"The basic problem with my love relationships with women is that my standards are so high"

If y'all haven't yet seen Scott McLemee's review of Cornel West's latest book, you really should treat yourself. As the critic in Ratatouille says, reviews like this are "fun to write and to read." And yet I ignored the first few mentions I saw of it because, like McLemee,

I would much prefer to think that all of this is a matter of his life being in turmoil throughout this decadei [academic envy and/or anti-pop culture snobbery] , rather than Larry Summers being right about anything.

But that's probably just because, again quoting McLemee, I myself have harbored fantasies of "popping a cap in a fellow faculty member’s ass."

In any case, you should pour yourself another cup of coffee and read the thing.

(early) December state of mind

Things that I cannot say to the intended audiences but that need to be said to someone in some way:

Students:
- Do not come to my office to discuss your absences at this point. Do not. I am not, in fact, surprised that you have 10 absences. Do you know why? Because I don't have 10 absences. When you ask me if there is a way for you to "make up" the absences, I hate you.
- The first time you turned in your assignment in one of those plastic sleeves with the slide off spine that I used for my 6th grade report on Neptune I thought it was endearing. Now, at the 4th time, I am just annoyed. That thing does not work like a staple.
- MLA-style citations are just about the easiest thing in the universe to not fuck up, and when you keep fucking them up, I hate you.

Really important guy coming to give a talk at school this Friday at 8:
- Seriously, guy? The last day of class, a Friday, at 8pm?

Mom:
- Please stop sending me personalized musical e-cards.

CAT:
- I only can't say this to you because you do not speak English, but want you to know that the flea bites I am suffering fucking suck.

Dude in the office next to me:
- I can hear your farts. All day.

Daughter:
- When I leave your room at night and you tell me to come back and check on you, and I say I will, and you say "if I'm sleeping, do you promise to wake me so I know?" and then I say yes, I am lying. But damn if it isn't one of the most amazing things anyone ever says to me.

Headquarters in his Hindquarters

I sacrificed to make you happy
Left nothin for myself
Now you want to leave me
For the love of someone else
-Marvin Gaye, Baby Don't You Do It

There's a story, probably apocryphal, if that means what I think it means, of a communique from President Lincoln to General Joseph Hooker, Commander of the Army of the Potomac.

Word had reached the President, so the story goes, that General Hooker had been talking smack about how the country needed a military dictatorship to put it to rights. The implication, of course, was that Fightin Joe, was the man for the job of dictator.

Lincoln sent a cable to the General reminding him that military dictators only ascended to supreme state power in the wake of military success. Bring me a victory, said the President, and I'll risk the dictatorship. Or words to that effect. Like I said, its only a story but that's the way I heard it.

Tonight President Obama speaks to the nation from the U.S. Army Academy. First reports from the barking media are that the President will announce the dispatch of some thousands of U.S. troops to Afghanistan for the defense of the Karzai regime.

I console myself with the knowledge that, just as they've gotten everything else wrong, the media have gotten this wrong. I tell myself that its just as likely the President will announce plans for the rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops under the slogan, Afghanistan for the Afghanistanians!

It could happen.

Probably not, though.

Now, I don't know if the Generals have buffaloed the President into this strategy of reinforcing failure but it sure looks that way. The righties have been hounding the President to give in to the Generals for months but they can hardly be taken seriously.

I mean, the GOOP abandoned genuine debate of public policy of all types some years ago. And the chickenhawk right is totally enamored of the military episcopacy; the uniforms, the shiny weapons, the rod and the staff, the imagined simplicity of the centurion who tells this one to go and he goeth and who tells this one to come and he cometh. Why the President feels any need to appease their opinion is beyond me.

Maybe he feels the need to appease the opinion of the Generals. They've already subverted his leadership with the disgraceful leaking of McChrystal's memorandum. Perhaps the President thinks they are a real threat to his authority.

This opinion is also inexplicable to me. American generals and admirals have proven themselves to be almost no threat to anyone except the American taxpayer. My God, since 1945, have American flag officers accomplished the military defeat of a single enemy of the United States? Anyone? Hello?

We've been chasing conscript farm boys around Afghanistan for eight years without effect. We've been chasing gangsters and religious militias around Iraq for almost as long and with similar results. We've lavished trillions on weapons that proved utterly useless in defending the country from attack on September 11. American flag officers couldn't detect an enemy of the United States if it camped out in their driveway.

So, President Obama, don't worry about the American generals. Whatever they're reccommending, I'm pretty sure its wrong. We got your back, Mr President.

Stop Look Listen

Comment moderation will be turned on for a brief period to ward off attacks.

The last couple days, BitchPhD has been vandalized by faceless and cowardly scumbags posting shit about the bloggers. Wading through this excrement is not only distasteful for the bloggers, its disrespectful of our readers.

Nobody has the time to monitor comments round the clock and the vandals, apparently, have nothing better to do so, we're going to moderate comments for awhile.

Reader's comments will be posted but the posting will not be immediate.

We will return to our usual comment procedure as quickly as possible.

Hacking the Holiday, Academic Edition

Like many of my academic cohort, I can be quite bad at managing my work. To the tun of being bad at quarantining work-free times/paces for myself. As is often noted, 'tis the nature of the academic job. Which is why I feel pleased to report that I have just had my first ever (well, since being in grad school) work-free (almost), completely enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. Possibly too enjoyable, as I am now experiencing vacation inertia like never before. I have been thinking today about why the holiday worked this way for me this year, and I think these are the steps I will repeat to keep the productivity demons in check.

1. Be home This is counter-intuitive to me on its surface because I tend to think that being away alleviates the temptation to Get Shit Done. But I also think the phenomena of travel fatigue and being out of one's space are the kind of thing that negate 50% of the relaxation of being away over a major holiday. For me, the deal with being at home and wanting to work is like the deal I've figured out with cutting back on cigs: If I don't have any in my possession, I obsess over them constantly, eventually buy a pack and jump back in with both feet. But if I keep a pack on hand and, every time I have an urge to smoke, tell myself to wait 10 minutes, I rarely ending up smoking the cigarette. Knowing I can smoke if I "need" to makes the process tolerable. Similarly, being away from my work or opportunities to work leaves me obsessing over it. A lot. At home, I can tell myself, 'well, you can always wake up an hour early tomorrow morning and take care of that if you need to." And then I don't.

2. Have a guest I'll be honest, the managing work obsession at home thing is way easier with a guest around. A guest forces you out of the routine and asks you to think about leisure as one of the day's goals, which is good for someone like me.

3. A low maintenance guest But obviously one's mother-in-law is probably not ideal for this. There are 3 or 4 people in my life who are the kind of guests that allow me to basically live a slightly more fun version of my everyday life: I don't have to clean or plan actual outings. I can sit on my computer and piss around for hours of their visits because they will do the same. They like my kid enough that they will play with her without me around. They like to watch movies we have all seen 100 times. This is the kind of guest you want for Thanksgiving.

4. Syllabus Design I suppose these points should be obvious, but it took me until this year to figure them out. Firstly, DO NOT teach anything new in the first 2 days of classes after Thanksgiving. If possible, teach the same text in multiple classes. Also: until this year I have always had a Major Thing due right before Thanksgiving, usually a paper of some sort. Bad idea, for obvious reasons. Seems like a good idea to build in the extra time for grading, but then it hangs over your head the whole time. My new approach involves realizing that the 2 weeks after Thanksgiving will suck regardless so there's no real benefit in redistributing one grading task to the holiday and thereby dragging it down too. But I didn't have nothing due; in 2 (of my 3) classes I had minor assignments due - an outline for the final paper and a bibliography of proposed sources. These were easily graded in less than 2 hours and are the thing that I would've done in front of the TV on a normal week. Having hem over the break and grading them over coffee and corn muffins on Friday morning made me feel like I was staying connected and accomplishing with extremely minimal effort. Which is an important game for me to play with myself.

5. Cook This won't work for everyone, but cooking at Thanksgiving (or any holiday) is huge for me. Cooking lets me take the productivity urges and see them fulfilled in a delicious way. When I can produce, by mid-afternoon, muffins, pies, spiced pecans, and bread - and all that on the day BEFORE Thanksgiving - I feel sort of All Powerful.

6. Live somewhere amazing such that it is 70 degrees on Thanksgiving and you can harvest pecans from your backyard. This cannot be sneezed at.

7. Don't try to be an at-home mom if you're not. In the past, I have felt obligated to use my holiday time the way many working parents do: spending quality time with kids who are in childcare. It's a lovely idea and is often restorative. But it also can be fucking boring and irritating. I am not used to spending all day for 5 consecutive days with a 4 yr old. I do not know what magic they work at school to keep her attention focused on something for more than 30 seconds, but I cannot conjure it. I do not find 4 yr old games relaxing. I do not want the monkey and the fairy to have to meet each other for the first time EVERY TIME we sit down to play with them. I am ready for them to move on to the next stage in their relationship. Also, I do not like to chase things or people. I have imagined myself as the kind of mom who spends holidays involving her kid in all the cooking and crafting centerpieces and name cards with her while the turkey cooked and creating all sorts of Heartwarming Memories. And while we created a homegrown memory or two (did I mention the pecans?), I also decided to go real lax with the movie watching and the computer playing and 'sure, get up from the table whenever you want' permission granting. And holy shit, did that decision make everyone sooooo much more relaxed. Thanksgiving is such an adult holiday; kids, at least preschool aged kids, don't really do cooking and sloth and gluttony. So increased screen-time seems a fair trade off. I mean, hell, Thanksgiving isn't good for anyone, really.

8. Don't be on the market. Snark, but true snark. Even with all of these thins enacted last year, I couldn't have really enjoyed the holiday because of the market. Knowing that the coming 2 weeks will potentially end your hopes for any of the applications you saved over, and, if so, will guarantee that you spend Jan-March repeating the labor of the last 2 months, that destroys any amount of carefully planned relaxation. So, for my peeps on the market, know I poured one out for all of y'all during the weekend

Holy Days Off

Dudes, I know I have become the shittiest blogger on these here internets. I'm only slightly better at correspondence, by the way. IOW, I kind of suck; ever since my laptop died in February, I've been primarily relying on ye old iphone as my primary computer, with occasional use of Mr. B.'s laptop or PK's desktop.

However! This MASSIVE SELF-DENIAL does mean that (1) my cobloggers have taken over the blog, which doubtless improves it greatly; (2) I have paid off our primary credit card, which was carrying quite a load, especially after we bought the house. So yay me. Now Mr. B's laptop is starting to act wonky, and having learned that it Is Possible to Live Without One's Own Laptop, I'm sort of advocating for him to replace it with a mutual desktop computer. I think he's on board, which means soon I should have my Own Actual Software and Enough Memory, which will be Really Nice.

Re. blogging, though, I gotta admit my heart isn't in it these days. The housewife thing seems to have totally taken me over, she says, like a hypocrite who is hogging all the credit for the fact that there is NO MORE CARPET in any of the main rooms. Actually that's all Mr. B's doing; he's been yanking the godawful off-white (?!?) carpet up for weeks now, a section at a time. He wants to tackle our bedroom next--probably tomorrow--and then, I guess, the study. I'm not sure if we're going to do something about the disgusting gray industrial carpet under the kitchen table yet; I doubt it's wood under there, and actually I want to replace both that and the kitchen vinyl with cork or rubber or something practical and hopefully semi-green. So that may be a project for later. But in the meantime it is SO NICE not to have carpet, even if we *did* discover a fairly large section in the tv/family room that doesn't have hard wood but is instead plywood, next to another section that someone in days of yore GLUED stuff to and that needs mineral spirits to pull up the yuck. That, too, is a project for later.

IOW, I am discovering, as generations have before me, that the American Dream of Home Ownership is really a Hobby for Life. If you don't want to take on an entirely new set of hobbies including do-it-yourself and gardening and organizing and surfing Craigslist and going to hardware stores and sewing and crafts and crap, KEEP RENTING.

That said, I am finding, to my great surprise, that I kind of like the organizing and cooking and planning parts of the American Middle-Class Nuclear Family (TM) gig. Not the yanking carpet parts, or the no-longer-going-out-on-the-weekend parts so much, or the cranky-neighbor-who-resents-my-kid-playing-in-our-shared-driveway-because-our-yard-is-a-pile-of-mulch-and-will-be-for-months part. But the parts that involve puttering and playing house, absolutely. I have actual plans to make curtains, y'all. And rugs. If I don't watch it I'm going to end up subscribing to some stupid-ass Martha Stewart magazine. (If that happens, please stage an intervention.)

Luckily Pseudonymous Kid, due, perhaps, to having spent some of his formative years in Canadia, is not nearly as materialistic as one imagines kids his age are supposed to be. Check out this adorable Christmas list of his:

For the sake of clarity, the boy wants:

1. a two-pound box of pick-it-yourself See's candy (picked by me) (none shared)
2. a new feather-on-a-stick [ed--this is a cat toy]
3. a chance at the wishbone (assuming there is one)
4. an iphone* (optional) (I don't suspect to get one)
5. a new gift certificate booklet (you know "go to the playground" "go to the candy store" that stuff.).
6. Josh, gagged and tied with his tough sliced out
7. A good christmas dinner

For the record, the kid is NOT getting an iphone, or an ipod touch--I've told him that's a present for when he turns 13, maybe. He is also not going to get his classmate Josh gagged and tied, nor will Josh's tongue be sliced out. The See's gift certificate is taken care of, and I suppose Santa will tuck a feather-on-a-stick in his stocking, and everything else he wants is HOME MADE. I love this kid so much.

On which note, by the way, let me suggest the "gift certificate booklet" as a gift for kids. It was a HUGE hit last year (sadly, it got misplaced during the move and has yet to resurface). I went out and got some printable business cards and used the business card template on my laptop's word processer to make a bunch of little coupons for him: "good for one trip to the park," "good for one trip to the library," "good for one playdate with a friend," "good for one trip to the beach," "good for one night sleeping with mama and papa in the big bed"--all the kinds of things that he asks for and I often say "no, not right now, we have to go to the grocery store instead" or "honey, I have to get dinner on" to. He LOVED it--the idea that here would be these things that he really wants, much more than he wants stuff, and he could control when he got them. I made it clear to him that it was up to him how he "spent" them--he could use them all up right away, or spread them out over the year, and on one or two things the card specifically said that it would require advance notice, but basically I told him these were promises that he could cash in any time as long as it was physically possible. (i.e., no trips to the beach at bedtime.) He's been talking about them all year as the bestest present ever. And that, I think--free certificates for time with his parents, doing the things he enjoys--is going to be his main Xmas present this year.

Everyone else is getting homemade curtains.*



*Not really.

Taken that Note Nobody Wrote

Jazz is everywhere, man. Did you know that?

Course you do. Cause you got the hook up to what's happening now and shit.
But did you know its even at the Little Brown Lounge? That's the bar in the Holiday Hotel out on the four-lane that runs past River City, Wisconsin, a soporific burg of 22,000 people named Kaminski.

So, we're hanging out last night, nothing much to do when Dear Friend says she's hungry. I begin to rummage the refrigerator for a third or fourth encore of the Thanksgiving remains.

Being the sensitive sort, I received the clear impression that one more plating of stuffing and cranberry relish and green beans almondine and orange jello with clementines shimmering from the shimmery orange interior meant blood on the sideboard. And the napkins. And the carpet. Possibly the draperies. Or window treatments, as my niece, Meche, calls them.

All this I read from the language of the eyes.

Also, the language of the mouth. In tones recalling the parade ground or scrimmage field, Dear Friend stated that one more lap with the aforementioned comestibles would end in blood and its spillage.

Probably mine. My blood, I mean. Well, my sideboard, too. My carpet. My napkins. And draperies. Or window treatments. Draperies or window treatments, you'll have to take that up with Meche.
OK, technically, they're my Mother's napkins.

But you'll agree, I think, that these are really side issues. The important thing, the thing to keep firmly in mind, uppermost and foremost, is that my blood stay right where it is, sloshing about from vein to artery and back again, happily coursing along the various channels and sluiceways of my organism, gaily pumping and perambulating and circulating and percolating; spilling only under the strictest medical supervision if at all. Its what I like to call the public option. Not private, unregulated spilling. No.
In consequence of the same and in the interests of domestic harmony and unspotted drapings, and, this being Wisconsin, I suggested a fish fry. They're very popular here and just about every bar and church and fraternal lodge has one going on of a Friday night.

A cursory review of the local paper narrowed the choices to two: Serb Hall and the Little Brown Lounge.

Serb Hall specializes in Lake Perch, the most desireable of the Friday Fish Fry fish fleshes. On the other hand, the Brown Lounge was sponsoring karoake along with the greased Haddock and that proved decisive. That and the fact that nearly everything served at Serb Hall tastes like its been dredged through gunpowder.
Over dinner I was reminded what it is that makes me crazy for this woman.
First, she tells me that she's decided to stop seeing Bud (the Stud).

That's what I call him. Bud (the Stud). That's because I hate him with a white hot hatred that is so hot and so hateful that I can barely express how much I hate him.
Although, I have to say, to all appearences, I'm totally cool. Entirely blase-blase. I am the absolute master of my emotions. Like, if we were out at the bar and in walked Bud, you, knowing the full hateful unplumbed depths of my hating hatred, you would say, Damn, Taddy, you are super-cool, man. And I'd say, Yeah, I know. And then I'd say, Are you going to get the drinks or what? Shit.

So, herself has no idea. Believe me. No clue. Zero. Nimbus. Ought. Void.

They both teach college. At the same college.

He's got tenure and a good salary and a Jaguar sedan and was acting head of her department last year.

He's a lot smarter than me and a little younger than me and has published a lot of deadly boring shit and has all kinds of accomplishments and shit, and a ski condo in Crested Butte and gets manicures and shit, blah-blah-blah.

She says he went for permanent appointment as department head but didn't make the cut and now he's all bummed out and pouty and whiny. Way too boring for her.
Now,inwardly, I'm doing hand stands and launching bottle rockets. Outwardly I'm all, Bud, Bud, Bud. Hmmmm. Do I know him? See? Totally blase.

Then she tells me that I need to start shaving again, that my whiskers have got her tender spots all chafy and shit.

This is a total confidence builder. I haven't had to shave since July. Even now, weeks after ending the chemicals, I'm downy as a little duckling and she knows I'm very self conscious about it.

For example, in spite of the waiters's remonstrations, I refused to remove my Denver Bronco's gimme cap when seated in the saloon bar of the Holiday Hotel.

First off, removing a hat in a Wisconsin bar located north of US Highway 10 is just a little too haughty.

Second, the growth on my pate can best be described as mosslike and I feel much better keeping it under wraps until it approaches it previous luxuriant hairiness if you don't mind.

Lastly, when we arrived at the Holiday Hotel, we found out that there wouldn't be karaoke after all. Some kind of machinery malfunction.

Rather, we would be entertained by the song stylings of Busted Flats, a jazz combo with a female singer, an electric piano, a Fender bass, and a guy on a trap drum set.

My dear friend is unaccountably hostile to jazz. That is the one great barrier to our love. Well, that and Bud.

Cause I just can't get serious with somebody who is not into jazz. I don't see how that could possibly, you know, work out. Might as well get serious with a goddamned Republican for Christ sake.

The thing is, not only did she not utter a discouraging word, she asked for a table right up front. Having already jettisoned Bud, this was practically a declaration that we're going steady.

So, the whole night left me with two questions. I would be glad of an answer to either or both.

First, with Bud failing to get the promotion, will he have to leave the college?

See, in business, and the military, too, its Up or Out. If you fail to be promoted, you're out. Is Bud out? Please tell me he's out.

I'd ask my Dear Friend but I sort of painted myself into a corner with that shit. If I ask her now, she might think I give a shit and that would mess up my shit.

Second, is there a word I can substitute for shit? Lately, I been using it a lot. Its a great word but, you know, its enough already.

Figgy Pudding

A day will come when I pierce the fog or miasma that is German artistic expression.

Today is not that day.

Here are two of my favorite pieces of traditional holiday music; one German (click Replay), one American.

Compare and contrast.

Happy families are all alike.

I have felt exceedingly happy for the last week. Mr. V has been at home for over a week, partly on account of the man-cold which plagued him, and having him hear has made M-F life feel easy, comparatively. The dry-cleaning comes and goes, the dishwasher is emptied, someone is laughing at my jokes. Someone else is showing affection to the CAT, freeing me up to continue to believe I hate her. Little V says a lot of sacchrine shit about how she feels like we're a "whole family" when Daddy works at home, which is a little much, obv, but she's happy.

The weather has been good, our good friend E is staying with us over the holidays, playing with the kid and cooking Puerto Rican food and being funny and warm.

And I have been feeling really happy.

I saw this guy speak a few years ago, and partly this is a good segue because, yes, he is beautiful, and that makes one happy. But it's an even better segue because he was talking about his new (at the time) book on Happiness. And not really about the book itself, which is, I think, an intellectual history of the concept of happiness. Like I say, I think. I am a flim-flam scholar who doesn't really read things. But what he mostly talked about what how he had a terrifically hard time being taken seriously in the academy while he was researching and writing, how people raised an eyebrow when he said he was working on happiness, how he consistently got the distinct impression that many people didn't consider happiness the kind of concept that one investigated with scholarly rigor in the humanities. Our model, in many ways, is very much the tortured Romantic intellectuals. So he spent some time, this good looking happiness guy, discussing our resistance to happiness within the profession.

This resonates with me with respect to the profession, but I bring it up here because I feel sort of sheepish when I blog to the blog about happy. Feeling happy is different than feeling grateful or calm or aware or balanced, it feels cheaper and less thoughtful somehow when you talk about it. When I think about feeling happy there is always an undercurrent on 'unearned-ness' with it.

But I can say this, I earned the shit out of baking-related satisfaction yesterday, so here's where I should segue to the Thanksgiving menu, which makes up for in deliciousness what it lacks in elaborateness.

Turkey. I don't really go in for anything complicated here. I brine it overnight in saltwater, then stuff pats of butter and blobs of minced garlic under the skin all over the thing, then oil and salt and pepper the skin. Then end.
Crockpot stuffing, which is killer and easy.
A potato gratin that I made up thusly: equal part sweet potatoes and red potatoes, cut into medallions. Make a sauce with enough heavy cream to cover 3/4 of the potatoes, a tbsp or 2 of butter, a tbsp of garlic, and some kind of shredded white cheese. Pour that sauce over, then sprinkle everything with fresh thyme and cayenne. Tope with a mixture of shredded parmesan and crumbled gorgonzola.
Corn muffins - take any cornbread recipe, replace 2/3 of the sugar with honey and then toss a can of actual corn in.
Pumpkin and pecan pies. The latter especially thrilling because we harvested the pecans entirely from our backyard.

You'll notice the total lack of vegetables. This is not my fault. We were running errands yesterday and the final one was supposed to involve a trip to the grocer's, which everyone assumed would be hectic and heinous. The list included green vegetables (beans and brussels) and alcohol. And somehow the other two grownups convinced me that the thing to do was to just forgo the greens and take the errand to the package store instead. So we're having a veggie free Thanksgiving, but we're all set on the Malbec.

I'm sending good vibes through the internet pipes to y'all. Try doing this posture if you feel like you've overeaten. The football games suck pretty much, so just go full boar with the naps and the Star Wars viewings. Happy day.