May Day, May Day

As if to prove the rule from yesterday’s post, today’s headlines included “U.S. airstrike kills top Qaeda agent in Somalia” and “Car bomb kills at least 9 in Baghdad; U.S. troops kill 18 militants.” How smart our bombs—how intelligent their design!—must be to only kill “militants” and “insurgents” but never a single “civilian” or “freedom fighter.” Or even a single American soldier. (You have to love the grafted-together nature of the second headline, as if to call further attention to the us vs. them nature of the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.) Yet the dangerous statistics remains: over half of all war fatalities are women and children. Perhaps we need a new math to go along with our new language and new logic. And new extra-judicial killings in the name of justice.

On a more “peaceful” note, the tit-for-tat political posturing between DC and Minsk has escalated: the US has closed its embassy in Minsk and has ordered Belarus to close its embassy and all consulates here. Everyone sing along: There’s no diplomacy like no diplomacy, like the no diplomacy I know.

I wonder how many questions on the standardized (yet altogether lacking standards) TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills) test this week will deal with such issues. How many will even concern the topic of May Day, a day that commemorates the benefits of labor? One glorious benefit from this less-than-glorious revolution in education: the golden opportunity to read such priceless statements like this from my college-level philosophy course essays: “This makes me wonder what will we enlighten our people on next?” It does make one wonder, no?

I (modestly, of course) propose enlightening “our people” on patriotism:

“What, then, is patriotism? ‘Patriotism, sir is the last resort of scoundrels,’ said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman.” [from Emma Goldman’s essay “Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty”]

On this note, I bid all working peoples of the world a blessed day of rest. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” And God bless Saint Emma.

Ask me no more questions...

Here's an excerpt of an email I received from a friend a few weeks ago. (And yes, I do keep emails in my inbox for several weeks at a time: one never knows when one will actually take the time to respond.)

How did the gym go? Is your little ass worked off now? I hope not! I happen to adore your ass! (In a friendly way of course! I'm a Democrat, so I adore all asses....) Actually, have I ever told you that you have the coolest walk of anyone I know? Seriously you do.... It's like molten metal moving, like a Richard Serra being made right before your very eyes, and yet it's also graceful, but not so graceful that it doesn't suggest just a bit of "don't fuck with me." ...It's the best, really....

Of course, everything she wrote is absolutely true. In fact, Richard (as in Richard Serra) often designs his sculpture after watching hours of video of me just walking. It's true! I have an inspirational ass! An ass full of inspiration ... and a few other things as well: deflated soccer balls, lost Frisbees, an old box of Girl Scout cookies....

Now, of course, is the time for me to spend several more hours on my ass as I write and write and write all the necessary final projects for my classes as well as grade all those essays, quizzes, and exams. Thankfully I've been hitting the gym fairly faithfully for the past couple of weeks, just to give myself a much needed and deserved break from continual warfare (aka "my jobs"). And so my ass won't embiggen itself from all the sitting.

Note to self: buy a decent chair as soon as the semester ends. It's starting to kill my ass!

I can't believe it's not Tuesday...

My calendar tells me it's spring break this week, despite the fact that spring doesn't begin for a another week and that over my "break" I have to write a midterm exam for my students, re-evaluate the grades for a handful of not my students, organize and type reading notes over several books and articles, begin research on my next essay due in two weeks, read a text for my Reading Group, and try to find time to begin reading another text that I put down a month ago and should've finished by now. Fuck spring break!

Tonight some friends and I are heading to Denton to hear some bands play at Rubber Gloves: WHY?, Cryptacize, Sunburned Hand of the Man, and Astronautalis. The band I'm most interested in is WHY?, meaning it's going to be way past my bedtime before they take the stage. (Please remember that I have at least three diagnosed sleeping disorders before you judge me an old, useless man. Which reminds me: I should try to take a little nap before going out.)

Last Thursday we had two inches of snow, and today the temperature is above 70. The forecast for the next few days should see us in the 80s. I try not to dread the summer coming on, but it's really what I do best. How did I manage to live in Texas for as long as I have?

A game I play with people who look ridiculous and sad: "What bad decisions led you to this?" The game consists in seeing someone ridiculous, sad, disgusting, ugly, unlovable, etc., and asking under my breath the question: "What bad decisions led you to this?" If I were to play this game with myself, I'm not sure even I could win. And I'm the one that invented the rule.

Now it's time to go back to my sweaty spring break (that is no break at all) and try to take a nap so I won't be entirely useless when my band comes on sometime around tomorrow morning.

A bad case of the hollows.

Yeah, this band is rad. I love new music that gets under my skin. Angry words about how fucked-up stuff is. Makes me wanna burn it all down. Singing at the top of my lungs … before I cough up a ball of phlegm the size of my head. Calls me back to Berlin, to that basketball court where it all began. At 11:11 (or was it 3:32?) last night I fell asleep only to wake up within 20 minutes. I read some Gadamer. Watched porn. Went back to bed more frozen than when I first laid down. Sometime around 2:00am I woke up to the sound of Spic-O-Rama, but without that adorable John Leguizamo. I dialed 9-1-1 on speed-dial to report the disturbance. Today’s shot. Tomorrow probably too. It’s now 4:00pm, and I’m only thinking about the things I should’ve already done by now instead of the things I have to do next. Can’t use the sink downstairs because of the leak. Don’t know when I’m going to get back to the gym that overcharges me on a monthly basis. Sick of the scams all utility companies pull with new service contracts. The bruises up and down my arms have finally faded from the boxes and boxes of books I moved. Ordered two new books from Amazon today. Eventually I’ll bruise myself by moving them as well. Benjamin’s greatest fear was losing his library. Before I slip away into nonbeing, I wanna pile everything I still possess into a gasoline-soaked mound and flick a match in its general direction. Just to see what would happen. Dreading Friday. Not because it’s my birthday but because it’s the anniversary of when the sky over Texas caught fire and rained down on our heads. Dead astronauts and all.

Listen when your hair gets pulled. Don’t get caught. It’s gonna be alright. As soon as the embers die.

As I lay me down to fall asleep
with my demons dying and my pilot light weak.
I curse the last six months I’ve been hiding behind a mustache.
To those last ten years I’ve been howling at a paper moon: Fuck you.

The New 30

I think it’s fairly telling that I should lose my earrings just a couple of weeks before I turn 40. I had to remove them at the doctor’s office while they were taking an EKG. I wanted to get my heart a little look-see since midlife is fast approaching. I put them in my shirt pocket, joking with the nurse that I couldn’t remember the last time I had removed them. Afterwards, I sat at Nodding Dog Coffee Shop in Bishop Arts for an hour working since I haven’t had an Internet connection since Friday afternoon and I’m supposed to be teaching an online section of philosophy this term. When they closed, I returned to the old apartment to do some more gathering of my things to move them to the new flat. It seems most of our things are finally here, and there are even some books already on the bookshelves! Today we finally got phone and DSL. (And AT&T sucks absolutely, but that’s another post altogether.) It must’ve been while I was cleaning and packing that my earrings slipped out. Perhaps I’ll find them when I go back for that last transport of framed art and a vacuum cleaner. So, my heart is healthy. The doctor said I have the heart of an athlete. That’s good news, especially since both my maternal grandfather and my father died of heart disease. No diabetes. No high blood pressure. And he’ll send me the results from the thyroid tests once they return from the lab. Another year. Another decade. Another (new) home. (It wasn’t until we were saying goodbye to Mary that I realized I spent my entire 30s at my last home: I moved in when I was 29, and I just now left—not counting a couple of years in Japan and Europe.) My 30s were good, and so much better than my 20s. I’m looking forward to the future, no matter how short that may prove. This is probably the first time in 17 years that I don’t have any of my rings in any of my 7 holes. I miss body jewelry. I miss the sleepless nights that turned into blissful decadence instead of exhaustion. Now it’s off to bed. Or to work.

What part of “don’t fuck with me” do you not understand?

I’m fairly mild-mannered as I move through my days. And although patience is not one of my virtues—blame my sonofabitch father for passing along that characteristic—years of meditation, qigong, and deep thinking all play a part in keeping my heart rate lowered while confronting “difficulties.” I’m never a dick … unless pushed to extremes. And yesterday I had to rely quite heavily on my coolness as I encountered several people bent on pissing me off.

Eating at Luby’s always stresses me out: I’m never quite sure which (or how many) sides to order. And the servers are rarely under sixty and (even less) display any serenity of their own. The first woman behind the counter didn’t grasp my order of coleslaw (pronounced “coleslaw”), so she ended up repeating it three times before finally spooning some in a bowl for me. Not too much of a problem, but it was enough to put me on edge for the next station.

My order: mashed potatoes. The server grabbed a plate with a huge chunk of pork on it and began slinging mashed potatoes. I asserted, “That’s not my plate.” Most people who know me know I haven’t eaten meat in 22 years. Since the server didn’t know me from Meat-Eater Marvin, I could certainly understand (and overlook) her mistake. But then she scraped the mashed potatoes back into the serving bowl and started slamming dishes around.

The next server asked what else I wanted, and before I ordered broccoli, I looked the previous woman straight in her 65-year-old face and said, “I could use a little less attitude.”

It was enough to make Stephen’s day, I think. He was still laughing about it later at night. The best part about it for me was that I said what I wanted to say, what needed to be said, and then let it go. Usually I’m worked up afterwards, but I was fairly calm while eating my coleslaw (pronounced “coleslaw”), (angry) mashed potatoes, and broccoli—hold the attitude.

After a stressful first day back on campus, filling out paperwork, meeting with students, attending orientation at the college, commuting for more than an hour, dealing with Surly Magpie at Luby’s, and trying to move into an new place, I was looking forward to relaxing a little once I got home.

At some time around 10:45pm, the flipping Filipinos—since I don’t know any racial slurs for Filipinos—started vacuuming. That is a common occurrence, and an issue that has been addressed by both the old management as well as the new. Since the last time I had to walk upstairs to tell them how to be decent neighbors and instead had a door closed in my face (after I was forced to knock three times before they deigned to answer), I decided I was above such face-to-face confrontations. So instead I crawled under our building and turned their electricity off. Fuck you, stupid fucks! Start making unnecessary noise when I’m getting ready to sleep and you’ll stumble your ass around in the dark.

Needless to say, I slept like a baby until about 6:00am, when I turned their electricity back on. Oh, did I say, “Fuck you”?

California Dreamin'

Just a week after returning to the States from Europe I had already had enough of Dallas and crap at the university.... Or at least I knew I was going to have already had enough, so Stephen organized a blissful weekend away to San Francisco (while I was still in Germany) since he and Kris were going to be there for work. And Jola is there.... So many wonderful people I care so deeply about in a wonderful city by the ocean. I read chapters in the U.S. history textbook for the class I TA for on the flight, so technically it was a working vacation.... Anyway, here are some of the photos of that most relaxing getaway (where gallons of coffee were drunk at Bazaar Cafe, we sat through an hour-long reflexology session, did qigong (as well as napped) in the sand on the beach, and ate incredibly delicious meals at ethnic restaurants throughout the city. I guess gluttony is yet another form of relaxation....).

Bullet-Point Friday

• Ah, the last of the Bullet-Point Fridays!
• I started this segment when I returned from Germany and began the fall semester just to ensure that throughout the long and difficult term I would sit down at least once a week and post something on my blog. And now it’s almost over.
• Well, not quite: I still have to submit another essay Monday. My research on the Redon painting has been fairly interesting, but—ohmygod!—I have no energy to just sit down and pound it out. I wrote about half of it Thanksgiving Day. While most of my compatriots were stuffing turkey down their throats, I was fasting and writing—what I tend to do best on that holiday. And I spent more than three hours at the museum Wednesday, so I have plenty of information to write about. Just tired.
• I exhausted myself with the first essay due before Thanksgiving. And thankfully that proved to be worth the effort. My professor wrote that I was “gifted.” (And I’ve hence decided to start a “Gifted & Talented” program for my Ph.D. curriculum! Too bad few of my colleagues will meet the requirements….) Of course, I started the research and reading on the flight to Germany last July, so it’s fairly accurate to say that I’ve done some serious thinking about my topic over the past 4½ months.
• Perhaps I will start my Bullet-Point Fridays again come January. But I think I’ll change the name: no good ever came from bullets. And “bullet points” imply a reduction and a leveling that I hope to never be guilty of.
• I submitted my translation portfolio for the term this morning. I feel like after the first draft I was no longer doing translation but merely leveling, making the text palatable to the pack of illiterate philistines who were in the class with me. After several classmates complained that one particular sentence was “hard to understand,” I declared, “Perhaps I should just translate it back into Polish, and then we’ll see how well you understand it!” If nature abhors a vacuum, then I’m certain she would indeed hate my classmates as much as I do.
• So, it’s time to go to bed. I still have so much more work to do over the next couple of weeks: exams to write and grade, essays to grade, grades to submit. And my winter break is quickly filling up with things wanting to be done and read. (And I’ll try to write so much more consistently throughout the week that Bullet-Point Fridays will be unnecessary.)

Bullet-Point Friday

• Today is Labor Thanksgiving Day in Japan. After (only) two years in Japan I still have no idea what that means or what is celebrated. But I was always thankful to have the day off from teaching.
• When did the day after the US Thanksgiving start being referred to as “Black Friday”? It seems like I’ve heard that phrase before, but it’s only been over the past couple of years. What a horrible thing this over consumption is: people feeling as if they have to buy gifts for one another, a nation’s entire economy based solely on over consumption and reckless spending for a so-called Christian holiday, and then the utterly useless news reports about over consumption and greed and then the interviews with poor people who can’t afford to buy what they want for their children and then the interviews with self-proclaimed shop-oholics or compulsive buyers! It’s enough to make me run screaming, especially when the soundtrack to this shopping season—tinny carols about some Jewish baby born in modern-day Palestine—comes over the PA!
• In honor of the Japanese holiday, I declare myself thankful to be counted among those who labor to make this world a (little) better place.
• I always enjoy teaching Marx in my classes. When I taught government, I would spend about a week on political ideologies, slowly introducing socialism in small doses until the majority of my students would insist on knowing why we in the gloriously free United States didn’t fully embrace Marx’s philosophy. I had a similar experience teaching Marx in my philosophy course a couple of weeks ago. One student exclaimed, “I’m poor, and I don’t see anything wrong with what he’s saying!” Another student questioned, “Why were we taught that he was the enemy?” My answer: “Why don’t you write your president and ask him?” I’m all about pushing the limits.
• There is no free market economy. It’s a lie and a myth and a delusion all rolled into one. A free market economy in principle would not allow monopolies to exist, would not insure bank deposits, would not bail out corporate failures, etc. etc. The only good thing about the US economy is all of the Marxist-inspired policies we have implemented to protect consumers and workers and the public. And we have a long way still to go.
• "The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
• My favorite new story this evening: the First Baptist Church of Dallas was robbed last night (on Thanksgiving Day). The thieves got away with eight plasma televisions plus a lot of other crap. I think God’s message this holiday: stop watching your fucking TVs when you’re supposed to be worshipping me! (I wonder if Homeland inSecurity will come knocking on my door if I declare that any church that has eight plasma televisions deserves to burn.)

Bullet-Point Friday

• Thumb drive? Check. I do, after all, need to record the grades of the precious students enrolled in the US history course I TA for.
• Stack of history quizzes? Check. I finished grading them over breakfast this morning, but I told my professor I wanted to re-evaluate a couple of them just to ensure I’m being fair (and consistent), so I’ll return them Monday. I’m still a bit perplexed by one student’s response: “Truthfully, I have no idea of what I should write because I haven’t read the book just yet. Fortunately [sic], there isn’t a way for me to pass this class having failed two of the last tests.” It continues for a couple of pages. I don’t like this conflicting sympathy-annoyance I suffer from: I really am too sensitive at times to be a professor, but I also work ridiculously hard for my courses, even the ones that only annoy me and waste my time. (After my last presentation, there was a hush before the professor exclaimed, “That was a damned good protocol!” I felt like crying, relieved after putting myself under that much pressure for a two-page paper.) But, of course, I’m not a freshman too lazy to read the assignment. (If I skip a required text, I have some deep-seated reason … usually. And I always make sure it’s one I won’t be tested over.)
• Sophie’s World? Check. I read it originally back in the fall of ’97 in Japan. When I moved into my apato, it was one of the few books left by a prior occupant. Because it was in English, I read it. I was annoyed because of its overly contrived narrative. I cringe when I feel like someone is trying to trick me into being educated. Now it’s a required text for my introduction to philosophy course I teach at the community college downtown. I had/have no say in the matter. But after drinks Tuesday evening with my brighter-than-average colleagues, I just may finally stop hating this book. Both of them swore that it was a more-than-suitable text for an introductory course. I’ll trust them (since they are so painfully freaking intelligent). Lesson learnt: stop fighting the flow and see what there is to learn instead of overly complicating things.
• Knitted skullcap? Check. In the mornings here, the temperature has been quite a bit more tolerable: in the mid-40s. It’s almost as if things are starting to cool down like they’re supposed to this time of year. In Poland I would’ve already had several days of snow by now.
• Crappy Apple laptop? Check. Thankfully it isn’t a problem connecting to the wireless here at this college campus (where I spend my “free days” writing, working, and doing research). I wonder how many other people here aren’t really supposed to be here? I spend more time at this school than I do at either the campus where I teach or the campus where I’m a student. But no one’s ever asked to see my identification or to justify my presence. At least I finally started bringing my own computer instead of using the one’s in the library.
• Internal (and upcoming) deadlines? Check. One paper due Wednesday. Another portfolio/project due on the 30th. And a final paper/presentation on December 3rd. Final exams in history to grade; five-page essays and final exams in philosophy to grade; eternal and continual paperwork to endure for classes taught as well as taken. Yes, I’m almost done with this term. But now I have to buckle down in order to check these things off. One by one.
  

Northern Latitude Dreaming

Instead of just sitting still long enough to grade 39 quizzes in US history over my break/office hour I've instead read through a couple of blog posts, did a search for Joris-Karl Huysmans' novel À rebours at my university's library (we have several copies), and ate a 280-calorie dark chocolate "energy" bar. I've holed up on the 5th floor of the library, sitting next to a window from where I can see--apart from a few office buildings in the distance and a handful of cars in the parking lot--a line of trees running alongside the western creek on campus. I seem to have caught fall fever: I don't want to be in love or run naked in nature. Instead, I'd really prefer to wrap up in some warm clothes in front of a fire somewhere and read a good book (perhaps Huysmans' novel) with a warm drink and even warmer cats. Considering this is Texas and today's high is in the mid-80s, it is unlikely I will get to have this experience any time soon. Even the promised thunderstorms don't seem to be on their way.

I have slightly more than a week to complete my term paper over Celan, about two weeks before submitting my final drafts for the translation workshop, and maybe three weeks before my project on Redon is due. Then there's final exams in US history to grade and then finally my final for philosophy is scheduled for December 11th. Now if only I can get through these damned 39 quizzes to set the rest of the term in motion. Ah, December! when life comes due.

Bullet-Point Friday

• I had my first setback in about a month or so after beginning my new insomnia medications: I couldn't get to sleep Tuesday 'evening' until about 2:00 am (Wednesday morning). Now I'm still recovering from that episode. The only thing I can figure out that was in the least bit different was that I drank a Dr. Pepper at 3:30 that afternoon. It was the first soda I've had in two months, and the only reason I drank it was because I 'won' it by filling out a survey about alcohol use on campus. From now on, I will only drink water (and alcohol) on campus. Perhaps I need to 'update' my responses on the survey.
• I skipped working yesterday afternoon and instead spent about 90 minutes at the YMCA. I felt I needed a break from the multitude of assignments and projects after working almost nonstop Wednesday afternoon/evening until about 9:00 pm. Yea: endorphins are my friends! (Unlike Dr. Pepper.)
• I'm taking another 'break' this afternoon: we're going to the Texas State Fair. I know I'm going to spend all weekend working, so I might as well try to have a little bit of fun while I can. Besides, I spent my morning office hours grading exams.
• I'm excited about my books from Amazon being shipped: Gadamer, Jabes, and Plato. God, am I a dork or what? I used to be one of the cool kids (at least as an undergraduate), but now I'm quite the stuffy old graduate student surrounded by books ... and very few friends. (Even Dr. Pepper is not to be trusted.)
• Perhaps Tiny Tim (or is it Tiny Tina these days?) can bring a little joy back to my life.
  

Observance

Today, on Columbus Day (Observed) I’m sitting through a lecture on early American history—yeah, academic calendars don’t quite match up to national holidays. (When I was at UD—boo! hiss!—I was told that we would not be off on Labor Day because “we are not laborers.”)

But today, I too feel like Columbus: discovering something that millions of people already knew about. (Thanks, Lisa Simpson!) My discovery: I need a break from sitting through lectures and spending far too many hours in front of a computer doing research and writing.

A modest proposal for renaming the day observed today:

• Stolen Continent Day
• Genocide Day
• Taino Heritage Day
• European Legacy Day (celebrating the effects of smallpox and “conquista”)

Indeed, perhaps we all should just walk backward into the ocean….

Visual Culture

After a relatively short run-through of the DMA this afternoon, I came up with the following six contenders for my project in Visual Culture. I'm really not ecstatic about any of them: I would much rather write about the work of someone I know a little bit about, like Anselm Kiefer or Magda Abakanowicz, but we've already been scolded for choosing only recent subjects (from the last 30 years). Since I have no interest in recreating the canon, I thought about either an Asian or pre-Columbian work, but I didn't find anything today that grabbed me. These six, despite being fairly canonical--hell, they're hanging in a Dallas museum!--caught my eye; plus I thought I'd be able to say something new and interesting about each of them, assuming that someone else hasn't already exhausted these works.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing's The Singer, 1924

Arthur Garfield Dove's Up the Alley, 1938

Edward Hicks' The Peaceable Kingdom, c. 1846-47

Max Liebermann's At the Swimming Hole, 1875-78

Odilon Redon's Initiation to Study - Two Young Ladies, c. 1905

Paul Serusier's Celtic Tale, 1894

Bullet-Point Friday

• Stop having those miniature emotional outbursts (read: breakdowns) when you translate sentences like, "The baby with the head like a balloon died in the hospital while she held his hand," or you're never going to finish this translation assignment by Monday. Tochman's reportage is difficult enough without getting emotionally involved with the people he writes about. Besides, you'll have plenty of time to cry after you finish the Ph.D. when you find yourself even more unemployable.
  
• I have to admit that I hate Apple more and more. Their software is utterly non-intuitive and buggy. I feel the vein in my forehead start to throb and my right eye begin to twitch every time that damned spinning rainbow mouse icon appears because that usually signals that I'll soon have to reboot. And why, oh why, can't they not release iTunes updates every fucking week? (Or when they do, make it smart enough to not require that I have to delete all the old shortcuts and add new ones?) And how much longer will it take me to figure out how to add Polish and Japanese fonts to this PowerBook? I've been trying for a couple of weeks so far with no luck whereas I had no problem with all my PC machines. (And yes, I've visited all the help sites and have downloaded various fonts packages, and yet still I can only type in the Devil's language (read: English).)
• Offer to take Jason to the Stevie Nicks' concert next time she plays Dallas. Hell, if he is interested in spending his birthday listening to Tori Amos wail away at the piano, then he's got to be a fan of the spinning lace and chiffon of that witchy-witchy woman with the soul of a poet.
• Remember the pure bliss of sitting at all those coffee shops in San Francisco just last weekend with Jola, Kris, and Stephen with no agenda, no plan, and no anxiety about the sheer immensity of my insurmountable workload waiting for me back in Dallas. That was the best (and most necessary) get-away of all times.
  

Bullet-Point Friday

• Don't stress out about misplacing/losing my debit card. With lack of sleep and new drugs and several frustrating factors worming their way into my otherwise sedate and calm life, I'm bound to lose more than a little plastic card along the way, especially when my wallet has barely recovered from the move back into my Texan life. I've narrowed down possible places I could've left it: the ATM, doctor's office, the college, the university, Fadi's restaurant, my office, my classroom, the faculty office, the copy room, the car, Starbucks in the basement of the Bank of American bldg. downtown, my home, or (perhaps worst of all) my wallet.
• Don't cry out loud. Keep it inside; learn how to hide your feelings. (This Melissa Manchester moment was brought to you by the letter J and the number 3.)
• Drink strong coffee while having even stronger conversations with Jola and Stephen while enjoying the cool afternoon in San Francisco starting this afternoon until Sunday afternoon.
• Write that short bio my boss asked me for three weeks ago, and begin looking at the teaching schedule for the spring '08 term.
• Accept the vajra when it strikes as it is always already striking yet again.
  

Simple Things

It really is the simple things that make life worth living. The complicated shit only makes me mad.

I’ve been spending much more time at the local YMCA. Lately I’m exercising at least five times a week, mostly there but also sometimes in the neighborhood. I’ve even been much more able to engage in the senseless chitchat with the woman behind the counter at the Y. I think it’s funny she wished me a happy fathers’ day and then asked if my father was still alive. Do I not exude the fatherly vibe myself? Am I (visibly) at that age where fathers typically die off?

I’ve been diligently reading since the spring term ended, preparing for the courses I’ll be taking as well as those I’ll be teaching this fall. I’ve read some really hard books. I wonder why all knowledge always comes in book format? To study music, you have to read books about music. To study art, you have to read books about art. I’m beginning to hate books more and more.

I’ve been slacking when it comes to studying German on my own. I’ve only gotten through the first six lessons in the Pimsleur program. Last summer I’d gotten through the entire Russian I course (30 lessons) in the same amount of time and had began Russian II. I hope my dedication comes back once I’m actually sitting in class in Germany next month.

Tomorrow I’m returning all the books I’ve checked out to the university library. I have eleven. And the Pimsleur German CDs. I need to get them back since I’ll be gone when it’s time to renew them online. And when I return, the fall semester will already be in its second week.

Today, the CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports on assassination plots, secret drug testing, and spying on Americans. That’s nothing: you should see the secret reports I keep on the government.

What’s in heavy rotation on my iPod this week: “North American Scum” by LCD Soundsystem, “Everyman Everywoman” by Yoko Ono w/ Blow Up, “Hammering in My Head” by Garbage, “Girlfriend is Better” by Talking Heads, “Bump!” by Nylon Room, and “Guilt is a Useless Emotion (Mac Quayle Vocal Mix)” by New Order. Maybe I should write a book about it.

snocap (songs for sale) + sale

Here's a sweet deal for anyone interested: buy 3 tracks from snocap (or any other online vendor) and I'll send you either the Caelum Moor or the Digital Tsar CD (your choice). You can check out the links in the sidebar to the left for more info about the CDs. And you'll have to email your mailing address to me.

Please help me clean out my closet and reduce my inventory all at the same time! Sale ends May 31, 2007.

Easy on the Eyes

I never claimed to be all that professional when it came to being a professor. In fact, there have been several times when I complained about individual students right here on this very blog. I intend to do that again now. Well, actually, I just want to make a few comments.

Despite whatever inappropriate things I may write here, it would still never be any less appropriate than the comments on one student’s final exam yesterday: “I respect your knowledge. Your [sic] also easy on the eyes. Thanks!” Now am I to assume that this student intended to declare, “You’re also easy on the eyes,” or did this student instead forget to write a word between “Your” and “also”? Did this student mean to include “face” in this declaration? Perhaps “ass”? “Clothes” maybe? Whatever. As long as something is easy on said student’s eyes, that’s all that matters, I guess.

Here’s a silly-gism—not to be confused with a formal syllogism from logic—that one student included in an answer on the final: “Plato is a man; Plato is mortal; therefore, Plato is a man.” I’m still laughing. What a lovely tautology! Another student chose to use mathematical notation to get the same point across: “a=b, b=c, c=c” with no “if,” “then,” or “therefore” and absolutely no logic. It’s the little things that mean so much to an underpaid professor.

Now it’s time to enjoy this so-called spring break (yes, three weeks before spring begins!) by reading as much as I can and getting back to the gym (which I’ve neglected while teaching these past three weeks). I’d hate to be hard on the eyes, after all.

Preview

Here we are at the lull before the final maelstrom. I’ve already taught the past two weekends (17 hours; Friday, Saturday, and Sunday), and I have one more weekend to go. But this last mega-session for the mini-semester is my favorite, beginning with Symbolism and working our way up to the current year. I spend 1/3 of the term on the last 100 years after cramming in everything from the Big Bang and the evolution of humankind up to the year 1900. During the first two weekends, I give them the bases for everything they think and believe, and in the last few hours I take it all away. Plus I get to talk about Le Pétomane and Cloaca. You know your college tuition money is well spent when the professor talks about shitting and farting! When my introduction to the humanities course ends Sunday I’ll have an entire week to work ahead for my own classes. I hope to finish the required readings by the end of the month so I can devote all of April to writing my two term papers and finishing my translation projects.

Next three performances I plan to attend: Kitchen Dog Theater’s production of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck; Rickie Lee Jones at the Lakewood Theater; and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6.

Alright, that’s enough for now. I have to go clean up cat vomit. (Yes, this entry did revolve around shit, puke, and flatulence. Good times.)