up, down, turn around

Yesterday turned out to be very wham-bam-thank-you-Ma’am (in this image, I’m the ma’am) because, in addition to being 1/2 moved out of one house and into another, and in addition to being massively distracted by my nephew in the hospital, I got extensive feedback from 2 out of 3 committee members all at once, which I wasn’t prepared for. Lots of criticism, some praise, and a general sense of optimism (but that might all be in my head).

I had already scheduled a coffee date with one committee member, a woman who would appear to be matronly and nurturing, until she takes out her purple fountain pen and eviscerates whatever you’ve given her to read (And I mean eviscerate. My favorite thing she ever wrote on a piece of my writing was "This is lame—and confusing." But I have many, many runners-up: her comments on my work usually initiate with one positive declaration (for instance, "You have written a complex and compelling analysis of x, y and z," then followed by the word "unfortunately," then a long list of where I’m inadequate.). Don’t get me wrong: I love this professor, we work well together and have for years, and I treasure this relationship. She is "concerned" about where this is all headed, and she’s concerned that the later chapters, all built on the ones I’m now writing, won’t make any sense to anyone but me and my advisor. She could be totally correct; she would know better than I; that’s why she’s on my committee. While I kinda want to ask why no one brought up these problems, oh, two years ago, at this point I don’t have enough energy. If switching out some texts will help finish this fucking fucker, I’m happy to drop "Mysteries of Udolpho" just like Tyra dropped Paulina Porizkova.

A general warning: to anyone who is contemplating a trans-, meta-, or inter- dissertation that will compare and combine generally disparate fields, I suggest you not bother (this is not only from my own experience, but also from watching numerous other fools trying to tackle the Balkanized academy). Professors always talk about how much they value comparative work, but it’s rare that any comparative work ever pleases them; no one ever quite trusts comparative work. If you’re writing on, hypothetically, Homer’s "Odyssey" and the works of T.E. Lawrence (makes sense–Lawrence saw himself as an Odysseus figure and translated "Odyssey") you’d be working in Classics and 20th-century English. No one in Classics would trust that you really know Greek because you’ve frittered your time with modern prose, and no one from English would trust that you could really handle novelistic prose because you’re obviously over-aligned with dead langauges. Ugh. Please, write a boring, standard dissertation, then a book, and once you’re tenured write something trans-, meta- and inter-. I digress.

After yesterday’s meeting I got back to my office and in my mailbox was a large envelope from another committee member. I thought it was TAship applications for my summer course at first, and it took me a while to realize I was reading my own draft, covered with comments. I don’t know what to say about this committee member, other than she scares the shit out of me (and in this I’m not alone). She’s brilliant, the most attentive reader I’ve ever come across, and always able to offer trenchant assessments in a way that makes sense to me. That’s why I like to work with her. Surprisingly, she liked the chapter more than the other committee member, and she thought it worked overall. Her main advice: excise the intro and conclusion, revise the body as rigorously as possible, then later write a new conclusion and intro that reflect what I actually say. I can live with that.

The missing piece is, of course, my advisor and his assessment. I’m eager to hear what he thinks, since the chapter was written with him (and his signature, and later his letter to a hiring committee) in mind. He’s finishing two books, and at this moment he’s the keynote speaker at a very important conference in Crete. Perhaps his comments will be forthcoming?

Inspired by the new craze that’s sweeping the world, I spent yesterday making some amazingly tender and delicious pulled pork BBQ sandwiches. Pork shoulder is always an attractive budget-minded dining option, but in the past week it’s even more pecuniarily advantageous since people who don’t understand pathogens aren’t buying it and Safeway has put it on big sale (I’ll admit that there are myriad reasons not to eat pork, but eschewing pork just because you fear it might directly infect you with swine flu is stupid.).

I highly suggest you give this one a whirl:

- one 3-4lb pork shoulder roast

- one large sweet onion, cut into wedges

- 30 - 40 oz. BBQ sauce (about two bottles; yes, it’s a lot, but you’ll see soon why the excess is vital)

- two cups Dr. Pepper

- salt and pepper

- eight chiabata rolls (or your other favorite sandwich bread)

1) Trim fat from pork shoulder roast (If you’ve been raised in certain part of the country, dispensing with all this precious hog fat at the outset might seem counterintuitive. Trust me; it doesn’t cook well.). Paparazzi the roast with salt and pepper.

2) Spread the wedged sweet onions on the bottom of your slow cooker. Apply pork upon onions. In a large glass bowl, combine all BBQ sauce and Dr. Pepper, stir til it’s thoroughly mixed, pour over roast and flood your crock pot.

3) Cook on low for 8 hours.

4) When the roast is cooked, remove as much liquid from the crock pot as you possibly can (there will be a great deal of BBQ juice, and it’s very hot - careful!). Pour it all in a pot and reduce the fuck out of it on the stove for about 20 mintues. Once you have about 1/2 the amount of liquid you started with, pour back into crock pot and stir. This step is absolutely vital, as the long cooking process dulls the otherwise divine porky flavors (all credit to my charming BF–this step was his idea).

5) Spoon pork amazingness onto toasted bread, top with cole slaw. Eat until your new flu symptoms force you to bed.  

(1) I may have found a house. It’s not perfect, but it’s pretty good. Well, it might be horrific, but compared to the $780 shed-cum-"room" it’s glorious–not least because it’s attached to an actual house and has working outlets. House: large, group of people (mixed, whatever, not friends but everyone seems nice), quiet, early-to-bed. Room: gorgeous, original master suite, recently renovated, deck. And all less expensive than Son of Terror Shack. We’ll see. Like jobs, bfs, where to eat dinner, picking a new room forces one to juggle "nice to have" plusses with "must have" necessities. I get stuck because I want to live with quiet, sober people, but not necessarily in a Quiet House or (even worse) a Sober House. In conclusion, this place fulfills many "must haves," and with far more elegance than most anything else on CL.

BTW, I’m so grateful when ad writers let all the shit hang out in their ads. To the Rasta Couple with the Rasta Dog about to have a Rasta Baby, Thank You for explaining all that on the ad so I can move on and not waste my time or yours! To all the massage therapists who give communication concerns pride of place, Thank You! To everyone who openly proclaims that they’re 420 friendly, a huge Thank You! To those people who specified a caffiene-free space, Thank you!

 (2) Today I found out that I received a one-quarter dissertation sabbatical for Winter 2010. Yay!

(1) I’m about to go look at a promising new housing situation. Most of the CL ads make me cry. One, on Sunday evening, made me happy. I replied, and as it turns out I know the owner. The house is in a great neighborhood (as the crow flies, probably 1/2 mile from my current house). We’ll soon see.

(2) At some point this will warrant full documentation, but for now this precis will have to do: I’m stuck in the middle of an epic copy card war, which is less about copy cards and more about the gestalt of demoralized panic plaguing UCSC these days. Someone at Cowell College Faculty Services made a mistake and gave me the wrong copy card. No one noticed until I left it in the machine at College Eight Academic Services. Someone at College Eight cared a great deal, and contacted someone else at Stevenson College Academic Services, and blah blah blah I’m one of 15 people cc’d on e-mails about just who fucked up with the copy cards with accusations, defensive replies, and processing. Initially, I thought I was being accused of stealing (I may be still, for all I know) but the clashing personalities of baggage of everyone else involved has taken attention away from me. Somehow, the university’s obliteration of the Community Studies Department fits into this story, as does a borrowed and never-returned Teach Yourself Spanish On Your Commute 6 cd set. 

 (3) One of my students brought her daughter to office hours today, and her daughter managed to insult me, my field of teaching, and my sister.

(4) Epic Fail: Last week I submitted a chapter draft to my dissertation committee (Yay!). But I misspelled the one author’s name in the title. And in a short abstract, I misspelled that author’s name two different ways. I didn’t notice until one of my committee members contacted me to let me know that, since we’ll be working together for a while, I should try not to suck so hard (my words, not hers). This is karma, but I don’t feel like explaining how.  

I’m too tired and brain dead to keep revising, but as it’s only 7:45 pm, it’s too early to go to bed. So I’ve been trolling Craiglist’s straight ads to see what those people are up. Umm, yeah:

Looking To Super Load A Fertile Women & Get Pregnant Guaranteed! - m4w - 25 (scotts valley)

Please Do Not Flag This Post! This Is A Real Ad For Real Potential Female or MWW. Thank-You!

100% Anaynomous & All Process Are Kept Private! Octapalet Opportunity???

Serious Fertile Women ONLY NEED APPLY! All Others Will Be IGNORE! To All Desperate Women Seeking To Get Pregnant! Please NO MAN OR MEN Trying To Pretend To Be a Woman LOL. Your Message Will Be IGNORE! So, Please Don’t Waste Mine Time Or Yours. Thank-You!

Strictly For 100% Disease Free & Peer Fertile WOMEN ONLY! No Games, No E-Mail Tags Or Waste Of Time! Send Picture For Immediate Consideration. Please Note That, This Is FREE For Those Women That Wants To Seriously Get Pregnant. However, Some Compensation Maybe Covered(not guaranteed)But 100% Supportive. Only Serious Women Apply!

This Ad Is For Those Women That Would Like To Have Kids Or Love To Get Pregnant. I Am a Very Super Sperm Squirter. I Can Constantly Shoot My Load Crazy And Certainly Do Not Want To Waste Every Droplet of It. I Been Thinking About Donating To A Fertile Clinic, But Thought I Post This Ad Here For Those Women, That Wants To Make Babies. I Am 100% STD Free & Been Recently Tested with Paper To Proof. So, You Be Too. You Can Certainly Create a Beautiful Human Being With My FREE Saved Up Super Sperm. This Is No Cost To You. However, I Am There All The Way To Support This Whole Process(compensation maybe negotiable). Please Send Me A Message If You Are A Real Women, Who Really Can Take This Chance In A Life Time. The Woman Or Women Whom Will Be Picked Must Be Serious And Be Very Interested. Each And Every Woman Or Women Who Shows Interest, Will Be Screened and Must Meet My Qualification Criteria. I Look Forward On Making This Happened To Desperately Seeking 100% Women. Thank-You For Reading My Post and Good Luck! Feel Free To Send Your Question Or Concern and I’ll Be Sure To Get Back With You In a Timely Manner.

PS: Include Is a Few(Recent)Photos of Me Wasting It LOL. I Do This 7-10 Times a Day. So, Why Waste? Since, I Really Can’t Help It. I’m A Cum Crazzzy Kinda Guy!

My brother came very close to marrying a woman whom I’ll call Denise. They were engaged and everything, but for reasons I’ve never understood, didn’t go through with it.

This was not a loss. First, my brother was never primo husband material. Torrid affair material, yes; other man material, yes. Long-term provider? Not so much. But also, Denise, whom I never knew well, didn’t come across as a buffet of long-term stability either. Passionate, interesting, yes. Her own drummer? Oh yes.

My brother’s funeral was filled with women whose hearts he’d broken but weren’t surprised to find themselves attending his funeral. Denise was there too, and she wasn’t taking it well. No one, obviously, was taking it well, but Denise especially gave off a whiff of volatility. At the point of the service when the podium was opened to anyone who wished to say words about my brother, Denise came to the podium. I remember very clearly everyone in the room taking a sharp breath. A "scene" seemed plausible.

Happily, instead of causing a scene, she said simply: "When I think of Stephen I think of one word, which was one of his favorites, ‘lovely.’ Stephen was ‘lovely.’"

The reason I’m thinking of Denise today is the miracle of Facebook. She and I are now friends on Facebook, and whenever I log on, I see her status messages, which, I think, say much while saying so little:

Denise is corn belt.

Denise is Cheyenne.

Denise is Tahoe.

Denise is roadside geology.

Denise is great salt lake.

Denise is Mountain Time.

Denise is elko.

Denise is winnemucca.

Denise is asteroid 2009D445.

Denise is small craft advisory.

Denise is sublimation.

UPDATE: I just received on e-mail from Denise, who reports that "I still send emails to your brother’s old email…4 spirit." Well, that’s fair. I used to dial his phone number until one day someone picked up—it had been recycled. And hey, sending e-mails off into the void is preferable, I really think, to talking with him, as other relatives do. 

Congratulations to my charming boyfriend on his acceptance to the San Francisco Baking Institute! In a year’s worth of intensive, hands-on baking instruction, he’ll bake more than 1000 loaves of bread. He’ll also learn to make pastries and even gelato. Hooray baby!

This great news for my charming boyfriend is generally bad news for my fat ass, for all the totally obvious reasons. Should I get a band around my stomach, like Sharon Osborne, or just stretchy pants?

I’ll be the first to admit that Great Books programs are problematic and fraught with ideological complications, even though I fervently support their right to exist. I’m well aware that some people consider the Western Canon to be satan-ic, but I honestly had never even contemplated the role of Satan himself in canon production, and relationship between the Western Canon and the antiChrist, until I received the following message via an on-line message board for graduates of St. John’s College (SJC):

The SJC books are the attempts of Satan "the god of this world" (2 Cor. 4:4) who "deceiveth the whole world" (Rev. 12:9) to distract you from the Bible which you are supposed to be meditating on "day & night" (Psalm 1) & "all day long" (Psalm 119), for that is part of what it means to obey God’s greatest commandment of loving Him with "ALL of your mind" (Matt. 22:36-40). Loving these books will lead you into Hell: "do not love the world or the things in the world." (1 John 2:15) The way I discovered these books to be of Satan was by discovering that the SJC book characters (ex. Achilles, Oedipus) & authors (ex. Shakespeare, Immanuel Kant,…) are all types of the Antichrist Satan incarnate who foreshadow the Antichrist in many very uncommon ways by resembling the Antichrist & Christ in very uncommon ways, just like many Biblical characters do (ex. Nebuchadnezzar, Cyrus the Great, Solomon, Nimrod, Saul, Goliath, Absalom, Antiochus Epiphanes, Cain,…), just as there are many types of Christ (ex. Noah, Isaac, Joseph, the Passover Lamb, Moses, David) See the very carefully researched website www.primaryproofoft hebible.com concerning these matters. Hell is where MOST people go, even those who think they are Christians and who have/had faith in Christ but did not use the Spirit provided by that faith to turn away completely from sin (Matt. 7:13, Matt. 7:22, 1 Peter 4:17-18, 1 Cor. 10:1-12). I urge you, friends, to turn away from these deceptive books which keep you from the infinitely deep treasure of God’s Word. "Unless you abandon your possessions, you cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33) Be not deceived by Satan who "deceiveth the whole world." "There is a way which SEEMETH right to man, but it is a way to death." (Proverbs) "Take heed lest ye be made a prey of by PHILOSOPHY & vain deceit." (Colossians 2:8) We have all been made a prey of by the SJC authors. It is imperative you turn away from sin immediately because God will send billions of people to Hell during the next decade during the Great Tribulation, which is about to fall upon the whole Earth, as is shown on www.primaryproofoft hebible.com.

Here’s a little anecdote, apropos of absolutely nothing. But I find it good, galling gossip, and you might too. BTW, I’ll probably get all the details wrong in the set-up, but that’s fine. We’re only after the punchline.

So–this woman I know was sorta-kinda fucking around with and hanging out with this guy, but nothing more. Which was fine; she was having a good deal of bedroom-oriented fun. But after a good bit of time, she was getting over the ambiguity inherent in their set up, and asked for clarify, reevaluate, etc. He said "nope" to anything definite, and she decided she’d had her fun but it was time to move on, that she wanted something more than perpetual fuck-buddy-ism.

Normal, standard stuff that happens all the time to everyone. Chances are, you reader have done this 1000 times too. But then: As they were wrapping things up, she said goodbye, and he said "I’m really going to miss…..the ADULATION."

What Brazen Gall!!!

Can you imagine it? Go ahead and imagine: we’ve all had our flings that run their natural course and we bow out—hopefully with grace and respect. And for this guy to say, flatly, sans irony, that he’s going to miss being worshipped… As she points out, it was nice of him to make it easy for her to walk out.

That’s all.

Today’s three hour public transportation trek from San Francisco to Santa Cruz was transformed into a six hour trip because of a six-car, double-fatality crash on Highway 17 at the Laurel curve.

Being on a bus for several hours with strangers who are now friends gave me some great stories, which I may report back later. For now, however, please slow the fuck down and fucking be careful, don’t fucking tail-gate, swerve, weave, talk on the fucking fun and least of all fucking drink and drive. When the highway finally re-opened and the bus drove past the crashed cars on the shoulder, 60 people all gasped in unison at the sight of a minivan turned inside out. Have you seen a butterflied shrimp? That’s what this minivan looked like.  

In general, it was a shitty trip for me to have been without a phone, i-pod or adequate snack, but fuck, I’m alive.