making biscuits

Music: Hammock: Chasing After Shadows . . . Living With Ghosts (2010)

Yes, the subject of my post today is also a euphemism, but, today my rockin' neighbor Mary Anne hosted a "Ladies Brunch," and I was fortunate enough to be a lady for today (you can call me "Lady Ja-Ju"). I confess my favorite meal to cook for is breakfast/brunch because I really do love eggs, among the many other breakfast foods. My contribution today included Migas, mimosas, and buttermilk biscuits. We also noshed on some fabulous sausages, fruit, cinnamon buns, and a deliciously spicy menudo (sans the tripe). Seasoned potatoes, crepes, the bounty was eye-popping and a waist-line blaster, no doubt. I had a marvelous time, and returned home for just enough time to get something on the to-do list crossed out before meeting a friend for a drink at the neighborhood bar. I'm pausing a bit to blog---at DJ K-Thang's request---before I start working on a speech I'm to give tomorrow at my lodge on the topic of virtue and friendship.

My migas turned out just a tad soggy, because I think the tomato I used was a little over-ripe. The biscuits, however, were a hit, and Kristin asked if I'd share with her the recipe. I figured I would share the recipe with everyone, because (a) making good biscuits is tough; and (b) with the help of Southern Living magazine (courtesy of my mom), I finally figured it out. Here's the secret: keep it cold.

That’s right: the key to really good, fluffy biscuits is keeping the dough frigid. You seasoned pros can probably explain this better than me, but from what I figure the trick is to make sure the leavening agent enters the oven hard and cold; the rapid heating helps to create the air-pockets that keep your biscuits from turning into hard scones.

Of course, you don't use yeast in biscuits---that's for bread-stuffs. Instead, you use butter or, as my grandmother used to use, "shortening" or Crisco. Now, Crisco is a hydrogenated fat designed to store at room temperature. In general, this stuff is bad for you, since it doesn't like to leave the body---so many of us go for butter. But Crisco does make the biscuits more light and fluffy than butter---so you might try to do half-and-half (I didn't today, but I have in the past). The history of Crisco is interesting, though (short for "crystallized cottonseed oil")---the inventor was setting out to make soap.

Anyhoo, here's my recipe for Kristin (my migas recipe is here). STUFF:

• 1 stick of cold butter (or, ½ stick of cold butter and 4 tbs. of Crisco)
• 2 ¼ cups of flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder (or just use self-rising flour and you're good to go)
• 1 ¼ cups of buttermilk
• 1/2 stick of melted butter

WHAT TO DO WITH THE STUFF:

Ok, so, slice up the butter into pats and dump them into a large bowl with the flower. Gently with your hands squish the butter into smaller pieces, until the butter/flour mixture is lumpy, like a bunch of peas. Do not squish so hard that it becomes like pie crust dough. This mixture should be pea-like and beady, not flaky. Then, stick the bowl into the fridge and chill it for at least fifteen minutes. Remember: the key is to keep it cold!

Take out of the fridge and add the buttermilk, and turn this mess into a wet dough. Take a handful of flour and mix it in until the dough becomes un-sticky enough to lump onto a cutting board. But before you do, make sure the cutting board is spread liberally with dough. Mash the mess to make it flat, adding extra flour when necessary to eliminate the stickiness. Set the oven to 450 degrees.

Using your hands or a rolling pin (I prefer the latter), roll out a 9X5 inch square of the dough. Fold halfwise, then halfwise again. Using the rolling pin, mash it out again into another 9X5 square. Do this two to three more times, BUT NO MORE. If you fold the dough too much your biscuits will be tough.

Using a glass edge, cut you some biscuits and put on a lightly oiled jelly roll pan (or a baking sheet, whatever). Fold the dough again to and roll out again to make as many biscuits as you can get. Put into the oven and set the timer to around 13 minutes. Depending on how your oven is, you may need to bake for up to 17 minutes to brown the tops to the way you like it. As your biscuits bake, melt ½ a stick of butter in a bowl.

Remove the biscuits from the oven, and immediately brush the tops with melted butter. Let them sit for a few minutes, then brush with the remaining butter.

I'm not going to pretend this is "easy," because it took me many tries to figure it out. Everyone's oven is different, and I suspect if you're like me, the dough is so fun to play with that you over fold and roll it. But with a little trial and error, you can do this! Again the key is making sure the dough is cold right until it enters the oven.

Sometimes I miss writing my food column, I must admit.

it's synth-pop friday!

Moon Theory from Miami Horror on Vimeo.

gone, but not not writing

Music: Bat for Lashes: Two Suns (2009)

Returning from the university I stopped off at my neighborhood grocery store. My experience there was worthy of a post titled "The Agonies of Randall's: Four Years Later" (the original agony here). We've all had the experience: you have three items to buy and head for the "express" lane, with three people in front of you. There is only one other lane open, and it has two buggy-full patrons waiting. Then, they open up three more lanes, but all the people behind you in line rush to them, and so you're stuck behind (a) the couple who have never used the credit swipe machine before and do not speak English; (b) the food stamp family whose card will not work; and (c) the elderly woman who haggles over an expired coupon and insists on writing a check (and who does not have the foresight to fill out said check while waiting for [a] and [b]). Of course, these folks reflect the neighborhood I chose to live in, and I prefer it over a Starbucks strewn yuppieland. Even so, after a long day it's hard to muster the patience (three items, forty minutes?). Well, I know this is a common experience for my ilk, but when you're in it---learning that Tipper and Al are splitting, Jolie is going to break Brad's heart, and that there are ten steps to losing the belly fat first---you have a ten minute self-pity party standing in the line.

Then you come home to pick up cat poop, since the foster cat doesn't want to use the litter box.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that my existential moments tend to occur in grocery store check-out lines. I cannot find the original blog post---dunno where it went, must've got lost in the server shift---but I recall one of my more pensive posts was about standing in line at Albertson's off of Government Street in Baton Rouge, being reminded of Elvis Costello's "Allison," and thinking the chain might make off quite well with a rewrite of the song . . . .

Well yes, dear readers, I have not been writing much on the blog. One can always tell how busy I am in relation to blogarrhea. Actually, that's not quite true; rather, one can tell how much I'm not in front of the computer when the blog is not posty. Generally, when I'm being productive writing I tend to blog a lot too---it tends to get the words moving.

But, if I'm not writing here, it does not mean I'm not writing in some form somewhere. These past few weeks I've been writing with food---I think that cooking is a form of writing. The genre? Korean and then comfort food. I have mastered all things kimchi and chicken fried steak and mac and cheese in the past few weeks. And I've been writing with "light," taking a lot of photographs during travels and hosting beloved guests. The photo on the left is what the scene looks like now (sans me, cause I'm taking the picture)---the patio at night, with a cigar and my computer. This is often the scene for nighttime blogging, and if I have an evening to myself I'm often perched out there (or here, since that's where I'm at typing this).

So, what have I been up to? Well, it's documented in a number of photo galleries. I headed up to Minneapolis the week before last for a nice touch with home base (the location of your graduate work is, lets face it, always home base for an academic). I had a lovely visit with one of my best friends, Mirko, and his partner Tim (whose favorite color is orange, by the way). Mirko attended a RSA preconference with me, which was orchestrated by another best friend, David Beard. It was a great time interacting with smart folks (most of whom were graduate students from the U of MN) and thinking about the intersection of institutional constraint and scholarship. Then, after the marvelous preconference I got to hook up with more best friends, Angela Ray and my doctoral advisor, Robert Scott. We dined at the delicious Spoon River, next to the Guthrie Theatre, along with RL's daughter Janet and renowned argumentation scholar Jim Klumpp.

The Rhetoric Society of America conference proper was the next day, and there was Christopher Swift, another best friend. Can you tell I was practically in heaven with all these beloved peeps around? Minneapolis is "home base" for a reason, I tell ya. Unlike other RSA conferences, though, this one was a bit strange because it was home base; I felt torn between professional duties and wanting to spend time with good friends in our "old stomping ground." I got to spend a good bit of time with many, but not all, and I confess I would have liked more time. We're getting older together, as I mused in my last post, and there's something both comforting and sad about it all. RSA was an odd conference emotionally, but also invigorating and certainly refreshing. Here's a gallery of photos---when I remembered I had a camera.

I returned home (with sadness) with a day to recover, then more beloved friends dropped in for a visit: the soon-to-be-married Amanda and Roger! I'll be officiating their nuptials, so we dined and discussed what should transpire in a couple of weeks (what to say about "God" in services is always a touchy subject, so we worked that out, among other things). They both live in Waco now, so we don't see each other as often as we would like to.

After Rogmanda's departure, school started again and so I found myself knee-deep in prep. Then, glory of all glories, Stace Treat and his buddy Wayne dropped in for Pride weekend in Aus-Vegas! To say we had something of a debauched weekend is . . . er . . . an understatement. Stace introduced us to Patrice Pike, who effin' rocked and is now my favorite righteous babe (sorry Ani, Patrice is better). We caught Patrice's show for the official Pride thingie at the Long Center, then headed over to Charlies and ended the evening at Oil Can Harry's (which, er, is a little blurry to me at this point). [Note to friends: I do not put money in the underwear of strangers---you can try to get me to do this all you want, but no matter how hot he or she is, I am not going to do it, even after three drinks!] We also managed to overeat at the Salt Lick (no surprise there), tried to see the bats (they never came out), then capped off the evening at the Driskill and Lovejoy's. My weekend with all the young dudes was simply a blast, and I was sad to see Stace and Wayne head south to San Antonio for a conference on Sunday.

So, that's where I've been. I'm still writing, see? Just not necessarily in front of a computer. I've been back to grading graduate seminar papers and prepping class---and writing a bit of the public speaking textbook.

My head is all about "informative speaking" at the moment. I'm looking for a good student speech that's a little quirky to include in the chapter I'm working on. I had a speech lined up on "civic coffee," apparently a much prized beverage made from coffee beans pooped out of cats. But that student is stonewalling me---so the quest continues: can you recommend a good student-authored, informative speech that's not about making a peanut butter and jelly sannich?

All of this said, I won't be traveling for over a month, so I hope I'll be able to post a bit more on the blog in the coming weeks. Occupying my head at the moment is the hard-to-believe oil disaster in the gulf; the rhetorical effects of School House Rock; and the ways in which The Passion of the Christ is pornographic (I have to pump out an essay before Claire Sisco King scoops me in her no doubt awesome, forthcoming book!).

head loops

Music: Eric Wollo: Emotional Landscapes (2003)

We arrived and slumped on backless couches behind a series of glass slabs arranged in a curious stagger. Walking past us on the street, if a voyeur surrendered to human habit, she would see two blurs moving, sometimes gesturing. To see us from the outside, she would need to discern the angled puzzle, and even then, we would appear as a couple trapped behind glass bars. And that is an aesthetic irony, because our arrival was something of an escape from the lobbied zones of greeting at the conference hotel.

I conveniently lost my nametag lanyard on the second day; it is hard to brandish a badge tethered to my head with long hair on humid days.

We conversed as long time friends do; she took off her shoes. I loosened my tie. Asymmetrical hair, Mia Farrow with inked sleeves, $20 martini? Well, what the hell. I reckon we've made it and deserve it and repairing the cracked front window at home can wait another month with duct tape. Besides, she's not going to point out with her eyes that I've gained weight. Again.

I did my best impression of a teacher-character's voice from South Park: "Well, are you having a good convention? Have you seen any good panels?" She grinned, and then we laughed softly, and the martini still was on its way. Why is that taking so long? It's like waiting for Jesus after all those talking heads. And having a good convention is not necessarily related to panels.

"I actually did see a great panel," I said. (Finally, martini.) "Someone was using Rancier in a way that could be communicated in the spoken word," I explained. "Interesting critique of the current state of visual rhetoric, but this time not with Heidegger." She shared a similar story too, but it wasn't long before we started talking about the last six months, reviewing things that had happened that didn't get discussed in the monthly catch-ups. (Oooh, what yumminess has been stuffed into this olive?) Academics on the decline; sit-com worthy naughty-neighbor stories; marriages; engagements; children; deans and . . .

Deaths.

Some of our mentors have retired or are retiring but are still thriving.

In one ballroom, an Indian wedding. In the neighboring ballroom, a wake. It's not always about the panels.

"More crying happens at conferences than I ever knew," I said.

"Yes. I know," she said. And I was thinking that not all of those tears are mournful.

"I think I get more hugs and love here than I do when I go home to see blood-relatives."

"It's so good to see you," she said, with those familiar and soulful eyes. I looked forward to seeing many sets of them, and in retrospect I did.

"Best friends: they only get 45 minutes." Laughter.

The blurred glass slabs return again later in the evening in a different way: the slurred speech of a respected senior figure summoning me for a private chat. I cannot figure the angle from which I should hear.

"I misread you," he said. "I thought you were all show. But I reviewed your piece on Prince's secret album . . . I was very impressed with how you revised that. You're a class act. But then, just look at you. Don't take that the wrong way. You're a good guy."

"Thanks. It means a lot to hear you say that," I said.

A clearer view, later, someone peering through the blinds.

"I overheard that conversation," she said. "I'd be pissed as hell. Why didn't you tell him off? Jeezhuss!" She grabbed my elbow.

"He was blitzed, and I knew what he meant. I wasn't insulted. I think he was just sayin' that he thought what I was trying to do was, you know, valuable, that it was worth the time to engage it."

"I'd have told him to [insert unpleasant words]," said another acquaintance. "He was obviously trying to insult you."

"Well, it didn't work. I'm a lover not a fighter," I joked. Until that "objective" assessment from the overhearing, I honestly didn't remember the conversation in any other way than I initially received and felt it. I was genuinely flattered; I think I still am.

"But you love everybody," said another mentor much later, about someone else, another generation, another clique, another slab (this time, smoke). That was a critique.

. . . especially you.

It's about growing older.

Growing older together.

Late last night, in 7th street between the two hotels, a man who had not shaved in some months sat slumped on the pavement, his back leaning up against a light post. He seemed delirious, his head occasionally rolling from one side to the other. A paramedic in a white uniform brushed by me with a plastic box of attending things. Bejeweled diners overdressed crowded along the edges of buildings in gawk; a heavyset man in a tailored suit laughed as he conversed with a state trooper. Flashing lights from a parked ambulance turned the corridor into a kind of street disco, blue and white lights flashing and reflecting on glass walls pointing to an open sky. A storefront of candy. Here and there academics could be spotted, forgetting they still wore their badges. I knew some of them. A doorman went on for some minutes about how much he admired my shoes. More and more policemen arrived.

As we stood in the lobby, a friend showed the doorman my pocket watch as I busied myself with a cell phone.

it's synth-what? friday!

except my scenery is peopled by idiots talking on cell phones and old men farting

chuckler

it's synth-pop friday!

little women?

Music: Trentemøller: The Last Resort (2006)

The latest viral video to garner national MSM attention features five eight- and nine-year-old girls, dressed in lingerie, dancing to Beyonce's "Single Ladies." Seeing it for the first time my jaw dropped, and then I laughed aloud. Then I watched it four more times. It's obvious from watching the routine that the choreography was deliberately provocative and designed to snap heads (its shock effects reminded me of the finale of Little Miss Sunshine, and I was similarly amused). The cheer-drawing effect of the routine is from the energetic, light-speed gyrating and grinding, the sort of stuff one expects from a racy adult strip-bar routine (which Beyonce herself promoted, albeit in more tasteful clothing). If you've not seen this yet, be prepared for a titillating experience. I daresay its almost NSFW:

[Later edit, 5/18: well, it didn't take long for the video to be pulled. The whole thing is something to behold; you can find some snippets of it, however, in the ABC news story.] The outcry on the InterTubes is that this is an age-inappropriate act because it sexualizes prepubescent girls. On television Dr. Phil went after the dance teachers for encouraging pedophiles. Last Friday the parents of a couple of the girls defended the routine as "normal" and "appropriate" within the world of competitive dance (this defense reminds me of Shanahara Gate). They defended the routine and outfits by arguing that the girls are oblivious to any sexual connotations that the routine or song might have, and that the outfits were designed for "movement." The father said it the girls' appearance was no different than children in bathing suits at the community pool.

I think Dr. Phil has a point---it's a pedophile's dream---but so, too, is a kid on a swing in a playground. The real issue here is the growing hypocrisy of denying adolescent sexuality while simultaneously celebrating its fact. Unquestionably children are moved by adult things with sexual themes without realizing that the feelings are "sexual." We learn the signifiers of sexuality as we get older and start applying them to our bodily excitations when society deems it appropriate. Freud's provocative and controversial thesis in 1905 is that we come out of the womb sexual creatures, capable of experiencing sexual stimulation and pleasure before we have the linguistic resources to make these bodily excitations meaningful. Of course, I don't mean "sexual" here in terms of adult intercourse (the feat that Freud mistakenly believed brings everything together), I simply mean bodily excitation. And one is hard pressed to think of an activity that pushes the body's buttons more than dance.

The controversy surrounding this video is a direct consequence of an overly narrow understanding of human sexuality and sexual response and, apparently, the limited repertoire we have for expressing the more intense feelings our body can have---the shear paucity of the signifier. On the one hand, we can argue that both the parents of the dancers and the outraged and concerned adults decrying the routine are simply in denial: human beings are sexual creatures, regardless of their age. We all stare and gape and are aroused by this dance routine because of its bodily/affective intensities. The girls dancing provocatively are similarly caught up in the sexual charge. On the other hand, however, one has to marvel at the rhetorical stupidity of the dancers' parents, as well as the dance teachers, who put this routine together. To say that children are sexual creatures is not to say that they should be allowed to express their natural, libidinal exuberance in a language that is only meaningful to adults. Children want to emulate adults; they learn by mimicry. So of course the girls want to dance this way; but they should also be taught what it signifies.

The stupidity of the routine is easily demonstrated with semiotic analysis: the Beyonce song, and very hot video associated with it, is about a break-up. The protagonist of the song is bragging about her sexual prowess and her body; she taunts "if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it," "it" meaning, of course, her body, the sexual experience, and so on. The Beyonce video features lots of sexually suggestive grinding. The "fun" of the song is really about the provocative payback: "if you really wanted to have sexual relations with me, you would have asked me to marry you." As we all know, the institution of marriage was originally an economic relationship concerning the property of the wife's body (not saying that’s what it is today, I'm just saying this is the basic history, and this is the logic the song plays off of). Yes, the song is catchy. But there's no way an eight year old girl could begin to comprehend the complexity of the lyrical message (even if it's done by Chipmunks). Regardless, the song is about the woman's body as property.

Where the routine gets irresponsible, however, is with the provocative grinding and the outfits. I think the grinding speaks for itself, but the lingerie is really "over the top." The outfits are designed to reveal as much skin as possible. And since when are knee-high black boots "normal" for eight year old girls (and there's quite a power-play signified by those!)??? Further, the "hot pants" and halters are black and red in color---classic colors of early 20th century U.S. burlesque. Now, I don't know the history of burlesque fashion, but I would be willing to bet the black and red color can be traced to prostitution---I just don't know. Most of us would agree, however, black and red underwear is a signifier of salacious interest---that is to say, the promise (or withholding) of genital intercourse.

With this dance routine, then, we have a wildly overdetermined adult sexuality. It's one thing to admit children are sexual creatures; it's quite another to have them dripping in all the signifiers of adult sex and then to claim that it's "innocent fun." These children were deliberately sexualized in adult connotation for a sense of enjoyment; it's the same logic of the Hit Girl character in the comic and film Kick-Ass (however, the film was much more responsible).

Gosh knows I'm no prude, and I do not side with Dr. Phil or the outraged parents decrying the dance routine either. All the adults involved in putting the girls into this situation---pro and con---need to take responsibility for their projections and enjoyments here. Human beings are sexual creatures whose bodies are excited by being with, and by looking at, other bodies, regardless of age. That said, how we make meaning of these excitations is clearly in the moral domain---and it's a very complicated domain shot-through with all sorts of consequences, political, moral, and economic. If parents want to dress up their prepubescent kids in lingerie and have them parade about, grinding their wares and evoking the economic dimensions of marriage, then they should be prepared to talk to them about human sexual response. The problem, of course, is that none of these girls have been talked to about their sexuality. The problem is now these five girls are confused about the controversy: why are all these people upset with us? What did we do wrong? And frankly, I don't think an eight year old is ready to deal with the complexities (and hypocrisies) of sexuality in the United States. Perhaps some of them are---everyone's different.

In short: the dance teachers and parents have introduced these girls to the vexed and often pathological discourses of shame. Ours is not a culture that is ready to confront the sexuality of young people. And because that's the social context in which this dance routine has intervened, I suspect a lot of young girls who identify with the feelings but not the meanings are asking themselves, "what's wrong with me?" That's the rub. And that's a shame.

welcome to texas

Music: Fous De La Mer: Stars and Fishes (2004)

The Texas Board of Education has been getting a lot of national press lately because of the "curricular reforms" a number of its "conservative" members have been ramming into policy. Most of the national hubbub has been about textbook censorship and curricular standards: removing Thomas Jefferson as a representative of the Enlightenment because of his advocacy of the separation of church and state; deleting Thurgood Marshall and other civil rights leaders from social studies curricula; adding creationism to the teaching of science; and so forth. The seven or so self-identified "conservative" board members are rather forthright about their ideological agenda; more than a few are on record claiming that "academia" has a "liberal bias" and, like Twisted Sister, they're "not gonna take it anymore."

Ok, like most of you reading, I think the Texas Board of Education is both comical and an embarrassment. I also think its regrettable that a creationist dentist can decide what is or is not in a textbook; because Texas is a huge state, textbook reform impacts the national textbook industry. In an ideal world, boards of education would be largely peopled by teachers (I don't think it should all be teachers, however; voices from outside the educational-industrial complex are important)---and these teachers should, themselves, have good educations. But, as much as I would admit that the content of textbooks is important, I also have to laugh at the attention these curricular "reforms" are getting. It's actually a diversion to the real problem our system of compulsory education: dedicated teachers. I don't care what textbook or set of standards you endorse or enforce, it don't mean jack without a good teacher to teach and enact them.

Because a good friend and colleague has tangled with David Horowitz, who has made higher education a political battleground in the culture wars (see, for example, this tomfoolery), I'm familiar with the more deliberate politicization of education, primary and secondary. As an educator I also understand the importance of speaking-out against the wildly unfounded claims of this "conservative" movement into the educational system. At the same time, however, I want to look these folks in the eyes and ask: who is gonna teach your revisionist history? Who is gonna teach creation science?

Let me get gross (that is, reductionist): "right" politics in the U.S. reduces to a fundamental---and primal---appeal: someone is taking your happenis away. "Left" politics often cottons to something like, "love your neighbor." These appeals resonate with all of us, but some of us lean more to neighbors than to self, some of us are more about giving than preserving. Guess which kind of person goes into---and stays in---the profession of teaching?

I've been teaching for fourteen years now. If there is one thing I've learned from being a teacher, it is that feeling is the glue of learning, that to get a student to care about doing the work, doing the reading, or mastering the skill, they have to believe that the teacher cares about them doing so. I just taught a class about religion, and I promise that 85% of the students in my class do not share my politics. To be a good teacher, however, I have to connect with them as people, and then provoke them to think for themselves. It really doesn’t matter what the textbook says---what matters is what we talk about in the classroom, how we connect with each other. What matters is the conversation we have. The textbook is a jumping-off point. Any teacher will tell you that the textbook is where we begin, not where we end.

That the Texas Board of Education thinks that it can craft political subjects by textbook content is laughable. It's the teacher and his or her affective investments that make the difference. It's everyday interaction, being in the classroom, it's working with people in "meat space" that makes the impact.

The folks who go into teaching are, by and large, romantics and idealists. Because they are motivated by building community, teachers are less likely to be free market capitalists of the Ayn Randian stripe. (I mean, you're not going to find a kindergarten teacher touting the virtues of selfishness.) If you really want to conservatize education, you're going to have to change the character of the teacher. And I ask: what kind of person signs-up for working in a system that underpays and overworks? What kind of person decides to dedicate his or her career to a profession that is undervalued? It's the kind of person who is less concerned with policy and more concerned with connection.

The assumptions behind the curricular "reform" of the Texas Board of Education are fundamentally flawed. They underestimate the intelligence of young people. And they have no clue about the type of person who is drawn to be a teacher. A teacher did not go into law enforcement for a reason; we are not police. By definition, teaching is not policing.

presidential head

Music: The Divine Comedy: Regeneration (2001)

I trust with the above blog entry title readers were temporarily---perhaps unconsciously---reminded of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair and The Starr Report. And while it is undeniably true I have a partially written essay titled "The Presidential Penis" (based on a reading of this), this post is actually about something even more interesting: random public art in Houston. It's all about the noun, y'all, not the verb.

Last weekend I was visiting with my Houston friends Mason (Macy and Jason) and caught a delightful show at Numbers (Faith & the Muse). Pre-show we were running errands and Macy asked, "have you seen the presidential heads?" Uh, no, I replied. So, right next to the Target we were heading into Macy whipped her car into an industrial area and drove into a gravel parking lot. My jaw dropped. I was suddenly surrounded by dozens of giant, concrete busts of U.S. presidents . . . and a cartoon mock-up of the Beatles.

While I'm sure it wasn't quite the Rushmore, still, this was delightfully weird. Most of the heads are behind a fence topped by barbed wire, but a few were out in the open and we got to craw inside some. I encouraged Macy to pick Lincoln's nose, whereupon she fisted his nostril. I was overcome with giddiness and took as many photos as my camera could handle. Here's a gallery of the best shots.

Ok, so you have to be wondering: why? Well, keep wondering. The heads were created by 80-something artist David Adickes, quite an accomplished academic and teacher (apparently he taught at UT for a stint), at his SculturWorx studio in Houston (where we visited). Macy said it's not quite clear what the heads are for, and sleuthing on the InterTubes didn't help. The most informational thing I could find on the artist is here, an interview. But no information is provided about the presidents' project. There was also a "for sale" sign on the studio, so apparently he's going to retire.

I have no doubt the heads will find a home---someone will want them. I'm going to try to get Marty Medhurst here for a talk next year; perhaps he will be moved to create a Presidential Head Park at Baylor?

it's synth-pop friday!

consumerist memetics

Music: My Bloody Valentine: Loveless (1991)

Today was a productive day, the sort that leaves one without guilt: edited a book review and the worked on a manuscript; went to an awards luncheon; graded undergraduate projects and had dinner with the rockin' TAs; started reviewing an article. Then I watched last night's American Idol, then tonight's, as I laundered. Now doing the finishing lap catching up on email, blogging, and surfing the InterTubes. Amazingly, I don’t' feel busy. It seems like things are settling down to a humane pace. I'm working on my Slow Aesthetic (trademark pending).

Flavia (whom I don't know) started a meme, which Debbie continued, and which I in turn decided to continue. Flavia wondered what her first Amazon.com purchases were, so looked, and then published it. Debbie did the same. Both observed these purchases were during graduate study---both to help endure it (music) and do it (books). I thought: does Amazon.com really go back that far, to our first purchases?

Yes, yes they do. I was surprised to see my old, old "order history"---but the purchases made seem oddly familiar and not too old. So here's mine:

First purchase, April 6, 1998:

• H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine (1888)
• G. De Purucker, Occult Glossary: A Compendium of Oriental and Theosophical Terms

Commentary: I wouldn't start writing the dissertation for another two years, but I knew what I wanted to write about. Given Blavatsky's volume here is two volumes and over a thousand pages, it was nice to get a head start. I ordered the Purukcer on recommendation from a Theosophist, who said it was a good glossary for reading Blavatsky.

Second purchase, August 11th, 1998:

• The Lilac Time: Astronauts (1991)

I've been a fan of Stephen Duffy's work ever since Julie B. gave me a ride to (high) school---instant crush---and I spilled coffee all over her. Lilac Time was in the tape player. I still follow Duffy's career (the Lilac Time long since gone, I think). This album didn't fare well in the states, but was reissued in Japan in the mid nineties. Only Amazon carried the reissue. Now this reissue goes for $70-100 bucks. God knows what the original, British pressing sells for today.

Third purchase, January 6, 1999:

• Schubert: Death & the Maiden, Quartettsatz/Tokyo Quartet (1992)

Commentary: I never remember ordering this, nor do I remember getting it [Going into house to look for album]. Well, this album is not in my collection. Apparently, however, I paid for it. Oh well.

the hegemony of busy

Music: Antony and the Johnsons: The Crying Light(2009)

In the past weeks a number of folks have asked, "how are you doing?" My usual response---until I rethought it today---was "busy." It's the kind of answer that could be read as if I believe as if I'm the only one who is busy, since in our culture the word busy usually implies one has so much to do that she cannot, for example, answer her email in a timely fashion (where "her" means a certain Josh). To say one is busy is either to say, "I can't be bothered" or "I am too busy for my own good." I mean the latter when I use the term, since I was taught (I cannot remember when or how) that telling some "I'm busy" is only an appropriate response to a child.

To wit: to describe oneself as "busy" is to tempt a kind of arrogance. It implicates a certain relationship to others that is less than ideal. If you're truly busy---as in intensely focused on writing deadlines and trying to keep your promises---it might be better to say "overwhelmed" or "treading water" or something that doesn't implicate a relation.

Part of the reason I thought to blog about this is that I've been noticing lately that Hotmail has a new campaign, probably ahead of a new rollout for its frequently hacked webmail program. It's called, "the New Busy." I noticed a billboard advertisement driving home for dinner: "The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a Cute Idea." Other slogans include, "The New Busy don't need a desk to get it done," and "The New Busy make beavers look lazy." On the Hotmail webpage amidst all these statements that collapse every waking hour into work---what manager wouldn't like to have staff available 24-7?---there are a few masking and contradictory slogans: "the New Busy are not the too busy" and "the New Busy make pancakes into exotic animal shapes" are examples. Now, who is this advertising team kidding? If the New Busy---code for people who work for a living---don't need desks and think 9 to 5 is a cute idea, then they are, in my opinion, way too busy.

I know a lot of people who emulate this class of New Busy. They check their iPhone email constantly at the dinner table while you're sitting right there, in the flesh, ready to have a meaningful conversation.

Of course, there are many kinds of labor---community building and friendships are important kinds of labor, to be sure. But what this campaign is truly reflecting is the kind of nomadic capitalism described by Juliet B. Schor over the last decade. It is not general labor, but working labor---labor toward the accumulation of capital for someone else. As she predicted in her classic study, The Overworked American, U.S. workers put in about as much time laboring for "the man" as folks did back in the 1920s---until the depression, of course. Oh, wait . . . doh! Déjà vu, baby. Well, people work as much as folks did in the 20s if they can get work (and most especially if they are educators, since much of the labor of education---like that of the arts and creative endeavors---seems invisible). When you factor in the kind of emotional or affective labor folks do for free (writing reviews for products on Amazon.com, for example), the New Busy starts to look a lot like The New Worked-To-Death.

Various "slow-" movements---slow food, slow poetry, slow bloggitry---are a response to this New Busy on an aesthetic and affective plane. "Busy" seems almost synonymous with "fast" or "immediate." "Busy" is no longer just a relational term for "I ain't got time for you," because it seems to have sacrificed the Other for naked speed.

The New Busy is your skimming this blog post because it is way too long. Why are you waisting your time reading this? You should be writing your term paper and grading.

I mean, just reading the billboard advertisements for the New Busy evoked first a feeling of guilt, then anger, then exhaustion (have you ever seen a beaver at work? They're not only relentless, but destructive and mean). Like most academics, what I've been reading lately also colors my thinking, and so I remember asking myself what Raymond Williams would think about The New Busy billboard. Williams' observations about what he termed "private mobility" have got me thinking a lot about what the "Information Superhighway" has done to automobility and domesticity, what the Internet has done to sanctuary.

Sanctuary seems to mean, today, the absence of a screen.

HGTV is also the New Busy. I have a current rubber-necking obsession with Property Virgins and House Hunters. Homes have always been showcases, but I would argue they have now become new zones of publicity. The rage seems to be for stainless steel appliances in the kitchen---the signature of a restaurant, a quasi-public place of . . . business. A place of the busy. Couple after couple has "entertaining" on the top of the homebound desires, of course, as if what their home looks like to the visiting horde (camera crews included) is more important than their children's bedrooms. "Open concept" floor plans are all the rage to better accommodate the "modern family's busy lifestyle."

Of course, I could also go on a tear about how the family car is now fitted with LCD screens and DVD players, but I'll leave off the commercialization of the domestic for now.

I think Williams would be especially critical of the New Busy campaign because it reflects the way public's interest (that is, accumulation)---civil society-cum-commerical society---has completely erased zones of domesticity. The commercial public has completely colonized private zones of being such that the workplace and home space have collapsed. The New Busy is a time of phantom domesticity and the spectral home.

It goes without saying that many of us have dispositions perfectly suited to the New Busy. Ever since I can remember "chilling out" involved some sort of work, whether it was studying a video game to get to the next level, or watching television. If I'm watching television, I'm doing housework or folding laundry or ironing or watering the plants.

I've been thinking about all this busyness lately because of the impending promotion. For the past two weekends I have taken time off to work at partying, first for the May Day celebration, and then this past weekend for Jen's "Tenure Tiara" party and a fun concert at Numbers with friends in Houston. I tried to forget my work and submerge the guilty in Beam and ogling Geisha ladies on stage. Even so, I was right back at the computer typing come Monday morning, and I read and typed all day today as well. I found myself thinking, "if only I had stayed home this weekend to write, then . . . ."

Suddenly the appeal of church starts to make a bit more sense, but not so much for Jesus. Or rather, because of Jesus. Did he not live a life of love a leisure? Miracles are not labor.

One problem, of course, is that I enjoy researching and writing, two things that are ironically harder to do with the New Busy.

I suppose, then, this aesthetic of the New Busy, funded by an ideology that increasingly capitalizes on every human thought and movement, is here to stay. Perhaps, then, the fight I need to mount---that we need to mount---is against the new temporalities that come with the New Busy. Is there a way to work on speed? Instead of pumping and pimping psychostimulants, can we dope up these New Busy people with some metaphorical Mary Jane and Bob Marley?

Well, I'm rambling. It's my blog and I'll ramble if I want to. I'm starting to realize why I've been on an ambient music kick for the last couple of years---why slow music with rambling melodies going nowhere have been the desired ear wig. I'm fighting the New Busy with slow. I think I want to join this movement of slow, somehow. But how? How to slow down?

With tenure, I hope to fight the New Busy with more vacations. And camping. When the weather cools off, who wants to go camping? Let's fight the New Busy with the Retro Slow. I dunno. I start tonight with sleeping. So, gotta go go go.

a coming contextomy

Music: The New Pornographers: Together (2010)

The new annoyance to trouble Texan academics this summer is Texas House Bill 2504 from last year's legislative session. It passed last summer with little fanfare (I certainly don't remember it---probably was eclipsed by the "Concealed Weapons on Campus" controversy that hit around the same time). The bill might simply be dubbed the "University Drive-Thru Window Bill," as it is premised on the logic of customer service: starting this fall, all courses offered in the Texas education system statewide must have up-to-date, published syllabae available on a publically accessible website (and no more than two clicks away from the front page). Further, all teachers must have current CVs (academic resumes) listing their educational backgrounds publically available, as well as past course evaluations.

Now, on the face of it this doesn't seem so unreasonable if only for the simple fact that many educators already do this. My department has been publishing our syllabae for a couple of years, we are already required to post a CV, and student evaluations are already publically available. In fact, if you spend any time poking around a college or university website, you'll find this stuff---which means, of course, this is more about publicity.

Publicity plots aside, the problem with the bill is twofold: (a) its logistics; and (b) its politics.

Logistically, these new publicity requirements expect a standardized formatting. I've yet to get the memo about what and how to new rearrange my vita, syllabae, and so forth---and I have hope there is no ordering, just required points somewhere in each document. There is grousing, however, that we're in for some kind of overhaul---and as those of you who teach very well know, syllabae and vitae are not quickly made documents. Some of us teach the same two classes over and over. Some of us, however, teach ten classes . . . and you can see where this is going (I teach nine classes in rotation here at UT---by choice, so I don't get bored or the stuff don't get stale). Then there are the poor folks who are going to have to code all this stuff---how he heck you make all the university's course syllabae available within two links from the front page is beyond me. In short, the bill is asking for more work.

The truly offensive part of the bill, however, is the politics behind it: it's really surveillance weapon deployed by Free Market Republichristian clique that has taken over the university system in the state. I don't mean republicans or conservatives, I mean the kind of Free Market Republichistian Wankerism that conducts politics through publicity---talking point celbritics pratitioners. According to a sharp piece in the Chronicle a couple of days ago:

The legislation, HB 2504, was signed into law in June 2009. It received enthusiastic backing from groups including the Young Conservatives of Texas and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative-leaning think tank whose president, Brooke L. Rollins, is Governor Perry's former policy director.

Elizabeth Young, a policy analyst with the foundation, said the bill would enable students to make more informed decisions about which professors' courses to sign up for. "By forcing universities to list a professor's postsecondary education and teaching experience, students will have a more accurate representation of a professor's classroom abilities than they would have otherwise," she wrote in testimony to lawmakers debating the bill.

Other claims in support of the bill include the predictable, which all boils town to customer service: students need to know what they are "buying" when they sign up to take a certain professor or course.

Folks familiar with Howorwitz's "Academic Bill of Rights" and Dana's tangles with these people already know what this bill is really about: it's not so much "consumer protection" as it is politics. These folks want to be able to vet the political "bias" of a teacher. These folks want to be able to police the content of coursework.

I can't think of anyone off hand who has anything to hide in their evals or their course materials. What troubles me is the coming contextomy, a concept developed by my colleague Matt McGlone. Also known as "quoting out of context," contextomy is a increasingly popular argumentative fallacy used in the mass mediated environment. For example, some years ago 60 Minutes did a story lampooning cultural studies courses. The tone of the reporting was something like, "can you believe your child can take a class in queering Elvis?"

All but one of my undergraduate courses actually relies on a bait-and-switch logic, and I worry this new publicity will make them particularly susceptible to contextomy. For example, my new course, "Celebrity Culture," relies on all the assumptions students make about what "celebrity" refers to, which is gossip, televisual drama, and scandal. The course already has quite a waiting list for this fall. Now, we DO address these racy topics, but what students quickly learn by the third day of class is that this course is not what they thought it was going to be. Basically, it's a class on public sphere theory and political communication. It explores the history of the infrastructure of publics and contemporary logics of publicity (for example, one of my favorite lectures is describing how P.T. Barnum's economic decision to use the train system changed presidential political campaigns within a decade). The course, in other words, is rigorous, educational, and colorful.

So, I predict we have more "outing" types of stories about academics teaching worthless courses in the near future. I don't think anyone is going to actively comb through thousands of syllabae in search of something to get in a huff about. I think it's more likely that someone will be gone after, and then their public teaching materials will be sifted through.

[sigh]. Annoying. And expect this to happen to your state school system too.

it's synth-pop friday (and the last day of class)

more on communication studieses

Music: And Also the Trees: Silver Soul (1998)

This past week in "The Object" seminar we read from James W. Carey's influential tome, Communication as Culture, which collects a number of influential essays that helped to forge the communication/cultural studies relationship in the United States. Owing to the shout-out from my friends at The Critical Lede, I thought it might be good to report on what I've learned in the weeks since I originally posted about my disciplinary confusion. Thanks to Gil Rodman's helpful prodding and Diane Keeling's reading suggestions, I think I've come to a much better---albeit complex and not-very-elegant---understanding of communication studies in the United States. I've always been annoyed with the "studies" half of my field's title, but I now have a newfound appreciation for the plural. We are communication studies, I find myself in those fields. My childish "communication studieses" is simply meant to emphasize why we went with a plural title in the first place.

But first, a wind-up (so as to convince my graduate student readers why understanding and learning disciplinary histories is crucial to a scholarly career). Since graduate school I've always known there were many forms of "communication" in the United States, but I had never really been motivated to figure them out. As a graduate student I figured that I had my interests and I was convinced I would study those interests and think about them using whatever theoretical perspective or outlook seemed to help me. For example, such an attitude led me eventually to psychoanalysis, despite what I would describe as a formidable disciplinary push-back; my relative ignorance about the history of the field only made it worse. Freud is such a liability in so many of the communication studieses . . . but the more I learn about the many histories of my disciplines, things are starting to make a lot more sense. Reading theory in context does not simply mean in respect to its historical situatedness and problematic; it also means reading theory in its proper institutional context. It was abundantly clear to the seminar last week, for example, that understanding Carey's work meant that we had to understand what was happening to the University of Illinois in 1947. I'll explain.

In retrospect, I was a big fat dummy to think the utility or power of a good idea was enough to escape the pressures of contextually disciplined framing. Neither theory nor perspective comes free. With a degree in philosophy, I should have known that, since my training taught me that you are supposed to pick a philosophical approach and stick with it for the rest of your career (which sucks for you Objectivists out there, I suppose). With training in rhetorical studies, one would think I understood the importance of knowing one's audience. In my early publishing career I got battered around quite a bit, but if I think I knew more about institutional contexts and pieties, my journey would have been much easier. (So, if my students reading this are wondering why I put so much disciplinary history into my seminars, here comes a rationale.)

Ok, so here's what I am learning: our current communication studies comprises five different research trajectories spread across three different kinds of departments. None of these are mutually exclusive and have much cross-pollination, so to speak. Here we go:

1. The Speech Tradition: in the tradition most familiar to me---and this because my teachers were all trained in this tradition---communication concerned oral communication. Created as a consequence of the Land Grant institution, the working or "industrial" classes were coming to college in the late 19th century, and many of them adults. Extant textbooks for existing colleges were too advanced and difficult, so new textbooks were written and new classes were formed, many of them teaching the basics of writing and speaking. Around these new exigencies sprang new collectives, teachers of writing and speaking, situated in English departments. Oral rhetoric folks gradually split off and became departments of speech in the 1920s and 30s (the writing folks stayed and are now know as comp or rhetoric or writing studies programs). These departments further split into the speech sciences and humanities foci (crudely focused around the "Midwestern" and "Cornell" schools). Debate programs are focused here, as well as small group, interpersonal, etc.

The shift to identifying as "communication" came in the 60s, for the most part, and this after much discussion and hand wringing. There is much to say here about the way in which the formation of the International Communication Association reflected a pressure to get rid of "speech" as a master term---and how a number of ICA folks come from the other trajectories below. There is also much to say here about whether or not to identify with communication technologies, how "speech" represents in some sense a conviction in the humanities and how the "s" in "communications" signifies such technologies. In fact, there's a lot to say here, but this post is already running long.

2. Mass Communication: Thanks to David Beard's lead on the previous post on this topic, I now understand Paul Lazarsfeld's role in communication studies. According to the ICA encyclopedia entry by Simonson and Peters, the Diaspora of Jewish intellectuals in the 30s and 40s led one of the first scholars to take radio seriously to move to the United States, first to Newark and then to Columbia. Funded by Rockefeller money, Lazarfeld's outfit was concerned with the effects of mass media on populations and pioneered what is largely identified now as "mass comm." I take propaganda studies is located here, as well as the origin of media effects. Adorno had a brushing with these folks, too. The affiliation, however, was with journalism programs (later, departments) because the outside funding came from those folks. To this day most "mass comm" folks are affiliated with journalism departments. However, to complicate matters it should be mentioned many journalism departments started off with speech departments---and some programs today still have both journalism and speech in the same department (one can see how the speech sciences and media effects have methodological affinity).

3. The Canucks: Dudes like Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan (and Jacques Ellul too) up yonder in North America's chillier regions also helped to establish a communication tradition in Canada. The focus with these folks was on communication technology and what has come to be known as "media ecology." The interest that gradually developed in this trajectory concerns the way in with forms of mediation create different environments and alter human epistemologies. To make matters more confusing, McLuhan also claimed "rhetoric" as an area of expertise, which is nicely melded in the work of Walter Ong---a stateside guru of rhetoric and communication technology (then there's Neil Postman and the list extends from there). This trajectory also intersects with television studies, which has ties to the next group . . .

4. Communications: This tradition is a Midwestern approach closely identified with media technology and the work of Wilbur Schramm, who was an English professor and short story writer at Iowa. Convinced that mass media was becoming a dominant force in society, Schramm started the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois in Chambana, a deliberately interdisciplinary program that courted multiple methodologies to investigate mediated communications. This program was located in a different college than was the speech program, and both were independently inaugurated in 1947. To this day Illinois has two communication programs. James Carey earned his doctorate at the ICR and stayed (well, until he went to Columbia; see #2 above)---and, he was heavily influenced by two strands of thought himself: the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey (which also had a profound impact on the speech folks) and the work of the Canadians (see #3 above). I'm starting to feel the need for a map with arrows pointing every which-a-way to indicate intellectual influence and institutional/trajectory affiliation; by the 1950s I think the map is starting to look like spaghetti.

5. British Communication: This tradition also goes by another name: "cultural studies." Communication was also a buzz word across the pond, and figures like the Leavises, Hoggart, and Williams were studying mass communication and "culture" in different ways---ways that would travel to the states though Carey and others. Later, Grossberg (who studied with Hoggart and Hall) would bring that influence to the states via Illinois, and John Fiske would take up shop at the University of Wisconsin . . . er, in a speech department that also incorporated elements of the communications tradition too.

Confused yet? Me too. But less confused than I was just a few weeks ago.

I suppose what is most confusing to folks entering the field of "Communication Studies" is that their program may reflect one or all of these different trajectories today---and this also depends on the type of college the program is situated in. For example, my department of communication studies is housed in a college of communication formed in the late 1950s, which brought together the speech folks and journalism, and which subsequently split off into different departments (radio, television, and film was spread across theatre, English, and speech but formed into one unit in the new college).

Now, even more confusingly, "Communication Studies" can also be mapped across different professional organizations. In my department, faculty and students attend both the National Communication Association as well as the International Communication Association. I'm just now starting to learn about the history of ICA, so I cannot speak to its composition much, but I know it reflects these different trajectories. NCA, because it is a large organization, houses all five of the above trajectories, and you'll find scholars from all of them attending the conference. One of the largest and newest divisions of NCA, the Critical and Cultural Studies division, seems to be a meeting place for the qualitative folks of the communications and speech (now "rhetoric") traditions.

So, when I earlier posted that the new editorship of Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies reflected a changing of the guard, I was beginning to hone-in on the different institutional trajectories I've discussed above. I did not yet realize when I first published in that journal that the audience was much, much more diverse than any other journal in the communication field. Because pieties and investments---stylistic, argumentative, philosophical, and conceptual--- are so different among the journal's audience, I am deeply sympathetic to the editors' challenge. My inner optimist---a rare persona, I know---does come out here, though, in the hope that a number of us might come together to think through a way to bring our different trajectories together with some common self-understanding. Perhaps a many-authored précis on the many communication studieses would help---an essay length thing, to be submitted to that journal---that attempts to discern a common thread to our projects, under the aegis of "communication?"

What I'm trying to muddle through here is probably obvious to those have lived through the formation of the Critical and Cultural Studies division of NCA, for example. But younger generations of scholars are not aware of this history---I was not, until recently, at least---and it seems to me we need some way to introduce this complex history to newer generations of scholars, especially as we continue to specialize into our own interests.

Frankly, I'm not sure why I've taken such an interest in disciplinary history as of late. Well, I am and I am not. Some of my interest has to do with visiting different communication departments around the country, delivering the same paper, and getting wildly divergent responses. And I'm sure it's no doubt inspired by the scholarship of my friends Pat Gehrke, Ron Green, and Bill Keith, who have opened my eyes to the history of the speech tradition. It's also inspired by publishing in my field and being mystified by blind reviewers who have very different reading backgrounds, different conceptual habits---and unforeseen hostilities. I'm sure what I've said here is incorrect in many places (careful history is not my forte, but I'm trying to learn!). Still, if I hope to impart anything with this post, it's the necessity of knowing our history---not only to make publishing scholarship in communication studies easier, but also so that we can, you know, communicate.

PS: Ted, I appreciate your question about The Quarterly Journal of Speech and its direction toward the critical. More on that score, I hope, in a future post.

adult function recovery

Music: Drive-By Truckers: Brighter Than Creation's Dark (2007)

Last night I hosted the twelfth annual Walpurgisnacht/May Day party (it made some appearance as an April Fools party one year in Baton Rouge, however, but . . . was in the same month). A good time was had by all---there was dancing, (moderate) drinking, and plenty of pretzels. No one got sick. No one broke anything. And aside from a couple of couples making busy with the PDAs, it was a rather successful "adult" function.

As my much missed former neighbor Shappy would say, "now, that was a good adult function."

What was amusing about last night's party---and perhaps telling of age, I don't know---was how well behaved we all were. And tired. There were many droopy eyes. Christopher arrived early and promptly napped on the couch. Folks were deliberately drinking water. The furrowed brows on the patio revealed more than a few folks were quietly working through term paper arguments in the back of their minds. A few defenders---a new Ph.D., a new MA, and a recently comped compatriot---were visibly relived.

In retrospect, I cannot think of a busier week in my career, and I'm sure more than a number of folks felt the same. We all wanted to party. We had the spirit within. But we're also all running on sleep deprivation. Sometimes "work hard" demands more "sleep hard" than "play hard." But we gave it a good ol' college try.

Had a lovely day enjoying the outdoors. Now, I think I'll get that "sleep hard" part accomplished. One more week of school to go for us here, then the grading parties commence. Then there are these pesky conference papers to write---and a coauthored essay to work on. And somewhere in there I hope to research and cook something new. And phone those friends I've neglected.

A gallery of the festivities is here. Come dance with us this Halloween.

it's walpurgisnacht!

So, are you coming to the party?

it has begun

Music: Lucette Bourdin: "Trip to Fame Drone" (unknown date).

So much has happened to comment on that I am having trouble deciding whether to blog about a dissertation defense in a foreign field (which was disconcerting and therefore good for me), the demise of a favorite band (Type-O Negative, whose lead died of heart failure), or the reminder that Arizona is a racist state (let Public Enemy remind you). So, I will blog about my garden instead, which is just beginning to sprout.

This year I'm trying, yet again, some new plants to see what is going to work best. I learned last year that Coleus and Caladiums (and this unusual variation) thrive in my mostly shady patio, so I planted a bunch of those. The new plant I'm trying is an elephant ear, which is just starting to sprout from a bulb planted two months ago. I'm also trying the "hanging" method of growing tomatoes, courtesy of a coupon for the Bed, Bath, and Beyond store (I discovered the "beyond" is, um, gardening supplies). I really don't like tomatoes except in salads and fried green, but the ones I am trying to grow are yellow and orange and therefore unusual and therefore something I can handle.

I almost tried to plant some okra, but I just don't think my patio gets enough sun.

Well, anyway, the garden is now completely planted and all we do now is water and wait. I'm most anxious for the peppers---but it'll be another month and a half before I get to eat 'em. A gallery of the garden in its sprouty state is here.