I LOVE FIELD STATEMENT

Thanks to Tweak for the picture. (And yes, that's the fabled bunker.)

Just a Note: Economical

So as of yesterday, oil has never been higher and the the dollar has never been lower.

The most important contemporary Marxian scholar out there is probably David Harvey, whose Limits to Capital is a remarkable update of Marx's entire oeuvre in terms of late-20th / early-21st century economics. I'm going to skip the long summary and just try to paraphrase Harvey on global capitalism as of 2006 (when the last edition came out.) Basically, the Right succeeded in deregulating every market in the world over the last thirty years in search of places to invest all of the insane profits the rich have managed to squeeze out of, well, everyone else. Not since the nineteenth century has there been such a wealth disparity between the top of the heap and, literally, the rest (the stats I remember off the top of my head are that 1 billion people live on a dollar a day, another 2 billion on about two dollars a day, while CEOs have never received such high salaries and bonuses, ever.) So capital needed a place to go, and it opened up every "emerging" market it could find in the space of a few decades, slaughtering labor and health and safety regulations in the process.

The thing is, from the perspective of the US, opening markets for investment may have seemed desirable, but now "we're" reaping the results. "We" shipped everything we had overseas as fast as "we" could so that stocks would go up a few bucks for a few months. And no one that I've read in the mainstream press has ever said anything about FUCKING INCOMES and REAL COSTS OF LIVING. "Consumers" are just supposed to find new ways to borrow. It's insane.

The scary thing is that no one that I've read anywhere, in the leftist academic press or the mainstream economic press, has any solutions. "We" sold ourselves out so that Haliburton could make more money in Iraq and the hedge funds could bet against commodity markets in Africa, and here "we" are. The only sane thing to do is vote for whoever-the-fuck the democrats decide on in November and hope and pray that he or she pulls out of every actual war we're in and launches a full-scale assault on the hedge fund managers and the CEOs instead. But I'm not holding my breath.

And in the meantime, as of March, B and I are now spending 1075/month for this shoebox we live in...

Fuzzy and Aquatic

My homie L just paid us a quick visit, punctuated by chowder, amazing views of a very wavy post-storm Monterey Bay, and an up-close visit with a fuzzy creature of extreme* cuteness.



While we were on the wharf watching him, he dove down three separate times and returned with tasty morsels. Them otters, they like to eat.

My TA assignment is getting a little ridiculous, for both me and the students. I have 60 5-page papers, 60 map quizzes, and 60 normal quizzes to grade. They have four lengthy textbook chapters to read and all of the above papers and quizzes to write. I think I'm going to have a little pep talk in section with them tomorrow about how they should be wary of lower-division history classes; profs tend to bring the hammer down in a way they actuallydon't in upper-division ones.

Shoulder to the wheel....shoulder to the wheel....shoulder to the wheel...

In other boring news, I'm kind of stuck on my field statement. I wrote all the stuff I can write without reading more books. So now I have to read more books. I think I'll try to figure out a way into tricking my brain into thinking that I'm having fun, maybe by taking up a powerful hallucinogenic drug habit.

* Extreme like paragliding down a tundra glacier with a jet-powered jet ski while pounding Mountain Dew.

Grad Schizophrenia

A brief psychological profile, following a typical chat/bitch-session with K:

The grad in humanities is fundamentally schizophrenic. He or she knows better than anyone else how little he or she actually knows about the literature, the languages, the theories, everything else. He or she knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that he or she is a hack. Likewise, there is always the ambient terror of being found out; what if, at a conference or something, a venerable powerhouse in the field asks that dreaded question that reveals what a complete phony he or she really is?!* Ignominy, shame, degradation, and finally the sweet, sweet release of death.

On the other hand, the humanities grad is a self-important egotist. That's RIGHT! I got a 710/680/6-out-of-6 on my GRE! That's RIGHT! I'm a motherfucking PHD student! That's RIGHT! I (kind of) know a whole other LANGUAGE! I was praised for my "work" by a knowledgeable professor! I have been told by those-in-the-know that my research is PROMISING! I have beat the odds, I have been accepted to full-on graduate programs at full-on accredited research universities. I get money for reading books, bitches, and I plan on keeping that pattern going until I'm dead.

I think it's the tension between those two identities, and the fact that they're both completely heartfelt, that makes this such a weird business to be in. It's confusing to be equal parts fraud and self-proclaimed genius, and it's even harder to have any realistic perspective on it when most of the people you spend your time with are just like you.

* "Could you please write that in Chinese for us?" "But what about the findings of the following major authors you've never even heard of?" "But hasn't that already been argued by so-and-so?" To say nothing of the dreaded "So what?"

If I Could Do It All Again

Here are some subjects that would have been interesting that I could never do now:

1. Early Icelandic and Norse history, based on the sagas and the extensive contacts between the Norse and pretty much everyone else in the entire western Eurasian world.
   
2. Central Asian history, particularly all of the contacts between Buddhist and Islamic groups and cultures over the centuries in what is now the -stans (i.e. Kazakhstan, Tajikstan, etc.)
   
3. The independence movements of nineteenth-century Latin America.
   
4. The cultures of Pacific sailors over the last few centuries, particularly in the points of contact between the sailors of different regions or nations.
   
5. The cult of the Assassins under Hassan I Sabbah in what is now northern Iran in the tenth century.
   
6. History of ninjas. I've never figured out why my (two) friends who do Japanese history won't take this up.
   
7. The intellectual history of free market ideology in the US.
   

Here are some I could still do eventually:

1. The history of atheism in eighteenth-century France.
   
2. A cultural history of casual violence before and after the French Revolution.
   
3. Why Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best video game.
   

I hate Tuesdays. Stupid 6:00pm discussion section.

On an unrelated note: I have been producing superhuman amounts of mucous. I'm serious. I took an ungodly amount of pseudophedrine today, washed down with a few pints of black coffee, and it just barely cut the misery.

With the Snotty

I'm back from a weekend carrying two kids around on my back. It went exactly as planned and expected: it was fun, it was incredibly tiring, and I got a cold. Now I'm trying to figure out how to plan my day such that I produce more field statement verbiage, get groceries, and most importantly, get powerful drugs that will clear my air-passages.

B got me the first season of Flight of the Conchords for V-tine's day, along with a copy of Kitchen Confidential, which I'm reading several years after everyone else did. I now have the option to ingest good media when I'm not grad-studenting.

Also, she's been busy on her blog lately.

Various thoughts have occurred to me over the past few days, but my big one is just that we could all do with a week locked in separate cabins about now. We'd all return refreshed and ready to turn this February 2008 out something serious. Instead, we'll just keep plodding along like big weird bovines.

Advice For the Fellas

Guys, you totally do need to buy your lady flowers today. That's just how it works.

P.S. I guess you don't have to if you're one of those couples that mutually chooses to hate on V-tine's Day. But you better be damn sure she isn't harboring residual wanting of flowers. Err on the side of caution, dude.

P.P.S. Unrelated note: D+D went awesome last night.

P.P.P.S. Miller High Life is the champagne of beers!

This Again

Well, it's hot and sunny in February again, like it was all last winter. It's been about a week and a half of nonstop sunshine, kids walking around in shorts and sandals, muggy bus-rides to and from campus, the works. The state managed to soak up enough moisture during the January - early February monsoon that I'm lacking my characteristic paranoia about water-levels in the snowpack and resevoirs, but I've recaptured my equally characteristic misanthropic sourness at seeing all of the doofy 19 year olds walking around like they're in a commercial for Disney World.

This is officially the term from hell for my entire cohort. We're all right at our outer limit of workload possibility. Here's how it's all going down:

• Everyone is madly scrambling to finish (or, as the case may be, start) their MA papers.
  
• K and I have our QEs very, very soon.
  
• The ABD kids are nowhere to be seen.
  
• The cohort itself is sort of pulled apart by centrifugal work-forces.
  
• We can't get no satisfaction.
  
• The stark reality of death makes a mockery of our meager dreams and aspirations.
  

On the up side, my niece and nephew are coming down from Oregon this weekend, so I'll go get in some uncle/human jungle gym action this weekend and drink beers with B and her dad. Always fun.