there ought to be a law...

What kind of adult intentionally deceives a kid into believing that the adult is a peer so that the adult can coax the kid to let down his or her guard, share secrets, and form attachments with the persona the adult has created? One answer which springs to mind readily is "the creepy kind who has to register with police."

So why is it that the case of Lori Drew participating in the creation of an online identity for exactly the purpose of deceiving 13 year old Megan Meier into believing this identity belonged to a same aged peer isn't being discussed in that light?

Over and above, or perhaps under and throughout, the more widely discussed themes of internet bullying, there is the characterization of Drew's behavior as a deliberate pattern of kid stalking.

While internet bullying is troubling (absence of certain channels in the interaction leads to a reduced immediate accountability load), I can't help feeling there's something about the term which implies some level of equality among the players and which, moreover, seems to invite a sort of "kids will be kids/people can be cruel but is it right to try to legislate good manners?" argument. Perhaps for those reasons I bristle at the treatment Drew's behavior has gotten, the bullying "issues" it has apparently raised, again.

This was more than bullying. Lori Drew engaged in a deliberate process of intentionally deceiving a minor into believing she was communicating with a peer, a peer the minor clearly had romantic interest in. It's not like Drew created a profile and Megan stumbled upon it, or Drew was pretending to be a kid for some reason independent of luring in a minor, or Drew created a female profile. No. Drew put out bait for Megan. Drew used the profile of a cute boy who said nice things to an insecure 13 year old presumably (because face it, big main stream presumptions of het until proven otherwise) straight girl. Lori Drew carried on this behavior, communicating with Megan, pretending to be a 13 year old the whole time. Lori Drew was part of making the Megan bait profile available and letting others use it to communicate with Megan. She pretty much pimped the profile.

Such deliberate deception of a minor, with such striking predatory overtones seems like it is something law enforcement should consider illegal or at least suspicious behavior. What I've seen in the news reports on Lori Drew's victimizing of Megan Meier is that there are no laws which apply here.

Should there be a law?

Arguably in many situations there is an assumed right to engage in pretense, online and in general. All of us engage in some level of it, to greater and lesser degrees and for better or worse reasons. And yes, some people will want to pretend to be younger than they are and while I personally think that sort of thing is deceptive and, well, lame, it doesn't take a degrees in legal ethics or criminal law to see that a 50 year old woman fudging facts by 5 or so years on her (adult) singles dating profile is a universe away from a 30-something year old woman pretending to be a minor for the purposes of initiating contact and carrying on a damaging relationship with a minor.

Is it just me or doesn't it seem like that sort of intentional, deliberate deception of a child should be, if not illegal, then at least cause for the FBI to seize your shit and comb through it looking for kiddie porn and the like. To me, it's the equivalent of hanging around the edge of the school yard luring kids over with candy and the like.

More grading...

Not exactly "grading" in that I'm not assigning grades at the moment. I'm "reviewing", where my linguistic training and the knowledge endowment from English teacher parents makes it impossible for me to leave a dangling participle...well, dangling.

Hence, more toys. These allow me to stay at the computer and not get sucked into something truly rewarding while providing enough distraction to keep what's left of my sanity somewhat intact.
(this applet is so cool it's now permanently on the footer of the blog)














Created by Anu Garg.

I feel like I should dedicate this post to my sister, for whom spirograph was a beautiful childhood obsession.

word of the day

Sausage Fest - n. - from "sausage festival". (humorous) Coined to describe situations where there are disproportionately more males than females, or where male presence and/or contribution is over-represented. This forum is a god damned sausage fest!

Title

Here's something that I recently discovered I have strong feelings about. It's the use of the word "entitle" to mean "title" or "name". It bugs the bejeezus out of me. Although it pains me nearly physically to do so, let me give some examples of the use of which I speak:
- "Entitle a single appendix APPENDIX, typed in all caps; multiple appendices should be titled and ordered alphabetically: APPENDIX A, APPENDIX B, etc."
(MBA Style Guide)
- "Dr. Thompson's talk was entitled Fire in the Mind."
(Colorado State Science Fair)
- "Readers' Responses to the Webcast Video Editorial Entitled 'A Healthcare System That Works'"
(MedScape General Medicine (MedGenMed))
(bold lettering and italics above are not mine)

I've spent some time thinking about this tonight. What is it about this use that I find so problematic? I'm not a prescriptivist. I'm a grammatical and linguistic pragmatist, for the most part. It's not that I believe "entitle" is ungrammatical (it's not). Even if it were, grammaticality alone is not grounds for me to dislike a use so intensely. There's some nuance here which is eating at me. And no, it's not the similarity to the other, more common meaning of "entitled".

While I can't fully see the details of what bugs me, here's the gist. If "entitle" means to give a name to, or more simply to name, then it should be synonymous with "title", right? Then why use the prefix form? Maybe in a diachronic view, "en" + "title" could be considered the correct form, or the more correct form. It's certainly plausible that somewhere along the line someone felt it was more proper to use a Latin/Frenchy form to express the event of titling rather than rely on some good old fashioned conversion. But this isn't Latin or French. It's English. And the usually quite linguistically myopic native speakers of modern English are more than happy to noun our verbs and verb our nouns quicker than you can say "zero derivation". It would seem that "entitle(d)" ranks up there with "enthrone" and "besmirch(ed)" (which, like "entitle(d)", seems to appear more often in the passive voice) for screwy archaic forms. Except "enthrone" and "besmirch" don't have easily found and high frequency synonyms while "entitle" sure as hell does.

weather, or not

It's almost December. In the past week, it has snowed, it has rained, it has frosted and frozen onto my car. I think it's even freezing rained.

Yesterday between periods of cold rain, all the tree between here and campus released their remaining leaves all at once, as if winter had come upon them - shivering and rolling its eyes - brandishing a gun and screaming "Ok everybody, drop the leaves! I SAID DROP THEM! DROP THEM RIGHT NOW GOD DAMN IT!!!!"

And today's high is 57.

Me and my joints, not to mention the trees, are getting mighty sick of this shit.

Off by about three months

Yep, that sounds right. Except the preppy (and put together) part.

You Should Be A Capricorn

What's good about you: hard working and ambitious, you're practically a guaranteed success What's bad about you: you can be unforgiving toward people who fail you In love: you're very picky, but extremely devoted to the one you choose In friendship, you're: likely to be a good friend but expect a lot in return Your ideal job: rock climber, sculptor, or practitioner of black magic Your sense of fashion: preppy and put together You like to pig out on: meat and potatoes

What Sign Should You Be?

am I 5?

I just ate a whole shit load of peanut M&Ms and now my stomach hurts, and I have a sugar rush so I'm blogging about it because A___ is grading and I am sitting here for once with nothing to do (I am done!!!....for now).

And I can't help wondering, am I like 5 years old or something? What 36 year old woman actually eats so many M&Ms that she gives herself a tummy ache?

Me. I do.

Well we all have our faults. I just happen to have ALL of mine plus a few I borrowed from a kindergartener as well.

On the plus side, I discovered that diaper pails make good kitty litter-leavings disposal receptacles. The diaper genie, in particular, works pretty darned well. Max (my cat) has had some digestive issues for a while now which got worse again about a month ago. This meant, among other things, I found myself needing to scoop his box more frequently. Like four to five times a day.

I can't flush it on account of the plumbing in the old house my apartment's in, so I scoop into grocery store plastic bags (damn stop and shop bags, there's a hole in every 2 out of 3). During Max's period of increased box use, I found myself trying to conserve bags by double scooping in one bag. This was disgusting for many reasons I don't think I need to go into. Then I remembered my friend cjblue telling me about this diaper thing which wraps up each individual diaper and then drops it down into the pail so you can toss another one in on top, wrap it, drop it, and keep going. It's great because it keeps the smell mostly shut in the container and I'm pretty sure I'm going through less plastic per scoop, which is good. Aside from few minor drawbacks involving the first one or two disposals in the pail (it apparently needs a bit of ballast to work properly) and a slightly less efficient but a hell of a lot more effective need to first scoop into a brown paper bag (lunch bags...ew), this thing is excellent.

I was feeling all smart and proud of myself for having found a good solution to the cat box scenario until I went on autopilot tonight after finishing my grading and ate all those fucking M&Ms while watching The Office webisodes.

Oh Shit. Sugar crash time.

Inflation

No, this isn't about the cost of gas, utilities, housing, or dairy products. It's about grades at university. I'm thinking about it as I finish my round of grading the most recent assignment from my students. I'm teaching a writing intensive section, which means by university policy that if a student doesn't pass the writing component, that student fails the course.

This ups the ante in what is already the high stakes, high pressure grading scenario at the college level. Each semester, I find myself engaging in a process of lowering my standards in what I consider not only A work but passing work. So both ends of my scale fluctuate in a way which widens the range of passable and good work such that it encompasses products which I do honestly feel are substandard.

Why do I waffle so? One reason is that I suspect my standards are not commensurate with the level of work students at my university typically produce. All the talk about how we have a larger number of high quality students simply doesn't add up when I take informal stock of the overall level of work my students produce. This spans semesters and years and different courses I've taught. This holds true across my colleagues and peers too. Because I am by nature a relativist, I tend to adjust my scale to accommodate what seems to be the norm here. That is, what to me is B or C level work apparently at my university warrants at least a full letter grade higher in the final accounting.

Another reason is that even in the cases where there is no reasonable basis for awarding the higher grade, I have had students complain, insist, wheedle, flame, contest, and confront about the grade they earned. One such student brought her belief that she had received an unfairly low grade all the way to the head of undergraduate studies for my department last spring. The course had ended four months prior. She missed the final, she turned in a fragmented final essay, she had missed a good deal of class at the end, and had missed a writing assignment mid way through (which despite my giving her the entire rest of the semester to make up on account of me being a really nice person she never did make up). The grade I gave her, a low B, was charitable. Her basis for contesting her grade was that she thought I hadn't taken all her work into account when I awarded her final grade. This was nonsense, but is one of the few legitimate bases for contesting a grade. The head of undergrad studies was sympathetic to my situation as an instructor, but suggested that I look over her work and my records anyhow to see if I had missed anything. I managed to give her a slight boost, to a full B, after bumping up her participation grade (which had been moderate, a reflection of her missing so many class meetings at the end of the semester) and allowing her to make up the final (she did poorly on it, not a surprise since it had been four months since the class ended). Again, that was charitable and not at all the grade her work had earned, but at that point I just wanted her off my case.

She was disappointed, but thankfully she did not proceed further with the grade contesting request.

I was truly appalled that the undergrad studies director had not been more strict with her from the get go. He sends out emails once a semester reminding grad student instructors of the policy on grades and grade contesting. Belief that the grade was miscalculated or that the instructor missed or didn't count significant work on the part of the student are the only legitimate reasons to change a grade after it's been submitted, and yet here he was encouraging me to go on a fishing expedition to find some way to elevate a grade which was already somewhat inflated.

I know I am not the only one (cf. "A's for Everyone!"). I know that this happens with other instructors at other universities. Still, although I don't want to be part of this trend, it is incredibly difficult to work against that aspect of the system.

How are instructors ever to feel confident assigning the grade student work has earned when even the instructors' own departments seem to falter in support of stated grade policies? I know I feel a hell of a lot less confident now.

And so here I am, nearly done reviewing these papers. I saved what I figured would be the most tricky ones for last so I could at least grade them with the lowest possible standards (that is, standards relative to what was most likely to be the best or typical work of their peers on this assignment, which I had started with). I'm looking them over and thinking "Ok, on a non-relative scale this thing deserves a C, tops..." but I know for at least some of these students, the amount of effort they have put into the assignment is what they expect to be graded on. And I know for my more tricky students, that is, the ones who I've already identified as having problems with the topic or the manner of writing about it, there has been a reasonably high level of effort involved in getting the assignment done.

So...here I am wondering not just do I inflate but by how much? How much can I justify before I feel like an academic whore, pimped by the university and my department, here simply to at least minimally gratify the majority of my students?

PFG needs (2)

My god some of these are frighteningly accurate...

PFG needs a generic re-post action
(ok not that one)

PFG needs a girlfriend
(not my thing, strictly speaking, but in a more general sense, couldn't we all use more love and understanding?)

PFG needs the volume throughput to maintain the economies of scale
(yeah)

PFG needs some psychological help
(yeah)

PFG needs to change her name
(Petite Flower Goddess Who Is Kind and Sweet and Fair but Who Does Have a Somewhat Short Temper?)

PFG needs another expensive pleco
(Er...)

PFG needs broadband
(No, I need broaderband)

PFG needs a good shot in the arm
PFG needs to constantly adapt in order to stay ahead
(so true)

slope

One holiday down, one to go. It was great to see my brother and sister. So great I managed to only blow up and act like a douchebag one time. Aside from that, it was great. The food was good, company was nice, and Skeletor was a big hit, as was this little number.


The end of my Fall Break means it's time to go back to work, and I approach work with a toxic mixture of trepidation and irritation these days. It's the close of a semester, always a crazy time. This one will be especially complicatedly crazy. I go back to an ambiguous relationship with my advisor, who has probably forgotten again that we have twice had the difficult but open and useful discussion in which I tell her where I think the faculty can stick their lip service to making medical accommodations and this PhD (nicely of course). Also waiting for me are some truly unpleasant discussions with various mid level administrators in my program as part of my effort to at least leave gracefully. And in the meantime there is grading and tonight there is an inbox stuffed with emails from a particularly annoying student, Princess.

I'm having a hard time feeling enthusiastic about work right now.

chip

I'm listening to my fella chip the ice off our cars. I just sat back down after a big fat cleaning fit. The place looks good, except for the kitchen which will soon be the site of pie making and food prep so I figured why bother with the heavy cleaning in advance? I've graded all but four papers from my students, alternately horrified and delighted by their writing. And now it's time to relax for a bit, clean myself up, eat, and then go pick up the siblings from the train station an hour up the interstate.

I know it's late November, but still it was something of a shock to wake up to find white stuff dusting the ground, the bushes, and the mostly bare tree branches. Oh and the cars. I looked at the weather... "Ice Pellets" is on the menu for today. That and black ice, freezing drizzle, and fog. Yeah, I guess it's winter.

I fell asleep in pain and woke up in pain, so this was a lot of work to get done on top of that and despite the fact that I pulled some muscle or something in my shoulder vacuuming, I feel like I got a hell of a lot accomplished. I'm still not used to the fact that my body and my mind are not exactly on the best of terms. When I can manage to get a lot of shit done in one day, it makes me happy. I'm looking forward to resting this evening, watching movies, and eating. We still have the drive up in not great weather but we'll take it slow.

turn out

Hate crimes rose 8 percent in 2006
By Michael J. Sniffen, AP Writer
WASHINGTON - Hate crime incidents rose nearly 8 percent last year, the FBI reported Monday, as civil rights advocates increasingly take to the streets to protest what they call official indifference to intimidation and attacks against blacks and other minorities.

Police across the nation reported 7,722 criminal incidents in 2006 targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability. That was up 7.8 percent from 7,163 incidents reported in 2005.

I read this and I am satisfied that there is visible outrage. There damned well should be. But I also immediately wonder where the outrage is over the numbers 358,220 and 38.5.

The first is the number the US Department of Justice 2005 personal crimes report gives for women who were victims of rape* or sexual assault** in 2005. The second, again, from the US Department of Justice, is the percent of women who reported an incident or threat of rape, sexual assault to the police.

Yes, there are Take Back the Night Rallies every spring - often on campuses or in university-heavy cities. But that's a bunch of feminists, right? And feminism is considered a political stance, not an attitude encompassing basic human rights. Where's the basic outrage and anger over the victimization of women? Seriously. Where the fuck is it?



For the data/methods interested folks out there, here's the methods for the 2005 survey

And from that document, we get the following definitions:
* Rape = Forced sexual intercourse including both psychological coercion as well as physical force. Forced sexual intercourse means vaginal, anal or oral penetration by the offender(s). This category also includes incidents where the penetration is from a foreign object such as a bottle. Includes attempted rapes, male as well as female victims and both heterosexual and homosexual rape. Attempted rape includes verbal threats of rape.

**Sexual assault = A wide range of victimizations, separate from rape or attempted rape. These crimes include attacks or attempted attacks generally involving unwanted sexual contact between victim and offender. Sexual assaults may or may not involve force and include such things as grabbing or fondling. Sexual assault also includes verbal threats.

"Promotions"

The studios have defined the streaming of films and TV shows as promotion, not programming. (LA Times Patrick Goldstein)



It kind of makes you wonder if streamed content constitutes "promotion" (rather than "show"), what is it that's being promoted? Shows? The network? Whatever product is being pimped 5 or 6 times a "promotion" (have you had your "white moment"? I am asked repeatedly by a totally surreal and fucked up ad which provides regular bathroom breaks in my viewing of an online "promotion" I watch regularly).

I haven't had cable or receivable TV in years, god something like 8 now. Then I discovered that some decent shows are on DVD. I rented them. Then they appeared on iTunes. I tried out a few, and the ones I liked I subscribed to. Now many of these shows are available as streams at network sites. ABC's player is better than NBC's btw. So now I watch 3 shows from NBC, 2 ABC shows, and one Fox show routinely, all online.

Although what is shown in the streaming version is identical to the show I would get were I to watch on TV, the networks would like us to consider this media "promotional", which appellation they believe absolves them of needing to compensate the writers for the work.

What a load of shit.

Texas?

I'm so supposed to be grading....

psych-o

My sister was asking me whether my university has the StanfordPrisonExpDocumentary (as opposed to this potential movie on the topic). They do and I am now wondering why we don't make a point of showing this footage to our students.
I'm not sure if the clip below is from the movie.

Pumpkin soup

I just made pumpkin soup and holy crap it's yummy. And pretty damned easy too. It's an adaptation of the recipes I found by googling "pumpkin soup recipe".
One small to medium onion
1/2 stick of celery
One peeled carrot
One potato
1/2 inch of peeled fresh ginger root*
2 cans of chicken broth (low sodium is better b/c the non-low Na has like a whole salt lick in it)
1 can pureed pumpkin (the pie stuff is fine providing it's not seasoned already)
1 crushed clove of garlic
A dash of ground cayenne pepper
Black pepper
A dash of nutmeg
1 bay leaf
Parsley
A very tiny amount of ground cinnamon
4 Tbsp butter
~ 1 cup of light cream

Melt butter in a large saucepan/pot. Add diced veggies, garlic, and seasoning and sautee until slightly tender. Pour in about 3 cups of chicken broth. Bring to a boil then turn down to simmer for about 5 to 10 minutes. Remove from heat and puree in a blender or food processor (we used an immersion blender right in the pot, worked just fine but wear an oven mitt because that broth gets hot). Stir in pumpkin, cover, bring to a boil then let it simmer for about 10 minutes on a very low heat, stirring occasionally (again, the oven mitt is necessary). Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Add cream and heat through on low heat.

I added a splash of cider too since (a) I had it and (b) my fella salted it up a lot and I figured the sweetness of the cider would help cut that somewhat.

* You can probably use dried ground ginger instead, although I'm not sure what the fresh to dried equivalent would be.

long week

It's saturday after a long week, before a long week. Extra long in fact since next week is thanksgiving. I need groceries, for the short and long term, but I don't even want to drive past the supermarket. Once when I was younger, married and living in Michigan, I went grocery shopping the weekend before thanksgiving. Standing in a line which moved slightly faster than grass grows, I vowed never ever to make that exact same mistake again. I didn't. Instead, I ended up going grocery shopping the wednesday before thanksgiving some years back.

This year, I am going mid-morning monday. I am hopeful that the swarms of holiday food shoppers who adopt the manners of petulant sharks will all still be at work.

However, it's saturday after a long week and I am already nearly out of coffee.

Tuesday poetry

Tom Waits sings Tom Waits and K.D. Lang sings Leonard Cohen

When a Bear Isn't

Let's try an experiment. Take a moment to imagine a big white bear. Got it? Ok, now that you've got it, I need to ask that while you are reading the following post, you try not to think of the white bear. Any time you do think about it, you should tap your left index finger.





Where to start. My weekend was not good. My fella's family doing an early thanksgiving because fella's sister and brother in law and new their new baby were in town. It's the first time I've met this sister and her husband, who are very important to my fella. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to like them. I wanted them to like me.

Maybe I should start with the The Card Game Which Wouldn't End on Friday night. That was most of the family, minus more local brother and his wife. Father was drinking. He gets a little competitive when playing games. He has made the now wife of my fella's brother cry. Me? He pissed me off. And I don't have a poker face, voice, brain, or mouth.

Saturday brought something like an apology from him. "Will you forgive me for being belligerent?" my fella's dad said to me with a pouty face and in what I was a little aghast to realize was slightly baby-voiced speech. I wanted to say "If you're apologizing for acting like a child, it'd help me feel a whole lot better about it if you said it like an adult." But while this was honest, it felt shitty. Instead I hemmed and hawed a bit and finally I settled on "I just thought you were drunk," which in retrospect was probably not exactly polite but I respected the guy too much to try to hand him some insincere bullshit. The apology came in front of several other family members so I couldn't have the open discussion with him which I'd like to have had. The one which would have started with me saying "Yeah that was a little weird..." and which would have hopefully ended with us agreeing amicably just not to play cards again so no one's style has be to seriously crimped. Or to have a safety word or something.

Fella's father went to bed early that night.

And then came Sunday.

Sunday I had what I am recognizing as a "pfg's greatest hits" fight. I've had it now with at least one social group at each stage of my life. This fight has happened with my family, friends, lovers, friends of lovers, and family of friends. It's the "I don't want to watch Freddy Krueger/Hannibal Lecter/most of the Quentin Tarantino collection" fight. Why a fight? Fuck if I know. It always starts out simply and I'd guess innocently enough. Someone suggests, shows up with, or goes out and rents a movie for a group which includes me. Since it's meant to be for group viewing, and making my usual assumptions that group members have a say about what the group's going to do during group decision time, I say something like "I really can't watch movies with over the top violence..." I often say it with some degree of self recrimination or chagrin, a tone of apology because I know that people don't like to have their video recommendations dissed.

Aside from the largely unavoidable tone, I have tried different ways of saying it. I've tried different word choices in expressing this. The repeat nature of the arguments my sentiment provokes has taught me what apparently doesn't work. I'm still looking for what does.
Here's what doesn't:
"No no, it's me. I mean, I don't think that (insert title of movie, e.g. Pulp Fiction) is a bad movie. I know it got good reviews, and if it's not death, dismemberment, rape, torture, and the like from start to finish and if you've seen it and can let me know when not to watch, I'm ok with watching it because I have heard it's good"
"Does anyone get a finger cut off?"
"A lot?"
"Does anyone eat a body part?"
"A lot?"
"Hey I'm not saying you guys can't watch it."
"If it's open for discussion, I mean, if it has to be something we'll all watch, can I just vote we not get it, at least not tonight?"
"Look, can we just not make a big deal about this?"
" Can we not have a fight over this? If you really want to see that tonight, I can do something else for a while..."

When dealing with this topic, I've even gone so far as to explain (to people I have some established reason to believe I am close to and who therefore should give a shit) what watching such movies does to me. As a matter of fact, I had had this conversation with my fella's dad on Wednesday night (we were over there a lot this week on account of the family thing). The topic happened to come up totally out of the blue and I thought "Aha, this is a good time to let him know I can't watch that sort of thing". I see it as like letting someone know you're allergic to peanuts. You might not tell them right away, but if the topic of peanuts or food or allergies comes up at some point and if you happen to have this allergy, you'd be stupid to not mention it then.

I do sometimes find people who don't take deep personal offense when I express my desire not to expose myself to this stuff. Being agreeable about it is different from "taking my side" - which in fact I find I genuinely don't like. "Taking my side" only perpetuates any possible (and likely) contention the whole issue is causing. My statement and the "side takers" who chimed in after created a terrible fight at a friend's place many years ago. That episode ended by me giving in because I wrongly accepted responsibility for making a scene, harshing a scene, or otherwise fucking up everyone's plans. I think I felt that continuing to try to negotiate a reasonable activity which did not include this movie would have necessarily meant continuing the extremely unpleasant argument about banning all things nasty and violent, ever, for everyone. I'm older now and I make a point of not letting that happen anymore. That is, I try to own my shit but not anyone else's. And I'd rather leave and create a social tear than stay and fill my head up with that fucked up shit which will bother me for YEARS.

This weekend the topic of one of Tarantino's latest projects came up - as raised by my fella's brother and brother in law, who had come back to the 'rents' house with the movie Saturday night. I was not quiet or demure about my feelings and intentions for MYSELF on the movie that evening. I was clear and upfront about it. And I thought "hey I talked to my fella's dad about it and he seemed to get it", which gave me some reassurance that I could at least assume he wouldn't get on my (or someone else's) case about it.

The movie was not watched Saturday night, rather, when my fella and I got to the 'rents' house Sunday afternoon, father, brother, and brother in law told us they had watched it that morning. Then began the retellings. My not watching this shit ban (for me, personally) extends to not wanting to hear retellings. If I am going to go through all that social fuckery to AVOID seeing this shit, why the hell would I want to hear about it second hand? If I could deal, I'd just watch the damned thing and not risk what is seen as a totally unacceptable fuss in expressing my desire not to see it in the first place.

I have come to totally dread this discussion. It touches on issues of my own abuse implicitly, whether or not I choose to explicitly involve them. Needless to say, I find it extremely difficult to navigate a tricky social interaction when a good chunk of my brain is trying very hard to suppress some quite unpleasant thoughts.

So the retellings..."It was totally disgusting," fella's dad declared. Ok. I'm with ya. Totally disgusting. Sure. I had just taken off my shoes in the other room, put down my purse, hung up my coat. Brother chimed in with "No way, it was awesome!" he went on saying something unintelligible or possibly just unmemorable because around that same time, just after brother in law also started talking about the movie, I turned to my fella and said "I really don't want to hear this, I'm going outside," and started putting my shoes back on.

My fella spoke to them while I was putting on my shoes. I heard him say something like "She really doesn't like those movies guys...can you not talk about it?" and then heard him say "Ok well we're going outside, you can talk about it while we're out." When we came back in, we played a game of cards with one of fella's sisters. The other men watched various football games in the living room. Topics like Hustler and Ann Coulter came up. I mention this I suppose because I think the lack of disagreement as a result of these topics demonstrates that I wasn't just looking for a fight. I just wanted to get through family time, enjoy what was enjoyable and not get ruffled or ruffle anyone over the rest.

Then Pulp Fiction came up. "Lollipop. That's what Bruce Willis' character called his girlfriend in Pulp Fiction" my fella's sister said. We were playing cards at the dining room table while father and brother sat swallowed up by sofas in the living room when she said it to the group as a whole. Fella's brother in law was sitting at the end of the dining room table where sister, fella and I were playing cards. Brother in law was dividing his attention between looking up scores for other football games on a laptop and watching the TV which brother and father of fella had begun switching between several games.

At the Pulp Fiction reference, I shifted a bit. Shit. More Tarantino movies, I thought with some concern. I didn't say anything then though because sometimes it doesn't go there and why preemptively go there anyhow? I wanted to avoid coming across as unreasonable.
"I didn't see it..." I offered conversationally.
"Yeah, I took my mom to see it" sister said, most of her attention still on the card game.
"You took your mom?" we heard father's voice chuckling from the sofa (her mom is his first wife)
"I've never seen it because I didn't want to see it." I said.
"She didn't like it" sister said and went on a bit about what her mother couldn't watch. Now details of the movie were starting to come out. And now the details of the conversation for me become less specific*.

Brother or father or brother in law said something about "...that scene where they inject the...into the heart...."
And I said "You know guys, I didn't see it for a reason."
The conversation continued, but without graphic details for a few turns.
Then sister said "She got up and left after..."
"Hey, guys. If I'd wanted to know about it, I'd have seen the movie" I said, slightly louder.
Father and sister had some conversation about the first wife's reaction. Everyone's attention was divided, except mine. I had my cards in front of me but they were little better than polite props.
And then someone said something about "the rape scene"
It may have been brother in law. Or it may have been someone else and then brother in law was expanding on that. Regardless, it was soon after "rape scene" and to the brother in law that I said, loudly "I say for a THIRD TIME, IF I HAD WANTED TO KNOW I'D HAVE WATCHED IT."

Brother in law looked up, searching my face for the sarcasm cue my tone hadn't held. I felt hot and I know I was flushed. I have some idea what I look like when I'm feeling that pissed off. In turn, he looked the way someone would look if the refrigerator suddenly started doing The Chicken Polka, just totally caught off guard. I felt bad for that.

Then father said "So I can't talk about movies in my own house?"
Shit. Maybe I needed an analogy I thought. "No, but it's like, how about if I came into your house and lit up a cigarette**? You wouldn't like it, right?"
"Right, so if I'm in YOUR house, I won't talk about this."

A moment later I was putting on my shoes. I was thinking maybe I'd go outside for a smoke, walk it off...but I was also thinking "this just isn't getting any better. This is bullshit. I don't need this. Not again." and I was thinking "This is worse than the booze fueled Card Game Which Wouldn't End but now, unlike then, it's still light out. I can get in that car and drive home.."
And the keys were in my hand as I walked out the door. Brother called after me "Are you going out?"
"No, how about I'm just going?" I said.
And I left.

For which I now suck the most of anyone ever in my fella's family. Which really is nothing compared to how I feel about myself for so many things.

* There are actual terms for this shit. "Intrusive thoughts" being a good one if you want to look it up on Google Scholar or some such.
** Since it was lost on most of my fella's family, I feel the need to expand on the analogy. My smoking is to his house as his descriptions of violent imagery is to my head.

How's that not thinking of the bear thing going for you? Did you forget about it? If you're like most people, you didn't (unless my story of family drama was that compelling). Try going back and re-read the post, but this time know that it's ok if the white bear prowls through your head while you're reading. No biggie. Just a bear. It's not like a graphic rape scene.

Drink, drank....

I don't like the holiday drunks. I do not find them cheerful or jolly. More often, I find them irritating, sometimes amusing in a "Laughing at you not with you" way, but never ever endearing.

Why bring this up now? Because my fella's family is doing an early Thanksgiving this weekend. This means drinking, and drinking apparently means drunk.

Got A.P.?

What the hell are they doing in AP English these days anyhow? One of the worst writing examples I got so far this semester is from a student who told me "...I took AP English". Was it a confession? An abdication of responsibility? An unexpected but welcome acknowledgment of the hypocrisy of western education? An excuse? An incantation?

Maybe it was a reassurance, for the student that is. As in "I know I'm not a bad writer, I took AP English, after all."

As I look over another draft, my is head pounding from lack of sleep after meeting with this student's group for two hours last night. After the group meeting was over, I met with him for about an hour in one of those unplanned meetings. I found myself wanting to write sarcastically to these students who do such things....No, please don't respond to my emails about this. Wait several days to see me in person, then hit me up just when I think I might finally get to add to the total 10 hour food intake of two chocolate chip minimuffins. I will be sure to be in an excellent mood and I will happily reexplain everything to you, tell you which emails you should have read, and give you extra days to do (or redo) the assignment because I am that awesome.

Hey guess what? I'm not. You're not supposed to stress this issue with your students, even though dealing with other people's limitations is a good thing to learn (so why not teach it to them?). I've found students think it's a threat if I say something like "Pestering about your grade puts me in a cranky mood, and I am grading papers today, so you don't want to put me in a cranky mood."

And so I didn't want to say anything like "hey man, I haven't eaten in many hours, I'm tired, and I'm super annoyed that you didn't reply to my emails but you're stopping me now. Given that, I'm going to be inclined to be uncharitable, and charity is what you're asking for" to the boy who sprung his last minute "can we talk about this" request on me after the two hour group meeting last night.
And so I let myself be sucked into the excruciating hour of going over the exact same issues I went over with him exactly one week ago (yes, a great way to spend time on Halloween evening).

During last night's impromptu discussion, I discovered that in addition to everything I have already obliquely ranted about above, the boy has not gone to the university's writing assistance center as I asked at our last meeting (nor has he even set up an appointment). My fella said "Of course not. The writing center is for stupid people."

I sit here looking over the boy's latest draft over this morning's minimuffins, trying to determine what feedback I can give which will better explain why reasoning of the type "X because X" is not ok even if it is stated in perfectly grammatical and stylistically impressive sentences* and the phrase "I took AP English" plays in my head, like a skipping track so I start talking back to it. "I took AP English!" it says. I reply "Yeah, you took AP English and you repeatedly use words 'additionally' and 'furthermore' to connect what are otherwise disparate concepts rather than do the work of relating them to one another..."

Lack of sleep, looming holidays, and some more hip problems over the last few weeks means re-reviewing a draft I spent a whole shit load of time going over in person only to see it still sucking in the very same ways it sucked before conspire to make me cranky. Additionally, (heh) there's something about the AP English statement which simply incites me in the context of a student who I can tell doesn't even read basic directions for assignments.


* It's so not. However, the sentences are sometimes grammatically impressive and stylistically correct. Unfortunately for my students, I find grammatically impressive sentences to be annoying.

Back to Beowulf?

The man who brought us Back to the Future and Forrest Gump directed Beowulf. Oh dear, I thought. I am truly done with the babyboomer aesthetic (if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch AI. Gorgeous and evocative but the evidence of this style, this sensibility, is smeared across parts of it like a hummus flecked thumb print).

I was ready to blow Beowulf off and seeing that Zemeckis is the director did very little to challenge my prejudice fueled decision. However, a couple of aspects caught my eye and now I'm interested again. Namely, Neil Gaiman shares screenplay credit. Anthony Hopkins is playing the king (the one whose all night parties pissed Grendel off, and pardon my detour but can you blame Grendel, really? If some fuck opened an all night meade hall just a stone's throw from your house, I'll bet there'd be nights when you'd be tempted to go in there and drag off thirty thanemen to prove a point...). Crispin Glover is Grendel, which is perfect. And in what seems to me a most unlikely but amusing casting choice, Angelina Jolie is Grendel's mother.

Ok, they definitely have my attention. Let's hope it's not a set up for a big disappointment.

1:00 AM poetry

Someone set the thermostat on my building's oil burner to 80 degrees. My apartment, being directly and immediately over the furnace, is mighty warm.

Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
-Robert Frost

Scarier in German?

Yeah baby, lick it!

Found on Forbes.com (and thanks to my fella for sending me the quote).
I provided some of the article for context.

Giuliani Is Asked His Conservative Views
By Sara Kugler
October 23, 2007 9:20 PM ET

Republican Rudy Giuliani declined Tuesday to tell a voter where he agrees and disagrees with conservative members of his party, saying it's about more than "just an ideology."

The former New York City mayor, who has made conservative Republicans nervous with some of his more liberal views - his support of abortion rights and gun control, for example - was asked pointedly at a town-hall-style meeting to outline where his views align with conservatives.
...
Giuliani ticked off his accomplishments as mayor, including his administration's 1995 zoning law that effectively closed adult entertainment shops or pushed them to the edges of many neighborhoods.

It is a part of his resume that he has been noting more frequently lately, and on Tuesday he suggested he alone cleaned up New York City's smutty reputation.

"I took a city that was known for pornography, and licked it, to a large extent," he said.

Snow miser

My little brother's doing better. He was down here this past weekend and I fed him so much he put on 5 pounds in 4 days. Excellent.

Life goes on. So do we.

I'm noticing searches for costume + Cold miser (or more properly known as "Snow Miser") have gotten this blog several hits in the past month or so.

I was the Snow Miser one year for halloween and apparently I mentioned that here. I feel bad for the people who come here looking...somewhere I have pictures. I've said this more than once, haven't I? And then I don't deliver. I have good intentions but bad follow through on that. This is (largely) because since I've lived in a series of apartments for the last 7 years and storage space is thus at a premium, my un-albumed prints tend to be packed away under or on top of things which would require strength and agility to negotiate. I admit to also finding myself thinking on at least one occasion while contemplating the pile of things which require strength and agility "Is this little bit of extra self absorption really worth possibly pulling a muscle, crushing a finger, dropping things on my head, or worse?"

It seems a big fat "NO" is a reasonable conclusion given the circumstances. And so the pictures stay un-posted. But I am ambitious and some would say an optimist (no really, a faculty member recently called me a regular god damned pollyanna...). So I'll at least consider trying to dig out some old halloween pictures to post. No promises though.

In the meantime or possibly instead, I've provided a YouTube Snow Miser/Heat Miser video clip from the movie, and below that is a (detailed) description of my snow miser costume in case you were considering a Heat Miser/Snow Miser costume (or set) this year yourself. It's pretty quick and not that expensive. Certainly no more than the bags o'costume you can pick up at those Halloween stores which spring up seasonally in the barely inhabited corners of strip malls everywhere. Or everywhere around here at least.




Truly, these "cartoons" are kind of creepy. Especially the little mini-snow miser chorus guys. Extra creepy. I went as the snow miser because the then-guy wanted to go as the heat miser and it just lent itself so easily to a couple costume. Oh the things we do for love...


Still, it was a fun costume and pretty quickly recognizable, especially if you go as a set. The costume below is clearly adaptable to a Heat Miser costume by substituting red, yellow/gold, and orange for the blue, white, and silver. This goes for makeup as well as for clothing. You should be able to pick up blue/white or red/orange/yellow cream makeup or face paint at most places which sell costume supplies (local drug stores out here have it seasonally on the halloween aisles). Obviously, if you're going to turn the costume below into a Heat Miser, don't go for the icicles and probably you should skip the boa and just plan to really go high and poky with your hair (with lots of cream makeup/hair-paint and that nasty, fumy colored hairspray they only sell at halloween).


What you'll need:
A long-ish long sleeved blue jersey (solid is best)
Blue gloves (borrowed or bought if you don't have any yet for winter)
Blue scarf (same)
White leggings, tights (if you want some kinda coochie grazing hoochie mamma Snow Miser get up), or sweats. I think I just wore black leggings. Not very accurate but boy was I comfy
Boots (whatever color, white if you want to match but any boot would work...so long as you can trick or treat or dance in them)
White cream face make up
Light concealer cream or base make up
Baby powder
Big powder puffy brush (at least, and possibly a slightly smaller one for eyes but if you're skilled, you can get away with sacrificing just one brush/puff)
Clear/white or silver glitter gel make up
Frosty blue eyeshadow or frosty blue powder makeup (cream will do in a pinch but I liked the powder over cream)
Enough white craft/marabou boa to fit around your head
At least 2 largish (>3" long) clear icicle ornaments

I didn't go for the straw hat...I suppose if you really want one you can probably get your hands on one at your local GOP elections headquarters.

Clothing: Cut a zig-zag pattern along the edge of the hem, sleeves, and neck of the jersey. If you cut too low on the neck, you can wear a t-shirt or tank top under it. Too high on the hem is why I wore leggings. Try not to go too high or you'll end up with a snow miser baby tee. You can avoid all that by trying it on and marking with some pins or chalk (inside out if you're going to do the chalk thing) but this takes all the fun guessing out of it.
The other clothing items are self explanatory I hope.

Makeup: Mix some white face makeup into the very light liquid concealer or very light cream base/foundation makeup. You can go with straight white face but I think it makes me look like a clown, which is not the effect we're going for here. We want pale and cold. Plan to whiten up a bit with the powder too, so your base doesn't need to be alabaster-like. Using powder rather than just cream white face make up helps avoid that nasty wrinkle enhancing property of white face (a concern if you're my age). Apply your very very light almost white base as you would regular base. For those of you who don't normally wear it, try dotting it along your face then lightly smearing down and over to blend it. Don't rub up or you'll be driving it into your pores and don't it in. Ick.

You can smear it right into your hair, adding in some pure white cream into the hair itself. Let it set a bit, then lightly puff on baby powder with a powder brush.

Use your make up brush (puff one, the thing you'd use for powder) to apply a bunch of blue frosty eyeshadow to your eyes and then around hair line, then more gently under your cheek bones (like rouge). You can put it all along the outline of your face really if you want to go for the very damned cold look. Using your finger, dot some glitter gel around - eyes, eyebrows, and hair line are good places, but wherever else is fine. Make sure to work some into your hair too. If you don't want your eyes to look totally dead, I recommend a dark blue eyeliner and mascara as well. You can mix blue eyeshadow or liner with lip gloss to do a blue mouth, set with a puff of blue eyeshadow and add a bit of glitter if you want.

Hair: By now it should be relatively well whited and glittered. If not, rub some on your hands with some hair gel or other sculpting product and work it at least through the ends of your hair with your fingers. You don't need color at the root, although it's pretty stiff when it dries and so it will help hold your hair up into the proper "cold miser" pokey looking 'do. Use a comb or brush to tease and rat up your hair a bit. If you have lots of hair, teasing it up is easier to do upright rather than with your head upside down. (a common misconception about pokey or otherwise "big hair" is that you need to flip your hair upside down to achieve it. I've found that while this may help in the blow drying phase, by the time it's dry and you're trying to get it up, keeping your head upright and just pulling up and ratting sections at a time (and fixing with spray if you're into the whole spray thing) is the best way to get it up and keep it up. Finish with glitter and tie the white boa around your head like a headband, covering your ears unless you want to rub a bunch of white makeup and powder onto them....

I think that's it. If I remember more, I'll add it later.

"how deep?"

This is the line on the flash Ford advertisement open in another tab of my browser. If I can, I'll post a shot of it. Until then, here's my description.

The picture this phrase accompanies is of a craggy looking man, close up on his face. In the gauzily focused background, there's a large black pickup, bed open, holding a very large, complex looking motor (there's shiny metal, dull metal, propellers, and even wood involved). The craggy man's face is creased extra hard with barely held in emotion. His mouth is making a begrudgingly appreciative flat smile, clefted chin straining to push that curve back into something more appropriately masculine. The overall effect is something which suggests judicious satisfaction. Mere inches from his face, a disembodied hand (presumably his) holds a very large metal bolt. The bolt is not shiny. It's dull with a bit of sheen on the head. It is perched delicately on the man's fingertips, glinting head about level with his creased brow, the base of the bolt disappearing down out of the frame (along with the rest of the hand which holds it). It is a large bolt.

The man is considering this bolt. The posture of him and position of the bolt inform us that he has been inspecting it and by the look on his face, we can conclude that he has found it to be satisfactory.
And now he is still standing there, struck by the imminently satisfying looking bolt, wondering "just how deep does it go?"


Update: Here it is. A screen shot of the craggy man pondering his bolt.


That is so Brokeback Mountain.

A favorite Dr. Katz

I stumbled across a Dr. Katz reference recently. To my delight, they have it on netflix. For now though, we can enjoy the random Youtube clip.

MRSA it is

My brother's got a (community acquired) MRSA pneumonia. He is super sick. They're going to try to drain some of the fluid from his lung today and also to try to get him a bed at a Boston hospital, dare I say at "The" Boston hospital. It's where his primary is, so aside from the status of man's greatest hospital in Boston, MA, there is the benefit of being followed by a doctor and service who actually have his history. Currently, he's inpatient at at one of those cute little suburban hospitals. My sister calls the little suburban hospital a "baby farm". The admitting and subsequently attending doctor (a "hospitalist") didn't get a history from my brother and didn't bother to ask any one of us. They only got two sputum specimens and everyone but the attending said they were shitty specimens. I mean everyone. Infectious disease, the lab, the respiratory therapist who got them....

My rants on the hospitalist and on some aspects of the nursing care at Babyfarm Memorial can wait for another time and possibly another forum. For now, my primary concerns are about my brother and about getting myself better so I can go back up there to be with him.

cold

I got a text message at 5:31 AM on Wednesday. My sister did too. The messages were from our brother, saying "Call me please".

By the time I woke up saw the message and called him, his phone was off and his voice mail was full.

My sister called me Wednesday evening to ask if I knew why there were ambulances and emergency crews all over Huntington Ave. Looked it up. Nope. Called her back after I saw a traffic report about a haz-mat spill. She promised to be careful and to call me later. I went back to work, writing my lecture for Wednesday, coughing, sniffling, and feeling kinda crappy.

Then my brother called. He was in a South Shore (MA) emergency department, and he was "wigging out" or some such phrasing.
"Well what's going on?" I asked.
He said he'd been cleared by medicine and was waiting to see psych.
To me, this signaled meth. I said "So you're having another - episode?"

I don't know for certain why I do this. I sometimes take my cues from him on it. If he's speaking openly about it, saying "I picked up" or "I used", then I feel like he'll be ok with me using more direct language. If he seems to be avoiding direct terms, then sometimes I will avoid them too.

I think my choice to comply with the oblique phrasing is because, at those times, I'm afraid I'll scare him off if he sees me as being aggressive or pushy when it comes to talking about his crystal meth addiction and his efforts to break it. I think it's because there have been times when I've insisted on saying "Did you use?" Or even more explicitly "Did you use meth this weekend/last night/today?" and when I've not heard from him for a month after.

So Wednesday night I didn't pry or push.

Later Wednesday night, my sister told me when she had last called the hospital, they told her our brother was outside, waiting for his ride home. "Are you his ride?" the hospital staff member asked my sister. My brother was fetched from where he was waiting outside the hospital. On the phone, he was unable to distinguish my sister from our mom. My sister tried to correct him and he got upset and hung up on her. However, according to the nurse my sister spoke with when she called back (concerned), our brother was alert and oriented and was being discharged.

Neither my sister nor I could believe that they were actually discharging him from the E.R. after only a couple of hours, moreover, that they had apparently discharged him to the curb.

And then Thursday came. I called my brother from campus, full voicemail. Sent a text message. Last night my sister and I talked only briefly. I felt like hell after teaching and then working in my rather chilly office for 4 hours. I got some work done but given how much I was coughing when I woke up this morning, I'm not sure it will have been worth it in the final account.

This morning, someone left a message on my house phone. When someone leaves a message on the answering machine on my house line, the machine helpfully beeps to let you know you have a message waiting. Much like a cell. Although I didn't wake up to the sound of the phone ringing (I blame the cold meds), I did hear the beeping of the answering machine. As I worked my way into wakefulness (believe me, it was work today), I realized there were in fact two beeps - the leading louder answering machine alert and the softer call of the cell phone which was smothered in the deeper reaches of my purse.

Both messages said roughly the same thing, each with slightly different details. My brother had gone back to the hospital and had been admitted. He has an aggressive pneumonia. He is in a lot of pain, is on O2, morphine, vancomycin, and his O2 sat is being closely monitored.

I can't go up to see him because I'm sick, still getting sick in fact it seems. They don't like you going into hospitals with a nasty rattling cough like this. This means there's fuck all I can do now. Just sit down here and
- craft a writing assignment which will elicit the clear and skillful written forms which I am to believe are sitting fully formed inside my students just waiting for the felicitous conditions under which they will burst forth in a fit of glorious, APA formatted erudition
- try not to smoke
- hope my brother rallies
- hope the organism isn't something on the order of MRSA
- hope he can be transfered to a hospital where the one E.R. attending isn't a moonlighting horse doctor

rot

It's October, the leaves are falling, pumpkins and cider are being sold on nearly every corner, and it's going to be in the mid eighties for the next four days. That's just fucked up.

The only thing keeping the leaf mold at a less than hideous level is the fact that we've been in drought conditions for about the last two months (or more).

Combined with the not unexpected but still miserable Fall sniffling, sneezing, hacking cold, I am not feeling terribly spry today. I'm also irritated with myself that my students are going to get about 2/3s of the lecture I wanted to give them and only about 1/4 of the lecture I'm supposed to give them.

That latter part isn't the crucial problem since what I'm supposed to give them is based on materials and a course structure which was outdated 5 years ago when it made its way into a series of computer files. That was the kiss of death for hopes of ever updating the materials to reflect the changes to the course curriculum because now the current poopapotamus and past poopapotami have dutifully copied and distributed this out of date material, semester after semester to grads desperately in need of teaching materials or even crutches.

Thus, the badly fitting material and structure has been perpetuated through the years, like some dysfunctional family tradition. Like the Nutcracker tradition my mother foisted on us each year for some period of my adolescence. It started with a drive into Boston on a weekend evening, always sure to get the clotting factor and blood pressure up. Our dad would navigate the minivan around narrow Boston streets, hunting in what seemed like a never ending loop which wove in and out of what used to be Chinatown and the Combat Zone, to Roxbury and skirting South Station. It looks like a small area on the map, but you drive it in the snow during rush hour on a Friday night with a drunk and three sulry and/or scared teens in the back. It's not a fun trip.

As with the Nutcracker, at some point you just have to say "Enough!" This is about where I'm at with teaching these labs. It's not that I don't care. I care quite a bit. I just don't care to "teach" my students by the book (or rather, by the CD) if the book no longer fits.

It does mean more work for me in terms of coming up with material though, and that's where we get into the 2/3 of what I wanted to give them today. Yesterday's fever sort of broke up my work time a bit more than I had anticipated and so my plan to cover this, that, AND the other thing had to be pared down at about 1 AM to just this and that.

If I had just stuck to the CD, I'd be able to give the students 100% of a lecture which is largely contextually useless, and still manage to have time for important activities like being seen dragging my sick, sniffling carcass through the hallways. This is very important in grad school, to be seen that is. If you can manage to be seen by a stodgey old paternalistic faculty member while you are visibly and indeed valiantly choking down a mouthful of your own vomit or carrying on with a two hour nonstop lecture despite looking like you could have played an extra in Shaun of the Dead, then you win.
At least for that moment.
At least in my department you do.

My advisor recently hurt herself. She doesn't know how. She just woke up in pain. It was so bad and enduring that she was limping quite severely all around the building last week. I wasn't feeling bad that day so when she said she was going to get lunch, I offered to get it for her.
"No, I'll get it. It's probably good for me to walk..." she said hobbling off. In fact, it is NOT good to use a part of your body which you very recently injured. The standard first aid which I honestly thought most people knew is Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. She was doing none of those.

It's been almost two weeks and she's lost work time, had to go home early and didn't even make it in on Monday, as a result of the pain not subsiding. But damn, she sure looked committed hobbling around campus, getting her own lunch. When she said it was probably good for her to walk on a joint which was so fucked that it was sore to touch, I wonder now if she meant good for her in a spiritual, pilgrim wearing a hair shirt sense....

Today I'm breaking my "don't come to class sick" rule. Because they have a project deadline coming up, and because although I've made up my mind to leave, I don't want to blow off my teaching responsibility. But Teaching in this state, it's like 80 degree weather in October. It just ain't right.

a libran decision making paradigm

Here is the question. Do I finish my PhD or do I leave by Spring 08 with a master's?

Here is a brief and highly simplified overview of my decision factors.
Pros:
Finishing what I've started.
Get to have people call me "Doctor".
Get a chance to hold a professorship.

Cons:
Coordinating good faith and timely reading and review of various drafts of both my proposal and dissertation by a group of faculty who have demonstrated serious failings in time management and coordination abilities.
With loans + a half time GAship, I will run out of money to live on by March 2008.
I am borrowing money that I will be paying off at a rate of:
- nearly $600 a month if I can pay off the debt within ten years
- nearly $400 a month if I can pay off the debt within twenty years
- just under $330 a month if I can pay off the debt within thirty years
(And that's assuming a maximum fixed interest rate of 6.8%, which not all of these loans have)
Permanent, stable faculty positions are far less easily come by now than they had been for the past generation of scholars.
Permanent, stable faculty positions entail average teaching loads of 4/3.
Many of the lower teaching load tenure track positions give preference to candidates with post-doctoral training and who come with their own active grant (or strong "extramural funding" history).
Trying for such a position would require at the least a willingness and ability to uproot every one or two years for anywhere from 3 to 10 years post PhD.

Realities:
I cannot get a more than half time GAship because I have been taking too long in this program since my second year in it.
I have good reason to doubt I will be healthy enough to hold a job after I leave my program (with or without PhD) which will pay enough for me to afford both my education debt payments and my other monthly costs of living.
I am certain I am not healthy enough to go through what is becoming the standard post PhD employment scramble and make ends meet, do a yearly tenure track job search, and bounce around following the promise of a tenure track job as if it were the damned holy grail.
I do not like the academic work culture/climate. The hypocrisies wear on my nerves, stress me out, and make me loathe nearly all aspects of the interpersonal interactions and even sometimes the impersonal experiences I have as a researcher and instructor.
I quite strongly feel the trends in higher education employment are socially irresponsible.
I quite strongly feel the trends in undergraduate education are socially irresponsible and socio-economically unjust.
I find it hard to reconcile both my principles and my physical abilities with how I would need to behave and act in order to be a functional part of this socially irresponsible, socio-economically unjust, hypocrisy laden, pretense riddled system.
Having some license to insist that people call you "Doctor" is, as I see it, not a sufficient reason to do anything.

cut and run

Well that's it. I decided. I'm officially abandoning the PhD. I'm hoping I can hang on until the Spring so I can stay insured and loan deferred until I have even minimal employment lined up.

Lots of thoughts on this although none coherent enough to share here at the moment, plus I have my period again and I'm mixing words, word parts, and phrases so I'll wait until I'm more eloquent to discuss the details (although this sums up some of them).

I thought I'd put it out there now, nonetheless.

brand new phone

I have a new cell phone. Unlike my fella who takes a fondness for obtaining and playing with techy gadgets to a level where I sometimes think it might be appropriately classified in the DSM-V , I had been putting off my most recent phone upgrade. Although I do like gadgets, I also like being in a certain comfort of use zone with such important every day tech. Given how important my cell has become, it falls squarely into the category of shit I don't like to fuck with lest it disrupt or hinder my routine use of said shit.

One of the things I dislike the most about switching phones is that it is the electronic equivalent of changing offices and having to wait for things like your filing cabinets to arrive. Or worse, having to move each file one by one because you can't afford to hire movers to just pick up the old cabinet (files and all) and cart it 20 feet down the hall for you. Oh yeah, and you lack the physical means to move it all at once yourself.

How's that for an unnecessarily drawn out analogy? Regardless, I assume the point is sufficiently clear. Changing phones can be a pain in the ass, and it wasn't one I had the time and inclination to deal with right now.

Still, I will upgrade when necessary. Since my old phone was starting to do some slightly annoying things which suggested it was necessary (is it me or doesn't it seem like something which costs that much money should last for more than two years?), and since I was at the point where a particular upgrade was in fact nearly free, last week I finally bit the bullet and got a new phone. But because I was not super-psyched about doing this, and because there's been so many other things going on, I've been a little slack on updating the new phone so it approaches being as routinely useful and informative as my old one.

Thus...as I write post, my new phone is ringing - well, it's making a noise like ringing. I've found the newer phones seem to be set up to encourage the user to buy any number of exciting ringtones. Toward that end (I believe), the "rings" the phone's manufacturers have left for built in choices range from sounds which most humans will universally find mildly irritating to sounds which I believe may actually inflame select layers of neocortical cells in any mammal within hearing range.

So when I say my new phone is ringing, what I mean is that my new phone is making a mildly annoying sound as it sits, unanswered, on my desk. Why not pick it up? Because just a few moments ago, it made the mildly annoying sound in my bedroom. I fetched it, looked at the call information displayed on the front, and saw a Boston area number. Thinking it might be someone like my brother or one of the aunties who I've recently been in touch with on account of a family death, I answered it. While I've entered some of the more important contacts, I hadn't gotten around to others like the local pizza place, the university financial aid office, my former infectious disease doctor (whose number I often have occasion to share on account of this being a high Lyme disease area), and my parents.

It turned out that when it rang just then, in the bedroom, when I picked it up because although I didn't recognize the number it was familiar and Boston-area, it was my mother.

"I just wanted to call and wish you a happy birthday," she said.
"Ah. Well, did you get that all out of your system then?" I asked.
"Yes," she answered.
I sighed and said "Great. Bye," and I ended the call.

And now she's calling back, causing my phone to burp and chirp annoying little noises at me.

On the plus side, I currently have a renewed sense of purpose in completing my cell phone transition. Additionally, I think I just might go make myself some ring tones. For the 'rents, I need something which will immediately convey the right quality and type of information to unmistakably specify "Holy shit don't take that call!"

b-day bbq?

Used to be by my birthday, it was apple picking weather. Now, it's usually a nice beach day. To wit, my birthday weather is as follows:
Tuesday - Sunny. Highs in the upper 80s. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph.

I ask you, wtf? Where are my crisp fall days? Where is my breezy but not biting, glorious Autumn weather? I want to wear sweaters and cotton tights and boots. A prolonged summer dramatically limits my wardrobe choices and that libra cusp can make getting dressed a lengthy ordeal on even a less limited day.

However, we made the best of it. Since my birthday falls mid week, it means I get to celebrate it for an extended period which spans at least both weekends around it. This weekend, my fella made me dinner. My apologies in advance to the non-carnivores out there. Don't keep reading if your dietary preferences extend to others. In my defense, while I enjoy the taste of meat, I consider giving it up almost as often as I consider quitting smoking. However, I cannot afford what is essentially a dietary luxury since I'm already two different kinds of vitamin deficient. Getting my nutrients from food (which we all need already on account of the whole caloric intake thing) is easier and cheaper than than finding creative supplements for a guilt free diet.

That said, dinner tonight was thick steak rubbed with garlic and perfectly cooked on the grill, brown sugar glazed carrots, and baked sweet potatoes. For dessert, A___ presented me with a slice of unbelievably rich chocolate...well I guess "cake" is the appropriate word for it. It consisted of super dense layers of chocolate cake-like matter layered with what seemed to be a light-ish dark chocolate fudge filling. The outside was covered in a thin coating of this same fudge-like icing with curls of dark chocolate shavings.

My man rocks.

This is not my beautiful life

While my fella and I were waiting for the car salesman to bring around what I was assured would soon be my frosty green 2004 Civic, the Talking Heads was playing at a volume just under loud over the speaker. They pipe the music throughout the dealership, even out into the lot near the door to the salesroom. Through the many hours I was there last night going over variously unaffordable car replacement options, I realized that the dealership playlist was meant to target my age group, possibly a few years older. I smiled, because I found myself perversely thinking of the soundtrack of the aged come the year 2045. I was imagining how strange it will be to hear Frankie Goes to Hollywood playing softly in the background while my roommate is being suctioned for a sputum sample or having her bedpan changed. Most likely, the many intervening years of car dealership soundtracks and other audio indignities will ameliorate the jarring scene that would otherwise be.

On a happier note, I think I'm getting a car. I say "think" because there could still be a hold up with the financing. But if that clears, I pick up my pretty green Civic on Friday. I have my Ford for two more days. I can't get rid of it soon enough. On the way home from this afternoon's meeting with the Honda financing fellow, I sat at the red light with my hand stuck out the driver's side window to compensate for the Ford's intermittently fucked left rear blinker. The smell of cooking coolant wafted in from the engine while the fan whirred away in a mostly futile attempt to bring the engine temperature down from just a hair under well done and I was reminded of exactly why I am willingly about to go very deep into debt and to bleed my combined savings and semester's living expenses of a hefty $6000 this week.

I am so damned happy I have good credit and about a thousand left over from my divorce settlement. But the savings will be gone after Friday, and the debt load will be at a frightening all time high.

This unavoidable situation has helped to underscore that I've been feeling much closer to quitting my PhD program since at least May. I'll leave the precious pauper act for those who have the health, some level of unshaken belief that life always turns out ok, and the family financial backing to support such silliness. Lacking these luxuries, it's nothing short of terrifying to know that I am literally pouring time, energy, and a huge amount of money into completing this degree.

The faculty attitude which sees any slow downs for my health problems as a smoke screen for lollygagging my way through the PhD program are quite wrong and clearly deserving of a battle. It's the kind of fight I don't easily walk away from. But it is looking less like a battle I can win with anything better than a pyrrhic victory. And the degree itself is seeming less and less likely to support me in what are the most probable and desirable careers for me given my physical constraints, my shaken belief that life will always turn out ok, my apparent allergy to academic culture, and what I know about the academic labor market.

An unbelievably petulant and exceptionally passive aggressive email in my inbox from the new grad in my lab this morning helped push that growing sense of "This is not my beautiful life" a little further into the range where bailing seems the best way to cut my losses. So far, I've lost many things including my self respect on more than one occasion. I've found myself needing to sacrifice personal principles I hold extremely dear in order to even try to play nicely with the other children. I spent the last few years of good health I think I will ever have in my life first attending one crappy PhD program and now another, which, after a change in leadership is rapidly transitioning into high grade crap itself. My debt load is increasing each semester I waste here with little chance of a sure way to pay it off at the end (i.e. few tenure track jobs available and those that are involve hideous teaching loads). I know I have more I can lose before I am left with nothing but I doubt my ability to pull up out of nothing. If I were healthier, I might not be so sure of that, but as it is I don't think I can afford to take the hit to my sanity, any chance of current or future peace of mind, and all of my patience that another year of this program seems to require.

Help support the Jena Six

(From the NAACP)
- Donate to the NAACP–Jena Fund : 4805 Mt. hope Drive, Baltimore, MD 21215. This donation will help the NAACP advocacy activities in Jena.
- You may also donate to the families directly by contributing to the Jena 6 Defense Fund. Donate online or mail donations to: Jena 6 Defense Committee, P. O. Box 2798, Jena, LA 71342.

Some backstory on the Jena Six

The Case of the Jena Six: Black High School Students Charged with Attempted Murder for Schoolyard Fight After Nooses Are Hung from Tree
Democracy Now
July 10, 2007
Six black students at Jena High School in Central Louisiana were arrested last December after a school fight in which a white student was beaten and suffered a concussion and multiple bruises. The six black students were charged with attempted murder and conspiracy. They face up to 100 years in prison without parole. The fight took place amid mounting racial tension after a black student sat under a tree in the schoolyard where only white students sat. The next day three nooses were hanging from the tree.


Judge Reduces Charges in Jena 6 Case But Refuses to Overturn Mychal Bell Conviction
Democracy Now
September 5th, 2007
A Louisiana judge has refused to overturn the conviction of Mychal Bell. He and five other African American teens were arrested and charged with attempted murder after a schoolyard fight in which a white student was beaten and suffered a concussion. An all-white jury found Bell guilty of second-degree battery and conspiracy in June. On Tuesday, a judge dismissed Bell's conspiracy charge and prosecutors announced they've reduced the attempted murder charges against two others among the Jena Six.

Court Overturns Conviction of Mychal Bell
Democracy Now
September 17th, 2007
In Louisiana, a state appeals court has overturned the conviction of 17-year-old Mychal Bell, one of the Jena Six, but he remains behind bars. Last year Bell and five other African American high school students were arrested for beating a white student during a schoolyard fight. The fight occurred after white students hung three nooses in a tree in the schoolyard. An all-white jury convicted Bell of aggravated second-degree battery but on Friday a Louisiana appeals court ruled that Bell should not have been tried as an adult. Bell has been in jail since December and remains locked up after Friday's ruling.

Douchebag du jour (VIII and V)

It's that steaming pile Mark Rowan again.

I don't blame you if you're thinking "Who the fuck is that?" He's a nobody but he's been working hard to make a name for himself by being a major douchebag. Let's not disappoint him folks. I may not say it in a paper funded by student (and indirectly, taxpayer) dollars, but I'll write it here. Mark Rowan is a douchebag who deserves, no I'm sorry, who it seems really needs to someday personally experience what genuine suffering feels like.

That life tends to involve pain for all humans is rarely a thing I take solace in, however when it comes to people like Rowan, I find a comfort in knowing someday life will kick him hard. Maybe it won't be until the end, when he's drooling into his hospital jello cup, subject to the numerous degradations of age and illness that a modern "middle class" and better life nearly guarantees as its final reward. But it will come. I sincerely hope that during whatever dark hours life holds in store for this birth defect, he has a moment to ponder the many ways in which his existence has been a waste of human - hell, even mammalian - potential. The boy simply refuses to heave himself up off his scaly belly and stop rolling in his own muck. Someday, I hope that muck drowns him.

For those of you who don't remember Rowan, he's the editor of a campus newspaper in CT, The Recorder. He's the guy who approved and defended a column called "Rape only hurts if you fight it" in February 2007. Shortly after the shit rather publicly hit the fan over that column, Rowan called his decision a "lapse in judgment". His apology for that lapse was pithy, but only in an ironic sort of way.
"We didn't know the campus community as well as we thought we knew, and because of that that's why we're getting this backlash and we're sorry because of it."

Rowan won douchebag du jour (V) here way back in May of this year for being the umpteenth "boy who called witch hunt" when the community The Recorder is funded by tried to hold him accountable for his seriously fucked up take on editing.

This time, Rowan has approved and defended a cartoon published in The Recorder called "Polydongs" which makes a joke about the abduction and torture/assault of a teenage minority female. The Recorder ran this cartoon on September 12th - about a day after the story about Megan Williams' abduction and torture broke.

Below is a description of the cartoon from Take Back the Recorder.

Panel 1: Polydong 1: "You know...when I eat a bowl of smacks or golden crisps, my urine smells like honey."

Panel 2: Polydong 2: "...Does it taste like honey, too?"

Panel 3: Polydong 1 (faded, focus of panel is on a door barred with chains and a padlock): "I dunno. I'd have to ask that 14 year old Latino girl tied up in the closet." (from under the closet door: "!Yo tengo hambre!")

Panel 4: Polydong 2 (in a bubble bath): "Oh. Tell Jaunita I say 'hola.'"

Beneath the panel: "The Recorder does not support the kidnapping of (and subsequent urinating on) children of any age or ethnicity."

Rowan's defense this time:
Rowan noted that he got two comments from Hispanic girls who thought the comic strip was funny.

One day to go!

I did four hours of lecture today - back to back - covering my fella's class which is right after mine. And I was still standing, or at least talking and presenting, by the end of it. I'm impressed. It helps that his students seem like a pretty good bunch, they actually thanked me today. How's that for a nice group?

My fella's going to be coming back to the U.S. tomorrow! Yay! Yippeee! And woo-hoo! It's been a long two weeks. His flight gets in late to NYC, so he might stay at his brother's place down there to catch some sleep before driving back to beautiful bucolic CT - but knowing I'll be seeing him soon makes me very, super, extremely happy.

calm

Ahhh....

megasuperdouchebags supreme

By now you've probably heard about the six deformities who kidnapped a woman in West Virginia. I read today's story on it because I had noticed a headline last night saying something about no hate crime charges. Sure enough, the prosecutor is not bringing hate crime charges against the six (arguably there could be gender as well as race in there - I'm sure they called her gender slurs during the ordeal). Below is a list of names of the six, who are currently being held on $100,000 bail each after being charged with the list of crimes next to their names. When I first saw that there was any bail, I was pretty pissed. But today I realized with people like this, $100,000 bail equivalent to no bail. Hell, they probably have more teeth among them than dollars.

I doubt anyone's going to post bond for them since (according to this news item) over the last 16 years, police have filed 108 criminal charges against the six which included first degree murder, domestic assault, brandishing a deadly weapon. One of them, Bobby Brewster, apparently had been charged in assault on Ms. Williams in July. Still, in a time when bail is based as much on the prosecutor's perception of the severity of the crime, it seems like this is a bit light.

So...there's talk of racism. Clearly there's the big undeniable, horrific racist and sexist crimes themselves. But I notice the racism and sexism of the institutions which should have been able to prevent this from happening. These people were in and out of the legal system for the better part of two decades, sometimes for quite serious crimes. The first degree murder charge came down to manslaughter. The woman charged served five years. Talk about a slap on the wrist. Moreover, according to the news item I read today, one of the six assailants (Bobby Brewster) assaulted this woman in July - but there was no court date set.

Here's the list of charges and charged, followed by a bit of the news item.
Bobby Brewster, 24 - charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and assault during the commission of a felony
Frankie Brewster, 49 - charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and giving false information during a felony investigation
Danny J. Combs, 20 - charged with sexual assault and malicious wounding
Karen Burton, 46 - charged with malicious wounding, battery and assault during the commission of a felony
Alisha Burton, 23 - charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery
George A. Messer, 27 - charged with assault during the commission of a felony and battery

Neighbors: Torture suspects were trouble
By Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, Associated Press Writer
September 13, 2007
....
Authorities say they held a 20-year-old black woman for about a week at their mobile home, where she was tortured, sexually assaulted and forced to eat rat droppings.

Megan Williams' captors, who were white, choked her with a cable cord, stabbed her in the leg while calling her a racial slur, poured hot water over her, made her drink from a toilet and beat her, according to criminal complaints.

State authorities said Wednesday they would not to pursue hate crime charges because the other charges the suspects face carry stiffer penalties. But federal civil rights violations remain an option, U.S. Attorney Charles T. Miller said.