b l o g o s

over heard (locker room edition)

Girl one: How was your Thanksgiving?

Girl two: Good. How was yours?

Girl one: Actually, it was really good. I had three Christmases!

Girl two: What?

Girl one: Yah. Three Christmases.

Girl two: How many Christmases do you have, like, total?

Girl one: Six. So, last week, we did my Dad's Mom's and my Dad's Dad's and my Mom's mom's.

Girl two: What do you do, like, on Christmas?

Girl one: It's basically all the same people, only different presents. Christmas eve is the big family. Then there's Christmas morning, which is Santa. And then there's Christmas night. Christmas night is when you get your big presents.

Girl two: You mean Santa doesn't bring big presents?

Girl one: No, Christmas night is big presents. Santa just brings your stocking stuffers, and some little things, like your socks and stuff.

Girl two: huh!

Girl one: Yah, and so over Thanksgiving I got so much money, I'm like, back in the green. Or back in black. Whatever.

Girl two: that's great.

Girl one: Yah, my grandpa on my Dad's side gave me fifty dollars plus a fifty dollar gift card to Target. I buy everything at Target. Clothes, and... everything.

Girl two: Like what else?

Girl one: You know. Christmas decorations.

the joy of overlapping insights

Yesterday, I did lots of professional (sort of) stuff, including taking an online survey funded by ICA (International Communication Association) about "graduate student characteristics." The aim of the study, from what I gather from the questions, has to do with identifying those characteristics most commonly perceived as indicators of success (or something like it) in academia. Most of the questions were write-in. For the question about the most common characteristics of "excellent" graduate students, I wrote something like "capacity for obsessiveness and a consistent willingness to work hard." (ftr: I don't think these observations are exactly newsflashes.) I also believe that good writing, big thinking, and all those qualities are somewhat indispensable, but they are (in my experience at least) slightly more teachable than the two I listed.

Another thing I did yesterday (last night after Odyssey) is read the introduction to Eve Sedgwick's Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity.  No sooner than page 2, I encountered this line: "I'm fond of observing how obsession is the most durable form of intellectual capital."

That's right.

dear magic 8 ball:

Will I ever be good at keyset pac-man?

----------------

         

My reply is no.

seasonal habits

I may have written about this here before, but the end of the semester has always been a productive time for me to write, especially when my teaching (as it sometimes does) converges so perfectly with the stuff I'm working on. But even more than that, the drive-to-write is a leftover habit from grad school in which the end-of-semester time presses down on everything, and deadline-panic gives way to focus.

This vestigial habit reminds me of another habit that didn't die with the conditions that produced it--the one in which I bit my nails throughout basketball season, beginning in mid-October and stretching through early April. These were high-stress, nervewracking times, etc. But weirdly after my playing days were over, I noticed that I did the same thing in graduate school: starting in mid-October, for no apparent reason, I began biting my nails. I eventually retrained myself and don't do that anymore.

By contrast, though, the vestigial habit of intense end-of-semester writing has its advantages, so perhaps I'll hang onto it.

more than words

cross posted at body blog

Today marked the first of two days in which students in my grad seminar give brief sketches in the history of rhetoric, taking up the question "what happens to those histories when we attend to matters of the body?" The answers are as various as they are interesting. I appreciated some of the threads that got going--the discussion of what happens to theories of voice as rhetoric's material changes e.g. (esp. the Cicero and Blair presentations). The focus on materiality is striking too--from Margery Kemp's fashion style to Gilbert Austin's notation system. Lots of references to the expressiveness of the eyes: who's up for writing a dissertation or book on eyes in the history of rhetoric? I was also excited to learn about the possibilities Vico holds for a critical body rhetoric.

no wonder I forgot yesterday's entry

Mountain Biking? The Saturday after Thanksgiving? Without a coat?

Forget it.

fambily

My dad's extended (play) family has a long tradition of gathering together in Tennessee around Thanksgiving time to see each other and eat a lot. They're a gregarious, happy bunch, the Hawhees, and now that my cousins are having kids and stuff, the numbers keep getting bigger. I bet there are 25+ people this year.

At some point--I'm not sure when (that seems to be the case with most traditions, huh?)--the big meal got pushed to Friday I think to accommodate family members with longer drives and work schedules. So today the Hawhee family is somewhere in Gatlinburg in a giant rented chalet chowing down, watching movies, opening presents, and talking about the year my dad and his brothers drank too much homemade wine and charred the turkey. Hi everyone! Sorry we couldn't make it this year!

delicious words

cross posted at body blog

Two psychologists in Edinburg have just published findings from a study they've conducted on people who experience "lexical-gustatory synaesthesia," which is to say that these people taste their words. It's a rare condition--the researchers have only been able to find a small number of people in Europe and US who have it--but man, is it fascinating.

The New York Times ran an article on it, but I think the science writer, in an attempt to play up the connections to Thanksgiving, gets it kind of wrong. The NYT article punningly places taste "in the ear of the beholder," but judging from the description of the study in Nature, the phenomenon under consideration is not about tasting words one hears, but tasting words one is about to utter: i.e. the sense of taste is activated in the process of conjuring a word. The researchers call this the tip of the tongue phenomenon (TOT for short), and the upshot has to do with meaning-making on the sensory level--perhaps, the researchers tantalizingly suggest, for all of us.

extras

I hope everyone's having an enjoyable Thanksgiving. For my part, it's been a day of delightful little bonuses:

- to the temps, an extra 15 degrees above normal
- to my usual dad phone chat, an extra 10 minutes of convo
- to our allerton run, the extra mile and a half loop
- to the dogs' two cups of pro-plan light, one chicken leg each (raw, for teeth cleaning)
- to my afternoon chai soy latte, a shot of whiskey

other extras will likely include (most likely in this order):
- an extra batch of biscuits, since John and I have almost made our way through one, and dinner hasn't yet officially started
- a nap
- an entire dvd of the office, season 2 (american edition)

spam from heaven

So, like, did anyone else get an email from Jesus today?

Just curious.

----- Original Message -----

From: Jesus

To: [email protected]

Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 5:05 PM

Subject: blessing