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Saturday, January 3rd, 2009
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11:05 am - Frontispiece
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...This changes a million times.
I expect that some of my students have wonderful Google-fu by now. If you've tracked down my super-secret identity, don't worry - I don't mind. This blog is meant to be public and I'm well aware that anyone can find it. You can comment, though in the interests of professionalism I may not be quite as revealing or candid as I used to be. If I feel something is too personal to reply to, I just won't reply to it - but that doesn't mean you need to clam up. If you have a lot of spare time, I also have a Deviant Art page that should prove fertile ground for gossip.
At the same time, I want to make it clear that this is personal space. I use it to share funny and sometimes disturbing links, communicate with my friends, write essays and humor, and sort out various things going on in my life. It bears no affiliation with the University of Colorado-Denver, the history department, my position, or even how I act or who I am in class. The meatspace and web realms are very carefully separated in thought and action. Thus, I would appreciate that they continue to be separate.
So if you're new, by way of explanation:
1. I curse quite a bit.
2. I find educational filmstrips intensely entertaining.
3. I had a stroke a few years ago, and blogging about it is one thing that contributes to my recovery.
And everything else will work itself out from there.
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| Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
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7:52 pm - That's Our Maddy!
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[Interior: The typical apartment, Mary Tyler Moore-esque.]
[There is a knock on the door.]
Medea: Coming!
[Door opens. Studio audience applauds.]
Jason: Hi, honey, I'm home!
Medea: You're late. [She inspects him.] Is that lipstick on your collar?
Jason: Oh, don't start, honey, you know how it gets at work.
Medea: I'm going to have to do something about your boss's daughter. She may be your client, but I'm still your wife!
Jason: Why don't we invite her over for dinner, and you can see that she's really not that bad?
Medea: Very well. We'll do it tomorrow.
[Star wipe, to the next day.]
Medea: We're so glad you could come to dinner.
Young woman: Me too. I hear so much about you at the office.
Medea: I certainly hope so. [Medea shoots daggers at Jason.] So what is it you do at the office?
Young woman: Oh, my father has me working very closely with Jason. We've struck up quite a friendship.
Medea: I'll bet. [Studio audience reacts.]
Young woman: So where are your kids? Jason tells me you have two lovely children.
Medea: Oh, I'm sure they're sleeping. They had a long day at school.
Jason: It's that bilingual education. I know that's the way they do things where Medea comes from, but this is America.
Young woman: Now, now. I'm sure Medea's perfectly right in teaching your children all about where she comes from. Where exactly is that?
Medea: Chihuahua.
[Star wipe to the characters sitting in the parlor after the meal.]
Young woman: I must say I adore your fashion sense, Medea. Where did you get that lovely blouse?
Medea: Oh, just a little something I picked up at Sun Coast. Would you like to borrow it?
Young woman: How sisterly of you! Yes, I would love to! Send it with Jason one of these mornings, will you?
Medea: Certainly.
[The evening wraps up. Star wipe to the next morning, children's bedrooms.]
Daughter: Mommy, I don't feel well.
Son: Me either. My tummy hurts and my skin itches.
Medea: I'll just have to call your father, he'll come home and take care of you.
Daughter: I like Daddy's new friend. She's a nice lady.
Medea: When did you ever meet her?
Daughter [cutesy, saccharine]: Uh, oh, I'm in twubble!
[Tagline, repeated] Medea: These kids of mine.
[Studio audience laughs uproariously.]
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| Friday, June 27th, 2008
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3:49 pm - Being vivisected is intellectually stimulating.
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Hey so I had the surgery. Well, part of it anyway. Things went better than they could have because my doctor is the fucking Van Gogh of surgeons, but if my veins were cooperating I would not be now having nightmares about the procedure.
Let me say that my doctor is in no way to blame for what happened. I consented to our plan B knowing that it would be extremely painful, perhaps the most pain I have ever had in my life. They drugged me up as much as they could, but it still cut through.
Bottom line, my veins weren't cooperating and after ten sticks I started going into shock, which is my circulatory system saying "fun time is over, quit poking me." They tried the wrist, but I put the kibosh on it after the second time they scraped a nerve. They even tried putting an IV into my foot, but the veins blew every time. You know it's bad when they give you a present for not hating them forever. I proposed I come back on another day, but the doctor said - and logically so - that, realistically, I'll probably just come back another day to have the same goddamn thing happen.
What happens when your doctor knows you have a high pain tolerance is this: he said I could either not have it done at all (which, well, I can barely even walk at this point), or I could have it under a local. Well, I said, how bad would that be, pain-wise? They began their answer by saying I would take two Valium (...uh-oh...) and then have a substantial dose of nitrous oxide. Then they would administer the local anesthetic. The anesthetic, see, would be the part that hurts the worst.
I must note that I think I was happier with this option than if I'd even been under the general. I'm very good at having horrible things done to one limb and still keeping it perfectly still - as I was screaming into the nitrous mask (which I think must have been partially for the doctors to not hear me) and having needles jammed into my bones, I wasn't, well, bothered by the fact that I hurt, if that makes any sense. They were amazed that the leg they were jabbing didn't so much as twitch and I think that's the only possible way this could have been done. I had a great anesthesiologist who was very comforting, and even as I screamed I'd still give her the thumbs-up. From a spartan point of view, all things said and done it's just pain and it will not kill me. Curiously, while being poked for an IV makes me shocky, this gross violation did nothing. In a way, it was kind of exhilarating - the knowledge that I was pushing my limits and knowing what I could withstand as a human being. Of course, the most important part of all this is that I was drugged out of my mind, and the Valium plus the nitrous meant that it takes the psychological edge out of it.
Once the local completely took effect, they took off the nitrous and while I wasn't in a position to watch, they gave me a play-by-play in between the lot of us telling dirty jokes. "Now we're slicing parts of the bone off," they'd say, and I found it so fascinating that I could feel them slicing it off, the release of tension and weight, but it didn't hurt one bit. And it helps that everyone had a great bedside manner and didn't mind my asking questions. The whole thing was very intellectually stimulating. Even without the plates and screws, a bunionectomy and resculpturing the fifth toe are not normally done on locals because they're so involved and hella painful, so there is a bit of pride in knowing that while it's not quite a bite the bullet surgery, it is very tough.
I went to sleep when I got back home, probably because it's exhausting to go through that. Then I had a nightmare about them administering the local, which isn't so much because of them but because I had a horrible experience when I was 4 with a needle, a cystoscopy, a nitrous mask, and a lot of screaming. This time, well, I agreed to go through this and call it off at any time so it's different. My foot is very unhappy at the moment, which is why I have more drugs.
We still have the left foot to go, the arthroscopy. I think they wanted to see how well I'd take to the bunionectomy on the local, and now I have the go-ahead to do the arthroscopy on the local if the IV doesn't take when we do all this again in two weeks. And then we'll see if I'm a big baby.
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3:37 pm
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"The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (Sonnets, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, The Tempest)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
I just went through and bolded the ones I've read. Saying I intend to read a book seems to doom it to a literary purgatory.
I must say, if you've grown up under a predominantly white, Judeo-Christian culture, it is indeed troubling if you've only read 6 of these. However, I find it a bit disingenuous to condemn someone who's perhaps read 6 very, very good and well-crafted books on this list next to, say, someone who's read twice as many on the list - but only the light fiction. I'll defend Stephen King's literary prowess as the day is long, but damned if I'll argue that whether or not someone's read Yann Martel or Dan Brown makes for a literary mind. The former is a plagiarist, and the latter never met an ellipses he didn't like. For that matter, does it make me more literary that, of the French literature on the list, I've read most of them in French and not in English at all?
Consider the merits and lack thereof of basing a worthwhile literature list on popularity as opposed to the critical thinking involved in reading or just absorbing text. People fucking heat their homes with remaindered copies of Bridget Jones' Diary. While this list, as it was constructed, does indicate... something about our literary values, this includes the bad as well as the good.
This is a list of the 100 most worthwhile books you absolutely, positively must read. Some of these books are quite distasteful to read, but are nonetheless important. Some of these books may not appear on the surface to be philosophical or incredibly deep, but have moved people nonetheless. I haven't read all of these necessarily, but I have read the vast majority. Like any such list, this is entirely subjective - and the fun comes in debating the results!
1. Bold the ones you've read.
2. Of the ones you have not read, substitute five of them with books you feel need to be included.
3. Pass it on!
My list:
1. The Giver by Lois Lowry
2. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne
3. The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri
4. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
5. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
6. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
7. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
8. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
9. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
10. The Bible, any translation
11. Whose Names Are Unknown by Sanora Babb
12. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
13. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
14. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry
15. Cane by Jean Toomer
16. So Far from God by Ana Castillo
17. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
18. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
19. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky
20. Yama by Alexandre Kuprin
21. The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
22. Don Quixote de la Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes
23. Family Ties by Clarice Lispector
24. The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
25. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
26. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
27. Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
28. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
29. Nervous Conditions by Tsitsi Dangarembga
30. Barefoot Gen series by Keiji Nakazawa
31. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
32. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
33. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
34. The Woman Who Owned The Shadows by Paula Gunn Allen
35. Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
36. Cruddy by Lynda Barry
37. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
38. The Qur'an
39. The Niebelungenlied
40. The Stranger by Albert Camus
41. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
42. The Shining by Stephen King
43. Weep Not, Child by Ngugi wa Thiong'o
44. Woman at Point Zero by Nawal el Saadawi
45. From Hell by Alan Moore
46. The Sandman Series by Neil Gaiman
47. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
48. Kehinde by Buchi Emecheta
49. Naked by David Sedaris
50. This Bridge Called My Back by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua
51. Sus Majores Poemas by Ruben Dario
52. The poetry of Pablo Neruda
53. The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger
54. Bitter Grounds by Sandra Benitez
55. Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman
56. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
57. The Thurber Carnival by James Thurber
58. Native Son by Richard Wright
59. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
60. Lysistrata by Aristophanes
61. Medea by Euripedes
62. Oedipus Cycle by Sophocles
63. Poems by Sappho
64. The Aeneid by Vergil
65. Paradise Lost by John Milton
66. The Heptameron by Marguerite de Navarre
67. Tartuffe by Moliere
68. Middlemarch by George Eliot
69. Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
70. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
71. Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
72. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
73. 1984 by George Orwell
74. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
75. Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo
76. Harry Potter series by J. K. rowling
77. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
78. Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
79. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
80. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
81. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
82. The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler
83. Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
84. Tepper Isn't Going Out by Calvin Trillin
85. Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters
86. The works of Rainer Maria Rilke
87. Upanishads
88. Candide by Voltaire
89. The Secret History by Donna Tartt
90. Vilette by Charlotte Bronte
91. Stories by Saki
92. A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket
93. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
94. Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos
95. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen by Alan Moore
96. The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
97. The Giver by Lois Lowry
98. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
99. Invisible Man by Harlan Ellison
100. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells
I'm sure I forgot a ton or will remember, as soon as I post this, something I JUST HAD to include and didn't, but that's the fun of these lists
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| Tuesday, June 10th, 2008
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9:34 pm
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Wow so I haven't updated this in forever.
Stuff I am doing now:
1. Research assistant: Procrastinating on stuff for Tom Noel's new edition of his atlas. I have it mostly done, I just have this weird thing yo where I don't finish shit because I get afraid of it I don't know what the fuck
2. Writer: Just turned in my first-ever article for the UCD Advocate, the university's alt-weekly. One day Dr. Miller asked me "Do you write still?" and I said no, I've been busy, and he gives me that look like I've betrayed humanity, and says "Oh, that's too bad," like he doesn't know that THAT DAY I will rush out and find a way to get paid and published. Because fuck me, it is honestly that easy for me to get assignments. Advocate pays pretty decently, too. Believe it or not, this first assignment is actually a huge two-page feature spread. It was all because Dr. Miller said something, and he is one of the few people whose tone means I will kill myself doing the impossible because they offhandedly said I should do it.
3. Comps: Studying and reading.
4. Music: Busy as all fuck, despite deliberately not trying and not really having any time for it, I have once again had my summer filled up with music stuff.
5. Oregon Trail: I haven't done anything in the way of intensive traveling this summer, and I am really, really pissed about that. I need to put my foot down I guess and say NO I NEED A WEEK OFF FUCKING LIVE WITH IT. I am going to Vegas, but that's not a work-travel situation. I am so behind on my travel stuff it's not even funny, and I'm starting to resent the other things that are scheduled in my life because of it.
6. Health: Fine. Having surgery the 27th but w/e. It's the feet again, unsurprisingly. This time they need major restructuring I guess. Yes, both, and there's some huge laundry list of problems. Also broke my left foot. I haven't been wearing the cast because it annoys the crap out of me more than the break.
And I have a cold that needs to die in time for me to get my pre-surgery bloodwork done.
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| Monday, March 31st, 2008
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9:29 pm - His response...
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I told the husband about the suspected OCD tendencies, and his totally serious response was "You didn't know?!"
NO I DID NOT.
I honestly thought I was just diligent, not, you know, compulsive.
Not that I am mad or anything - I guess I was kind of expecting him to shoot down the whole "somebody on the Internet tells you x and confirmation bias blah blah" because it happens, a lot (not to me but to others like self-proclaimed aspies and whatnot who just use it as an excuse to be a jackass but don't have any real problems a little manners wouldn't cure), and I wanted external reference that I wasn't just confirming normal behaviors in retrospect. (Um, which is also compulsive behavior.)
So is everyone else just going "Yeah, we thought you knew"? If so, somewhat amusing, yes?
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5:46 pm - PhD stuff
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I am stifled, I tell you.
U. of Oregon says I'd BETTER be starting my search now. I haven't formed my program rankings yet, but damn I cannot be choosy because there aren't that many to choose from. Given my super-sekrit weapons, it's not like I'm worried about getting in.
Recent revelation: I have mild OCD tendencies. How many people are surprised by this? The deal is, I share some OCD thought processes and am high-functioning so to be truthful I could probably use a little more OCD in my life. I stray away from official diagnoses for stuff that is probably an asset, I'm afraid someone will try to medicate it out. Because of this I believe the "disorder" part is probably a misnomer. The whole thing comes about with a multi-person dialogue involving some psychologists, several "norms," and a few guys who have been in mental institutions. Of course they are all very careful to tell us, when appropriate, we have "tendencies" and not say "you have OCD" which is inaccurate. So yes, I "suffer" from compulsive thought processes. The list:
Obsessiveness:
-The note cards.
-The travel brochures.
-The filing system.
-The cataloguing.
-The need to double- and triple-check everything academic.
I spend a few hundred dollars a year on this. Not a problem, and on the whole beneficial, but it's there.
Compulsiveness:
-Worries about performance
-Need for outside approval
-Anxieties about who performs what role
-Nightmares, I seriously get nightmares when I have left my obsessions in the state of flux, though not too bad
-Compulsive thoughts about disaster resulting from not fulfilling the above
Again, it's not like I suffer or anything. I think it drives me to become a better student, and I believe I developed this as a result of my memory problems and unreliability of my health.
And it is in full swing regarding my search for a PhD program. It drives me a little bonkers when they say "go to the website" because it's a bit harder for me to get a feel of the welcoming atmosphere from the website. If a program claims a specialty in American West but does not have any pending dissertations in that subject, yes, I believe that's worth a call regardless of what the faculty page says. I've seen too many programs in other disciplines assemble faculty surrounding a subject and for some reason not encourage student research or practice in that subject, and they have varying effectiveness in conveying whether or not your academic specialty is welcomed.
I have to meet with advisor-type people and find out what the top programs are. I'm probably applying to whatever the top 5 are, whatever's in-state (just one, actually), 2 places in warmer climates, and a couple of safety schools unless I hear from my top choice that I'm getting in no matter what and they'll throw money at me. I just have to decide who that is.
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| Sunday, March 30th, 2008
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9:47 am
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| Friday, March 28th, 2008
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11:54 pm - This sounds more stressed than it really is.
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(When reading the following, keep in mind that a) it's just how I see it and may be wildly incorrect; and b) I am high right now.)
Grad school is eating my brain, my time, and my social life all at once. I had a long talk with another student who is having the same problem, but he feels even more isolated and disconnected because he's new to the state. I've at least had several years on this campus and know the state like the back of my hand. And the kicker? His wife's from here, so it's not even something he can reasonably expect to share in his marriage. I feel for the guy, not in the least because to some extent I'm in the same boat.
When the husband went to medical school, it was understood that graduate studies of any stripe tend to make the support system into a one-way street most of the time. Things calm down for the PhD (hopefully) because by then you've learned where you can cut corners. You're not scrambling as much to put your foot in the door, because this is the terminal degree. I have no basis to say that the doctorate is easier than the master's, because I'm sure that's not true; but going from undergraduate to graduate studies is a much bigger adjustment. Paradoxically, while the students who are connected and involved in extracurriculars as undergrads are the most highly-sought after by graduate programs, they also have the hardest time adjusting emotionally because they learn to seek their stimulation and interest outside the classroom as much as within it. And once they enter graduate school, they're expected (for good reason) to cut out their connections.
True, most of my friends made it easy by dumping me first. My social circle is wee beyond that because I just don't have the time or energy to even think about most social activities. In my down time I... well, for Spring Break I worked on grad school stuff. I played WoW for a couple of days, but otherwise I can likely count the number of times I've logged on this semester on one hand. My guilds wonder where I am. I never go to session any more, I haven't been to pipe band practice since August and I miss them so much... but on our practice nights, I'm checking last-minute stuff for classes during the rest of the week, finishing grading, outlining the research I'll need for my thesis, and trying to relax so I don't tailspin into horrible depression and stress like last semester. Unbelievably, there are more expectations and work on me this semester than last, but aside from my circulation tanking on a nightly basis I haven't had too terrible a time of it. It never decreases, it just gets easier to bear.
I don't blame people for ditching me during grad school, frankly. How could I expect otherwise, being so disconnected? It's neither here nor there, just a common observation that it's what people do when any relationship becomes a one-way street and neither party has the ability to continue it at that time. Grad students fear being dumped by their non-program friends because it's a damn reasonable response. The program doesn't do much to encourage us to cultivate friendships within our department. Why, when in two years max we're all going our separate ways? So for even people who do get along well in class, it seems weird to make plans outside of a work context. This in turn leads to a borderline-unhealthy situation where we all cannot fathom a social outing unless there's work involved, some enriching academic pretense. We'll all go on field trips and backstage tours and have a blast behaving like kids, but never forget that we're there to learn something very specialized and difficult.
I remarked to R. that I can barely think of a goddamn thing these days without thinking about what it signifies, what its place in history might be, and how it came to be. For example, when I drive on a road I think about the numbering/naming system, evolution of routes relative to geographic features, road characteristics anomalous to the Jeffersonian system of land platting, and anything specific to the road itself that I might also know. I can't turn it off. It's exhausting to live like that. The whole thing was by way of explanation as to why I don't see good movies in the theaters - B-movies are about the only place I can turn it off, because with a few exceptions B-movies are fun to think about and undemanding as a genre. But that's a tangent. I wonder, if I could stop thinking about stuff, could I start again? What would the price be if I were to stop thinking so hard?
It's comforting to know that every other student in my department has the same concerns and anxieties. It's part of grad school. The chatter before and after classes and at academic conferences is what passes for a social life these days, and we invest in these short snippets of time because we all have roughly the same expectations about where it leads and what it means - which is damn little, but unless you're a big ass it's enough. More than anything I pity the few students here who have alienated the rest of us through their superiority complexes, raging sexism, or bullying manners. Depression and withdrawal is okay, because we've all been there and recognize ourselves. When I had to excuse myself from class repeatedly last semester to sob uncontrollably in the bathroom, a couple of students I knew pretty well asked me about it, accepted my answer that it was as much physical and involuntary as a legitimate thing, and just folded it into a hope that like the rest of them my depression would pass. And if not, I'd have asked for help anyway. The big thing was, all of us were equally convinced we were incompetent idiots. As overachievers, suddenly there was a huge gap between what we knew and what we would have to know by the end of class. With the exceptions of the bullies, sexists, and superior pricks, admitting vulnerability was quite clearly accepted and encouraged because not everybody could know everything, and that's why we're in the fucking class to begin with. The first, often rough semester is in coming to terms with our inferiorities and insecurities. The rest of the time, the insecurity we feel is implicit and shared; so we can relax and channel that energy and anxiety into once again overachieving. Unfortunately it becomes cyclical. The more insecurity you have, the more energy you spend trying to eradicate it, which leads to increased responsibilities, which leads to more insecurity and so on. At DU I didn't quite understand this because I wasn't ready. Now I do, I get how this all works and why graduate work requires distance while it sucks support from everyone else like a parasite. I don't know if I can fix the isolation everyone feels, or even if it's worth the effort. Because we barely have enough energy for ourselves.
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| Sunday, March 16th, 2008
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9:11 pm
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In case anyone's looking to share the gift of comics, manga, and graphic novels with me, here's my wishlist:
Barefoot Gen - all, but especially vol. 2 - current
The Boys
Fables - all except vol. 1
Runaways
Buffy
Gotham Central
Persepolis - 2
Tom Strong
Ex Machina
It's taken me a billion years, but I'm finally getting into this stuff.
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| Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
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12:03 pm
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| Monday, March 10th, 2008
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11:33 am - The War On Christmas Part 2
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Let me preface this by saying I believe the War on Christmas stuff is bullshit. Given that the Christmas season encompasses, depending on the year, holidays of several different faiths and persuasions from Paganism to Islam to Judaism and beyond, it is entirely more appropriate to wish someone "Happy Holidays" if you do not know their faith than "Merry Christmas." It is an appreciated courtesy, particularly in this state where we have a great deal of religious and secular diversity in how we celebrate our respective faiths. Hell, I'm a mostly-secular Jew who is influenced by Islamic teachings but holds on to a mostly Dantean view of the afterlife, and I still love Christmas. But wish me Happy Holidays, because it's the right thing to do. If someone rails on about the "War on Christmas," what they're really against is courtesy - and in a season supposedly about peace on earth and brotherhood to men (or sisterhood to women), why would you immediately flag yourself as a hypocrite and defend those values by doing the opposite? Inclusion of other faiths does not mean exclusion of your own, and anyone so threatened by inclusion that they need to say "Merry Christmas" as some sort of political/religious statement must be incredibly weak in their faith that mere etiquette can shake it to the very core. If you're that threatened by "Happy Holidays," you seriously need to go back to your pastor and get some fucking counseling. The reason you feel threatened is because of your lack of commitment. I don't need for everyone else to worship as I do right down to using the same phrases to feel solid in my faith, and it's the most hodgepodge fucking thing ever.
The same goes for allowing gay people to march in the St. Patrick's Day Parade. (Ah, say the readers, there's the relevancy.) Gay people like St. Pat's. Everybody likes St. Pat's. You know they can make cosmopolitans green now? So let 'em march, what does it hurt? Gay people are Irish, Irish-American, whatever. If our parade allows clowns, Civil War re-enactors, casino buses, and an entire mile of Shriners, I sure as fuck hope there's an atomic drag float in there somewhere. This holiday, unlike Christmas, is secularized here to the extent that it is for everybody. This year, for example, the Catholic Church moved it to March 15th because the 17th falls during Holy Week. Did anyone notice, outside of extremely devout Catholics? Fuck no. The 17th will be just as big as ever, a bunch of drunks listening to music played by other drunks. Fabulous. The parade's on the 15th, you might say. That means nothing, since here St. Pat's often begins the 1st of March and carries on well after the 17th. The parade is always on the nearest Saturday regardless of date. Denver's the drunkest city in America, after all, and if St. Pat's didn't exist we would invent it. St. Pat's here is a city celebration, a celebration of the coming of spring, and most of all, a celebration of beer and whiskey and shiny things. The saint himself - well, not even sure what he looks like, honestly. I don't know anyone who talks about him other than the Guinness commercials, and even that's to make a link to beer drinking, and nobody cares that a religious feast day has been totally, and thoroughly, turned into this. In fact, the Church has utterly capitulated to the secularism of the holiday - the reason they moved it is so people can drink without feeling guilty. They're enabling it. The Church has decided our livers must suffer, and sent all the Catholics on their way to debauchery saying "Slainte" at their backs.
Does this sound like a religious affair to you?
So why... why is there now a slight push to rename this to "Shamrock Day"?
FUCK THAT. "St. Patrick's" is about as offensive a name as "St. Louis" or "Yves Ste. Laurent" or "Los Angeles." The Church practically washes their hands clean of any involvement so we can properly let off steam, whereas Christmas, I hear, is still kind of a big deal. It's a far different situation. We do not need a war on St. Patrick's Day. I can't imagine it ever getting off the ground. "Shamrock Day" is fucking stupid, and also is harder to pronounce when drunk.
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| Thursday, March 6th, 2008
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6:27 pm
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| Monday, March 3rd, 2008
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8:37 pm
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I've been taking half a tab of Vicodin every night. You know, I've had insomnia to some degree or another practically all my life and no medication has made a dent, but this stuff works. I weaned myself off Primidone and the tremors haven't returned, and I don't wake up in the middle of the night very much. I also get long, vivid dreams (last night I dreamed that I was walking along a road, and all of a sudden my old horse Flicka found me and went berserk until I paid attention to her. She'd been surrendered to a rescue organization, had her name changed, her papers lost; but it was her, and oddly she looked as she did when I first got her as a 9-year-old. Just like Paul McCartney, she'd be 28 if she's alive.) It's like the Vicodin evens me out and fixes everything, oddly; I don't know if it's supposed to do all that, but it does, and H allayed my concerns that I would become a junkie whore just because I take a half tab every night. Too much DARE education growing up has convinced me that a steep descent into drug-induced madness is sure to be my fate, but then H has a more reasonable perspective than DARE any day so I believe her.
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| Friday, February 22nd, 2008
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8:42 pm
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Nice-enough chick held the door open for me at the Tivoli when my arms were full, so that was awesome.
It puzzled me why she had "PINK" written across virtually everything she wore, including the oh-so-tasteful assitological region. Seriously, head-to-toe branding. Do not do this. It's awful, yes, but I'm not a fashion plate myself and have not yet figured out how to wear a goddamn skirt with a lining. (It's not that I don't wear skirts with linings, it's just that I honest to God somehow fuck it up and spend the entire day rescuing the hemline from creeping up and then at the end of wearing said skirt the lining has to be reattached. I do not know how this happens.) I realize that my slobby looks are generally the result of lack of skill on the physical act of sustaining an appearance for more than five minutes, but it's something I've been working on lately in an effort to not look like such a slob. Note: I now look like a slob in nicer clothes. If I went on "What Not To Wear" I think I'd have several outfits that would in fact pass the cut - as long as I were standing perfectly still. It also does not help that I am very unfortunate-looking. And no, this isn't fishing for compliments or anything; it's just that I have 30 years of photographic evidence proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that me and good looks were never to meet. It's not a problem for me exactly, and I don't take it as a personal failing. Some people are ugly, most people are ugly in at least one way, and at least I'm not like the hordes of people who have not apparently noticed that Victoria Beckham scares small children with her pyramidhead and glow-in-the-dark tan and a hideous boob job, the awfulness of which she somehow highlights with everything she wears. She holds herself up as a fashion icon. I am an academic. One of us has chosen a profession confluent with our aesthetic tastes and God-given lack of attractiveness.
After a disastrous day with a lovely, well-fitted patterned skirt (linings! argh!) I have decided to try again with long skirts. I have three long skirts, one of which is on its last legs and one of which is really especially hideous on me, so now I have to go buy some long skirts.
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| Tuesday, February 19th, 2008
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10:02 pm
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You know what? People are insensitive.
Yeah, news flash.
R asked me today about an update about the twit who kicked me. By the way, because she's a twit and has no conscience, she has not come forward even under assurance that there is no punishment involved. Had I known that she is capable of not caring fundamentally about someone else's welfare even after knowing for a fact that she has hurt them physically, I would have pressed charges and had them come down on her like a ton of bricks. HOWEVER, since she's decided that she'd rather live with the karmic debt for the rest of her life, the only thing I can really do is move the fuck on and work on a way to haunt her in her sleep. (I'm sending psychic waves to her to have sex dreams about Carrot Top.)
It seems that what near-complete strangers fail to realize is, on some level this amuses me. It's annoying, but annoyance doesn't bother me so much in a lingering sense. Yes, I was mad when it happened, but that's natural and so I am okay with that. I can also, amazingly enough, adapt well to the likelihood that Bitchpants is not going to get her comeuppance. The world is like that, get a helmet. People have done worse to me in my life and gotten off scot-free, with or without police involvement.
It would be wildly inappropriate for me to then drag it out and start directly confronting an entire class about the Big Hairy Deal What Happened To Me. Number one, it's not really that big a fucking deal. Number two, I am not a special snowflake. Aside from the professor using this as a lesson for them in what NOT to do in conflict mediation, this is about me and her - whoever she is. To take up everyone else's class time for some personal vendetta I'm honestly too lazy to care about would be idiotic. I did not press charges when it happened precisely because I knew, no permanent or serious damage having been done, I would get bored with this in a week.
Near-complete strangers, or a certain one, call this "being a victim." Shrinks would probably call it "being well-adjusted."
Even after four and a half years, I discover little things about my new brain. See, before, I was quite aggressive and confrontational. Now, I don't really have the mental energy to sustain personal vendettas. I get momentary amusement in that my enemies are enraged by my happiness, but to dwell on it? To make it every fiber of my being to hate another person? Quite soon it stops being funny to me, until someone reminds me, and then "Ooh, yeah, I remember that. That person sucks." But it's about them. They suck, not me. That is not being a victim. The stroke made that so much easier, because people who declare vendettas and stick with them and aren't combative just for entertainment value deal with a lot of unresolved anger and hatred and trauma and, most importantly, a worldview that everyone is out to get them. They're the victims, and that's as much about their lack of ability to resolve all conflicts, big and little, internal and external, as it is about any real injustices committed on their person. What happened to me sucks, and Twitboots is a sucky person for doing it, but it has not realistically prevented me from anything in my life. It hurt for a few days, and now it's on her to live with it, not me. Personally (and I know not everyone is like this) I would much rather live with a few days of bruises and strains than knowing that I hurt another person. Bruises heal; guilt is harder.
One of the other little quirks of my new brain is that I find it nearly impossible to make declarative, verbal statements of contradiction coming from my own opinion. It's something new I've just put my finger on, and so I haven't completely worked it out yet. It's similar to cocktail personalities in BPD, in which someone will adopt or mirror personalities or opinions if they can get something out of it, except in this case I'm minimizing my own opinions verbally, not saying what I feel, and I get nothing out of it except lack of confrontation. Monday, the person I was interviewing asked me what my core beliefs were. I knew them, of course, and if she'd have asked for it in written form? No problem, I've done it before. Marriage equality! Throw money at poor people! Self-assumed personal responsibility and high standards! Open borders! Garfield sucks! But for some reason I just couldn't articulate it at that moment. I stammered out something about gay rights. And she was not being combative - she's a mediator, and even though she did not agree with me she never once made me feel as though I was wrong and she was right or that my opinions were devalued. I was comfortable with her. But I could not articulate the core values I had shouting in my head, as though my tongue physically would not obey. It took Herculean effort to say what I did.
Is that not fucked up?
I know, even while this is happening, that this is irrational. It's not a way to excuse my opinions or make them less important - it's acceptance of the beliefs of others going to the extent that, when staring them in the face, I don't feel the need to impose my personal beliefs on somebody I don't know well. I also fail to see why it should make a difference to another human being why I believe in mudkips or Rick Astley or whatever unless I wish to get in a debate about those things, and 99% of the time I do not.
This seems contradictory, but it all goes together in my head, really. I don't think my opinions are invalid personally simply because they are unexpressed verbally. I don't think other people's opinions are invalid if I do express mine. I just don't like how debating seems to get into these subjective arguments about morality, and doing so verbally might be seen as an attack by me to someone else, and unless I know someone well I am also not vested enough in that relationship to sustain the energy to have fun debating them either.
I have a double-ruby National Forensics League pin from my before-brain. I debated in high school. I judged debates after high school. In college I went toe-to-toe with people from 192 other countries and told them, to their faces, that my position was contrary and if they had a problem they should take it up with me. They did so, often, and I would debate with people face-to-face for weeks at a time. I've done a 180 from that person and I can't even believe I once did all that stuff. I tried it again afterwards in a simulation setting, and a family emergency called me away. To tell you the truth, I was relieved - I could not stand being there and potentially making people feel inferior in any way just because my position was different. I knew I could argue my position, and win, but I'd reevaluated the goal to the point that winning opinions didn't really matter.
Now, if we wanna talk history, we can throw down. I'm distanced. It's not me, and it's not you. It's the facts and the interpretation and the theories, and whether or not Camp Trinidad really was anti-American or Silas Soule is a hero or traitor - I am invested in the accuracy. Whatever facts I believe to be correct, or whatever interpretation you've held about a particular event, one or both of us could be wrong - but that doesn't matter, because what should really matter is the Truth or as close as you can get it. Core values are different. Personal shit is different. These two things are unlikely to change without offense. Whether someone is allowed to marry, that affects someone. Whether someone is shown to be an ass in front of her classmates, that affects somebody.
This kinda sounds like I'd rather be a victim; but in truth, I would really rather be the victim than the victimizer, and that's not such a radical statement. But I believe there is another choice - to move on, personally, and leave the victimizers to their own fecund personalities and leave the debates and contradictions to the people who seem to thrive on seeing their conflicts wrought on another's face. I know what it's like from that side of the fence, to stare an opponent in the face as I present, unflinching, an argument that he or she is irrevocably a poor debater and unworthy to share my podium and see the points and the trophies flutter from their eyes. I used to enjoy it. It was my lifeblood. I don't necessarily blame people who thrive on conflict and making others wrong; if you enter debate or engage on conflict, you willingly take on yourself the possibility that you will be shown as Not Good Enough. You allow that you may become the fodder for someone else's smug superiority; or that you may simply fight to a draw and have spent the last few hours arguing to a stalemate. Or you may win and get your little pin and trophy, or even only the knowledge that you can argue well. Anyone who doesn't want to lose the game or make someone else lose should simply not allow themselves to be dragged into it. As for me, my double ruby National Forensics League pin hasn't moved from its box in years.
As I was being harangued by someone who thinks they are an expert on what exactly I would prefer to do with my time because of her own unrelated life experiences, I observed her body language. Here she was, using her size, her accusations, and her voice to intimidate me into disrupting a class for however long and behaving like a special snowflake and making it All About Me. But not only did I not want to do this, I didn't even want to talk to her about it. She has nothing to do with this conflict or how I choose to deal with it. She cannot say I am being a victim if she refuses to even allow me to talk in my own defense - in fact, she's one of those people who thinks you win by not allowing the other person time to consider a measured response. Honestly, with those people, the only way to win is to not play at all. And as she's haranguing me about not being a victim and fighting against - what, someone tripping over me in a hallway and being a callous ass about it? - she's using what she perceives to be my personality to bully me, herself. And it only gets worse the more I refuse to play. In my head I have the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song and wishing I could, physically, eat my own head and not have to listen to this crap. Because I know I'm not being a victim by refusing to push this - I don't feel it's likely to have results. If indirect mediation will not get Twitboots to get a conscience, directly confronting her classmates on a day she may or may not be there sure as hell will not have a positive outcome for either of us. Moving the fuck on and treating it, somewhat detachedly, as though it was an annoying episode and I didn't die and bada-bing, has a positive outcome for me. "Think of justice!", the other woman ordered me. What, there's likely to be an epidemic of epic twats in boots tripping over people in hallways and not taking responsibility for it if I don't march in there and disrupt a class? This is not called being a victim, it's called being a damn realist.
But I could articulate none of this, because I could not get a word in edgewise anyway and because shouting above someone who is acting in a verbally aggressive and unsympathetic manner is Playing The Game. I can't play the game about myself and my own choices. They won't change because of external forces or people getting in my face - it has to come within me, from within my own observations, not getting yelled at. If I have to dwell on this conflict, I honestly get a physical block and response. Take it far enough, and that shit hurts - like someone's pulling out my tongue from the back. Add to that feeling like others want to force me into a conflict situation I feel is not productive; and then pile on some woman acting aggressively physically and verbally to order me to act as she would have - and that shit hurts worse. It's a crossed wire, somewhere. Empathy for another person gets jumbled with the natural human response to avoid conflict, which is mixed up with the desire to see positive outcomes and not beat my head into a brick wall when the perfect solution does not present itself, and then the strong desire to not meet aggression with verbal aggression - I may use the words "anxiety" or "worry," but really it's closer to painful overstimulation. This isn't the first time overstimulation resulted in a physical problem - for the first six months of grad school, the sound of my advisor's voice made me sob uncontrollably until I got to know her better. Some of it was anxiety, but a lot of it was simply the cadence of her speech, no matter how gentle or comforting she tried to be. And the physical response and lack of control caused me more anxiety. I choose, in this case, to not be too anxious over this particular response; analyzing it will help me adapt, just as it did with my advisor, but forcing it to stop will cause more overstimulation and it will get worse. And to be honest, while I don't win a whole lot of arguments, I also don't get into them with total strangers for no reason and that makes me happier by leagues.
When I didn't want to confront Twitboots and was avoiding the issue because I was being a wimp, I had no problems expressing that verbally. I knew exactly what was going on, and it was a natural response. I screwed up the courage and handled it by going to the professor. This specific set of circumstances, however, is different; there is no likely perfect outcome possible, other people are buttinskys about what I should do because they have a chip on their shoulder, and external forces try to make me do things I know to be unrealistic in a manner I have trouble with in the first place. It runs into a crossed wire and the result is a physical block. It's as though my brain has ordered my tongue to fly, and it tries but doesn't know how. I am content with not forcing it to until it's damn good and ready.
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| Monday, February 18th, 2008
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5:22 pm - Historiography
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When taking an oral history, it is best not to start off with asking about the arrest records of the subject's children.
Failing that, it went well.
Oh and for once I was not the one to bring up cannibalism.
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| Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
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12:17 pm
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The couple sitting on the bench behind me are continually making out. I can't see them but I can HEAR THEM smacking on each other. It has been like this for a half hour.
Jesus Christ, people, if nobody else slobbers on their significant other in this lounge - isn't that a hint that you shouldn't advertise, either? Be fucking adults. Jesus.
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| Sunday, February 10th, 2008
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5:32 pm
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So I didn't get the Bessemer job and I have not yet heard back from DU on their position, but that's okay because on top of being a grader I got a job now that is so impossibly cool I can't hardly believe it.
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| Monday, February 4th, 2008
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9:46 am
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