Criminy, I mean, yes, I already knew that moving sucks, but moving sucks, man! Our apartment is now officially in mid-packing bomb-went-off mode, and we haven't even gotten to the "kitchen" yet.*
Anyway. I don't have the mental horsepower to post about this topic, and I'm on beer number two for the PM, but neither do I have anything else to post about, so here goes a short summary: apparently, the only way capitalist economics works is by inflating bubbles, riding them on the way up, then rich people jumping ship as they burst and everyone else getting screwed. You can't read the whole thing unless you're on a college campus, but this New Left Review article does a brilliant job of summing up the current situation with global economics. It scared the crap out of me (again, more) because the point is basically that there's been nothing but bubbles, no "real economy" to speak of, for thirty years now. Should we all be hoping that another bubble comes along that temporarily lifts the situation?
To sum up: there still is neither hope nor justice in the universe. But we knew that.
* Our "kitchen": a teeny hallway with a miniature Italian fridge. I am not making this up.
9.06.2010
9.03.2010
Looking Back
It's a pretty standard caveat to start a blog post with "sorry I haven't been posting to my blog very much," especially lately. My once mighty cadre of fellow bloggers has shrunk to an elite task force of semi-regular updaters (ongoing big ups to my homie K for his always-enlightening posts.)
The thing is, for me, it's like: baby. I have this baby, and that's about it. I could complain about the lack of jobs, the worries about the future, etc., or I could talk about how elated I am at the prospect of returning to Portland. But most of the time, I'm just making ridiculous noises at Plan C to get her to giggle and/or bouncing her around to get her to go to sleep.
BUT: what I did want to post about was something B and I were talking about the other day, namely, the fact that we can't remember the first two months of Plan C's life in anything except hazy nightmarish images and dreamscapes of insanity. That's the thing about really serious sleep dep, of course: your memory gets shot to shit. It's also a kind of very softcore version of post-traumatic stress; it's just so bloody hard to deal with a newborn, the constant screaming, the fact that they have absolutely no sense of their surroundings, the simple fact that to be awake is to be unhappy for them, etc.
Happily, that changes. Having heard the horror stories from friends with kids, I think we're pretty bloody lucky. The little croc has her self-soothing techniques (she sticks her whole fist in her mouth, mostly), she giggles when we dance around, she plays with stuff, she naps, she sleeps at night (mostly), she does all kinds of rad shit like that and is generally hilarious. As far as I can tell, she's only four months old and she's already a lot easier than most of her baby peers.
Once the move is over, I hope to have new and interesting things to post about (no promises, though. I am pretty boring.) In the meantime, I'm just happy to have this funny little kid and to be moving back to my favorite city on earth.
The thing is, for me, it's like: baby. I have this baby, and that's about it. I could complain about the lack of jobs, the worries about the future, etc., or I could talk about how elated I am at the prospect of returning to Portland. But most of the time, I'm just making ridiculous noises at Plan C to get her to giggle and/or bouncing her around to get her to go to sleep.
BUT: what I did want to post about was something B and I were talking about the other day, namely, the fact that we can't remember the first two months of Plan C's life in anything except hazy nightmarish images and dreamscapes of insanity. That's the thing about really serious sleep dep, of course: your memory gets shot to shit. It's also a kind of very softcore version of post-traumatic stress; it's just so bloody hard to deal with a newborn, the constant screaming, the fact that they have absolutely no sense of their surroundings, the simple fact that to be awake is to be unhappy for them, etc.
Happily, that changes. Having heard the horror stories from friends with kids, I think we're pretty bloody lucky. The little croc has her self-soothing techniques (she sticks her whole fist in her mouth, mostly), she giggles when we dance around, she plays with stuff, she naps, she sleeps at night (mostly), she does all kinds of rad shit like that and is generally hilarious. As far as I can tell, she's only four months old and she's already a lot easier than most of her baby peers.
Once the move is over, I hope to have new and interesting things to post about (no promises, though. I am pretty boring.) In the meantime, I'm just happy to have this funny little kid and to be moving back to my favorite city on earth.
8.30.2010
Chunklet: Indie Cred Test
I contributed some stuff to a new book managed by indie / punk / garage uber-savant Henry of Chunklet fame a while back. The book is being self-published, so check out the fundraising video (which is F'ing hilarious, BTW.) 15 bucks = a copy of said book. Either way, watch it.
8.26.2010
That Too Did Pass
...and so ends the weirdest class I've ever taught.
Normally, when you teach college kids, the whole trick is to get them engaged. You're usually staring out at a room full of glazed eyes, with the students texting or updating stuff on Facebook while you're talking, the one kid in the back taking a nap, and your three good students sitting up front nodding diligently, reminding you that they should really get A's.
This session, however, was the weirdest pedagogical clusterfuck I've ever had to deal with. I had one complete big-mouth dickweed who interrupted my lectures every sentence or so with either an irrelevant tangential comment (a.) or an obscure question (b.) I didn't have the impression that he was being a jerk deliberately; it was more like he was compulsively driven to be a jerk because of deep-seated mental problems. Besides him, I had about ten other students who interrupted and made tangential comments as well, albeit at a whole level of magnitude lower in intensity and frequency that Captain Blowhard. Collectively, the class was way too engaged, making it almost impossible to keep the narrative thread of my lectures together. I felt really bad for the dumb kids, who invariably lost track of what I was talking about as I had to fend off question after question and try to keep the anachronistic comparisons to a minimum.
I told B the other night that each lecture was like trying to land a plane with all of the engines out, desperately trying to keep the lecture on course as you plummet.
Anyway, I finished grading the finals and essays I had to do this morning and handed off the rest of the stack to my homie M (who is my TA), so that's done and done.
And the worst of it? Captain Blowhard totally got an A. As much as I wanted to report him to Homeland Security with some made-up threat and get him waterboarded, the fact is he wrote a really good essay and did a fine job on the exam. Crap.
Normally, when you teach college kids, the whole trick is to get them engaged. You're usually staring out at a room full of glazed eyes, with the students texting or updating stuff on Facebook while you're talking, the one kid in the back taking a nap, and your three good students sitting up front nodding diligently, reminding you that they should really get A's.
This session, however, was the weirdest pedagogical clusterfuck I've ever had to deal with. I had one complete big-mouth dickweed who interrupted my lectures every sentence or so with either an irrelevant tangential comment (a.) or an obscure question (b.) I didn't have the impression that he was being a jerk deliberately; it was more like he was compulsively driven to be a jerk because of deep-seated mental problems. Besides him, I had about ten other students who interrupted and made tangential comments as well, albeit at a whole level of magnitude lower in intensity and frequency that Captain Blowhard. Collectively, the class was way too engaged, making it almost impossible to keep the narrative thread of my lectures together. I felt really bad for the dumb kids, who invariably lost track of what I was talking about as I had to fend off question after question and try to keep the anachronistic comparisons to a minimum.
I told B the other night that each lecture was like trying to land a plane with all of the engines out, desperately trying to keep the lecture on course as you plummet.
Anyway, I finished grading the finals and essays I had to do this morning and handed off the rest of the stack to my homie M (who is my TA), so that's done and done.
And the worst of it? Captain Blowhard totally got an A. As much as I wanted to report him to Homeland Security with some made-up threat and get him waterboarded, the fact is he wrote a really good essay and did a fine job on the exam. Crap.
8.24.2010
Hating the Heat
The elements of enjoying hot weather might include the following:
The elements of why I hate hot weather do include the following:
- A/C.
- A porch with chairs or a couch.
- Cold beers.
- Screen doors.
- Water? For people who like that kind of thing?
The elements of why I hate hot weather do include the following:
- Third-floor apartment (note: heat rises.)
- Tattoos make being in sun inconvenient.
- I am always about five degrees warmer than everyone else.
- I can barely swim.
- I try not to leave the apartment in Santa Cruz.
8.20.2010
Untapped Ironic Affectation
In the spirit of our imminent move to Portland, I wanted to offer a sartorial suggestion to that oft-maligned class of citizen, the "hipster."* One of Portland's defining quirks is the massive population of hipsters, which frankly I always kind of liked because it meant a great music scene and lots of people who were fun to look at. In turn, one of the defining characteristics of hipsters is the ironic fashion; consider the following trends from just the last ten years or so:
Anyway, may I humbly proffer an item of enormous ironic potential, as yet untapped: THE COMBOVER.
Niiiiiiice.
- Big nerdy glasses (like Elvis Costello.)
- White belts.
- Mesh trucker hats.
- Mustaches.
- Huge mountain-man style beards.
Anyway, may I humbly proffer an item of enormous ironic potential, as yet untapped: THE COMBOVER.
Niiiiiiice.
The way I see it, hipster dudes who are actually bald / balding (like, uh, me) could sport the real deal. Hipster dudes who aren't could have their heads shaved and configured to achieve artificially-induced combovers! All the hip, swingin' guys in town would look like my AP Biology teacher from high school! Triumph!
Think about it, hipsters of Portland (and other cities.) We can make this happen if we try.
* There is an enormous internet literature on the "hipster." It's one of those appellations that almost no one admits to being, but clearly exists in huge quantities. Personally, I think hipster is fine as long as the hipster isn't a dickhead.
Think about it, hipsters of Portland (and other cities.) We can make this happen if we try.
* There is an enormous internet literature on the "hipster." It's one of those appellations that almost no one admits to being, but clearly exists in huge quantities. Personally, I think hipster is fine as long as the hipster isn't a dickhead.
8.18.2010
The Worst-Case Scenarios
Editor's Note: This blog post will use the F-word a lot. On behalf of all of us at kungfuramone.blogspot.com, I would like to apologize about this fact to my mom, who doesn't like it when I swear too much in my blog.
The apartment building next to ours is just awful. It's run-down, ugly, and inhabited, mostly, by very sketchy people. We actually looked at an apartment there on the first day of our hellish hunt for housing in SC four years ago, but B wisely called bullshit on the ambience. Through weird coincidence, we ended up in the adjacent building instead.
At some point in the last six months, a gang of idiots I like to call the "Word-Case Scenarios" moved in to one of the upstairs apartments there. These guys play really, really loud hip-hop and stand out on their porch shouting about getting in fights and "the primest jack I ever saw."* They invite over every hostile idiot in town and have parties about four days a week. I cannot imagine what it must be like living in one of the adjoining apartments. Thankfully, our apartment doesn't face theirs, so even when they're blasting their music at 110 decibels and doing their best to emulate the Insane Clown Posse in both appearance and behavior, we don't really have to deal with it.
That said, there was a brilliant moment two days ago when I went to take out the recycling. The recycling bins for my building are under the WCS' apartment. Here are the lyrics to the song they were playing this time, as best as I could make out:
"Fucka-fucka fuck fuck fuck FUCKA! Fuck fuck FUCKA fuck fuck! FUCK FUCK fuck fuck FUCK!"
It was like...their theme song.
Here's hoping wherever we end up in Portland has a much lower per-capita moron count. Portland as a city has about 15% of the morons of SC, so I'd say the odds are on our side.
* As in, "the most entertaining robbery I have ever witnessed."
The apartment building next to ours is just awful. It's run-down, ugly, and inhabited, mostly, by very sketchy people. We actually looked at an apartment there on the first day of our hellish hunt for housing in SC four years ago, but B wisely called bullshit on the ambience. Through weird coincidence, we ended up in the adjacent building instead.
At some point in the last six months, a gang of idiots I like to call the "Word-Case Scenarios" moved in to one of the upstairs apartments there. These guys play really, really loud hip-hop and stand out on their porch shouting about getting in fights and "the primest jack I ever saw."* They invite over every hostile idiot in town and have parties about four days a week. I cannot imagine what it must be like living in one of the adjoining apartments. Thankfully, our apartment doesn't face theirs, so even when they're blasting their music at 110 decibels and doing their best to emulate the Insane Clown Posse in both appearance and behavior, we don't really have to deal with it.
That said, there was a brilliant moment two days ago when I went to take out the recycling. The recycling bins for my building are under the WCS' apartment. Here are the lyrics to the song they were playing this time, as best as I could make out:
"Fucka-fucka fuck fuck fuck FUCKA! Fuck fuck FUCKA fuck fuck! FUCK FUCK fuck fuck FUCK!"
It was like...their theme song.
Here's hoping wherever we end up in Portland has a much lower per-capita moron count. Portland as a city has about 15% of the morons of SC, so I'd say the odds are on our side.
* As in, "the most entertaining robbery I have ever witnessed."
8.15.2010
Don't Bother With the Psychologist
"Yeah, uh, go ahead and don't call again."
Editor's note: We all know that talking about your dreams is stupid and tedious. To help deal with the phenomenon, I established a rule many years ago for talking about dreams: you get two sentences to describe a dream in all of its intricacies.
In my dream last night, I was confronted by a faculty member at UC to the SC, who informed me that I had not, in fact, finished my PhD. I broke down in a kind of whiny semi-freak-out, telling her that I...I...I just had to get out of SC.
You could assign this dream to high school students studying Freud and get pretty accurate readings, I think.
P.S. B, completely earnest, just now: "We need more disco beats!"
(this after a successful Goodwill-gathering mission in the kitchen set to the Scissor Sisters.)
In my dream last night, I was confronted by a faculty member at UC to the SC, who informed me that I had not, in fact, finished my PhD. I broke down in a kind of whiny semi-freak-out, telling her that I...I...I just had to get out of SC.
You could assign this dream to high school students studying Freud and get pretty accurate readings, I think.
P.S. B, completely earnest, just now: "We need more disco beats!"
(this after a successful Goodwill-gathering mission in the kitchen set to the Scissor Sisters.)
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