Saturday, November 20, 2004
Personal Oeckonomics
Natalie's post yesterday attempted to explain why it is, perhaps, that all of us are blogging like fiends right now, especially considering the increasing pressure of our end-of-semester deadlines, which in a couple of weeks will be curshing us with the approximate force required to turn our brains into diamonds.
The link she used to explain--which appear to be lecture notes from a sociology class--is spot-on. Let me highlight a key passage, ripped right from the lecture notes:
"These are some of what are often regarded as dehumanizing conditions of work under capitalism.
(i) workers must do detail work and are crippled monstrosities.
(ii) separation of mental and manual labour.
(iii) monotony of repeated tasks.
(iv) labour not creative but merely concerned with possession."
Now, dear reader, replace "Capitalism" with "Graduate Studentry" and you get the point.
But really, as this passage shows, maybe making a distinction between the two is misleading....
The link she used to explain--which appear to be lecture notes from a sociology class--is spot-on. Let me highlight a key passage, ripped right from the lecture notes:
"These are some of what are often regarded as dehumanizing conditions of work under capitalism.
(i) workers must do detail work and are crippled monstrosities.
(ii) separation of mental and manual labour.
(iii) monotony of repeated tasks.
(iv) labour not creative but merely concerned with possession."
Now, dear reader, replace "Capitalism" with "Graduate Studentry" and you get the point.
But really, as this passage shows, maybe making a distinction between the two is misleading....
Friday, November 19, 2004
People in Cars
A couple weeks ago I had what stands for me as a landmark moment.
I was driving in the car over to Omaha, and this young lady in an SUV was riding my tail, hard. I was speeding a little, and in the passing lane heading out of town, but I apparently couldn't get around cars fast enough for her. But she was also one of these rubber band drivers who speeds up and slows down, so one second she'd be right on my butt, and the next she'd be two hundred yards behind me, and then I'd look again and her SUV would be swallowing my whole rear-view mirror. Her driving is really inconsequential--fact is, she had me watching her closely.
I was able to see that she was listening to the radio, and just tapping her hand. Any time I witness someone going nuts to their music in the car, I always get a little bit of a chuckle out of them. I'm also always watching to see if I can figure out if they're listening to the same thing I am, because I had always thought that would be cool. But this never really happens, so I tend to watch long enough to figure out they're tapping to a different beat, or singing a different song.
The lady was rubber-banding me particularly close when I saw her hand tapping, so I start wondering what she's hearing in the car. In the middle of this thought the DJ comes on and announces that Rod Stewart is singing his song about Maggie next, and the radio kicks right into the song. At that very moment, the lady behind me, who is now so close I see the car behind her clearly through her rear window, just kicks it into overdrive, singing and throwing her hair and banging on the steering wheel like she's Rod herself, or like she wrote the song and loved Rod's version the best.
Maybe her name was Maggie.
I began wondering if there were any pictures on the web that people had taken of other folks in their cars, picking their noses or doing the white man head bob to Rod Stewart. I spent way too much time combing the internet to come up with the conclusion that, in fact, all the websites containing such pictures are hidden, except one from The Plug, and the pictures there aren't even very entertaining.
I did find some interesting stuff along the way, though, like you do. Many of them, like the Truck Driver's Gear Change songs (wtf?) were only tangentially related to people in cars. Many more of them, strangely, had very little to do with either people or cars, like the inexplicable appearance of the online picture gallery from the Toronto '03 Zeppfest, which features utterly classic pictures of the buffoons in the Led Zeppelin cover band, Zeppelinesque, like this one here:
Then, out of frustration, I thought I would find one of my favorite amateur movies on the internet to soothe my soul, "405". I have known about this movie from time immemorial, though strangely, I don't think I've ever blogged about it. I'm not sure it's worth all the hype the website gives it (originally I found it on an Italian website, and it was much cooler out of this self-important context), but it had everything I was looking for: people driving in cars, people listening to music while driving in cars, and pictures of people who are driving next to you while you're driving in your car. I remembered while I was watching it that it also had people flicking other people off while they are in their cars. Well, more specifically, one person flicking another off.
Come to think of it, that reminds me of another site that seems, as far as I can tell, to be centered wholly around the idea of flicking off and being flicked off, MasaManiA. Coincidentally, MasaManiA also has a picture of a man in a car doing something stupid, driving his car while scratching his armpit and talking on his cell phone. Unfortunately, this picture's flicking off largely blocks the armpit scratching.
Of course, the English is part of what makes MasaManiA such a funny site. I mean, just check out the entry on Micky Yanai, for crying out loud! It's hysterical! But read long enough, and you'll start to decode that behind all the flicking off and truly funny commentary, there's an aching heart and some bitter invective at play in MasaManiA. It seems that many of the moron Westerners who post comments really fail to understand how they're indicted by this person's reaction to our cultural infiltration. Take, for instance, the piece on George Bush or the one where he flicks off the boy for eating McDonald's on the train.
The commentary doesn't even spare his countrypeople, who have adopted the American "peace" sign as the standard pose to strike for pictures. This is from the post where he flicks off a group of young Japanese ladies who are giving the peace sign:
"So why do I get frustration ? I don’t know. But anyway I dislike doing piece sign. Japanese people have few gesture, few body language. I know sometime, this poor expression scare other country people. This poor expression make misunderstanding with other country people.
"This is the reason, we got atomic bomb two times !"
So, as an American, what can you say to that? Well, let me see. My grandpa fought in that war, and gave a leg fighting the Japanese in the Philippines. And one of my best friends, a Japanese-American soldier who recruits for the National Guard, is the son of a fine man, a patent-holding chemist. That fine man was born in the dirt, his mother panting in a hovel as America's prisoner in a Californian internment camp for the Japanese. The Japanese who came to America looking for a better life.
I was driving in the car over to Omaha, and this young lady in an SUV was riding my tail, hard. I was speeding a little, and in the passing lane heading out of town, but I apparently couldn't get around cars fast enough for her. But she was also one of these rubber band drivers who speeds up and slows down, so one second she'd be right on my butt, and the next she'd be two hundred yards behind me, and then I'd look again and her SUV would be swallowing my whole rear-view mirror. Her driving is really inconsequential--fact is, she had me watching her closely.
I was able to see that she was listening to the radio, and just tapping her hand. Any time I witness someone going nuts to their music in the car, I always get a little bit of a chuckle out of them. I'm also always watching to see if I can figure out if they're listening to the same thing I am, because I had always thought that would be cool. But this never really happens, so I tend to watch long enough to figure out they're tapping to a different beat, or singing a different song.
The lady was rubber-banding me particularly close when I saw her hand tapping, so I start wondering what she's hearing in the car. In the middle of this thought the DJ comes on and announces that Rod Stewart is singing his song about Maggie next, and the radio kicks right into the song. At that very moment, the lady behind me, who is now so close I see the car behind her clearly through her rear window, just kicks it into overdrive, singing and throwing her hair and banging on the steering wheel like she's Rod herself, or like she wrote the song and loved Rod's version the best.
Maybe her name was Maggie.
I began wondering if there were any pictures on the web that people had taken of other folks in their cars, picking their noses or doing the white man head bob to Rod Stewart. I spent way too much time combing the internet to come up with the conclusion that, in fact, all the websites containing such pictures are hidden, except one from The Plug, and the pictures there aren't even very entertaining.
I did find some interesting stuff along the way, though, like you do. Many of them, like the Truck Driver's Gear Change songs (wtf?) were only tangentially related to people in cars. Many more of them, strangely, had very little to do with either people or cars, like the inexplicable appearance of the online picture gallery from the Toronto '03 Zeppfest, which features utterly classic pictures of the buffoons in the Led Zeppelin cover band, Zeppelinesque, like this one here:
Then, out of frustration, I thought I would find one of my favorite amateur movies on the internet to soothe my soul, "405". I have known about this movie from time immemorial, though strangely, I don't think I've ever blogged about it. I'm not sure it's worth all the hype the website gives it (originally I found it on an Italian website, and it was much cooler out of this self-important context), but it had everything I was looking for: people driving in cars, people listening to music while driving in cars, and pictures of people who are driving next to you while you're driving in your car. I remembered while I was watching it that it also had people flicking other people off while they are in their cars. Well, more specifically, one person flicking another off.
Come to think of it, that reminds me of another site that seems, as far as I can tell, to be centered wholly around the idea of flicking off and being flicked off, MasaManiA. Coincidentally, MasaManiA also has a picture of a man in a car doing something stupid, driving his car while scratching his armpit and talking on his cell phone. Unfortunately, this picture's flicking off largely blocks the armpit scratching.
Of course, the English is part of what makes MasaManiA such a funny site. I mean, just check out the entry on Micky Yanai, for crying out loud! It's hysterical! But read long enough, and you'll start to decode that behind all the flicking off and truly funny commentary, there's an aching heart and some bitter invective at play in MasaManiA. It seems that many of the moron Westerners who post comments really fail to understand how they're indicted by this person's reaction to our cultural infiltration. Take, for instance, the piece on George Bush or the one where he flicks off the boy for eating McDonald's on the train.
The commentary doesn't even spare his countrypeople, who have adopted the American "peace" sign as the standard pose to strike for pictures. This is from the post where he flicks off a group of young Japanese ladies who are giving the peace sign:
"So why do I get frustration ? I don’t know. But anyway I dislike doing piece sign. Japanese people have few gesture, few body language. I know sometime, this poor expression scare other country people. This poor expression make misunderstanding with other country people.
"This is the reason, we got atomic bomb two times !"
So, as an American, what can you say to that? Well, let me see. My grandpa fought in that war, and gave a leg fighting the Japanese in the Philippines. And one of my best friends, a Japanese-American soldier who recruits for the National Guard, is the son of a fine man, a patent-holding chemist. That fine man was born in the dirt, his mother panting in a hovel as America's prisoner in a Californian internment camp for the Japanese. The Japanese who came to America looking for a better life.
Proliferation
Wow, blogging explodes at Creighton. Two new favorites, one by my dear friend, Bryan, about whom I wrote yesterday, and another by my lovely bride-to-be, Susanne. As Susanne mentions in her blog, there's a blogging community now at Creighton. She's not kidding. We should have our own webring. "Merely Creighton Gradstudents" or somesuch. Too bad all these brilliant people graduate after this year, and since I'm a year behind the webring would then be "Creighton Gradstudent Graduates and one Mere Creighton Gradstudent".
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Thoughtful people
My beloved bride-to-be, Susanne, and her classmate, Bryan, also have a blog on the history of writing instruction from 1900-present. Now, before you wonder why they would blog about such a topic for the sheer joy of it, let me tell you they're doing it for class.
But if you think it's not interesting reading, you'd be wrong. Susanne and I have had some really good conversations about how it is writing is taught. Writing is a tricky monster to wrestle, and Susanne's picked its most slippery incarnation as her interest--the teaching of creative writing, especially poetry.
Her stuff on blogging in the classroom is also superb, I think. And, just so I'm not tooting a horn quite close to me, spend time reading Bryan's posts, as well. He's a shrewd thinker and nothing if not a good discussion partner.
But if you think it's not interesting reading, you'd be wrong. Susanne and I have had some really good conversations about how it is writing is taught. Writing is a tricky monster to wrestle, and Susanne's picked its most slippery incarnation as her interest--the teaching of creative writing, especially poetry.
Her stuff on blogging in the classroom is also superb, I think. And, just so I'm not tooting a horn quite close to me, spend time reading Bryan's posts, as well. He's a shrewd thinker and nothing if not a good discussion partner.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
Subverted
Yesterday in class we discussed our readings of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto. For this class we have to provide a summary of an article several times throughout the semester, and one of my esteemed colleagues brought something on the connection between the Gothic novel (for Otranto was the first of the sort) and heavy metal music. The connection did make some sense. The argument from the article went thus: when genres like rock music and the novel came along they were subversive, especially upsetting to their times. But, as we think about it, their act of subversion was really rather tame, and as people got used to rock music and the novel they started to appropriate these once-subversive forms into codified methods for commercial success. Now introduce the gothic novel and heavy metal, which want to reclaim the subversiveness once held by their parent genres (the novel and rock music).
Nevermind that the gothic novel, sort of like the novel itself, was quickly codified and reappropriated for commercial success. Really, so was "heavy metal" when it first came out. To me, at least, as a heavy metal listener, what was originally considered "heavy metal" (like Led Zepplin) is hardly "heavy" anymore, but perhaps that's because metal has continually gone through this process of reincorporating its subversive qualities in different genres. Each new style, introduced by some innovators, eventually becomes codified and loses its subversive qualities. Take grindcore, for example. Grindcore had Cannibal Corpse, but it's easy to reduce their sound to codified junk--it's really not too far from that to begin with. But we see it even more readily in "shock" metal, which perhaps wears this influence right on the surface. God bless Alice Cooper--and I can say that because we belong to the same church denomination--but "School's Out" hardly sounds either heavy or shocking these days. After Alice Cooper gets, well, typical (and don't get me wrong--I love Alice Cooper) it takes something like Marilyn Manson to reinject the subversiveness.
Even old Marilyn's getting flaccid now--sadly, he just came out with his greatest hits album, which sounds like the death knell of a career to me--so maybe we're going to be on the hunt for something new to shake up our sensibilities. I'd propose the popular embracing of black metal. We could talk for a long time about how subversiveness is a large part of black metal, how it's a reaction to a dominant Christian culture. Sure, they've been doing their schtick for some time now, but black metal still has all the anger and attack and slicing subversion that our culture needs.
You don't need my word to see how these artists are quietly stirring up the pot, and how it's now only a matter of time before this subculture bubbles to the rock and roll surface to supplant all of our codified notions. You want a home where "genre" has no bounds, where each artist is an innovator and where there are no two voices with the same timbre, much less language? Where fresh thoughts spring like water from the rock? Where "convention" is the most hated nemesis, and where the decaying Christian culture has finally met the skeletal hands to punch through its rotted flesh and yank out its cold, lifeless heart?
Look here.
Nevermind that the gothic novel, sort of like the novel itself, was quickly codified and reappropriated for commercial success. Really, so was "heavy metal" when it first came out. To me, at least, as a heavy metal listener, what was originally considered "heavy metal" (like Led Zepplin) is hardly "heavy" anymore, but perhaps that's because metal has continually gone through this process of reincorporating its subversive qualities in different genres. Each new style, introduced by some innovators, eventually becomes codified and loses its subversive qualities. Take grindcore, for example. Grindcore had Cannibal Corpse, but it's easy to reduce their sound to codified junk--it's really not too far from that to begin with. But we see it even more readily in "shock" metal, which perhaps wears this influence right on the surface. God bless Alice Cooper--and I can say that because we belong to the same church denomination--but "School's Out" hardly sounds either heavy or shocking these days. After Alice Cooper gets, well, typical (and don't get me wrong--I love Alice Cooper) it takes something like Marilyn Manson to reinject the subversiveness.
Even old Marilyn's getting flaccid now--sadly, he just came out with his greatest hits album, which sounds like the death knell of a career to me--so maybe we're going to be on the hunt for something new to shake up our sensibilities. I'd propose the popular embracing of black metal. We could talk for a long time about how subversiveness is a large part of black metal, how it's a reaction to a dominant Christian culture. Sure, they've been doing their schtick for some time now, but black metal still has all the anger and attack and slicing subversion that our culture needs.
You don't need my word to see how these artists are quietly stirring up the pot, and how it's now only a matter of time before this subculture bubbles to the rock and roll surface to supplant all of our codified notions. You want a home where "genre" has no bounds, where each artist is an innovator and where there are no two voices with the same timbre, much less language? Where fresh thoughts spring like water from the rock? Where "convention" is the most hated nemesis, and where the decaying Christian culture has finally met the skeletal hands to punch through its rotted flesh and yank out its cold, lifeless heart?
Look here.
Monday, November 15, 2004
The morning ritual
Once, when I was a child, we saw a McDonald's commercial, and that McDonald's commercial provided us with a long-running private joke.
In the commercial, Ronald McDonald (who else) goes through his morning routine. At one point he stops by his closet to pick out something to wear, but of course the only thing in his closet is a collection of those exact same goofy clown outfits he's always wearing. Several of them. But he says, like a real dope, "What to wear, what to wear."
This transformed the morning routine. I would walk to the closet and ask, "what to wear, what to wear," like a dopey clown. Once a year or so now, as an adult, I'll look at my closet and think that it seems I've worn everything that I'd care to wear recently and think, "what to wear, what to wear."
My most eager weeks of this phrase followed my conversion to sumo wrestling, and the thrilling days when I'd wake up to my drawer stuffed with newly-pressed white towels. Looking at the towels, I gleefully chanted "what to wear, what to wear" as I attempted to twist and ram the white towel into the proper sumo position. Never once did I end up with anything more appropriate to the ancient, honored martial art of sumo than a vague hat-tipping to saggy cloth baby diapers. In frustration I would throw the towel in (the wash) and put on normal clothes, and my sumo ambitions, meeting such repeated disappointments, fizzled into nothing in less than a week.
Too bad I didn't have this. It would have solved all my problems. And I, like these amazing athletes, could trot around in an embarrasingly painful chunky white thong.
Apparently, considering the size of the "models", the famous mass of the sumo wrestler comes post-loincloth. There's hope for me yet.
Thank you, Memepool.
And thank you, Sprint, whose incredibly slow website allowed me to write this whole post while I waited for the pages to load so I could make my payment.
In the commercial, Ronald McDonald (who else) goes through his morning routine. At one point he stops by his closet to pick out something to wear, but of course the only thing in his closet is a collection of those exact same goofy clown outfits he's always wearing. Several of them. But he says, like a real dope, "What to wear, what to wear."
This transformed the morning routine. I would walk to the closet and ask, "what to wear, what to wear," like a dopey clown. Once a year or so now, as an adult, I'll look at my closet and think that it seems I've worn everything that I'd care to wear recently and think, "what to wear, what to wear."
My most eager weeks of this phrase followed my conversion to sumo wrestling, and the thrilling days when I'd wake up to my drawer stuffed with newly-pressed white towels. Looking at the towels, I gleefully chanted "what to wear, what to wear" as I attempted to twist and ram the white towel into the proper sumo position. Never once did I end up with anything more appropriate to the ancient, honored martial art of sumo than a vague hat-tipping to saggy cloth baby diapers. In frustration I would throw the towel in (the wash) and put on normal clothes, and my sumo ambitions, meeting such repeated disappointments, fizzled into nothing in less than a week.
Too bad I didn't have this. It would have solved all my problems. And I, like these amazing athletes, could trot around in an embarrasingly painful chunky white thong.
Apparently, considering the size of the "models", the famous mass of the sumo wrestler comes post-loincloth. There's hope for me yet.
Thank you, Memepool.
And thank you, Sprint, whose incredibly slow website allowed me to write this whole post while I waited for the pages to load so I could make my payment.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Updates
We're going to keep Little Yellow Notes around, even though I don't work at the assisted living joint anymore.
Then what the heck could I possibly be filling my time with?
Well, that's a great question. Let me tell you.
I've started as a graduate student in the English program at Creighton University. Creighton's English grad program is going to get me where I want to be in a couple years, best as I can tell, but I haven't figured out if that's because of them or because they're able to give me the opportunities I need to make my efforts pay off. Probably the latter.
Where I want to be, exactly, is defined more by generalities than geographic specifics. In a doctoral program in English literature. More specifically, in a doctoral program in Anglo-Irish Literature. I'd like to have been published, even perhaps a couple times, and definitely to have been to as many conferences as possible.
Sharing this is not an opportunity for me to vomit my ambitions into the blog, but rather, as a primer for whatever comes next. Grad school--as anyone who has done this can attest--has a way of eating your life alive, so it's impossible that shreds and nips of it not to leak into what I write.
So let me tell you right now why I'm excited about this semester. I'm putting together a documentary edition of some unpublished letters by George Russell, a poet and painter also known as AE. I'm writing a paper about how his friend, Lady Gregory, defined her Irish identity through her depictions of the stereotypical character of the Irishman in her plays. And I'm writing a huge research paper on shit.
Then what the heck could I possibly be filling my time with?
Well, that's a great question. Let me tell you.
I've started as a graduate student in the English program at Creighton University. Creighton's English grad program is going to get me where I want to be in a couple years, best as I can tell, but I haven't figured out if that's because of them or because they're able to give me the opportunities I need to make my efforts pay off. Probably the latter.
Where I want to be, exactly, is defined more by generalities than geographic specifics. In a doctoral program in English literature. More specifically, in a doctoral program in Anglo-Irish Literature. I'd like to have been published, even perhaps a couple times, and definitely to have been to as many conferences as possible.
Sharing this is not an opportunity for me to vomit my ambitions into the blog, but rather, as a primer for whatever comes next. Grad school--as anyone who has done this can attest--has a way of eating your life alive, so it's impossible that shreds and nips of it not to leak into what I write.
So let me tell you right now why I'm excited about this semester. I'm putting together a documentary edition of some unpublished letters by George Russell, a poet and painter also known as AE. I'm writing a paper about how his friend, Lady Gregory, defined her Irish identity through her depictions of the stereotypical character of the Irishman in her plays. And I'm writing a huge research paper on shit.
The Utterance
My friend Natalie just started her own blog.
I must credit her, at least a little, with this post, and with any that follow. I've been feeling the itch to begin posting again.
Now this is not a promise. But you might want to start checking in again. As Natalie's reminding us, there's a lot going on in the world, and in a time when it's so blatantly obvious that every single vote counts, how can they say our voices don't matter?
I must credit her, at least a little, with this post, and with any that follow. I've been feeling the itch to begin posting again.
Now this is not a promise. But you might want to start checking in again. As Natalie's reminding us, there's a lot going on in the world, and in a time when it's so blatantly obvious that every single vote counts, how can they say our voices don't matter?
