Deep breaths...

And off we go.

An update (see Nov. 15 post)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'll see you on the other side.

WELLIES!

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

75 DAYS

Holding my breath

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

Like, really stupid.

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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

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.

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.

FUCK NO.

Web errata

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

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.

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...

NO.

Professionalizing blog?

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

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?

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

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

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.