b l o g o s

scattershot 8: technology edition

1.  by my estimation, between 71 and 88% of the time "lol" is a big fat lie. these people are not even laughing, let alone doing so out loud.

2. holy mother of god, our library just added a little feature whereby you can, by clicking on a little button, have call numbers and locations texted to your cell phone. i've been using it all morning long. i may well still prefer the paper version when on the library portion of the hunt, we'll see about that.

3. the new gym on campus, which JM and i don't go to because it's further away than the other new gym, and because it is so gargantuan that it's like being in a multi-level mall, but which i have been going to this week because the other new gym is closed for break, has all new cardio equipment with individual televisions attached to the machines, and squat racks as far as the eye can see. it is total and complete workout nirvana.

4. facebook is glutting my inbox, but for some reason i don't really care.

5. i am quite fond of looking at people's photos on facebook, but if those same people were to send me these photos directly, i would find that extremely offputting. what is that about?

6. ebay bids on items i am selling seem to go up only during the night. i'm not sure whether this is because a) people wait until they get home and put the kids to bed, or b) people have a few drinks and lose their sense of restraint bidding for items that are not all that exciting.

7. i once did 6 b) with a women's denim jacket that i hardly ever wear and haven't bid on anything since. i feel certain i was in a bidding war with another size XL tipsy woman, or maybe a drag queen.

8. visual medical technology is INSANELY, unbelievably cool, the feminist critiques of it notwithstanding. in fact, the next time i see a paper that is dismissive of the medical gaze, i am going to raise my hand and say "but they can SEE STUFF INSIDE YOUR BODY, WITH LIGHT!!!" and i will expect the nearest person to give me ten dollars for raising this insight. okay, maybe fifteen. my copay has recently gone up.

if you're going my way

Not being at NCA this year is a little weird, if only because last year I had such fun with nca's queens. So what is a girl to do with herself at the onset of a week-long break during which she usually has two trips, but during which this year she has no trips?

Well, here's what I've done so far. First some decidin'. Then some mom-in-law hosting, including a tasty dinner at Luna (though Luna REALLY needs to lose the headache-inducing jazz). Then some much needed sleeping. Then some organizing of recipes and some digitizing of music. I have also been on something of a Sophocles bender that is kinda, sorta related to a writing project I'm hoping to revive, let's say, Tuesday. And I have mightily begun my quest to replicate the vegan cornbread at my favorite campus restaurant, The Red Herring. (Oh, and you locals, please help save them.) Then some co-planning for T-giving, and relatedly, some food shopping.

I also (with JM) watched the charming and light-hearted Be Kind, Rewind, starring Jack Black and Mos Def. This morning I read the ENTIRE paper, and was intrigued, first by this whole "slow blogging" business, and then by the prospect of conjuring woolly mammoths from dna culled from a woolly mammoth hair ball. These two stories, and for that matter, the movie too, seem to me to be philosophically related in a technology-goes-around-the-bend-retro kind of way.

Even though--or perhaps because--I'm not traveling this week, I have this scene stuck in my head. It is also sweetly retro, and I wish it were at least another minute longer:

first person, plural

This time of year, we are a busy lot. Our email pronounces things to us. Things like good news. itinerary. reminder. favor. checking in. favor. big favor. ms. review?. urgent. We send emails with these same subject lines to others, like barely mutated viruses. We get colds. We medicate. We wonder why, with medical advances and so many medications, we still feel as if we lost an eraser up each nostril.  We quickly skim the surfaces of each other's lives via facebook and blogs. With others we have drinks and think through more important matters with the kind of attention they deserve. We join groups online that cohere around fleeting desires. We attend curriculum meetings; we shuffle papers; we receive news about the dire budget situation; we read first-person columns in the Chronicle detailing problems with one aspect or another of our jobs, the framing of which make the authors seem virtuous, suspiciously so. Some of us sneer. Others of us snort. Others of us wring our hands as if we wrote the column and are about to be discovered. Maybe we did. Maybe we are.

Some of us check email incessantly and cultivate reputations for our lightening-quick response time. Others of us ignore email for days and days. This slowly drives us fast responders insane and perhaps it serves us right for not having a more full life. We stand in front of classrooms, looking out upon distracted faces, formerly chatty and bright young adults whose slouching seems to have deepened as the semester goes on, turning to slumping after the end of daylight savings time, when even the reasonably timed afternoon classes spill us out into darkness.

We try with varying degrees of success to conceal our weariness. Some of us act more beset than others. Others have little patience for the contest of who is busiest. We are all very tired; this is the point. We read Nietzsche and wonder why more people don't think this way. We are very tired, but we wake up at 3 am and can't go back to sleep. Our days become shorter. We begin to feel out of touch with our research, which in turn makes us restless. Those of us who are on leave feel their euphoria giving way to a vague anxiety about not having done enough. To steel ourselves and remind ourselves of a more productive time, or to postpone beginning that conference paper we proposed in some spring haze, we check on the status of manuscripts we submitted at the end of summer, when everything seemed bright and fresh, and turnaround times could be counted in weeks, not months. We get cheerful but vague replies from overworked editors and/or their overworked assistants about how they are still waiting. We wait. We unroll our lunchbags and chew on cold sandwiches. We attend afternoon talks and fend off sleep by snickering at our colleagues who nod off in the front row.

Soon (though not soon enough) it will be time for thanksgiving break. Some of us will travel a long way for a big meal, while others of us will lay around all week, catching up, peeking at our research, falling into slumbers, rousing ourselves only to make soup and bread and eat turkey and pie, all in an effort to regroup somehow. 

It helps to know we're not alone.

overheard in the locker room: complicity

co-ed #1, stepping off the scale: "OH MY GOD I have totally gained my FRESHMAN 15!!!!"

co-ed #2:  it's just a number, and you're soaking wet.

co-ed#1: do you think that's why my pants are kind of tight?

co-ed #2: probably.

co-ed #1: do you think it's drinking weight?

co-ed #2: maybe. that shit has a lot of calories. do you work out?

co-ed #1: when i'm at home, I play tennis? OH MY GOD. I really can't believe this.

co-ed #2: shut the hell up, before I punch you in the face.

co-ed#1 (small voice): I think I need to eat at Allen hall tonight so I can have a salad.

co-ed #2: okay. that way we don't have to walk very far.

anticipation

Waiting for Tuesday feels a little like waiting for a really important championship game, only the players will have gone home; many of the judges don't seem to have watched the same contest I did; and the scoring system may or may not work properly. In the meantime, though, lots and lots of things to keep me busy, in addition to shaking my head at the latest Palindrone: that the press's labeling her critiques of Obama as "attacks" threatens her freedom of speech. I mean, please. Pretty please?

Those scoreboards had better fucking work.

Anyway. My first full weekend at home since early September (and end of D.S.T no less) means catching up by tending to deadlines and promised reading and also some really, really good mountain biking. Nothing gives those endorphins a kick quite like riding at high speeds deep in the woods where the fall colors have turned the sun into a gigantic, super high wattage red/orange/yellow disco ball. I would have enjoyed it even more if not for our governor's plan to close down those trails, along with so many rape crisis centers, to balance his budget. Last week his approval rating was half--half!--that of W's.

Which brings me back around, worrying toward Tuesday. Get that vote on out, people.

days like these

I officially have more meetings and events than hours today. The first one begins at 8:30 a.m., and the last one will end around 9:00 p.m. The sum total is something of a drag. I am, however, looking forward to moderating tonight's IPRH panel on The Media and The Election featuring my colleagues Bob McChesney and Dave Tewksbury. If you're here, you ought to come--these guys know their stuff.

best rec request ever

time warp

This morning on my run, I saw a guy struggling to push his dead car in the opposite direction, so I tied my running buddy Tillie to a tree and jumped in to help only to be informed by the out-of-breath fellow that he didn't "believe in making females work." "Call me old fashioned," he added while heaving. To which I responded, "well, then, it's time for a little lesson" and started pushing anyway.

A bit later a colleague and I had a lunchtime appointment with a downtown publishing business. So I met her at her parking garage and we drove to lunch.    Our hosts wanted to show us around their office, and so we took a little tour. The place was cool--it kind of looked like the warehouse in The Office, except, alas, no Darryl, and no big scale for the entire staff to weigh themselves collectively (JM and I just watched this season's premiere).

But then we went into the office part, where my colleague and I sat on one side of a big desk. There were two of these big desks in the room, and I kept thinking something was off, until it hit me: these desks didn't have computers on them. No power strips or a/c adapters or cleared-away spots to suggest the use of laptops either. Nothing. Just a phone, pictures of family members, and horizontal blinds. I felt like I'd stepped from an episode of the Office to an episode of Mad Men, only without the martinis for lunch. 

on knowledge: cell phone conversations overheard on the train

woman sitting behind me:

“girl, I got a 73 out of 75 on my first speech.”

[pause]

“girl I know. I’ve never studied so hard in my life. I think I know everything.”

 

woman sitting in front of me:

“I’m reading a colleague’s articles so I can write an external letter. She’s up for tenure this year. It’s kind of a nuisance, but [sigh]  it’s a service.”

[pause]

“No, I don’t think a letter from your mother will help your tenure case. For one thing, I’m not in your field.”

leaving-town madness

It being the day before we leave on our annual trek to Wisconsin's northwoods, there was quite a lot to do around these parts. But in addition to the packing, list-making, errand running, rental car retrieving, cooking for our co-travelers, and cleaning, I managed (with co-author's help) to send out that article we have been working on for so long now, and also to break up a tangly, squealy, scary, but ultimately bloodless whippet brawl with the help of a bag of fresh thai basil. Since we didn't have quite enough to do, JM and I made a giant batch of marinara sauce and did a little canning. Ripe tomatoes (fifteen pounds' worth, from Tennessee and Illinois) above all else.