Billie J. Pilgrim

i moved

2009-11-22T19:57:00.000-06:00

http://temporarilygrounded.wordpress.com/

Deep breaths...

2008-12-18T10:16:00.000-06:00

And off we go.

An update (see Nov. 15 post)

2008-12-14T10:23:00.003-06:00

I'm leaving Madison in 32 4 days. Between now and then I have to buy the remaining things I need for the trip, pack my backpack, put the rest of my belongings into storage, buy my Christmas presents, ~~figure out my health insurance~~, ~~defer my loans~~, ~~celebrate Thanksgiving~~, ~~grade 53 student papers~~, proctor my students' exam, grade 53 student exams, ~~write~~ revise a short story, and write ~~two~~ one term papers.

Breathe.

Signs I know the semester is ending / I am in a bad place

2008-12-13T23:14:00.000-06:00

1. I actually purchase and finish an entire cup of coffee in one day

2. However, I don't actually need coffee to wake up in the morning, because the panic takes care of it

3. During the last several hours of sleep in the morning, I dream about oversleeping and not having time to do something important

4. I am wearing my college sweatshirt almost every day, and I pretty much never wash it

5. Still working at 3 am does not seem at all ridiculous

6. I find myself strategically planning which night this week will be my all-nighter

7. The word "meals" could in no way apply to how I eat throughout the day

8. I am blogging

This seems like an Erinn project

2008-12-10T13:35:00.000-06:00

On my last backpacking trip (also with Kevin, also to South America) I did not take an iPod. It was a more innocent, more austere time. Neither did I have such luxuries as I will now be taking, like a personal pillow (compressible), or patterned clothing (for some reason I thought if I were stuck with the same clothes for 2 months, they should be as bland as possible--this was dumb). But back to the iPod. I've never packed an iPod on a long trip, and I've also never "packed" an iPod... aka, pre-selected tunes for months of future listening. The real trouble is that I'm only taking a shuffle, which only holds 200 songs. I mean, I have to preserve some illusion of hardship on the road. But making such a pared-down music list is posing some real quandaries.

My first instinct is to use up these slots with my top 20 albums. But maybe not. Maybe I should only include 15 albums to make room for stand-alone songs. But if you think choosing only 20 albums out of all the ones you have is hard, try choosing just 50 songs. And when do you make the call to pick a song but not its album? For instance, I love the song "The Dogs of Buenos Aires" by Mirah (and it's fortuitously applicable to our trip), but while several other songs on the album are also good, the entire album falls well below my top 20.

Do I go with my absolute, fixed, all-time top 15 albums, or do I shoot for a mix of stand-bys and new contenders? A list of all stand-bys could prove disappointingly... familiar. But can I really justify axing Modest Mouse's The Moon and Antarctica just to take a chance on something newer?

Do I include things that I'm obsessed with right now, or do I try to predict what I might be sick of in a few months' time? I'm all about the soundtrack to The Motorcycle Diaries these days (again, topical), but what if this is a phase that will run out in a matter of weeks? What if my obsession is particular to the fact that I'm getting ready for the trip?

Do I go for the pleasure index, or shoot for re-listenability? Life In Cartoon Motion by Mika is one of my favorite albums over the last couple of years, because every time I listen to it it makes me crazy-happy. That album gives me joy. But it is not the kind of thing you listen to again as soon as its over (unless you're Andy). Part of why it stays so fucking good is that I only listen to it once in a while. But that once in a while is sooo good. Can I sustain this dynamic when the album represents 5% of my entire music library?

What about old favorites that have fallen out of rotation? Is this the time for a Mates of State comeback? I used to listen to Team Boo on a loop, but I haven't in a couple of years. Is it still one of my "favorite albums"? Or can I safely say that it's been replaced by St. Vincent or Vampire Weekend, or Hot Chip, even though these are newer favorites?

So many problems, and I haven't gotten out of the M section of iTunes....

How do I choose just one Andrew Bird album? Just one Decemberists??

Do I screen out my favorite albums, to prevent the monotony of the playlist and the length of the trip from ruining them for me?

Do I specifically choose things that Kevin doesn't choose for his own (larger) iPod, thus maximizing our total selection but also relegating my own iPod to the status of a mere supplement, full of second-class choices made to meet external constraints?

Do I run with the travel theme, and choose things that I think I will like listening to on the road? Then I should go back to albums I associate with travel or with driving. I can't imagine taking a long road trip without Ted Leo, or Calexico, or The Soundtrack of Our Lives in the car, because I associate them with being on the road. But will that translate to bus rides? WIll I regret replacing something else that I all-around appreciate more?

Do I take thematics to the extreme and choose a driving album, a reading album, a walking album, a writing album, etc. etc., just to make sure all my situational bases are covered?

Do I say fuck it all and select twenty albums with household objects in the title, or bands with the letter V?

Should I try to effect an eclectically hip mix of cutting-edge indies, quirky mainstream choices, and I-know-my-music classics, just in case some outrageously cool Argentinian or Kiwi borrows my iPod? Do I need to maintain backpacker cred? Will my favorite Beatles selections suffice for this, or do I need to be the kind of person who has a favorite Beatles album and feel strongly that it be preserved as a whole?

And more distressingly, if I can't even load my iPod, how will I ever finish my term papers???

Maybe my next paper should be about food

2008-12-09T23:33:00.004-06:00

All I want to do during finals is eat. Maybe it's because I have long been opposed to eating while working, and so eating is a cue for break-time. And because I give eating enough status that it can stand alone even during the busiest of times, it has somehow taken on too much status, become something so important that it is actually a productive activity. Or maybe it's because eating, unlike online procrastination, does not leave me feeling empty and ashamed. Or maybe it's because ordinarily my brain is given enough varying stimulation throughout the day to prevent its constantly returning to food, whereas the unpleasant singularness of the paper-writing task sends my brain screaming and fleeing. Or maybe painful intellectual exertion demands bodily retribution. Or maybe it's because I just really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really like food. A lot. And I think that I deserve it because I wrote another page.

The question is: How fat am I willing to get before tenure just isn't worth it anymore?

self-titled

2008-12-08T21:36:00.003-06:00

oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god oh my god.

oh. my. god.

No news, no new regrets

2008-11-30T14:06:00.003-06:00

I have to agree with Kevin. Thanksgiving is the new Christmas. My Christmases are not tremendously festive, since it's just me and my mom. And let's just say the present-giving in that scenario is pretty lopsided, so I'm always embarrassed by that, too.

And I do wish I could spend Thanksgiving with my mom, because I do love her and she's my family. But not traveling over this particular weekend of the year is SO NICE. I love having vacation time where I live. Sleeping in in my own bed, baking pies in my own oven in my jammies, having friends over to celebrate with. Also, being with K is a big part of it. This will be our 6th Christmas as a couple, and we'll have spent all 6 of them in different states. It's just how it goes. But Thanksgiving is for us. And having 6 or 8 or 10 friends our age come over and drink shitloads of wine and eat and carouse and watch movies with... just... yes. Having our own holiday feels like being a grown-up. Also, when we're drunk and drawing penises, it feels like we're still kids. It's a good combo.

There it is: the Fear

2008-11-15T14:53:00.002-06:00

I always forget how much I love the song "Senegal Fast Food" by Amadou and Mariam. It's jam-tastic.

Anyone have any ideas for what my short story should be about?

I'm leaving Madison in 32 days. Between now and then I have to buy the remaining things I need for the trip, pack my backpack, put the rest of my belongings into storage, figure out my health insurance, defer my loans, celebrate Thanksgiving, grade 53 student papers, grade 53 student exams, write a short story, and write two term papers.

Piece of cake? :/

The eve of history

2008-11-03T23:00:00.002-06:00

God, am I going to enjoy voting tomorrow. I may cry.

I'll see you on the other side.

WELLIES!

2008-10-30T00:30:00.006-05:00

I finally used the Land's End gift card I got for Christmas last year. In other news, Land's End kinds sucks. But you know what doesn't suck? My fleece-lined, polka-dotted WELLIES!

I know, a missing birthday post. Well, maybe it's because I can't handle the idea of being as unfathomably old as 26. Sigh. But my birthday was really good. K-Stapes and I threw our joint bash, and I think it was even more successful than last year. I didn't get any balls drawn on my face, but then E wasn't there. I did, however, get nice and drunk and have to be helped home by my boyfriend, during which walk I held forth on the universal applicability of "-ass" to the ends of adjectives in order to add emphasis, even when the adjective in question is a number. "Look at those four-ass houses!"

I got a lot of sweet presents for my birthday, many of which were in jewelry form, which if you know me, you know is not a problem. To say the least.

My birthday being a Monday, K. took the night off from school and made me a delicious bbq rib and mashed potato dinner, and a carrot cake, which was good of him, since he hates all things involving carrots that aren't raw. And I opened a lot of awesome presents from my mom, including the collected stories of Gogol, season 7 of Friends (3 more to go!), and an album full of my baby pictures:

Much amusement for K.

And he, being a sweet boyfriend, got me a series of gifts all related to our upcoming trip, like super-comfy socks, super-thin journals, and a super-durable water bottle. I kinda wish I could start packing right now. But I'll try to keep the absurdity pot from boiling over.

Here are the presents he adorably decorated with fall leaves:

Here's me getting excited to open presents:

And here's my sweet cake:

Another year, another batch of goodies to stave off the horror of being old. Yay!

the birthday post comes later

2008-10-14T01:13:00.001-05:00

75 DAYS

Holding my breath

2008-10-11T11:53:00.004-05:00

I am starting to believe Barack Obama is going to win this election. That's a hard thing for me to do, to give up my cynicism and allow myself to just straight-up believe he's going to win. Because elections rip your heart out. But he's polling 6-10 points above McCain in the national poll, and in every battleground state except Missouri, he's polling enough points ahead of McCain to be outside the margin of error. Which means if the election were held today and the poll numbers accurately predicted it, he would win something like 350-150 (by electoral votes). That's a pretty solid basis for belief, so I'm starting to believe he's going to win. (Now of course, I'm on to my new worry, him getting shot, since McCain/Palin seems perfectly comfortable inciting near-riots of hatred at their campaign stops.)

A black man is carrying the election, no one seems to care about McCain's swift-boat politics and war-mongering, and Connecticut legalized gay marriage, so the country seems to be tipping back to the middle, or maybe even left, or rather, it seems to be tipping back toward sane and kind and rational. The days of "kill the towel-heads" are receding into an embarrassing past.

Oh, except for that 10% of the country who actually believes Obama is the Antichrist. Ummm....

I guess what disturbs me is that it seems like about 35% of the country is voting for Barack Obama, 5% is voting for the Democrat in spite of the fact that he's Barack Obama, 5% is voting against John McCain, and 5% is voting against the Republican Party. Probably in the coming weeks we will see another 5% voting against Republican leadership during the financial crisis.

I hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but this country baffles me. If you run Obama-McCain polls in just about every civilized nation on earth, McCain's percentage of the vote makes him look like he must have been a write-in candidate. I feel much the same way I felt after the 2004 election. It was comforting to know that 1 in 2 people was just as angry as I was that George W. Bush was allowed to remain in office. But it was shocking to realize that 1 in 2 people said he should be there. I will cheer Obama all the way to the White House, no matter how he gets there. And I'm thrilled to see that a majority of the country wants that to happen, as well. But I cannot understand why, in the current political and financial climate, given the stark difference in their policies, 2 in 5 people want McCain, and only 2 in 5 are actually excited about Obama. The middle 20% is going to elect him as the lesser of two evils, however they define them. How did this country become so deeply and evenly divided along the liberal/conservative divide? Why do half of us persist in sticking by hyper-conservative values while the world looks on and scratches its head. Why aren't we all parading in the streets with huge posters of Obama? Why is it actually somewhat reasonable to worry that he'll get shot, in a way it wouldn't be in almost any European nation? Why, America?

People are really stupid

2008-09-29T10:01:00.002-05:00

Like, really stupid.

It's kind of like a 19C travel diary...

2008-09-18T22:45:00.002-05:00

100 DAYS, BITCHES.

100 days until I'm on a plane bound for the southern hemisphere. Just thought you might like to know.

Shall I record my thoughts on this auspicious occasion? My thoughts are FUCK YES.

This woman is going to be on Dancing With The Stars in 2 years, mark my words.

2008-08-31T01:11:00.006-05:00

John McCain's running mate, a 44-year old partial-term governor apparently totally equipped to run the country* in the event of McCain's inevitable and imminent catastrophic health failure, or at least good enough to persuade millions of American women that she's just the same as Hillary solely because she has a vagina, despite being 100% opposed to her on every major issue:

The health teacher from Varsity Blues who turns out, to no one's real surprise, to also be a stripper:

*From 2007:

Alaska Business Monthly: We've lost a lot of Alaska's military members to the war in Iraq. How do you feel about sending more troops into battle, as President Bush is suggesting?

Palin: I've been so focused on state government, I haven't really focused much on the war in Iraq. I heard on the news about the new deployments...

Well, at least no one's serving barnacles in their underwear

2008-08-09T12:48:00.004-05:00

Sweet. Kevin recapped our summer in his blog, so I don't have to. If you're curious to see the long version of the pitiful summary I left in my last post, check it out.

So I've been spending a fairly large chunk of my free time preparing for my next overseas adventure. It's really exciting, because it will be the longest I've ever been out of the country at a stretch, and I expect my Spanish to improve mightily. It's also exciting that K & I are skipping out on about 3/4 of Madison's winter this year. And it's pretty bomb-tastic that we're taking a semester off school, because while on balance I do want to be in grad school, it's important that I pay attention to the part of me that doesn't. And, finally, it allows me to indulge my near-obsessive love of future-planning. I fucking LOVE making schedules and itineraries, doing internet research on hiking and sightseeing, making spreadsheets to compare hostels, passing whole entire afternoons curled up in a chair at Borders reading travel guides and taking notes. I fucking love it. I'm not a type-A traveler, ironically. Once on the ground, I do like to make sure I see all the good stuff, but I don't plan out every day or stick to even the loose schedules I've made. I go with the flow. I just like to go with the flow after I've arrived prepared with encyclopedic knowledge on all the best stuff to do. And I love planning for things I know I'm going to enjoy. So I've been making less than academically-wise use of my summer, but fuck it. I'm going to South America.

I've also discovered some interesting cultural tidbits that I'll share with you because I'm sure you'll find them more interesting than thousands of photos of gorgeous landscapes, which cause me to geek out like a lunatic and which in the spring months you'll be subjected to on my travel blog anyway.

1. Seafood is abundant and delicious in Chile, so I hear. But they eat literally everything that comes out of the sea, including things like octopus, squid, anemone, and barnacles. Yes, barnacles. I gotta be honest, until a couple of weeks ago I didn't even know there was any component of barnacles that was alive. But inside those spiny rocky fungus things on the bottoms of boats you'll find a slimy, wiggly little snail thing. They sell them in the markets still squirming. I know people all over the world eat things that seem gross to us, and I'm not trying to "Other" other cultures or anything. I just can't believe people eat these fucking things. They look like they ought to be bursting out of people's skin in horror movies (check out what it starts doing about 30 seconds in.. gahhhh).

2. Apparently Chileans have something like a version of Hooters that is somehow both classier and sleazier at the same time. Instead of pubs, they're coffee bars, and instead of just tight shirts and short shorts, the waitresses are in their underwear. I'm not sure how Chile has managed to combine the Starbucks market with the strip club market, but they have. And I'm intrigued. They're called café con piernas, meaning "cafe with legs." All I know is that getting my morning coffee on this trip is not going to be like it was in Bolivia, where a surly teenage boy would pour out lukewarm Nescafé in an empty restaurant. I did not come back from Bolivia with a single photo of a half-naked woman, which in retrospect seems like a real mistake.

More to come, I'm sure.

A Return to Blogging;-- In which Batman steals the Spotlight and Memoir is foiled once again!

2008-07-26T01:49:00.010-05:00

Batman was incredible. I usually can't tell if people wearing face paint are acting well or not, but damn Heath Ledger was good. Christian Bale took the whole breathy this-is-not-my-real-voice voice a little too far, maybe because he sensed he was being outdone by the Joker and tried to ramp up his own game with, well, the only thing you've really got going for you when everything but your mouth is behind opaque black plastic. And I thought they did a great job of pacing a long film, using a steady, creeping feeling of the downward spiral. (---SPOILERS FOLLOW---) When Maggie Gyllenhaal bites the dust you look around and say, this shit is bad news bears. And then the movie just never really lets go of your nuts. I'm really feeling the altered mood of these films, the way cartoonishness has been flattened into a kind of really dark... not magical realism... maybe improbable realism. I like the way we're asked to accept this world as being coterminus with our own; even if it's not likely, it's not a cartoon, either. My suspension of disbelief did suffer, however, at a couple of key junctures, most obviously when Batman somehow rigs all the cell phones in Gotham to emit and receive sonar, and relay the data to him (in about an hour). In other Batman movies this would be totally of a piece with the general outlandishness of the gadgetry, but I felt I was being asked to believe in this movie a little more. None of the movie's other technology suggests Gotham has a much different electronics landscape than ours does. I can wrap my mind around a multi-billionaire with access to cutting-edge weapons technology building a car that flips over on walls or rigging one cell phone to map a room. To me, that participates in reality in a way that city-wide, remote-activated cell phone repurposing does not. K disagrees with me, but at that moment in the movie I found myself "WHAT??"-ing the screen a la Wanted and the Loom of Destiny. Maybe everyone has a different disbelief threshold. (P.S. don't see Wanted.) (---END SPOILERS---)

I'd tell you what I've been up to since my last post at the beginning of summer, but I don't know how to clown-car seven states, Snoop Dogg, 50,000 hippies, all the Leinenkugel's in the world, what I can only describe as "cunt-phrase," paddleboats, a general lack of moderation, and a glazed-donut-bacon-cheeseburger all into one blog post. And the long version would be a lot less interesting than this short one.

Madison will not be the same without Lee and Jeff.

In news you can use, however, after a death-match battle between Expedia, LAN air, my credit card company, and my very soul... it's finally official. K and I are leaving the country once again. From 12/28/08 - 6/12/09 we'll be bopping around Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Goodbye, graduate school. I'd say I'll miss you, but it's much more likely that I'll realize I don't miss you and that our relationship is built on lies and insecurity, and I'll have to break up with you for South America. I'm already blowing off my pathetically minimal summer responsibilities to read about trekking in the Andes, so what chance do my seminars stand in the fall? Sigh.

It's been a good summer, but I should probably be reading a lot more...

I survived my first year and the only thing I lost was my self-esteem. Time to get to work on my liver.

2008-05-31T11:11:00.007-05:00

No term papers means fewer updates. I know, the loyal readership withers and pines. Here's a 5-point recap of the last two weeks:

1. Don't return library books on the same trip to campus in which you hazily, sleeplessly, turn in your last paper. You'll mix up books that belong to the library and books that belong to your friends (once again, Gwen, really sorry about that).
2. I would probably marry Erinn even if she didn't make pie. But the pie pushes it over the edge.
3. You should go on the Capitol tour. It's only 45 minutes long, and pretty interesting. The Capitol is beautiful inside. Also, it is full of badgers. Real ones or statues? I'll just let you wonder.
4. Getting really excited about J&K Do South America, the Sequel. Cuz, uhhhhh... look at this freaking place.
5. It turns out that even when you're 25, having your mom come visit makes you feel 15.

It's funny how my priorities change when the semester ends. I have a to-do list that never gets to-done, because while reading lots of theory, working up papers for conferences, and re-organizing my photo negatives all seem like seductive projects while I have term papers, I lose interest rapidly once the term papers go away and I realize that 1-10 on my to-do list are actually all "sitting on my ass." Not a new problem, but I have a new strategy: giving in to it. Since the semester ended, and especially in the last couple of days since my mom left, I have been doing a remarkable amount of ass-sitting, and you know what? It's good. I've been slowly adding in drinking and DVD-watching, but I'm trying to pace myself.

Oh, except for last night when I got big-time drunk during and after the Sex and the City movie, which is fucking long. And there's way too much squealing. AND CHEERING IN THE THEATER. I HATE MOVIES WHERE THE AUDIENCE CHEERS. CARRIE BRADSHAW CAN'T HEAR YOU! But though I never thought I'd be part of the mass of estrogen crowding the theatre on opening night, wearing "I'm a Carrie" or "I'm with Big" t-shirts, I can hit pause on my cynicism long enough to admit that it was fun. I give the movie one thumb up, so long as your other hand is wrapped around booze.

But I did not get as mega-drunk as my boyfriend and his new butt-buddy, whose initials (coincidence? who's to say?) are BB. We came home to find them absorbed in an epic video game marathon and 2/3 deep into a handle of Cutty. Oh, boys. The Butt-Buddies also did something I'm not supposed to talk about. No, no, not that. The penises in this adventure are metaphorical. (Okay, okay, don't tell MW, but they bought Guitar Hero. Shhhh.)

The gang's coming back from whatever that $tate was they went to, and the 10-day is full of bright sunny afternoons for sitting around in the park, sitting at Mallards games, sitting in front of a grill, sitting on the terrace, sitting on the steps of the Sacred Feather with ice cream, and sitting pretty much anywhere with booze. I wonder if we could set up beer pong with chairs. It's gonna be a good summer.*

*Except for BE and MT leaving for the summer. What's up with that, dudes?

Oddly comforting

2008-05-10T01:20:00.002-05:00

The mid-mod talk today really hammered home what I've long suspected. Namely, that the appropriate model for papers and lectures is more or less, "Assertion. Also, if you think about it, [opposite of] assertion."

Sweet, nothing is ever true, and self-contradiction is a plus. I can roll with that.

The answer to lots of questions... I suck.

2008-05-06T20:42:00.002-05:00

Why do I never go to office hours to talk about my papers? Why am I scared of my professors? No, no, scratch that. I know why. So... no question here.

Just fuck.

I suck.

2008-04-23T01:30:00.001-05:00

FUCK NO.

Web errata

2008-04-19T15:43:00.012-05:00

No real post here. Just dumping some stuff that's been accumulating on my desktop. You can click on any of the photos to see a bigger size.

1. Everything that's wrong with this country: a screenshot of the "current ads" on Facebook. Don't even get me started on the fact that you can click underneath of an ad to see a whole page of ads, or the fact of the ads in the first place. Just take a look at this shit. Unattainable figures, unattainable figures, celebrity gossip, and real estate development simulation. Poor Obama down there in the corner.

2. Stereotypes R Us: yet another facebook ad. This one really speaks to me, because I'm a girl so I do know that image is everything, especially when it comes to having the prettiest high-interest-rate credit card so that I can buy lots of stuff (I'm a girl) and live beyond my means in an adorable fashion.

3. Where the Darwin Awards come from: this is pure genius. It's tempting to give this one the same title I gave number one, but I bet these people would be awesome to spend an afternoon with.

4. Scary 'cause it's true:This is the banner on the Metro homepage. Just because many of the Madison bus drivers are terrifying Knievals, doesn't mean they should advertise that fact.
a.) Is the bus gunning for that girl? There's no bus stop there, so that's my only guess.
b.) Shambles over there on the left is the best and only evidence I've ever seen that jaywalking actually should be a crime. Is this the best they could come up with to represent our city's public transit? WTF is this photo?

The Lifted Veil

2008-04-15T17:54:00.005-05:00

Yesterday felt like the real first day of spring. It was the first day this year I've seen crocuses, the first day I've seen people playing frisbee in the park, the first day I didn't see any snow anywhere. In the last week the last thin layer of ice covering the lake melted, the fountain came on, and the food carts came back. We made it, people. Today was even a little warmer. It may have hit 60. So what's my point? That tomorrow is an excellent candidate for Skirt Day. The day when it's finally warm enough for the undergrad girls to break out their minis and flounce to class. It may not be quite warm enough tomorrow, but it isn't usually. Skirt Day is a strange phenomenon that has less to do with the actual temperature being appropriate for skirts, and more to do with a psychological breaking point followed by a perceived shift in the weather. And I've seen a number of people in the last couple of days who were overdressed, which usually inspires an over-correction in the other direction. Now, why should it interest you that tomorrow might be Skirt Day? Because tomorrow is also supposed to be very windy, which could turn Skirt Day into Asscheek Day, and that would just be fun for everyone.

So, speaking of seeing things you're not supposed to see and that kinda give you the creeps, have you all seen Google Maps Street View? The map service through Google (which is way better than Mapquest, if any-a-y'all are still using that junk) has long had both a map version and a satellite version. The satellite version was equal parts creepy and useless, because if you've never noticed this from an airplane, well, the tops of buildings all look the same. But now... NOW... you can click anywhere on the map, and a street-level photo pops up showing you the storefronts, houses, yards, whatever is right there. And it's interactive. You can spin around, walk forward, move to the left. You can walk down your own street, without leaving your house. You can zoom in on your own house and stand in front of it like a stalker. Oh yeah, and there are people in the photos, too, so if you happened to be taking your trash out the day they took the pictures, you and your terrycloth robe are on the internet.

So, okay, first of all, PanopticonMaps--I mean GoogleMaps--how the fuck did you do this? I'm not even sure how you make something like this in the first place. Do you use video? Photo? Psychics? Secondly, how did you do it for just about every city in the fucking country? Like, side streets and all. There's no reason I should be able to see a street-level photo of the alley behind my apartment. Which brings me to thirdly: WHY would you do this? Other than because you're the Panopticon. Check out our new features! You wannnnnt the features. You neeeeeed the features. The features are harmless. The features looooove you.

Features are creepy.

Geting my accomplishment on.

2008-04-03T08:55:00.000-05:00

I often mention "small victories." Cuz, you know, grad school takes up all your time and is really hard, and most of the time it makes you feel like a fuck-up at best, if not an essentially defective person. So I'm going to recount two victories, one small and one large.

Small: Yesterday I read an entire book. That's right. I know, I know, this is not a big deal to everyone else, because you all took some kind of "exam" where you had to read approximately 750 books in 10 days, while being poked with sticks and standing on hot coals or something. But it's a big deal to me, because I have an attention span problem, as well as a finishing-stuff-I-start problem. So, yeah. I read a 300-page book in one day, and I didn't start until 4. What's up, bitches.

(Nevermind the fact that reading that book occupied the lowest-priority slot on my to-do list, and I only read it because of a staggering guilt complex about not reading for class, and also to procrastinate on working on my term papers or reading Our Mutual Friend, which is actually relevant to my field. Also nevermind the fact that I ended up not really participating in the discussion about the book in class and instead talked about the the articles, which I didn't read. Whatever. It was a good book.)

Large: This weekend K threw up ham. Okay, okay, this is not about grad school. But it was awesome and deserves celebrating nonetheless. Saturday night, after we all ate an ill-advised amount of ham, B wagered K that he could not drink 2 beers in five minutes. No slouch to a challenge, K slapped on his smug face and put a shotglass down on the table next to his beers. 4 minutes and 50 seconds later, everyone is yelling a new-years-style countdown and K is looking quite green around the edges. Not a man to give in, however, the shotglass tips back. Also not a man who can consume a pound of ham and two beers without consequences, the shotglass tips forward again. Whiskey sprayed all over the table. K running, hand on mouth. Vomit everywhere. "Oh, God, it's all ham!" Me laughing harder than I can remember laughing in my entire life (excluding anytime I was stoned, particularly one time I laughed so hard I fell off a porch at a house party).

So things are going pretty well. Except for those looming paper deadlines. H(ow)TF am I going to finish this semester? Lord do I hate HD's class. Let me count the ways. Why am I never caught up on my reading? Why do I always feel like I'm not really learning anything? Aren't I supposed to be doing PA work? When am I going to buy plane tickets for my summer trips? Why did I sign up for a summer class with a bad professor? Should I buy a house? And HOW? Help...

2008-03-21T00:30:00.002-05:00

NO.

Professionalizing blog?

2008-03-10T00:25:00.007-05:00

For me, the Graduate Student Conference this weekend inspired a new way to stay awake during talks.

A game: Listen for the Dubiously Pronounced Word.

There's one in every talk. You just have to spot it. Sometimes it's clearly a case of the person being wrong. Then you get to spend a couple of minutes feeling superior and/or figuring out how you can formulate a question with that word in it, so you can say it right. But sometimes you can't decide if it's the speaker that's butchering a term, or if perhaps you have been doing so for years. Then you get to spend a couple of minutes trying to figure it out. Either way, that's 2 or 3 minutes you're neither asleep nor listening to the talk, which is a win-win. Plus, listening to individual words is way better than listening to whole sentences, much less trying to connect sentences together.

Some words from this weekend I used to be sure of, but am not anymore:

lascivious
aporia
eschewing
insidious

Now if there were only some way to make this a drinking game...

It's an election eve, so... my thoughts on our responsibilities tomorrow

2008-02-18T21:37:00.009-06:00

I hope that everyone I know in Wisconsin votes tomorrow. More to the point, I hope you vote for Barack Obama tomorrow, and I'll tell you why.

If you're a Republican, sorry about your luck. Your vote no longer matters, and also, your candidate is a 71-year-old, Dubya-loving war hawk who has somehow managed to swindle the nation into believing he's a liberal. In other words: the moderates hate him because he's too much of a Bush clone (and they're right), and the conservatives hate him because they think he's a liberal (they're wrong). Let's assess his chances for victory in this climate, eh?

This idea that John McCain is a liberal is infuriating. Granted, in some miniscule ways he has inched away from the reactionary arch-conservatives. And the fact that he has an (albeit ill-deserved) reputation for being liberal and was nominated anyway is a promising sign that the Republican party is either moving closer to the center or fracturing in two, and either way I'm pleased to see the marginalization of the extreme right. Huzzah and all that, what what. But let us not allow ourselves to see liberalism in a man who: is advocating for corporate America to pay FEWER taxes than they already do, wants to make tax cuts a permanent part of the budget (wow, it's so smart to make decisions now about economic circumstances for the future that we can't predict... Bush made this same decision his first year in office), wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned and abortion made illegal, who has always been and continues to be a strong advocate of the war in Iraq (and who recently suggested keeping a military presence there for 100 years), and whose major campaign issue is the fear of future attacks from Islamic extremists.... (deep breath)... HE'S A HUUUUGE CONSERVATIVE.

Let's look at his more "liberal" tendencies: He isn't willing to ban gay marriage on a national level. Okay, sure, that sounds like something a Democrat would say. But McCain strongly encourages the states to do ban it, since "[t]he family represents the foundation of Western Civilization and civil society." Cue up the 1970s scary music and a graphic of two men holding hands. Now spiral it around and flash this up there in dripping-blood font: GAYS RUIN THE WORLD!

But how about his environmentalism? Surely the Republicans are scared for a reason, right? John McCain must love him some nature, and I bet he's ready to vote against all those big, bad coal companies and oil companies so that the bears can frolic! Oh, no, what will us fat-cats do?? Sleep tight, corporate America, John McCain's reputation as a tree-hugger is just a lot of smoke and mirrors. Know how you can tell? The League of Conservation Voters, a group that keeps track of how often congressmen cast votes to protect the environment, gives him a 29% (that's not good). When it comes time to choose between his friends in coal and oil or the environment, he goes with the former 71% of the time. (Hey, isn't that how old he is?)

To quote a recent op-ed piece in the Badger Herald: "Okay, so he is anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-environment, anti-civil liberties and pro-tax cuts for the wealthy and pro-elimination of social programs. Let us get one thing straight: John McCain is definitely not a Democrat and by no means a liberal."

But, hey, what do I care. He's not going to win in November because no one likes him and he can't lift his arms over his head (yeah, I'm making fun of his war injuries, sue me). What I actually want to say on this Election Eve is a message of positivity:

We are about to nominate either a black man or a woman as the Democratic nominee for president. People, this is big. Even bigger is that their minority status isn't even on the top 100 list of reasons to vote for them. They're both highly intelligent, educated and capable leaders. They both stand excellent chances against John McCain in the fall. We are staring down the opportunity of a lifetime, to begin the decades-long process of reversing the effects of the Bush administration, restoring our standing in the world, and sounding a war cry to mainstream racism and misogyny. We have a great shot at this so-inspiring-I-want-to-cry vision. We're polling high. Democrats are going to the polls in 2-to-1 numbers vs. Republicans. The nation wants change. If one of them loses in November, it will not be because the country's not ready for all of these things. The only way they won't get it is if we don't give it to them.

People, we have to pick somebody. We have to be what the Republican party always models for us and we never seem quite able to be: strategic and united. Even in this, the Republicans' least coherent election year in recent memory, they are still able to focus on November and pull out the right strategy: rallying around the guy with the best shot. There are very few lessons we need to look across the aisle to learn, but this is one of them. Let's stop yelling about who's the real "agent of change." Let's stop fighting with each other and start fighting John McCain. Let's face some facts:

Hillary Clinton is sagging behind. The only way for her to pass Barack Obama is by surging, and she's been on a rock-steady decline for months. There's no surge coming.

Obama is on the upswing and will almost certainly finish the primary cycle ahead in delegates and the popular vote (and Democrats ought to remember what happens when you elect the guy--or gal--who lost the popular vote... do we really want to go there?)

It's highly unlikely that, despite these trends, either candidate's lead will be clear enough to call a winner anytime soon.

If we don't call a winner before winter turns to spring, we are handing the election to John McCain, a man who might be four steps to the left of GWB, but is still four time zones away from the middle.

I've never been entirely comfortable with the pragmatic decision. It certainly doesn't sound right coming from someone who supports Barack Obama for entirely un-pragmatic reasons. I like him because he has a vision for the future of this country, a vision that rests on equality, liberty and humanity more than on fear-mongering and us vs. them rhetoric. I like him because he's not afraid to take to the podium and flatly accuse this nation of having the wrong values, of protecting the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor today and the whole world tomorrow. He's not afraid to ask us to believe that we can make major changes in our country's values. These are not practical reasons to like someone. So, no, I don't usually advocate the practical vote. But this election is too important to throw away. If Hillary were the one surging ahead, I would vote for her tomorrow. The fact that the candidate I like is also the candidate with the best shot at victory is a coincidence that serves me well, though I admit looks bad for my sincerity. But hear me:

DEMOCRATS, FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIVES CAST A STRATEGIC VOTE TOMORROW. LET'S SHOW THE SUPERDELEGATES AND THE DNC THAT THE NATION IS BEHIND BARACK OBAMA.

Go get your democracy on tomorrow. Choose Obama and Barack the Vote.

Isla Fisher or Amy Adams?

2008-02-13T23:20:00.001-06:00

Who the fuck knows. I can't tell these broads apart.

If that groundhog saw his shadow, he's a fucking marked rodent.

2008-02-08T19:39:00.000-06:00

Two things have happened to me this semester, and I can't figure out if they're related to one another. First, and thankfully, I am starting to be able to detect minute improvements in my grad school thinking. For instance, when someone in class says, "This is so Kantian," I don't immediately think, "Fuck you." I often know vaguely what's being referenced. Universalism, aesthetics, teleology, something like that. Also, I find that when I say things in class this semester, I don't always have an out-of-body experience, and most of the time what I've rambled about doesn't make me want to crawl under the seminar table and spend the rest of the class building lego racecars. Most of the time.

I talk a lot about small victories in graduate school, but this is actually a huge improvement.

The other new thing this semester is that, paradoxically, I seem to care much, much less about my work. It's there, and I know I need to do it. But there's no panic, there's no Fear. Fear has been replaced with Priorities. I don't seem to need my entire weekend for doing work. Apart from this weekend, when I fucked myself with three mini-assignments (including a paper I can't seem to formulate a coherent thesis for) on top of all of my reading, most weekends, I think--dare I say it?--I might be able to kick back a little.

So, are these two things related? Or am I heading down a dangerous road of not reading but talking in class anyway? Am I headed down the highway to the danger zone? To a neighboring state that begins with a big old capital A?

Speaking of a different (but related) A, he asked me to update my weather blog. And I was feeling self-conscious that all I ever write about is the weather... it's like being that person at a party who has nothing to talk about, and since I usually feel awkward at parties, with nothing to talk about, it felt important that I try not to simply post over and over again about the temperature. But I do have a couple items of note that I wanted to share, and now that a request has been made, well, here:

It snowed 13 inches last Wednesday. 19 inches in some areas outside of the city. Apparently one of the 5 worst storms on record. 1,000 cars were stranded overnight on the highway. But the University opened in the morning! With a nice, patronizing note reminding us that the UW has only closed twice for snow in the last 18 years. That's cute and all, but when the city has declared an emergency, is woefully behind on plowing the streets, all the other public schools and all the other UWs are closed, and the UW Madison hasn't even begun to shovel its on-campus walkways... maybe it's time to put safety above pride? How many of those people who spent the night on the beltline were trying to get to/from the University? At the very least, the Chancellor needs to reword / make more public the snow policy, because it's not a great reflection on the school when most students believe that the school simply "never closes" or that the Chancellor adheres to some arbitrary snowfall total instead of actual city conditions. The students should at least believe their school puts safety before pride, even if it's not true.

And, finally, here's a screen capture from Saturday night:

HOLY SHIT GROUND BLIZZARDS??

You win, Madison. Game over.

I think we pissed it off...

2008-02-02T11:04:00.000-06:00

Anyone who thinks hell is hot has never been to Wisconsin.

This week the weather has actually turned agressor. Exhibit A: Last Tuesday the day started out in the low 40s. By 2:30 it was sleeting giant ice pellets, and by 7pm the wind chills were -30 and we had "blizzard conditions" during which it was advised to simply stay indoors, because frostbite could set into exposed skin in ten minutes. A SEVENTY DEGREE TEMPERATURE SWING in eight hours kinda makes me think Wisconsin doesn't want us here anymore. The 35 mph winds were howling "Get out. Geeettttt oooouuuuuuuuuut."

And exhibit B: Thursday we had an icequake. Yup. Plates of ice on the lake collided and the whole lakeshore shook. It felt like a bomb went off in the building I was in. It registered on the Richter scale. People, I think we need to take this seriously. Maybe we just shouldn't live this far north. If we all pack up quietly and head out to say, Arizona, maybe we won't anger it any further. There's a ton of empty space out there. We could totally just take it over. Anyone with me?

Wisconsin, you've gone too far.

2008-01-30T20:13:00.000-06:00

Really? Really, Wisconsin? I'm resigned to the 6-month winters. I'm resigned to the weeks when the wind chill dips to -30. I'm resigned to the fact that the University will never, ever close for the cold, and that when the public schools are closed and the undergraduates decide to just skip class, I will always, always have to bundle up and wait for the buses (which are running late, but of course you can't count on that, so just when the weather is the worst, you have to stand around outside, not moving, blasted by wind, your nose hairs, eyelashes, and contact lenses freezing, for longer than when it's nice out) and trudge down the icy wind tunnel that is N. Park St. and spend my day in a building shaped like a parking garage. This is the price of being a grad student in Wisconsin. Fine.

But when I put up with all of this, early in the morning, and I arrive at HCW *before* having my coffee, and I shed my layers and begin the slow process of bringing feeling back into all of my exposed skin for a long day of talking about books, I do NOT appreciate...

A. Fucking. Fire. Drill.

A 9:15 in the morning fire drill. With the wind chills outside at -28. Yep. I expected to get bent over, Wisconsin; I just didn't expect to get bent over this hard.

Taking a hard left here, the season finale of Lost is re-airing right now, in anticipation of the season premiere tomorrow night. They're trying to attract new viewers, which is a difficult thing to do with a continuous narrative. Close to 75 episodes have already been aired that build secrets and revelations on top of the ones that came before. To solve this problem, it seems, the producers (stand-ins? I think the real ones are on the strike) are re-airing this one 2-hour episode with a little scroll bar along the bottom that fills in the background. So, while Charlie's being tortured in the Looking Glass, the scroll bar reads: Charlie is a former rock star who's being tortured by the Looking Glass sisters because he's trying to un-jam the blocking frequency of the Others, but he already knows he's going to die because of Desmond's prophecy that he will die trying to save Claire, who's the blonde Aussie chick with the baby.

Seriously? This can't be working for people. Four things in that one convoluted sentence alone need explaining to even make sense. It's like watching a crazy-ass pop-up video, only you have to remember all the seemingly unrelated information and plug it together. Also, there's so much reading it's hard to follow what's going on in the actual episode. I want more Lost viewers as much as the next guy, but... um. There are a bajillion characters. Give or take umpteen.

OMG LOST PREMIERE TOMORROW.

And because I guess I'm just going errata-style here: While trudging up the walk to my apartment tonight, a helicopter with a searchlight flew overhead. I gotta say... I really hope they find who they're looking for. I'm pretty fucking terrified of anybody bad-ass to go on the lam in -30 wind chills. That's beyond bad-ass.

Moving on again: I love Prof. S. And I love his class. Most things about it. But one of the things I love (even though it's not actually lovable) is the way he doesn't actually answer questions.

Me: Prof. S., I have a somewhat historical-contextual question about the novel, that might be open to interpretation but that I'm just looking for some of your insight on. It's X.
Prof. S.: When I was a boy, my dad gave me a $2 bill and I still have it.
....
Prof. S.: So, any thoughts on an unrelated topic?

It's kinda awesome. Seriously.
It's gonna be a good semester. I think I'm figuring out how to do this grad school thing. Slowly.

2008-01-19T13:59:00.000-06:00

Two screen captures from Weather.com. The first is from Wednesday evening, and the second one is from today at 11 AM.

"Unknown precip"?

Feels like -29??? Too cold. Too cold. Too, too, too cold.

Why is Wisconsin in a perpetual state of "advisory"? When is it going to be May?

Back by popular demand: blogging. Back by grudging concession to the inevitable: the semester.

2008-01-15T13:53:00.000-06:00

Welcome back. There are no new year's resolutions, but perhaps this is a resolution that could be put on some kind of ballot.

Proposal: Professors assigning a full week of reading to be done for the first class... is cheating. The academic calendar reports the semester starts January 22. All days prior to January 22 ought to be part of my vacation. If you can't shoehorn all the readings you want into the normal number of weeks in the semester, that's not my problem.

Corollary: Creating bonus seminar meetings during the regular semester is also a violation of my graduate student rights (hahaha), particularly when you hold them during finals week and require every single class member to give a presentation on extra reading, unrelated to their term papers, and allow the bonus session to go FOUR HOURS. (This, you may have heard, was one of many--but a particularly cruel--source of my end-of-semester ire this fall. I have four words for you: Don't. Take. Art. History.)

Exception: Classes held on Mondays. The semester starts on a Tuesday, so my Shakespare seminar doesn't meet until week 2, which means I won't even do the "advance" reading until classes have already started. This is acceptable, especially because the whacked out academic calendar screws this professor out of a week all the others get. In fact, "advance" ("bonus") reading should be reserved only for Monday professors, to allow them to catch up. The rest of you are just reinforcing an inequality!!

So, as you might infer, my vacation is drawing to its end. I know this because tomorrow I'm going to start reading Sister Carrie. The resumption of my work means I will be taking up blogging again, my age-old procrastination device. Since it's still technically my vacation and I lack the will to really summarize the end of my semester and my vacation thus far, I give you a haiku roundup:

Just 'cause I didn't
fail doesn't mean I didn't
embarrass myself.

One-day term paper:
surprisingly effective
self-punching technique.

You actually can
go home again. You just have
to bring Valium.

Nobody throws a
party like my college friends'
all-nighter, black-out--

Hate everyone else
already; yuppie parties
make me hate myself.

Connecticut, you
are small and pretty but you
have I-95.

Beer and snow. Never
thought I'd say it: Wisconsin,
home sweet fucking home.

-----------------------------

And if you made it this far, here is a slightly different, perhaps more profound summary of last semester: some randomly generated haiku assembled from rearranged blog entries in the recent past. You can have your own made here.

i now see that if
i worked for the next two
hours without stopping

it's comfy it
has a sofa and a list
of prepositions

been in madison
like she never left like a
big lake almost 10

going to come the
fuck on i know it's the
easy part i hate

on the bus okay
look the bus will fill up and
you won't hear me

induced optimism
today is the second type
this takes the form

waiting look at that
list and think this is a case
of wikipedia

it was kinda cool
i liked doing it and
before you know it

hear is full of snow
and ice and if you don't
answer my questions

no it's not like
to touch strangers to pay the
price of touching them

where the hell did i
read this now i have to write
resigned to the fact

my mouth and it's a
store of life experience
of good waste to have

they start to sound like
sense and then there's grunting
and a couple of

and my favorite:

below the surface
of coherence he made two
fists and flailed them

and one i made from becca's blog that was too good not to share:

really wanted
this paper to be done but
i chickened out

Here's to a new semester of feeling just shy of miserable.

The best present of all.

2007-12-24T11:58:00.000-06:00

The. Mother. Fucking. Semester. Is. Over.

I flew back to Baltimore on Thursday, which meant stress, booze, and Xanax, because that's the cocktail I use to manage my severe flying phobia. I woke up the next morning, hung over from... life. And in an epic marathon finish, I wrote 19 pages on Friday, over the span of about 17 hours. The quality was about what you'd expect from such a showing, but I was damned if I was going to take an incomplete. It was the least human I've ever been in my life. I was a paper-writing shell of a person, filled with Badiou and self-loathing where my soul and organs used to be. My poor dear Rachael got off work (her last day of the year), and had to celebrate by watching me write.

BUT I'M DONE! Semester wrap-up to follow, at such point as I have regular internet access. Happy holidays to all, and to all a strong scotch.

Peace and joy,
J.

Glorious Email Irony!

2007-12-19T10:10:00.000-06:00

This semester has been nothing if not a series of triumphs and crushing blows to the ego. The self-esteem roller coaster that is grad school in a top 20 program has ultimately left me with one pervasive feeling: It is possible, though perhaps not likely, that I am a capable and intelligent person. I think that's what they want all of us to feel. When you brainwash someone, you have to break them down mentally and physically to the point where they're lying on the floor drooling and have completely resigned themselves to the combat boot on their windpipe. And that's where I am right now, two days left in the semester, bone tired, sick-feeling, with one last fucking paper to write, resigned to the fact that it's going to suck and the best my professors will think of me is, "Oh, her? I think I remember her. No... let's not kick her out of the program... not yet." So I'm a shivering empty vessel, which is how they've managed to implant their ideology: you're smart... maybe. I'm starting to see that the life of an academic is feeling that way forever.

Despite the fact that I've reached the 'acceptance stage,' I cannot really continue writing this post. I've finished with two classes, done all but my last touch-ups on a third, and have one entire term paper to write... by Friday. Oh, and I'm flying home Thursday. Which is tomorrow. It's gonna be a photo finish, kids. So, unless you happen to have a term paper out there on Badiou that I can have... No? Damn. In that case, I will just leave you with what I myself received this morning: a letter telling me I've been admitted to the grad program in English. Apparently my file never got processed, so just at the moment when I'm most considering quitting to become a... well, anything else, I get officially admitted. Just in time that I can't claim non-departmental status to get out of writing my papers, just in time to remind me that several months ago this was the thing I wanted most. Just in time to say, Hey, Jessie! You chose to do this for the rest of your life!

Dear Jessie,

Your request to change your major area of study to English has been approved. We have notified the Office of the Registrar to make the changes effective Fall 2007. If this information is not correct, please notify us.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX XXXXXX
Office of Graduate Admissions

...Maybe I should notify them...

Meat lockers and feelings of inadequacy.

2007-12-05T23:10:00.000-06:00

Apparently in the county where my mom lives in West Virginia, the public schools close in honor of the first day of deer-hunting season. And they don't just close that day... they get the whole week off. What the shit...

I finished a paper! [Momentary pause for cheering!] ...And now I have to write two more in 15 days, and I have almost no work done on either of them. [Resuming regularly-scheduled puking into a bucket.]

But as always, grad school is best measured in small victories. And the fact that I got a seminar paper done, it didn't suck really bad, I kinda liked the topic, and it was reasonably within the page count (that's usually a huge problem for me)--that, friends, is what we call a minor triumph. However, handing it in today was highly anticlimactic. The professor's "Thanks" followed by setting it on her desk was a real pin in my delirious balloon of giddiness. Also a downer was then going right back to the library to collect books for my next one. And then thinking of the horrifying possibility that I could actually get a paper back while I'm still writing other ones. Shudder. Nothing like a prof's scrawled "what are you even doing in grad school" to keep your confidence up in the darkest depths of finals week.

But we all know professors aren't that on the ball. I will probably never see the paper again. The much more likely but equally unfortunate scenario I thought of is that she will now think I turned it in early because I think it's perfect. That there's no point keeping it for ten more days, because even given that amount of time, I could find nothing wrong with my work. And this, of course, will inspire my professor to scoff loudly and set about proving me wrong. See, if you turn it in the day it's due, and there's a crap-load wrong with it, you get the benefit of the doubt that you know what that crap-load is, you just didn't have time to fix it. Oh well. It's in, and I'm moving on.

Wilkie Collins, Duleep Singh, and the anxieties of the colonial body, here I come. Hooray..?

Oh, and: 7 more inches of snow last night. If you're keeping track, we've got a solid 10 on the ground right now, according to the local news, with a couple more coming tomorrow. Current temp: 0, feels like 0. If you're going to be miserable, you might as well be miserable in a meat locker, that's what I say!

I get to bitch because I don't plan on doing anything about it... that's how it works, right?

2007-12-02T10:56:00.001-06:00

If I had forgotten how bad snow removal in Madison is, it's all flooding back now. After this weekend's three-inch snowfall, the major roads are sort of clear, and the side roads haven't been touched. I don't really understand how, in a climate where it snows regularly, all winter, every winter, they're not ready for it. Although you couldn't really say that the plows and salt trucks (which are bad for the environment anyway--they should use sand) are behind, persay. It's not that they get caught unawares by the storm and can't keep up with it. That would be pretty pitiful anyhow, considering it only snowed three inches.

No, it's not so much an inability to deal with the snow as an unwillingness. Last night, after the storm was well over, all of the cross streets on the Isthmus were still completely white. And since there had been sleet, they were also covered in ice. The precipitation had stopped, but... were there plows out? Nope. It seems the city just decides which three major streets they're going to plow, and then they pack it it for the day. Mission accomplished! As of this morning, the bus lane on University Avenue, the major downtown campus artery, was still buried under an inch of snow and ice. And if you live on a side street, forget it, you're fucked. The people who live on the little roads going up from Gorham to Lake Mendota might have some of the prettiest houses and the nicest views, but during the most minor of snowfalls, they also live on an icy white slip-n-slide of death.

I wonder if the state thinks that Wisconsinites are just so rugged and hardy that they'll take care of it themselves. Sure, they must all have tire chains and four-wheel drive and personal plows--they're outdoorsmen! Maybe that's true in the more rural parts of the state, but here in Madison we're a bunch of crunchy, liberal, latte-drinking students. You need to plow us out! In the last twelve hours, I have seen three incapacitated vehicles, one the result of an accident, and two that had skidded into banks of snow and gotten stuck. There were policemen there helping, but not a plow within earshot. Oh, yeah, and all three of these accidents were within six blocks of my apartment.

For the love of god, people... THREE INCHES!

Snow = :-) Cold = :-(

2007-11-29T23:27:00.000-06:00

My blog started out last year as a record of how I was adapting to all things Wisconsin. Living in the Midwest, handling grad school, restraining the urge to commit suicide due to the mid-winter tundra. As a staunch opponent of winter, I often treated my blog as more of a weather-logue, and I have gotten away from that this year. I wouldn't want anyone to think that it's because I approve of winter any more than I ever have before. No, quite the opposite. The last several days have involved a whole lot of "Holy Fuck"s muttered into the scarf wrapped around my mouth. And it's not even that bad yet. This morning was a measly 15 ("feels like" 2).

So in honor of the 100% (!) chance of 3-6 inches of snow this weekend*, a weather recap: This fall has been quite gentle. Aside from the occasional wicked swings (a couple of 80-degree days in October), the daily temperatures have followed a steady drop-off that has hewn closely to recorded averages. Still... there's a degree or two, I think it's about 33, where suddenly it's cold. Damn cold. The wind kicks off the lake, and even when I'm crossing the street in front of HCW I'm thinking maybe it's just not worth going in today.

That happened. And I'm sad. Expect many more snow totals and wind chills in posts to come. Also, page counts. It's snow season and term paper season. Everything is happy!

* Source: weather.com, a notorious coterie of liars and charlatans.

Why am I insane?

2007-11-28T21:02:00.001-06:00

Sometimes when I come home to my apartment, and my boyfriend's not home, I get freaked out that some creepy stranger is lying in wait for me. There are any number of sneaky nooks a bad guy could camp out in, but invariably it's the bathtub that pushes me over the edge, and I have to pull back the curtain and check. It's irrational, yes, but there's just all that space in there. And everybody knows baddies hide behind curtains. But I wondered tonight what I would actually do if I poked my head around the curtain and there was a large stranger standing in my tub. The answer? Instantaneously stop living. Dead. The big graduate school in the sky.

So, maybe it would be slightly better, even if there was a creepy dude in my shower, to ignore him and hope he decides to leave?

Am I missing something? Should I not write blog posts after midnight?

2007-11-28T00:06:00.000-06:00

Why is it that in bad movies and TV shows, when someone gets locked in a freezer by a villain (usually a meat freezer of some sort), he doesn't jog in place or do jumping jacks? Wouldn't this help? Or is this yet another exposure of my very tenuous grasp of Science?

Proof that grad school gets inside of you... in a bad way.

2007-11-20T23:53:00.000-06:00

Many of you know this story by now, and for that I apologize. But it's too good not to record.

My boyfriend--I won't name him, even though you all know who I mean (somehow it seems to jive with standards of so-called 'professionalism' to blog anonymously, and adhering to this norm lets me delude myself into believing I'd ever have enough readers for my blog to affect my professional life... plus this is not the most flattering story I've told about him, though it is funny)--My boyfriend often does not meet his goals. Let me not suggest that he's not highly productive and successful. Because he is. But he's also capable of astounding feats of procrastination, self-delusion, and deferral. These two things add up to the mystique of his spontaneous success, which though I find it irksome I have to admit has some basis in reality. The reality of naps, youtube, and facebook video games. And the reality of generally brilliant performance as a student. I know. It needs to be studied.

Despite his occasional (frequent) lapses into the unproductive, he always approaches his day with a surge of panic-induced optimism. Today is the day I do all the shit! (he says). But because of said lapses, he also occasionally (frequently) ends his day in a fit of remorse and self-flagellation. These moments are invariably punctuated by two phrases, said aloud, while muttering around the apartment at night, trying to collect the fragments of his lost time. "Tomorrow is going to be a huge day." And "I cannot have any more days like this one."

But on with the story at hand. A few nights ago I awoke around 4 A.M. to the sounds of my boyfriend talking in his sleep. He doesn't do this very often, and it's usually just like anyone else talking in his sleep: gibberish making border raids on the coherent. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself... everyone in my Weds. seminar gets that one.) He mumbles a couple of words that, strung together, start to sound like sense, and then there's grunting and a list of prepositions. You know how it goes. The other night was no different, except that he was particularly loud and enunciating particularly well. There was a certain intentionality to his speech, garbled as it was. I was about to go back to sleep when, amidst the babble one sentence emerged, clear as a distress signal in the noise, a cry for help from the subconscious: "I can't have any more days like this!" Dead asleep, his voice yet had the tone of resignation and panic that accompanies the lucid versions of this statement.

And then, before he once again sunk below the surface of coherence, he made two fists and flailed them about above his body. Not to this point have I seen such a powerful testament to the fixed and thorough permeation of our souls by the monster graduate school.

On a related note, two graduate student characters in a story I wrote recently have the following exchange about grad school:

"It's like paying someone to poke you in the face with a screwdriver and call you stupid."
"It's like being a prostitute and getting paid in I.O.U.s"

I hereby put out the call to finish the sentence, "Graduate school is like ______."

Hmmm.

2007-11-18T21:16:00.000-06:00

O excellent! I love Jessie better than figs.

See original quote and generate more

Reading theories of tourism... touring the internet... same thing.

2007-11-18T12:21:00.000-06:00

I've got some questions I'd like answered.

1.) How does doing literary criticism fit into your personal ethics? (No, I'm not going to elaborate that question at all.)

2a.) Do you know where I can get cheap frames and mats?
2b.) Or alternately, do you know of a cheap and easy mounting technique that meets archival standards and doesn't require expensive equipment? I've got some digital prints and I could frame them, but I'm interested in learning how to mount them. I'd prefer a backing with some depth to it, not something very flat.

As a reward for answering either of these questions, check out this sweet base-jumping video. You can check it out even if you don't answer my questions, but I'm watching you. Seriously.

Happy Sunday.

Don't mess with my secret lair!

2007-11-13T10:47:00.000-06:00

There's a place on campus where I particularly like to go to read. I'm not going to say where that is (even though most of you know already) because it's a small space and within that small space, there's just one seating apparatus that I like. One seat on the whole of this campus. It's comfy, it has a view of the lake, and it's next to an outlet. I know! Shockingly, I usually don't have to fight for it, either. This is the major reason I'm not telling you where it is. There are lots of other comfy seating arrangements in this... room... but a serious lack of outlets in general. So I more or less understand when someone needs to use it. (Though I'd be lying if I said no irrational rage bubbles up anyway, kind of like when someone sits on the seat on the 81 bus that I always take--of course they don't know, but they somehow should). But yesterday, yesterday!, before I had my computer out and plugged in, some dude took the last outlet spot for his computer and then took a ninety-minute nap on the floor! Oh, my inner Miss Manners was tee-ohed! If that seat were not so cradlingly comfortable and the view not so soothingly serene... I swear I would have done something drastic, like... unplug his machine. Yeah, I know.

Steve Carell, did you mean to get on the career elevator to the basement?

2007-11-11T09:21:00.000-06:00

Coupla things. I posted a ranting blog about etiquette several months back. I'd like to add something to the list of holding doors, taking bus seats, and getting up from classes: ELEVATORS.

This is a tri-fold problem for the general public. First are the people who walk up to the elevators where you're waiting, look at you for a second, and then reach out and push the button that's already lit up. There seems to be some bizarre human elevator-related anxiety. If I don't push the button myself, how can I be sure that it's going to come?? The light could be stuck in the "on" position! This person waiting could be stoned or retarded or in a waking coma! How could I live with myself if I didn't take every possible precaution against being skipped by one or possibly more elevator cars?! Basically what I'm saying is don't be a douche.

Secondly, you get on in the order you arrived. This is a special problem in the HCW elevator lobby. Yes, it's a tiny portico, and people aren't very good about moving all the way in. And yes, the elevators don't come very frequently, so people tend to stack up waiting. I do understand why you need to come inside and why it's impossible to form a line for the elevator. But try to remember that when you need to come and shove your way into the room and stand right in front of the elevator, it's because there are too many people waiting. People who got there before you. DON'T BE THE FIRST ONE ON THE ELEVATOR. In other words, don't be a douche.

Finally, when the doors finally open, and it's actually your turn to get on an elevator, try to restrain yourself from pushing past the people trying to get off. The elevator is not going to leave without you. The riders will exit, which will hold the doors open, and then they will stay open long enough for you to board in a restrained fashion. It's not like getting on the subway where you only have a few precious seconds to beat the closing of the doors, and where you may actually risk life and limb to do so in some cities like Moscow, where the doors don't have object sensors and I saw a man get stuck, Winnie-the-pooh style, and have to be yanked through by his fellow passengers while the train was departing. Elevators don't do that. The doors take forever to close and if they start to... you can put your hand out, and they'll open! Stop pushing your way on to elevators!

People, don't be a douche.

But on to much more pressing matters. Is it pretty much just accepted at this point that Steve Carell is trying to climb up inside of Jim Carrey, or at least his career? Aside from the fact that he took on the sequel to Carrey's Bruce Almighty, he's clearly going for the guy-with-infantile-but-of-the-moment-sense-of-humor-proves-his-chops-through-touching-but-lighthearted-role-and-captures-all-demographics thing. Even the title Dan in Real Life figuratively evokes The Truman Show. But I'm trying to picture SC in a role as heartbreaking as Carrey's in Eternal Sunshine, and I can't get there. Probably I would have said the same thing about Jim Carrey at the time, but all I keep seeing is Brick Tamland's vacant, constipated expression. And you know what? That's timeless. I don't still find The Mask funny, but I bet Anchorman's sense of humor will stand the test of time. So what I'm saying, Steve, is don't make any poor decisions. Well, any poorer than you already have.

Too many italics in that last graph. Tired fingers. Ciao.

It's good to finally know what you want.

2007-10-30T22:50:00.000-05:00

Some of you who've known me for awhile (and many of you who haven't) will know me as the girl with one foot out the door. It seems I can be happy doing almost anything--a great virtue, I'm told--but my attention span for any particular activity is quite short. This probably explains how, since I graduated college in June 2004, a mere three years ago, I have accomplished (or half-accomplished) the following:

* employed as an academic adviser by the UD honors program (six months)
* employed as a waitress at TGIF (eighteen months--and it kills me that this will be the longest entry)
* drove across the country and back
* spent a summer learning Russian (in Moscow)
* spent a summer backpacking in South America
* moved three times
* earned an associate's degree in photography
* completed half of an M.A. in journalism (one year)
* applied for and accepted a doctoral program in English

Yes that's right, folks. Three years. I'm like an avocational floozy. Where is this going, you ask? Surely she's not doing it again... she's not once more hauling out the old bag of excuses--poorly informed past choices; lack of life experience; this time it feels right; I can't go on living unless it's as a taxidermist; &cta. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but it's true. I've dipped my big toe in the Ph.D. program and I now see what was wrong about everything I've heretofore decided to do...

It was all about doing something. Yep, this time it's for SURE. I know I've got it nailed. I'm dropping out of school (again) to do nothing. It's going to be great. I'm going to sleep in all day, and watch movies until Kevin comes home and makes me dinner. I'm going to drink beer in the shower and go for long sits in the park. I know it's the right choice, because... well, it just feels right. Like nothing I've done before.

"I feel like I'm getting a glimpse of Undergrad Jessie"

2007-10-15T18:38:00.000-05:00

Oh, hello. It's you again. What are you doing here? Me? Oh, no. I haven't been hanging around this whole time waiting for you, no. I have stuff to do. I'm cool.

But since we're both here, let's talk. I haven't blogged in a thousand years. Literally. But now that I have a soul-crushing amount of schoolwork again, I'm going to need all the procrastination devices I can get. I thought a good way to kick it off might be to cover my spectacular weekend. Yeah, I know. Snoozefest. Everyone blogs about her fucking weekend. But you know what? My weekend was cooler than yours.

Exhibit A: It was my birthday. Which I share with one of the coolest grad students in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of English. Oh, hell. I'll say it. One of the coolest people in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of English. Yeah, that's right. Kristiane is a goddess. Not only did we celebrate with a giant table full of tikka masala and vindaloo... not ONLY did we throw a fantastic party complete with cake and car bombs and Coolio and me being called a "birthday whore"... No, not only all of those things. But my long-lost and darling-beloved Erinn showed up unannounced at dinner. IN THE FLESH! No, she wasn't naked. Well, she was half-naked, but that's beside the point. Her sneaky (and covered) little ass just waltzed on into Maharani in Madison like she never left. Like a cold-blooded gangsta.

Exhibit B: Erinn made apple tart. Yeah.

Exhibit C: I got to have dinner last night at a prof's house in the arboretum (read: smack in the middle of nature) with a Pulitzer prize-winning author. I will leave him (Damn, I've revealed his gender! Damn, I've done it again!) nameless. But if you ever get to hang out with a famous author who's a little flamboyant and wears tight black t-shirts and gets a little tipsy and starts slamming all of his least-favorite contemporary authors, you'll know just who I mean. Did you know that reading Don DeLillo is like being rammed by a huge dick? Me neither. (For the record, that's apparently a good thing. I'll spare the good names of the authors he eviscerated, because they were some of my favorites. :-X)

So, all of that makes the fact that I'm completely screwed this week somewhat bearable. Also the knowledge that my weekend was better than yours. That helps ease the pain a little, too.

I typically hate memes, but this one was cool. And I'm supposed to be writing a paper, so... you know.

2007-04-28T21:55:00.000-05:00

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

OH MY GOD SO AWESOME.

2007-04-14T20:52:00.000-05:00

This story involves everything I love. The 19th century. Pre-Raphaelite art. Fucked-up children's lit. Wombats.

Read on.

From the Wikipedia page on Dante Gabriel Rossetti:

During this time, Rossetti acquired an obsession for exotic animals, and in particular wombats. He would frequently ask friends to meet him at the "Wombat's Lair" at the London Zoo in Regent's Park, and would spend hours there himself. Finally, in September 1869, he was to acquire the first of two pet wombats. This shortlived wombat, named "Top", was often brought to the dinner table and allowed to sleep in the large centrepiece of the dinner table during meals. Indeed, this is said to have inspired the dormouse from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Lest you think this is a case of Wikipedia hacking, like the Eric-discovered description of Machiavelli's philosophy as "testiculogical" (as opposed to "teleological"), here's an article on the very subject.

I'm peeing and dying of joy at the same time.

It's April, isn't it? My calendar, can someone check... it's working, right?

2007-04-07T10:51:00.000-05:00

I don't ask a lot from Madison. I know more or less what I'm getting into. The winters pain me deeply, but I smile and put on four coats because I chose to move here, and I'm a big person (personally, not physically... though, with four coats on...).

But look, Madison. In return you could at least live up to your average temperatures. It's April now. And I have the internet, so you're not fooling me. The average high is supposed to be in the upper 50's. That's not exactly fucking balmy, but compared to the last four months it's certainly liveable. Jacket weather, that's all I'm asking. But the ten-day forecast doesn't go above 48. Lots of highs in the 30s, lots of lows in the 20s. And... snow.

COME THE FUCK ON.

I know I was warned about this, too. Everyone reading this who's been in Madison for a couple of years is saying: "Oh, isn't that precious. The new girl is still upset about the slow spring." Well, YES. YES I AM. I don't like winter very much. I steeled myself for it, and I handled it. It's spring. I'M DONE HANDLING IT NOW.

Playing Magic in the library over spring break is like masturbating to a chess competition.

2007-04-05T16:47:00.000-05:00

A guy sitting in a booth in the library cafe is on his cell phone, talking loudly. It's spring break, and there are only about six of us sad sacks in here doing work, so his conversation is more or less filling the room. I was tuning him out pretty well until I just heard him say:

"Yeah, last night was pretty cool. We just played a bunch of Magic. I brought my big deck over to show people, and yeah, everyone was pretty impressed with what I could do with it."

If you're imagining the guy saying this with a kind of Napoleon Dynamite voice, you're pretty close. I'm not judging Magic players (okay, I am a little bit). But I am judging someone who gets his self-validation from reporting his skill at it. And who also uses the word "deck" a little too much like the word "penis."

And the loud cell phone conversation brings me to a social etiquette rant I've been meaning to go on for a little while. There are literally thousands of breaches of social responsibility that I could go on about. Leaving a wet counter in the bathroom. Farting in an elevator. Not tipping. Dropping a deuce so large it won't flush and then just walking away. But here, I will focus on three, ordered from least annoying to most homicide-inducing.

1.) Getting your stuff together to leave a class while the professor is still talking. Yeah, we're all attuned to the impending-freedom clues, buddy. It's not just you who has a super-psychic sixth sense or a specialness-goblin whispering in your ear to alert you to the code. When the professor's voice lifts a little, when she starts talking about what's due next week, when the second hand is moments away from colliding with the big 12... We all get it. Here's the thing. You think you're being all quiet and sneaky, soundlessly shifting your papers back inside your folder, maybe closing your water bottle top. But the next thing you know, you find you need to scooch your chair back a little. Now we're talking audible sound. And then everyone else around you starts doing it, and before you know it, the professor is completely drowned out. What's the big deal, right? She's just doing a syllabus-drone that everyone knows is literally seconds away from becoming a see-you-next-week closer. IT'S FUCKING RUDE, THAT'S WHY. You know why it's rude? Because you don't have anywhere to be. Universities design time between classes for just this reason! You'll make it to your bio lab, I swear! I will grant that 0.5% of students in any given class have an immediate and pressing appointment. But you probably don't. And you signed up for the class. So sit the fuck down and attend it. You are not more important or valuable than your professor. You just aren't.

2.) Taking up two seats on the bus. Okay, look. The bus is small and often of a temperature that's an ill match with the season. And above all, no one likes to touch strangers. We just don't. I, especially, do not like to touch strangers. Some of us do, and they probably ride the bus in the middle of the day, but we're not dealing with those folks in this particular case. No, I'm talking to people who--like me and the rest of the world--don't like to touch strangers but who go to inconsiderate lengths to be sure that other people will have to touch strangers before they will. You know the bus game. People fill the bus in a checkerboard pattern, taking all the seats that don't have anyone next to them (much like urinal selection, I'm also told) until this is no longer possible. Then people have to start sitting next to other people. Some try to avoid having their neighboring seat taken by placing a backpack or shopping bag there and then becoming "absorbed" in some kind of reading material or window-gazing and pretending not to notice that the bus is filling up. You know what? Just because you went shopping doesn't earn you an extra seat. The bus is actually quite often used to take people to the store. And I don't think they built it with 25 EXTRA SEATS FOR TOTE BAGS. You are not more special than other people. You're not. Other riders simply move to the aisle, leaving their window seat open but inaccessible. Listen, the likelihood is that eventually the bus will fill up and you will have to touch a stranger. All your delaying does is cause kind people like myself, who also don't want to touch strangers, to pay the price of touching them first. I'm not sure if this makes me so mad because it's rude or because I secretly wish I had the stones to do this, because I hate strangers so much. BUT OH MY GOD MOVE OVER.

3.) Poor door-holding etiquette. This comes in two forms. First are the people who walk through a door in front of you without looking back to see if there's someone behind them to hold the door for. This results in the familiar door-slamming-shut-just-out-of-your-reach problem which is actually worse than walking up to a closed door, because you do this awkward little lurch to get to the door, but then you miss it, making you both mad and embarrassed. No good. Far worse, however, is the second type. This takes the form of a person--oft-accompanied by a cell phone stapled to the side of the head--walking behind you. You, being the considerate sort of chap you are, hold the door open for the person walking behind you, waiting that extra second or two for said person to reach out their very own hand and take the door as they pass through it. Only, this particular douchebag doesn't put her hand out. No, no. She just walks on through the door, past you, and out into the world (or library) without even looking at you, much less saying thank you. This one baffles me. Are there really people in the world who have no trouble using their fellow human beings, who are simply extending a kindness they are not obligated to extend but do, as butlers? I have particular trouble handling the several-years-younger-than-me, several-brains-stupider-than-me fucking chippy talking on a cell phone and wearing a puffy coat that's wider than it is long ASSUMING I am there to hold her doors. ONE OF THESE TIMES I AM GOING TO CHASE YOU AND STAB YOU IN THE NECK AND YOU WON'T HEAR ME COMING BECAUSE YOU'LL BE LISTENING TO YOUR DADDY TELL RACIST JOKES ABOUT YOUR ACTUAL BUTLER WHILE YOU WAIT FOR AN OPENING TO ASK FOR MORE MONEY TO BUY A NEW, PUFFIER COAT. Agh.

Reach out. And take the fucking door. You are not more special than me. And you won't look as cute with a broken nose.

Don't all three of these problems really boil down to people thinking they are more special or more entitled than other people? Maybe we should all take a generation off from telling our kids that they're special. And send them to summer camp on a socialist farm.

Just hold the door.

A thousand rescue St. Bernards, STAT.

2007-02-25T10:15:00.000-06:00

Last night was the snow-pocalypse. Actually, this entire weekend is the snow-pocalypse. It snowed about 5 inches on Friday night, which was somehow the perfect backdrop for my getting slightly drunk at 6pm. The Department held its annual Graduate Student Conference on Friday, and somehow I got assigned to moderate the final panel and thus give the final little talk of the day. Who.. what? Guys, I don't know if you know this, but... there are a lot more, better candidates in the graduate school for this. Like people who have been here long enough to know things about the department. But I threw down some writerly skillz on that and delivered a speech most people seemed to like. And then three pints of Bass in an hour seemed like the way to go.

Which brings me back to the snow-pocalypse. I heard it was supposed to snow a lot this weekend. Specifically, Saturday. So when I exited the City Bar on Friday evening into swirling snow, I was a little surprised. But when it had snowed 5 inches, I thought, well, I guess the snow came early. Because though we have had consistent snowfall ever since the deep freeze ended two weeks ago, we haven't really gone above 6 inches in any one snow "event."

Oh, but the snow did not come early this weekend. It came three times. Last night was the actual snow event that people had been talking about, and it snowed another 9 inches. And by tomorrow we're supposed to get another 3. All told, that makes... 18 inches.

Friday night the snow was accompanied by one of those freaky, bright, daytime skies in the middle of the night. And it was radioactive yellow. Last night the snow brought thunder and lightning and blizzard-condition winds. SWEET. Wisconsin is trying to kill me. Snow-pocalypse style.

Also, my work is trying to kill me. In my lit class we have a paper due already, which is strange, because we've only read two novels thus far, so there's not much subject matter to choose from. And while trying to accomplish this head-scratching task I have two weeks of dense theory to read for the same class. Presumably this is to help me conceptualize my paper, but I don't know how I'm going to have TIME to write a paper when I have 275 pages of Fanon to get through and another 200 of Bhabha. And then, the week AFTER the paper is due... we don't have class. What.....

But my Critical and Cultural Studies class continues to rock hard. And I have to say, what I really like about this semester is reading the big names. As opposed to reading lots of articles where people cite Foucault and Anderson and Adorno, I'm actually reading those people all semester, which is great. I feel like I'm finally building up my smart-arsenal. And someday I will blow shit up.

Right.

Supa Bowl Weekend.

2007-02-03T19:30:00.000-06:00

Current time: 7:31 pm
Current temp: -6
Current chill: -24

Damn.
I can't wait to see what it's like in another five hours.

Professionalism, Shprofessionalism.

2007-02-02T09:42:00.000-06:00

Go look at the 10-day forecast for Madison. I'd cry, but my tears would freeze to my face in little icicles of sorrow.

I'm a teacher. A college teacher. That's so weird. I'm actually "teaching" right now. My students are doing group work, and I'm writing in my blog. I teach wearing ripped jeans, and sometimes I project Natalie Dee and Married to the Sea cartoons on the wall while my students are working. I think sometimes someone's going to come into the room and say, "Oh, no no no. You come with us. There's been a terrible mistake made here." But I got my evals back from last semester and they were very good. So at least I'm popular.

Super Bowl this weekend. Aaaaaaand I'm out of things to say.

Everything is frozen.

2007-01-29T11:13:00.000-06:00

I'm starting to think that Wisconsin isn't playing around. The lake finally froze. I say finally because December and early January were unseasonably warm, so the freezing process was late in the year (avg. freeze date Dec. 20), not because it took a long time. Once it got going, it only took about 4 days. That's fast. And it's a big lake (almost 10,000 acres). Big up to Wikipedia for the factoids. One morning in December I rode past the lake on the bus and saw this low layer of mist rising up from the middle of the lake and rolling quickly out to the shores in waves. Two different people told me it was the lake "giving up its heat." The next day it was partially frozen. I imagine, if not for the following warm spell, it would have gone through that whole process in a couple of days. Like a big yawn and then it closes its mouth. But it took a month-long hiatus and was nice enough to wait for my return to this tundra wasteland.

Which brings me to the 10-day forecast. The average high over the next ten days is 18; the average low is 4. (This blog entry is full of data; it's so official-like.) There's a light snowfall every couple of days. The big snow from last week is still here. Everywhere. Deep. I've never lived someplace where it snows and then the snow... doesn't melt. It hasn't been above freezing in weeks. It doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. I feel like I live inside of a giant freezer. You know that lumpy, white build-up of ice you get inside of freezers? That's what Wisconsin looks like right now.

Erinn's 25th birthday was Thursday, and I made a lot of fun of her for being old, rounding up to 30, being a quarter-century...however you want to look at it, she's ancient. To celebrate the occasion, we went bowling, ate cake, and almost died. That's right. Kevin almost got us hit by a train. I'm not talking about cutting across the tracks a few seconds before the barrier goes down, while the train is still a ways off. I'm talking about not realizing we were sitting in the middle of an intersection through which a train passes and trying to figure out which way to turn. He chose a right turn (thanks to the urging of our own Backseat Angry Dad, Eric) and four seconds later, in the rear-view, a thundering train passed a few feet from the spot we had just been occupying. A left turn would ACTUALLY HAVE KILLED US. But my point here is not that this was Kevin's fault. For all that Eric and Andy maintain there was ample warning, I only heard bells. Which are loud and can be heard from some ways off an actual train crossing. It was dark. I never saw tracks. If you're not familiar with the local streets, what's to tell you that the train is coming through your intersection and is about to murder you? Where's the little white mechanical barrier, Wisconsin? They're not expensive, and you know what? I OBEY THEM. Happy birthday, Erinn. I hope you like the near-death experience we got you. You can't exchange it.

Belly-up to the lazy buffet.

2007-01-15T14:59:00.000-06:00

Snow. I'm officially calling this my first real Madison snowfall. We had a dusting right before my birthday (much too soon for a snowfall in my opinion) and a couple of two-inchers at the end of the semester. Then it got fucking cold and the lake began to freeze. But then it got all 40-degrees and dry for weeks on end. My return to the midwest has been hailed with real snow.

It's currently still snowing, though I can't really believe that the small blowing flakes are contributing any more to the accumulation, which seems to be about 5 inches. When I decided that I was moving to Wisconsin, I used this new-fangled internet thing--which I hear is full of all kinds of facts--to look up Madison's annual snowfall totals. When I found the answer to be 5 inches, I was doubtful. The midwest is supposed to be full of snow! But how could the internet lie to me?? Since it's now January 15th and our total for the winter thus far is about 7 inches, I feel a.) relieved that the midwest will live up to its white reputation (and oh, how that applies in more than one way) and also b.) disappointed that the internet is not, in fact, a digital Delphi.

Snow is sweet.

So, yes, I'm back in Madison. I won't say much about my vacation. Except that I was surprised by own capacity for regression into the state of a sullen, angsty, family-hating fifteen-year-old. And that it's a good thing it took me most of my time at home to figure out how to connect my laptop to the internet, for this saved me from posting a ridiculous blog rant about hating my life. All I will now say in retrospect is that going home for the holidays at this age is hard. And that growing up has done a lot to contribute to a changed perspective on my family. And that I wish I had brothers and sisters. It's strange to spend the holidays with just my mother, as much as I love her.

I've done jack shit with my vacation. I need to learn to be okay with that. I always schedule myself more things than I can reasonably do, which leads to the ridiculous practice of making to-do lists months in advance. During the semester, while I'm buried under academic readings, I begin to wish I were making more progress on other, less soul-sucking projects. There's not enough of a sense of completion involved in academic work. It's cyclical. So I make fantastical, optimistic lists of all the things I will actually "take care of" when I have my time to myself. Things like, finishing the blanket I started crocheting two years ago. Building my website. Reading books for fun. Scrapbooking. Then vacation comes around, I look at that list, and think, ".............no?"

This particular to-do list has looked much the same for YEARS. These projects are all unfortunate enough to fall in the interstices between semester busy-ness and post-semester laziness. I will never do them.

So I have spent three weeks watching television. I feel a bit bad about myself at the moment, actually. I have read .5 books. I think I will go home right now and read. Or maybe watch a movie...

I keep telling myself I need this. That I must build up a good store of waste-of-life-ness to counterbalance the draining level of productivity I must sustain for the next four months. But I think I'm lying to myself. Because I kind of feel like shit. I'm not usually like this. All my life I have denied myself vacation time, and now I'm freaking gorging at the all-you-can-eat lazy buffet. And I can't stop. Someone please call for help.

Why do I never sleep the night before I travel?

2006-12-20T00:37:00.000-06:00

Going home for three weeks. Well, Pittsburgh and home. I'll probably post from home, but that's the sitch. Later, folks.

International conspiracy / Making fun of college fashion.

2006-12-17T15:54:00.000-06:00

You know how you work on a paper for a really long time and become committed to your topic even though after a certain point you realize you really should have written on something else? I now see that if I wanted to write about Colombia, I really should have focused on this:

PABLO ESCOBAR AND DANE COOK ARE THE SAME PERSON. That's right; the U.S. military didn't kill him. He hid out for ten years and then became a comedic pop culture icon in the United States. Bold move, Pablo, but I'm onto you.

Also, I posted this on Facebook already but couldn't resist also doing so here.

Does this not remind you of all the undergraduates in Ugg boots, stretch pants, and short puffy coats with huge hoods? Because it does me.

Graaaaaading.
<3.

Procrastination and photos of my apartment--for those who haven't been here.

2006-12-16T14:26:00.000-06:00

What do blogging, baking, and laundry have in common? First, they are great ways to procrastinate. Also, I am doing all three of them right now.

Okay, Kevin made the pie. And he will be very upset if I do not give him his due credit. But I am watching it in the oven, so now going into the kitchen every five minutes is my responsibility. Oh no! I have to abandon my shitty project to tend to a pie! You can't ignore the dinging of the timer. It's very important. So is laundry. That constitues an every-35-minutes interruption. And then there's the blog, the final nail in productivity's coffin.

I hate this project. I hate this class. If I worked for the next two hours without stopping I would be done. But so strong is my aversion to working on it that I will likely make only sporadic progress spaced out over the next six hours, thus accomplishing the feat of letting this one minor thing ruin my day. That's how I roll.

Plus, I have to do laundry. And bake. And blog. Have to.

I finished my first term paper. It was called, "Multitemporality, Hybridity and Violence: Cinematic Identity in a Simultaneous Colombia." It was about how Colombian film both expresses the violence of its national identity and the anxieties of Latin America as a whole, which is both premodern and postmodern simultaneously. And how this hybrid identity tells us it is neither useful to talk about Latin America as a whole unit nor about nation-states as independent from regional influences. Yeah. It was kinda cool. I liked doing it.

And yes, I used the mandatory "_____, ______, and _______: Nonsensical Juxtaposition" titling format. That's Eric's joke, by the way. Look at me go, giving credit to other people. I felt I had to use this format for my first term paper. It's a rite of passage. Also, I thought up my title 2 minutes before printing and handing in the paper.

I should do another 15 minutes of work on my project. Then I will need a break, so I will come back and post the apartment pictures I keep promising. Ready, go.

And I'm back. I think three paragraphs, another load of laundry, and taking the pie out justifies my continuing the blog. Right. So where was I? Oh, right, pictures of my apartment. Here you go:

This is our badass living room. Note the badass hardwood floors and the badass fireplace and the badass built-in bookshelves. (You can't really see those, but they're on either side of the fireplace.)

This is another view of our badass living room. Note the badass bay windows and the badass curtains.

Yet another view of our living room. That glass door in the back leads to the study and the sun room.

This is our badass sun room. It has those windows on three sides, but I couldn't get them to fit in the picture. It's also got a lot of plants. We've only killed about half of them. Check out the sweet hanging pot that makes fuzzy pink caterpillars. It's called a chenille plant. It's badass.

This is our main hallway. To the right is our living room, study, and sun room. The doors on the left lead to our bedroom, library, and kitchen. I'm standing in the bathroom to take the picture. Kevin likes to slide down this hallway in his sock-feet, a la Risky Busines.

This is our bedroom. It's kind of plain. But all we do in there is sleep. I will decorate it next semester.

This is our "library." We had so many extra rooms we didn't know what to do with them, and this one became the miscellaneous room. It's not really the library. Most of our books are in the living room. But it has a sofa and a bookcase, our music, my photography supplies, and my clothes. I use the closets in here, and Kevin uses the ones in our bedroom.

This is our kitchen. It's my least favorite room. It doesn't match the rest of our apartment. It's like someone had an extra bucket of white paint and nowhere to use it. But it is spacious. And we're going to get a bird feeder for the window.

The bathroom. Claw-foot tub. Weird.

The study. Ahahaha, it is always this messy.

The end. Hope you enjoyed.

24 pages down; 6 to go.

2006-12-11T21:30:00.000-06:00

Oh my god, I am so close to being done with my term paper. This is the part I hate. I have systematically worked around all the technicalities like citing, preferring instead to let my brilliance stream forth uninterrupted, pausing only to insert things like (CITE THIS LATER) and (WHERE THE HELL DID I READ THIS). Now I have to go back and fill all that shit in, and I don't wannnnnnaaaaa. Oh, and I also still have a chunk of it left to write, but it's the easy part. I even have a conclusion already. You might say, Hey. How do you have a conclusion when your paper's not done. I say, Fuck coherency. Better to take a bunch of extra shit that isn't really fitting in, throw it at the bottom, and call it a conclusion. Tah-dah! Jessie's guide to paper-writing.

I really wish I didn't have a full day of other things before this class tomorrow. I could use going to bed right now followed by five or six hours of work tomorrow. But alas, I teach and then have another class. So, boys and girls, what does that mean?

ALL-NIGHTER!

Also because I'm posting on my journal right now instead of working....WTF.

7 pages down, 20 to go.

2006-12-08T14:59:00.000-06:00

Davita, in the process of opening her birthday card and spreading birthday cookie around the office like delicious confetti, found the following on the floor: a folded-in-half note, addressed to no one, that read...

It is in your best interest(s) to meet me upstairs in (3) 17-19 minutes.

*What's in (parentheses) had been crossed out with an X.

Where upstairs? Meet whom? What was wrong with 3 minutes? Why the specificity of 17-19 and why not just say 18? More importantly, what was happening upstairs?? It is now the office mystery.

It's sad that I think the middle of the day feels warm. The middle of the day today was 20 ("feels like" 12), as compared to the morning temperature of 6 ("feels like" -1). About 2pm it was downright balmy. I stopped clenching the muscles in my back.

And so begins the weekend of work. Term paper, ahoy!

Come on. Really?!

2006-12-07T07:24:00.000-06:00

Time: 7:24 AM
Status: Sleepy, getting ready to teach
Temperature: 5
"Feels Like": -11

That's right. -11.

One more week of school. I can't wait to sleep in and watch movies.

Procrastination for dorks

2006-12-06T12:19:00.000-06:00

Ohhhh, Megan. Screw you for getting me hooked on this website. Just a very few of my favorite words.

Dammit.

It's early.

2006-12-05T07:42:00.000-06:00

Time: 7:43 AM
Currently: Getting ready to go to school allllll day.

Temperature: 5
"Feels Like": -4
Forecast: snow.

Wisconsin snow removal = D, in danger of failing.

2006-12-03T15:08:00.000-06:00

Wisconsin is really disappointing me so far this winter. It snowed again on Friday--and I have to say, it freaked me out, because not only did I not see it snowing, but I also didn't even know it was supposed to snow. So I woke up on Friday morning, and as I was wandering through the apartment in my sleepy state, I noticed it was a bit brighter than usual. Because there was fresh snow everywhere. I have a feeling this will become normal.

So the point is, it only snowed 2-3 inches. But yet, TWO DAYS LATER, the side streets were still totally white. I fishtailed in Erinn's car (cover your ears, E, everything's fine) while driving to my super-secret Saturday morning thing.

Come on, Wisconsin. Aren't you supposed to be, like, the champ at this sort of thing? Isn't this kind of what you DO? Who do you think you are, Delaware? Get on it.

The real temperatures have been hovering around 25/15 (high/low), and the "feels like" temperatures at around 15/0. Here we go, winter.

Wait, wait.... nope. Still not a genius.

2006-11-30T13:25:00.000-06:00

Now it's cold. Sixty to zero in two days. Okay, so I just wanted to invert that phrase. It's not zero. It's actually thirteen. But that's pretty damn close. Plus, I live on the Ameri-tarded measuring system, so thirty-two is my zero. The point is, it's cold. And I made an important discovery, which is that my coat stops being effective somewhere between thirty and thirteen degrees. Which means I need a new coat. A Wisconsin coat. Anybody know where I can buy parkas that aren't ugly?

It was sixty degrees over Thanksgiving weekend. We went for walks every day. We visited the arboretum. I mean, everything was brown and crunchy, but at least I was outdoors without wishing I were dead. And speaking of brown and crunchy, I have to say that Madison in the winter is disappointingly drab. Aside from the older neighborhood streets--which is thankfully where I live--the architecture here would make an incredible case study in why not to build an entire city in the 1970s. The spirit of Madison seems to bubble up over the boxy prison-buildings, and there are parks and trees everywhere, people with dogs, the lake full of sailboats, sidewalk cafes.... oh, wait, all of that is only in the summer. Now the trees are bare and hide nothing; the lake is gray and empty; all the people shuttle by in puffy coats and fuzzy hats*; and sidewalk life, dog walking, and lingering conversations in the street have given way to an intense desire to be indoors NOW. So now I can see the buildings. And they're ugly.

*Why, oh why, didn't I buy a fuzzy Russian hat while I was in Moscow?

I still like Madison. She's my dog.

So this was the first time I hosted a holiday. My mom came here and slept in my guest bedroom. She offered to help me with my dishes. I took her on fun little outings and excursions. I thought it would make me feel old, but it didn't. It made me feel like my mom was old. It made me think of us hosting my grandmother for holidays--she'd fly in by herself, shuffling through airport security and take up awkward space in our house for a few days, seem sort of small and disconnected. My mom does none of those things. She's active and fit, energetic, and young. Still in her 40s. But it made me see her set apart from our home, adrift like my grandmother. It changed the way I saw our dynamic, and that made me see her as old, as less attached to a set of symbolic anchors, somehow drifting apart. I don't know. I guess I can't explain it. It seems like something DeLillo would explain perfectly (I'm reading White Noise right now, which incidentally is incredible).

As if my mother sensed that I passed an entire weekend without feeling old, she sent me the link to a story about a child music prodigy. And within four seconds I went from feeling like a reasonably self-assured twenty-something who's pretty cool and has a whole adult life with which to do great things... to feeling like a giant dried-up waste of good organs. Then I stopped making it about me and decided that this kid (Jay Greenberg) is pretty damn cool. He's 14 and hears entire symphonies in his head, just like Mozart did, which is... absurd and phenomenal. He could name instruments before being taught to and could write symphonies without knowing how to play any of the instruments. He goes to high school and Julliard at the same time. He's being called the first real musical genius in a couple hundred years. I read a bunch of articles and watched the 60 minutes special on him, and the one thing I wondered about, which no one brought up... are his pieces any good? Or is that a stupid question? Okay, he has an almost supernatural ability to hear and write music. That's so astonishing as to defy language. But is that kind of genius necessarily accompanied by creative genius as well? Is it possible to have a Mozart-like genius for musical comprehension but to hear and record derivative drivel? Or is this kind of prodigy-level of fluency all by itself the measure of "good"?

I am consumed with the hope that this kid is the real deal. I'm really fascinated by this stuff, because I don't understand what it is. I mean, seriously. Explain it to me. Is it a genetic mutation? Is this the beginning of the wimpiest X-Men ever? There isn't even a musical history in this kid's family, and he hears symphonies. I've often wondered if the age of the classical prodigy is over, now that we give that kind of music so little cultural space, and kids rarely grow up exposed to it in the same way they used to. But the idea that without any exposure this kid knew how to write symphonies suggests something very elemental about that kind of music. I've feared sometimes that we've murdered our modern-day geniuses in the crib with Jessica Simpson and flourescent lighting. So what's the explanation? We all have talents, that's what makes us different. But this kid is abnormal. Is it mutant DNA? Reincarnation? Growing up on a nuclear test site? Honestly. Let's talk about this. I don't know what the answer is, but I think it's pretty cool.

Feel like crap now? Me, too. So if you'd like to see something at which I achieve brilliant levels of mediocrity, check out my latest book review in the City Paper.

I will post pictures of my apartment next time.

And for an update: I am still burping a lot. Like all the time.

Excuse me for one second, I need to whine.

2006-11-29T10:34:00.000-06:00

It is currently 39 degrees and raining, which is probably the worst weather I can imagine. You might say, "How about 33 degrees and raining?" But the closer you come to freezing, the more likely it is that what you actually have is a wintry mix, which, while horrendous, accompanies the possibility that school might close or that it might turn to snow. No, 39 and raining is the worst.

And I must point out that it was simply 39 and cloudy when I left my office 20 minutes ago to walk to the library. A block from my destination, when it was stupid to stop, take off my backpack, and dig out my umbrella, God poked a hole in his waterbed. In an absurdly short amount of time, my jeans were soaked. You know how that is. When you're walking in the rain, for some reason, your thighs take the worst of it. Which is so awesome, because that also happens to be where your pants are the tightest, thus not only clinging inescapably to your skin but also drying incredibly slowly!

And you know the only way to really deal with a situation like this is to take off your pants and put on something so amazingly dry that you do a little dance inside your warm, dry pants. But here I am, all settled into the library for a day of studying, with wet, cold, clingy jeans. Oh, and it's not raining anymore.

I'm taking my pants off.

Also... in other absurd news, Jada Pinkett Smith has a metal band?

Study study study.

My subconscious is a HUGE DORK.

2006-11-27T21:08:00.000-06:00

So I had this dream.

In which Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Keats were engaged in a kind of vicious rivalry. Yes, that's right: a poet-rivalry. And one evening, by chance, they found themselves in the same tavern. And again by chance, a bar fight broke out. Keats was right in the thick of things, and when shit got heavy, he ended up killing a man. Well, Coleridge was hanging out on the sidelines, and he captured the moment of the murder... with a daguerreotype. And later had a crisis of conscience about whether to publish the daguerreotype in a periodical. He wanted to, because it would bring down Keats, but he didn't want to be vindictive.

Nevermind that the daguerreotype antedates Coleridge's death by 6 years and Keats' by 19.
Nevermind that you couldn't really print daguerreotypes in newspapers.
Nevermind that the daguerreotype took several seconds to expose and thus could not freeze-frame a murder in a tavern.

I think the thing to focus on here is how AWESOME my subconscious is.

On flakes, Fergie, and faith

2006-11-11T11:59:00.000-06:00

It snowed again. It was only an inch and a half. But it was real snow. And it's still out there. I looked on weather.com to see how things were going in good old Maryland, and it's in the 60s this week. So maybe the weather is making me grumpy. But I'm pretty sure not even in New Zealand on a crystal beach could I abide the new Fergie song. Non sequitur? Whatever.

I had some trouble with the Black Eyed Peas signing on what was obviously not much more than a pair of tits. I had a bigger problem when they released a song containing the line, "my lovely lady lumps." I blamed Fergie. Now I'm sure. She is in fact incarnated evil in the form of bouncy fleshy merchandising. WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN:

"How come every time you come around, my London, London bridge wanna go down?"

IT DOESN'T. MAKE. ANY. SENSE. It's a children's rhyme morphed into some bizarre meaningless sexual allusion. I mean, I went there with Beyonce when she called it 'jelly.' I even went there with Ciara when she called it a 'milkshake.' But a giant iconic piece of architecture? Which part of you, Fergie, is like a bridge? What does it mean for that to collapse? Just because you gyrate and bite your lip at the camera does not mean that you can turn any combination of words into a sexual reference. AGHHH. But I'm getting worked up at the wrong person. She's clearly just a pair of tits. Some jackass in a suit wrote this song. In about five minutes before the staff meeting. And a group of suits said, "GENIUS!"

I'm not naive. I know that for years and years now we have stopped demanding quality in music. But are we really at the point where nonsensical crap isn't even something we can identify? Okay, a lot of great music doesn't make sense. But this isn't great music. In fact, I'm pretty sure that not only does the chorus not make sense, but the verses are a complete rip-off of "Tipsy" by J-Kwon. So we're stealing, and not even from a good store. Son of a bitch, Fergie. (Though I have to admit to kind of liking the J-Kwon song. See, I'm not a total music snob.)

Also, the new Outback Steakhouse commercial features a cover of "Wraith Pinned to the Mist (And Other Games)" by Of Montreal. The cover goes, "Let's go Outback tonight / Life will still be there tomorrow." Instead of "Let's pretend we don't exist / Let's pretend we're in Antarctica." I think the guys at Pitchfork said it best: something along the lines of, "who hears bouyant Elephant 6 indie pop and thinks, 'STEAKS!!'" I don't know what I think of it yet. Just that it's bizarre. Most people I know have never heard of Of Montreal. And then I was sitting on my couch watching TV and there they were on an Outback Steakhouse commercial. I can't decide if they're sellouts or if they just think that's kind of ironic.

____________________

Moving on from pop music. A Jehovah's witness came to my door last week.

ME: (opening door)
HIM: Hi, I'm spreading the word of the Gospel.
ME: Oh. Thanks, I'm not interested. (shutting the door)
HIM: (shouting through the door): HE'S COMING!!!

Yes he is. And he is the police.

I think it's one of Kevin's teachers who invites Jehovah's witnesses in, acts interested, and then says, "Wait, only 144,000 of us are going to be saved? What if I'm taking your place? What if I'm bumping you out of heaven?" Seriously. Why do they proselytize? Doesn't every new convert reduce their odds? He's coming. Aren't you going to feel like an ass when you're number 144,001. And I'm standing in front of you. Ha ha.

What the hell. The things people are willing to believe.

_________________

The Democrats are my unreasonable faith. I need to believe that they're going to finally extract their balls and do something in office. Investigate corporate kickbacks. Make a plan for withdrawal in Iraq. Impeach the president. It's going to happen. It has to.

Yeah. And the guy at my door will be one of the 144,000.

Throw out your televisions

2006-11-07T20:46:00.000-06:00

also on my election night rant... WHY ISN'T THERE CONSTANT NEWS COVERAGE? WHY IS LAW AND ORDER ON WHEN WE ARE ENGAGED IN KICKING ASSHOLES LIKE SANTORUM OUT OF OFFICE?

And on a similar tangent, why is everything on TV now an 'event'? It's a fucking ER 'event' every single episode. The last time I checked, an event was the Million Man March, 9/11, or, I don't know... AN ELECTION.

Next week is a "very special Deal or No Deal." I'm not kidding.

Here lies Jessie; she died in a fit of patriotic agony.

2006-11-07T19:42:00.000-06:00

Elections get me all worked up. It's some kind of combination of deep lurking patriotism and heartburn. The waving American flag graphics on the news, the thought of millions of families in their living rooms waiting to see what form the government will take--it's almost enough to make a girl well up with democratic pride. I think, too, it takes me back to a very particular era for my family. You know, when we liked each other. Election '92 I was 10. Only dimly aware of the electoral process. My parents, being news junkies, had kept me somewhat in the loop about the Arkansas cowboy who'd grabbed the nation by the balls--and the nation liked it. But I can't say I really cared about the outcome. I sensed that my parents cared, but I had no idea why. Then, on Tuesday--a school night--my dad drove me all the way out to my uncle's house, two hours away. My family used to get together a lot, but a mid-week party was unheard of. We were up late into the night, or what seemed late for a 10-year-old on a Tuesday, and when the news anchors called the victory for Clinton, my entire family broke into "Happy Days Are Here Again," and my grandmother started crying. I had no idea what was so important, but I knew that something serious had happened and that it made me feel like I wanted to be a part of it. I think that's part of how I still feel on election days. I know; it's cheesy. Sometimes that shit gets me. Despite appearances, I am a patriot.

And, I think, that's why this election in particular is so important to me. It's not just that the Democrats have a chance to take the House and the Senate; these are good things, but I can't convince myself that they will change the course of the next two years so dramatically. The Republicans are already moving away from Bush.

And it's not just that I've been burned in every election I've so far participated in. Though I have. This was my fourth time voting. Let's review. 2000: Bush steals the election. I stay up all night and fall asleep after crying. 2002: Bob Ehrlich wins the governorship in Maryland. I stay up all night and fall asleep after crying. 2004: Kerry comes close but falls short; almost all of my faith in the country falls apart; I stay up all night and upon hearing the official result in the morning, have a quick cry before work.

No, it's not just all of those things. Though for once it would be nice to vote for the guy who wins. (The only races in which this has happened are, to the best of my knowledge, uncontested Sentate seats and maybe the executor of wills.) No. I don't even care so much if the Democrats win because they're Democrats. I care because I need to believe that our nation has any threshhold of political indignation. My patriotism is on the line. If Michael Steele wins in Maryland... I just... I don't even know what will happen to my faith in the voting public. How can we stare down the barrel of en endless mideast quagmire, corporations running a congress which has its dick in every intern it can find, and a looming energy crisis the administration seems to want to ignore... how can WE NOT DEMAND CHANGE. Is so very much of the country so very wedded to the idea of gays not having abortions that they will not stand up for education, the future of the planet, and the 18-year-olds dying in the desert? It boggles the mind that anyone can watch the news and go to the polls and vote red. BOGGLES.

This is what happens to me every election night. I have palpitations.

The early returns are in, and the Democrats have picked up two Senate seats--Ohio and PA (go the eff home, Santorum!). But this is how it always happens. It looks very, very good, and then Dan Rather says, "wait, it seems Al Gore has NOT won Florida." So I'm not holding my breath just yet.

Everyone say a prayer for Maryland.
<3.

Trick or Tricked-Out Sluts.

2006-10-30T22:55:00.000-06:00

***Update: the man I referred to in the third paragraph is actually playing a piccolo and is commonly known as Piccolo Pete.***

Madison's most notorious holiday came and went, and the city is still standing. No mace, no broken windows. Just a whole lot of titties.

State Street was not quite the freakfest I was hoping for. It was more like a freak petting zoo. We walked down and back up--about 45 minutes--which is more or less what everybody does. You get drunk and go for a walk. Some 20,000 people do this. Walking the gauntlet of State Street, with all of its stadium lighting and drunk high-fiving, allows you to simulaneously do all the ogling you want and also be admired for your own costume creativity. It's really all about swapping props. For many a Madison man, however, the emphasis is on the viewing. There were plenty of guys in what could only loosely be described as costumes, who were clearly particiapting more in the voyeuristic side of the holiday.

But most people chose to embrace possibility. There was something for every fetish: the ghouls, the walking puns, the puking partyers, nurses, bo peeps, sluts of every variety, and of course, lots and lots of bouncing flesh. The closest I came to seeing actual knockers was a guy wearing fake plastic boobs and a plastic Twister sheet around his neck (get it... a titty twister?). But I did see a fleet of girls dressed as "slutty referees," a take on the "slutty noun" costume I hadn't seen before. And boy did they run with the genre. To say they were wearing skirts would be a generous way of describing red belts that happened to have some swish, hovering above entirely exposed ass cheeks. There were also four guys dressed as the Jamaican bobsled team. Respect.

And my personal favorite... the guy dressed as UW's best local street personality. I don't want to call him a homeless guy, because I don't know that he is. Nor do I feel comfortable calling him a crazy. But he's not in the same category as the street musicians on State, who look like they have well-appointed living rooms they sit in when they're not busking. He's entirely distinct. He has a big fluffy white beard and sits in front of the university bookstore, dressed in hazard orange from head to toe, playing the recorder. This wouldn't be so great, but what makes Mr. Orange a full-blown personality is that he's always accompanied by a little kokopelli, also dressed in orange, also playing the recorder. He sits with his little buddy and plays and seems mostly oblivious to the comings and goings of students. And I just like the guy, because, well... he has his own doppelganger. And that's badass. I don't know whether the guy on State Street this weekend was dressed as Mr. Orange as a joke, but I like to think it was a token of respect.

At any rate, it was my favorite sighting.

And I just like a city that goes apeshit for Halloween--and does it at the feet of the state capitol. You've gotta get behind a sanctioned festival of hedonism. Even if it's not really what the holiday is about.

~~~~~~~

In other news, I've decided to come to terms with the things I will never be good at. This week: titling emails. It's my worst social inadequacy. I am spectacularly bad at it. I can't leave them blank. No one likes an email without a subject. It's suspect. So I consistently send off inquiries to very professional people, whom I admire and who might someday prove pivotal in my career with subjects like, "A Question," or "Hello," or "I'm a Giant Douchebag." It's hopeless. No matter what I try, the conveyed message is always, "you have new mail....... from a huge tool."

~~~~~~~

My final thought on the weekend: I just learned that medium vs. dark roast has nothing to do with caffeine content in coffee. Huh. I guess that makes sense. I've been proceeding on unexamined assumptions, which would explain some of my recent unfortunate buzzes. Those of you who go to In the Company of Thieves on E. Johnson, the house blend is the most-caffeinated. Just so you know. I didn't.

Happy actual Halloween. Don't turn your lights out and hide. It's not nice, and you will have to scrape egg off your door.

Boo.

And the end is increasingly nigh.

2006-10-25T17:19:00.000-05:00

***Weather update: It flurried again this week. And we're already averaging 46/32 for the high/low, which is too much like a mid-atlantic December for my tastes.***

In a matter of five minutes this afternoon, I came to the conclusion that Rachael Ray is the devil.

Let me stress the context here. I had just awoken from the most incredible coma on my couch, the kind where it actually feels like you sink into the cushions and a heavy dark blanket of near-death envelops you. I woke up and made a sandwich and needed five minutes of television to facilitate my reentry into the world. Since it was 2:15 in the afternoon, I knew nothing would be on, but I put on NBC, thinking I might get Dr. Phil, the least evil of all daytime programming. (He's still pretty evil.)

But no, Rachael Ray came on. Rachael Ray, who I didn't even know had a daytime network show. In fact, I knew very little about her. I thought she was a cook...? On the food network...? I've heard good things about her cooking, her recipe books, and her personality, so, though I had never really seen her, I had a generally positive sense of her, collectively-constructed via my most savvy friends.

I only watched five minutes, but I am pretty sure she's the devil.

She IS a cook, right? All I saw was an officious interrrupter asking inane questions to reified teen poster David Boreanaz. "Okay. It's 3am and you're walking your dog. Do you scoop the poop or not??" She showed a clip of his show without introducing it and then CLEARLY lacked the vocabulary to talk about things like characterization in the hour-long drama, which he was painfully attempting to discuss in that, "okay, I'm just the talent, but I can at least spit back the director's pre-crafted sound bite about the sublime uniqueness of his particular crime drama" kind of way. And her response was--yet again interrupting the man--to turn to the audience and say, "Pretty watchable, eh? Eh??" thus underbidding Boreanaz's already very low cultural offer.

Who gave this woman a talk show? She's a cook, no? Shouldn't she cook? Shouldn't we all be doing our dao, as it were, and not stinking up the cultural channels with more steaming piles of meaningless words?

I mean ........what?

Some Lake Mendota photos

2006-10-24T13:07:00.000-05:00

Pictures I took a few weeks ago ...free from the usual rambling monologue. Click the thumbnails for a blowup.

The Once and Future English Major

2006-10-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

Perhaps that will be the title of my personal statement for my inevitable application for reentry into the coterie of the literarily-inclined. Ahhhhh, J-School. How insistently you remind me that I don't want to be a journalist. I'm not sure that's what you're going for.

The coffee from the shop on my block is intense. I'm now a cup-a-day drinker, to the extent that I get headaches if I do not have my daily cup. So I would think, considering that I'm starting from a defecit each morning, that I could handle fairly intense intake of caffeine. But I consistently order a small cup, spend an hour drinking it, and spend the next eight hours opening and shutting everything in my apartment and discerning the shape of my heart by the impressions it's beating into my chest. It's unnerving. I've also discovered that there's a strong correlation between my being jazzed the eff up on caffeine and my stress level. When I'm in a normal state, my brain is also fairly chill. "Hey, everything's gonna be cool," it says. When my little blood cells get the souped-up drag racing upgrade from the coffeeshop, my brain follows suit. It gets all high-pitched and squeaky and tries to convince me that my workload is impossible and that I should just quit school. So, why do I drink the coffee? Because I neeeeeeeeed it.

I got my always-delayed buzz this evening listening to a panel called the "New Wave Fabulists," which consisted of Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, and Gary Wolfe. Sitting in the Orpheum theatre, I suddenly felt as if I had passed through an electric fence, which made me very restless and for some reason translated into me checking the time every four minutes. Which says nothing about the content of the discussion, because though it was a bit discursive and unorganized--as any unregulated discussion between authors rightly ought to be--they talked about some interesting things in regards to genre. And Neil Gaiman being my husband. Though this last part was not discussed explicitly, it was quite clearly on all their minds.

The room sort of came to the conclusion that "genre" is a nasty little word. I see where they're coming from, since they are extremely successful writers who bend, break, and otherwise defy genre-ization. But we can't really do without the term, can we? How else to describe a Danielle Steel or a Tony Hillerman? Or the works they create? I think more to the point, we should differentiate between genre-workers and writers. After all, a writer ought to defy genre, no? A writer is a creator. It's a shame that someone like Neil Gaiman is discussed as a reaction to uninspired form writing. "He's a genre-bender." No, he's a writer. Daniele Steel is just a genre whore, and her work does not deserve to be the springboard off of which we discuss the Neil Gaimans of the world.

Just you all wait until I'm in charge of the Language Department in Erinn's New World Domination.

I had to yell at my students this week for doing a shoddy job on their weekly turn-in-something-ANYTHING-related-to-our-discussion-and-earn-credit assignment. I really enjoyed it.

I have a tendency to get really into things for a short period of time until my interest burns out, and then I drop them like they're hot. And simultaneously around the world, a thousand chairs fall over from shock. Okay, no big revelation here. I know an awful little about an awful lot. My deep, deep hope, however, has always been that grad school would be my shot at becoming an expert in something. And now that I despise J-School, I'm worried that I'm just doing that grass-is-greener thing I've always done and that I'm going to turn into Lynn from Girlfriends, a show I am in no way embarrassed to love. Point being, she has like 8 master's degrees in just about all the major social sciences and humanities and lives off of her friends because, well, they're all pretty much worthless. The degrees, not her friends.

I think all I really want is to be in school forever. Oh my god, I am so dysfunctional.

Brian and I have been sporadically working on learning-up my web-building skills, so I'm hoping to have some idea of what I'm doing by the end of the semester and a website up and running by the start of the spring. Details TBA.

And now for one last non-sequitur. Some of my friends and I have noticed a trend in the Wisconsin service industry to answer requests with a tongue-in-cheek, "No, you can't have that, sorry." No, no, I'm sorry. It's obviously my fault for both failing to frame my request as a command and for presuming that you are in fact being paid to fulfill that request. It happened again the other night at Qdoba.

Scene: Qdoba.
Players: Me, hungry. Employee, un-funny.

"May I please have a queso burrito?"
"No."
"What can I have?"
"Nothing."
(tornado of teeth, hair, and tortilla shells)

Okay, so it was more like:

"May I please have a queso burrito?"
"No."
"What can I have?"
"Nothing."
".........."
"Of course you can! Hahahaha."
".........................."

During which silence I wondered what about Wisconsin--the cold, the snow, the cheese-heavy diet--destroys the sense of humor. I'm a nice person. I chat up the help. I spent the last ten years of my life being the help. But it's not a very good joke to begin with, and after hearing it six or eight times, my somewhat convincing titter of amusement has turned into a painfully forced "Ha. ....Ha. Give me the emeffing burrito." The same joke in every local establishment has really lost some luster for me, and besides... you do not get between a girl and her burrito. End of story.

For real.

Coming to terms with snowflakes.

2006-10-17T21:59:00.000-05:00

Lately I've been burping excessively. Couldn't tell you why. I rather enjoy burpring, though, so it's kind of okay.

I've been including photos in my posts, and I should give them some context. I went around Madison two afternoons at the end of September and took a bunch of pictures. Like... a bunch. So far I've included some that show the neighborhood around my apartment and some that show scenes from the campus periphery. Included below are some from campus itself. The leaves remain yellow in the photos because they are still the ones from three weeks ago. The reality here is different. Most of the leaves are down... already.

So far I'm actually adjusting to Madison weather pretty well. But then I did spend two months in South America and had three hours of rain the entire time; I was prepared to be disappointed by everything when I came back. So Madison hasn't been too bad. Plus, I've been too busy to much care about the weather. Tuesdays I don't even look out of a window between 9am and 6pm. And when it's shitty outside, I only concentrate better on my work. So I feel an emotional disconnection with the weather. But I can acknowledge that it has been disappointing. As soon as the semester started, it turned cold and rainy. And apart from exceptions I can count on my fingers, it never looked back. I hear tell this isn't typical for Madison autumns. Neither are the leaves changing color in September. Everyone reassures me that Madison is usually temperate through most of October and the leaves change sometime around then and it never rains this much. I can only assume they are lying, as these are all people with a stake in my not fleeing the state.

...Which I swore I would do if it snowed before my birthday. So I've got about half of my stuff packed, and I just need to figure out how to get out of my lease. I never thought to look for an out clause based on premature snow. One of my students says it doesn't count, because it didn't stick, but I say semantics. Air temperature, the movement of fronts, weather goblins with tiny snow machines... whatever. White stuff fell from the sky. I know what that is. It's snow. Peace out, Midwest.

Really, I love it here. I love that I live one block from the lake. I love the public transportation. I love the hippies with strollers and the farmers market and the negligible population of Republicans. I love that there's too much going on for me to do even half of the things I'd like to. I love the draw of a liberal Midwest capital city that brings Andrew Bird, Mark Danielewski, and Neil Gaiman in the same month. I love Erinn, and I love Kevin, and I love my apartment.

Just don't talk to me in mid-January. I'll be sitting in front of my fireplace with a two month supply of food and a bad attitude.

This is Bascom Hill, which is UW's version of a central campus mall. It goes steeply uphill and its buildings contain nothing I will ever use. I never walk up Bascom Hill. But it's pretty.

This is the Union. A couple of posts ago I uploaded a picture of the lake terrace. That's what's on the other side of this building. Inside there's coffee, food, beer, and some other random stuff. I spend most of my time on the terrace outside.

This is the Red Gym, probably the strangest and most-photographed building on campus. It houses the visitor's center and probably a whole bunch of other stuff, considering its size. But I couldn't tell you what those things are.

This is yet another building I like but never set foot in. Pretty picture.

As you might guess, most of the buildings I actually use are very, very, very ugly.

The prospect of a Mets-Tigers world series... well, it actually makes me want to watch.

2006-10-15T19:07:00.000-05:00

If I am the Commander-in-Chief of my life, then I guess it would be appropriate to deliver a State-of-the-Jessie every year on my birthday. Well, everyone, the Jessie is stressed out. Goodnight, and thanks for coming. God bless.

I am a year older, a milepost in which I constantly discover new facets of meaninglessness. This year it meant lots of people being unduly sweet to me and an excuse to throw a party. So for those 36 hours my birthday was rich with import, but as for the age thing, well... so what. 24 is a good number, I guess. It adds up to 6, and it's divisible by many things. It's a full 2 years away from the terrifying "late-20s" designation. So, sure. Why not.

Perhaps significantly, I passed my birthday minute (12:59 PT, in case you care) on a fabulously misguided bus tour of Madison. The mischievous Friday the 13th forces at work? Having gone to the pharmacy, I found myself attempting to take a new bus route home to my apartment, and though I won't belabor the details, let me be clear that I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that I spent 90 minutes on a series of buses. For what should have been a 20-minute ride home. Through various false assumptions and generally ill-informed choices on my part, I wound up navigating an entirely useless circle around the city that took me to places I will probably never go again. And since I managed--I think for the first day since I've been here--to be without iPod, book, or cell phone for this voyage of discovery, I had ample time to contemplate the irony of passing my birthday minute driving useless loops around the university.

I use the word irony, because I am currently driving myself crazy over my academic future. Though I am nothing if not an obsessively self-assessing person, I am in a new place, which means new features to my madness. It all more or less boils down to the following series of realizations:

1.) I don't want to be a journalist (brilliant job, Jessie, enrolling in J-School).
2.) I am an academic; there's absolutely no fighting it.
3.) I should get a Ph.D.
4.) The Communications department does some lovely things.
5.) I am interested in none of them.

It's well and good for my friends in Communications to tell me that the department is incredibly flexible (it is) and that I can study almost anything I want under its guise (I can), but two facts remain: The first is that at some point a communications Ph.D. requires quantitative research. The second is that even if I find a way to get around all the crap I don't like in the department, my future career will be in Communications. So, whatever. It doens't matter right now, because I'm getting a free master's degree and tons of great experience (teaching, being a grad student, etc.). But I can't help feeling that while everyone around me is moving toward an end goal, I am moving away from one.

Aside from righteously depressing self-evaluation and mistaken buses, I had a lovely birthday weekend. Kevin and I threw a mostly-successful party with a fire and lots of snacks. And in other related activities, my office-mates up in Vilas provided cake and a giant Orlando Bloom poster, who they managed to make picking his nose (you had to see it). Erinn made me a Boston cream pie (my favorite of all pies), and I got lots of wonderful presents from her, Kevin, and my mom.

Mark Danielewski came to Madison the day before my birthday for a reading/signing. And the day after my birthday, Andrew Bird was in town for a show. Perhaps augmenting my self-reflection was the arrival of these two creative geniuses who are so clearly doing what they are meant to do with their lives. You look at them and you just know it. And I think I envy the certainty I perceive in this, even though it probably doesn't exist for them. Or maybe it does.

Danielewski may be moving into dangerous territory with the experimentality of his books. House of Leaves toed the line to perfection, but I've found myself disinclined to read Only Revolutions. Listening to him read made me think I should get the audio version. It's hard to read a book so dependent on sound. I've skimmed passages and not even been able to get a handle on the umbrella narrative. But his reading made me want to try.

The last time I saw Andrew Bird I thought he was one more highball away from going completely unhinged. But this time he expressed his obvious musical genius in a coherent way, which for him is still pretty fucking nuts. He's a classically-trained violinist who writes delirious apocalyptic songs and whistles like an effing train. His whistle might even be stronger than his singing voice, which is impressive. He plucks, bows, and smacks his violin, plays the guitar, sings, and whistles, creating loops with pedals at his feet. It's incredible to watch one man with virtuostic mastery of multiple instruments actually create full sound on stage in front of you. And from the sound of the new songs he played, his forthcoming album will be a return to the style of Eggs, which makes me happy in the pants.

A nice wrap-up would be great, but I'm fresh out. So to close this birthday ramble, I give you more pictures, this time closer to home.

This is one of the little sidewalks running through our apartment complex. We live on the second floor of that building on the right. The squarish part sticking out is our sunroom; the bay windows are one-half of our living room. If you were to keep walking though this little alley and cross the street on the other side, you'd come very quickly upon Lake Mendota.

This is the coffeeshop just down the block from my apartment (see those brick buildings on the right?) where I spend most of my weekends.

These are the Blues Brothers dancing gaily inside the coffeeshop.

Stay tuned for actual pictures of the inside of my apartment.

Well, I've never read it, so it can't be that good.

2006-10-12T09:48:00.000-05:00

According to askyahoo.com, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is the best-selling novel of all time. The Bible is the best-selling book of all time. The authorship is lovely here. God (or a group of historians with a motive, depending on how you see it). A hack fiction writer borrowing heavily from other sources (or a historian with a motive, depending on how you see it).

Catholicism and Catholic subversion. Interesting, our mental dichotomies. Or rather, our shifting sensibilities over time, because it is probably worth noting the periods of most intense sales for these books. The Bible has had most of literary history to achieve top-dog status; Brown's novel does not come close to eclipsing the Bible, but it reached the top of its genre in a matter of months. And I wonder what the drop-off in Bible sales looks like over the last 100 years--because I'm sure there's been one.

I'd like to see the stats for the number of households currently in possession of a copy of each of the two books. And then again for the number of each sold copy that has actually been read.

I guess it's no surprise--what with population blooms, mega-mass-production, and globalization ushering in an age of international trends and zero-cost translation--that current pop culture would overtake the sales of even the most widely-read classics. 100 years of teachers assigning Crime and Punishment cannot compete with a global feeding frenzy in 2004. So I would postulate that record-holding power is lessening. Look at other fields. It seems every Olympic year, yet more records are broken. We are a culture obsessed with being the best, and since there are about a billion more of us every decade, there's increasing likelihood that the best will soon be bested. How long it takes someone to swim the 100m freestyle is a fairly objective measure of greatness. The best are getting better, even if only by hundredths of a second. But book sales? Consumption quite obviously does not equal quality. In fact, this may be an unfortunately universal axiom.

If the reign of the best-selling novel or the highest-grossing film shrinks with each incarnation, I have to wonder also about the trend in the quality of the champs.

Is the Bible's record going to fall to a tell-all by Colin Powell?

Meaning is impossible without ellipses

2006-10-10T23:33:00.000-05:00

So says one of the film studies scholars we've been reading for Globalization of Mass Media. He's referring to the idea that, both in terms of the physical senses and in terms of narrative text, we require the ellision of a vast amount of material. There is simply too much to process, and it is only through the carving away of certain information that the rest reveals itself as meaningul. Interesting, I thought. God really is in the details, in the sense that both are too omnipresent for us to grab hold of. It makes me wonder, too, about people who exert selective hearing in order to construct the meaning they WANT to be there (isn't that all of us, after all?), and how depending on a.) your particular experience and b.) your mental ellisions, you will have your own personal semiotics over the course of your life, different from everyone else's.

As you can see by my ridiculous academic opening to my first blog entry, I am in grad school now. And I thought I'd start a new blog to hold what are sure to be all of my fantastically trenchant displays of intellectual superiority. Because I'm a grad student now, and I don't know if you know, but that means I'm smarter than you.

And the sad thing is that there are grad students who believe this, and they roam free, lurking in bars waiting to pounce on impressionable undergrads with arrogant windbagging about half-understood theoretical texts, giving all the rest of us who need the moral support of our equally coffee-ridden colleagues just to keep from dropping out every day a bad name. I have class with some of these people. They are predators and should have to sign a registry and announce their presence in neighborhoods.

But aside from the shiny thought-nuggets I'll be mining from my fertile brain, I hope this will be a kind of Jessie-in-Madison blog, for photos, new experiences, etc. I got sick of my old blog in many ways and wanted to start fresh. So, how can I properly sum up the last two months, which is how long I've been here. Hmm, well, to quote James: "Two words come to mind. Shit and show."

Stellar apartment, tornado sirens, darts, dinner parties, reading, reading, reading, new friends, mixed feelings, mid-life crisis. There, that about does it. In ever so many ways, I feel like a new person. I'm going to go off on an academic rant again, but it makes me think of the Tibetan idea of the "bardo," or the between-state after life and before death. They saw this nebulous non-state as a place where your actions would have consequences far more magnified than ones you were ever able to effect in waking life. So, when you made bad choices in life, you mildly screwed with your next life's potential, but in the bardo, you could make small corrections and go from reincarnating as a slug to reincarnating as a... well, something better than you were before. I forget all of the levels. The point is that it represents a moment when things move at this hyperspeed and when small alterations in your trajectory wildly affect your ultimate destination. I think the last two months have been a bit like this for me.

I moved to Wisconsin. Big deal. But I think that the differences in who I am now as opposed to two months ago are much greater in scale than those from any recent comparable period of time. I simultaneously reached new levels of: relationship structure, personal freedom, professional maturity, and intellectual process. And it's giving me a mid-life crisis. In a good way.

There will be more on this in future entries, I'm sure. All in good time. For now, I leave you with some photos.

This is the street running from campus (directly behind the photo) to the capitol. It's 10-ish blocks long and filled with delicious things like Urban Outfitters, used bookstores and Chipotle. The carts in the foreground are the various smoothie / ethnic food trucks that park there on Library Mall (so named because one of the libraries is right off to the left there). Note also the yellow leaves, as well as the date of this photo... SEPTEMBER 29.

Here's the lake terrace at the student union. Live music often at the stage, lots of local beer. Good times.

Here's another view of the capitol, as seen from my walk home. The building is more or less a symmetrical X, bounded by a traffic square. All around that square every saturday is a huge state farmer's market. Mmmmmm.