For The 'Ween, We Hide.

Halloween: Not a big fan, me. In SC it's even easier to be a non-big fan, what with the annual tradition of stabbings three blocks from my apartment. HOWEVER! That certainly won't stop B and I from eating a sumptuous chili feast, carving some serious pumpkins in a serious manner, and watching America's Next Top Model.






Happy day everyone. Wake me when it's Thanksgiving.

The 80s, Stuff Happenings, and so on, Etc.

Ok, so:

First, it's not just that I like a lot of music from the 80s (because I do: Don't you want me baby? Don't you want me....oh?!), it's that lately I've really appreciated what an incredibly original decade it was for pop music and pop cinema. The styles were totally distinct and iconic. Music has never REALLY gotten past the innovations that were introduced in the 80s; synth-pop, hip hop, punk, hair metal, all of it created the templates that everyone's been aping every since.* Granted, most of it was like eating a cake made out of poop (a "poop-cake," if you will), but the stuff that was good was often strikingly, memorably good. I bring this up after listening to a few contemporary bands that are SO warmed-over 80s (like, uh, these guys), but I think the point stands pretty much across the board.

Secondish, one of my students got the stuffing kicked out of him by a gang outside of the Safeway on Mission last week. Besides feeling awful for him in general, it heightens my already-extant paranoia about this town. B and I had a talk the other night about how we're feeling about SC, about reconciling homesickness (for Oregon) with loving our friends here (because they're smart and ravishingly attractive), but then also having to deal with the logistical problems of central coast living: it is sometimes sketchy and it is always expensive. I hate thinking that it's one of those places you have to go from locked car to locked apartment, and I guess I like the fact that such a huge percentage of the population is affiliated with the university, since it kind of wimps-up the general populace (no UC to the SC student can beat you, or even me, up...believe me.) It's still a bummer.

Thirdly, uh.......well, I am excited about Thanksgiving. My excitement was heightened by the insane, sumptuous feast prepared by K last night. That girl is not only one of the best minds of my generation, she can also cook the HELL out of a chicken-stuffing-veggies-fresh bread-type meal. Now I'm extra fired-up about the rapidly-approaching turkey day.

Side note: Regarding this season of Heroes, I, for one, SALUTE the awkward gay-couple stylings of Matt and Suresh. However, I am deeply troubled and irritated by the fact that no one has hit Sylar over the head with a wrench or shovel until such time as he dies a lot.

* Indie rock provides a possible counterpoint here...The Pixies were the first important 'indie' band, right? And when did they really get going?

Coffee, Tap Water, Alcohol

That's the usual routine 'round these parts. Today is no exception. Last night the lovely and talented E visited after spending her week being corporate in Silicon Valley. We ate some burgers at our favorite fancy burger joint / bar, came home, and watched funny music videos while drinking vino. This morning we had time to eat French toast and go look at the butterflies at Natural Bridges before she had to head to SFO.

After that, an elite cadre of Europeanist grad students got together to strategize about being less-screwed all the time at the local hipster coffee joint. It was probably the greatest concentration of mental acuity this 2-bit town has ever SEEN. Our conclusions? Someone needs to tell us how to get grants. Also, they need to teach classes about European history every couple of years.

Now I'm home, eating pasta, drinking tap water. At some point there's going to be a serious bathroom-cleaning throwdown and I'm going to hook up our VCR so that we can tape shows (yes...we tape shows. On tapes. Still.)

Then I shall read Kafka so I can talk about it with the kids next week (between ourselves, I'd really, really like to get back to teaching theory...I'm all literatured-out.)

I put up some pictures at flickr.

And that's all I gots to say at the moment...

State of the KFR Address

Or, at least, a brief assessment:

1. It turns out that the actual, on-the-books QE requirements at UC to the SC aren't that draconian. Write a 20-page essay, write a vague dissertation proposal, write a couple of syllabi. Fair enough. I'm meeting with my adviser tomorrow to hash it out; I've got a proposed draft of my reading list ready to show him.
2. It's been 90 degrees for the last few days. 90. It's almost November. Can you believe that the official Republican policy as late as a few years ago was that global warming was a liberal myth? Can you believe that there are still some fucktard hold-outs still claiming that?
3. On a related note, I feel really, really bad about the fires in Socal. They affected friends in very bad ways. Also, this morning I asked my students and 50% said they had family there who either had evacuated or were going to evacuate.
4. Still pondering another "week of thing!" photo essay. My man Matto suggested a different tattoo every day. There were also calls for a hat week. Sadly, I have only three hats, making hat week nigh-implausible. Ideas are welcome.
5. Buying tonic for G+Ts at 7-11 makes me think about Russian nihilism. As if there were any other kind!
6. I have an iPod, which is connected to big Princess-Leia-earmuff style headphones (no so-called "earbuds"...they creep me out) I was reminded of why yesterday, when I took the bus without them and had to listen to two room-temp IQ mouth-breathers complaining about how they didn't want any more "crazy bitches" in their lives. I restrained myself from reminding them that they were, in fact, the crazy bitches.
   
7. No surprises: I still feel great about black coffee and red wine. Oh, and tonight Top Model is on. Let's hope that blond chick who looks like a skinny mule gets kicked off.

Thanks for tuning in. If you have week-of-thing! ideas, drop me a comment.

Shameless Wife Promotion

If you have 2.5 minutes to spare, please do the following:

1. Go to the Etsy Plush Team page.
2. Glance over the first post, the Plush Vote one.
3. Go enter a comment in which you vote for the Soft Sculpture Wool Spider.
4. 'cuz that's the one this one girl I know made.

Thank you.

Also, here are two delightful quotes I've come across in the last few days:

From a Veramyst commercial: "The way Veramyst works is not entirely understood." (yeah...THAT inspires confidence!)

From the condom machine in the bathroom at the Poet + Patriot Irish pub: "Electrify her with studded rubber nubs."

That, my friends, is freaking POETRY.

And Then There Was Strategy

It was a rough week. After I figured out that I had to populate my QE reading list on my own, I was struck by an acute malaise. Sleep deprivation and weltschmerz came together. Constant crankiness ensued.

But I did some thinking, then last night B and I had a productive chat about the situation. Here's what it comes down to, I think: it takes a tremendous, tremendous foundation of self-confidence to pull this PHD thing off. You have to believe in your own ability to do a huge amount of work without the slightest bit of encouragement or guidance. You're nominally a member of an academic community, but you're reminded every day that what you really are is an intellectual proletarian, grading the papers the profs don't want to bother with and hanging around at the edges of your field. You have to be both brave enough to submit work that might get torn to shreds (again, after having no one to warn you about its problems) and smart enough to pull it off.

Until last night, I don't think I really had the self-confidence to do it. Now, I still don't have the self-confidence to do it, but I'm fully cognizant that I have to anyway. And in that, there's a kind of relief.

So here's the plan:

1. Use my newly-discoverd copy of Les écrits de Simone de Beauvoir to fill in the gaps on my highly-predictable MA thesis. Write said fucker over the next couple of months.
   
2. Use the extensive bibliography of Tony Judt's Postwar to generate a QE reading list. Read books on said fucker over the next nine months.
   
3. Identify intellectual leftist to write a dissertation about. Maybe André Gorz....
   
4. Write stuff up for QEs. Take said fuckers.
   

That's as far as I've gotten. Somewhere in there I need to apply to the UC Paris program to be a TA and figure out other grants to apply for. Also, I must remember not to lose my mind. That is all.

8am Discussion Sections: A Bad Idea

This here's a picture of what I look like after leading an 8am discussion section. I found that the perfect musical accompaniment to a 7am stumble to the bus station after drinking beer the night before is White Zombie's soulful classic "More Human Than Human."

This here's a picture of my brother and I from this summer. I like it a lot.

Major big ups to E for both pictures. She is not to be held accountable for the creepy eyes in the first one, however.

You Don't Get Nothin', Kid

I'm glad everyone seemed to enjoy sweater week. If I can think of another themed-week theme, I wil produce another themed week.

I had an enlightening meeting with two of the older, wiser Europeanist grad students here the other day. They're both ABD*, trying to scrape together grant money to go to archives in Europe, being teaching assistants in the meantime to make ends meet. They both took their QEs** last year and now they're cast adrift to find their way with neither guidance nor requirements from any class, institution, or professor here. What I got out of the meeting is this: no one is going to give me anything here - not a reading list for my exams, not mentoring, not hints on how to secure grants. These two guys, smart, capable, mature, have no better idea than I do how to get finished with all of this nonsense, and because of that, I finally figured out that I'm going to have to do this all on my own.

To that end, I'm starting today on determining what needs to be on my reading lists and getting the books together. I already know who's going to be on my committee, so I should be able to take care of the exams this summer.

I'm not really bitter about any of this. I just feel kind of resigned. The advantage overall is that I doubt I'll be the least bit stressed out at any point preparing - I know I'll pass, I know I'll get it all done. And if I come out of it with inadequate knowledge about something important, well, I'll be able to throw up the best bullshit smokescreen anyone's ever seen.

SC kids: Poet + Patriot tonight, don't forget!

* ABD: All But Dissertation. An ambiguous state of being in which a graduate student must somehow pay rent and eat food while ostensibly researching and writing his or her dissertation.
** QEs: Qualiyfing Exams. Some programs call them "prelims," others, "comps," but they amount to the same thing: you write up a bunch of crap and then some professors quiz you to see if you know all of the important literature in your field(s). After the QEs, you're ABD.