How Panel Went For Me Last Night

Tyra: Will SheeNaynay and KFR please step forward.
(We step forward, holding hands.)
Tyra: Two lovely models stand before me, but I only have one photo in my hand. This photo represents the model who will continue in the competition. The model who I do not call must immediately return to the bunker, pack their things, and go home.
(We shuffle uncomfortably.)
Tyra: SheeNaynay, the judges look at you and they see a model with so much potential. Such lovely eyes! Such an incredible walk! But for some reason, you can't make that translate in pictures.
(SheeNaynay nods sadly.)
Tyra: And KFR. The judges can't believe what they see. 6 foot ONE! So slender and strong! Such maturity and drive! But then they can't overlook the fact that you're a 30 year-old male, you're bald, and you're covered in tattoos. And that's just not what the industry is looking for.
(I nod, with a wry, understanding smile.)
Tyra: So who goes home?
(Dramatic pause.)
Tyra: KFR.
(I smile with disbelief, give SheeNaynay a quick, half-hearted hug, and take my picture.)
Tyra: You've still got it. You face a lot of prejudices in this industry, but the judges believe in you.
(Shot of Miss Jay nodding. Nigel looks on.)
Tyra: You're still in the running for becoming America's Next Top Model.

How to Read Dostoevsky

This term, my TA assignment involves between 125 - 350 pages of reading a week, a combination of secondary stuff (i.e. history books) and primary material: essays written in 19th century Russia and novels by Turgenev and Dostoevsky. Regarding the latter, we're dealing with D's Demons, which is almost 700 pages long. The students (and I) are supposed to read it on top of, besides, and diagonally from all of the other reading, bringing the total page count per week to something like a 290 average.

Now, I can handle this. The kids, not so much.

My point isn't to complain, however, but to share my breakthrough technique. As I mentioned a while ago, I've been playing an exciting new video game, Heroes of Might and Magic 5. It's a turn-based strategy game, meaning you do something then the computer bad guy does something. The latter takes a while, so what I do is play, finish my turn, and read Dostoevsky while the computer does its turn. Using this technique, I have finished about 340 pages so far.



Never have I been so happy to have not studied literature.


Next up: figuring out a way to combine Yoshi's Island with my dissertation.

Topical Haiku

Filthy Undergrad
You're Always Gross on the Bus
Don't Give Me Swine Flu

I Admit It

I am politically schizophrenic. I study these far-left intellectual nutjobs, I sympathize with historical radical politics in Europe in the postwar era, I know quite a bit about Marx and Sartre and Marcuse and Habermas and Gorz and, now, Herzen, but I find it really hard to stomach radical politics on the UC to the SC campus. The people who organize direct action here never seem to stop and consider the circumstances of the things they're protesting.

CASE IN POINT: how can you organize walk-outs and rallies around the theme of "stop the budget cuts"?! There isn't any money, you guys. This is not a case of a sinister right-wing conspiracy. For once, not even I think that Dick Cheney had something to do with this. They have to cut.

I know it's more complicated than that, that you can make a case for wanting more community participation in the question of what is to be cut, that the administration here has done some horrible, repugnant shit lately (see: family student housing), etc. Also, I will point out that B and I are, unlike these activists (who have stable grants and TAships), directly affected by the cuts. We honestly don't know if she'll have a job in a week.

That said, what I can't stand about the sound and the fury of all of this is that it's like the activist community here likes protesting, that they look for excuses to protest, that they're all entirely too cavalier and flippant about it. IMHO, if they were more selective about the issues they rallied against, they'd have a lot more credibility than they do hitting the panic button every week.

End rant.

Let Us Join in Celebration

I have only one thing to say this morning in my sleep-dep'd, back-aching delirium:

How totally rad is it that they voted off Natalie from Top Model last night?!?! She was such a nasty classist snob and she made the same face in every picture! She was totally worse than the weird Edward Gorey / Tim Burton / Anime girl with the huge eyes.

Good riddance, you guys.

P.S. I'm still pulling for Fo (whose name we prefer to pronounce "Fuh," following our homie J) to win.

Dragons! Dissertation Writing Grants!

First of all, tell me that shit doesn't look like a dragon! I know, commenting on clouds looking like things is actually even more boring than talking about your dreams, but I mean...it even has a clearly defined eye! With lids! Extraordinary!

More to the point, writing for grants is hard. You have this massive pile of work, full of its fiendish intricacies, and you have to boil it down to 1 - 3 pages for the application. You end up sounding either too vague or too specific, and meanwhile your whole (*cough*) career kind of hangs in the balance.

I'm trying to get next year off from teaching, you see. In history we teach two sections a term with about 60 kids to grade and cajole. I will get my diss done next year either way, but it would be ever-so nice to be able to do it at a sane pace, with adequate time to think deep thoughts and read the relevant stuff while I'm working on it.

Cold Hard Fact: The Bunker Sucks It

Here's a shot of me in the bunker preparing for my QE from about a year ago:*

It doesn't quite adequately capture the facts, though. The bunker is the sum total of our "facilities," on semi-permanent loan from the department and the division.** It's one medium-sized room below ground with bare concrete walls and an unfinished ceiling. The temperature is fairly comfortable in the morning, then gets colder all day until it's unbearable by mid-afternoon. Light is limited to big florescents and some meager, inadequate desk lamps. The computers are aging eMacs and a few beat-up old G4 towers, all of which are slowly dying. You get the point.

I bring this up because I avoided going up to campus and the 4:20 insanity today and instead worked at a local coffee joint for a few hours. I couldn't believe how much I got done. I've tried to turn the horrors of the bunker into a kind of virtue over the years, bragging about how I'll be the first person to have done 85%+ of his work as a graduate student in that awful little chamber and gotten a PHD out of it, but today I'm reminded of the kind of Stockholm Syndrome that attitude really speaks to.

I'm also just the littlest bit cranky because of the 90-something degree temps we're getting right now. Re: those, at the risk of repeating myself: I get to hate the sun. You get to like it if you want. But don't give me shit about it or I'll just tell you to fuck off again.

* Featuring my commie hat (I later removed the star, because it was just too hackneyed. Tweak took the picture.)
** We are reminded of its "loan" status whenever we complain about how awful it is. "Oh, you don't like it? Then maybe we'll justtake it away from you, you whiners!."

Not a Stitch to Wear

DANG, dude:

This is not good for kids like me who don't like it above about 70 degrees, let alone within spitting distance of 90 during friggin' APRIL.

The thing is, I just don't know what to wear! I have so many great sweaters, so many fine combinations of button shirts and jackets, so many snappy Fall + Winter outfits, that inclement conditions never bother me. But in the summertime, I'm constantly uncomfortably hot and I don't like how I look. I mean, I asked this on a blog post years ago, but I still don't have a good answer: is there any style of shorts that doesn't look lame on a tall skinny guy like me?

This summer, anyway, I'm going to be showing off the ink more. It's just too uncomfortable when I keep the sleeves incognito. I need to have a plan. I'll get a good bottle of SPF 400 sunscreen and, wear my hats, and if we have any money this summer, maybe think about getting a slightly less ridiculous pair of sunglasses.