Out with 2008!

Well, there's one more day of it. I made my New Year's Resolutions, which include things like drinking eight glasses of water per day and reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and running a 10K and making sure that I laugh as often as possible. There were 25 in all.

I haven't blogged much because my semester was too intense. But I'm baaaaaaack. For now. Only because I like to be with my friends in cyberspace. It's a way to be there and not be there but still feel like you're there even when you're not there and still feel like other people are there even when they're not there because they are immersed in their own lives out in real spacetime. Oops...I almost slipped into ontological mode.

Christmas in Memphis was fun. I sort of felt like Elvis was singing to us through the cold dark earth. Well, not really.

Playin' Possum

This possum was on my porch! We've been (unintentionally) feeding her (I am randomly assigning a gender) for a few weeks. She eats cat food. I haven't seen her in a few days, but the last time she was eating, she actually stayed still long enough for me to photograph her...too bad the flash just washed her out. Spooky looking thing is friends with our most deranged cat, Minnie.

I spent 30 minutes looking at wigs for halloween on the internet and finally decided I'd have to go to a store. I'm going to be ___________ for halloween. Last year I was the color pink. I'll leave you all in suspense.

Joe, Where Are You?

Holy Crap! I am having a plumbing problem. Seriously. I am waiting til Monday to call the plumber because weekend rates are outrageous. I was watching Palin on SNL and then after scrubbing the tub I turned on the shower and discovered it doesn't friggin work right. So enter Joe. I kid you not all plumbers named Joe with websites are getting serious hits and probably more business. I am going to look for a plumber named Joe to fix my shower. Actually, I have a really good plumber already whose name is not Joe. I should probably call him. He is probably wishing his name was Joe right about now. I'll say, "hey, can I call you Joe?"

BLINDNESS, the film

Blindness is the worst film I have seen in a long, long time. I was unconcerned that blind people were protesting it, thinking it was perhaps hypersensitivity or overreaction, but even I, a seeing person, am offended by how they portrayed blind people. I am offended that this even passes for entertainment. Even if I were stupid enough not to realize that this is a totally unrealistic portrayal of how the blind would act, even under circumstances of sudden blindness, I would be bored and disgusted by this film. We left an hour or so into it, at my insistence. We then asked the theatre for free tickets to another film (not because it was a horrid, horrid film, but because the theatre was extremely cold and the people behind us were very loud).

Meanwhile, back in real life, I am grateful for my sight. Hence the picture of pretty flowers from a recent walk I took.

Stolen Steam Bun

The case of the stolen steam bun came about in this fashion: I took a lunch break today at Veggie Heaven. I was ushered into the back room (I had no idea that they even had a back room) as the front room was full...I ordered my usual: Lucky 7 (funny little vegan "meat" balls with veggies in a spicy sauce with brown rice). Five minutes later an indifferent young man who did not speak English tossed a funny looking white blob onto my table. I pondered what it might be...I thought perhaps they had started serving weird white blobs as appetizers the way Mexican restaurants serve tortilla chips: free of charge and a nice filler/time killer while you wait for your meal. I poked it with one of the lime green chopsticks that had been waiting for me to pick them up and use them, though most assuredly they had not been intended for poking white blobs. It should have bounced back but it had a slight stickiness that failed to produce the rebound I had anticipated. I then poked deeper and discovered that inside of this white blob was some brown stuff with chunks in it. I went ahead and tore off a piece and took a bite...not bad. At about that time, the indifferent non-English speaker tossed another thing onto my table that I did not recognize. This time I stopped him. "What is this?" I asked. He did not reply, shrugging his shoulders and trying to escape. I asked again, "What IS this?" Then the guy at the table behind me called out that perhaps it was the food HE had ordered! I carried the food to him and sure enough, it was his "usual," not mine. It then occurred to me that I had eaten part of a white blob not intended for me. I grabbed a menu (conveniently loaded with pictures of weird looking blobs and funky mixtures of seemingly ad hoc oriental looking food) and looked up the picture of the white blob. "Steam Bun," the caption beneath my white blob's likeness read. I asked the man behind me if he had ordered a Steam Bun. Indeed he had. I then carried the half-eaten, ill-fated Steam Bun back up to the front and explained to a waitress that a mistake had been made. I felt sheepish because clearly, before correcting this mistake, I had eaten part of it. She gave me a nasty look and took the blob and disappeared. The man at the table behind me got a new Steam Bun and all is well in the land of things that can but should not be poked with lime green chopsticks.

In other news, just watched the debates...speaking of white blobs...

It's Party Time...sort of

Today is Tuesday! I am celebrating a small break (like 30 minutes) from the rigors of academia to have a glass of red wine and ponder the meaning of life. Random snapshot of my life: Me, in a rusty green VW bus, 14 years ago, on some north-bound stretch of interstate at least 6 states from here, with a pregnant dalmatian in the back. How did I get here from there? I drove the bus back home after my adventure, of course, along with 10 dalmatian puppies! Now that beautiful dalmatian is in doggy heaven and who knows where all those grown up puppies are...

Penultimate Ping-Pong

I am in my penultimate semester for my degree plan. Tomorrow I have an appointment with someone who will do a degree check and hopefully not screw up my plans. The university has been kind of half-A&& with me and I hope I haven't been steered in the wrong direction...I would only have my ULTIMATE semester to fix it. Now...

Today was a bit disappointing. I had a tuna crisis. Madame Monkeywit saved me...I showed up with papers to scan and tuna to spread on bread...thanks, Madame Monkeywit! How did this 'tuna crisis' come about, you ask? Well, I was supposed to make little quartered sandwiches for a coworker who is going away. It was a lunch time going away party in a little tiny office filled with about 12 cubes and their very tolerant inhabitants...we do well for an office of all women crammed together...

Anyhoo...my tuna was prepared and I went to get the bread to spread and OH! That dirty little RAT! My cat Rousa had jumped up on TOP of the refrigerator where I keep the bread and she had torn open the bag and eaten the crust...at the same time I was supposed to be delivering very important papers and so Madame Monkeywit scanned them while I spread tuna (after getting new bread and dragging my tuna and papers over to Madame Monkeywit's monkey house). A labor-saving venture indeed.

Even more disappointing was my women's and gender studies seminar course (which I am taking as a history course). I read an entire book in 2 days and was hoping for some fun and stimulating discussion and it just didn't happen. It was a senior level history course and we had to listen to some guest speaker tell us all about how to write a paper. I was aghast that a class of university seniors and a few graduate students had to sit through this. Is it really that dire? Are young Americans so ill-prepared for scholarship these days?

And why did I choose that picture up there?

Because it is a very strange circus contraption that for me acts a visual metaphor when in motion of the sort of round and round we go through in life to get to some destination. The dark background represents my dark thoughts about subjects that have been so thoroughly trampled on by scholars in the last two decades as to render them unrecognizable although their substance is essentially unchanged. There is no objective interpretation (I think this is from Foucault) of anything, only multiple interpretations with no ultimate standard by which to ascertain their truth. Without objectivity there can't be truth. I don't know who said that. I just know that these ideas manage to trickle their way down from the ivory tower into the ideological sewers that common people drink from.

Ocean and legacy

Missing the beach...tonight would be a nice night to walk along it...I am studying the history of race and citizenship in this country and concurrently the history of women in sickness and health in this country and I shall soon be reading about the history of the vibrator. There are a lot of premed students in my class...they are in for a real rollicking ride whether they want it or not.  A couple of guys are in it only because they couldn't find another class to fit their schedule. We will be talking about abortion and reproductive rights, the decline of the midwife (and rise and fall again after the 60s), the history of birth control, the medicalization of birthing and historical birthing practices, and many, many other things including female sexuality.  In the race class, we will of course talk about race historically and the rights and lack of rights of various racialized groups.  With all this "heavy stuff," I feel I need the healing ocean air...this land is ripe with legacies and they're not all pretty.

Elephants Rule!

Went to the circus on Sunday!!! Love the ellies. Also saw tall tigers, dinky dogs, clowns galore and of course zebras.  

adieu

gulag