote is set for next week on our campus and a number of others. For some reason I don't know, the votes are being staggered, with about half next week and the other half the week after that. I don't know if the neutral fact finder's report has been filed, and if it was I wouldn't know anything about it, since it's kept under wraps for 10 days after it arrives. Last time, the fact finder's report agreed in every important respect with the CFA's positions on the issues.

getting my Schutz together

It's February, which means it's the season for writing a paper for the Society for Phenomenology and Media, something I've done each of the last 9 years. I am the only person to have attended every conference of the group, which I call SPaM.

This year I'm writing about Alfred Schutz's essay "The Well-Informed Citizen," which my honors Human Interests and the Power of Information class is reading. Not usually one to engage in critique (as a result of his commitment to a descriptive phenomenological method), Schutz concludes the essay by saying there is a problem posed by public opinion, especially when it guides political decisions in democratic societies. It's not that original a problem to pose (Walter Lippmann published Public Opinion in 1922, though he had a very different attitude toward it), but Schutz's call for the well-informed citizen to "prevail" over public opinion is a peculiar way of dealing with it, especially since Schutz doesn't tell us what that would mean. It's practically tossed off at the end of the essay, and it's not obvious how the essay as a whole helps illuminate the problem, or even how the problem is motivated by the essay or vice-versa.

I've spent a ton of time on this essay over the years, but for some reason this year it seems as if I have been able to get deeper into it. That has its good points and its bad points. I'm finding it very difficult to keep my paper within narrow enough parameters. It wants to creep all over the place. So I'm thinking my presentation this coming Thursday will be a little odd. We'll see. Perhaps I'll be able to get some of the other stuff out of my system in class on Monday, so the focus on public opinion can come back.

landmark post #200

A few utterly disconnected items.

1. One of the aspects of popular fame that would really disturb me if I were popularly famous is that news services routinely prepare anticipatory obituaries for such people. I understand, they don't want to be caught having to write something appropriate, pithy, ironic, or whatever in the 3 minutes they have to scoop other news services on the death watch. But still, there's something very slightly ghoulish about it, and the notion that someone has already summed up my life and achievements in 300-500 words while I'm still alive strikes as judgment before the trial. Case in point, the clearly canned obit the San Francisco Chronic Ill just posted about Anna Nicole Smith.

2. I'm trying very hard to make the most of the break between Winter and Spring, by being On A Break. So far, this is working well, except insofar as I'm working on a paper and tracking down a few issues for lecturers. I think I've got four songs in the works now, though.

3. A few candidates for my motto came to me lately:
* I eat pipsqueaks like you for breakfast!
* I'm the philosopher-chef. I saute wisdom.
* Speak softly, and carry a big schtick. (an oldie from college days)

debate

Ah, those wacky Senators. Mitch McConnell:

"The Republican side is ready for this debate," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "We're anxious to have it."

McConnell said Republicans were not resorting to any special tactics, calling it "ordinary" to require 60 votes before an item can move forward on the floor of the Senate and pointing to the Democratic use of the filibuster against Bush's judicial appointments when they were in the Senate minority.

from the San Francisco Chronic-Ill

Let me explain, Senator. A debate is when different views on an issue are aired, argued, and defended with evidence (sometimes; we'll even make this optional for y'all because y'all have such a hard time determining what evidence means. You gotta crawl before you can walk). When you filibuster to prevent debate, you're not debating.

By the way, remember when filibusters were uncivil tactics used by the desperate to avoid admitting they had no other options? Guess what? They still are!

Remember when the Republican majority forced a Democratic filibuster to end by threatening to eliminate the rules permitting filibustering altogether - and ending over 200 years of parliamentary practice in the Senate? Looks different to the minority party, don't it, Senator McConnell? Senator? Mitch? Hello?

what I need: a motto

I came to the conclusion, as I recall, in the car, while running errands, just the other day. I'm pretty sure we were on Geer Road, heading south, dealing with typical Turlock traffic, to wit, gaggles of overlarge SUVs being driven very badly by soccer moms on cell phones, handfuls of little cars with loud mufflers and stereos that shake the whole car and the pavement surrounding driven very badly by 20-something underemployed guys, and Buicks being driven very badly by old people. (Not that I condone stereotyping. In fact, that could be a potential motto: "Officially, I don't condone stereotyping. Unofficially, guys with cars like that are idiots." Eh. Not so much.)

I'm pretty sure we saw a very inane bumper sticker, and decided that this was the (very bad) driver's motto. It might have been the truck with the little cartoon Calvin figure from the long-defunct Calvin & Hobbes strip, peeing onto the words "gun control."

Anyway, choosing a motto, I figure, would be a simple, effective way of advancing my life prospects. It has to be snappy, relevant, and encouraging of the kind of behavior that would advance my life prospects. So "I like cheese," though true, is not a strong contender.

I'll consider contributions from all sources, and meanwhile continue my deliberations here.

So far, I have only one candidate: "You gotta eat." More, I hope, later.

mythical guitar and demi-glace

Yesterday I made the beef stock preparatory to putting together demi-glace, the mother of all sauces. Today we zapped out yet again, to go on a series of errands, including a trip to Turlock's own Ingram Music.

I saw a guitar.

It was a Monroe-Moore (or Moore-Monroe; I'm not familiar with the brand) electric semi-hollow-body, with double cut-aways, like John Lennon's Epiphone Casino.

It was blond, too. It had an action like no guitar I have ever played, perfect balance, and frets so smooth they felt frictionless. The neck actually felt soft.

I tried to look the machine up online, to no avail. Moore-Monroe (or Monroe-Moore; see above; who knows?) doesn't have a website, it seems, and they're known for bluegrass acoustic guitars and mandolins. They also make a fair number of resonator guitars and, I kid not, an acoustic-electric bouzouki. But I didn't see this electric thing anywhere. But nothing on the electric guitar. Nobody has seen this beast, anywhere, except, it seems, Ingram, and me and Lauren.

I called Bobo, who not only owns an encyclopedia of electric guitars, but is also in many ways a walking guitar encyclopedia himself. To quote him: "I got nothing."

Horrors. A guitar Imj hasn't heard of is peculiar enough, nigh onto absurd, in fact. There can be only one conclusion: This guitar does not exist. I could go back to Ingram tomorrow (in fact, am sorely tempted), but it won't be there.

Anyway, I've made exemplary sauce Espagnole, the next step in making demi-glace. It's beef stock, a mirepoix of veggies sauteed in fatback, a roux, and good sherry, reduced down to 1/4 or so of its original volume, all the while skimming fat and other stuff off the surface. Tomorrow I'll be adding this to more sherry and the rest of the stock, reducing that to 1/2 or so of its volume, again with the skimming (always the skimming), and finally into ice trays to make demi-glace ice-cubes.

Demi-glace and electric guitars have a few things in common.

back in the saddle

Despite tear gas, stomped vegetables, and general discombobulation, we're settling back into home. Our first full day back home since Saturday, or would have been, except we took off to Funkytown to re-stock the stores.

I'm settling back into myself, too. This morning I started the dough for rye bread. We hit the road to go pay rent and buy stuff to replace all the stuff we used up so it wouldn't get poisoned (see "tear gas," above), and on the way the subject of brewing a stout came up. We proceeded to the fermentation supply store for the necessaries, whence off to Trader Joe's. There, the idea struck that a pork tenderloin might be the thing to do, which brought to mind immediately (as it does, for me at least) sauce Robert, the ultimate French sauce for pork.

Sauce Robert requires demi-glace, the basic instrument of the hardest of hard-core French sauces. I make my own, a process that takes three days, but at the moment we're out. We'd anticipated this, and nabbed some bones the last time we trekked out to Marin County for meat. These I have roasted and am now simmering away to make the 3 or so quarts of stock that will eventually become a couple pints of demi-glace.

Meanwhile, the rye bread dough rises, and I'm listening to the Penguins game over the internets (as we say around here). Lauren is painting a yellow chrysanthemum-like flower onto the black cosntruction paper "fish tank" in the kitchen, inspired by the flowers we bought today.

Bread, beer, demi-glace, Penguins, art. I'm home.

just a blog before I go

My pal Jim ("The Most Optimistic Man in America," which might be a trademark owned by a large conglomerate, but he doesn't care) Williams used to pun on the word "blog" in the titles of his entries, so this title is sort of an homage.

It's also true: we're bugging out for several days. More properly, we're being bugged out, because the mgmt wants to tent about a dozen units and gas them for termites. I suppose they have the right to do so, but insisting that we wear those armbands is, in my opinion, going too far.

In any event, blogging will be a very low priority during this period. Chances are, I won't have net access where we're staying, and hanging around on campus to post a blog entry seems awfully silly.

We were gonna hafta stay in the Best Western Dank Inn here in Turlock. This had been the only hotel anywhere near the university until just this past year, and rumor has it that the accomodations have in fact driven away candidates for tenure-track positions. But luckily a campus pal, Susan, offered us a place, for which we are highly grateful.

Lauren sings in the Motown Symphony Chorus concert this afternoon; then the bugging out begins.

the state of our onion is strong

After the President's state of the union (approximately) speech, I made dinner: sauteed scallops, and shrimp with lots of garlic and some saffron served over linguine, with salad. I forgot the bread, but oh well. I did decide that while making the salad I should chop up green onions. While chopping I cut a chunk out of the nail on my left index finger, down to the flesh underneath. That's one tough onion.

I'm less sure about the US, though, after hearing the state of the union (in a manner of speaking). I don't recall Bush saying the state of the union (that thing) was strong, which is the traditional statement Presidents make. He didn't say it was weak, either. Should we infer that it's sorta fair-to-middlin'? Or moderately neato, as George Carlin put it? Hunky-dory? Okey-dokey? Blah? What? Damn it, man, speak up!

Actually, I didn't yell that at the TV. No, because we were watching the NHL All-Stars Superskills Competition (TM, in fact), which is far less exciting than you might expect, although Alexander Ovechkin just about fell on his face. I may have yelled a few things at that, or at the President. Who can tell?

yeesh! finally I'm more or less in one piece

After I was sick, I was sick again. Then I was in the middle of restructuring my entire Professional Ethics class, which is good work, but lots of work. So I haven't been blogging.

It's good, every once in a while, to take a course you've been teaching for a while and throw out everything you've used in the class. I suppose. You know, maybe it isn't such a good idea.

Anyway, I was having a blast yesterday preparing the materials on autonomy, its limitations and conditions, and how to respect autonomy understood that way. The articles were fascinating to me: depths of discussion of respect for client autonomy and competing values in social work, nursing, public policy regarding drug-using pregnant women, plus narrative identity, Rawlsian veils of ignorance, existential advocacy - a freakin' cornucopia o' concepts. Delicious!

It was about then that the realization hit me that, as always, my enthusiasm for these ideas would be much greater than my students'. This is natural, I guess. They don't have the context I have to see how challenging these ideas are to some predominant and rather naive conceptualizations of professional responsibility for client autonomy. I tried to share that today, but I don't think I gave it enough emphasis to show the contrast, and how much this set of essays opens these issues.

This is always a problem teaching any philosophy class. It's endemic to teaching philosophy that, on the fly, it's very difficult to convey to students how important it is that an idea or a way of life can be (in an intellectual sense) turned entirely upside down. Truly: from the assumption that clients are autonomous because they can choose from among options presented by professionals, we got to the analysis of the way conditions of need or lack undermine client autonomy. We moved from informed consent to autonomy as the self-direction implied in narrative identities deeply underlying public behavior and statements. I mean to say, whoa.

Then again, maybe some of them just didn't read the stuff because their midterms were due today. That happens, too. We'll see: Wednesday we'll be discussing assertions of the right to assisted dying. If that ain't fun, then maybe I just don't know what fun is!

beach impeach project in San Francisco today

It was chilly out today, so about 1200 people snuggled up and incidentally spelled out IMPEACH!

Yeah, kinda silly, but sometimes the point of a protest action is to have a massive lie-in on the beach, complete, I couldn't help but notice, with 12-string guitars (I think that's a Fender, poor soul).

Also: saw Night at the Museum today, and it was a lot of fun. Ben was on a tight enough leash most of the time, which always helps. Good special effects, underdone, sorta warm-rare, if you dig that.

other news

I bought a bass yesterday, during our trip up to Modesto to pay rent and get groceries from Trader Joe's. It's an OLP MM2, a four-string knock off that seems to have gotten solid reviews online. I have limited bass experience, but I always felt I had an intuitive sense of what to do to play a bassline for the kind of music I'm interested in, so this seems like the right kind of instrument for the task. So soon I'll be posting tracks with basslines. Lauren got a tambourine for Christmas, so now we've got a percussion instrument as well. Now I've got to make this wacko German software work with all these tracks.

sick

Yep, I'm sick.

I switched to the new version of Blogger, for reasons surpassing imagination. But I'm sick.

home at last

Lauren and I left Turlock on Friday the 22nd for L.A. We left L.A. for Detroit on the 26th. We came back to L.A. on the 30th-31st. We stayed up until around 2 this morning talking about music, culture, politics, and hope, concluding yes, perhaps, of course (though ultimately doomed), and yes and no (yes for the planet, nature, cockroaches, individual persons, solidarity, struggle, and creativity, no for the species). We came home from L.A. today. Nuff said.

Got new music for Christmas from my loveliest - Tom Waits' Alice and a new find, a chick named Mirah, that were good eats. I've decided that I want to write the kind of imagery Tom Waits and Kathleen Brennan do. Got a gift card from Allison towards getting a bass, and a hoopy "You can't have too many guitars" t-shirt. My folks bought us some of our airfare to Detroit, which was disgustingly expensive (though oddly and horribly less than my sister paid to fly from Phoenix, a shorter flight, which she booked far earlier).

Down in L.A. I put together a tune for my favorite of their cats, Stella, who only seems to like me and Allison, and whom I always greet by saying "Stelllla! Hey Stelllla!" So that could come online sometime during Winter Term (which, incidentally, starts in two freaking days). Meanwhile, there's a handful of songs up there now from the most recent sessions, at the end of the semester and during finals.

Lancelot is intact. We're intact. I restrung Guinnevere while half-watching the Maple Leafs-Bruins game. I hadn't seen the Leafs yet this year, so I have no idea if this was typical, but they were certainly entertaining. For whatever reason my octave-high G string snapped when I tried to tune it up, but luckily I had a spare.

By the by, I received an invite to link my blog to a site called NHLBloggers. This is odd because I don't particularly blog about hockey - it comes up, like tonight, because I love the game. But it doesn't come up in any systematic way, and if someone followed a link to my little outpouring of teeming meaningless details of my life, I'd think that person would be a little put off.

And so ends this random post. My brain, as of this writing, has the consistency and cognitive power of a bowl of tepid gruel.

NO FUTURE!

I have no idea what this means, but it fills me with a mixture of horror and grim satisfaction that words can not describe. Apparently, Jeb Bush has announced that he has no future, which (of course) immediately brings to mind the Sex Pistols' "God Save the Queen." More irony after we spend a moment contemplating the lyric.

God save the queen her fascist regime
It made you a moron a potential h bomb !

God save the queen she aint no human being
There is no future in englands dreaming

Dont be told what you want dont be told what you need
Theres no future no future no future for you

God save the queen we mean it man (God save window leen)
We love our queen God saves (God save... human beings)

God save the queen cos tourists are money
And our figurehead is not what she seems
Oh God save history God save your mad parade
Oh lord God have mercy all crimes are paid

When theres no future how can there be sin
Were the flowers in the dustbin
Were the poison in your human machine
Were the future your future

God save the queen we mean it man
There is no future in englands dreaming

No future for you no future for me
No future no future for you


Ahhh. So, the story from Reuters says that Jeb Bush told a Spanish-speaking audience that he has no future in politics, basically because brother Dubya screwed the pooch. The Bush clan's power-grab over the last 30 years (going way back to when Bush père was head of the CIA) has culminated in one of the most corrupt and vapid Administrations in US history. And the victim: Jeb. (Jeb was the heir apparent, years ago, but somehow that simian creep from Texas took over the family business. Imagine Christmas with the Bushes this year! Whoof!)

Jeb Rotten lives!

Feh. To hell with these people.

meme: 10 weird things about me

For as long as I've been online, doing the web thing, the email thing, the chat thing, and now the blog thing, I haven't done much of the community thing. One of the community things I haven't done much of is follow a meme. But I've been tapped to follow a meme by my sweetest one, so herewith is my attempt to follow through and provide...

10 Weird Things About Me.

The rules are deceptively simple: "Each player of this game starts off with ten weird things or habits or little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged must write in a blog of their own ten weird things or habits or little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you must choose six people to be tagged and list their names. No tagbacks!"

Caveat #1: As I begin, I'm not sure there even are 10 weird things about me, despite my loveliest's assurance that there are.

Caveat #2: These are not in order of weirdness. Not all of them seem weird to me.

1. I have to eat. I absolutely must eat three meals a day, just about exactly according to the ol' food pyramid (though consuming far less animal protein), or else I feel like complete and total crap.

2. I have lived for 8 or more years in 4 states (Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and California).

3. I played ice hockey for a couple years (sadly only a couple) in Ohio when I was a kid. I played goalie. And I was a holy goddamn terror, though I played for the worst team imaginable (we won 1 game, the first game). I usually saw 30+ shots a game, and usually allowed 4 or 5 goals a game, which gave me the highest goals-against and the highest save percentage in that league. I slashed more ankles than God can count.

4. I own several vintage manual typewriters dating from the 1920s to the 1960s. I love 'em. I wrote a few hundred pages of notes on my dissertation on two of them (and my dissertation was under 200 pages).

5. I floss. You should too, but you don't.

6. From what I've gathered, I was the youngest person ever to complete the requirements for a Ph.D. degree at Duquesne University. I get this second hand. My grad school pal Paul Swift told me that when he filed to complete his Ph.D., the folks in the graduate school told him he was the youngest ever to complete the degree. He finished his the same spring I finished mine, but he was older than me. Q.E.D. Being the youngest, and having a buck and a quarter in your pocket, would get you a bus ride in Pittsburgh.

7. I dream in color, in stereo, lucidly, with taste and smell, and in pure abstract concepts. That last one is what really throws people, perhaps because I can't explain what it's like. Once, when I was reading a hell of a lot of (German philosopher G.W.F.) Hegel for a period of a few days, I dreamed what seemed to be my understanding of the way Hegel makes concepts fit, work, and fight together. It was amazing. I woke up, tried to get some of it down, went back to bed, and in the morning, my notes made (you're expecting this) absolutely no sense whatsoever.

8. I'm terrified of thunder and lightning. More than anything else except vicious homicidal gangsters and my ex-wife, I am stone-cold afraid of thunderstorms. The only thing to do is curl in the fetal position, preferably under the bed, while covered with blankets and cuddling our stuffed bunny or the cat. My fear of thunder and lightning is, as far as I can tell, my only true phobia.

9. My oldest friend, Bob, has been my friend for 32 years. We spent lots of our childhood together in Maumee, Ohio, making ridiculous tape recordings of TV and radio parodies under the auspices of radio station WDUM. Bob was the host of "This Stupid Program," which was (he would say, as the only content to the show) 32 and one-half seconds, even though in fact it only lasted about 12. I wrote ads for products from a conglomerate called Krazy Kooks Inkorporated, which sold flavored puke, manuals on such topics as how to read, and basically anything else that came to mind.

10. Unsightly stains!

The rule is, I have to tag 6 people. There's no rule that they have to participate, but I think if they don't, that means I lose. I'm not sure. Back in the day, memes didn't have rules, you were just in the grocery store and somebody said "where's the beef?!" Newfangled contraptions!

Tag:
Bobo, the Wandering Pallbearer
This Girl I Used To Know
Lancelot
You Gotta Be Kidding You
Bob, whose blog really puts this in perspective
Lascivious Polyphony, aka KOM, because KOM seems to need the boost.

two more new tunes!

Whew. I don't get much chance to record stuff. But here are two more new tunes:

Christina Sorting Records and Raechel's Song.

I'll be getting a round bajillion papers over the next couple days, so we took the opportunity to put down some tracks. A whole freakin' set to come. Cazart!

dumb ads; brain mush

We got TV for hockey season. We watch all the games we can (which aren't many), and The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Hockey games are mainly brought to us by Dodge and by the US Postal Service (or as we call it for reasons too complex to go into at the moment, Ground Chicken). Their ads share in common that they're incredibly stupid.

For the Postal Service, this is no doubt due to the fact that, as a large bureaucratic organization run by the federal government, its decision-making processes are broken. Things are bound to go wrong. In fact, you should consider yourself lucky if your mail arrives at all (although, considering the quality of mail we mainly get, maybe unlucky is the more appropriate feeling). The ads depict inanimate objects speaking in accented voices to one another. In one, the water cooler talks to boxed pairs of high-tops about how the Postal Service will handle sending them. The shoes say it's no problem, as a young female in a postal uniform enters with a clipboard, because "the lady drives a big truck." That there are only four boxes, and that she has to leave her clipboard behind, shows us just how practical and thought-out the whole process actually is. Why in blithering hell does she need a big truck to carry four boxes of high-tops? (I bought a pair of high-tops recently, and there's also no way my high-tops would have fit into one of those boxes. Are they being sent one shoe to a box?)

In the case of Dodge, the stupidity of their ads is definintely central to their sales strategy. The only car advertised during hockey on Versus is the Dodge Nitro. The whole range of dumb Nitro ads is displayed. I hate the one where the guy in the parking lot needing a jumpstart has his car blown sky high by the Nitro giving him the jump. I hate it so much I can barely refrain from screaming at the TV when it comes on. Then there's the one where the Nitro is dropped accidentally from a crane that was lofting it for no reason, and falls through the earth's crust, through a cartoon hell with a cartoon devil and a cartoon monster, arriving unscathed in (of course) China, all to what sounds like a Tom Jones loungesong. I do scream at the TV when that's on, because I am sure that if I don't, the pressure will damage my brain. Here's how clever Dodge really is: these ads are a surefire way to capture the attention of people who would think these were funny situations. That's a particular demographic group: dumb guys. Indeed, the protagonists are all men, the situations are generally manly, and as previously stated, scintillatingly inane. Dodge is cornering the dumb guy market! And marketing execs at Ford and GM are sleepless these days.

These are not the main reasons my brain is mush. I was compelled to comment on them because I am watching the Sabres/Devils game on Versus, because my brain is mush. My brain is mush because I spent 4 hours in committee meetings today. They're important committees, and I'm committed (or committeed) to them, but they mush my brain.

But now, I have to pack a Dodge Nitro in a box, so Ground Chicken can come in a big truck and pick it up.

new tunes!

I recorded a couple tracks today. At least one of these will have a lyric soon, but both of them could be recorded again. I just had a compelling desire to post these.

"It's Usually Tomorrow There" gets its title from something Lauren said to Raechel on the phone, about Australia. The tune had already been written, and I'd been playing it a while, but this seemed like the time to append an arbitrary name on it.

"Looking Down On J St. From The 18th Floor" is not an arbitrary name, because this bit came to mind while I was, in fact, looking down on J St. from the 18th floor.

These aren't the best recordings. I'm working on that, as best I can. I'm not a recording engineer, I'm the philosopher-chef! I roast wisdom! I'm saucier than thou!

what could go wrong?

Recently, CSU Stanislaus received a large donation in exchange for naming the new science building after the donor. During Academic Senate, the question was raised, with no hidden agenda, where the family got their money. No one knew for sure off hand. The questioner then noted that at an institution she'd previously been affiliated with, there was some sort of issue related to the way the family had gotten its wealth, that made the donation a little less than savory.

I wanted desperately to say aloud (but instead muttered sotto voce) "Well, that could never happen here, could it?" Because, near the end of the tenure of our previous president, the university accepted a donation in exchange for naming the gym after a company called DreamLife, which was supposedly a mortgage firm. Well, yesterday the president of DreamLife pleaded guilty to 122 felony counts of fraud. Good times. We sure miss Marvalene around here.

the end is near

The Semester That Wouldn't Die is about to.

At some point, I may write about some of the Internal Turmoil™ and other Serious Stuff™ that made this semester such a treat for my inner masochist. But last night, the more important agenda, after class, was to slough off a massive amount of stress.

Let it be said throughout the land: It's especially difficult to teach Foucault on 2 hours' sleep, because he's dead.

I had to miss yet another meeting yesterday of the University Instituional Review Board, because the board decided to meet on Mondays this semester, when I couldn't come. Today's calendar includes a rollicking Academic Senate meeting, where I'll be called upon to say something intelligent, or at least audible, about the meeting of the ad hoc Committee on Constitutional Amendments. (The CoCA Committee - sing it to the tune of "Copacabana" - met Friday, when I couldn't come, but due to the miracle of Letting Students Run Their Own Group Discussion™ I went anyway.)

It looks like the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (proposed motto: "It beats flipping burgers") may make cultural studies a focus for development, which might mean the formation of a Cultural Studies Committee, which might mean another opportunity for me to be on a committee!

But seriously, no.

In other news, Lauren abides concussive, her main symptoms last night being giddiness, occasional pain and physical disorientation, with a side of unfocused perception. I had a couple concussions as a kid, but I don't remember them well enough to say whether she's on schedule or what. She's reportedly enjoying the experience (at least, the giddy part). Hey, you know what? She should get on a committee!

Michel Foucault: magnificent bastard

Different philosophers' writings strike me very differently. I want to say there's a certain feel to their work, and I want to say that that particular feel is the feeling of their thought. At the same time, I have grave reservations about saying that. If it's folly to declare what some philosopher is really saying, then it's even sillier to say how some philosopher thinks. My ascription of these feelings to the philosophers' works and thoughts might mainly be a description of my experience of reading and thinking about what they wrote. I could make the weaker claim that I'm only describing my experience, but nah, that doesn't sound right. There really appears, somewhere in the relation between the words, my brain, and the brain of the author, something like that philosopher's thinking. We really do get glimpses of that, and it's pretty thrilling when we do. (And some philosophers thrill us more than others for that reason. For me, it's G.W.F. Hegel, Aristotle, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Michel Foucault. As much as I love Jürgen "Mad Dog" Habermas and Edmund "Fast Eddie" Husserl, I don't get that thrill from reading them.)

I'm reading Foucault this afternoon, prepping for Monday night's Theory of Knowledge class. I selected a couple chapters in the first section of Archaeology of Knowledge to read, because I love that book, because most people don't pay as much attention to it, and because I haven't read it in a while. I may be alone in this assessment, but I've always thought it was Foucault's most Foucauldian book. At some points he literally out-Foucaults himself (oooh, but couldn't that be a multi-layered pun), for instance, when he criticizes his own earlier work for being somewhat naive. He gets there by doing the thing that makes me so excited about Foucault, a feeling I describe sometimes as walking a tightrope, and sometimes as perversion. And if that says more about me than about Foucault, I'm fairly sure he'd think that was highly amusing, and so would I.

The tightrope: Foucault uses the phrase "neither... nor" a bajillion times in this book, tracing out the narrow path he's following. His attempt to account for discourses of knowledge requires him to deny himself ground, foundation, or, really, justification. He lays bare how discourses follow immanent rules in forming objects, but the complex relations that lead to those objects' formation are not to be confused with the objects themselves. So he's not performing a kind of Marxist de-fetishizing of objects. He also denies himself the phenomenological option of returning to the things. He also denies himself the option of linguistic analysis. It's not clear he has a method, or could have a method, for doing this. In the book, he is attempting to say what that method is, but it's more of a denial of method than a theory.

Perversion: If you apply that non-method to his own work, it becomes evident that either it's impossible for Foucault to explain how he does it, or it's impossible for him to actually be doing it, or both. And he leaves you there. This is rather alarmingly like certain kinds of SM play, and it thrills me immensely. It does feel to me very playful, about as playful as a philosopher can get, and not only perfectly in keeping with the content of this book, but also with what I ascribe to Foucault as his way of approaching his work and his life. That self-consistency, and the way that self-consistency impels him to be self-inconsistent in this book, is nothing short of kinky. (It's well-documented that Foucault was a pervert. I'm not referring to his homosexuality, but to his very bizarre sexual practices, which, sadly, almost certainly led to his early death. And yes, I adore the fact that Foucault was a pervert, and adore him for having been a pervert. That means I like perverts, I suppose - at least, those who don't deliberately harm anyone.)

One of the oddest things about Foucault's work, and one that led me to pick Archaeology of Knowledge instead of the more likely suspect The History of Sexuality is that The History of Sexuality is less kinky. In fact, it's hardly kinky at all, in the way Archaeology of Knowledge is. I think by then he'd formulated a more theoretically grounded method, and although it's also a great book and fun to read, to me it's just a little less of a thrill.

Foucault would reject all this, of course. To analyze his discourse as though it were his would make very little sense to the author of Archaeology of Knowledge. To him, discourse isn't a phenomenon of expression but of discursive relations that issue subject positions in the context of various institutional sites. As an occupant of such positions, there may be a "Foucault," but that's not to be confused with the French pervert who died in 1984. So you see, Foucault - the Foucault that Foucault would want me to say I'm describing - really is a bastard. Woo-hoo! Cheezy Petes, I love this stuff!

Stockton Thunder 3, Long Beach Ice Dogs 1

Long Beach looked flat in the first period, and were outshot through the game nearly 3 to 1, something like 38 to 13. Stockton skated faster, played a very good puck-control, aggressive game, and never really let up. Their best player, Mike Lalonde, scored a goal and assisted on another, on his birthday.

We went to a couple Thunder games last year, and I was impressed with how disorganized their play was. This year is completely different, perhaps because most of the team was overhauled (in third-tier pro hockey, there's a pretty high level of turnover in personnel, as you might expect). A couple of their defensemen were notably good, one for being solid, big, in position, and good at making opposing players sit down suddenly (Tim O'Connell), the other for being very smart and moving the puck well but not being big enough to make all of his ideas become realities (Jeff Lang). But Lauren and I were most impressed tonight with Liam Reddox, all 5-10 180 pounds of him, because he has attributes we both adore in hockey players - speed, aggression, and (Lauren's particular proclivity) diminutiveness.

Fun stuff. We were three rows behind the team benches, at exactly center ice (my seat straddled where the red line would be). $16 seats - nearly the most expensive. Yep, I go all out, spare no expense. When we go again, we're going to try for seats one or two rows behind where we were, to get a slightly higher perspective on play.