Playa Hata Degree

Square One

2009-05-22T22:45:00.002-05:00

Well, it was a nice ride, while it lasted.

For a while there I thought that I'd found paradise. Away from the bloodthirsty pursuit of high-profile programs, I'd fallen into the perfect job.

Through the first year or so of work, it was in a way, complete bliss.

The chance to teach what I wanted. No real pressure to cover core requirements.

Speaking of which, no dumping work on new faculty.

Faculty meetings where everyone generally got along.

And were fed by the chair.

New offices.

Travel funding that stayed in the midst of recession budget cuts.

Coming from an intensive graduate program, it felt like the overall workload was actually less!

More money for less work, that's right, you heard me.

I'd talk with people I went to graduate school with, people much smarter and more hardworking than me, and so I had a definite reference point for my own situation, and a reminder of how shitty the first job can be.

So I'm coasting on this highway of bliss. Then I get assigned my first administrative duty. I'm on the department's annual review committee this year. Members evaluate the other faculty based on a submitted report, and recommend that their work be termed unsatisfactory, good, excellent... You get the picture. The chair makes the final call on these "grades" before sending them up the dean, but this little committee gives him a summary.

Is it busy work? Kinda. It occurred to me that unless someone smelled of loserdom, we'd be finding ways to call everyone "excellent."

Sure, that's a SOP I could get with. Looks like Debbie the aging hippie, the second member of the committee, thought so too.

Tamara had other ideas.

Tamara is machine. She's always in her office, publishes like she has her own printing press, and her hands in 50 things at once. I once heard the chair tell another assistant professor that her publication rate was due to the fact that the field that she'd chosen to squat on was so incestuous that the handful of names in its journals were essentially a cult.

I'd also heard Tamara deliver unsubtle digs at faculty who had retired with only one book. (The gall.) But that was the kind of anecdote you mentally file and don't think much of.

Not until you have more anecdotes. Completely psychotic anecdotes.

The annual review committee works off a set of university-wide criteria, differentiating what for instance, constitutes a "good" level of research activity, from what can be termed "excellent." The three of us first familiarized ourselves with the criteria and figured out how we were going to tabulate accomplishments.

Then we opened the first file.

"OK, Matthew Williams," I began, "let's see, teaching... he directed 5 independent studies..."

"I had 10 of those," Tamara stated.

Hmmm, that's kinda weird to say, I thought.

I continued, "...he also chaired 3 thesis committees..."

Tamara: "I chaired 8."

Um, really?

Debbie sought to cut this off right away. "This isn't a competition."

"I know," Tamara responded, "it's just..."

Debbie turned to me and asked, "well what else did Matt do?"

"OK, for research he said he wrote one chapter for an anthology, and has 3 forthcoming encyclopedia entries."

Wait for it... wait for it...

Tamara: "I had 8 entries, and I know what article that was because I gave him that chapter. I asked him to do it."

Now, you might think I'm exaggerating this for comic effect. Shit, I would if I weren't in the room to hear it. But I am not embellishing one fucking bit. This actually happened, in the way that I described.

Debbie and I soon figured out that we weren't ever going to conquer Tamara's one-upman-Tourette's. So we tried to move things along as best we could, in between Tamara's reminders of her own awesomeness.

I thought the 4 hours of work would feel like 8. It ended up feeling like 16.

I can understand if one is a workaholic, committed to scholarship and teaching, and wanting to ensure that the department's standards remain respectable. I can certainly understand if someone wants a meaningful definition of rigor, and a process that did not involve self-congratulatory back-slapping. The young faculty are not well-served by being told that they're great when they're not. Hell, no one is.

But what Tamara was doing went way beyond such concerns. It was clearly all about her. It was pathological. And since then, I've noticed her condition pretty much every time she opens her mouth.

Then I realized she's Penelope!

It depressed me for a while, because she represented the first real "thing about academics that pisses me off" that I found at the new job.

Still great though, but the bubble has burst.

Money Tip

2008-11-05T16:52:00.002-06:00

I've written before about how academics tend to not live in reality. And because of that, they have about as much financial sense as a 2 year old. Thank God they... we have a retirement plan run by TIAA-CREF, run by just about the best fund managers around.

So in this shitty market, TIAA-CREF has been sending out emails more frequently, trying to calm frayed nerves. It's completely understandable.

These emails contain many FAQs about what one should do in this volatile climate.

Here's one question I'd like to take myself...

The value of my 403(b) retirement account is declining because of the recent market volatility. I am considering holding off on making additional contributions until the market starts to go up again. Is that a good idea?

TIAA-CREF gave a measured, rather educational answer. It explained as best it could how there's no single right answer for everyone. In a few paragraphs, it went over the wisdom of dollar-cost-averaging and set a tone of calm reassurance.

I'm going out on a limb here, not giving you investment advice, but telling you how the way I see it, there is only one option.

Hold off on making contributions until the market gets bullish?

No.

I mean, HELL NO.

Now is actually the best time to MAX OUT your retirement contributions. Shares are "on sale". Whenthe market bounces back up, your returns go up exponentially.

After the Lehman Brothers collapse, after their shit and everyone else's hit the fan, I walked into the HR office and maxed out my tax-sheltered contributions for the year. I can fortunately afford to run a deficit in the short term.

That's right, from now until the end of the year, I'm spending more than I'm taking in. That money I'm putting off won't be taxed, and is gobbling up some delicious value. Mmm-mmm Good.

Words... words...

2008-09-25T12:10:00.002-05:00

I have a student this semester who doesn't quite get the conceptual stuff of the course. It might be safe to say that she often leaves class with no understanding of what just happened.

She's a conscientious person by some accounts, is aware of her weakness, and is trying to catch up.

However, being a step behind her classmates has not stopped her from speaking up in class. Consistently, persistently, and all too readily.

The class literally halts when she speaks because 95% of the time, her words are quite simply incoherent. I've begun to notice other students rolling their eyes and shifting in their seats every time she starts up.

When I open the discussion to the floor, I dread the sight of her hand going up. She will begin, mention some keywords rather randomly, but shortly after, find herself lost and confused. At that point, she tends to then try to plow her way through the mental blur by continuing to just talk, as if in the hope that in building a wall of words, some of them sounds might just make sense.

They rarely do.

When she does stop, I hesitate to ask a follow-up question, since she will either be humiliated by realizing that she's just spent 30 whole seconds saying nothing, or, God!, she might begin another soliloquy.

Scary part? I hear her voice in Sarah Palin.

Master of the Amazon

2008-07-15T12:51:00.002-05:00

I was relieved when the UPS guy finally dropped off my vacuum cleaner from Amazon. Finally, I could clean. My carpets were on the threshold where they might begin to trigger my allergies.

And, it's new stuff. Everybody loves new stuff. Oh boy.

I'd ordered the unit for $50, on sale from about $80. It isn't the most durable appliance around, and it isn't one of those fancy against-the-laws-of-nature Dyson models, but for an apartment of the size that I have, it was perfectly functional.

Man, it picked up a lot of stuff. I took the box out to the dumpster and stowed the vacuum in the corner.

But the next time I pulled it out, while undulating the electrical cord, I noticed a defect. A small chunk of rubber was missing on the cord. The white insulation underneath was visible and fraying. Convinced that it wasn't the fault of a giant rat with an appetite for rubber, I realized that this was obviously a problem. The cord heats up considerably during use, and would be a bit of a fire hazard.

I got on the computer and wrote to Amazon. I told them of the problem, offered to send a picture, said disassembly and thus reboxing/returning the item would be nearly impossible, and asked for a discount.

One of Thomas Friedman's little buddies, Rajiv, wrote back. He apologized for the trouble and offered a 20% refund.

But no one keeps his money by surrendering to the corporation.

I countered with an explanation that the parts and labor involved in repairing the cord was worth more than 20%, and pushed for 40%.

Another of Thomas Friedman's proofs that globalization is great replied. He agreed to 50% and processed the refund.

A few weeks later, the vacuum's price on Amazon went back up to over $70.

I paid $25. "Parts and labor"?... a bike ride to Sears for an 80 cent roll of electrical tape.

And that's partly how I managed to swell my savings on a graduate assistant's wages.

Numbnuts

2008-07-09T12:10:00.002-05:00

It was the second week of the semester. I walked into class, picked up my roll sheet, and waded in between the desks to take attendance. I was still trying to learn students' names, and walking around enabled me to strike conversations that make it much easier to connect names to faces.

I came to Nate, a back-rower. You never know about these backbenchers, they can either be thoroughly engaged students who like the observational perch, or too-cool-for-schoolers who hate the fact that you're asking them to learn.

I pointed to Nate's Blackberry sitting on the corner of his desk. Sure, I could've seen the thing as a conversational piece, or communed with another smartphone user, but honestly, I was mainly conducting field research for tech stocks like Apple (iPhone) and RIMM (Blackberry).

As astonishing as that admission might sound, it is true.

"How's that working out for ya, Nate?" I asked.

"This?"

"Yeah... Blackberry, right?"

"Yeah, it's great, I have it for work."

"You like it?"

"It's great, it's my Crackberry, have you heard that term?"

"Yeah," I laughed.

"Although the battery is losing memory," Nate said.

"Why's that?"

"I didn't charge it properly. You have to let the battery run down before charging it, otherwise the battery develops this memory where it thinks it's empty before it actually is."

"Seriously? Oh shit, I charge mine everyday," I gasped.

It didn't take me long on the web to find out that the kind of memory deterioration that Nate was talking about didn't affect me, since my phone uses a Lithium-ion battery, not a Nickel-Cadmium battery where that problem occurs.

It should've been my first clue, though, that Nate was just a little full of shit. He seemed overwilling to display his techie knowledge, yet remained ignorant that his Blackberry uses a different battery. In hindsight, his Blackberry's position on the desk also seemed a tad ostentatious.

Fast forward a few weeks, to the review session for the midterm. I distributed the study guide, then answered a few questions about time limits, format and recommended prep strategies. When I asked for questions, Nate's hand was the first one up.

"What kind of questions will they be?"

"Short answers and essays." The topic had been addressed just seconds before, but I replied patiently anyway.

"No multiple choice?"

"What? Multiple choice? Ha. Yeah... no."

"Come on," Nate seemed to playfully plead.

I took a breath and said, equally semi-seriously: "Every semester, this happens at least once. There are students who try negotiating. I used to wonder why they'd think I was such a schmuck, but I came to find out that it actually works sometimes, and some teachers actually give in. Do I look like a pushover?"

The class chuckled. Nate smiled.

"And the other thing is, have some self-respect, you know? Multiple choice? What is that? This isn't [Rich College], know what I mean?"

"Rich College" is the private university on the other side of the same town. Expensive, well guarded and utterly unchallenging, it operates with the axiom that education is a service industry.

I like to use that line because it's part ridicule, part cheerleading, used in the hope that many of these working class students would see these classroom challenges as a validation of their intellects.

Like the rest of the class, Nate seemed to get the joke. But hours after turning in his midterm, he wrote to tell me that he was withdrawing from the class because of what his grade would do to his GPA.

A few weeks after that, before class started, I walked in on some students discussing this person they seemed thoroughly annoyed by. Unable to resist, I asked what they were talking about.

"That guy who used to sit at the back," Luke, a front-rower, said.

"You mean Nate?"

"Yeah, oh God he had such an attitude. When we would be outside waiting to come in, he'd just go on and on complaining about what the point was... like what's the point of a Bachelors."

"Really? He seemed all right in class."

"No, he was annoying," two other students said in near unison. One of them rolled her eyes.

Luke added: "I loved it when he asked for multiple-choice and you told him to have some self-respect!"

"Maybe he's just too cool for school." I said to a few final guffaws.

Nate really was fine while he was in the class. But it was a good thing he dropped early, because if he had stayed in and acted like an asshole, he couldn't hate the class more than I would've hated the fact that he was in it.

The Good Life

2008-07-07T11:41:00.002-05:00

About a week ago today, my day began at 3:42pm. I woke up and dragged my feet to the fridge for something to eat. I couldn't decide between the tub of homemade granola that I store in those massive ice cream containers, and the leftover lamb and chickpea curry from 2 nights ago. After a few moments of silent contemplation, I decided that I wasn't hungry enough to need to decide. So I pulled a bottle of water from the door and watched cable news for a while.

At about 6 o'clock, my stomach began to growl. I scooped myself a cup of granola since it involved less preparation than popping the curry the microwave, and chowed.

Not long after that, the caffeine withdrawal headache and lethargy took its inevitable toll. I crashed in the TV Fort and woke up in time for The Daily Show. I then showered, lay in bed with a book and was out in less than an hour.

(The TV Fort is a 10 by 10 foot area in my living room bordered on three sides by my TV and a sectional sofa. It's got my TV, it's my refuge, and I defend it to the death. Hence the name, TV Fort.)

My friend Frank used to start conversations with me by asking, "How's the good life?"

In the throes of dissertation writing, I would reply, "What good life? Just drudgery here, man."

But these days, dissertation defended, tenure-track job acquired, summer classes over, I had to finally admit... this might just be the good life.

Today I woke up at 6am, made some breakfast to watch MSNBC's Morning Joe with, then biked to the nearby Whole Foods wannabe (all the organic food, none of the asshole customers) for some milk. I cracked open a can of organic cola, and sat down in a booth with my New York Times. I worked through the paper, gave up after 3/4 of the crossword, and came home in time for the late morning rerun of Jon and Kate Plus 8 on TLC.

It's 1pm right now. The landscapers are raising a minor ruckus outside with their leaf-blowers. My belly is bloated with a smoothie I made with the milk I bought. And this, I'm pretty sure, is the good life.

I can't say that this is typical. During the past semester, I pulled multiple all-nighters a week to prepare for classes. When I wasn't doing that, I was pulling my hair out trying to pound words out for conference papers. I'll soon have to interrupt this utopia with a manuscript I aim to complete during the summer. Someone did a study once and found that academics work as many hours as everybody else, they just have more flexibility and thus look like they don't work much.

But having said that, for weeks in the summer like this, the trade off is more than reasonable.

Frankly, I don't know how many hours a week I work. My schedule is so flexibile that work and play can and often does tend to merge. I also enjoy the work so much that I often have trouble calling it labor. I laughed at myself the other day, and couldn't stop snickering because I quite literally couldn't believe that I get paid to do this.

Is the money worth all those years in grad school? Probably not. Is the life worth all that investment? Yes.

Tony, a student who graduated with me, isn't feeling as hot these days. His adjunct contract wasn't renewed and he's screwed, for now. In my mind, Tony knows more than I do and is smarter than I am. Why am I in the good life and he in the throes of depression? I don't know.

The academic game is a random one. So many factors go into hiring decisions, 80% of which can have absolutely nothing to do with the candidate's qualifications.

I feel guilty about my relative success. Especially when people like Tony are struggling.

The book I'm reading right now is Then We Came to the End. The funniest book I have ever read, set in the office of a Chicago advertising firm. Douglas Coupland meets pitch-perfect verbal comedy. I can't say enough about it. Buy it, read it. You'll be terrified to find out how much you resemble these characters.

Part of it involves a fired employee who despairs at how he seems to have ceased to exist to his former colleagues. I always thought that the same would happen to me once I graduated. Former fellow grad students would run into me when I returned for a visit, say hi but scurry along with their own lives, their own dissertations to stress about.

Surprisingly, for the moment I appear to have a legend that is growing. I'm apparently discussed in near mythical terms as "the one who got out." Like the escaped prisoner who was never caught. The one who finished his dissertation, transitioned straight into a job, living the good life.

Part of their obsession comes with the territory. Grad students can't imagine graduating, let alone find work. Like right now, I can't imagine getting tenure, let alone get promoted. It never ends.

And before you know it, I've talked myself into believing that the good life is cause for depression.

You can take the man out of grad school, but you can't take the grad student out of the man.

I'm tired. Caffeine is a hell of a drug and I have none. I'm probably going back to sleep, and it's not even 2 o'clock in the afternoon.

The Fourth Annual Father's Day Repost

2008-06-15T05:13:00.002-05:00

Reading over this entry, I rue slightly some of the original choices I made. The tone does at moments sound juvenile. Maybe it's because the mood this year was made more somber by the death last Friday of Tim Russert. I haven't read his book about his father, Big Russ and Me, but I would like to now, from hearing about it over the last 2 days more than I ever wanted to. I have a natural aversion to books and narratives like that, because they tend to fall into the superficial and dubiously existential category populated by Tuesdays with Morrie or the more recent "Last Lecture" by Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch.

Tim Russert's passing connects with me a little more, though. I heard MSNBC anchors pay tribute to his relationships with his father and his son, and the responses that he received from readers that Big Russ and Me was exactly about their fathers. Knowing what I do about Russ and Big Russ, I can't say that either is a reflection of my father. But I am struck by what did resonate.

Like Big Russ, my father personified the stoic self-sacrifice that's nearing extinction with today's narcissism. He complained occasionally about his lot in life, but pulled back when asked about it, wanting to protect his family from the burdens that he thought were his alone to bear. Best of all, he hated "phonies."

And like Tim Russert, my father gave me both an interest and a clarity of perspective for politics. He earned the loyalty of everyone worked for him, and found uncommon joy in children. But like Tim, he had his excesses, and was taken in his fifties, in the middle of a great year.

"Hey pa, you really need to get us to confirmation class on time," I pleaded.

"Nah," he said as he drove us to get Sunday's lunch.

"C'mon, man, we're always late, and the teacher scolded me today."

"It's nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing? He said that if I continue to show up late, that I won't be confirmed."

And this was when my father laid one of the shiniest pearls of wisdom that he ever did on me. "Look, they're never going to not confirm you. The church wants members, there's no way that they'll turn anyone away."

Holy shit, he was right. The world started to become so clear after that, this is how bureaucracies work, this is how they keep people in line. And more importantly, it explained why my father, the classic lapsed Catholic if there ever was one - he whose only education took place in Catholic school, who was an altar boy so hard core that serving in Latin masses actually taught him the language, whom no one less than the Archbishop knew by name - couldn't give a shit about getting my sister and I to catechism on Sunday mornings.

I sometimes think about what if anything in how I was raised led me to choose academia. My mother was a elementary school teacher, so that explains a lot. But what was dad's part?

He wasn't the most involved parent. He looked at my college applications and said, "you did all this in school?" Nor was he the most affectionate human being. I can remember hugging him no more than a handful of times, and every one took place in an airport.

But boy did he teach me about how the world works and how to spot a moron, especially one in a suit. He'd drive me to political rallies in election season, stand at the back taking it all in, and mock the candidates on the drive home and laugh our fucking asses off. We'd do impressions of their bullshit speeches through the night. He'd bunk on the floor of my bedroom and we'd laugh ourselves to sleep in the dark.

He grew up dirt poor. His grandfather was pious, struck it rich and built churches that still stand today. But my grandmother depleted the fortune by helping new immigrants build their lives. Dad couldn't go to college because the family needed income, and he saw his friends who did go to university climb the social and economic ladder with double steps.

He got a job, bought a house, started a family, and saved like a motherfucker enough to send both his kids to private colleges of their choosing. But without a degree in a bureaucracy that prized paper qualifications, he hit a glass ceiling and found himself carrying the load for incompetent graduates who would eventually be promoted over him.

The Guinness gene skipped a generation. Dad had a liver problem that prevented him from drinking. But he never kept booze from me even as a kid, and as a result, I learned how not to abuse alcohol. Or how to abuse it correctly, at least. But he smoked a pack a day for forty years, and taught me that cigarette taxes are a tax on the poor, because no one else is stressed out enough to need to smoke.

During Christmas vacation of my senior year, as we were watching television late one night, he gave me a lesson on substance abuse.

"Anything new with you?"

"I don't know," I said. "Not much... I started smoking cigars occasionally."

"You better not. You'll get addicted and never be able to stop."

"But it's only cigars, and I only do it once a week."

"That's all it takes. That's how it starts. You'd better watch it, it's a dangerous habit."

"C'mon."

"I'm telling you, you should stop. It's going to happen, you'll get addicted."

"Only once a week?"

"Yes!"

"Whatever."

Gee, I guess he thought smoking is bad. After a few seconds, he asked: "Anything else new with you?"

"I guess I smoked the ganja!"

"You better be careful with that," he said. And that was all he said about it.

Classic.

On that break, we talked about his upcoming retirement, and the family's trip to my college graduation. He'd bought a suit for it, the second one he ever owned. He married my mother in the first.

We hung out, mocked the world's bullshit, and laughed like hell. I almost pissed myself when he told me about how he was run over by his car. The man's 5'5", about a buck and a half. He'd pulled in the driveway, forgot to pull the handbrake, and was doing something behind it when it started to roll down, trunk open, towards him. He ran up to try to stop it, but tripped and fell underneath.

Brump-ump! - the back wheel went over his chest, then Brump-ump! - the front wheel. The car kept going and was eventually stopped by the curb on the other side of the street. Brother man, 5'5", buck and a half, just picked himself up like nothing happened. As he told it, it was the funniest thing I'd heard in my life.

Christmas and New Year came and went. We ordered many late night pizzas even while in the middle of food comas, and laughed ourselves to sleep again. Leaving for college had brought us closer during my vacations. At the airport, we hugged.

When he'd call me in my final semester, he talked about my graduation. He was excited about it, more than he was about any trip, about anything in his life.

In the final days of March, just three months after his retirement from a job that had been complete drudgery for at least a decade, and six weeks from when his first-born would be the first one in the family to graduate college, my mother found him on the floor of the bedroom. Apparently putzing around in the middle of the night, he'd collapsed from a heart attack.

I remember the phone call in the middle of the night. To this day I jump when the phone rings unexpectedly after 2am.

He was buried in the suit that he planned to wear to my graduation. I wrote his eulogy, and included a jab about how he was unappreciated at work. When his old bosses came for the wake, my uncle read it to them, and made sure they heard the line. The secretaries who bawled when he retired, were completely devastated.

In a way, he probably hastened his own death. He stressed himself out a lot, and kept it in like a good repressed Catholic. He hated doctors because he dreaded bad news. But he was also scared shitless of "Uncle Charlie" and is probably glad that he went so quickly.

He never knew me as an academic, never heard any of my stories. He almost never verbalized any affection, though I knew that he'd do anything for his kids. He wished that I'd become a doctor. I always wonder if he'd be proud of me.

He was a savage critic of hypocrisy, hated pretension, was a man of his word and knew what was important. Sometimes genius, sometimes a moron (in both good and bad ways), but never, never, a douchebag.

Coolest Thing EVER!

2008-06-04T03:26:00.003-05:00

Last night, before Michelle Obama left the stage for Barack Obama to deliver his victory speech at the end of the presidential primary season, the couple shared a fist pound.

A fist pound!

Look, there are any number of substantive and rational reasons why I support Obama.

But you know, I also really really want a First Family who fist pounds.

Come on, wouldn't you?

One Acceptable Justification... Maybe

2008-05-23T10:26:00.000-05:00

I don't like students calling me "Mr". I don't like them calling me "professor". And I sure don't want them calling me "Dr".

I can't deal with it yet. That's maybe something I have to soon.

Mostly, I hate the way some academics see it as a rubber-stamp on their identity as an intellectual who deserves that social recognition, especially when they are not intellectual and don't know how to live in society.

But I also don't think I need it to maintain authority. I recognize however, that I am a man, built like someone you wouldn't normally choose to fight, with a teaching and writing style that reflects it.

I know female faculty members who insist on being called "Dr". I've always understood a big reason why. I found this passage in a WSJ article about gender in the election season, confirming as much.

An hour away in Indiana, Pa., a working-class town, Jill Fiore, who teaches part-time at a local college and has a doctorate in English, says she constantly has to remind students to call her "Dr. Fiore" -- the same way they address male professors -- rather than "Jill" or "Mrs. Fiore."

The article described the motivation of women to vote for Hillary Clinton, a person they saw as someone who understood their struggles and who would be an advocate for them.

I think that it's a legitimate reason. I despise the Clintons for many reasons -- curruption, cronyism, blind ambition, thirst for power and the utter absence of a guilty conscience, political value system, idealism and one might argue, souls. It is no wonder that they criticized Barack Obama's speeches as "just words," because their words are just words.

But while she, in that partnership, has sold out the poor, the working class, the black, the gay, and the personal friends among us, I think she has consistently met the promise to fight for women's rights.

Unless they're black, gay, or trying to unionize.

No matter. I can see the appeal, and I don't begrudge the position.

The problem is that I've met many women whose sole rationale for supporting her is the symbolism of voting for a woman. They know the flaws, and they're willing to overlook them.

In a piece for Time, Susan Sarandon said this:

There's absolutely no reason why a woman shouldn't be in that office, but I am not sure about this woman. It's insulting to assume that because you're a woman or a person of color, you would automatically back any woman or person of color. It's a little more complicated.

For some, it apparently isn't.

That, I just can't get my head around.

The Ones You Can't Save

2008-05-20T11:40:00.002-05:00

As the class was taking their final exam, I put their graded papers in alphabetical order, then wrote on the board:

If you have any questions about the grade on your final paper, I will be in the office for few hours after the exam.

As they turned in their exams, I pulled their papers from the stack and handed them over.

Mike, a little doofus who wouldn't be able to feed himself after graduation if his family didn't have professional connections, almost shit his pants when I followed up with my suspicion of plagiarism. But persuaded that he had been sufficiently traumatized by my very question, with a dash of my own end-of-semester exhaustion, I decided to let the incident go with a major penalty on his already shitty paper.

I looked back at the board, and realized that I had phrased the instructions wrong. I didn't want any grade grubbing, so I changed the words "the grade" to "my comments." It might be too late, I thought to myself, they already read the old instructions.

Sure enough, there was a small line of students waiting outside my office when I got there. Most of them had the lower grades in the class. Most of those wanted clarification - the comments on the final paper are more sparse given the tight schedule at the end of the semester. But a few of them were grade grubbers.

Oh joy.

I would figure that after a semester, most students would know that I don't put up with a lot of bullshit. Office consultations and discussions are just that. I will sit there forever to explain something to someone who wants to learn.

Most of the people who want to sit forever however, are the ones who don't actually want to learn. I'm not very quick in realizing when that's the case however, my assumption is always the opposite.

And some assholes... think it's a negotiation.

Whenever someone who is about to teach college classes for the first time asks me for advice, the first and usually only thing I tell them is: "You can't save everyone."

The stubborn douches and negotiators for example.

The paper generally asked for a comparison of two cultural texts from different historical periods, and some kind of explanation for any variations or developments that had occurred over that time.

Phil wrote his paper about two gangster movies, a Jimmy Cagney film from the 30s that he probably was forced to see in some introduction to film course, and one of the more recent Scorcese-epic wannabes. I always ask for a clear thesis statement, and Phil provided one that claimed that the difference between the two films can be attributed to the changes in the production code.

If that sounds unusual, it's because the Production Code hasn't existed for almost 40 years. It began in 1930, came to be administered by the Production Code Administration, but was replaced in 1968 by the film rating system. I knew that much. I even checked.

"What question did you have?" I asked him.

"I don't understand my grade," he replied.

"How so?"

"I did what you said, I don't think I should get a C-."

This wasn't going to be pleasant, I could tell already.

"Well, first off, I don't understand what you mean by changes in the production code," I said.

"What do you mean?"

"What do you mean... changes?" I continued, daring to give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Well, in the thirties they weren't allowed to show some things, and also, when a character broke the law, the production code had a rule that said that character has to die."

I knew already this was time I couldn't get back. The only question that remained was how much. Phil just uttered a combination of hopeless vagueness and outright falsehood.

"Okay, well, what kind of rules does the production code have now?" I pressed disingenuously.

Pause... "Uh, I don't know, it's different now. The old rules aren't there anymore."

"Do you know that the production code doesn't exist anymore?"

"What do you mean?"

"There is no production code anymore."

"Really?"

"Yeah, not for 40 years already."

"Well, what, uh..."

"You see how that is a major problem for your main thesis?"

"Not really."

"Do you see how your biggest claim is based on a fallacy? You see the problem there?"

"Not really."

This went on for a few intolerable minutes. Until I said, "OK, let's ignore that for a second, let's ignore the fact that your thesis is based on something that just isn't true. Let's say we ignore that, OK? Well, the rest of your paper is still pretty thin. It's got a lot of descriptions, but you don't really explain why the films are the way they are."

"But I did that."

"No you didn't, remember I asked for, for example, a social context for the films? For the changes that you identify?"

"Yes, and I did give social context."

"Really? Where?"

"Like where I talked about how in the old movie, the gangsters were dealing in alcohol, because it was what was prohibited at the time, but in the newer one, they were selling heroin because alcohol isn't illegal anymore."

I was lost, trying to get my head around the string of words that just came out of this motherfucker's mouth. "OK... so what's the social context that's related to that?"

"That is the social context."

"But that's only a legal difference."

"Yeah..."

"It's not the social context that you need for this paper."

"I think it is."

"Well, it's not."

In the meantime, Phil had also gotten progressively more pissy when he realized that I wasn't just going to change his grade. When I folded my arms after I realized that there was no getting through to this knucklehead, he folded his arms too.

Why do that? Seriously, why do that? Any sympathy I had for him - kinda like the sympathy you have for an autistic person - went out the window right there and then.

I will genuinely and patiently sit with someone who wants to learn. But someone like Phil who thinks that it's like haggling over a trinket at some Moroccan street fair can go to hell.

I Believe that this is the Score

2008-03-22T16:53:00.002-05:00

Cuteness 1, Evil 0.

Observations of a Political Junkie

2008-03-15T13:17:00.002-05:00

If Barack Obama is taken down in the primaries, do you realize that the Democrats will be rewarding race-baiting? Way to go, America!
Eliot Spitzer is still a hero for what he did for the free market and the individual investor. Still a hero.
Do you notice how Barack Obama's campaign and his personality have been constant and in fact identical since he started? Please, compare and contrast.
The Marxist critique of identity politics based on race and gender is that it divides the working class and prevents them from thinking collectively and working for their common economic interest. Clinton openly targets "downscale whites" in Ohio and Pennsylvania. I dunno, is there a connection?
OJ Simpson taught us that centuries of racism leads black people to forgive murder. Geraldine Ferraro teaches us that sexism leads women to forgive corruption, race-baiting and a politics that reaches into the darkest pits of humanity.
Late-night MSNBC election coverage is hilarious. Wait a while until the panel gets short on sleep, until Norah O'Donnell starts to laugh, Pat Buchanan starts to become really crusty, and they start to insult each other, I can watch them forever.
But today, MSNBC's special on Eliot Spitzer segued seamlessly into a story on sex-trafficking and white slavery. Uh... WHAT?
Close your eyes. Picture a general election debate. John McCain at one podium, Hillary Clinton at the other. Holy... fucking... shit. Way to go, America!
CNN calls itself the "best" a whole lot. I didn't know being best means having the biggest set and the most touchscreens. Here's a suggestion to John King, instead of fucking around on your fancy touchscreen, why don't you save us some time and just fucking tell me already?

Samantha Power is awesome. But she teaches me that if I ever worked for Barack Obama, I'd be fired in about 3 minutes.

Why are You Admitting that?

2008-03-14T00:17:00.002-05:00

Has it really been more than a month? February 5 is the last entry? Wow. I've been watching too much of the primary elections these last few weeks. You know it's bad when you're thinking that MSNBC's post-election coverage doesn't have enough Chuck Todd.

Uh, in what universe is Chuck Todd a superstar? The one called my private hell, that's which one.

I can't blog about the election. I don't have the time or the energy to write 10 entries of 5000 words each. That's what opening the floodgates would mean.

But here's a good one, a story from the last faculty meeting.

The university's in a budget crisis, and the college is feeling the pinch.

No surprise there. I work in a public university, the country's in a recession, young people can be pushed around, so you cut where the political consequences are least.

A faculty meeting was called to address the situation, and any questions or concerns that anyone had of the chair.

We were given a doomsday report. They do that so we can prepare ourselves emotionally. That's the administration's M.O.: They say everything's on the table when they try to decide where to cut, even though most things are off the table.

This is what it's coming down to: Some professors offered to give up their office telephones. Well, I'm sure as hell holding on to mine.

They also talked about cutting down on the copying budget. And the chair encouraged us to use online tools like Blackboard to post syllabi and assignments. You know what, between that and the phone, I'd use Blackboard in a heartbeat. Save some trees, cut some budget... what's not to like?

You'd be surprised.

Up went Larry's hand.

"Yes, Larry," motioned the chair.

"I just want to register my personal opposition to using these commercial applications. They're just one step closer to distance learning, and I just have personal objections to it."

Well, Larry, that's interesting. Because I've heard students talk about your classes. They already feel like they're in a distance learning program.

Larry had a student in his office the other day, discussing the student's concerns about his progress in the class.

Everything Larry did in that session, I would have chosen not to do.

He got defensive. He put the blame squarely, assertively, completely on the student, and made sure the student got the message. He made no attempt to understand what the problem might be. And as I expected, he put everything down to the student's naive and stubborn unwillingness to accept a opposing viewpoints.

Sigh!

As that conversation traveled down the concrete walls of the narrow hallway, out of curiosity, I looked up his comments on ratemyprofessors.com.

ARROGANT.

DOESN'T LISTEN TO ANY OPINION DIFFERENT FROM HIS OWN.

ASS.

OBNOXIOUS.

CONDESCENDING.

LOOKS AT US LIKE WE'RE SPEAKING ANOTHER LANGUAGE.

I have to say that from students' complaints, that they also like to air loudly in my presence, those online comments looked about right.

The meeting moved on. One faculty member talked about how the union is failing us. "Why are they doing nothing to resist these cuts?" She asked.

I would say that they're too busy endorsing a corrupt race-baiter for president, but that's just my humble opinion.

"They have these luncheons," she ranted, "I can't believe they spend our dues like that and do nothing to fight for what they're supposed to. I mean, why am I paying these dues?"

To which, across the room, Dr. McStatussymbol chimed in.

"Not me! Mm-mm. Not me, I don't," she said, shaking her head indignantly.

Uh what? Did someone just admit to that?

CoughAynRandercough!

CoughFreeloadercough!

CoughRepublicancough!

What the fuck?

I can understand being frustrated with the union. But as useless as ours is, it isn't that useless, and quitting would only weaken it, and make things worse.

The colleague who first complained about it would never really come close to quitting the union.

Not Dr. McStatussymbol. Mm-mm.

Doctor.

Douchebag.

The Deep End

2008-02-08T15:27:00.000-06:00

My union sent me a big glossy full-color pamphlet, announcing its endorsement of... well, not Barack Obama.

Which makes a lot of sense, right? A union endorsing a corrupt, corporate-owned and anti-union candidate? Why not? MAKES COMPLETE GODDAMN SENSE!

I read the pamphlet anyway, figuring that somewhere in there would be the part where they beg me to remain a member despite their endorsement.

I shouldn't be surprised since my great union responds to every budget cut by turning away defiantly, then bending over, reaching back and spreading our cheeks W-I-D-E.

I need a shot of whiskey.

Can You Hear Me Now?

2008-02-01T17:27:00.000-06:00

As I was walking around the classroom before the start of class taking attendance and chatting up the crowd, Margaret who sits in front of the room said, "You know, I'm really sorry that my cellphone rang the other day. I totally forgot to turn it off, and you turned to me like you wanted to kill me, like, that's strike one... strike two and you're out. I'm really sorry."

"That's OK," I replied. "Don't worry about it."

I didn't have a problem with Margaret precisely because I knew she'd feel immediate remorse. She's by all accounts a good student, and some things, you can simply let go.

Other things, however, you can't.

Carmelo is a "student" in my other class. I qualify that term because he showed up only once in the first three weeks -- the second class of the semester... and late at that. Throughout the class, I caught him looking at his cellphone. I'd assumed he was a drop when he was absent for the next two weeks, but he showed up in week four.

"You still in the class?" I called out loudly as I walked in. The inflection was somewhat similar to the one I'd have if I was asking, "You the guy who took a shit in the elevator?"

"Yeah," he said after a pause.

He daydreamed his way through the class, and was again late the next time. Great, I thought to myself, he's not dropping. Now I have to deal with this bullshit.

During that class, I distributed the midterm paper assignment. Where those go, this one was a tough one. I expected most of them the struggle, even the hardworking ones. I secretly relished the prospect of receiving an inept piece of work from Carmelo, giving him an 'F' and waiting for him to disappear from the face of my earth.

I saw him write things down when I used the blackboard. But I'd bet 100 bucks that he had no idea what was going on.

I screened a video that day. I put it on, turned down the lights, and sat near the back.

Sure enough, I saw his phone light up. He hunched over it and tried to hide behind a classmate. But from across the room, over the video, I heard the sound of his keypad. I waited five minutes to see if I'd calm down.

I didn't.

"Carmelo!" I said, and waited half a second for heads to turn, "you wanna do that later?"

I saw the backlight go out, and through the darkness, heard what sounded like the cellphone being tossed on the desk.

Did I offend him? God, I hope so.

When the video ended, I thought he looked like he was a little pissed at being called out by name.

I'm not beyond re-evaluating him if he produces work of genius. But I also wish to God that he goes to the chair to complain after we rumble a few more times.

Go on, big boy, your move.

I say all this because I just got out of a faculty senate meeting where the deans were going over the latest administrative crisis. Over the course of an hour, no fewer than 7 cellphones went off.

Seven.

SEVEN?

How does the first ringing cellphone not prompt you to turn yours off?

How does the second ringing cellphone not prompt you to turn yours off?

You and I know that each and everyone of the faculty members there would be furious if a student's cellphone went off in the middle of class.

Some things, I'll just never understand.

Obvious but Unreported #8

2008-01-31T02:15:00.000-06:00

I know, I said #7 was the last installment, but call me Billary, I lied.

This is just too damn juicy.

F you, oldies!

Sweet Caroline

2008-01-29T19:19:00.001-06:00

I feel Neil Diamond.

Like most people, old film and video footage of JFK is part of my historical consciousness. Jackie too. After them, John Jr. appeared in People often enough as well.

I can't remember when I saw Caroline Kennedy for the first time. It was probably on TV.

I'm the only person in my family who can't play an instrument... but if I could, I would've tried to write a song too. There's something to be said about the woman you'll never know who touches you like that.

Touching me, touching you... but anyway...

You don't see her around much. She wasn't the kid saluting her father's coffin in pictures, or the one playing under his desk.

I don't think John Jr. was a lightweight even if I think I would've had an easier time than he did passing the bar. But Caroline always struck me as a more serious human being.

I went to college surrounded by kids from rich and powerful families. Many of them reach adulthood wondering why everybody can't succeed as easily as they do.

In Caroline, I see someone who doesn't apologize for her privilege, but who is absolutely aware of it. She expects not more of what she was given, but to fulfill the social debt that comes with it.

Among the few times we do see her in public, is when she speaks at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremonies. She has an awkward gait that is visible when she walks in a gown, kinda like female athletes at the ESPYs. It is the only visible indication of her discomfort with being America's daughter.

But she lives it with a quiet dignity that freezes her face in time. Is she in her fifties? Is she really?

I've always thought that I don't get to see her on television often enough. But that's likely why her pedestal is so high.

The point I wanted to make is this: I'm not an emotional person. I haven't shed a tear for my father even though I miss him dearly and often.

So when Caroline wrote this, it came closest to bringing me to tears. Read it carefully. It's by a little girl who lost a father she never really knew.

It's about when the little girl found him again.

It got me. I have to say, it got me.

Rocking the Oldies

2008-01-28T03:06:00.000-06:00

I might regret saying this in a few decades, but I'm sick of old people.

I'm sick of their shit.

I'm already resigned to not seeing any of my social security contributions by the time my turn arrives. I've dealt with that reality. And I think that the oldies should cash their checks and shut the fuck up.

Billary's most reliable demographic: People over 65. One of my friends who caucused for Obama told me that he sat with kids who brought Gameboys along to pass the time, and looked over at the battalion of aluminum walkers in the Clinton camp.

For how long do we have to continue paying your debt?

I'm sick of their racism.

I'm sick of their boomer kids, most of whom never really lived the sixties as fervently or as radically as they like to say they lived it. Their 60s cred evaporated the minute Dennis Hopper made his first Ameriprise commercial.

I'm sick of the parental yuppies who hold up lighters at Springsteen concerts while their Polo shirts are tucked into their undershorts.

I'm sick of the people who benefited from cheap educations, but who are now divesting schools and universities, all the while touting the value of a good education.

I have to say that I'm not sick of all of them... and it's not about being young at heart, or not being crusty... it's about not expecting credit just for breathing a long time. It's about using the past not as an ideal, but as a way to look forward to the future.

Obvious but Unreported #7

2008-01-23T02:56:00.000-06:00

This is the last installment of ObU. I can't take this bullshit anymore. You want a monarchy in this country, you have it.

Realize this: People have been persuaded by an argument that is essentially, "I am a better candidate because although you know that I lie most of the time and think that I lie all of the time, my opponent might be a little inconsistent, while we all agree, he was right at the most important time. Although I've proven to you that you cannot trust me, believe me when I say that the other guy is a dirty politician."

I've thought hard about this. I have only one choice as a response: McCain, baby!

ObU #7 is about this quote from the South Carolina Democratic debate:

"Well, I respect John's commitment to ending poverty. That's why, 35 years ago, when I graduated from law school, I didn't go to work for a law firm. I went to work for Marian Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund, because ending poverty -- particularly ending poverty for children, has been the central core cause of everything that I've been doing for 35 years."

Let's talk about Marian Wright Edelman, shall we? Let's talk poverty. Hell, let's talk children.

I have a question for the candidate, this champion of poor children.

Have you or your husband spoken to either Marian Wright or Peter Edelman since they departed the first Clinton administration in 1996 on principle, to protest your passage of Welfare Reform? Since they did not ever receive any indication apart from computer generated Christmas cards, that you were sad to see them go, have you broken that ice?

Now, I have friends who live in trailer parks, whose neighbors arrange their calendars around the arrival of welfare checks and marvel with bemusement at "the people who work." I also have a die-hard liberal friend who works behind a pharmacy counter, and is questioning his belief system because of the frequency with which he sees taxpayer money funding deadbeats' drug habits. These situations pose valid questions for us as a society, but this is something else.

Welfare Reform in 1996 transferred all federal obligations to children in poverty to the states.

Reagan, for all the things he did, never touched it.

That's a Reagan policy Barack Obama can probably agree with.

You apparently, did not.

Obvious but Unreported #6

2008-01-23T00:49:00.000-06:00

"They've been after me for 16 years, and much to their dismay I am still here. And I intend to be still here when that election comes around and we win in November 2008."

Barack needs to be quicker and more succinct here.

Yes they have.
You've returned fire, and yes, you're still here.
But these are battles not all of us want to fight.
Strategies can outlive their usefulness.
And as Iraq has shown us, one can win a battle, yet not a war, and always at a price.
There is another way.
One that does not divide us, but finds in our collective ideals and essential morality, a direction out of that past.

Dear Barack Obama, you can have that for free.
--Teach

Obvious but Unreported #5

2008-01-21T14:43:00.000-06:00

See Obama's statements on Reagan again, in my previous post.

If you interpret it wrong, you're either an idiot, or a liar.

John Edwards's use of the quote was within the bounds of reason:

"Senator Obama, when speaking, used Ronald Reagan, President Ronald Reagan, as an example of change. Now, my view is, I would never use Ronald Reagan as an example of change."

But in the hands of people without morals or scruples...

Hillary:

"My leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last 10 to 15 years. That's not the way I remember the last 10 to 15 years."

First of all, his frame of reference was actually 40-50 years. Second of all, where do you get the idea that he agreed with Reagan's ideas? I have to check the TV the next time she's on. Are her pants really on fire?

Even better, according to Tim Russert, she actually called Reagan one of her favorite presidents in an interview with a New Hampshire newspaper.

You really want 8 more years of this bullshit?

Bill:

"He said President Reagan was the engine of innovation and did more, had a more lasting impact on America than I did. And then the next day he said, 'In the '90s the good ideas came out from the Republicans.' Which it'll be costly maybe down the road for him because it's factually not accurate."

You cannot be serious... yes, of course it's not accurate, because he didn't goddamn say it. But of course he had a more lasting impact on America than you did. Let's not forget, your presidency was a seamless interregnum between two Bushes!

And if you thought the Republican ideas in the 90s were bad, please tell us why you stole so many of them.

Obvious but Unreported #4

2008-01-19T21:28:00.000-06:00

And so, the world really has corrected itself. It's back to being over.

If it weren't going to have consequences, it would almost be a comedy.

A female caller just called into C-Span to tell the world that Barack Obama models himself after Reagan. She questioned his supporters, and the candidate himself if he even knows whether he's a Democrat or not.

Who in the hell can watch the quote in which he talked about Reagan, and come away with the impression that he's a Reaganite? Who?

Barack Obama's main weakness is that he assumes people are smart enough to think for themselves. Unfortunately, the often aren't. The media? Completely complicit. You expect his rivals to take the Reagan reference and run, but you'd also expect the media to get it right.

Haha... but you would be wrong.

Obama's statement was not about himself, but about history. Reagan took this country rightwards and did it with a smile. He'd crack a joke and people went along.

Can you see Hillary doing for what's remaining of the left, what Reagan did for the right? Do you?

Since she's running on her 8 years in the White House, let's see what this grotesque couple did accomplish that even Reagan did not ever do, and often never even tried.

"Don't ask, don't tell." Excuse me, but how does a fight for equality and rights end with legalized discrimination? How exactly? Here's a sign of trouble, let's sell out the fags!

"Welfare reform." Here's a sign of trouble, let's sell out the poor!

I'll stop before we get to the war crimes and felonies.

In case you're wondering, none of these crimes I have in mind involved Monica Lewinsky. Hey, the guy used the Oval Office to get poontang. I can't fault him for that. But hey Bill, you know JFK? Your supposed role model?

He banged movie stars, and he didn't have to rape them.

But I digress.

The real point of this post is this: The race was over when Obama became a black candidate, a candidate that blacks support. Everytime South Carolina is described as Obama's key state because of black voters, it's another nail in the coffin. Here's why.

The minute Obama said anything about race, anything... he turns into Jesse Jackson. The minute he gets Jesse's stink on him, his campaign is toast.

For a while, he managed to avoid it. His intervention on Joe Biden's behalf during a debate was genius.

But then he got close to the lead. He got a head of steam. And the Clintons pulled out race. They injected race, baited and waited, and baited and waited.

When Barack didn't respond, they responded for him by accusing his campaign of playing race.

Barack denied it, and aha! Gotcha! The black guy is talking about race!

Now Barack's got the stink on him, and I don't see how he gets it off.

America gets what it deserves. And it deserves what it asks for.

And would you believe it? They're asking for eight more years of Reagan.

Remember when I asked the existential question, when do I turn into a Republican?

Well, I don't think I turned into a Republican when I became the victim of a crime.

And it didn't happen when I started owning tobacco company stock.

But you know? It might well happen when we're faced with another 8 years of a Clinton in the White House.

Obvious but Unreported #3

2008-01-13T17:57:00.000-06:00

Just got done watching Meet the Press. Hillary was on for the hour. It is taking all of me right now to just throw every other sentence she uttered back in her face.

Did the tears in Portsmouth humanize her? If so, it explains what I felt as I listened today... I was literally ashamed of being a human being.

Bill Maher said of Clinton haters that there is no real reason to hate her, and that for anyone who does, it is about them and not about her. That opinion really does a disservice to reason.

That said, here are some choice bits.

"I've worked all my life on behalf of civil rights and women's rights and human rights, and so I want a good, vigorous campaign about the differences between us and our various qualifications and experiences to be the president that America needs."

Two words: Lani and Guinier.

"The interests are deeply entrenched. You know, they've gone after me consistently for 16 years and I bear some scars from that because I have stood up against them on universal healthcare, for example."

Three words: Someone shoot me.

Read this. I stared at my TV screen up close today, looking for an iota of consciousness of guilt. None. How does someone lie so easily?

"I don't think that either of us should use gender."

No words. They're not needed at all here.

Obvious but Unreported #2

2008-01-10T18:39:00.000-06:00

CNBC's Kudlow and Company is really the lunatic fringe of the insane party. I'm not criticizing the host's economic acumen, but his constant cheerleading of the economy is utterly irrational. I'm pretty sure that he can look at the stockbrokers jumping out of windows and blood spilled in the streets and still be convinced that there will be no recession. Even on The McLaughlin Group, he can be an entertaining presence, but his current show is a complete waste of time.

But I of course, still watch it way too much.

Tonight, he posited something that no one is really questioning: If Hillary is elected, what will it mean for the economy? The consensus on the show was that it would take a hit. Corporate tax rates would rise, the HMOs would be threatened, the drug companies would run and hide, and the special interests would cower.

Let's put this notion to bed.

1. The narrative of 1993's Hillary-care put forth by both parties is that socialized medicine was pushed back by HMOs and its enablers in Congress. Hillary has claimed that it came down to a simple failure on her part to communicate the details of the plan to the public.

Let's stop this nonsense. Hillary-care actually consolidated the industry. Under her plan, the largest HMOs at the time would have an oligopoly. The HMOs that fought it were actually the smaller companies that would have been shut out.

Would healthcare have been universal? Yes. But it would have also been a humongous payday and a monopoly for the bad guys.

A failed populist fight? Hardly. Talk about "fairy tales."

2. Let's draw up a list of campaign contributions from drug companies for this election cycle. Who's getting the most money?

3. A Clinton coronation a year from now would be my personal cue to go HUGE into defense contractors. Name me one missile system that Hillary would not buy. Maybe it would be a necessary way for a female commander-in-chief to compensate in the face of sexism. But seriously... does that really matter?

On which planet, in which galaxy, is that considered change?

My union sent me a letter recently explaining its endorsement of her. I have a serious mind to cancel my membership. The only thing stopping me is the abhorrent thought of being a freeloading Ayn Rander.

Obvious but Unreported #1

2008-01-09T23:23:00.000-06:00

This is going to take the blog off-topic. But given my unwritten commitment to write the academic stories only in fully formed narratives, I've found that teaching twice as many days this semester than last, and an impetus to send out a manuscript as soon as possible, I rarely find time to in fact, stay true to my original intents and blog consistently.

Yet I find time to follow the news, and find myself completely exasperated almost everyday. I've decided to use the blog to relieve some of that pressure.

I support Barack Obama. My stock portfolio might take a little hit if he's elected, but I'm perfectly willing to navigate that difficulty for the promise that his election will bring.

(You might be interested to know that my second choice for president is Mitt Romney, since I feel that if we're going to have a Republican president, I'd rather have an authentic CEO. If we're going for change, let's do it right. If we're not changing the world, let's make some money that isn't stained by the blood of murdered ideals.)

Months ago, Barack began to occasionally criticize his current Democratic opponent by pointing out differences and throwing a jab here and a jab there.

The response was completely ridiculous. It was essentially, "Hey Barack, what happened to the politics of hope?"

"You voted for the war, Hillary."
"What happened to the politics of hope?"

"You're rhetorically initiating a military confrontation with Iran by labeling its military a terrorist organization."
"What happened to the politics of hope?"

I suppose we can't be surprised. (That other side has already shown its naked willingness to race bait.)But Barack's simplest response to that inane retort didn't come. I would have said, "the politics of hope does not immunize you from criticism. The politics of hope should not cripple my ability to point out your mistakes."

After weeks, Obama finally responded with, "the politics of hope does not prevent me from pointing out our differences." It was a jab, not a punch, but more importantly, it was delayed. In the meantime, I began to doubt Barack's temperament.

So, from now till I get tired of it, I'm starting a series of entries that keeps me on Blogger, provides an outlet for my ambitious but lazy aspirations to be a politico, that takes on the politics of inevitability. The academic stories will come when they come.

Onto today's edition of Obvious but Unreported...

This is how Hillary began her victory speech in New Hampshire: "I listened to you, and in the process, I found my own voice."

You gotta be kidding me. That is exactly the problem isn't it? Why don't you look into your own soul, your own principles if you have any, and find "your own voice"?

Dear New Hampshire, I also suspect that she wasn't listening to "you", but her political advisers and pollsters. Just ask Iowa what she said about their illegitimate caucus vote the morning after she lost there.

Jesus!

Thank God They Never Listen

2008-01-07T01:20:00.000-06:00

At one point last semester, in the middle of a class, a lecture took me to a particular point where I began to speak about the socio-political status quo, and the possibility of change. I can't remember what the precise context was, but I believe that I was trying to provide a political background for a piece of writing that they had just read.

The time and place for those writers were different, tumultuous and uncertain, yet full of possibility. And as a means of bringing the material closer to life, I compared it to their time... our present time.

I don't know if you realize this, I said, but this is it. I'm sorry if you have ideals, I'm sorry if you want to change the world, but this is it. The end of originality, the death of personality, possibility... gone. Facebook, Deal or No Deal, Transformers... that's what we have, and that's all there is.

It was an apolitical argument actually, though I've never shied away from integrating politics into a humanities class. Politics make things relevant. And if you do it logically, if it emerges organically from the course material, and if you're self-assured, no one gets angry about being talked down to or preached to and everybody thinks.

I drew a few chuckles as I spoke. Some were just taken aback with a sense of: "Aren't teachers supposed to encourage optimism?" A few eyes drifted over to Ashley, the dreamer in the class who sees the world as how it should be. I saw in Ashley only doom -- the impending horror of dashed hopes and stark realizations of the world as it is.

Then came this.

"They said this day would never come.

They said our sights were set too high. They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.

But on this January night, at this defining moment in history, you have done what the cynics said we couldn't do.

You have done what the state of New Hampshire can do in five days. You have done what America can do in this new year, 2008...

I know you didn't do this for me. You did this -- you did this because you believed so deeply in the most American of ideas -- that in the face of impossible odds, people who love this country can change it...

I know how hard it is. It comes with little sleep, little pay and a lot of sacrifice. There are days of disappointment. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are nights like this; a night that, years from now, when we've made the changes we believe in, when more families can afford to see a doctor, when our children -- when Malia and Sasha and your children inherit a planet that's a little cleaner and safer, when the world sees America differently, and America sees itself as a nation less divided and more united, you'll be able to look back with pride and say that this was the moment when it all began."

What a speech. As someone who in a way, essentially writes and speaks for a living, I had to admire the beauty of those words. The rhythm, the construction, the care that went into perfecting them, and utter joy that the writers must have felt to hear them delivered beyond his and her wildest expectations.

But how could I not feel ashamed at that moment, to have taken away my own desire, ability and need to see the world in the same way?

I picked up my cellphone and sent Ashley a text reminding her of that day in class. "I take it back."

The message was returned, replete with exclamation points. She heard me that day. But thank God that people like her will never listen.

Paradigm Shifting

2007-12-18T03:11:00.000-06:00

I have a bit of time right now, and figure that I need to pay some attention to the blog. Same old excuses: Teaching, trying to write when I get a break from teaching, and then keeping one eye on the stock market to catch anomalous drops that reap easy cash in a few days when the stock price corrects itself.

As I run through what I've done since I woke up this morning, my life strikes me as well... rather different from what it was a year ago.

Then, I was punching the clock on the dissertation and stressing out over upcoming job interviews namely at the MLA, and sending out letters well into the spring.

As it turns out, most of the spring deadlines went ignored after I accepted my job in February.

My morning today is quite typical. I wake up mid-to-late morning. As I turn over in bed, I check my email and my stock portfolio on my PDA. I get up, and open the blinds halfway. Since one entire wall of my bedroom is a sliding glass door, the rush of light turns on my internal clock instantly.

Why I bothered to log on to the internet in bed, I have no idea, because the second thing I do after I get up is to flip open the computer and do the same thing. I run through most of the bookmarks on my toolbar, then turn up the volume as I arrive on the video channels of TheStreet.com.

I start boiling water for coffee in the kitchen, and dress as the videos start to play. I'd like to say that I like TheStreet.com for the strength of its news and reportage, but honestly, half the time I just want to find out which turtleneck Alix Steel is wearing, and whether Brittany Umar can actually be hotter than she was yesterday.

Ah, the ladies of TheStreet.com... but I digress.

Anyway, that's kind of how my life is on many days, and it's way better than grad school. With that in mind, I figured that I'd write a tip sheet for the people in my position one year ago. The MLA interviews are coming up soon, so all over America, hundreds of young academics are experiencing a severe existential crisis.

So for those among them who found this page by googling "academic job interview", here are 10 things to remember as interview season approaches.

No, they won't cover the very basics like how you should prepare for interviews by preparing sharp answers to the basic set of stock questions asked at all interviews, these are the things no one who takes academia too seriously ever tells you, the things that worked for me.

10. First a shameless plug: Read my entries from February to March 2007. Those stories from the trail are one of a kind.

9. Get a suit. A nice one. Your last one or two Amazon bills would cover this. While it might not actually get you a job, you don't want to think that it could've lost you one.

8. Remember that most interviewees will be completely anonymous in black, with a dark shirt, and understated tie. Fuck that. Vary from the black, and pick one article in a solid color above the waist that pops. A bright tie that isn't clownish, or a sharp collar that isn't too guido or so overly black that only Michael Jordan can pull off. I'd do the same with scarves for women.

7. Don't sightsee. Study your notes, rehearse your answers. It's an audition. You know how politicians sound so smooth? Well, their secret is practice.

6. Be psychologically prepared for the MLA. The sheer spectacle of it. The hordes of douchey nerds in the hotel lobby can be intimidating, but float above it all. Remember, they're all so scared that they're pretty much ready to throw up. Just observe them closely, see the panic in their eyes and body language, and you'll feel better instantly.

5. Don't be scared. It might help to have a plan B. Another year on the diss? Another hard but lucrative year on the community college gravy train? A visualization of a second career perhaps. Act like you could walk away from the table without a second thought, and the upper hand is yours. Your confidence? Palpable.

4. Find a personality. I tend to find mine in a cup of coffee with a shot of espresso.

3. Remember the assholes among your grad student colleagues. They grew up and became academics, who now find themselves on search committees. They might be strangers, but you know their psychological make-ups and failings. Use their dementia to your advantage. It's the same game. Same people, same douchebags, same social dysfunctional bullshit.

2. Some jobs are just not meant to be. You might luuurve to live in San Francisco or Manhattan, but narrowing your sights like that can cripple you, blinding you to great situations and greater people elsewhere, and stressing you out when the one big interview doesn't go well. The programs that like you will like you. The ones that don't can go screw themselves.

1. There are a million, no... a billion things that can work for or against you in an interview, none of which has anything to do with the basic barometers of academic worth. Chill out.

Chill the fuck out.

Settling In

2007-11-29T09:57:00.000-06:00

When I interviewed for this job, I laid out a research agenda that would make it necessary for me to watch a boatload of visual materials in the next two years. Everyone knew this: the search committee, the Dean, and all who spoke to me during the interview.

In my counter offer, I asked for a good-sized television, ostensibly for the office. It was a reasonable request, but still sufficiently out of the ordinary for the department that if it had come back with "we'll give you a 25 year-old Sony Trinitron from the basement," I would've taken it and thought nothing further.

But the offer I took included not the equipment itself, but a certain chunk of change for research materials. I did some quick math, figured out what could be tax deductions and what couldn't, so I could decide what to spend the research funds for.

One of those things was a television. It didn't take much math at all for me to logically conclude that I had about $700-800 for the AV equipment. I did some online research, and realized that the market changed at the right time... that amount of money could get a high-definition television with very respectable specs.

It still seemed too good to be true. So I wrote to the department chair to confirm that my intentions were appropriate and kosher. It was my first job, and there was no reason to rock the boat. He wrote back and said yes.

Great. All clear. Only no one bothered to tell Carol, the department secretary.

As I contacted her about my moving expenses and other paperwork, I brought up the television, and asked if it would be procured by the department or if I would be reimbursed.

"What TV?" Carol asked.

"My TV," I replied.

"Your TV?"

"Yeah, the TV that the department agreed is giving me."

This was unprecedented. Electronics? Brand new? Since when? That conversation set off a series of emails between Carol, the chair and various program heads. It wasn't that she thought I was doing something sinister, it was just unusual.

It didn't take long, fortunately, for the chair to clear things up. We brought Carol up to speed on the deal, and we were on our way.

Which was when, in the middle of it all, I realized that a TV of that size is too big for my office. Next to the industrial wood furniture and near shoebox dimensions, it would be like putting a humongous subwoofer in my trunk.

Unfortunately, I'm not a rapper. So I went back to Carol and asked her what paperwork was involved in letting me be able to use the TV at home.

Another flurry of emails ensued. The chair had to sign off on the idea again, which happened easily enough.

And so now, we were on our way, for real this time.

Until the procurement request arrived at the desk of a pencil pushing bean counter in the bowels of the administration building. As I heard it, the man lost his shit.

"What do you mean, we're getting this guy a high-def TV for his home?"... or at least that's how I imagined his reaction.

There were more emails... ones titled "Christopher's television."

OK, friends, there should definitely not be emails about "Christopher's television." There should not be emails about Christopher, period!

I done gone did it now. What did I get myself into?

Did my request make no sense? Or did it make too much sense?

As I type this entry I'm in my bedroom. Hiro Nakamura is wielding a samurai sword in the next room, on a big screen, in HD.

Stressing out a few university administrators for it? So worth it.

The Constant Gardener

2007-11-07T06:58:00.000-06:00

I was looking for a loaded pistol.

We were an hour into the new faculty orientation, and while it was necessary to sit through a general set of presentations for the most general of audiences, the tedium didn't take long to set in. The HR rep at the front of the room fashioned herself a bit of a comedian. Maybe if she didn't have to take the job pushing pencils in a back room, she'd run off to join Second City.

She needed to keep her day job.

I needed to shoot myself.

After the spiel on health plans and life insurance options, the floor was opened to questions. A hand went up near me. The young woman had been whispering throughout the presentation, with the kind of mild disrespect that comes with being tall and attractive.

"Are you going to talk about the TIAA-CREF thing?" She asked?

A frenzied murmur started around the room. Everybody was excited about how TIAA-CREF was going to take care of them during retirement. Not surprising, the company's reputation is well-earned. Low fees and commissions, and a track record that is as famous as it is unparalleled.

Among the good reasons one has to get a Ph.D and become an academic, TIAA-CREF ranks just behind the flexible hours and the insulation from the real world and external society.

But you see, insulation from the real world also means that most academics are blissfully unaware about all things financial. "The TIAA-CREF thing" is about the level of sophistication that many academics have in thinking about their money.

And I will say, that weirdly enough, TIAA-CREF is set up perfectly for the passive investor. Don't know the first thing about capital? CNBC sound like gibberish? Does setting up direct deposit feel like a major accomplishment?

Well, my friend, TIAA-CREF is the mutual fund manager for YOU!

A few months ago, I took a little surfboard and paddled out into the real world, caught a bit of a wave called Google, and suddenly, I am all about the money.

My addictive personality compels me to dive into the deep end. I see a screen full of charts and numbers, and I say to myself that I need to understand it and master it. But even if that weren't the case, it's only wise to know where your non-taxable contribution is going, and what it's doing. Makes sense, right?

You'd be surprised. We're talking about academics after all.

The TIAA-CREF thing?

Jesus Christ. I can see sharks circling.

I have a colleague who will doesn't save receipts, even when he knows that we're in a profession where pretty much everything can be a tax deduction. He needed a printer and bought the first one he saw at the store.

Then he threw away his receipt.

Money should not overwhelm anyone who wants a meaningful life. And it's a sad day when that happens to a person. But Jesus, don't get taken for Christ's sake. I'm nowhere close to being an expert, but I taught that colleague more about his retirement money than he would've learned in 10 years.

And yet, the academic who doesn't know how to manage his finances is not nearly as bad as that weird little creature called the Marxist who doesn't understand economics.

You see, Marxists in the humanities tend to treat terms like historical materialism and base-superstructure as mere concepts. It's all about the economic system, they'll tell you... about class structure and all that good stuff. They dive right into discussions of the mode of production all right... and cry mightily for the proletariat cause.

What's a dividend? That's another matter.

Which is weird, why? Because who would've understood it all and understood it well?

Uh, Marx, that's who.

Thank God for TIAA-CREF. Without them academics would be homeless at 65.

Turning Red?

2007-10-19T04:28:00.000-05:00

Which is the day I decide to be a Republican? The question has been on my mind of late.

Previously, I could identify to a few personal moments in history that could be turning points.

There's the day someone stole my backpack. Fortunately, I was a few days removed from my comprehensive exams. If the thief had struck before then, I'd have lost a laptop and probably 10 library books. In the aftermath though, my rage transferred directly into an unwavering sympathy for the cops, and a willingness to give them the benefit of the doubt in brutality cases.

But even in the absence of that event, "Don't Tase Me Bro" would still be what it is: freakin hilarious.

Then there was the day I recognized Pat Buchanan's talent. He delivered a presidential campaign speech exalting his supporters to "saddle up, lock and load, and ride towards the sound of the guns."

Saddle up... lock and load... and ride to the sound of the fucking guns? Now, in some ways, my living depends on how well I write and how persuasive I am to large groups of people. I know good oratory, and that my friends, is genius oratory.

On some matter or other, at some time or another, I guarantee you that Pat Buchanan will agree with you on something. If you ever find yourself behind a position he is articulating, you'll figure it out too: The man is a verbal genius. That's why he's so popular with old Jews in Florida.

Well, not really. But you get my point.

Graduating and drawing a real salary changed my outlook on things just a little bit. I am no more the means of production. I now officially own the means of production. Well, some of it at least.

Which means that if the wrong person wins the presidential election, well, it could work out well for me. It means that something that is bad for working people, can be not so bad for me.

It's a different feeling... to have a rooting interest like that... to actually be in position to get my taste of that trickle-down. It's a little unsettling, tempered admittedly with a little pleasure.

I've always known that most money is made by the encouraged and often enforced ignorance of the poor. So it's a little weird to be a beneficiary of that.

Nah... I haven't really changed. I still believe what I used to believe. Among them:

I'd prefer not voting for Bill Clinton because if I am to be stabbed, I'd like to see it coming... from the front.
Socialized medicine is the only civilized thing to do.
Anyone who regrets a Nader vote in 2000 should get a memory and remember what Al Gore was like in 2000.
Is there anything Hillary won't say to get elected? Is there anything she does say that isn't focus-grouped?
Socialized medicine is also good for the American economy because it lifts a ridiculous burden off employers.
Unions are great. It's the reason I'm not in debt. It's the reason I draw the investment line at union-busters like Walmart.
Walmart wouldn't have to union-bust in the first place because... you guessed it, if there was socialized medicine...
I think that people who don't like to pay taxes because they don't like what it pays for should have the right to not pay any. We should even allow these people to use public roads and get municipal water. But there should also be a record somewhere of these fucking assholes so the cops and fire department know which calls they can ignore.
Who am I kidding? Of course Walmart would still bust those unions even if they didn't have to.

E-eww

2007-10-04T01:19:00.000-05:00

Great episode of House this week.

I mean, it was as good as it can get when Jennifer Morrison isn't on screen for every single minute.

Or I mean, it was an OK episode... but it had a great line... a great line.

House was interviewing doctors for his new team, and among them was a semi-brilliant older male who House discovered, didn't have a medical degree. The guy was an admissions officer at a medical school for 20 years and audited all its classes. So he was an ABD, so to speak.

He auditioned for House's team because our good doctor was someone who broke rules, so the geezer thought that he'd understand. House refused, but offered him a job as a glorified assistant, who would then have all the responsibilities as if he were on the medical team.

Exploitation? House indicated that it sounded about right.

"That's not exactly my dream job," the old man complained.

House replied: "It is your dream job, it's just not your dream title."

Perfect.

Because there are several faculty sharing a hallway with me now who it seems to me, are really savoring their dream title.

Dr. Pleasey Recognizemydegree.

He shares a common wall with Dr. Lovemy McStatussymbol.

Together, they're really starting to piss me off.

Oh my God! Someone just fainted and turned pale! Is there a doctor in the house who knows what to do? Dr. Recognizemydegree?... No, Dr.Mc Recognizemydegree, an aspirin ain't gonna do much.

How about you, Dr. McStatussymbol?... It's OK, stop bugging out, calm down and call us an ambulance, can you do that?

Is there a doctor in the house? Anybody? Anybody?

"Dr."... fuck you.

Seriously, what the hell is up with that? The reason I'm sure these people absolutely love being called a "Dr." is that I have never heard them correct anyone for it. Not their students, not the undergrads, not the grads, not even the secretaries!

I can remotely understand how one's leadership and social skills can be so retarded that he or she might need that social crutch to maintain authority over the young'uns. I can also see very clearly how that crutch is necessary to mask intellectual shortcomings.

But really, why do you need graduate students to call you "Dr."?

Do you seriously want the secretarial staff to do that? You know, the people who actually run the office? You really want to wear your invisible labcoat in front of them?

And because of people like them, I have to deal with the pain in the ass of correcting students who refuse to let go of "Dr. Gradserf."

Now... because of my long-expired first-aid certification, I would in fact know how to react in a medical emergency (...that is, if I overcome my knee-jerk fear of legal liability in that situation...), but all my friends know to shoot me if I ever let a stranger call me "doctor" a second time.

"Dr."... kiss my ass.

Tickled Pink

2007-10-02T15:25:00.000-05:00

After I broke the class up into small groups last week, I gave them a question to discuss, and walked around to see who needed help with their discussions, who wasn't discussing what they were supposed to discuss, and generally to walk amongst the people.

I noticed that most of the open textbooks were highlighted and contained marginalia. Apart from the fact that I had given them tips on how to study for this fairly difficult class, it was heartening to know that they had taken the advice to heart, and that most of them at least were doing the work conscientiously.

I can't say the same for my other class. The percentage of serious students might well be the same, but it's enrollment is more than 5 times larger, so numerically there are more lazy pigs sitting at the back to deal with.

The auditorium is huge, the walls are solid concrete so sound bounces off them like crazy. The microphone is screwy so half the time I find myself chucking it aside. The back row of seats is about 1.5 to 2 storeys higher than where I stand to lecture. Needless to say, crowd control is a nightmare.

The students who sit towards the center where the acoustics are best, and towards the front where the sightline to the blackboard is best, are the ones who want to learn. They show up, they read, take notes and listen.

They're also the ones who laugh the loudest when I stop class to tell the back row to "shut the [expletive of the day] up."

I teach to them, although on most days, it's the little assholes at the back that stick in my mind, mostly in my craw.

So after I brought the smaller class in from their discussion groups, I was so gratified when I realized how hard they were working that I told them so. I said that I was happy with the effort they were putting in, that they shouldn't worry about the exams, and that they will probably be fine... all easier said than believed.

I also added a little blurb about the big lecture section. "I don't know if you know anyone in that class," I began, "but although most of the students in that class sit front and center and they're there to learn, it seems like 20 of the biggest douchebags in this university are in that class and all of them are sitting in the back row."

So many of them were just tickled pink at my very mention of the word "douchebag." One of them just got so excited that he heard a teacher actually utter those words. I mean, he was literally bursting... he was so excited. Is it just a phonetically funny word? I don't know. Sometimes, the chilluns laugh at the weirdest things.

New Life, New Job, Same Old World 2

2007-09-24T16:24:00.000-05:00

My friend Ben was in town this weekend. A perfectly timed trip that coincided with a period where I was really missing the Midwest. My friends like to unintentionally torture me by calling me on the weekend while they're drunk, together and partying hard, putting me on speakerphone and leaving me with some serious emotional pangs.

In those moments, I genuinely wish that I was still a tenured TA.

But things change, I know that.

Ben's visit also liberated me from the obligations and pressures of attending faculty-dominated socials. I've been to a few since the start of the semester, and 2 hours is the longest I've gone before the need to stab my neck with a broken bottle overtakes me.

I got a taste of this antiseptic crowd before when I came to town over the summer to apartment-hunt. But now that I know them a little better, I can finally say that they are actually a little less interesting than I had thought. Imagine this tableau at a bar:

Lee is a junior faculty member in my department. He's very gregarious, almost to the point... no, definitely to the point of being a spaz. He's been very nice to me, and very generous. He in fact encouraged me to string the department along in my negotiations, even though he was on the hiring committee and wanted me there. I'll put it this way: If I show up at this doorstep with the fresh carcass of the department chair's pet dog, he might actually grab a shovel.

But there's a minus that is threatening to outweigh his pluses. Lee is also overly open with his personal business. He talks about his dates, his sex life, his students, his teaching, etc. The thing I find about people who are this open is that beneath the impression of self-confidence in being completely exposed, is a tremendous need for validation. The difference between Lee going into detail about his break-ups and unbreak-ups, and someone who irritatingly uses word "mygirlfriend" or "myboyfriend" incessantly, is very thin indeed.

Yeah, dude, I know you like the women in spite of your totally gay vibe. I don't need your match.com stories to figure that out. And yeah, I know your students like you, no need to tell me about how your classes are great, especially when I've heard your full complement of 5 stories three times over.

Or was that four times?

The gay vibe... question asked and answered? Hmmm...

Randy is another assistant professor who is researching punk music. He allegedly used to be a headbanger, and keeps the long hair to remind himself of that. But he also speaks in the best cure-for-insomnia monotone that comes from either (a) too many bad drugs at metal concerts while standing in front of the speaker or (b) a whole of lot of vitamin B-50 in his bones. B as in BORING.

Based on my intuition that an academic treatise on punk is perhaps the LEAST punk thing on the face of the earth, or the BIGGEST sellout move since Dennis Hopper giving Da Man public rimjobs in Ameriprise commercials, I'm guessing... not (a).

Another guy, John, recently received tenure. I attended the deliberations as an observer, and found out that he has improved his teaching, where in previous annual reviews, he had attributed his bad evaluations to the fact that his classes are hard, which is badprofessorese for "my students are stupid" and "I'm... too smart for my shirt, too smart for my shirt, so smart yeah it hurts..."

Where have I heard that bullshit before?

Well, at least John accepted his weaknesses and addressed them, probably out of fear of being rejected for tenure. But, he righted the ship, so we can't complain.

So things are slow... I have to find a different social circle, and it took me years to find that where I went to grad school. It will be the same process here. I knew that, which is why I was not looking forward to having to build up a whole new social circle. It's a pain in the ass, and being preoccupied with work isn't helping. I'll have to find time, I suppose.

Is Our Children Learning? ... Well They Gotta Get to Class First

2007-09-11T14:14:00.001-05:00

In the new job, I have a lecture class: Me, 150 students, and one auditorium perfectly designed for a bullfight but definitely not for instruction.

I played the asshole to the hilt on the first couple of weeks. Cursing at the talkers, telling them that they can "get the fuck out" if they have some place else to be, and generally acting like a dick who takes no shit. I told would-be plagiarizers that I'd kick them out of school, and coasters that they needed to pick another course to fulfill their humanities general education requirement.

And generally, it's worked. The real students who sit front and center are grateful that the teacher is on their side, the inconsiderate dicks instinctively quiet down when I so much as look in their direction, and yesterday, one young woman asked if she could leave to go pee.

Not even joking.

I don't want to be the timekeeper of students' urinary schedule, but maybe it's a necessary evil. No one gives me any crap. Questions are asked carefully and cautiously. And although some students scare me because they look like they have a 9MM in their belt, they still speak softly and call me "sir".

I don't like people calling me sir, but sometimes, I don't correct them.

But really, there were also the no less than 5 students who came up to me in the third week of class, asking if I knew what discussion section they were in.

Let's get this straight... It's the third week of class... 1, 2, and now 3... these bitches have not been to a single discussion section, the same discussion section that they need to attend to pass the course. And not only that, they have no idea where or when it meets yet!

I shrugged my shoulders and gave them a look, like "how the fuck do I kn0w?" And weirdly enough, most of them gave me a smile like they knew that they'd fucked up. But then it also felt like they almost wanted to get cursed at, like the people who approach Susie Essman asking her to swear at them.

Yeah, I'm not sure about these here kids. I'm expecting the evaluations to vary wildly between the ones who love me and the ones who don't. Maybe we'll get a few complaints before then too. We'll see.

Don't Look Back

2007-08-31T12:27:00.000-05:00

When I bought my mountain bike, I had a clear expectation of what my relationship with it would be. I knew that I wanted a cheap basic one that would take a beating and not cause me any heartbreak when I moved and maybe flung it into the trash.

I did. It cost me less than $300, and I got more than enough miles on it to have paid for itself long ago. I wasn't the kindest owner to it. Tune-ups were rare, oilings were haphazard and hasty, and repairs often went unmade.

But something happened after I bought the bike. It became mine. Friends could tell where I was and what I was doing just by spotting it in on specific bike racks. I rode high on it. I rode drunk on it. I fell off drunk on it.

So when the cheapest plan became for me to use full service movers, I decided to take it with me.

My brakes have worn out twice, mostly because of the big hill that separated me from the office and library. But instead of replacing them immediately, there were stretches of weeks when I was going downhill with no brake pads.

The guy in the bike shop told me that it had worn out the rims when I took it in earlier in the summer after noticing that my wheels weren't turning true. He had to lower the brakes as a result, and advised me that I should change the wheels soon.

Well that went in one ear and out the other.

The other bad habit I developed as a bike owner was not getting a pressure gauge. Pumping the tires up at the gas station became a guessing game, but a pretty reliable one for years since I used the same gas station. As I would find out, the pressure on these air pumps can vary widely.

And where I have now moved to, that pump pressure is apparently very high.

And, above a certain pressure, the "thumb-gauge" becomes pretty useless.

My first ride above 2 miles created the need for some air. I rolled into a corner gas station and found the pump. The owner had rigged it so that you had to assemble it somewhat.

It was a hot day, and I was still new enough to the city that I still felt the eyes of everyone on the back my head. But since this was something I'd done countless times in past, everything's cool, right?

Well, as I'd find out later at the bike shop, this was what happened. The rims of my wheels had been worn so thin over the years that when I overinflated the tires, and by overinflate I mean OVERINFLATE, the pressure actually bent the rims back.

So naturally, when I began to roll it away, it felt like the wheels weren't true. I stopped in the middle of the gas station to inspect the alignment when the lazy afternoon peace was disturbed by a deafening explosion.

The owner must've shit his pants. Either there was gunfire afoot, or something was about to set his livelihood on fire.

With my left ear ringing like a chorus of sleighbells, it took me about two seconds to figure out what had just happened. I looked down and saw a mighty flaccid front tire. I just turned and walked away immediately. If someone did shit his pants from the sound, I don't know. I didn't want to know, 'cause i just got the fuck out of there.

No pause, no look back, I just turned and walked.

The dude at the bike store was for lack of a better word, blown away by what he saw. "Oh man," he said, "I've gotta keep this around to show people!!"

"Glad I could give you a story," I said.

Blinking First

2007-08-20T22:34:00.000-05:00

Before I bought my first real mattress, I didn't know what sleeping on a real mattress felt like. The last 2 weeks have been bliss. I get into bed and melt. I literally get sleepy within minutes of just lying down.

For good measure, I also bought a set of 600 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets to go with it.

Those mattress ads that go on about waking up refreshed? They ain't kidding.

The only thing better than discovering the bliss of proper sleep? The haggling over the purchase with a New Yorker who has a sense of humor.

The trick to making a sale is to sell yourself and engender trust. The trick to getting a bargain? Same thing.

"How are you doing today?" The dude said as I opened the door. He wore a long-sleeved shirt, tie, and hard-soled shoes. There wasn't a boardroom in sight, but the guy took his mattresses seriously. His dark hair was slicked back over his bald spot, and as he walked towards me, I could tell from his smile that sale or no sale, this was going to be fun.

"Yeah. Just looking for a mattress," I replied.

"Sure thing, man. Did you have anything in mind?"

"Full-size. You have anything on sale?"

"I could help you out... Do you want something soft, or something firm?"

"I don't know. I have a sore back sometimes, especially when I lie on my back."

"You might want something firmer. Go ahead and try this one out," he said pointing to a mattress.

I climbed on. "A-a-a-h-h... feels good."

"Now go ahead and try the one next to it... Whaddya think?"

"A-a-a-a-h-h!" This one seemed a little firmer, but frankly, I couldn't tell them apart if I really had to.

"Then try that one."

"Oh this feels good."

"Yeah that's a good one."

"So what're we talking about here?" I cut to the chase.

"How much did you think you wanted to spend?"

"I was thinking around 400 dollars."

"OK, you want to try out that memory foam one anyway? It's a thousand dollars, but just try it out."

"Sure... A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h-h!... Oh God, you know what, I'm gonna get off this one before I get too used to it."

"Ha ha."

"You have an educator's discount or something?" I asked. I ask everyone that.

"Sorry, man. We don't. Do you work for the university?"

"Yeah, dude. Just got a job here. First job, man. Now I gotta find me a real bed."

"Cool deal, cool deal. You need a good bed to go with the good job."

"Nah, 400 tops."

"OK, well, those ones you tried out... that one's originally $840, I can give it to you for $460."

"360," I low-balled.

"How much?"

"360, and it's done."

"No, I can't do that, man. $460 is the best I can do."

"Oh! You're killin' me!" I responded like a best friend had just asked for a huge favor that I knew I had to agree to.

"What about that one?" I gestured towards the I knew was more expensive.

"You know, that one? $420."

"OK, give me the other one for $420 and you got a deal."

"I can't, that's already on a big reduction. I do that and I'll lose my job."

"You can't do 40 bucks?"

"I already did $400."

"You're killin' me!"

"I can't, seriously, or I'll lose my job."

The desk he rose from as I walked in the store had a plate that said "manager." No one was going to lose his job.

Come on, you can't come down 40 bucks?"

"I really can't, I'm already cutting it big time."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. I'd lose my job."

And this went on in between small talk for about 15 minutes. "You're killin' me!" "I can't, I'd lose my job." "You're killin' me!" "I can't, I'd lose my job." For fifteen minutes.

In between I went to the water cooler in the back room and poured me a paper cone of water. I had been shouting and laughing so hard that my throat dried up. But then, I was laughing and drinking at the same time, which made me choke, and laugh even harder. Mr Mattress himself was chuckling through it all. I think he knew that he'd met his match.

After a while, I think that we had a rapport going that was good enough for Mr Mattress to give me a separate $500+ mattress for $295. Or at least, he claimed it was a $500 mattress.

I tried it out and I could definitely live with that choice. "OK, I'll take it."

"Great. You picking it up?"

"You guys deliver?"

"Delivery's $60."

"OH! YOU'RE KILLIN' ME!"

New Life, New Job, Same Old World 1

2007-08-19T00:58:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time.

I haven't given up on the blog, far from it. I've just been moving and settling into the new place, and soon, the new job. This is finally seeming like somewhere I can live, and thank God for that. The furniture is its in place. The boxes have been put away. The last month has been tiring as hell, and stressful as fuck.

And now, we roll out the stories.

First, we have to start at the mindset I started to develop at around March and April about cleaning the old apartment. Knowing that I'd have to give it a massive once over before I moved out, I made the mysterious decision to in fact, not clean.

Give me a break. It just made sense at the time, all right?

So come move out time, I had this massive coat of nasty in all manner of form in the apartment. Which was fine. Nothing a sponge, a pail of Pine Sol and rubber gloves couldn't fix, right?

But then the kink in the plan came when I got the flu on the weekend of move-out. So, final packing and cleaning took place when I was taking little naps so I wouldn't fall down dead.

The flu and manual labor just aren't meant to go with each other.

All those trips up and down the stairs to the dumpster. All that rubbing, all that bending over to dark and dirty corners. Oh God, kill me now.

It all got done, I guess. The movers came and went. I left the apartment empty, and while I left it dirty around the edges, and without the required professional carpet shampooing, there was not much more I could physically do. Literally.

I was so exhausted that I couldn't sleep at night. My heart was beating too fast. I came this close to checking into a hotel to try to sleep it off in a 24-hr Rip Van Winklefest.

I stayed in town for a week after I moved out, crashing at the place of a fellow graduate student who was kind enough to let me have the run of his place while he was out of town. It was only three blocks away, but I still needed help moving my bags up the street because of the flu.

With almost everyone I knew also moving, I had to call in the calvary from out of town. Yes, to move me and a few bags three blocks. It really was that bad.

The good part is that I didn't have time to linger and dwell on the sadness of leaving. There were a few intimate dinners and drinks with non-academic friends. But no big bash with the grad students. Hell no.

But the topic of a grad student bash was broached though. Which felt good, even if I didn't really want it at all. I had always thought that I'd leave town without any of the grad students even noticing. That didn't turn out to be true at all.

Fast forward 2 weeks, and I've reached a stage where my new kitchen is sort of stocked and I have a gym membership. Both signs that I'm ready to roll here.

School starts in a week. I'll get new students, a new office, new colleagues, and eventually, new friends. Who knows who they are and where I'll meet them?

These past two weeks though, were full of high incidents. Come back for the sequels. Here's a preview.

There's the 2 days I spent putting fraud alerts on everything with my name on it because I thought someone stole my identity.

The haggling with the guy at the mattress store. Who knew buying a bed could be that much fun?

The day my bicycle tire exploded and I walked 40 minutes in the summer sun to the bike store.

The week when I was the actual topic of office conversation because the department finally realized what ridiculous terms they had agreed to in my negotiations.

The new faculty orientation where everyone had collars and I looked like a guy who just rolled out of bed to go to the gym.

See you soon.

Conference Game

2007-08-09T00:01:00.000-05:00

I submitted a paper to my field’s major conference last year. Like all conferences, the quality at this one is no different. Most papers aren’t fit to wipe your ass with.

My paper was not accepted.

Translation: I’m quite unquestionably an idiot.

The paper was a chapter from my dissertation. It was a metaphorical flame-thrower, a thoroughly undiplomatic but well-supported rant that would’ve set at least half of the presenters at the conference ablaze. I adapted the chapter into a job talk, which landed me a tenure-track position.

Translation: My field is full of morons.

Translation of that: I think that makes me a supermoron!

But I was also part of a roundtable at the conference, so I had reason to attend despite the paper’s rejection. A week before the event, one of the other participants in the roundtable emailed the others and wrote, “I’m very much looking forward to the conference and finding out about exciting new developments in the field!”

Translation: That person clearly revealed herself to be an imbecile.

I attended the conference, making appointments to show up for my friends’ panels. I was glad to do it, but it also meant that I was forced to sit through some literally unbearable atrocities in order to hear my friends.

It is so amazing how some people have the performance down to a science. They know how to dress like professional intellectuals, they know how to speak like they’re smart, and they’ve mastered the art of ass-kissing diplomacy when addressing each other.

The proof however, is in the puddin’. Nothing, but nothing, can rescue a derivative paper. It doesn’t take very long – mere minutes, if that long – in listening to a presentation for one to realize how limited the imagination is from which it came.

But all that doesn’t nearly turn my stomach as badly as hearing sycophants praising themselves backhandedly. Some douche got up to present during my roundtable and said, “I’m just grateful and nervous about being on a panel where everyone is so brilliant!”

Translation: You’re so brilliant! Ergo I’m so brilliant!

Uh… fuck off?

Jesus, after 2 days of this bullshit, I was ready to eat a .22. The next day, I slept in, went for a run in a famous scenic part of the city, and was somewhat ready to jump back into the abyss, bright and shiny at 2 in the afternoon.

I showed up for a panel, got bored out of my mind in about 10 minutes, and started to look around for my escape route. I looked left, and then halfway to my right when I saw something so rare at these things: a woman that didn’t make me consider homosexuality. In fact, Linda was more than that.

I have to admit, and you can think what you want of me because I confess, the first thing I saw was her chest. Her winter coat didn’t reveal much, but enough to tell me that I could suffocate under those breasts. Funny thing was, she wasn’t really my type. She was a little dainty, and she had a humongous mass of black curls that came halfway down her back.

I don’t know what it was that drew me to her, could’ve been any number of reasons, but all of a sudden, the conference had possibilities.

I started a conversation in the hallway, found out that she had attended my roundtable, and that she thought my presentation was most impressive. Giggity!

We attended one more excruciating panel, after which I planned to make my move. But d’oh! I was almost thwarted by an old friend Jason who stopped me in the foyer to talk shop. A minute later, I turned around, and the hallway emptied for the start of the next sessions. God, I like Jason, he’s been real nice to me, but right then, he was killing my game!

When we parted, I looked around and Linda was nowhere to be found. Godamnit! But then I remembered the panel she mentioned interest in, so I hung out, watched some ESPN in the atrium and waited for the panel session to end.

What, you didn’t think I’d put myself through another useless set of papers, did you? Hells, no.

So, I stalked her, you could say. I headed back down to the conference rooms after an hour and a half, and “ran into Linda” outside the conference room as she emerged.

I wasn’t in a mood to pander. If she didn’t understand this sentiment, quite frankly, I’d rather go find friends to drink with.

“What are you up to?” I asked.

“I was going to see this panel…” she replied while flipping through the program.

“I gotta get o’here,” I declared. “Want to come with me to get a cup of coffee or something?”

“I don’t know,” she hesitated, “I’d feel guilty about missing these panels.”

“C’mon, come with me, I promise you that in an hour…”

“You promise that we’ll be back in an hour?”

“I guarantee that in one hour, you won’t regret coming with me.”

“Oh, OK.”

And off we went. This was really turning out to be a great conference.

We walked around looking for a place to talk that was just inaccessible enough from the main strip so that conference people weren’t likely to wander in. We talked for about 4 hours before she revealed that she needed to catch her plane in less than 2 hours.

Crap. I didn’t have the confidence in my game to ask her to take another flight so that we could bone 10 floors up from the conference. So we just promised to stay in touch, when she then told me as we walked to her cab that the few hours she spent with me was the best part of her trip.

Translation: Was she saying, “Ask me to stay so that we can make each other scream so loud that the conference 10 floors down will wonder what’s going on?”

No one has ever accused me of having quick reflexes. Like a dork, I let the moment pass, we hugged and she rolled off to the airport. Dagummit. Oh well. Some other time, maybe.

There’s a part of me however, that was sufficiently satisfied with knowing that while hundreds of academics were thinking of their careers and reveling in their own “brilliant” selves, I was busy macking. The iconoclast asshole in me liked the idea very much.

The evening however, was not lost. I went to a university’s reception with an open bar that my undergraduate advisor had invited me to. All was good as I started on a few Guinnesses. But after a while, I realized that it was taking too long. So I ordered a Blonde Russian (a White Russian with Bailey’s instead of cream, therefore more booze), that I slurped between 3 shots of Jameson’s.

Nice and sloshed, I then found my dissertation director who was sitting with a few other grad students in my program, and we spent an hour or two shouting and laughing at each other in public.

Not quite an evening with majestic black curls draped over a pair magnificent breasts, but it’ll do. Platonic good times had by all. Blue balls had my me.

Post Script

Linda turned out to be a weird one. She eventually let on that she was living with a boyfriend, but would spend hours talking with me, with no mention of him, until her cell phone went dead.

Translation: Hell if I know.

No, let me correct that. I think I know what my appeal was. I must have seemed like a well-adjusted academic. One who wasn’t paranoid, insecure and an all-around basketcase. I say what I want, I do what I want, I kiss no asses, and I can walk away from it in 15 seconds flat.

I thought I knew the game I had to play, but doing so from 600 miles away isn’t easy.

She’d say that she was glad she met me, and that she loved talking to me, while also saying that she can’t call from home because the apartment she shared was small and gave her no privacy.

Translation: Chicks are C-R-A-Z-Y.

This carried on for a few weeks. Her leaving phone messages for me in flirty voices, me trying to work it from 800 miles away.

Then she left the country for a few weeks, and when she returned, she apparently left her interest in me behind. I’m guessing she realized that she needed to stop flirting so intensely with a dude while she had a serious boyfriend.

It was fun while it lasted. I’ll have to see if I can find the same magic next year.

My Stuff

2007-07-23T16:01:00.000-05:00

I'm packing. Bit by bit. Slowly. Almost a shelf a day.

I'm finding things from freshman year, from family, from friends old and not so old.

I kept some, and put others out.

Like the receipt for my freshman meal plan. Like shirts I can't fit in anymore, and others I'd never be seen in public with, to other fabrics that shouldn't touch human skin. The Goodwill box just keeps getting bigger and bigger. For humanitarian reasons, chemically questionable fabrics went in the trash.

I have the same feeling I felt when I cleaned out my final dormroom: "How does one person accumulate this much stuff?"

Well, here's how. A list of things I found that made me pause.

1. Glassware. A collection that is a vertiable tour of the bars in town. Many shot glasses. A few pint glasses. Some good-looking, others that found their way home just because the bartender pissed me off and I wanted a way to get back. One or two were pure drunken kleptomania.

2. The Virgin Mary figurines and rosary that my godmother gave me at Confirmation and before I left for college. Oh what the Blessed Mother has seen from the top of my dresser... I am so going to hell.

3. The tissue from my bathroom that a woman used to blot her lipstick, which I kept at the risk of being stalkerish because I wasn't sure if it was left on purpose. In hindsight, yes, creepy. But I'd seen how Luke showed Lorelai the horoscope she gave him for luck. He kept it in his wallet for eight years. On the show, it was a good moment when Luke took it out of his wallet. As I pulled my memento out of the back of my drawer?... Er, not so much.

4. The old syllabus that my future boss gave me when I took a class that he taught while adjuncting at my undergraduate school. This is called "things coming full circle," people.

5. My GRE scores. Numbers no one on the grad school admissions committee ever paid attention to. Money I'll never see back.

6. The old microcassette tapes of the important interviews I had while working at the college paper. If I'd put in more time there, I'd be assistant editor. But I liked TV and sleep just a little bit more.

7. The winter coat I just dry-cleaned. It probably had a whole gallon of cheap beer caked into the thinsulate.

8. The little jiggling bag of pre-EU Spanish, French and British currency from my sophomore backpacking trip across western Europe. I think I'm the only one in that travelling group who isn't married. Thing is, I might also be the happiest and most satisfied.

9. My hotel towel collection. I think the Marriot "gives" the best ones. Not for much longer with guests like me. Also see #1.

10. The PS2 I gave myself when I completed half my dissertation. Maybe it's time for a PS3.

Countdown to Day Zero

2007-07-17T19:12:00.000-05:00

With the move impending, these are weird times.

When I'm not on the move, getting time in with friends, making calls, running errands, taking things to Goodwill, packing boxes or throwing away a ton of trash I wonder why I kept, whenever I find myself sitting down with nothing to do, the depression hits.

Oh God, why couldn't I just be a tenured TA?

Well, because you need to start a real financial portfolio and a retirement plan, jackass.

Or how about getting a real apartment with adult shit in it, you douche?

Maybe a real job? Maybe because you need to finally graduate from college? Dumbass.

I recognize the need to get out of school. I really do. I know that this is what is supposed to happen.

You finish the dissertation, you find a job, you put your time in as an adjunct somewhere, and you land the tenure-track job. I even managed skipped a step, and will never know what adjunct limbo is like. Much smarter people than I have had to serve that time.

The job gave me almost everything I asked for, I'll be making almost as much as the two assistant professors on my dissertation committee, found myself a great place to live, and more academic autonomy than I've ever had...

Good, right?

Well, not when I sit in my living room with my boxes stacked in the middle. Because that's when you look at the pile of stuff and go, "That's it? This is the sum total of my life?"

And come to think of it, even when I'm with friends, making promises to visit, take road trips... even with people around me, I get depressed too.

Because when I see my social circle, I realize what a big pain the ass it will be to build another from scratch.

Even though I like moving to completely new places -- I picked my college for undergrad according to where no one else even remotely from my high school would be -- things feel different for this move. Maybe being a little older robs of that optimism, where you're completely sure that the next step is one that goes up.

What if the new city sucks? What if the new students are morons? Or worse, what if they're assholes? What if the other faculty are morons and assholes?

Well, actually, I kinda already expect it to be the case. All signs from my colleagues so far are honestly to the contrary, but with academics, that is the default baseline we work from.

In the same way, I've always found a way to be comfortable in almost every city I've lived in. In a college town where many people are just stopping by as they move through their lives, I've always found new friends to keep me sane.

Is the grass greener? It would have to be pretty goddamn green to beat this. And getting there is such a pain in the ass.

I'm such an unbelievable whiner.

P.S. So sorry if you're checking back and I don't have updates. I'm busy feeling unjustifiably sorry for myself. I do have a few entries saved on another drive. And in just a few more weeks, fresh stories from new academics!

I Rock Their World and Crush Their Souls

2007-07-03T12:29:00.000-05:00

It's hard to pick a class I've taught to call my favorite. They have different objectives, the students and dynamics are of course different, I care about some subject matter more than others, and summer classes can be more easy-going than regular fall or spring ones.

But one class I taught for 2 semesters has probably given me the most laughs.

At the time, only faculty taught it. When the department was short of bodies one year, my adviser pushed my name up for consideration as a one-time-only graduate student stop-gap solution. He taps into the grapevine by pumping his undergraduate advisees for information about their classes and TAs, so he knew how students responded to me. And since I was one of those ABD ma/lingerers, he'd throw me some crumbs wherever he could.

What I did in that year led to the revision of the faculty-only policy for that class. And not for the last time, I literally and directly opened up a new source of funding for graduate students after me.

The course is essentially an introductory course required by all majors. No small part of it involves critical thinking skills that enables them to read in a way that opens texts up for analysis. Kids tend to take information for granted, and important-sounding authors' knowledge at face value. To undermine that, you very often have to change the very way students see the world.

I had so much fun in this class. The subject matter was undefined since it was skills-based. So it was entirely appropriate and effective for me to simply watch TV, read the news, or simply keep my eyes open around town, find something relevant, and introduce it in class as examples.

The first sign I received about how deeply I was getting to them was when Jason, a student in the class, came to see me in my office. He had thought about things over the weekend and concluded that after seeing what I was trying to explain in class, that it didn't make sense to stay in another class that he was also enrolled in at the time.

"I see your argument, and just don't see what the point is of taking this other class," he said.

Yeah, I don't think the department would've given me the course if they knew that I was going to nullify its course offerings.

Jason eventually dropped the other class, but he assured me later that it was because of scheduling conflicts, though he maintained that my class did certainly "had me fucked up for a while."

Kelly, a student from Jason's hometown, told me later that a group of 4-5 students regularly got together to discuss what I'd introduced in class. They'd literally sit in the hallway of their dorm and talk about what it all meant. Not "it" as in the course material... but "it" as in the world.

Nick told me at one point that he was no longer going to remember any names in any of his classes, since in a way, authors don't exist.

When I started the course for a second semester, students from the first would talk to those in the new section. The bad news was that since I recycled some jokes, I would get beaten to my own punchlines.

More than that, the new students were sometimes already emotionally prepared for what I was going to say. Maybe that's why they were far more laid back. The reticence in class stressed me out about how well they understood the ideas, but I realized that I was making good headway when one of them sent me an email over the break telling that he spent Thanksgiving trying to explain postmodern thought to his poor mother.

The other day, I saw on facebook's news feed that one of the students from the first semester was enrolling in graduate school. I was glad to see that because like Jason, he had stumbled into office hours completely dejected midway through the year.

His grades were excellent, but evidently, it was because he had understood the material a little too well and taken much of it to heart. He sat down, told me that the class had given him a pre-graduation existential crisis in the middle of his final semester, and he asked me to help him find a reason to live in this society.

I couldn't make that story up even if I wanted to. I told him what I tell them all in the final weeks, that he needed to see the world for what it is, but figure things out for himself and follow his instincts.

Zack, from semester 1, would run into me and ask how I was doing and how far along I was in my quest to "crush their SOULS!"

If only he knew.

As students from those classes become aware of my graduation and impending departure, I find shots magically appearing in front of me at bars, and in the ensuing conversations with students from those classes, I've revealed to them my overall philosophy in designing that syllabus and running the course.

When I tell them that I saw it as "a semester-long mind fuck," the reaction is almost always identical. They laugh, turn halfway serious, then admit, "Oh yeah, that class seriously fucked me up for a while."

When the world gives me zombies, I make human beings.

Sex on the Dance Floor?

2007-06-28T17:21:00.000-05:00

Curt is a first year grad student who looks like he's up for a good time. He didn't seem pretentious, appeared willing to put up with a bar's flaws if the beer was cheap, and didn't need to be around academics drinking gin and tonics and smoking American Spirits to feel like he was a worthy person.

I asked him if he had scruples about going to noisy college bars blasting Rihanna if I could get him a pint of Guinness for $1. He asked where this heaven was, so I brought him out one night with another buddy.

We pre-partied at another bar where the deal was a quart-sized cup of mixed drinks for $3. And since I know the manager, the drinks were DRINKS.

We got buzzed and headed on over to Billy Jack's. This is the bar I like to describe as the place you go to 30 minutes before closing if you absolutely need to get laid. It's an empirical fact. Many people I know call the place a skank ranch but it's to make them feel better about the fact that they find themselves in there at least at some point in the evening.

I got Curt loaded on 4-5 pints of Guinness for pocket change. He seemed grateful to not be breathing the clove cigarette smoke of the grad student bars. Over the course of the evening, we talked about why I preferred the less stuffy scene, namely bars that I don't want to burn to the ground.

Eventually, I gave him a survey of the bars in town, what kind of music they played, who dominated the clientele, specials, etc. And I told him where one was more likely to see random boobie flashing without the motivational aid of Girls Gone Wild cameras.

Everyone had a good time, but I should've known that the social pressure would get to Curt. Because evidently, along the grapevine, this turned into, "Chris, I hear you like to go to undergraduate bars to look for beaver."

"What?"

"Yeah," Jim said, "someone told me you go to those places to find young girls who will show you their beaver."

Seriously, what the hell? One, I never ever spoke to Jim about bars I go to. Two, I never use the word beaver. Three, seriously, what the hell?

I don't really care if they think I'm weird for having functioning testicles and a normal sex drive. I care even less if they look down on my taste in beer. But really, "looking for beaver?"

I dug around a little more, and realized that it had very little to do with what I do in my free time or what they heard I do, and all to do with what they thought of college bars and college kids. I think that everyone in the grad student hangout/shithole gets their mental images of college bars from Girls Gone Wild infomercials.

Once, in a moment of complete disgust, I said, "God, I really hate this place." It was another grad student gathering that I had to make an appearance at because it was someone's birthday.

"Why, Chris?" Pam, a grad student, asked.

"Why? Isn't it obvious?"

"Why? Tell me."

"This place is so bland. The people are stuck up, boring, pretentious... too many trust-fund liberals."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

"Where do you like to go?"

"On the strip, you know, where you don't need a rod up your ass to buy a drink, or be around people who need to see peeling paint in the bar to feel like they're drinking with the working class."

"Where do you go? Do you go to Billy Jack's?" Only she asked the question like she was asking if I jerk off in public.

"I've been to Billy Jack's. The music gets on my nerves, they play too much Jay Z, and there could be fewer striped shirts and flip-flops there on any given night. But I get wasted on no money, people know how to have a good time, and I don't feel the need to burn the building down."

"People have sex on the dance floor there, don't they?" Pam followed up.

"Sex? On the dance floor?"

"That's what happens at that bar, doesn't it?"

"Uh, no. Where did you hear that?"

"I don't know, I've heard."

"That's completely crazy. Bullshit."

"Do you have sex on the dance floor?" She wasn't letting it go.

"No."

"What do they do on the dance floor?"

"Well, they dance. Sometimes, they get their groove on. Some people, the lucky ones, even do the forbidden dance!" I replied with elaborate gesticulations.

The conversation didn't strike me at the time as crazy because well, I was talking to a grad student, so I kinda expect some level of insanity. And I also hear Pam talk constantly about how she "hates undergrads." But after the Curt "Boobies-to-beaver gossip" incident, everything made more sense.

Grad students are weird.

But a question I have is, how do you teach classes if you dehumanize your students to such a degree? Do you set the bar lower because you think that they're animals? And where the hell do these ideas come from?

I love this college town. I'm about to leave and I'll miss it terribly. Most of my "colleagues" are a little perplexed about why I do. Well, it's because I like living in reality.

Patron of Cuervo

2007-06-28T02:27:00.001-05:00

"Chris, you need a ride home?"

"Huh?"

"Let me drive you home."

"Nah, I'm OK for now... Bla-a-a-a-a-ah!"

"Let me drive you home, Chris."

"Hrumph... OK."

Mike drove me home from the party. He was also a little lacquered, so it was a good thing that we weren't in a part of town where the cops were laid in wait. But he was a maternal kind of guy, so he wanted to head off trouble before it happened.

I was so hammered that I thought I'd need a stomach pump. I showed up at the academic party to make a polite appearance, but it got unbearable real quick, and I concluded that the most meaningful conversation that I'd have all evening was with senior Jose Cuervo.

The night began innocently enough. A faculty member was leaving for another job and there was a farewell party for him. I was just coming off a weeklong bender and didn't need to extend it.

Before I lefty, I'd called some friends who were drinking downtown, so I knew that I had an excuse to leave the party. But it was already almost 11, and I knew that if I was going to head downtown, that my appearance at the party was going to have to be short. No problem with that, no problem at all.

I showed up, poured myself a cup of wine so I had something to carry around, and mingled.

That got old very very soon. I found myself back at the booze table. I picked up the Costco sized plastic bottle of Cuervo and started to pour.

My head turned and I noticed an open box of Patron. Wait! There's Patron! Where's the bottle?

I head scanned the table. There's the bottle! Is there some left? YES!

The bottle of Cuervo went upright immediately. I needed me some Patron. But now I had a double shot of Cuervo in my cup. What to do, what to do?

I believed that there was only one thing TO do.

I shot the Cuervo to clear my cup, poured me a shot of Patron, and shot that too.

In time, the party of pretentious academics with fragile egos didn't seem that bad.

I tried talking to some of them, but was reminded almost immediately why I don't hang out at grad student bars. The loud, mean drunk in me began to show itself.

By that time, it was too late to go to the bars, so I was stuck there.

Left with nobody to talk to that I didn't want to punch in the face, I found myself back at the booze table. I had another shot of Patron, at least one or two more shots of Quervo, and was swigging a bottle of chianti.

All in the space of less than 2 hours.

What can I say? I made the best of the situation.

I made fun of people, I called out some people for being imbeciles, and at one point, I freaked a friend out because I said that she needed to get away from me.

Because she was married, hot, and I was being an aggresive drunk.

Finally, Mike saw the writing on the wall, and took me home.

I slept my load off and woke up, miraculously, without a hangover. I've never had a hangover. Never had the headaches, the sensitivity to light, the need to curl up and die.

The streak continues.

I suppose that's what happens when you have a grandfather who asked for Guinness on his death bed.

The Third Annual Father's Day Repost

2007-06-17T12:33:00.000-05:00

I dedicated my recent dissertation to my father, and some have said to me that the 2 sentences I also wrote in the acknowledgement section were very touching and sad. I have mixed feelings about that, because my memories of him have always brought forth big laughs of the belly-cramping kind.

Anyway, I kind of like the idea of this yearly repost:

"Hey pa, you really need to get us to confirmation class on time," I pleaded.

"Nah," he said as he drove us to get Sunday's lunch.

"C'mon, man, we're always late, and the teacher scolded me today."

"It's nothing."

"What do you mean, nothing? He said that if I continue show up late, that I won't be confirmed."

And this was when my father laid one of the shiniest pearls of wisdom that he ever did on me. "Look, they're never going to not confirm you. The church wants members, there's no way that they'll turn anyone away."

Holy shit, he was right. The world started to become so clear after that, this is how bureaucracies work, this is how they keep people in line. And more importantly, it explained why my father, the classic lapsed Catholic if there ever was one - he whose only education took place in Catholic school, who was an altar boy so hard core that serving in Latin masses actually taught him the language, whom no one less than the Archbishop knew by name - couldn't give a shit about getting my sister and I to catechism on Sunday mornings.

I sometimes think about what if anything in how I was raised led me to choose academia. My mother was a elementary school teacher, so that explains a lot. But what was dad's part?

He wasn't the most involved parent. He looked at my college applications and said, "you did all this in school?" Nor was he the most affectionate human being. I can remember hugging him no more than a handful of times, and every one took place in an airport.

But boy did he teach me about how the world works and how to spot a moron, especially one in a suit. He'd drive me to political rallies in election season, stand at the back taking it all in, and mock the candidates on the drive home and laugh our fucking asses off. We'd do impressions of their bullshit speeches through the night. He'd bunk on the floor of my bedroom and we'd laugh ourselves to sleep in the dark.

He grew up dirt poor. His grandfather was pious, struck it rich and built churches that still stand today. But my grandmother depleted the fortune by helping new immigrants build their lives. Dad couldn't go to college because the family needed income, and he saw his friends who did go to university climb the social and economic ladder with double steps.

He got a job, bought a house, started a family, and saved like a motherfucker enough to send both his kids to private colleges of their choosing. But without a degree in a bureaucracy that prized paper qualifications, he hit a glass ceiling and found himself carrying the load for incompetent graduates who would eventually be promoted over him.

The Guinness gene skipped a generation. Dad had a liver problem that prevented him from drinking. But he never kept booze from me even as a kid, and as a result, I learned how not to abuse alcohol. Or how to abuse it correctly, at least. But he smoked a pack a day for forty years, and taught me that cigarette taxes are a tax on the poor, because no one else is stressed out enough to need to smoke.

During Christmas vacation of my senior year, as we were watching television late one night, he gave me a lesson on substance abuse.

"Anything new with you?"

"I don't know," I said. "Not much... I started smoking cigars occasionally."

"You better not. You'll get addicted and never be able to stop."

"But it's only cigars, and I only do it once a week."

"That's all it takes. That's how it starts. You'd better watch it, it's a dangerous habit."

"C'mon."

"I'm telling you, you should stop. It's going to happen, you'll get addicted."

"Only once a week?"

"Yes!"

"Whatever."

Gee, I guess he thought smoking is bad. After a few seconds, he asked: "Anything else new with you?"

"I guess I smoked the ganja!"

"You better be careful with that," he said. And that was all he said about it.

Classic.

On that break, we talked about his upcoming retirement, and the family's trip to my college graduation. He'd bought a suit for it, the second one he ever owned. He married my mother in the first.

We hung out, mocked the world's bullshit, and laughed like hell. I almost pissed myself when he told me about how he was run over by his car. The man's 5'5", about a buck and a half. He'd pulled in the driveway, forgot to pull the handbrake, and was doing something behind it when it started to roll down, trunk open, towards him. He ran up to try to stop it, but tripped and fell underneath.

Brump-ump! - the back wheel went over his chest, then Brump-ump! - the front wheel. The car kept going and was eventually stopped by the curb on the other side of the street. Brother man, 5'5", buck and a half, just picked himself up like nothing happened. As he told it, it was the funniest thing I'd heard in my life.

Christmas and New Year came and went. We ordered many late night pizzas even while in the middle of food comas, and laughed ourselves to sleep again. Leaving for college had brought us closer during my vacations. At the airport, we hugged.

When he'd call me in my final semester, he talked about my graduation. He was excited about it, more than he was about any trip, about anything in his life.

In the final days of March, just three months after his retirement from a job that had been complete drudgery for at least a decade, and six weeks from when his first-born would be the first one in the family to graduate college, my mother found him on the floor of the bedroom. Apparently putzing around in the middle of the night, he'd collapsed from a heart attack.

I remember the phone call in the middle of the night. To this day I jump when the phone rings unexpectedly after 2am.

He was buried in the suit that he planned to wear to my graduation. I wrote his eulogy, and included a jab about how he was unappreciated at work. When his old bosses came for the wake, my uncle read it to them, and made sure they heard the line. The secretaries who bawled when he retired, were completely devastated.

In a way, he probably hastened his own death. He stressed himself out a lot, and kept it in like a good repressed Catholic. He hated doctors because he dreaded bad news. But he was also scared shitless of "Uncle Charlie" and is probably glad that he went so quickly.

He never knew me as an academic, never heard any of my stories. He almost never verbalized any affection, though I knew that he'd do anything for his kids. He wished that I'd become a doctor. I always wonder if he'd be proud of me.

He was a savage critic of hypocrisy, hated pretension, was a man of his word and knew what was important. Sometimes genius, sometimes a moron (in both good and bad ways), but never, never, a douchebag.

Top 5 Whores in American Academia

2007-06-14T18:03:00.000-05:00

I don't have a problem with trying to inject intellectualism into public discourse. It's something very present in Europe, and completely absent here. The editorial pages should contain more than the likes of actual whores like Maggie Gallagher and Armstrong Williams, sycophants like Thomas Friedman (the Pulitzer Prize became worthless the moment he won one) or quite frankly, anyone with a bowtie.

The American university and culture at large is too insulated from each other, trivializing both in the process.

But when you get so enamored with being on TV that you become willing to say anything to stay on CNN or MSNBC's speed dial, then we've got problems. I'm not saying that professors should stay away from cameras. Oh no, far from it. It can raise one's profile and that of the university in any number of positive and beneficial ways.

But when you find a drawstring hanging down your back, you should stop.

So, in no particular order, these are the academics who are the equivalent of Anna Kournikova in tennis, David Beckham in soccer, and Dane Cook in comedy... completely losers in their profession who however happen to be media savvy enough to get the money and fame.

1. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University.
This dude really enjoys being a pre-eminent African American scholar. I know undergrads who can out-think this guy. Nobody but nobody pimps his racial identity as skillfully as this guy, except maybe Will Smith. Sure, Cornel West appeared in The Matrix, but c'mon, that brotha is actually smart, and at least he appeared in a blockbuster franchise that spawned philosophy books. Gates is a classic example of someone who used tenure not to be more adventurous, but to stop working. The PBS series "Wonders of the African World"? Jesus, Angelina Jolie could not have been more condescending.

2. Ward Churchill, University of Colorado.
No doctorate + Nothing of consequence to say = Tenure! I can't decide if CU or the Pulitzer is now the more worthless institution. The kind of academic that makes us all look bad. Is it true that if I grow my hair long, claim Native American heritage and regurgitate communist slogans in a very loud voice, I can also earn tenure? Has this guy ever been in a library long enough to know how the Dewey Decimal System works? The long list of plagiarism charges aside... actually, no, that long list kinda explains a lot. Let's not call his "little Eichmanns" comment crazy or "out there" because that would have the wrong connotation that he is actually capable of original thought. I bet real Marxists don't have much sympathy for him either. Simply making Sean Hannity mad does not an intellectual make.

3. Robert Thompson, Syracuse University.
Boy has this motherfucker done good for himself. New office digs, money, D-List fame... sheeyit, this "media expert" is now beyond cable news, my friends. He's now a staple of sorts on VH1 and E!. Nothing inherently wrong with that. His analysis is completely facile, yet, nothing really wrong with that either. But seriously, can he pretend that he can say something smart every 10 years at least? Curious about why he's on TV all the damn time, I looked up his books, and Syracuse would've done better if they made Maria Bartiromo chair of the Economics department. Was it on the E! True Hollywood Story on The Real World that this dufus said that when the history of reality television is written, RW will constitute the first chapter? Uh, An American Family was on PBS in the early 70s. Do us a favor, Bob and hit the books. More reading, less being a moron on TV. Anyone who knows about even Google and Wikipedia wouldn't have made the same mistake.

4. Alan Dershowitz, Harvard Law School.
Someone I know interviewed him once and asked him point blank how he'd respond to charges of media-whorishness. He got so defensive and even a little mad. He pointed out that solicitations for his media appearances only come from one direction. But Al, you could say no once in a while. Just like it is possible to say no to celebrity clients. All the same, the near hysteria that question provoked was perhaps a sign of the kind of petty personality that houses the crazy obsession to crucify Norman Finkelstein. (Having said that, he might still be Harvard Law's youngest tenured professor. Mad props for that.)

5. Michael Eric Dyson, University of Pennsylvania.
Yes, the media likes to anoint African American leaders, people who for no good reason are asked to speak for the entire race. But it's no excuse. If the formula for being a black spokesman is a mildly confrontational attitude, a reasonable vocabulary of multi-syllabic words, a hint of liberalism, and the willingness to assuage white talk show hosts' guilt, then this showman has taken it to an art form. Put those syllables in a rhythm, raise the volume, get a nice a tailor, and this is what you'd get. Then again, anyone who keeps Aaron McGruder off the air is a good thing.

Beer Busting

2007-06-12T19:03:00.000-05:00

Let's get a few things clear.

I have a PhD.

I am old enough to have seen the first Star Wars trilogy in its original theatrical run.

I have been entrusted with the future of America's youth.

I am responsible for the higher education of many many people.

I am cynical enough to think that it does not matter who votes for whomever in any American presidential election.

But in my hourly job that I am holding until the end of graduate school, we got walkie talkies today, and I have to say that the excitement of these new toys just about killed me.

The More Things Change…

2007-06-12T12:38:00.000-05:00

“Don’t live there.”

“Seriously, trust me, you don’t want to live there.”

“I lived there in my first couple of years, and I was so depressed.”

A clique of young faculty and their friends were advising me on where I really wanted to live, and where I didn’t.

My two apartment choices were both in places that made them queasy. They were making their case for me to live in a neighboring city.

For me, commuting was an impossibility and ultimately undesirable on several levels. I’ve never enjoyed being far away from the office and the library. But when 4 people are in your face telling you that you’re going to be miserable, one can’t help but listen.

It didn’t take much for them to completely depress the hell out of me. Oh God, what did I do? I’m going to hate this city. I thought back to 2 schools who had expressed intense interest in my application during the last cycle, and who made it quite clear that I'd be a serious candidate the next time a tenure line opened for them.

“I’ll stick this program out for a while, and then I’m out of here,” I thought. I had started the evening in a good mood, but after running the gauntlet of Debbie Downers I was ready for a game of Russian Roullette. It was that bad.

I got along with the group well enough. They were glad that I was joining the faculty, and implicitly awed by the fact that I got a tenure-track position out of the gate. The fact that I look like I'm all of 25 compounded that.

But then I caught one of them looking at me out of the corner of her eye. She was a girlfriend of one of the adjuncts. A young woman who had grown up in the area and as I came to find out, unsure of herself and what she was going to do, or about what she was supposed to do with her life.

I suspect that she was observing my reticence, how I was nodding and concurring, but somehow distant from the talk at the table.

The talk centered a lot on work; like teasing someone on how much he wrote on his manuscript, ragging on and on about undergraduate students who don’t get with the program, complaining about the intellectual deadness of the state’s inhabitants, the staidness of the place itself, opining about how Nirvana sold out, how corporations rule the world and the death of punk rock. Then someone passed around a psychedelic video they found at Goodwill.

Then the gathering moved to one of their homes. They reminisced about the one out-of-control night when they blacked out on free shots when a drunk bartender thought that one of them was a member of the Smashing Pumpkins. They put on the psychedelic video and communed in the living room.

“WAIT!” I said to myself. Wait just a fucking minute here.

I know you people! There’s a bunch of you where I go to grad school! You sit in pathetic and antiseptic grad student bars bitching about your lives… the only lives you know how to live because you don't know how to do anything else!

Oh, the faces are different. But the clothes are the same. The words coming out of your mouths are identical, word for fucking word!

Ohmygod!

I know you, person from southern/Midwestern state filled with so much self-hatred of your roots that you fucked and followed out of there the first person you met who listens to the Pixies.

I know you too, person from the Ivy League who wears Converse All-Stars like a symbol of capitalist resistance. Anti-commercial, but hipster-wannabe nevertheless, I see.

I know you, European who hates America but would blow 50 Brazillian crackhead porn actors for a green card.

I know you, vegetarian who wears Abercrombie “from a flea market,” waxing lyrical about punk rock. Your third-hand SUV is burning more gas than a new SUV, asshole!

I remembered. I know every single one of these people.

I remember… I can't stand them.

I found myself on the porch with the woman who had earlier spotted my uneasiness. We commiserated about pretentiousness, about academics who apparently understand everything about the world, about how the state that’s paying their salaries isn’t nearly as bad as they constantly said it was, about how discussing Pierre Bourdieu over imported beer isn’t really normal behavior, about academics and reality -- namely, how they don’t always exist in the same realm.

Implicitly, we talked about how belittled she feels when they ridicule her home state in front of her.

Then we talked about how you can possibly watch a psychedelic movie without drugs like people were doing inside, and how if you were really punk rock, you’d talk about the one night you that didn’t black out from Jager shots.

These people are so familiar. Another group of them here where I currently live are bewildered as to why I’m dreading to leave the Midwest. They don’t understand why I pick hardass professors for advisers. They wonder why I’d rather eat shit than walk into a grad student bar.

Why the hell should I ever listen to any of them or any of their ilk?

A knowing smile crept over my face.

I picked my apartment. I think I’m going to enjoy it.

Final Steps Towards Incorporation

2007-06-11T11:59:00.000-05:00

Before left last week to recon my new town and to find housing, my friend Sarah and I spoke about what I should look for. "We" decided that it had to be something that befits a newly minted professional and a responsible adult.

“Something that’s better than what you’re in now, right?” She subtly mandated.

“I suppose,” came my reply.

“When I come visit, I’m not staying in some dump, bitch!”

Point taken.

The search was pretty easy but stressful only because of my obsessive compulsiveness. I put pen to paper on an application just hours before my departure.

A junior faculty member put me up and took me around as I went apartment hunting. I looked at online and newspaper listings, checked out personal recommendations spoke to a few brokers.

I’m a pretty precise shopper. I have an idea in my mind of what I want, and I rarely waiver. Anything out of that range gets discarded immediately.

The same impulses were in action as I put together my interview suit a few months back. I put a color combination in my head, and hit the mall with swift surgical strikes. Quick and painless, in and out.

I knew what I would need. I knew what I would do day to day. And I knew whom I wanted to be neighbors with. And of course, I knew I had to find something adult so Sarah wouldn’t give me shit.

To cover all my bases, I showed up for an appointment with a roommate situation even though I knew I probably wouldn’t take it unless the roommate turned out to be George Clooney. ie. someone whose sloppy seconds I’d gladly take. Shit, they’re sloppy seconds that even Brad Pitt would happily take, and probably does.

The ad said that the roommate is a professional lifeguard. Nothing however, would prepare even the most cynical person for the sight of gym equipment set up in the living room, a beer blimp floating in the top corner of the kitchen, and liquor posters on every wall.

Roomie was in his early forties and well on his way to becoming Mitch Buchanan. He seemed to be a perfectly nice guy and on evidence, an impeccably clean and tidy person. Nothing was out of place and you could smell the household cleaner in the air.

I felt two distinct pangs of sadness. The first was for Mitch. A perfectly nice and decent human being, but also a professional lifeguard in his early forties. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Mitch had everything he wanted and seemed perfectly happy.

The second ache was for myself. Just five years ago, I would’ve taken the room in a heartbeat. Cheap rent, a classic “dude” for a roommate, no potential conflict in sight.

...“When I come visit, I’m not staying in some dump, bitch!”...

Adult, adult, I have to be an adult.

Argh. I shook hands with Mitch and thanked him for his time. Then I walked away from what is essentially a youth that I enjoyed and found hard to wrench myself from. Sarah’s admonition notwithstanding, I knew divorce was necessary and inevitable. Time moves on and so do we.

Painful? You bet, but only kinda.

A few days later and my choices came down to two apartments. One was in a gentrified area, close to shopping and essentials, a lakeview and condo amenities little Ari Golds cream themselves over.

The other looked distinctly like my current apartment. In fact, on the inside it looked exactly like my current apartment. Close to essentials, closer to work, and a short walk away from a stunning running route.

It was tough.

I pulled out every conceivably reason to take the second one.

All I need is a supermarket, right?... I run a lot. I’ll run even more if I live here... I’m not moving up, but it sure ain’t a step down, is it?...

But in the end, the weeklong echoes rang out again.

... “When I come visit, I’m not staying in some dump, bitch!”...

Adult, adult, I have to be an adult.

I sold out. I knew I had to. I’d enjoy it. I’d be comfortable, I’d be stress free, and if I really wanted to run in a setting right out of the pages of Runner’s World, I’d make it there anyway no matter how far away I was.

Orange Alert, War Profiteering and the First Amendment

2007-06-10T18:59:00.000-05:00

Coming back from my advance trip to find an apartment, I strolled through the terminal during a layover looking not very hard for a flight schedule. I knew I was waiting at least 2 hours, so time as not at a premium.

The Brian Eno was interrupted occasionally by a young male voice, a friendly reminder -- as if the military had just went to Defcon 2 -- that the national threat level is now "orange." Watch for unaccompanied bags, don't leave your own baggage unattended and keep an eye out for hairy brown men with shifty eyes.

I'm guessing no one paid any goddamn attention to the announcement. I'm wondering when they'd have to create a new threat level above "red" because no one was paying any attention to "orange."

My flight was delayed. It was a dinner time flight, so I had half-expected it. With any departure later than 12pm these days, you have to expect a delay.

I looked at the airport directory to see what food was available. I was hungry as shit. I wondered if there were this many restaurant choices in airports before airlines decided to stop serving meals.

Then I wondered if they sold as many $2.00 sodas before airports reacted to a liquid threat and started to restrict outside liquids in the terminals. I also wondered if it was anywhere close to the time that airport water fountains lost pressure and gained 10 degrees in temperature.

Airports are crowded as fuck in these days of the war on terror. Fewer flights, fuller planes, harder to find a peaceful gate area for me and my laptop with an electrical outlet conveniently close to empty seats.

More delays, greater confusion, angrier customers.

I put away the wrappers of the fast food franchise that I'd sworn off just days ago, in the same airport on the departing flight. I chucked it in the trash, peed in a crowded but remarkably clean men's room, washed up, nestled myself in a seat near my gate, and opened my laptop.

"Why the hell did you tell us to go to gate A2?" A black male voice boomed.

I looked up, so did everyone else within earshot.

"The plane was delayed, sir, and that gate area was congested," the gate agent replied. She was a black woman in her thirties. Thick in the hips, weave in the hair... as a general rule, don't mess with these sistas.

But I'm not a brother, so I was curious as to how this might go down. So was everyone else.

"You just told me to go to A2! Then it changed to A35, and no one there told us!"

"Sir, please keep your voice down."

"But you don't know what the hell you're doing! I almost missed my flight! Someone's gotta call you on this!"

"Sir, the planes are delayed. We're giving you the information as it come to us. You don't have to shout at us."

"You don't tell me what to say! I got da First Amendment! What the hell you tellin' me about I can't say this... sheeyit. I can say anythin' I want! You heard o' da First Amendment?"

Sista Weave was halfway out of the counter. One hand on a hip, the other just itching to wave a finger. Somehow, it found a way to stay waistside. "I'm just saying it's pointless for you to raise your voice. It doesn't help the situation or anybody else."

"You tell us to go to A2, that's at the other end, sheeyit... this ain't no 10K mile race. I can say that! I got the First Amendment! Talk to me about what I can say and what I can't... sheeyit."

Then, gradually aware of the 15o pairs of eyes on his ass, which incidentally could use a few laps around the concourse, and pacified somewhat by his wife who looked like she was completely humiliated to sit beside him, our constitutional scholar calmed down, lowering his voice to a mutter and then to an inaudible rant into his wife's exhausted ear.

I knew exactly what happened because my flight's gate was changed twice as well. People were tired, dehydrated, hungry yet not hungry at the same time, and generally on the verge. I knew -- I should say I hoped -- that it was only a matter of time before another person lost his...

"Walla walla halla wah!!!" An white-haired old man in his fifties or sixties was screaming at the very same agents in an accent made completely unrecognizable and unintelligible by his red-faced rage.

"Sir-"

"Halla walla halla walla other gate!!" He continued unrelentingly. I ventured that his Europeanness and her blackness gave him the authority.

"Pleas-"

"Walla walla hella how can you do this?!!"

The happiest person around was Mrs Constitutional Scholar, because by now all eyes were off her and her family.

The second happiest person was probably me. Please, I prayed. Lose it, lose it, trigger a police response, please lose it!

"Walla walla halla wah!!!"

For some reason, a pixie of a woman was assigned the task of dealing with the gentleman. She led him across the concourse, and within minutes the cops descended. One of them was a black officer in a uniform made inappropriately tight by steroids and steaks.

Please, dude, please lose it just one more time. Give us a "Walla walla hella!!" Just one more.

Alas, no such luck. Disappointed, I put my head back in my laptop. I didn't notice him again. He must've been escorted out and probably missed his flight. Oh God, how much more mad must that have made him?

Mr Constitutional Scholar saw what happened and was well behaved after that. He might be an angry black man, but he wasn't going to be big, angry, black and cuffed, not below the Mason-Dixon Line.

Two more delays at the gate, one more while taxiing, and once more on the runway, and my flight lifted off 2 hours behind schedule. A friend was picking me up and we were supposed to get our load on that night. In a way, I suppose it's a good thing we lost those 2 hours.

I did however, get a lesson on national security, political economy and the constitution though.

Today's Conundrum

2007-06-05T01:42:00.000-05:00

When I first began my PhD program, this much became clear to me: I am not the smartest person here. Not even close.

Beyond the default base-level of paranoia that is part of the psyche of every graduate student -- the same mental condition that causes one to fear that today is the day he or she will be revealed as an intellectual fraud -- that observation, I think, was empirically true.

One year ahead of me was a dude named Jerry who was smarter than every professor in this school. If you think that it is hyperbole, you have not met Jerry.

In his cohort was Lisa who received every fellowship in sight, and executed an examination so astoundingly outstanding that the exam committee created a new, and higher, passing category for the exam. No one but Lisa has ever earned that designation. No one else probably will.

In my own group, Anthony was only a master's student, but he had read more, knew more, and could read faster than me. Only humility, deference and the most elaborate smokescreen I ever created prevented him from finding out about my retardation.

I was not the smartest. That much was clearly established.

The trouble was, I was also not the most hardworking student!

How big of a dumbass was I? Already behind, I chose to fall further down the line!

Not the smartest, not the most hardworking, how did I ever get to where I am, where everyone's kissing my ass?

Tenure-track job in hand, with employment choices to boot, what did I ever do to deserve to sit so pretty? If you asked me, I'd say, "Nothing."

The only thing that's left, the only thing I can possibly point to as a reason for my new found kickass-dom, is my deftness in playing the game.

I know how to do the little things. I know how to maximize my strengths and hide my weaknesses. I know how to navigate bureaucracies. I know how to sound smart. I know how to be aloof and humble at the same time. I know how to grease the wheels but not look like a weasel.

Wait, wait... wait...

I so COMPLETELY hate that kind of academic!

Faculty members who hated my outspokenness about their bullshit and departmental politics, who ignored me for years, are now greeting me in the hallway.

Grad students who thought I was weird and probably a little assholic, are beseeching me for advice. I dispense it and they look at me like I just introduced them to color TV.

A normal person would bask in the adulation. Honestly, I did for a while. But evidently, naturally, luckily, I left enough psychological breadcrumbs to find my way back to self-loathing.

For Entertainment Purposes Only

2007-05-31T18:54:00.000-05:00

"My mother is getting on my sister's nerves because she keeps asking my sister when I officially graduate," I said while shooting the shit with Sarah.

"I like your mother," she said.

"She's doing it because she wants to know when she can start calling me 'doctor' or 'professor'."

"Awww, that's sweet."

"What? No it's not," I said. "She asks me sometimes, I don't entertain that."

"Bitch, you need to entertain that. You don't know how long your parents will be around. If something like that makes them happy, you have to let them be happy. It's the least you can do. Let her have that."

Well, maybe Sarah does have a point. My mother has an ego on her, one that really grates on my sister and I because she won't admit to how large it actually is. What's more, she's often the first to point it out when people she knows become status-conscious.

But I suppose there's nothing wrong with indulging her a little. It would make up for my infrequent visits.

I'd have to point out her hypocrisy though. And then carefully regulate what she says, because I draw the line at calling me a "doctor."

There are only two kinds of humanities PhD's who call themselves that. It's on their business cards and the "Dr." is right there before their name in their email signatures.

Two kinds of people: Morons and assholes, both of whom don't have the actual smarts to have their actions or words seak for themselves. These are the people who really really enjoy being professors, and REALLY enjoy being known as a professor. Morons and assholes, who need to let people know that so every inconsequential thing they say takes on a vague aura of intelligence.

I can let my mother's ego loose on her friends. But I'll have to make sure that I'm not going to look like either of those things.

The day after my defense, a few of my students saw me in a crowded auditorium. "Hey Chris!" one of them called out. "I hear that you're now Dr. Gradserf!"

"Yeah, DR. GRADSERF!" Another former student called out.

I looked at them, let out a breath, and said only loud enough for them to hear: "Take it easy..."

My reaction made both of them laugh loudly. More than anything, I was glad at how immediately they understood me.

The Lord Giveth, but You Gotta Have Self-Control

2007-05-22T17:45:00.000-05:00

People born Catholic keep it real. Even if you're lapsed like me, there's something about the indoctrination that never leaves you.

We consider converts second-class citizens, because not through any fault of their own, they can never comprehend the threat of damnation as completely. Oh no, you gotta live through it in your childhood.

We shun electric musical instruments, except for the organ. No drums, nothing that sounds pop-py (aka Protestant), and sure as hell no raising of hands. Repression is the key word here.

And most of all, we have the most guilt. Here's a story about that.

In the week before the phone interview for the job I most coveted, I was on pins and needles. I spent hours reading its website. I looked up my interviewers' publications to find out how to kiss their ass. I spoke to mutual acquaintances to figure out the same. I sought out anything that would give me helpful information about the program and the school. Everything I found only made me more excited.

The interview came and I killed. Everything they threw at me looked like a fastball down the center of the plate. My answers soared into the sky like Nathan Petrelli, then accelerated with a ring of smoke and a sonic boom.

Oh, it was good. The call for a campus interview promptly came 2 weeks later.

But oh how close I came to sabotaging the interview the day before.

While taking a break from reading the school's website, I took a break and checked out what was new on Defamer. Sweet Jesus Holy Christ, it was the bulletin for Britney's fantabulous hoo-ha pictures.

It didn't really matter that the sight of Paris Hilton in the background was enough to give you the clap. Nor is it significant that her Cesarean scar is clearly visible. To me, the image of Britney that endures is that from her Super Bowl Pepsi commercial.

Like Courtney Cox and the Dancing in the Dark video, or Lea Thompson in everything she made in the 80's, nothing these women ever do for the rest of their lives will ever alter those memories. Not marriage to David Arquette, not sad roles on the Lifetime network.

There Britney was. There "it" was.

What is a dude with functioning testicles to do in this situation? He takes himself to the moon, of course.

But I was not that man. I was a guilty Catholic with functioning testicles, with an important job interview coming up.

I looked, but I did not touch.

I took the interview with the blue-ball pain that can convince you that you have testicular cancer. The interview, as you know, rocked.

It was a small price to pay.

Letter to an Unknown Horse, Part II

2007-05-16T17:14:00.000-05:00

About 10 years ago, CBS came up with a detective show called Dellaventura, starring Danny Aiello as vaguely Italian (read: familiar with the mob or ethnically tough and streetwise) private eye. He roamed the streets of New York like a one-man A-Team, clad in all black, shades and Aie-titude.

The show was absurd, a case of when bad shows happen to good people. The problem to me was that unlike The Equalizer or the vigilant-ish Hunter, which rode the spirit of Dirty Harry for what now seems to be ages, Dellaventura did not even try to be unsafe for kids at all.

Aiello walked around the hard streets of New York City, cleaning up the mess Martin Scorcese left behind. "If you need me... I'll be around," he told us and the helpless citizens of a pre-Giuliani , pre-Disneyfied New York.

And what would we need him for? Of all the show's unintentional hilarity, this one was the best... Dellaventura went around ridding the dirty streets of "punks."

Punks.

Punks?

Yes, punks.

The second I heard that, I knew that it was something Letterman would jump on. I mean, how can one not? I used to watch Dave religiously. The stuff he mined for laughs was genius, and I prided myself on being able to sense which cultural moment would find its way onto the show.

Sure enough, Dave referred to "punks" for weeks if not months.

In any case, I wrote a little while ago about what bothers me about the alleged "sport" of horse racing, and how commentators describe the animals like pro athletes who grow up dreaming of playing in the majors.

I gotta show you this from a recent Family Guy.

Revenge of the Boomers

2007-05-16T02:50:00.000-05:00

Most college towns with an off-campus social scene probably also have a vocal and disgruntled group of residents who try constantly to control rowdy undergraduates.

The town I currently live in is about to bring a new law to a vote. Enforcement of this proposed regulation would squeeze the college bars, and inevitable push the students to house parties in the student "ghetto," a roughly 5x5 block area next to campus where slumlords gouge students for every dime they have and then some.

Granted, the downtown commercial district could stand to have fewer college bars where you can get trashed on shit beer like Bud Lite with the change you find in your couch. Granted, the city spends at least some money cleaning up the mess people leave behind on wild weekends, which come out to about 40 a year. And granted, the area where the bars are concentrated is definitely not for children on three nights out of the week.

Let me put it this way. I know where to go to get laid 20 minutes before closing. I know where to publicly urinate on the way to get laid without getting cited. I know where to see free boobie flashes. I know where to go for free gropes. Hell, there are places for those who want to be groped. There are ways to get plastered after hours, after you're beyond gone, for fucking free.

I know how to get drugs. Hard, soft, anything in between. And yes, because I'm a popular guy, I can actually get them for free.

And I don't even go out that much... any more.

But the point is, it gets pretty wild in this lil' ol' college town. I can see why people would want to reign that in.

The one big problem I have with efforts to do that is, most of the puritans who are behind them are boomers, people who grew up in the late 70's and 80's, back when the college students were really wild. It's enough to make you wonder.

The same people who hold lighters up at Springsteen concerts with their polo shirts tucked into their undershorts. The same morons who think The Boss's songs are actually happy. The same people who like the Ameriprise commercials because they want to vote against capital gains taxes and feel like a rebel. The ones who buy those ridiculous minivans with sporty contours.

My other thing with them is their justification for it. Underage drinking! Debauchery! Disrespect of public spaces! Public safety! The problem with this kind of rhetoric, the kind where you go, "We're doing this for your own good. We're doing this to protect you" is that I don't think any of these fogeys give two shits about any of that.

If the partying gets pushed to the student ghetto, the trash will follow. An old trend where freshmen and sophomores tour the streets and walk into random keggers paying $5 for a cup will intensify. The ghetto will literally turn into a shithole, with puke in the streets and some very well-fertilized bushes. Date rapes? Forget about it.

All the safety issues will multiply, but the difference would be that they will be confined to an area where these concerned citizens don't ever have to enter. Out of sight, out of mind.

I could be wrong, but the attempt by the same group of people to ban porch couches, essentially targeting students and well, black people, makes me doubt that.

I wrote once about the assholia of the residents of Orange County, which has a local ordinance requiring airplanes flying out of John Wayne airport to do so as fucking vertically as possible. They wanted all the convenience of an airport, with none of the inconvenience.

Living in a college town can have real benefits. A good humanities program will bring culture to the most random podunk towns. A decent university hospital will bring high paying jobs and a good hospital. And as many student partiers as there are, there are usually twice as many who bring energy, optimism and volunteerism. And because they graduate before that idealism dies, the supply of that energy and optimism is endless.

If you don't like college kids, don't live in a college town.

Remind Me, What am I Defending Again?

2007-05-11T01:46:00.000-05:00

The defense was quite seriously an event.

My adviser, high on supervising his first dissertation, publicized the defense as the chance to meet the second coming, who would be on hand to discuss the manuscript of a book that was going to change the whole discipline.

He was also using me to stick a proverbial middle finger in the face of some... let's say "less imaginative" members of the faculty who don't think that he belongs with the cool kids. Not that I minded. I'd insult them for him if he asked me to.

You could say that my adviser sometimes does not get on well with others. But then again, I don't either. You see why we get along.

Then I also invited friends who might be remotely interested in coming, and former students as well. As the crowd gathered, there was actual concern that the conference room was not going to be big enough to accomodate them.

Another adviser came round the corner and chuckled at my Sunday suit. I'm going to quote Will Smith here, once and once only, EVER.

I made that suit look good.

Then he stopped and just about gasped at the 20 or so people outside the room. That is about 18 more than the average attendance. "This must be someone who's been here a while," he cracked. It was an inside joke. He's been ribbing me about my "tenured TA" status for more than a year now.

Thinking back, the crowd was almost surreal. If you've been to half of these things where the candidate is lucky to have 3 spectators, the number was mindboggling. All the chairs in the room were occupied. There were about 15 against the wall, plus the few unused ones at the conference table.

Everyone was seated in a chair. One more person and he or she'd have to stand or take a place on the floor. And what was weird about it was how those numbers matched up very coincidentally.

One former student Noah went to the bathroom and came out to see everyone already seated in the room. Unwilling to cause a "scene," he left. One friend who'd promised to come was given a last minute assignment by her professor. Another was called to work. Another got a case of puke. In other words, the crowd could've easily been 25.

Gee, I thought as asshole like me would never have this kind of drawing power.

As I would find out later, there was never any doubt among the committee during the discussion prior to summoning me, that I was going to pass, easily. One of the older faculty members also remarked behind those closed doors that it was one of the best dissertations that he'd read in the last few years.

Not bad for crap I felt like I just pulled out of my ass. I look at it and I see all the holes. I swear, contrary to what every reader told me, I still thought it was going to be the day they were going to expose me.

I love my committee. They zing me with every chance they get. I dig tough love. I didn't choose any fillers or yes men to make up the numbers. I knew I'd get pushed around in there, which was why I probably should've prepared.

But when your chairs tell you that they're both willing to sign off on the manuscript as is, you start to think that it'll be a cakewalk.

Which in a way, it was. Then again, with the biggest attendance ever for a defense, you should forgive me for geting caught in the lights.

Let me put it this way: I didn't bring a pen with me. What's more, I didn't forget it either. Oh no, I actually had a conscious thought go through my head that I was not going to need to take any notes.

Genius or prick? You decide.

They threw me fastballs over the plate, and I'd single on the ground or bunt. The sliders, I whiffed on. The curveballs, shit, I didn't even see. It was uncomfortable, and squirm I did on the hot seat. Many times.

As anal of a planner as I usually am -- I actually schedule my bowel movements before my 5K races for goodness sake -- I got caught with my pants down.

My partner in anti-social crime promised me that if anyone gave me shit, he'd intervene.

He lobbed some softballs over the plate. I even had trouble hitting those.

In the end, no one seemed to notice. The committee sent me and my posse out to confer one final time. People were telling me I did fine. At least, that's what they said. I got called back in and was only told to proofread the motherfucker for the oddly frequent spelling and grammar mistakes. They really did sign off on it as is. Wow.

Congratulations all around. My co-chair hugged me. The supervisor, the dry, shall we say, undemonstrative one, shirked body contact. My not so secret crush walked up to me with her arms wide open for a hug.

Uh, schwing!

I'd just passed my dissertation defense, realized that I'm relatively well loved, was essentially given no revisions, but I swear, that might've been the best part of the day.

In fact, the story can't get any better. So I'm ending right here.

Last Days as a Civilian

2007-05-04T22:26:00.000-05:00

"Impressive."

"Very compelling."

"Brilliant."

It's been hard to get much feedback from my dissertation committee in the run up to my defense. Most of them tell me that with the end of the semester and other dissertations to read, that all they can promise is that they will have read it by the time of the event. It all sounds very "reassuring."

The two main people on the committee however, have told me what they think, and seriously, I find those words very hard to believe.

First, I am by nature a person who doesn't know how to take a compliment.

Second, I chose none of my committee members to be Yes-men or Yes-women who will pass anything and who will gush over any piece of drivel. All of them have the potential and willingness to tear me a brand new asshole. All of them are seriously smart people.

That's how I like to play it. The trouble with that of course, is that I can't really believe it when they find anything that I do remotely worthy.

Third, graduate student paranoia kicking in... I just know that this is the day that I get uncovered as an intellectual fraud. Someone's going to figure that out and blindside me on the day with a single bit of analysis that will invalidate all 270+ pages of the dissertation.

That won't happen, right?

Or will it?

Most defenses are droll affairs: The committee, the candidate, a handful of interested observers in a conference room.

I however, plan to pack the room with my posse. I have the benefit of defending it while I'm still an active member of the campus. So there are many familiar faces around. Colleagues, friends, former students, co-workers... all invited. Especially to the student whose comment in class helped me to completely smooth out my longest chapter. There was a section in it that was hanging off the side like an unsightly booger. But he literally enabled me to integrate it into the rest of it.

I billed it to my students as the only time in their lives that they will ever see me in a collared shirt.

All of them there to see the humiliation.

I only have one rule: No wagering.

Entourage of Sorry Asses

2007-04-24T04:14:00.000-05:00

A little off-topic today, readers.

What the hell is happening to American masculinity? Vacationing in Europe?

There was a period a few years ago when every fucking academic conference had a chunk of papers that addressed some "crisis of masculinity" or other. The "crisis of masculinity" in action movies... The "crisis of masculinity" in 1970's American literature... The "crisis of black masculinity" in graphic novels...

Let me just say, most of those papers were pure shite. But what I'm seeing now is a real crisis of masculinity.

Look around you. They're everywhere. Look around you, and you're bound to see or know a few of these assholes.

They love, absolutely love HBO's Entourage. On Sunday nights, they might actually secretly wish for The Sopranos to end sooner for Entourage to start.

Then on Monday morning, they log on first thing in the morning to read Bill Simmons's Sports Guy column. And they laugh, and they find kinship.

But they don't laugh as loud as when they watch those asinine Man Law commercials for Miller Lite.

Entourage, Bill Simmons and Man Law commercials... the pussy triumvurate, a perfect storm of reasons why, my friends, we're losing the war on terror.

A friend once told me before I had watched a single episode of Entourage that I'd like the show because they were "my kind of guys." Oh, my God, what image am I projecting exactly? How could anyone think that I'd want anything to do with guys like these? How could anyone watch the show and not want to kick the shit out of those characters?

And as if I didn't have enough reason to slam Bill Simmons, his love of Entourage (first two seasons only, he might protest) was also the first thing that piqued my interest in the show. God, what a mistake. I didn't have HBO at the time. But when I did, I went, I saw, I felt like taking a dump.

Don't get me wrong. Bill Simmons can be funny and clever. He's got a great gig getting paid to do what he likes, and he is completely self-aware whenever he's taking part in bullshit, so far at least. I can respect all that. But he also has these fans who have apparently seen an average guy make it big on the strength of 50% channeling Matthew Perry, 50% power of the metaphor/80's film reference, and all of a sudden all these people now think they can do the same.

They can't.

Simmons regularly interacts with his readers with lengthy mailbag editions, and chats. When I read them I can't help but see all of them as a virtual world where mediocre men commune with their mediocre wits.

One of his readers, George from Chicago, once wrote this:

Q: People are searching in vain for a comparison to Zinedine Zidane's meltdown. I say Robert DeNiro in "Heat." He's the best robber anyone has ever seen, and he's minutes away from flying off into the sunset, free and clear, only he has to throw it all away in order to kill Waingro. Of course, he gets busted and goes down in flames.

Simmons, not to his credit, agrees! George from Chicago, this is why you are not a man. Go back to watching Entourage in your seashell necklace, empty half a bottle of Tag on your manboobs, and go out with your boys for an overpriced pint of Miller Lite.

I can't recap the entire movie here. It is too much of a fave for me to write any less than 10 pages once I start. But I can say that Robert DeNiro plays the leader of a heist gang who is home free on the highway to the airport, when he decides to make a stop to take care of a former associate who had first screwed up a perfect heist, then ratted out the rest of the gang.

Anyone who doesn't understand why DeNiro had to turn around doesn't get the movie, or the ethic that it glorifies. DeNiro's character doesn't talk much. He performs his heroism without fuss. He adheres to the code without proclaiming it. He does it, he knows he has to, that's it.

No sitting around a table with Burt Reynolds and Jerome Bettis who really should be embarrassed by what he's doing. No talking about manning up. No hugging it out -- Christ! No posing. Jesus, how does anyone not understand that DeNiro owed it to humanity's very value system to make Waingro see the bullet headed for his head? Shit, he owed it to Waingro.

And then, there's the recent "thing" Simmons and his Guy-lets have developed about Kiefer Sutherland's height, which has recently turned into a re-evaluation of Michael Chiklis. (Read it here.) All of a sudden, 24 and The Shield aren't as badass anymore because the stars are 5-6.

OK, Kiefer Sutherland is an actor who is given to gushes about the "craft." He likes to cross his legs like a woman and rest his hands on his lap. But Kiefer is also a rodeo champion. He drinks -- I'm guessing NOT Miller Lite -- and he gets into barfights. Persistently.

If you're in a bar fight against lets say, the entire bar, who would you want covering your back? Kiefer Sutherland or all fucking four of the douches on Entourage?

That's what I thought.

A Little Less Conversation

2007-04-19T14:06:00.000-05:00

The thing they tell you about campus visits on the job interview is that you are auditioning all the time, that you are being observed and evaluated every second that you're there, except maybe for when you're in the restroom.

And like all things about the process, different people have different takes on how you should behave. One of my advisors said to simply be myself. Another said to display energy and enthusiasm everywhere about everything. For me, those two things don't always overlap.

My advice includes being extra nice to waitstaff, respectful of secretaries and interested in all things campus and city.

Sometimes, of course, this is easier than at other times.

At Springfield, population <10,000, this was harder than most. I have never been more caffeinated in my entire life than I was during the interview at this satellite campus. I was overqualified for the job, as I've described in an earlier post, everyone on the committee seemed to know that.

They weren't hiring me, and I wasn't taking the job. Even if I took the job, I'd want to leave ASAP. Everybody was in on it, including me.

Why did I go for the interview, then, you ask? Well, I had a few more coming up, and an offer from this school was additinal leverage. How's that for strategy?

Anyway, as hard as it was to maintain this front for a whole day, one still does not need or expect a conversation like the one here. Not much in the handbook really prepares you for this.

I was driving around town with the head of the search committee, who was givng me the grand tour of the towering metropolis... only without the towers or metro, but perhaps a bit of a polis on Main Street.

Already fully aware that the committee was wary of someone with a research agenda's fit with a teaching satellite campus in a smallish city, I was keen to show that I was seriously considering the job.

"This is the neighborhood where many faculty live," the guy said, "the student apartments are mostly on the other side of campus."

"Oh yeah?" I responded, "it looks nice... what's the real estate market like here?"

"Pretty good actually, as you might expect, for an amount of money here, you can get a very nice house compared to most places. Brian, one of the faculty members you met today..."

"Mm-hmm," I nodded.

"... he's lived on this block for a long time."

"What about you?" I asked. Remember: Act interested in every person and thing.

"Well..." he began, "that's a bit of a story. My wife and I moved here when I got this job, and we built a house...

"Then we split up."

Now readers, what exactly do you say to that?

"I'm sorry?" Too cliched.

"Oh no, that's too bad?" Too asshole.

"That sucks?" Ha ha.

Almost anything would've probably been fine. He didn't seem hung up on it, and had told me that he was about to move to a city an hour away where his girlfriend teaches at the main state university campus.

But tired, borderline delirious from a caffeine crash and still kinda nervous, I chose silence -slash- awkward transition to next topic.

Sigh.

There's What I Do for a Living...

2007-04-13T20:28:00.000-05:00

... and then there's my life.

"I'm glad you didn't send the letter," Sarah said.

"Yeah?" I went.

We were having dinner at an Italian place downtown. Sarah's one of my closest friends in the department. When I leave I'll actually miss her a lot. For those who read my previous entry, she definitely got a mention in my Acknowledgment page.

"Yeah," she continued, "because I've sent those letters before, and after some time, you realize that it's immature... like things you do very impulsively."

"Mine wasn't spiteful or mean. But it was quite strong, 5 pages strong. And did I tell you that almost every woman who read it cried and implored me not to send it?"

"Yes, well, there was such a finality to it... I'm glad you didn't send it."

"Which is why I didn't send mine right away, remember? I held on to it and waited 2 weeks to be sure that I wanted to send it. But I just became indifferent."

"Have you spoken to her?"

"Not in a month, more than a month actually... not since she told me. It's radio silence."

"Don't you want to talk to her?" Sarah asked.

"Sure. I've had dreams since then, three of 'em. Never had them before these few weeks, dreams of us hanging out. And it was good... a good feeling... like before. And so I know from that, that I want to talk to her. The dreams are convincing."

"Call her, email her," Sarah pleaded.

"I don't know... thing is, she hasn't written back, and now for me it becomes a case of who's going to blink first."

"But that's silly, that's so stupid, why should you care who calls first?"

"I don't know."

"You've known her a long time, haven't you?"

"Eleven years, as long as I've been an adult."

"Call her!"

Greta's been mentioned briefly before. When I first met her through another friend, I thought to myself that this chick needs to calm the fuck down. She's loud, likes attention, and is completely open -- everything I'm not. But we began to hang out, and by the time I left for my PhD program, she had become a very good friend.

I didn't know what the hell I wanted at the time. Which is to say, ironically, that I thought I knew exactly what it was that I wanted. It meant that I was looking in many directions, except hers. Long story short... I eventually came around, and I said to me: "Hey dumbass, it's her."

But it was too late, and I was prepared to live with that. Until it became not too late. And I knew that the day was coming when I had to tell her, to put it all on the line. And make no mistake, all of it was on the line. It wasn't like macking on someone at the bar, where you put yourself out there, because all that you're risking is your ego. If you get shot down, shit, you pick yourself up and there's another candidate just feet away.

No, this was 10 years that was going on the line. In those 10 years, if anything happened to me, good or bad, Greta would know about it before most of my friends and before even my family. I knew that when I told her how I felt, that it could also be the last time I ever spoke to her. Either way, I knew my life was going to change.

I waited for the moment, and I put that bet down, and I said that if she wanted it, that "I'm all in." She said she saw it coming, but she needed me to wait. I understood those reasons perfectly, and so I waited.

I've carved out a particular lifestyle in graduate school out of sheer necessity. I'm pretty spartan, don't spend on anything I don't have to, control all my material wants. That simplicity makes life a lot easier when you have to sweat it out every spring when the department decides on graduate student funding. And since going into debt seemed completely unnecessary, I made my life as simple as possible, at least until I don't need to. I became very good at it too.

Greta perhaps saw that as entrenchment. And her life turned out to be everything that mine wasn't. She likes stuff. She likes ideologies that like people who like stuff. And I don't. She has a salary that gives her the opportunity to buy stuff. I don't.

A little perspective: I kicked ass on the job market. In hindsight, I might've kicked major ass. But my starting salary is still less than the raise that she's about to receive.

I know what I believe, and know why I believe what I believe, but the thing is, it was never going to be a problem for me if we thought differently because my convictions don't make me rigid; being sure of myself makes me open.

Greta and I tussled over the years on things like the usefulness of taxes and unions. I know my union enabled me to keep meat in my diet for at least a few years, and I don't mind taxes because potholes have to be filled, schoolteachers have to be paid, and those Blackhawks being shot down like kites in Iraq need to be replaced.

But maybe that kind of sarcasm didn't really serve me well because it must've widened the apparent gap between us. Maybe she thought that I want my children to grow up to be as sensitive as Alan Alda. I really just want them to have compassion for those who need it, and to always go into things with their eyes wide open.

Of course, I always knew that I would never be able to give her what she was used to, not matter how hard I wanted to. But I thought that I knew how to give her the things that could mean the world to her... the things that would mean the world only to her.

And because of all those differences, Greta said no. She did it very rationally, maybe because she thought that I'd understand it better. But to me, the reason was far more fundamental. Regardless of how much or how little she thought I was willing to compromise, she didn't ask me to because quite simply, she didn't love me back.

I don't think she really knows what I was willing to give up. I pushed her to decide when I had to make a decision about the job offers in hand. One was terrific. One was not so terrific, not by a mile. I would've taken the second one if she asked me to, and I would've done it immediately.

But she needed to ask, she needed to love me back.

There was a departmental function today. I'm still getting congratulations from people who just heard the news of my job. It sounds so amazing to people for whom a tenure-track position so soon in one's career means so much. My reaction was what it has always been. I shrug my shoulders and say, "it's all right."

Because it's only what I do for a living.

I like what I do, don't get me wrong. And I'm pretty good at what I do. But I would've given it all up in a second.

Because that's my life.

Business Over Pleasure

2007-04-12T15:09:00.000-05:00

Dropped off my dissertation for photocopying just over an hour ago. It was still warm from the printer. Warm... like a big steaming pile of the most aromatic horse manure you'll ever see.

The last week has been spent formatting the document according to specs, which was a huge... HUGE pain in the ass.

I wanted to distribute the thing to my committee 4 weeks ahead of the defense date. I'll make it in 3.5. Which was why I didn't have much time to blog much.

I was also writing the acknowledgment section, and it made me understand how hard it is for say, Oscar winners to write acceptance speeches. Who do you leave out? Geez, that was hard. And even as I write this, I'm realizing that I left some really important people out.

I revised the acknowledgments on the advice of my advisor. The first draft had a joke on every other line. It would have been the funniest motherfucking set of acknowledgments ever. But he persuaded me to avoid the possibility of misinterpretation by readers who might not be in on the joke and end up seeing it as a series of intensely passive-aggressive gestures.

Going for laughs was my first instinct. None of my committee members are the type to wear sweater vests, if you know what I mean. All of them are in their own ways, very funny people. I'd wanted the page I wrote to reflect that.

But I can surely keep it business-like.

The defense however, should be full of laughs. Unless of course, the world caves in with a blindsided attack. But hopefully not.

The Interview that Sucked Big Hairy Donkey Balls

2007-04-01T23:50:00.000-05:00

Although my advisor told me that he was initially worried about what kind of interview I am, I've actually always been comfortable with that part of the process. I don't know where I picked up those interpersonal skills given as how I can be a little dickish, but I guess along the way, I somehow did.

I think you have to be yourself, you have to be prepared, energetic, enthusiastic, and confident. Confidence might be the toughest thing to learn, but teaching can help one with that. Energy and enthusiasm comes with caffeine and OTC stimulants. Shit, they might even give someone a whole personality in some cases.

As for being yourself, I guess you just has to hope that you're not an asshole.

Preparedness is maybe the easiest requirement to control, especially for graduate students since it only involves research and reading up on the program at which you're interviewing.

So once the interview was scheduled at State U, I asked a friend, Rita, who taught at the nearby U of State if she knew anything about the position or about the program.

I thought briefly of asking Rita to maybe put in a good word for me if she knew anyone at the neighboring school. But I dropped the notion when I realized that she knew very little about me and my work.

I suppose a recommendation like, "He once made me really scream my lungs out at 3am" might be useful in some circumstances, but for an academic job search... maybe not so much.

But she did give me a bit of scoop. Apparently, she too had interviewed at State U when she was on the job market. During the phone interview, someone asked her to name the books by this writer that she had written her dissertation on.

It's important to be clear about what this question was, because seriously, where the hell did it come from? The interviewer has read the CV, probably a writing sample as well from this candidate. And the best question he can ask is an elementary quiz about the very topic of the dissertation.

What? You think I'm fucking lying to you motherfucker? You think I just made up a dissertation topic for my dissertation, wrote a chapter out of thin air, and got 3 professors to sign off on this fraud? Where the hell do you fucking get off with this shit?

Anyway Rita made it past that stage and earned an interview at the wretched MLA, where an entirely different committee awaited her. Which was fine, except they expected her to be able to teach a subject that not only went unmentioned at the phone interview, but it was not even stated in the job posting.

I should have been warned.

I was given a time that was :40 past the hour, and they were upfront about the length of the interview, 20 minutes tops. I mean, they were seriously herding the candidates through the turnstiles.

There was a fucking problem from the get-go. After I summarized my dissertation, some asshole asked me a question that was based on something I did not say. He had misunderstood my statements. So now I'm in a position of either answering a question that made no sense, being forced to essentially say that the interviewer was wrong (to hear what I didn't say), or both.

Brilliant motherfucker, this guy.

This was a job that barely made it into my net, which was cast wide according to the axiom of applying to everything for which I was remotely qualified. The specialty they were looking for was not specifically in my portfolio, but I should've borrowed a syllabus from a friend and at least learned to answer a question like, "how would you teach this subject?"

I didn't, and bombed on that question. My bad. Fair enough.

But then came my Quiz Question, from Professor Brilliant, no less.

"As a theory head Chris, I'm interested in your perspective on the state of theory, can you say something about that?"

The state of theory? It is important to know that although my dissertation is moderately theoretical, this question still came pretty much out of nowhere. Imagine asking a job candidate about the "state of work."

"The state of theory?" I repeated it back to him.

"Yes, where do you see theory headed in 20 years or so?"

If I expected such a question, I'd be more ready to respond, or at least to react. But interviews aren't usually about quizzing the candidates. Maybe it should be, one could argue that. But conventionally, these interviews aren't supposed to proceed like an oral examination, which this was rapidly turning into.

My degree is from a program that is far more established and rigorous than State U's. I would take such a question more willingly from some programs, but not from podunk State U here, and sure as hell not from Professor Brilliant.

I didn't make it past the phone interview. Didn't hold my breath for it either.

Fantasy Island

2007-03-26T12:57:00.000-05:00

A few months ago, as I looked at the list of jobs that I'd applied to, some programs naturally popped out more than others.

My friends live there, or
it's near that city, or
I'll be able to attend my favorite team's games.

Professionally, one might think,
I get to work with that person, or
I'll get to teach my favorite classes, or frankly,
I'll be getting massive bank from that place.

The one that rose to the top of my list early on was Slacine College (S-mall L-iberal A-rts C-ollege in the N-ortheast). The program was intimate, I'd clearly have my own niche within the department, in a college town of decent size, was near a great city with a lot of larger research universities. What this means is that while I'd teach in a small college, my research setting would actually be much larger.

Unbelievably, the school appeared from the beginning to like me just as much. They were the first to call for a phone interview, on which I fucking killed. I got along swell with the faculty, and there were multiple moments like this:

Professor I: "Tell us what you can teach."

Me: "Well, first, let me say that what really appeals to me about Slacine is that you appear to really understand how to teach this subject. The presence of that specific required course for instance, shows a great awareness of how students learn the topic. Very few schools have a course like that and more should."

Professor II: "Said like a seasoned teacher of this subject."

Professor I: "You can't see us right now, but we're actually smiling to each other. That is a new course that we just put on the schedule because of those very needs."

And the rest of the interview went just like that. I seemed to understand the program innately, and they appeared to appreciate my strengths and were even impressed by the part of my portfolio that I thought was weak.

Two weeks later the chair of the search committee called my dissertation director to confirm that I was indeed going to defend it soon... a great sign that I was on a shortlist. And I was. After a nailbiting week, the secretary called again to set up dates for my campus interview.

The secretary, by the way, has therefore called twice, both times with great news. I wondered if she knew that to me, she had the voice of a fucking angel.

By the time of the interview, I thought that I was completely in with them. One of the committee members is an alum of my PhD program, and close to my advisor. And another major person on the committee had gotten his job at Slacine because of a letter that an old undergraduate professor, had written for him, or so my old prof said.

I called him to see if he liked me enough. "Yes! I know that guy," he said, "I've written letters for him, so he owes me a few favors. Tell me what to do! Let's see if we can make things happen!"

In like fucking Flynn, you could say.

Still, as well as I was doing with a school that I really, really wanted to work for, I knew that I needed to keep from getting overly excited. I have natural tendencies of course to expect the worst so as to minimize disappointment or to avoid jinxing, but above all that was the knowledge that the academic job search process is completely random and can turn on factors completely out of one's control and outside any kind of meritocratic scale.

Because if Slacine wanted or needed to hire a black lesbian to hit three diversity goals with one stone, very few things on my resume would change their mind.

If a committee member held a grudge against either my undergraduate or graduate college because either of them had rejected him or her 20 years ago, I was fucked.

Shit, if my tie reminded a committee member of his two-timing ex, that's a strike against me before I even opened my mouth.

When I got to campus, things were definitely looking solid. The committee member who knew my old prof mentioned a "mutual acquaintance."

"Oh really?' I asked with all the sincerity I could muster. "Who's that?"

"John Terry? He emailed me and had a lot of nice things to say about you."

"Oh yeah, he taught one of my classes sophomore year. I keep in touch with him and told him I was interviewing at Slacine."

Yeah bitch, you better remember who owns you!

In like mother-fucking Flynn, I tell ya.

Then again, things change.

At the first meal, the idyllic image of Slacine began to break down. Don't get me wrong, I was treated well, the committee seemed interested in me professionally and personally, but halfway through, I began to feel like a complete alien.

As close as the faculty were, they were always constrained by etiquette and by the distance that polite society wraps around every one of its citizens.

I looked around the table. Sweater vests, oxfords, Brooks Brothers all the way. If I get hired, I'd be the rebel of the bunch. "The guy who teaches in a sweatshrt!"... they'd probably say.

For a minute or two, I actually had only one thought on my mind: "I absolutely don't belong here."

But the feeling went away, because we tend to hold on to our fantasies. And because they don't make movies where colleges don't look like the set of either Robin Hood or Julius Caesar.

But you know, eventually, it did go away. Due to the following reasons:

The commitee member who wanted to know where my other offers were coming from, but would then add, "but it's all up to you. You don't have to tell us if you don't want to." By the sixth motherfucking time he pulled that, I was close smacking him.
The job talk that was supposed to be for an educated audience. ie. faculty members. Something, I was told even more specifically, that I would present at a conference. Well, I prepped for the presentation that would make me sound genius-like, and what do you know? Undergraduates show up, and were each given an evaluation form. Well, fuck ME!
The student guide who, when asked about her favorite thing about her school, sighed this: "The teachers. When they are in a class with interested students, the result is... magical." OK, honey, that must seriously be the most naive, sheltered and innocent thing anybody has ever said to me. Seriously, you need to get out more, because there are many things that school isn't teaching you.

Right before I left Slacine, I already knew that the only thing still keeping my interest here was the fantasy. My father weened me on John Houseman and The Paper Chase. That shit stays with you, my friends.

But I still wanted the job. Oh hell yeah, I still wanted the job. Mainly just to have it, but also to leverage other schools even further. And turning them down would be like, sweet.

I was not their first choice. And since I wasn't, I had to only consider the offers I already had because the clocks on my decision were already ticking.

The committee member who owes his job to my old prof's letter actually wrote back to his master, explaining why he didn't follow orders. Insubordination, I say.

But I was their second choice. And since their second (me) and third ranked candidates had taken other offers, they then went straight to No. 4.

And if you are a poetic person, you would know, oh you know it... No. 4 was a black woman. Someone not even close to having my teaching experience.

Nice job, Slacine!

Being and Saying

2007-03-23T17:51:00.000-05:00

When I was a new graduate student, I kept hearing the name Giorgio a whole lot. "You know Giorgio?" "Did you see Giorgio? He's back." "How come you've never met Giorgio?"

Well, because he's never been standing in front of me?

Giorgio was older. He defended soon after I got here, but came back occasionally to visit his friends. Since I generally don't see graduate students socially - and by "don't see socially," I mean "avoid" - we never crossed paths. But I heard about him enough. They said he was smart.

Maybe so, but until he's standing in front of me, I probably won't meet him.

I came across his dissertation in the library stacks, once. I've seen better. That is all.

I still haven't met the guy. But I still hear about him. And just today, I heard just about the most pathetic thing about him.

A friend had run into him at the big conference, and blew him off. Justifiably of course, because Giorgio had assumed that they were friends or acquaintences when they in fact had not been introduced. True to graduate student sensitivity-levels, Giorgio was apparently miffed.

"Oh well," my friend said.

"Yup," I responded, before moving onto the next conversation topic.

But my friend also told me what kind of guy Giorgio is. Apparently, he likes to chat up waitresses, call them "honey" and "dear," and try to get their phone numbers.

"Only he doesn't know how to do it without being completely fake about it, which he is," buddy o' mine said.

""Wow, that's really kinda pathetic," I observed.

"He also said he likes being a professor because he gets to have sex with undergrads, which, I don't know, is kinda gross," my friend added.

Gross indeed.

Look, don't get me wrong. James Woods has something here. The young 'uns are nice... don't get me wrong, they are nice. And if you're in a college town, random things fall into your lap all the time, as readers here might already know.

I'm not opposed to drinking from that fountain. Although, the main appeal is not the physical, contrary to most female opinion. No, younger women are happier. They're not bitter, haven't been let down by anybody, and generally approach everything with more optimism and energy. The fact that bodyparts tend to point up and not down is good, of course, but don't assume that it's the only thing.

But back to Giorgio. The pathetic thing about his little acts of machismo posturing is the display he put on. You see, if you're really a ladies' man, you never have to announce that to anybody. Best example bar none: George Clooney.

If you're anything, there really is no need to let the world know it.

Have you ever heard anyone say something about themselves, like "I'm not a racist," or "I'm a liberal"? If you have, take note, because my money is on the fact that they are everything they say they're not. Call an avowed liberal prejudiced, and 10 times out of 10, he or she will go into hysterics, and get super defensive. Proof positive, if you ask me.

Giorgio? As if his flirting with service staff - people who have no choice but to be nice to you - wasn't sad enough, it was clear from what he said that he was using his position in the university to get tail.

What a loser.

What kind of teasing did he have to take as a nerd in high school to have this kind of complex? Please, Giorgio, leave the title and degree at the door. Walk into a college town bar, try your "honey" schtick with a girl who doesn't need a tip or a grade, either now or in the past, and see who will fuck you.

I'm guessing not too many.

Good thing I didn't ever waste my time meeting him.

Finding a Tenure-Track Job is Like Getting Your Drink On

2007-03-20T03:41:00.000-05:00

There's a general rule that I find is always true. Never build up a night on the town in your mind. You end up expecting too much, and will end up disappointed. You have to let the evening come to you. The most I've ever had always started out with no expectations.

That's the closest explanation I can find for why finding a tenure-track job hasn't been... frankly... all that it was cracked up to be.

I've been told many times over the last few weeks that I should look a lot happier than I do, given the situation I now find myself in.

I read one academic blog today of a person who left after bouncing around in adjunct hell for 10 years, failing to find what I got right out of the damn gate. How much does that guy hate me right now?

Don't get me wrong. I'm excited about the job. It's by all measures a great position. I've overachieved in my estimation, which should really put me that much further over the moon right?

Right?

I read an academic job search advice column once that even if you know that you will take a job, don't accept it right away, but take a few days to savor being wanted for once in your damn life. So, this should taste like a Little Red Corvette, right?

I dunno.

At first I thought that maybe it was because at the time I was making my job choice, the other person in the most meaningful female friendship in my adulthood told me after a long time of waiting for her to reach the right emotional place in her life, that she doesn't love me back. That would throw cold water on the festivities, but in all honesty, that wasn't it.

Much earlier than that, my advisor found me all melancholy and said, "you should be happy. You got a job offer and you're dominating negotiations. You better be waking up with a big fucking smile on your face."

I smiled at that, but only for a minute until he walked away.

Since I am nothing if not self-reflective, I'm coming up with a few reasons for why I'm putting the fireworks on hold.

1. I don't want to sound like an asshole, but as much as I feared -- and still DO fear -- failing miserably and being found out as an intellectual fraud, I expected this. It's come sooner than later, but I never seriously envisioned a scenario where I wasn't in this position. I know I'm smarter than many people who did the same.

2. I thought it would be harder. In a lot of ways, this came almost too easily. My first serious entry into the job market, and I got a lot of interest almost right away. I've never tried to fashion myself as someone who would. I've made choices to teach over research, to choose an outdated topic instead of a "hot" one for the dissertation, to be anti-social in academic circles, to conscientiously not network at conferences.

That's the irony. If anything, I've made incredibly bad choices over the years, things you really don't do if you want a job. And I slide into one like any penis within 20 feet of Paris Hilton.

3. I've come to love the state I'm living in. I love the weather, the culture, the people, the city, the friends I've made. Sure there will be others, and I've honestly always loved every place I've ever lived in, except the first. Sure, I'm sure I'll love the next city. But it's got a lot to live up to.

4. And now we venture into the irrational... maybe the realm governed by Catholic guilt, and the motto: Don't get too hysterical, or something will fuck up, and you end up looking like a right schmuck.

Not make sense? It's not supposed to.

5. As much as I enjoy what I chose to do, I don't really respect it. Teaching is great, but the research and writing can be indulgent. And the state of the field is woeful. 98% of papers at my discipline's main conference is complete shit. Most of what I write still has streaks from where I pulled it out of my ass.

My dissertation chair of all people, thinks that the field is dead.

I have my friends in the field. And we get together and trash the same things when we are together at conferences. But I have a rule: If you are heard calling the people on your panel "brilliant," or enjoying the "wealth of ideas," it's sure fire proof that you're a moron. That counts out half the attendees at the big conference right off the bat.

How can I be proud of being in a profession like that? It was Woody Allen, quoting Groucho Marx, I think, who said, "I would never want to belong to any club that would have someone like me for a member."

Getting the Hell Out

2007-03-17T02:52:00.000-05:00

Beep!

"Hello Christopher, this is Peter Wanker from the University of the Midwest, Springfield. I'm calling about the assistant professor position in our department, calling to see if you're still interested in the position. I wanted to tell you that you have made the final shortlist. If you would call me back, we can then proceed with the next step of the search process. Thanks, bye-bye."

The good news of that phone message: I made another shortlist for a tenure-track job.

The bad news: It's in Springfield. I like the peace and quiet, don't get me wrong, but Jesus, I'd like a town where Friday night excitement ain't shopping cart shennanigans at the empty Wal-Mart lot, across the street from the Super Wal-Mart.

The weird: It is December, not March. No one gets hired in December, unless the process is rigged for an inside candidate, and even then, most schools try to look honest. Why is Professor Wanker asking me if I'm still interested when it's very unlikely that I have another offer?

...Clue #1.

Anyway, I figured it was nothing, and called the guy back. Again, he asked if I was interested, in a tone that really seemed as if he was asking, "you still want to live in Springfield? Really?"

Hell yeah, I'm interested. Shit, let's see, when would be a good date to interview on campus? How about that week... right before the interview at the school I really want?... so I can use your job talk as a dry run for the job talk at the school I really want?

Nice. UM-Springfield makes it three campus interviews. I am turning out to be quite Da Man in Demand of this year's job cycle.

I'll use this interview to prep for my others. If I get an offer, I could use it as added leverage with other schools. It'll be low-key, it'll be nice, it'll be fun.

But right off, something was amiss. The day before the interview, I checked into the hotel in the afternoon, and was taken to dinner by most of the search committee.

Now, OK, this is Springfield, Pop:<10,000. But shit, I'm pretty goddamn sure that there are restaurants in town better than the Chinese restaurant annexed to the grocery store.

...Clue #2.

But you know what? We've got people who want to kill the DoE for God's sake, maybe money is tight here, I can accept that. I ordered the chicken with snow peas, declined the wine, and thanked the waitstaff repeatedly.

Dinner conversation starts, and they start talking to each other. Uh, hello, your job candidate is sitting at the table, you don't want to push your program? No questions for the supposed man of the hour? I could not be more ignored if I was still sitting zit-faced at a mixer with Shannon, Heather and Amy, the three rich sorority girls who lived down the hall from me freshman year.

And that would make it Clue #3, and counting.

I looked over at the grad student rep on the search committee. He resembled a young hippy Chris Elliott, and he looked like he was wondering if I knew the secret code, like he was dying to tell me something but couldn't.

Clue #4.

I didn't get any more popular for the rest of dinner. But at least I didn't tell one of the more substantial committee members that maybe the steamed vegetables would be a wiser choice than the egg roll AND deep-fried sweet and sour chicken.

I got back to the hotel, slept to the sound of the TV, and woke up for the interview proper. I was picked up and taken to campus, with a stop at the Cafe on main street for a tall cup of personality.

My first meeting was with the Dean. She was a tall, handsome woman in her late forties. Smartly dressed, leather boots with 3" heels. One could say that she was a... uh... bit of a milf.

I wowed her with a spiel about my commitment to the value of a liberal arts education, some of my teaching philosophies and some generally awesome stuff about me. Then it was time for my next meeting.

She got up to lead me to my next meeting, and complimented me on the fact that I acknowledged the secretarial staff on my way out. Well, that's because I'm not an asshole.

We walked through a hallway, out of the building, and walked 25 yards in the midwestern winter to an adjacent building. We went through a few doors, chatted as we waited for the elevator. When we got in, I saw them.

The Dean. Tall, milf, knee-high leather boots, just in from the cold, with the glorious nipples of a pornstar, majestic even, undeterred at all by her white blouse.

Remember the Seinfeld rule on looking. It's like the sun, take one quick look, but look away.

I forgot the rule. Three times. You tend to be like that when you don't really want the job.

I went through the meetings, the interview, lunch, rocked the house at my student meetings and teaching demonstration, and gradually found out that I was vastly over-qualified for the job. It seems like I was not the only one that day who was going through the motions.

I think that they saw me as someone who would not want to work there, and even if I did accept the job, they probably thought that I would look to leave as soon as I could. Their complete disinterest indicated that there was someone else on their list who would take the position and stay.

Something seems wrong about that, the sham of the whole thing. I mean, they would be absolutely correct to assume that. But it still feels wrong.

As I prepared to leave the last meeting and hit the road, I had to wait for a member of the search committee who was still leafing through my portfolio. I stood in the office with the chair of the search committee, simultaneously chatting with him about tennis and with the secretary about her mountain bike.

After a few minutes, the faculty member appeared, with my portfolio in hand, and Clue #5 on the tip of his tongue:

"Hey Chris, great to meet you. Sorry to keep you waiting... I'm sure you can't wait to get the hell out of Springfield."

Not until just now, dude.

The Gods Must be Crazy

2007-03-15T14:16:00.000-05:00

When I left one of my better interviews at the MLA, I was told that I should expect to hear word from them soon, possibly mid-January.

Word about the next stage? "No," the chair of the search replied, "about the final decision."

On a bit of reflection, I realized that it wasn't that extraordinary since the job was a one-year-renewable position, a rung or two above the dreaded "adjunct."

That would work out great, I thought. If the vibe I got was right, and they were coming to me in a few weeks, then I could extend my decision and go to my scheduled campus interviews with a job offer in hand.

A few notes for the uninitiated:

A job offer in hand from another institution multiplies your appeal exponentially. It might not be a tenure-track position, but shit, you kinda keep that detail to yourself. A job offer is a job offer. If someone else wants you, it's confirmation of your attractiveness.
Two weeks is the customary maximum for a candidate to make a decision about a job offer. Many schools push for a sooner.

A few days later, I woke up, put on some coffee, checked my email, went through my bookmarks, and then retreated for a mid-morning numero dos.

I came out refreshed and 1.5 pounds lighter, to find my answering machine flashing. I hit the button and heard a familiar voice telling me that "we enjoyed meeting you at the MLA interview, and..."

this is where he tells me I'm a failure

"...the committee met and discussed our findings..."

oh boy, I can hear it now: Mom, I'm moving back in

"...we've made a decision about the position..."

oh shit!

"...you were ranked first among the candidates we met."

Shit!... Y-y-y-?-?-esss!"

Ten seconds of euphoria was then followed by the realization. Oh shit, they're going to want to extend an official offer very soon. One or two days + two weeks... is less then half the time between now and my first campus interview.

FUCK!

This meant that they will probably want me to make a decision on their offer before the schools who were having me for interviews could complete them, way before those decisions, and way, wa-a-ay before I could use an existing offer as leverage.

I spoke to a few faculty members on what to do. None had a good answer. One told me that I should really then forget about this offer because it's not a tenure-track position, and so unless I needed the money to pay off angry bookies or angrier baby-mommas, that I should wait for the tenure-track interviews.

Shit. Am I going to be forced to turn down a job before I even get a job? Shit!

Another professor told me to buy myself a few days by making myself unavailable for a few days so they didn't have the chance to get a hold of me to make an official offer, then stall the hell out of them. The chances of this working were slim since the time I needed was too long.

But if it was going to work, then come to think of it, it was a good thing that I didn't pick up the phone, making that the luckiest shit I ever took in my life.

Still, the tactic didn't work. I was made the offer very soon after that. But in a moment of desperation, I just went for the gold. Might as well. I straight up asked if they could wait for me to finish my campus interviews.

What are the chances, right? But I hold dear the theory of "you don't get what you don't ask for." The chair of the search listened, told me that he'd talk it over with the rest of the committee, and let me know.

Yeah right.

A few days later, he called me. To say, holy crap, that they were going to give me 7 weeks.

You have got to fucking kidding me! I had half a mind to ask him if he was nuts.

So, to get this all straight, not only was this school willing to give me an unheard of amount of time to decide, they were also essentially letting me use them for leverage at my other interviews.

Maybe they knew that if they pushed me to decide soon, then I'd most probably decline. True.

But me? The person who likes to talk about the pleasure of his daily shits?

Apparently so, my friends, apparently so.

When Academics See Sunlight, It Ain't Pretty

2007-03-13T16:25:00.000-05:00

I had a few interviews at the Modern Language Association convention, which is pretty much the biggest monstrosity this side of a Star Trek Convention. It's a massive event, thousands of very crappy and even more inconsequential scholarship, presented by sad, insecure, socially dysfunctional psychopaths.

It is also the place where humanities programs conduct first round interviews. The search process can vary from program to program. There might be anywhere from 2 to 5 stages in the process: the request for more materials like writing samples, syllabi and teaching evaluations (if they didn't ask for them in the job posting), a phone interview, a convention interview and a campus interview.

The event is so huge that it can take place in several hotels at the same time. And beyond that, additional surrounding hotels can also be used to conduct interviews. Sometimes, they are in massive halls where the scene is more like a session of speed-dating than a job interview. Mine was of the other variety, in hotel suites.

The drill is this: You go to the hotel, call the contact person on the courtesy phone about 10 minutes before the interview starts, and ask for the room number. Receive instructions, then follow instructions.

The scene and the experience in the lobby is by my friend James's estimation, "wretched." I've tried to come up with a more accurate word, but cannot. It is WRETCHED.

The lobby area is completely taken over by thirtysomething graduate students and adjunct faculty. All are completely and identically overdressed. Black suit here, black suit there, black suits everywhere. I mean, Jesus, show some personality and character, will ya?

Well, I guess, to do that, you'd have to have personality and/or character. Nevermind.

All of them look pasty, forlorn, desparate, and deathly afraid. It has come down to this. They couldn't live in the real world, did the only thing they knew how to (be in school) since the age of 6, never interacting with anyone who didn't do the same thing, and in the process developed all sorts of paranoia.

Now they are interviewing for a job, begging what is most likely someone who was among the crowded hordes no more than 10 years ago, for a chance to do the only thing they remotely know how to. Their odds? Slim at best. They all look around, thinking that the next person has a better resume, thinking that maybe, today is the day they get found out as an intellectual fraud, a useless moron.

I can describe it because I know the feeling well. Ah, the life of an academic... Ah, the academic job search...

Entering a hotel lobby and lounge at the MLA is the petit bourgeois equivalent of looking into the hull of a Laotian shipping vessel to find 150 Chinese immigrants standing in their own waste. Thank God I have the fashion sense to avoid the black suit, blue shirt and business tie. I had a coat and tie, but it was ridiculously casual. Less Brooks Brothers, more Gap. My tie matched, but if anything, was a veritable party around my neck. It was different, but it was mine. Anyone who would hold it against me, probably wouldn't be an ideal colleague anyway.

Didn't I need a job? Even if it was shitty? The first one is the gateway, the one that makes it easier to get the next one, right? Yes, but I went to MLA already with 3 campus interviews scheduled within the next month. I was set. MLA was not going to make or break me.

Simply armed with that knowledge and assurance, I probably walked and talked differently from 75% of the candidates there.

Most people never get the chance to see so many humanities grad students in the same place. It is a sight to behold, a clinical sample of abnormal behavior.

I saw one woman walk up to the hotel Registration desk and ask for the name of her committee chair, "Clayton Whatshisface?" Only she said it like Captain Picard requesting a program on the holodeck. Like it was supposed to appear in front of her.

The desk clerk had probably been dealing with this all day. A waitress in a greasy spoon would've smacked the customer at this point. The clerk did her a favor. Instead of pointing her to the courtesy phone, knowing that this weirdo might've walked up to the phone and said out loud, "Clayton Whatshisface?", he looked up the name on his computer, dialed the number for her and handed her the receiver.

"Hello!" she chirped. "Yes!... Thank you, nice to speak to you too... Room 1972? Okay!... Thank you!"

She handed the receiver back to the clerk, who pointed her to the elevators. The woman walked a few steps, turned the corner, and said out loud, "1972?"... seriously, I'm not kidding, like Picard telling the Enterprise computer to take him to the bridge.

Ho, ly, shit.

I looked around to see if anyone else was taking this in. All I saw was a guy in an anonymous black suit, leather bag slung across his shoulder, looking like he was going to piss himself and throw gigantesaurus chunks at the same fucking time.

I waited for my time. I called up, got the room number, and headed for the elevators. The suite was tucked away in a weird little corner of the hotel. If a fireman had to look for you in the room, you were fucked. I knocked on the door, got through the introductions and pleasantries, which was when the chair of the search committee asked me, "did you have a hard time finding your way here?"

"Well, after the swim through the sea of despair and gloom downstairs, I was fine."

That's how I opened. I got a few laughs from the room, and the interview went long. Pleasant, yet perfunctory.

I told my advisors after I got back into town about my line. Both laughed their asses off. Both agreed on this: If they didn't get it, I didn't want to work there anyway.

Word.

Turns out, I didn't want to work there.

Steps Towards Complete Incorporation

2007-03-12T15:20:00.000-05:00

Last week, I signed and returned my job offer letter for a tenure-track position. It's a good position, at a program with a rising rep, young faculty that I get along with, a graduate program, and a Dean and department who loved me enough to give me almost everything I asked for in the negotiations.

And believe me, I asked for every goddamn fucking thing I could think of. Then I asked for every goddamn fucking thing everyone I knew could think of.

I did it without a degree in hand, which as I've been told, is increasingly unlikely, and rapidly becoming more so.

Not only that, I had a choice of schools. I received my first offer at the start of January. And I had back-up plans behind that as well.

By all accounts, I did well. And it became apparent pretty early on that I was going to have employment in the fall. Not that it helped my anxiety level any. Frankly, I didn't relax until I saw the hardcopy of the offer letter in my hands.

But for all the stress it gave me over the course of 5 months, signing it didn't seem to be sufficiently satisfying.

I'm sad to leave the midwest. I'm going to miss having seasons, I've come to love this state (and have earned honorary citizen status here, I like to believe) and there's just something about being in the heartland.

Frankly, I got depressed everytime I received an interview invitation. Weird, huh? I know.

At the discipline's big conference. People were congratulating me left and right. News travels fast, especially when your undergraduate advisor proudly tells everyone who will or won't listen that her undergrad advisee got a good tenure-track job. It really seemed to be a big deal for her.

I mean, fuck the grad students, I guess that when you ask a junior whether he's ever thought of grad school and he eventually finds a tenure-track job on his first real try, I'd feel good too.

Anyway, people were telling me they'd heard. Grad students I didn't know were looking at me like I was God. But since it actually was a reminder of that fact that I am going to leave a place I've come to like a whole lot, I was trying to look at least a little happy so I didn't come off looking like an asshole.

But where do I start telling the story of this saga?

Maybe at the start. Not the first interview, not the first letter I wrote, but even before that.

The assholes running my department decided to give its grad students a hard time about using department letterhead.

It is technically against university policy for grad students to use letterhead, but most departments don't enforce it, especially for those students who need it to apply for jobs. My department was the same way.

Until a few years ago, when all of a sudden they became bitches about it. Their asses tightened up like a snail's, and we had all these rules to deal with. Grad students wouldn't have access to letterhead, and their precio-o-o-u-us were locked away in the office.

I thought of plans, like scanning the letterhead of an old letter and making a template. That would work, but there wouldn't be a university watermark on the letter. It would have to do. I tried to figure out how to put that into action, then stick it to the man by giving the template to all the grad students.

Until one day, the office was being redone, and they were moving their shit around into new furniture. And someone, guided by the hand of God, left a box of department letter head on the counter overnight.

I took a quick look around, reached in, estimated how many job letters I'd be writing, doubled that thickness, and pulled out a stack of them. I shuffled to my office to hide them. As I was walking away, I then thought of the assholic way that the department decided to enact those rules.

So I went back to the office, reached down, grabbed an even bigger stack, and shuffled it back to my office.

Did I need so many? Fuck no. But if you're going to be assholes about it, two can play at that game. Now I had a shitload of black market department letterhead. For me and valued friends.

Har har, hardy fucking har har.

Next: The convention interviews!

MonTeach Python and the Holy Grail

2007-03-06T16:11:00.000-06:00

The last time my team reached the Super Bowl, it did so with one great winning streak during the regular season. At the start of that streak, I began this ritual of "snapping" my nerf football at my team's every offensive play.

I'd reach down from my dorm room chair, hold the ball and tilt it up,
and pick it up when the play started. Every play, every week, for 3 months.

I reached the Super Bowl that year.

For another team, when I was a teenager, I wore the same T-shirt and sweatpants to bed every weekend. Without fail, for about 7 years.

I won many championships.

If I were an actual pro athlete, you'd be forgiven if you mistook my obsessions for a serious case of Tourette's.

So when I blogged about the job search last year and didn't get a job, I decided not to this year. And you know what? You can't tell me my rituals don't work.

My applications last year were not really serious. I wasn't close to finishing the dissertation, but I wanted to send out a few letters to learn the process, to make most of my mistakes when it didn't matter and to have the experience of an interview, before I really had something at stake this year.

This year's round of applications could not be fucked around with, you see. But now that it is over, I want to thank the loyalists who have continued to check the site. The next few weeks will see all the stories roll out. And boy do I have stories.

Off the top of my head, let me whet your appetite with a few coming attractions.

There's the convention interview where I made an opening joke making fun of all the candidates waiting in the hotel lobby.

There's the farcical campus interview where the Dean walked in from the cold without a coat and you could hang a key ring on her nipples.

There's the job offer from a program who waitied a ridiculous amount of time for me, knowing full well that I was using the offer as leverage for other programs.

... and more. Come back soon.

Chuckles

2007-02-24T00:39:00.000-06:00

And then there was the time when I laughed for 5 minutes straight because I had come home drunk and eventually realized that I was naked, on the crapper, but with my baseball hat still on.

The Mron

2007-02-03T21:09:00.000-06:00

Just read this in the New York Times about how Motorola is tanking.

Perhaps most worrisome to Motorola’s fortunes, the Krzr does not appear to be eliciting the gotta-have-it reaction from as many consumers as the company hoped. At its recent earnings call with Wall Street analysts, executives conceded that the phone was not meeting expectations.

Albert Lin, an analyst at American Technology Research, paid $500 to obtain a Krzr a few days before the introduction, and carried it for all of one week before giving it to a friend.

“I was hoping to be treated like a movie star on the streets of New York, like I experienced with the Razr,” he said. When that didn’t happen, he switched to the ultra-thin Samsung model, which he said was having the desired effect. “When I take it out, everyone asks me, Is that even a real phone?”

Dear Albert Lin,

Are you a real fucking douchebag?

Teach

Letter to An Unknown Horse

2007-02-03T20:29:00.000-06:00

Dear Barbaro,

I am sorry. I had no hand in your pain and suffering, but I am sorry for my fellow human beings who put you there.

I'm sure that people loved you and cared for you, and tried to make you better. But I also think that they deserve blame and scorn. I saw these assholes cry and scream about your tragedy, but all I saw was your continued humiliation at their hands.

Because, Babaro, I'm pretty sure that you didn't really grow up wanting to be a champion racer. I'm sure you didn't have Kentucky Derby pyjamas or dreams of the Triple Crown. Just like I'm sure that you didn't ask Santa for a new set of reins.

Did you beg your parents for a new whip so you could be whacked on your ass? I didn't think so.

So while laminitis must've been a real sonofabitch, it's a good thing that you're too illterate to understand the ink these sorry excuses for people spilled about you. And while I'm sure you could understand some words, it's a good thing that you didn't know enough to understand ESPN.

For every person who talked about you like you were a boy who wanted to grow up to be an athlete, I wish that you could deliver a swift blow to their heads. Because it wasn't like you had a choice in the matter, was it? I'm sure no one asked you if you wanted to diet and train and run as fast as you fucking could over a fixed distance.

Did someone ask you if you wanted to try to run so fast that your leg could be broken in Goddamn half? Were you asked to sign some kind of competition waiver negotiated by Leigh Steinberg? Yeah, didn't think so.

So seriously, what the fuck right? These fuckers were crying like someone just ran over their kid. "HEY ASSHOLES! You put him there, you cocksuckers!"

So no, I don't really like it much when people talk about you like you were a person, like you had conscious desires to race. I'm sure that you had all the fucking oats and apples that you wanted, but I'm sure that you'd have been happier just running around on your own in Montana.

MUCH happier.

Just like the Clydesdales who pull moron tourists in kitschy carriages through smog-filled cities. Have you seen them? Their handlers don't even need to hold the reins or look forward! Those horses know how to stop and go with the traffic for fuck's sake. And they look so, so sad. It's so, so sad. Once, just once, I want these horses to decide that it was all bullshit, kick someone in the head, and take the fuck off to Montana.

You think?

Happy trails,
Teach

What I Would Want to Do if I weren't an Academic

2007-01-19T03:08:00.000-06:00

1. A SHORT ORDER COOK.
One of the reasons I liked to watch the TV show Alice is that I always thought that Mel had the coolest job in the world. What is it about standing in front of a big hot griddle with a spatula and 7 orders going on at the same time that I think is so awesome? I really don't know. But I know I liked how Mel would scream and fight with Alice, Flo and Vera, but they all knew'd do anything for each other.

This is also why I like Luke Danes. Go Luke. I'm pulling for you, big guy.

2. A PERSONAL TRAINER.
Most personal trainers are full of shit. They're either completely clueless or too obsessed to use the book knowledge. Most personal trainers don't know what they're doing, including those with their own reality tv shows. If you give me 2 months, and do what I say, I can change anything. Plus this job must really have one of the largest income:effort rations in the world.

3. WRITER FOR DAVID LETTERMAN.
Some might ask why I would put this job over one with The Daily Show. Well, that's because any comic today in their 30s or 40s probably owe everything to Dave and what he did on his old NBC show. If there were no Dave, there would be no Conan or Jon Stewart. Ask them, they'll tell you it's true.

Would I be any good at this? I have no idea, probably not.

4. PERSONAL ASSISTANT TO KATE BOSWORTH ON ANY SEQUEL TO BLUE CRUSH.
Need I say more?

5. FOOD AUTHOR.
I would only write one book, on the different cultural renditions of fried chicken. Every culture in the world has a recipe for fried chicken. Each variation has something to say about the tradition that created it. I would title this my "Fried Chicken World Tour."

Amnesty From Flannel

2007-01-11T00:53:00.000-06:00

I can't remember how I found out about it, but Amnesty International's first meeting of the year was taking place tonight in the sociology building.

It was my freshman year. It was college. I was going to change the fucking world.

I think every other person on my dorm floor was jumping headlong into beer and weed. My roommate was furiously learning the art of napping. I was going the change the fucking world.

I walked into the room. It was pretty full, and maybe half of the attendees were freshmen. Wide-eyed, bleeding-hearted, changers of the fucking world.

The gathering was called to order by Matt and Sarah. She had a red bandana on her head. He was a rebel. I knew he was a rebel because he wore a flannel shirt over an indie band T-shirt. (Back when indie was really indie, ie. not Green Day)

Matt and Sarah began to explain what AI was all about, what the group did over the course of the year, and the importance of our mission, should we choose to accept it.

Thing is, this didn't last very long. Because Matt soon transitioned into a spiel about a group of oppressed comrades in Central America, living under constant watch of automatic rifles (I can't remember if they were American or Soviet-supplied), and generally living a life inconceivable to the students on our idyllic campus. Our obscenely expensive, perfectly manicured, squirrel-populated campus.

Matt then blooded us into our first act of campus activist world changery. "These people need our help," he implored, "and we want to try to persuade their government to do something about it. Together, we can start to make a difference."

Holy shit, I thought. This is it. I looked around the room for the picket signs, or maybe the bricks, or maybe the Molotov cocktails?

I'm young, I'm stupid, just show me where to throw it, Matt.

And then he said, "I'm going to pass around some paper, and a copy of a protest letter addressed to the letter. Copy it, sign it, and we'll send it."

Whoah. What is this I'm signing again? Something about putting my signature on a piece of paper triggered the bureaucratically aware part of brain, the one finely honed by my father the career bureaucrat.

I started question what exactly I knew about these people I was writing on behalf of. I quickly wondered why I was supposed to go entirely on the word of Matt. Was it because he was a fan of The Pixies and Soundgarden? Was it his flannel shirt? His expensive sandals?

I copied from the form letter selectively. Anything I wasn't positive about, I left out. My letter was short.

Was that it, Matt? Is this how AI works? Getting impressionable 18 year-olds to copy letters, putting their name on a document they neither wrote nor really understood? Sorry, Matt, but this isn't really my style.

The people on the other side are supposed to be the ones who follow blindly. We're supposed to be the thinkers, the intellectuals, remember?

I never went to another meeting. In four years, I never met another member of AI for that matter. Thanks, Matt, for tainting and sullying my heroic image of the human-rights activist.

If You Tag an Anonymous Blogger, Does He Need to Respond?

2007-01-03T12:19:00.000-06:00

Well, here's an easy way to break out of my blogging slump. I've been busy, lacking in story ideas big enough to sustain a whole entry, hence the lack of activity here. I actually had to pause to remember my Blogger password. Apologies to those who check here regularly. Anwyay, here are my five things.

1. I really hate being told what to do. My mother unknowingly prolonged my long-hair phase by about 5 years because she sugguested that I cut it. I will discard brand loyalty in a heartbeat the minute a company makes an ad I feel violates my "space."

For instance, there is a new company that makes what I think are the best tech shirts around. I'd found them years ago on the site where I buy my running shoes. I bought about 3 items over a few months, before they launched a national marketing campaign. I was fine when they managed to snag some contracts to kit out a few college sports teams. But when I saw their over the top television ad campaign, they lost me for good.

By the same token, I'd normally hate to respond to a tag like this. But Jocelyn the Person gets a pass in this area because she's Jocelyn the Person, and like I said, it gets me out of a blog slump.

2. When I get dressed to go out to bars, I sometimes make wardrobe decisions based on what would be best suited if I had to get in a fight.

3. There was a period of a year or two when I'd regularly walk out of my house in sneakers, Crazeewear, and an oversized LA Gear t-shirt. You need to get the visual right, because if you look at the catalogue today the wear isn't crazee at all. Oh no, this was when these pants were LOUD, multicolored and visible from planes flying below 3000 feet. It was the height of MC Hammer, what can I say?

Was I ridiculed, you ask? I should've been, should I not? But remember, the only people who wear Crazeewear are gym rats. And much of my time was spent in the gym or with individuals who like me, were in the gym for 2-a-days. The T-shirts weren't oversized for nothing. So no, we were not made fun of, not to our faces, and not least because the crew included the local bodybuilding champion who once punched out a teacher in a roid-induced rage.

4. I've written one fan letter in my life, to Mr. T. It was an eloquent tribute to his heroism, acting chops, [bad-] attitude, and just all-around awesomeness. He did not write back, because he was busy making The A-Team the best TV show ever.

5. I would tell 95% of the teachers I had in high school that they were full of bullshit and that they could shove their provincial pontifications up their ass.

Tri-Sensory Failure

2006-12-16T22:16:00.000-06:00

Incident #1
"Hi!" The girl behind the counter chirped.

"Heyhowsitgoin?" I replied.

"How can I help you?"

She could help me by dealing me my caffeine fix for today. I usually drip my coffee at home. It's part of my morning wake-up routine and saves me $2 a day.

"Yeah," I started my order, "do you have a thing where I can have a shot of espresso in my coffee?"

"Yes, it's called a black guy."

"A black guy?" I repeated incredulously.

"Mm-hmm!"

"Really?"

"Oh yeah," she confirmed.

"Really? Like... give me a black guy!?" I exclaimed dramatically.

"Yeah."

"Um... OK, I'll have a black guy."

"Room for cream?"

"No thanks." Oh no, no one's stiffing me out of that extra 1 oz of coffee.

"That'll be $2.20."

As I then milled around the coffee pick-up area, I thought to myself, there is no way you call a menu item a "Black Guy" and get away with it in a college town, is there?

I stepped back and took a second look at the overhead menu, and there it was.

"...Extra shot of espresso with your choice of coffee:
Black Eye."

Incident #2
"What are you up to right now?" I asked Brianna after some small talk in the mailroom. I'd stepped in to check my mail box, and she was waiting to pull something out of the microwave.

"Oh, office hours," she replied.

"Cool."

I saw her pull something out the microwave. I looked at the circular food item, caught a whiff of it, and experienced a cognitive short circuit of sorts.

"Uh... why does your cookie smell like ramen?" I asked.

Brianna broke up, "That's because it's a veggie burger."

Incident #3
Scotty and I were walking home from the bars. I'm a lightweight, but for a man pushing 300, Scotty's even lighter than me.

I'd told him to park at my place because I knew that the walk back would do him good at the end of the night.

We were going over the funnier events of the evening, the 20 year-old college crowds, the sticky floors of the dankiest sports bar, the standing room in the franchise bar, which I call "the bar you go to 10 minutes before last call if you really really need to get laid."

I started describing the bar like that even before I actually confirmed the veracity of that statement.

As Scotty and I talked, the theme of the conversation seemed to be, "we're too old for this shit."

Oh, it's good fun when you need to get your load on, but yeah, the scene gets old eventually.

We noticed a commotion across the street. It was coming from 2 couples. One girl was walking in front. The other, in a very short denim skirt, fishnets and black boots was trashed out of her mind. The two guys behind them looked like vultures.

"Look," I motioned to Scotty, "that's a date rape waiting to happen."

"That's just wrong," he replied, trying not to chuckle at the truth in my statement.

"Those guys like their chances!"

"I think they do."

"Three kinds of VD walking there."

"Only three?"

"I'm too old for this shit."

We stopped by a corner convenience store so I could get something for my munchies. I picked up a carton of eggs and a potato for breakfast, and some cold deli chicken for the more short-term gastric needs.

As we rounded the last row of shelves and walked up to the counter, the date-rapes across the street were standing at the checkout.

I saw the first girl closer up and realized that I knew her. She was a bit of an annoying loud-talker I met when I frequented a cafe where she worked that I used to love studying at.

Then to my right, her fishnet friend appeared. Underneath a mop of dyed hair, I saw a face I never expected to see.

Renee was an undergraduate in my department. She was not in any of my classes, so the relationship was always more personal and not academic or professional. She was also a reformed sorority girl, turning away from the racks at the Express store when she discovered the wonders of punk rock.

Cute, nice and always friendly, Renee can pretty much out-hot most women I know by sheer force of personality and smile. She moved to another state when she graduated, which was why she was the last person I expected to see.

I said "hey" and she opened her mouth and eyes wide. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh my Go-o-o-od!" she squealed, opening her arms and oh crap, I'm now in a bear hug with a carton of eggs hanging off my elbow.

We caught up on whatever drunk people catch up on, which is not very much. I did find out that she was in town for a day, before flying out the next day for a vacation on another continent.

I then saw that she was with Jimmy, who isn't really a vulture. I mentally took that earlier jab back. I took back the crack about the date rape too.

A little about Jimmy... he is the guy you go to when you want something. What thing? Well, anything. You see, Jimmy's a townie who saunters around the kids. He carries Henessy in his back pocket at all times, and was at the counter buying a refill.

Jimmy held his fist out to me to "pound." He then opened the liquor right at the counter, took a swig, and offered me one as he always did. Some time back, I saw Jimmy speaking to another dude in front of his open trunk, and walked up to say hi. He didn't notice me approaching, and when I called out to him, he swiveled around and looked at me with the look of a guy who was about to go away for 25 years.

I'm sure that if he ever goes to prison, Jimmy will be the guy you go see if you need a Die Hard car battery to break your brother out of prison.

Saying good-bye outside the store was a production. There were more bear hugs from Renee, a little kissyface, and then she decided to smear my face with her spit.

Si-i-i-igh.

When we finally managed to pry ourselves away from that disaster, Scotty informed me of his conclusions.

"You got some questionable friends," he declared.

"I'm too old for this shit. I'm not saying it's not nice, but I might be too old, dude."

The Colbert Report is Better than this, c'mon!!

2006-12-07T01:03:00.000-06:00

Before I go into my brief entry, I have to mention something a student told me.

Apparently, he has friends - right wingers - who loved The Colbert Report because they took the material straight. I mean, they did not get it at all, and were cheering the jokes aimed directly at them.

Is that possible? Evidently, it is.

My student had to spend time, carefully explaining what the show was doing. I mean, he actually went, "see when he says that, he's actually making fun of Fox News, because..."

I guess they don't teach irony in the state's other public university.

He eventually got through to them. Which was when they stopped watching the show.

Anyway, tonight's guest was the venerable John Sexton, NYU president and member of the Walmart and Coca-Cola school of labor relations.

Oh say it ain't so.

Sexton was on to make the case for knowledge and learning, against sloganeering.

Oh God, where can we start?

It would be too easy to find one of his many anti-labor slogans. So how about a quote from ol' Sex-ster more related to knowledge and learning?

More specifically, his knowledge and learning.

Check this out, and my comment.

De Facto Entry

2006-12-04T18:08:00.000-06:00

Busy like a freakin' bee these days, folks. Explains the big lapse between blog entries. In lieu of one here, maybe saunter over to my friend Jocelyn's site where I posted a long comment.

Keeping Up with Borat

2006-11-22T03:19:00.000-06:00

There is a sequence in Borat where he is describing a neighbor in his home village in Kazakhstan.

"He is my neighbor, Nushuktan Tulyiagby, he is pain in my assholes. I get a window from a glass, he must get a window from a glass. I get a step, he must get a step. I get a clock-radio, he cannot afford... Great success."

I was talking to a former student, Pete, who is doing quite well in the real world. Living the dream, you could say. He's got a family, and a radio show that is gaining popularity fast. If things keep going the way they have in the last year, I won't be surprised if it goes national in the next 5 years.

He interviewed me once or twice on his show, way before he got noticed. He was addressing something related to the topic of the class he took with me. So if you Google me, a record of that interview will pop up sooner or later.

Anyway, during our conversation, Pete mentioned that one of the other grad students in my program contacted him about being on the show.

"For what?" I asked.

"To talk about the issue that I had previewed a few weeks before," he said. "He volunteered his vast knowledge on the topic..."

"He asked to be on the show?"

"... he offered his services, yes."

This seemed strange to me. I mean, it's pretty unusual behavior. Academics don't usually pimp themselves out like that, and definitely not grad students.

Full-time professors wanting a little attention or an extra revenue source? Maybe. Grad students? Not so much.

Plus, it's kinda like selling out to the man. Sure, intellectuals should descend from their Ivy-covered towers and participate in the public sphere, but this isn't really show business.

Yes, I was on the show, but I was asked, and did it as a favor to a student who was so into what I taught him that it made me blush.

I didn't go to him and say, "excuse me, uh, stranger I don't know, I know that Chris Gradserf was on your show a while back talking about [some bullshit], well, I'm a stellar genius myself, and I was wondering if you wanted an expert on the air to help you educate America. Plus my girlfriend said that she'd toss my salad if I get on the radio."

OK, I made some of that up. But he did volunteer his genius, and he did drop my name.

And then it made sense that a while back, he did this other weird thing of offering to lecture my class because he had written a seminar paper on the topic I was teaching about.

Yeah, for those of you not on the job, academics kinda don't do that kind of thing. There's no rule against it, but it's something that has to be offered to you and not something you seek out.

If for no other reason, you kinda don't want to imply to a colleague that he or she isn't smart enough or that their class wouldn't be complete without a sprinkling of your genius dust to validate it.

I research a topic, he research a topic.
I teach the class, he must teach the class.
I get a student who showed me love, he cannot afford... Big success.

Dangerous Mind

2006-11-12T11:35:00.000-06:00

I got home late. It was close to midnight. I threw my jacket where I'd find it the easiest in the morning, placed some leftovers in the microwave and decided to give Sarah a call.

I had not spoken to her for more than a week. It would be late for most people, but for those with whom I can laugh off waking them up if they are asleep, I tend not to care as much.

"Hey," she said.

"What's up?"

"Oh my God, let me call you back, OK? I have free minutes."

"OK."

I pulled dinner out of the microwave and was just in time for the return call.

"What's goin' on?"

"Oh my God, I don't know why these things happen to me..." she began.

"Things like what?"

"There was this sound coming from the apartment above me. I couldn't figure out what it was. It was loud, loud pounding. It didn't sound like construction because they weren't machine sounds, just loud pounding on the floor."

"Could it be dancing?" I asked. "I get that sometimes right after the bars close."

"Well, that's what I thought it could be. But tonight I had to get some work done at home. And the thing is, most of the time this neighborhood is completely silent. Anyway, I finally had to go upstairs to find out what's going on."

"And?"

"You wouldn't believe what I saw. You wouldn't believe what was actually going on above me."

"What?"

"This guy answers the door eventually, and I see behind him that he and his friends were playing basketball!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean basketball!"

"How'd you know that was what they were doing?"

"There were these guys, sweaty and standing around. These people were having a full on game. I mean, they had a real hoop up and everything."

"Like a regulation hoop?"

"A regulation-size hoop!"

"And then what happened?"

"They apologized, but after a few minutes, the game apparently started again."

"Call the cops."

"I did," Sarah said. "I asked the cop if I was being unreasonable, I made him listen to the noise from my apartment. And he said I wasn't being unreasonable. He went up there and those guys sounded like they were very apologetic, but when the cop left, they played on for another hour, and just stopped right before you called."

"What the fuck?"

"These things only happen to me, this is the semester from hell." Sarah tends to overreact, but playing indoor basketball at 11pm, after your neighbor has said something to you, is bullshit.

"Geez..."

"I know, right? I mean, who does that? And who else does this stuff happen to?"

"What did they look like?" I asked.

And that, really, is the punchline to this story. I caught myself right after those words left my mouth. I wasn't just asking a question. Because what I was doing was trying to figure out the viability of my solution.

And by my solution, I mean going up there myself and giving Lebron and 'Melo a little dose of the crazy. Essentially, was regulating going to be an option?

Maybe I need to alter my thought-process a little bit. Post-election, it seems like the American people too would prefer a little more diplomacy, a little less shock and awe.

Sarah did answer my question. Her neighbors are skinny white guys, not formidable by any means. She'd never let me get in trouble, so I suggested that she drive over to the part of town where, as Borat would say, the people with the chocolate face live. She could give the biggest black guy she could find 50 bucks to go up and talk to the neighbors.

That would probably work too.

Cutural Learnings

2006-11-06T11:26:00.000-06:00

Jagshemash!

I've just been reading a few articles about the Borat moviefilm, which are interesting because of the various ways that it is being received.

I first noticed the ones about Kazakh citizens here carping about how Borat isn't an accurate representation of their culture, people and country.

"I find it unbelievable that people can think that the character is an accurate portrayal of my country," expressed one interviewee.

Well, you know what? I've met people from that part of the world. Spoken to them at length, known them too well. I can say that Borat isn't too far from the truth.

These weren't rural hut dwellers who used goats as garbage disposal. These were college educated sophisticates. Or as I might say, "college" "educated" "sophisticates."

Anti-semitism? Check.

Misogyny? Double check.

A little unfamiliar and suspicious of First World technology. Oh hell yeah.

If anything, Borat is a little kind to them. He overlooks the rabid racism and homophobia that is as much a part of these characters.

Here are a few choice quotes for you to judge for yourself.

On American women:
"American women, they talk too much!"

On Jews, one Hasidic Jew (hat and full beard) in particular who was on television standing next to the President:
"Oh my God, look at that Jew!"

On Bill O'Reilly:
"I want to write to him. I say 'Hey O'Reilly! Why do you hate the gays so much when you yourself also a gay?' "

On American football:
"Look at these gorillas!"

Then catching himself in the "wrong" company:
"These black and white gorillas!"

On the CNN news story on mothers of war casualties from a neighboring country whose culture and people he didn't quite respect:
"Every year you are mother, my god!"

On a graduate student whom he found out was from Hawaii.
"You don't look like you are from Hawaii!"

Anyway, I also found two hilarious interviews that Borat did to promote the film. These are choice because the interviewers claim to be in on the joke, and don't really know it when they become the butt of it.

Seriously, you usually need to go to college to meet stupidity like this.

Borat on Fox and Friends. How often does someone get on Fox News and get in multiple digs at the White House while the host sits there completely unable to respond? Look at the baboon on the right try to be in on the joke.

Borat's interview with Jillian Barberie, aka the woman who is not the most annoying woman on the planet only because Kimora Lee Simmons and Rachael Ray are still alive. Look at how she tries to play it off, in complete contrast to how she was completely outwitted. Look at how fast she got up after the interview ended. Amazing how someone who made her name being the tits and ass on Fox's Sunday football pre-game show could be offended so easily. Priceless.

Eternal Sunshine of a Child's Mind

2006-10-31T22:37:00.000-06:00

Just in case some of you have delusions about the mind behind this blog, the level of sophistication that drives these ruminations, meditations... the intellect, if you will... this entry might clear that right up.

I often amaze even myself about the level at which my mind operates… that of a 15 year-old, who wants to be 12..

I am, as they say, very easily entertained. Fart jokes for instance, can put me in stitches.

Ph.D.? Please…

A friend and I were at the library one day, sitting in separate cubicles. One of us had work to do. The other did not. The one who did not, insisted on attention.

The one who did not wrote me a note and threw it at my table.

Dear Chris, now I am hungry and I blame you. Plus I am bored and you are not very entertaining. That is all.
[HEART]- Cathy

When I ignored it and buried my face back in my laptop, another message came through airmail:

Dear Chris, I hate you. Be more fun or I won’t walk around your apartment in just a towel. I red towel, since I am so dirty and scandalous.

A little context: I had earlier joked about getting Cathy to help me get hooked up with free HBO by getting the cable guy to come over so she could flirt me some premium channels. She would come out in a towel – a red towel because sexy red trumps virginal white – and do her thang. And then I’d be kickin’ it with Larry David and Al Swearengen.

So well, I didn’t start this discussion, but I’m finishing it. I wrote down a philosophical question, one that has tortured the male mind since olden times, and sent it over.

What do girls do when they’re together, tickle fight in their underwear, or pillow fight in the nude?

Pillow fight, plus many other things in the nude, like getting wet and hot in the shower like me.

And soap up your boobies?

(Only I dotted the center of the 2 “O’s”.)

(For the nipples, you see?)

Haha yes and soap my boobies. That is fun.

Call that girl behind you and ask if you can soap up and lather each other’s gazongas.

hahaha, um I only touch friends boobies, not those of strangers.

Me like boobies!

Um… OK all boobies or just mine?

All. But yours are particularly sumptuous.

Haha why thank you, I really try to make them sumptuous.

And so it ended. An everyday discussion about men and women, and a fascinating look into the psyche of a man who wants to be a child...

... the psyche of a person who is entrusted with the higher education of America's youth...

... that just fills you with confidence for the future, don't it?

Truffles is Magic

2006-10-29T03:02:00.000-06:00

When I was hit with the black death on Labor Day, I discovered about a few hours into my 40-hour sleepathon that my fridge was bare. The thing about being against commercial foodstuffs, and about baking your own bread and cooking vats of food to eat over a week or two, is that once in while, everything runs out.

No bread, no vat of reheatable chuck-wagon food, just tubs of flour and cupboards of dried goods.

When that happens at a time when you're hit with the black death, when the 15 steps to the pisser needs psyching oneself up for, you have what most people would call a problem. Still, it wasn't time to start looking for The A-Team just yet, because there was still someone who could help.

I called Sarah and left a message on her cell. She lives in a neighboring city 5 minutes away, so I asked her to call me back if she was in the town.

She called me back 10 minutes later. I told her the situation and asked if she could make a run to the grocery store. I needed a gallon of milk, a gallon of juice and a rotisserie chicken.

Which itself isn't much to ask from a good friend, but Sarah's also a germophobe. But she didn't even think twice. I told her to take her time and to finish her business before coming by, but she was knocking on my door within the hour.

I opened the door and I could spot behind her kindness and concern that she really didn't want to be next to a sick person. She looked good as always, I looked like I'd been sleeping for 18 hours - like shit.

I flipped my wallet open, but she refused money. "You can buy me coffee sometime or something," she said. I was about 15 seconds away from unconsciousness, so I asked if she was sure, thanked her, shut the door, just managed to take the food to the fridge, and passed out again.

As I got gradually better that week, I knew that I wanted to repay Sarah for making that store run for me, and for not taking money, though I'm pretty sure the latter was because she's the female version of Adrian Monk.

Hmmm, I thought, what can I do for this girl? I know... truffles. Chocolates are key. They're like magic. No, they are magic. This was verified as fact to me recently. And Sarah is such a chocoholic that she likes those abominations that they make in Pennsylvania, whose brand will go unnamed on this blog. (No, I will name it: Hershits.)

But for hauling ass to the store, then hauling 2 gallons of milk and juice to my apartment, plus one rotisserie chicken, then being exposed to my sick ass germs, I think the girl deserved the good stuff.

When I was well enough, I went to the mall and got her a box of truffles. I pointed to a good-sized box, and asked for one each from the one of the display shelves, reading the labels pretty much in succession. One of them was an intriguing Kaluha truffle that I have to much self-loathing to actually buy for my own consumption.

I think that maybe women who work in candy stores always look kinda sad, because what else can a steady stream of truffle customers do but remind you of how your man doesn't do things like that?

Walking out of a candy store with a box for a female is exciting, because you know that the person you're about to give it to is going to be really really happy.

I wrote a thank-you note on a card, stuck it to the box, and left it on Sarah's desk.

I knew she'd come by to thank me, maybe go girlie a little. But then she did a little extra. She exclaimed at how sweet I was for five minutes, then told a colleague who walked by about the truffles.

"Chris bought me chocolates!"

"Awww...!"

"...and all I did was get him juice when he was sick! Isn't that sweet?"

"Awww...!"

That, my friends, was uncool. Un, cool. A little thanks, a little gush, that's fine. Doing it in public and making me literally spaz and squirm in my seat on the other hand, is not. Oh for God's sakes, just eat the chocolates.

"Awww...!"

I have a rep around these parts. In class, nothing is sacred. Anything that needs ridicule, gets ridiculed. Sometimes, even the undeserving get a shot or two as well. Students are sometimes afraid of me and scared of speaking in class because they wonder if I'll turn my belligerent sense of humor on them if they say something wrong. At least that's the word on the street.

I can't have chicks milling around oohing and awwing and calling me sweet. And doing it loud. You know what I'm saying, bitches?

God!

Is There Something to this Person that Isn't Lame?

2006-10-23T01:18:00.000-05:00

This semester, I'm back in the same office with the person who lives in a world where petty theft does not exist.

We happen to be TAs for different sections of the same course. Kim had taught it in the previous semester and wanted to use a similar syllabus. My jaw dropped when I saw it. It was narrow and skewed too far in favor of contemporary material (for a general survey course). I suggested changes anticipating resistance, because she developed a little bitterness last semester when an exam committee threw a roadblock in front of her.

Not surprisingly, she's taking it as a personal insult instead of an intellectual challenge, and will be leaving the program for the safer confines of a department where people like her better.

Our faculty supervisor this semester had warned me when I told him that I was going to "strongly recommend" changes to the syllabus. "Don't be too dictatorial, because she was a little disgruntled last year, and I'd rather not deal with it."

I knew the stress he was under, and I understood why he didn't want mental clutter concerning anything petty.

"I know about the disgruntlement," I responded equally cryptically, "I won't be an asshole about it."

What I really meant was, "I'm not taking any shit."

Fortunately, no disgruntlement ensued. Kim took my suggestions positively and thankfully, and we ended up using a syllabus that is finally, academically respectable.

Remember her annoying habit of humming bad pop songs? Still there.

Only now she has a new annoying habit of sneezing, then making this weird childlike whine like a little girl about to cry.

After every sneeze.

Thank God she's almost never there because she treats office hours like a nuisance. I usually wait out the humming and the sneeze-whine without too much difficulty.

One day though, I had enough. She sneezed, then she whined.

"Huh?" I asked loudly like I thought she had said something.

"Oh, you said 'Bless you?'... Thank you."

...as I pounded my head on the table.

None of that, though, made me squirm as hard as a conversation a few weeks ago.

I was wearing a hoody with the name of my undergraduate college emblazoned across the chest.

"Oh, did you go to [unnamed college]?" she asked.

And by "unnamed college," I mean "ridiculously expensive private east coast university populated by children of privilege and upper-east side wine-and-cheese summer-in-the-Hamptons liberals."

Except in the years since I graduated, it has gone from "ridiculously expensive" to "obscenely ridiculous."

The $70 sweatshirt I was wearing? My junior-year roommate found it one morning while out on the lake with the crew team, and asked if I wanted it.

"Yeah," I replied.

"Wow, you went there? It's so expensive."

"It was a lot cheaper when I went, now it's become a little unreal."

"You must be really rich," she concluded.

That's a good one. My father afforded that tuition because he didn't have a life of his own for 30 years while he worked his ass off. It also actually got cheaper when I was there because of a Clinton economy and my Resident Advisor job that paid for room and board later on.

"Not really," I explain. "I sure don't have Eli-type money."

Eli is a graduate student in the department who owns, -- o-w-n-s... -- an apartment in Greenwich Village, but somehow can complain with a straight face about being exploited as a grad student and about bad jobs that he's been forced to have.

So no, my family doesn't have that kind of money.

But she wasn't letting this go, and ignored every word I was saying.

"Wow...!" she continued, "I'm going to look at you differently now!"

Because she thinks that I come from money?

I went through everything that annoyed me about her. This definitely was the one that made me physically squirm.

Sigh.

Danger Lurking in Every Bar

2006-10-20T06:41:00.000-05:00

The thing about being a teacher is that students tend to get surprised when they see you in a different context. "Look! He actually shops for groceries!"

The thing about being a teacher who has a drink in a bar is that students tend to absolutely lose their shit when they see you having a drink. "O-oh-h my God...!!"

The thing about being a teacher whom students tend to like for some reason, is that walking into a bar confers hero-status on you.

The thing about being a teacher who is known for an irreverent sense of humor and a cavalier attitude is that you might just be mistaken for a God at a bar.

The thing about being a teacher whose students past and present -- 3 of them to be exact, all of whom recommended you to each other -- happen to work at a bar, is that they might just want to buy you drinks when you're already a little plastered.

Especially when you're already a little plastered.

Three drinks to be exact.

Three Irish Car Bombs.

Three Irish Car Bombs, and a double of Jameson's.

In under an hour.

The thing about having to teach the next day at 9:30am is that well, after the double shot of Jameson's, you tend to not think about the fact that you have to teach the next day at 9:30am.

But the thing about having grandfather who asked for a Guinness on his death bed is that your liver gives you the unique luxury of not ever knowing what a hangover feels like.

There's a gas station a block away from where I have to teach that sells a extra-caffeinated cappucino so powerful that a cocaine user recommended it.

Literally.

The thing about this story is that at least 3 things are just a littlw wrong.

Think so?

How the Man Keeps Me from Feeding My Family

2006-10-15T02:30:00.000-05:00

As I've chronicled before here, the university like all bureaucracies, tries to extract money from you in every way, justified and unjustified. When it is the latter, you can bet that the following rule applies: Quick to charge, slow to refund.

Just like clockwork, the cashier's office tried to scam me again.

I paid my university bill online for the first time. I typed in my bank account information, the amount I wanted to pay, and hit "Submit." I then saw a readout that said that I had authorized a payment.

A few days later, I found out that my bill had not been paid. It was already past the payment deadline. I instinctively knew that the computer was now going to assess a late charge, and that I was going to do battle with bureaucrats once again.

The person at the cashier office's window confirmed that my bill was not paid. I described how I'd paid it online, but the worker again told me otherwise. I so wanted to punch this asshole's smugness off his face, but knew that it was no point getting angry at him.

I wrote a check for my bill, and asked, "there's going to be a late fee, isn't there?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so," he replied. "It's not on your bill yet, but it will be there eventually."

Great. I walked straight into the cashier's office, past the adjacent window. I realized at that moment that the window existed to discourage "walk-ins" like me. That was Roadblock #1 between me and my money.

Lesson #1: See someone in person further up the ladder as soon as possible.

I walked in and asked to see someone about my bill. Surprisingly, no one sassed me. I was told to take a seat.

A nice lady greeted me after a few minutes. In her office, I explained to her what happened and she said that she was not authorized to waive the fee. She advised me to fill out a waiver request.

"You could do it online, or fill one out by hand."

"I'll do it by hand, could I have a form please?"

Roadblock #2 was the form. There was little way around it, but I chose to handwrite it because Roadblock #3 was the impersonal online submission.

Lesson #2: Use proper channels to maintain decorum and the impression of honesty.

Lesson #3: Make sure the decision-maker knows that you are a real person.

I wrote out the request and asked the lady to read it over. "Looks good to me," she said.

Lesson #4: Affirm your progress up the ladder and cover your tracks constantly, so you always say, "but so-and-so told me that..."

"How long will it be before I hear?" I asked.

"About a week."

"Thanks! Have a good one."

"I will, thanks. Stay warm."

Lesson #5: Be aggressive and determined, but be nice, always.

Then a student had the misfortune of meeting me right after this. He innocently asked me how I was, and I let loose with a minute-long profanity laced rant about the well-oiled swindle machine that is the cashier's office. The look of shock on his face was priceless.

"I'm sorry, Eric," I explained. "Some things just piss me off more than others. This is one of those things."

A few days later, I had my reply. The cashier's letter informed me that an "appeals committee" had "considered my request carefully" and denied it.

That was Roadblock #4: The authoritative and formal letter.

And Roadblock #5: The "committee."

Now that irked me just a tad. We all know there's no committee. The lady told me as much that the "decider" was the head of the cashier's office himself. Only him. Here's a tip for the man: Make sure all your minions are with the program.

I picked the letter up off the floor (I'd thrown it down in a rage) and put it in my bag.

Lesson #6: If the man is going to screw you out of your money, make him do it to your face. Most people back down, especially when you bring a big bowl of nice with you.

The next day, I walked back to the cashier's office and asked to see the man himself. He had a mop top and had a formidable demeanor, like he was used to haggling with pissed-off students.

I collected my thoughts, and made my case. I explained that he might not have understood what really happened. This time, unlike most of the time I confront the man, I happened to be in the right, with the facts behind me, even.

Mop top fucked around on his computer, and repeated the response he gave in the letter. I calmly re-presented my case, never getting tense, but making it clear that I was here to get my damn motherfuckin money back.

"All right, I'll waive it just this once," he conceded.

Victory.

"Thanks a lot, I appreciate that," I said.

Lesson #7: Don't believe a word of what the man says until you get what you want. Don't be intimidated by the power of the institution, and make it clear that you're not like any dumbass who will normally falter at Roadblocks #1-#5.

Go forth. Fight the man.

The Control Sample

2006-10-06T17:22:00.000-05:00

"Hey!" came from the direction of two bodies standing in my office doorway.

I looked up from my laptop and saw Rich and Josh, two students from my class last semester.

"Yo!" I greeted them, "what's goin' on?"

"We were just talking about you."

"What about?" I asked.

"About going to the dining hall."

"Oh shit, sweet." We had talked before about hitting the gastric festival that is all-you-can-eat. They had heard about my feats of strength, but now they wanted to experience the abomination that is my gluttony first-hand.

For the record, I've never turned down any buffet invitation, but sharing a few laughs with these guys was already reason enough to go.

"Yeah, dudes, so when?"

"I can't today," said Rich.

"And food sucks on Friday," chimed Josh.

"I gotta work Fridays anyway," I said.

"And Saturday sucks too," Rich declared.

"Sunday!?" I proposed.

"Sounds good."

"Yeah, I work till noon, but after that, I'm good," Josh said.

"Oh yeah! You guys ready to be disgusting?"

They laughed.

Josh looked at the pile of papers, books index cards and plastic bags on my desk and asked, "so how's your class going?"

"All right, I guess... but shit man, they're quiet."

"We were kinda quiet," Rich said.

"Yeah, but you guys laughed."

"They don't laugh?"

"They do, but apparently not on the outside. Some jokes fall so flat... I mean, with a freakin' thud."

"We laughed all the time."

"You did, and you were engaged too."

"Yeah, we talked about class a lot outside of it."

"I know. These people these semester are apparently engaged, I mean, I think they are. And I think they kinda get the jokes, but they're just freakin silent."

"Hmmm I wonder why," Josh said.

"I... dunno," I shrugged. "There was this one joke I put together so carefully, I spent days composing it... and nothing. I got nothing from 'em."

I use jokes as part of my pedagogy, and definitely also to have a good time myself. A student told me once that my lectures have a rhythm that resemble a stand-up comedy act.

Punchlines can't just be said perfunctorily. The set up, the sounds, the delivery have to be occasionally choreographed, especially if they can't be random jokes - I mean, it is a college lecture after all.

That kind of thought and prep doesn't go into my "material" all the time, of course. Most of the time, I just riff. But once in a while, I think of a joke that needs to be put together and rehearsed.

"...miss one part, and it's ruined, know what I mean?"

"Yeah," Josh said, "what joke was it?"

"OK, you tell me, all right? How do you not laugh at this? This is what I said... [joke deleted because it's related to my discipline]"

I was about 3/4 through the joke when Rich and Noah were already hunched over laughing out loud.

"Funny, right?" I asked.

"They didn't laugh?" Rich said, barely breathing.

"Nothing. I mean, that joke fucking died in that room. I'll figure them out though. I'll get 'em sooner or later... So, Sunday?"

"Yep," Rich confirmed, "facebook me to confirm."

"You bet."

Falafel Consequences

2006-10-04T15:43:00.000-05:00

I was hungry. Even more so than usual.

As dinner - beef stew over brown rice - cooked, I decided that I needed to eat something freakin' now.

I prepped some falafel mix, and heated up the oil. Fried them up, toasted the pita, and started to mow down the sandwich.

Oh goddamn. What a deliciouSON OF A BITCH!!!

Fuck!

Ow!

Fuck!

I'd just taken a bite out of my own lip. I've done it before, only this time it was worse. It's never the immediate pain, but what comes later, when the busted mouth turns into this mother of a sore that will make me look like I just kissed Paris Hilton.

Sure enough, a few days later, the sore opened up and could radiate pain around even my gums.

Great, now I've got a lisp.

Which is fine, because a population trained to listen to the palsic intonations of Tom Brokaw can also comprehend a guy with a busted lip.

And all was fine, until a class decided to not talk during a discussion.

I'd prepped them for it. Told them to read, reminded them more than once, and even gave them notes and questions that were supposed to generate discussion.

I'd already told them about my undefeated record in staring contests, and they knew that I wasn't going to bail them out.

Thinking back, maybe most of the time, the tension is broken by my smile or smirk at how I know one of them is going to break. It defuses any awkwardness and sooner or later, someone breaks. They always do.

Today however, they were tense. My busted lip didn't just give me a lisp, it also prevented me from really smiling or holding any expression other than stone cold seriousness.

They visibly began to panic, and I followed my rule: I just stood there. Looking at them looking everywhere but in my direction.

The know-it-all piped up. He mumbled some incoherent string of incomprehensible half-ideas, which he thinks is profundity seeing as how he has an opinion column in the school paper. Oh my, look at the "genius."

Not in my class. You try bullshitting, and I kick your ass. I crush you like a pompous intellectual slug, and I make sure everyone knows it.

At least I let him finish. Then I pointed out how nothing he said was relevant or coherent, and resumed the staring contest.

Eventually, the honors student collected enough of his thoughts together and bailed his classmates out.

They break, they always do.

That falafel sandwich didn't help matters though.

Beauty

2006-09-27T15:38:00.000-05:00

A friend once told me of a professor who had a student come in to contest a paper grade. The young woman's mistake was that she mistook the meeting, thinking that it was a negotiation rather than a clarification. It went a little like this:

Student:
Can you tell me what was wrong with this paper?

Professor:
Sure.

He then took the paper from the student, flipped to the back, read his extensive comments out to her verbatim, and handed it back.

That was the most awesome thing ever, until Brianna showed me this video today.

If a cell phone even rings in class, I pull out a standard punchline where I nonchalantly suggest that someone's dealer is on the line. Generally, I start the ridiculing small, until someone decides to escalate matters by doing it again.

Brianna said about the video, "it looks like a very Christopher thing to do." I would hope so, because I can only dream about coming up with this kind of heroism.

Everything I've done to the narcoleptics, bullshitters and douches in my classes absolutely, abjectly, so completely pales in comparison to THIS:

My Hero

2006-09-25T21:54:00.000-05:00

As I was about to shut down and leave the library one night, the Public Safety officer who came by told me that they'd caught a pedophile in here last week. He was looking at kiddy porn on one of the stations in the computer lab.

They swooped in, took him in for questioning, and grabbed the computer with them too in a classic "SVU" operation.

Arthur, the cop, pulled out a video recorder the size of a business card holder and played back the encounter for me on a little screen.

"You can see that he pulled his pants up really high to hide his erection."

Uh... ew.

"So you're assigned to the case?" I asked.

"Yeah, no one else will touch it."

"Why?"

"It's extra work. No one else will go near it."

I'm so full of confidence in the Public Safety Department right now.

(The perp has since been picked up, mostly because he has a record and had racked up a number of parole and sex-offender violations in the last few months.)

Alarmed that as a staff member in charge of security, more or less, I knew nothing of this, I asked my boss if we should be on the lookout for this perv. The cops were gathering evidence, and he was still out on the street.

My boss, a soft-spoken dude named Jay, is still struggling to put together an operations manual for my position. And when I asked him about the matter, he had to go up the food chain for answers.

When he finally got back to me, he simply went over the basic duties.

"Actually, if someone's watching porn, it's not illegal and you can't ask them to leave just for that," he said.

"Well, I knew that."

"Even if he's looking at kiddie porn, we can't necessarily do anything."

"Really?" I said, surprised.

"No. But if there are children nearby, then it's different. If you see that, call Public Safety. We recently had someone masturbating on one of the reference computers, too. If you see that, call Public Safety. It's just really complicated..."

"Because of privacy issues?"

"Yeah," Jay said, "and you don't know who's doing research and who's not..."

"Sure. But what if someone's flashing his wang?"

"Then you call Public Safety."

Notice the trend? Because I didn't.

"What if someone is more aggressive?"

"You call Public Safety."

"So under what circumstances do I have to throw someone out?"

"You never do. We don't want you engaging with anybody in any way."

My heart sank.

"What if..." I began.

"I don't want to get into a series of hypothetical what-ifs, Chris. Just remember that if anything happens, you call Public Safety."

"No no... what if I ask someone to quiet down because another patron has complained, and he starts to push me?"

"Then you back away, and call Public Safety."

Damn it!!

I tried one more time.

"OK, what if someone starts to like, physically assault one of the staff at the circulations desk?" I ventured.

"We still don't want you doing anything," was Jay's insistent reply.

"Come on, dude," I implored, "how can anybody just step back in a situation like that?"

And then came the funniest thing I've seen and heard in weeks...

Sensing the disappointment in my voice, Jay broke out the tiniest of smiles at the corner of his mouth and said:

"Chris, you're not the avenging enforcer... If you hurt somebody, they can sue the library."

"OK." I looked away, but I had one more question, "but what if I'm not on duty?"

"They can bring assault charges against you, and they can do that even if they're the sole aggressor, and if that happens, you might end up losing your job."

I guess I can understand that.

But the avenging enforcer is disappointed. And frustrated. Dagummit, he wanted to see some action.

Girl Power

2006-09-23T13:17:00.000-05:00

There are several potentially good stories, possibly great stories, abrewing in one my classes. I have one genius who's too cool for school, or definitely too cool to attend class.

And I've got another who was too cool to attend class, begged to be forgiven, but can't seem to stay awake.

These will have to be played out completely before I write about them, though.

So when I need material to write about, I usually look in the "Education" sections of newspapers to see if anything in the news gives me an idea. This morning, I read about the falling enrollments at women's colleges.

Evidently, an increasing number of these schools are being forced to admit men, altering the fundamental nature of its experience, because they simply don't have enough girls applying for admission.

Those who want these colleges to stay true to their original missions cite statistics that their graduates do better than women who attend co-ed schools. Their students have more opportunities to occupy leadership positions on campus.

And the social environment is one that doesn't have to deal with male assholia.

But the women who are now choosing to attend co-ed universities might say that needing a single-gender environment is condescending. They don't need protecting, and the sooner they learn how to deal with men's douchebaggery, the better.

That's all well and good. But I wonder how many of those women lived up to their declaration of equality.

Here's the thing, most women in a co-ed classroom tend to retreat. The "training for the real world" and "we don't need coddling" theses tend to not work in real classrooms. And patriarchy tends to get stronger as a result.

Too often, women don't learn how to overcome sexism, they kinda learn how to live with it.

Sure, I can and do try to combat that. Any dude who talks over a female classmate in my class gets ignored or a verbal beatdown. And I try to encourage the "quiet but brilliant" women to speak up in discussions.

Most of the time, I just want them to say something... anything.

But isn't that coddling? Isn't that protection in a way?

Bullshitters - students who talk a lot but say very little - are predominantly men in my experience. Oh, I've encountered female bullshitters... actually, I've only had one in all the classes I've taught. So I'm quite sure, the tendency to think that "what I'm saying is important because I'm thinking it" is pretty much a male trait.

Many women seem beaten before the class even starts. I can almost see the futility in their eyes about trying to say something when Ryan Q. Douchebag next to her is spouting his genius... I mean drivel, over everybody else.

This is not about weeding these "weak" women out, and forcing the few who do find the confidence to stand out in co-ed classrooms to rise to the top through some mythos of meritocracy.

Tough love doesn't work for everybody. In other words, it rarely if ever works for women. Simply insisting that tough love is the ideal way to educate every person is silly.

If a young woman needs a single-sex college experience to attain some measure of confidence or self-belief, I think she should have it. I sure don't think that she should turn away from it just because she's been force fed post-feminist selloutism.

I can testify that some of the bullshit that circulates in high school performs a harm on students that takes a long, long time to undo. And sometimes, that's easier to do when the current perpetrators aren't in the same room.

F*cked Up with Less Money

2006-09-17T01:10:00.000-05:00

Learning how to bake has served me well. I can make focaccia from scratch in less than an hour, pizza in under 2 and honey wheat loaves in 3. I've learned how to eat pretty well on less money, and also that commercial bread must be the grossest product on most grocery store shelves.

Graduate school = Less money.

Cooking skillz = Happy graduate student.

Now I've added something else to my repetoire: homebrew. Technically, it's probably more accurate to call it wine-making, or mead-making. But I like the more rustic "Homebrew."

I've had the equipment in my cupboards for a fairly long time. My friend Roy had helped me make a batch of hard cider once, but that was more his project than mine.

I finally found the motivation to start a brew on my own at the end of last summer.

I bought a mother bottle of Cran-Grape, warmed it up to dissolve a few cups of extra sugar in the pot, added a bag of brewer's yeast, and let that sucker go. After a few weeks, I added more sugar, and it bubbled up again.

Less than two months later, I bottled it. I got home at about 11pm one night, and poured myself a shot when I'd filled three bottles - I think about 3+ litres in all.

I was on an empty stomach and wasn't sure whether the kick I felt was due to that or the actual strength of my brew.

But I had another shot two days later on a full stomach, and well, I can confirm, it's pretty goddamn strong. It definitely wasn't because of the empty stomach 2 nights ago.

I'll soon get a bottle of Cranapple from the good folks at Ocean Spray. And oh that new batch will be even better than this one.

If I didn't have to adjust and adapt to a grad student budget, I would've never discovered these joys.

That's one good thing I got out of it.

Audience Testing

2006-09-15T14:20:00.000-05:00

This was going to be a scheme of legendary proportions.

I teach a class right now that I've taught in the past. The previous section could be a quiet bunch, and I remember being concerned about how to get them more engaged. Hell, I didn't even know if they were engaged.

Because when the "wow, that blows my mind" face looks exactly like the "what the fuck is going on" face, it's pretty hard to tell.

I came to learn that my previous class was in fact very engaged, and their reticence actually hid the fact that they were actively thinking about the material, gathering in their dorms after dinner talking about what I said, and all that.

The current class might be a little more quiet than the last. And I didn't want to assume that they're as involved in what is going on. Especially since everytime I'd prod, someone would say something that indicated they had misunderstood some aspect of the material.

Most teachers would do things like try to formulate questions that weren't the overly general "Any questions?" type queries. Others might split the class into small groups so the shy ones feel more comfortable talking.

Sure I'll do all that. But I also have my way of doing things. And my way involves jolting them out of their trance by attacking them personally but indirectly.

The topic was authorship, and the reading Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?"

I was going right at what they held dear, and savaging the lot of it. I wasn't going to call anybody out, but I'd get examples of their favorite things, and ridicule them like the angriest of angry comics.

This is the best part: I went on Facebook to research what their favorite authors, books, movies, music were. I settled on a the greatest hits, and spent the weekend writing jokes so merciless that would give them no choice but to respond.

Devious, no?

I wanted them mad, so mad that they would talk. Say something, you little shits!

The laughs, actually, never really came. I got some smiles, some nods, but this was a tough crowd. The good news however, is that I'm more convinced that they are following the lessons and trying to comprehend. There was little time left for questions, but the ones that did arrive were pretty good. That's all you can really ask for.

It'll take more than one class to draw them out. I'm going to have to weed out the pretenders - the absent-half-the-timers and the sleepers, namely - but once I do, things might liven up a little.

Heck, they might not be talking simply because they're scared of me. I can always see some of them glancing over at the one or two assholes who always fall asleep, anticipating the humiliation that I inevitably, eventually, predictably wreak on them.

Oh no, you don't fall asleep in my class without being called out, thrown at with chalk, or kicked in the foot if you have the gall to do so in the front row.

People hate to sound stupid, especially to a teacher with a short temper. They'll have to learn about me, and maybe I'll find out whether or not they're mentally awake.

I'll report back in a month.

My Complaint

2006-09-08T00:54:00.000-05:00

I picture most mothers saying things like this as their sons pack to go away for college.

"Don't forget your heavy coat."

"If the cafeteria food is iffy, go ahead and order pizza."

"Study hard and don't stay up too late."

"If you're short on money, you can call us collect."

"Remember to do your laundry regularly."

Am I right?

Not my mother.

As I was folding my T shirts into my duffel bag, she sat at the desk in my room and watched me, and out came the words:

"Hey, take care of your dick."

Except it actually could've been worse. She might've actually used the C-word. But I might be suppressing that memory because... you know... AWKWARD!

I guess I should've seen that coming. I mean, there was the time she overheard the 2 Live Crew CD in my collection that my sister had found and popped in the stereo. I'm thinking that there might've been a less direct way to ask me about it other than the very loud, "Hey! What's this fuck fuck pussy pussy?"

Or the time I hit puberty, I grew extra hair, and it evidently became up to my mother to give me tips on adult hygeine: "Hey, you better wash yourself properly down there."

And you know what? I don't need to know how she goes on movie dates and leaves with no idea about what the movie is about. Really, I just don't.

Although... every teenage boy could probably need his mother to inquire about his game, before mocking it. Repeatedly. At every opportunity. I have to admit, that's kinda helpful.

I've read Portnoy's Complaint. And let me just say, Philip Roth is a genius.

Well, let me qualify that. My mother never smothered. She let me do my thing and gave my sister and I a lot of independence. She relied on our judgement and maybe she was more lucky than wise to do so, but I think our heads are screwed on pretty straight.

She bought me my first book once I could put words together, a big baby blue hardcover with 365 stories - one for each day of the year. I almost ignored the poems but read my favorite story (about a sleepy fireman who was always the last mofo on the fire engine) over and over. And that was fine.

I had 587 different hobbies as a kid, and no matter how many little fish I managed to kill, no matter how many relics of faded interests cluttered the house, that was fine too. She'd always help me find out what I liked to do, even if I only liked it for a week.

So not surprisingly, she was really quicked to accept the fact that I was going to use my biology degree to transition into grad school in the humanities.

"He likes what he likes," is what she says to friends who can't fathom the switch.

But she couldn't get me to take up the piano. I had no commitment to practice. But I've often wondered if I'd be better off if I made a different decision. Get my mother behind a piano and it's a party. Do it at a party, and the party comes alive.

And as open as she is with some things, there's a lot of suppressed history on her end. I know next to nothing about my grandfather, and anything I think I know, I've had to piece together from her maiden name and where he was from.

She was an elementary school teacher, and I wonder if I'm doing what I am now because of that. I remember helping her draw up her tests. As a kid, I liked to draw (most of the time, I drew Superman). I have spatial awareness that makes it easy for me to draw in three-dimensions. If my mother's test questions needed illustration, she'd point to the spot where she wanted a car, or a dog, and I'd go to work.

I can't say for sure, but maybe I did enjoy being part of that process, of being responsible for someone else's learning.

I've thought about this entry for a long time, and have held off on it because there isn't a narrative that makes enough sense. She's full of contradictions, and I can't come close to addressing the millions of other things that make her awesome, hilarious or downright infuriating.

So I'll end this before I start to ramble. Just know that if you met her, she'd have to warm up to you, but once she does, you'd love her.

And that it's your moms who are weird, not mine.

Laborious

2006-09-04T11:16:00.000-05:00

I had big plans for the Labor Day weekend. An article here, some dissertation headway there, some catch up on sleep, a trip to the grocery store for some mighty beef stew... oh, I had plans.

Many students would be out of town for the long weekend, and whoever was left in town would be out tailgating for the first football weekend of the season. Big plans, baby, big plans!

I was going to stay clear of local festivities. We were playing some minnows in a de facto preseason scrmmage, and I had scholarly pursuits. Except I got home on Friday night and found this message:

"Hey Chris, it's Ben! I'm thinking of just driving to town straight from work later, because trying to sleep might be a bad idea. That will put me into town at about 4am. Hope you're ready! I got a couple of steaks and some beer. If we need anything, we can stop by the store. All right, hope you're ready, see ya."

Well... shit.

Like clockwork, he showed up at 4am, ready to get the party started. We were playing the game in the morning, so tailgating was going to start pretty early. We hit the store for some extra fixins' and headed out for the parking lots where tailgaters set up.

Eventually, we realized that we didn't account for the Labor Day weekend and how it would cause the party crowd to thin. But it didn't matter, because this was about men, red meat and beer.

Even more so because we ate the steaks without plates or flatware. No salt, no pepper either. Frankly, I didn't know steak could taste that good without seasoning.

When other friends showed up, I snuck off to the passenger seat and took a nap. I was told I was out for 2 hours. But when I woke up, my nasal passages felt like a deranged homeless man had hacked at it with a butter knife.

When everyone else went to the game, I then had to go to work for a 5 hour shift. Thank god it was going to be slow because of the holiday. But over that time, I could feel myself get progressively more ill - seriously, the sickest sensation you can experience.

I got home at 6pm and slept for 40 hours, taking breaks only for food, water, and the bathroom.

I can't remember my dreams, but I know that they were all about insurmountable problems, conundrums with no solutions and every single insecurity I have ever harbored.

And in that time, my phone rang like it was Grand Central Station. Every caller was someone I wanted to talk to, including:
1) Ben and another buddy calling me from the post-game barhop.
2) My awesome mother, who will deservedly have her own entry soon.
3) Another friend from out of town whose second call on Monday was eventually the life-saving lunch invitation that extracted me from the pall of death enveloping my apartment.

I didn't mind the phone calls (at least the ones I heard), but getting to the phone was another matter. Due to a set of circumstances too long to explain but ironically easy to overcome (yet the status quo persists), my bed, telephone and answering machine are each in different rooms of my apartment.

Try to get your mind around that one. When I think logically, I can't do it myself.

Medicated sleep, nightmares, with a dash of beef n' beer... that was my ode to Labor.