Greater love hath no woman

Than to help a friend move from Washington Heights to Brooklyn in August when the Republican Convention is on and no trucks are allowed south of Central Park.

Actually, it was awesome. Lots of heavy, sweaty, hot, humid exercise; interesting political climate; much traipsing about (we were staying in NJ with another friend). And to be fair, Mr. B. did all the truck management, but I managed pseudonymous kid, and I really think that of the two piggybacking a 40lb kid all around Manhattan, often while toting bags of takeout food, and keeping him all cheerful by pointing out the cute rats in the subway! is at least as difficult as driving a truck around. Luckily pseudonymous kid is a great city kid, though we had a couple of bad mornings where late breakfasts made everyone cranky and impatient. But even that was good, somehow. I love city life, damnit.

Interestingly, every single conversation I got into--in shops, restaurants, Central Park--ended up on the "does Bush suck or what?" topic; even the cops seemed pretty well-inclined towards the protesters. I suspect, btw, that my NY trip might be why some of you got hits from the gub'mint off my blog; I had mentioned that I was going in the comments to someone else's lefty blog, so doubtless we are all now being investigated under some provision of the Patriot Act. Sadly, I did not actually get to do any protesting; post-WTO I am not too inclined to take pseudonymous kid into a protest situation, and b/c of the move I wouldn't have been able to break away without taking him along.

But for the record, spy boys? I think Bush sucks.

The medium is the message

God, I feel sorry for men. Probably women are in the same boat, but since I am not playing around online with women, someone else will have to blog about that. And also, of course, I'm only talking here about straight folks; I have no idea what the sociology of gay sexchat is. Again, someone else's topic.

So this online hooking up thing. It's fascinating to me, how it really pushes people into very traditional gender roles, where women are the sellers and men are the buyers and it is a seller's market, baby. And then the reactions that people have to that situation reinscribe it. If you got your entire impression of gender relations from online, you would really believe in the neanderthal caveman stereotype of male/female sexual interaction. (Come to think about it, I think some people really do believe in that, but that's a whole other problem.)

So to begin with, what happens is, guys *always* make the first overture. Being a good feminist, and pretty comfy with my own sexual desire, obviously, I started out by making the first move a few times: but what happens then is you get swamped with responses, so you quickly learn to hold back, to be coy. Men, I imagine, have the opposite learning curve: if a guy is polite and waits to be acknowledged--in other words, if he is, in fact, a reasonably well-socialized guy--he probably runs the risk of getting overlooked. So it perpetuates this "nice guys finish last" bullshit that a lot of insecure men believe in. Now there are exceptions, which I'll get to in the next paragraph, but first, one last piece of evidence for the thesis, here: tone. Men who go too far out of their way to make the point that they are "interested in a woman's pleasure" or "respect the ladies" or somesuch? ICK. It just comes across as (a) creepy; (b) smarmy; (c) insincere; or (d) weak. Like they are either feeding you a line, or else they are trying a little too hard to say what they think "women," as a class, want to hear.

Exceptions: in my very limited and satistically unsound experience, men who are confident and have a sense of humor tend to stand out. You log in to the little sex chat room, and if you're feeling incredibly bold ("you" here are a woman), you say "hi" to the room, and then about fifteen guys all say "hi" back, and then the trick is, how fast can you read the scrolling chat, and how fast can you type? It's like playing pingpong with fifteen balls. Guys who do not immediately try to monopolize you ("Hi, sexy lady! Wanna chat in private?" to which one can only think, "why would I? What distinguishes you from the other hundred and fifty men in here asking the same question?") but who instead sort of broadcast their amusement at the entire dynamic tend to be more interesting to talk to than the ones who, doubtless pushed into pushiness by the medium, lose their sense of humor and start grabbing. And of course, the dynamic perpetuates that, too: if you put off the pushy boys, they presumably either push harder next time, or else overcompensate and end up, again, with the smarmy insincerity and / or weak-sounding problem.

And then, of course, there's the fact that it is a text-based medium. Which means that being able to type and read quickly, and ideally spell, are massive advantages--which is amusing, and kind of nice, since those are not usually areas in which one gets major mating bonus points. It also means that one, or at least I, tend to wind up meeting people who are actually quite interesting: mostly folks who write for some part of their living, but occasionally people who do other things but who happen, sometimes to their surprise, to write well. Being able to broadcast personality in what is, essentially, a rushed and sketchy first draft, is very handy in sex chat. And being able to do so collaboratively--to instantly intuit the subtext of the person you are talking to, to figure out where they are trying to get the conversation to go, and to respond appropriately, as well as broadcasting your own subtext in a way that is suggestive but not so blunt as to be offputting--is really quite the writing challenge. And fun, too.

So it's a weird medium. I think it suggests a lot about the odd intimacy of the internet: the combination of freedom and focused attention that is, I suspect, part of what we all enjoy so much about the (not-eroticized) social aspects of the web. It also, I think, may be a clue as to why sex-based web content is so huge: not just because "sex sells," but because the web as medium is somehow particularly well-suited for sex: intensely private and enormously public at the same time, allowing one to play safely with exposure and intimacy.

I think this musing of mine touches on this post over in Sergei's sex blog (such pleasing alliteration there), though it didn't start out that way.

Anyway, on that semi-academic (read: overly analytic) completely not-academic (read: sex-based) (that's a joke: academics have sex. Only it's not a joke, b/c it's painfully obvious to those of us who blog as academics about sex that there is supposedly some tension there, which is why we're all damn well anonymous) note, I am off for a long weekend. I may or may not post before I return early next week. With luck, I will be too busy enjoying my very irresponsible just-before-the-semester-starts-even-though-I-don't-have-my-syllabi-or-even-my-reserve-lists-done-yet semi-vacation.

And by the time you are done parsing that paragraph, I'll be back.

I want to be like her when I grow up

This, from one of the best blogs going imho, does a much better job of saying what I was trying to say in the comments to this post (which you can read as soon as haloscan gets its act together, hopefully), about what Jeanne calls, more clearly than I, "the tendency on the left to feed the myth of the noble soldier."

"Because [veterans] have suffered, and, in some sense, suffered for our sins, they are not to be questioned.

That's as anti-democratic a notion as I can imagine, but I would argue that every time we join the paeans to all our fine and noble young men and women in the military, we contribute to the problem. Being in the military is a difficult, dangerous, and underpaid job. We owe it to everyone in the military to keep every promise we make to them. We owe it to them to take care of their families while they're gone, and we owe them assistance in healing and readjustment when they return. We owe it to them not to scorn their work, even if we disagree with the cause they fought in. But we don't owe them one bit more respect than we owe any other human being."

Oh goody

Haloscan seems to have gone tits up.

In other news, apparently "tits" is my all purpose swear word du jour.

Ironic, pointless post

So a few folks have emailed me saying this page doesn't load well in IE; I think I mentioned it before, and a couple of people who actually know shit about programming and browsers told me it wasn't me, it was IE, which was a relief. I do know that the page works fine in Safari and Mozilla, anyway, and if I were less lazy I'd test it in Netscape but no one uses Netscape any more, really, do they? I used to love it, but it is so slow.

Anyway, I found, somewhere, probably on the blog of one of you, this handy-dandy link to The Web Standards Project, which is cool, and links to free browsers that are not IE, and even has a li'l "learn" section about how to design accessible forms, web standards, stuff like that. For those of us who don't know what the hell we're doing and are just totally taking advantage of the "pushbutton" blogging provided by Blogger, et. al. Some day I would love to actually know what I'm doing with all this stuff. I hate feeling like an ignorant doofus.

Now I am going to go back to being irritable at pseudonymous kid, who I have had to drag into the office today (I have been doing that 1-2 times/week of late, and it is starting to get on my tits, as the Brits say), and trying DESPERATELY to get something done in terms of finishing the planning for my graduate seminar.

Grr.

Since I'm not posting anything else today

Silly quizzery. I so swore to myself that I would not do this sort of thing... But I do like Oscar Wilde.


Oscar Wilde: The Portrait of Dorian Gray. You are a
horror novel from the world of dandies, rich
pretty boys, art and aesthetics, and
intellectual debates between ethical people and
decadent pleasure-seekers. You value beauty and
pleasure but realize their dangers, as well.


Which literature classic are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Feminism, (open) marriage, and fucking around: some preliminary thoughts

Stimulated by the most recent issue of Scholar & Feminist Online - Young Feminists Take on the Family, which includes an (iffy) article about adultery: while I agree with the essay's main point, that adultery can be seen as a form of resistance against marriage, I think Kipnis (cited in the article, and also, before, by me on this blog) said it much better. Largely because Johnson, in this article, seems to be arguing against marriage but for monogamy (of a sort): her betrayal comes when her married lover promises not to sleep with his wife any more and then, of course, does. Also there's a weird bit in there about wearing his wedding ring, which she speculates makes her somehow queerly married to his wife: this is actually an interesting idea, that I'll try to address either here or at a later point, but she doesn't explore it and just kind of leaves it sitting there, seeming a kind of outrageous wishful thinking.

Anyway, other than that article, I have just started glancing through the essays on the site, but the subjects of them alone--the myth of "Doing It All," "The Myth of Balance," the "Privilege and Emotional Energy" of motherhood--are tapping into stuff that has been going on for me the last couple of days, so I will use them as a jumping off point. This may be a rather kaleidoscopic entry; I hope to return to some of the issues I'll probably just gloss here, maybe develop them at another point. (Would that this were the material of my primary research field; alas, it is not.)

The pieces:

1. Fighting with Mr. B. the last couple of days about how he runs (or, as I am arguing, fails to run) the house. Blog not called "bitch" for nothing: I can be demanding and unforgiving. In my defense, however, Mr. B. was adamant that being the primary house person was what he really wanted to do, even though I initiated several conversations before our move about whether or not he really meant it, how much work it was, how it seemed to me that his free time was not spent futzing with the house but instead doing other hobbies, etc. So part of my current anger is the intellectual dishonesty and lack of self-awareness thing.

2. Fucking around: though I fear my "queen of het open marriage" crown may slip a bit on admitting this, in fact our open relationship has been largely theoretical since we tied the knot lo these many years ago. While we were dating and living together, I did indeed fuck other people. Once we got married, I didn't; the openness up to this point has consisted of Mr. B. fooling around on a few occasions with two different women, and me getting highschool hot n' heavy with a guy at my 10-year hs reunion (no penetration, b/c no condoms), trying to seduce someone (unsuccessfully) last year, and a very drunken attempt on both our parts to initate a 4some with some friends of ours that resulted in me making out with my girlfriend, showing off for her sexy boyfriend, and that was about it.

3. Affairs: married men looking to cheat. Man, these guys are easy to meet, especially online where my profile says up front that I, too, am married and want "discretion" (not b/c of Mr. B., though, but b/c of my job, which is always misunderstood initially). What fascinates me about all these married guys is that they love their wives. Now, mine isn't a scientific sample because if a man starts to run his wife down to me, I wind up the conversation (polite to the end) and then block his ass; but I would say that the ratio of loving (cheating) husbands to men who think that the way to court another woman is to tell her all the bad things about your wife is, ime, about 4:1.

4. Talking to Mr. B. about all this. This might sound strange, but it makes perfect sense: ever since we have known one another, Mr. B. and I have agreed that the biggest problem with monogamy is that it preemptively cuts off one possible avenue of growth. You are not allowed to explore this set of feelings, this person, what you can learn here, because it is "wrong." To me, that seems deeply fucked up and inimical to love. I love Mr. B. (even though he is pissing me off this weekend), and he loves me, and therefore why in the earth would we want to put limits on each other? Fooling around, getting crushes on others, or (as I'm doing now) really pursuing relationships and/or fucking other people is a pretty profound learning experience.

I would say this is so even if you don't think much about what you're doing: one of my closest friends has twice had affairs. The first time was as she was getting ready to leave her husband, and she married the guy she was fooling around with; the second time was a year after the second marriage. It was, of course, very risky--but I think it taught both her and her husband a lot about themselves individually and as a couple. I offer her as an example because she is very instinctive and impulsive: when these things happened, I tried to ask her what she thought they "meant," and her response was, basically, "huh?" And yet, from the outside, and watching her work through these things with the men involved, it is clear to me that they were a (dangerous, risky) learning experience, a way of testing the relationships. Though she and I are very different, we share this important quality: we need to know that when push comes to shove, our friends and partners will stick it out, argue it through, rather than impose arbitrary boundaries and limits. (This is a theme; see (1) above, and I shall return to it at the end, I think.)

Back to (4): one thing my recent adventures have really taught me is that there are different aspects to this open marriage thing. One is that the extracurricular activities really have nothing to do with the main event: other than a little "hehe, good for you!" kind of thing, most of our fucking around up to this point has been pretty meaningless. I know that people don't always get this "how are you not jealous?" thing, but it just has always felt like how you are about your friends' sexual adventures: giddy, maybe titillating, amusing, entertaining, and largely having little or nothing to do with the friendship itself.

But there's apparently this other side, too, where it does have to do with the marriage. More backstory (I analyze anecdotally and digressively; this explains both why I chose my job, and why I worry that I'm not as good a critic as I think I "should" be, but that is a topic for another day). A year or two ago (big scary revelation here! blogfodder for many years to come! another reason for anonymity!) I made a pass at--gasp--a student. Well, I waited 'til he was not my student any more, because I am neither stupid nor mean, but once that grade was in, I propositioned him. I feel the need to explain that I was very principled about it: I was on my way to another job, so I knew I would never have him in a class again; during class, despite his obvious flirting with me, I stayed friendly but professional; I never ever touched him, though we met a couple of times (I have touched him since those initial moments, after we became friends); and, in the end, he couldn't get his head 'round my marriage, so I settled into being the friendly older woman mentor figure I am, for him, to this day. Anyway. An old friend, who I talked to about this, asked: "what is it you are getting out of this boy that you are not getting from Mr. B.?" At the time I thought that was the wrong question to ask. But it stuck with me, and I am starting to realize what it means.

The truth, I think, is that it is impossible for one person to be "everything" to someone else. Impossible and, I think, cruel: setting the other person (and, incidentally, yourself) up to fail. In part, this is the answer to the "why open marriage?" question in a nutshell: because I think it is loving to deal with your fear in order not to limit the other person's growth. Yes, my standards are high (which is why you do not want to be keeping my house), but at least I try to avoid a double standard. Now, surely there are people who have such issues with jealousy and fears of betrayal that it is best for them and their partners to agree that there are limits: here, monogamy has its uses. But I think that for most people, garden-variety jealousy and fear is, or can be, or should be, a way to learn: what is it you are afraid of? What is it that you are not getting (or giving)? What does your crush on this other person, or your partner's crush, say about who they are that they didn't know before? In other words, as my friend asked: "what do you get out of 'cheating' that you don't get at home?"

Now, a lot of these married men, it seems to me, get something very simple, something that I get too, and empathize with. This is partly my response to the Johnson article I linked at the top, my sense that my feminism means that learning what "cheating" means to me means beginning to recognize, and empathize with, what it means to married men. Fucking someone you love is terrifying, requiring enormous vulnerability; to try to manage the fear, probably a lot of people have pretty bad sex, b/c while you need to get off, you are not going to take the risks involved in opening up and really communicating much, sexually. A lot of these married guys seem caught in this trap: their wives put them off, they don't know how to get around it, they are horny, they look around a bit, but they end up just feeilng guilty and sad because what they really want, hand to god, is to fuck--to communicate with--their wives.

I said to someone recently that I want to give all these men feminist cards to sign, because if they only realized it, the feminist project is their best friend: get women to feel entitled (to sex, to autonomy, to money) and they will find it less threatening to admit what they want, and they will be able to have better sex, more often, if their husbands love them and are also willing to take those risks; or, to decide that this is not the marriage for them, if not. (This is part of the way that I think the "married to his wife" thing in the Johnson article might make sense, and part of why I won't listen to men complain about their wives: it is obvious to me that if your sex life is unsatisfying, it ain't entirely her fault, and so I tell the unhappy, sweet, thinking-of-cheating men that they need to tell their wives what they are telling me.) Yes, it's a risk. But the alternative, it seems to me, is to live in a tiny box for the rest of your life.

So, better sex and better relationships through entitlement: this, at least, is true for me, and it is what I'm exploring right now with by fucking around. With someone who I am not married to, who I do not have to deal with next week, next month, next year, I can feel free to try something embarrassing; I can feel free to be, frankly, as whorish as I like; I can feel free to be entitled, goddamnit. This includes entitled to say no: no, I won't do that, no, I won't pretend to believe that your wife is just frigid. With my partner, I am afraid--not to say no, I am halfway to feminist perfection--but to say yes. What if I do something that he thinks is freaky, or that he finds so very titillating and erotic that I have to do it from here on out, forever? So, sticking strictly to sex, what one gets out of it is a chance to explore things in a less-fraught environment; ideally, one then processes that shit and brings it home and expands one's sex life with one's partner.

But obviously there is more to it than just sex. There is the little domestic, date-like stuff: enjoying knowing that someone has made an effort to impress you, enjoying making an effort to impress someone else, being kind, being considerate, being on your best behavior. You know you should do that--all the preachy marriage manuals tell you to--but there is a huge difference between knowing it intellectually and knowing it by feeling it. Date-boy cleaned the hell out of his apartment just in case I showed up; I groomed the hell out of my body and took him to a very nice restaurant for dinner, one I could barely afford. And I found myself thinking, over dinner: "wow. I really should take Mr. B. out to a nice dinner like this some time, leave pseudonymous kid at home with a sitter, we should have an evening like this, we always say we can't afford it but fuck that shit, when you're dating spending money on your partner is a priority." And Mr. B. told me later that he was thinking, while I was gone, "gee, I really should probably make more of an effort not to always look so frumpy, I should shave more, I should take my bitchy wife less for granted." And, since I started this whole sex-chat leading to dating thing, we have been much more courtly of one another, and it's been great, I'm telling you, though it's embarrassing for both of us, and hard, because my god! who is going to notice these changes more than the person who lives with you? And then they'll know that this isn't, actually, the way you "really" live, and the illusion will be blown, and oh no, they'll know that you are actually trying and ahhhh! what if they reject me?

But you know, if you love someone or you want to have decent sex, you need to stick your neck out. I've talked to Mr. B. about what I'm enjoying about these sex chats, aspects of my (sexual) personality that I haven't found a way to talk about before, and that, too, is cool. So yes, there is actually a little bit of jealousy, a little bit of a threat there, in the sense of a challenge to integrate this new stuff into the old relationship. But isn't that the challenge of marriage? Isn't marriage, by definition, threatening in that way? Here we have two people who have promised to spend the rest of their lives together, or to try. Shit. Presumably you want growth, you want to grow as a person over your life. That means change. How is that going to fit into the promise? How are you going to handle it when your partner makes you a promise ("I want to keep house") or takes a new job, and you have your doubts, but you go along with it, and then it doesn't work out? How are you going to handle that learning in a way that holds them to a standard without tearing into them for failing?

Somehow, compared to housekeeping, sex seems like a very safe place for finding out some of that stuff.

Better than anything I'm going to write today

This, snagged from that Respectful of Otters chick (as I now call her in my head, thanks to Fafblog), is a really tremendously moving, incisive, humane, and intelligent piece about the Bridge Incident in Samarra. You know, where a group of soldiers drowned an Iraqi man. The author, I gather was in the same brigade as those soldiers, and he makes the old-fashioned point that leaders are ultimately responsible for the actions of their followers, because they put those followers where they did, and they have a responsibility to know what human nature is.

There's one reader comment to the effect that, no, soldiers have always done bad things in war time, the military will always try to protect itself--and this is true, though it is also true that many soldiers are very moral and principled people, and I don't say that as knee-jerk lefty "support our troops" idiocy, but from personal experience. Anyway, the comment, I think, reveals a moral problem with some kinds of leftist thought, which is that yes: human nature is that people will do bad things. But the proper response to this isn't just to be cynical, because nothing happens in a vacuum, and even those who do abhorrent things are, in the end, human. The author of this piece is making a very principled point that context matters a very great deal, that people are responsible for their actions but that that doesn't absolve those who create the conditions in which they do bad things, and I think that is true.

It is an interesting and beautiful essay. It has me feeling very Catholic, musing on whether the metaphor of the devil as omnipresent tempter might be an attempt to make this larger point that cruelty/sin/whatever you want to call it happens when the situation is right. Perhaps the personification of Satan is a way of suggesting that the conditions for evil are, after all, things we make. And thinking about things like grace and forgiveness. A surprising start to a Friday morning, but not a bad one at all.

I prefer "have done" lists to "to do" lists

Today I:

1. Finished my annual review (pretty much: need to write short paragraphs describing my courses last year, and put all the component parts into a binder).

2. Told my chair that I will be looking at the job market this year; asked for a letter; explained that it will be a very limited search, that I am very happy in the job, but that I am geographically far from home. He seems to be a mensch, I think it will be okay. And he said (without my asking) that he will keep it in confidence, which is best.

3. Emailed my advisor and my other famous committee member and asked for new recommendation letters; attached new c.v., wrote up brief (but actually, not so brief! when did I do all that shit?) email detailing what I've done this year. Nice advisory-type email back, including wise advice about job search and an impressed "wow!" at last year's activity. Advisor notoriously hard to get praise out of; a "wow" is unheard of. I am pleased.

4. As consequence of (1) and (3), now have up-to-date cv. Shall tinker a bit with format, but basically okay.

5. As consequence of (1), have draft of teaching-type statement if called for on job market.

6. Got back draft of Big Grant Proposal from mentor: to my shock, she says it looks "virtually finished." I thought it was the draftiest draft that had ever been drafted, but who am I to argue? So must finalize budget details and turn that bastard in next week.

7. Organized shit in office. Arranged tomorrow's minor tasks (typing up comments on masters' theses; renewing membership in various organizations). Shall turn annual review in tomorrow (early, even!!), tackle final stages of grant proposal.

8. Oh yeah, yesterday I met with grant money handling person, turned in receipts for last of startup money (big computer shopping trip last weekend), consulted on various pots of money for the upcoming year and what the rules are about spending them. This weekend I hope to put together a spreadsheet so I can start actually managing these various fundages instead of just guessing and not really knowing what I'm doing.

Damn. I actually feel like I got shit done this week. I'm actually feeling okay that tomorrow is Friday.

Back Up Plans

A couple of other people's posts today--here and the last few entrieshere--made me think about this: what are my realistic and/or fantasy alternate careers? And why?

In no particular order:

1. Long-haul trucker. Seriously. I love road trips and driving, and my fantasy world says it would be splendid to have a kind of mindless job where I got to think. Of course, hemmerhoids and lots of crappy food would be gross.

2. Writer (non-academic). I frankly think I lack the discipline. Without the anxiety and pressure of "having" to write (as Rana put it), I almost certainly wouldn't. And yet. And yet. Blogging is writing. I can imagine myself writing porn (really, no joke). I would sort of enjoy, I think, writing a popular semi-scholarly historic-type book in my field, one where I could enjoy the research and presenting the entertaining anecdotes and constructing a narrative of what happened--like I do when teaching--without having to worry or fuss about whether I was citing everyone I "should" or whether I was being theoretically sophisticated, or wtfever. I go round and round on this one.

3. Teacher (secondary school). Actually, I think I would be very good at this. I just worry about the bureaucratic bullshit, whether or not I'd have the freedom to design my own courses as I like to, and swearing in class. Oh, and the boredom of disciplinary stuff. And the endless private vs. public school debate.

4. Full-time mom. No, sorry. I would lose my mind. But in my more anxious moments, I wish I could just stay home and go to the park.

5. Ancien Regime French mistress. I'm good at this! Really! I boost egos, I have caretaking skills, I'm fun in the sack, I have a dirty mind, I am affectionate but completely not jealous or clingy, I like having time to myself, and I enjoy being spoiled as well as spoiling others. Oh, and I actually find married men who desperately love their wives but can't figure out how to approach them sexually very endearing, and I give good advice. But sadly, the historic moment has passed.

6. Pet psychologist. Again, I am not entirely kidding. I'm good with animals, and empathetic, and I can always figure out why the cat won't pee in the box and how to change the conditions so they will. Animals have feelings, too.

7. Shrink. I think I fantasize about this only because I adore my own so much. But no more school for me, uh-uhnh.

8. Editor. I have mad editing skills (and no, I don't spell-check my own blog, so shut the fuck up, this is informal writing). I also really enjoy it. Sadly, it tends to pay badly.

9. Some kind of administrative or managerial-type work. See, I get vague on this possibility, even though it is probably a realistic one. Then again, I have noticed that job descriptions of this type tend to be vague, too. But I'm good at planning shit and then getting other people to do the scut work. This is my achilles' heel as an academic, too: hating to do the scut work and detaily crap. Come on, already, it's a great idea, let someone else prove that it works. Can I move on now?

10. Career consultant/advisor. Oh, I give great advice. I just can't figure out my own life.

Actually, now that I look at this list, the abstracted skill set seems pretty much in keeping with what's required in academe.

LOL

As so often happens, The Onion manages to boil something down (in this case, my neurosis) to its hideous, ludicrous, core:

"Stockbroker Donald Guy, 38, announced Monday that his non-work life is "a complete waste of time." "I spent the weekend reading, watching movies, and visiting friends." Guy said. "I didn't get a damn thing done." He added that he might have gotten more accomplished Sunday had he not been burdened with the need to go swimming with his wife and children."

I think I may have to have a sampler made for my office, or something, to remind me not to be such an idiot.

Rushed blogging: or, What happens when meetings run FOR-EVER

It is that busy time of year, and my mind is all a-flutter. Hence I have a zillion ideas going, enough for several blog entries, and yet I am too busy and undisciplined to edit or cohere or parcel them out in a manageable sequence. So here are a few puzzle pieces. You may attempt to construct a coherent narrative if you wish (it's in there), or you may simply enjoy them as a random design:

1. Washington Post on the Capitol Hill sexblogger: link goes to the second page, which is as far as I got before becoming irritated. If you haven't registered with the post, try bugmenot. Chuck's already talked about it a bit, too.

Jessica's "behavior is not mainstream majority behavior in the same way that most soldiers in Iraq are not abusing people," Yankelovich says. "She's an extreme, but she's a sign. These kinds of signs are breaking out often enough that you know they are signaling something much larger and more important."

Feminist author Naomi Wolf agrees, and says modern sexual conduct offers a window into what's been gained and lost in the nation's values revolution. . . . "What is gained is they totally reject the double standard and believe they are entitled to sexual exploration and sexual satisfaction," Wolf says. "The downside is we've raised a generation of young women -- and men -- who don't understand sexual ethics like: Don't sleep with a married man; don't sleep with a married woman; don't embarrass people with whom you had a consensual sexual relationship. They don't see sex as sacred or even very important anymore. That's been lost. Sex has been commodified and drained of its deeper meaning."

Give me a goddamn break. Jessica the sexblogger is not abusing prisoners in Iraq: what an offensive analogy. She is having sex and talking about it--anonymously, even. Good for her. If the people involved recognize themselves and are embarrassed, that's their fucking problem: she didn't put their names on the blog.

And I'll go further than Chuck and say that Naomi Wolf's statements are annoying too. The rules are not don't sleep with married people (says the married person who fucks around), and the rules sure as hell are not "don't embarrass people." The rules are, be ethical; and have a sense of boundaries. If married guy is cheating on his wife without her knowing, that is not Jessica's problem: it is his. If he's a double-standard hypocrite who fucks around and then fires his fuckbuddy if she talks about it, then he damn well deserves to be embarrassed.

So yeah, I really don't think this woman did anything wrong at all. I think she's really being hung out to dry (book deal notwithstanding) because a lot of sexist motherfuckers are conveniently forgetting that talking about who you fuck or not is up to you; and that firing someone for fucking (or after you fuck them--it's not clear to me if her employer was actually someone she slept with or not) is actually, um, wrong. She should file a lawsuit, not that she'd probably get anywhere. And I think the whole reporting that she feels kind of ashamed, or apologetic, or confused, or whatever, makes perfect sense. She is a young woman; she is being punished for being sexual, and admitting it. It's a hard goddamn row to hoe, and despite her admirable sense of self-assurance about her fucking behavior (pun intended), I seriously doubt that she is completely free of internalized sexism. I know I'm not.

2. Date: went well. We were going to a play. Our dinner went long, so we missed it, and opted to rent a movie instead, which, as I said, we did not watch. We ran out of condoms (!), I found myself absolutely thrilled with the realization that the "older woman with kid" body I have is so very much more servicable and erotic with younger men than it was when I was that age myself, I was charmed by his momentarily youthful shynesses (especially given that this guy is so very not shy, sexually speaking), I got home at 4:00 the next day. I will see him again, if he is willing, though I don't think I can do a 24-hour marathon a second time, since though Mr. B. is highly amused, pseudonymous kid was rather upset at mama's absence Saturday morning.

3. Anonymous blogging ('scuse me while I beat this dead horse): it's obvious to me that if my colleagues were to / are reading this blog, they probably know who I am. My reporting of collegial interactions is too specific to be mistaken. I don't know what I think of this. It is odd, because virtually everything on this blog is something that I am more or less open about: one friend here knows about my date, another couple of people know that I am thinking of looking for a different job, etc. Yet still, the sense that this is a "private" public space remains very important to me, so I feel alternately uncomfortable about and careless of the possibility of being recognized. I doubt it'll change what I do, but it continues to fret me.

4. Interminable meetings: at today's meeting, I found myself looking around the room, realizing that I really like the people here. This is a happy department: yes, there are internal divisions and conflicts, but in all it seems well-run. People are principled and collegial. I am far happier than I was back when I was a petrified newbie. Even Tinytown is pleasant, with the summer weather; and on Sunday, Mr. B. and I went back to Big City, ran some errands, stopped at a park with pseudonymous kid, and ran into some colleagues who live there. It was absolutely lovely, and we talked about how I might feel very differently about being here if we had decided to live in Big City rather than in Tinytown. Which of course is still an option: one can move. While it would seem this is a good thing--feeling happier about being here--it makes me feel threatened. I had this reaction, too, to profgrrrrl's entry on home. I want not to be unhappy here, and yet I also do not want to stay. When I find myself imaginging staying, feeling content, it frightens me. My identity is kind of bound up in not being from here, and I miss home, and I don't want to stop missing home, and I don't want this to become home. I am torn between maintaining a firm resistance to all happiness and wanting to just relax, settle in, and avoid the stress of trying to find something new, especially because what I have now is really very good indeed, except geographically. It is becoming much easier to imagine staying here, and because I know that this is normal, to be expected--that most academics move, feel terribly homesick, and eventually make a new life--it bothers me: I don't want my longing for home to be merely a phase, I want it to be real.

All in all, I know this is a positive development. It will allow me to make decisions from a calmer, more rational place. It will help me work better (which is already happening, notwithstanding the extremely distracting extracurricular activities I've got going--indeed, in part because of my hobbies, which also make me feel more at home, more myself, more integrated). I am beginning to feel, not just tell myself, that it is going to be okay. In a sense, this is a kind of homecoming; perhaps it is this that is settling, rather than my sense of place. I hope so (my lingering anxiety and homesickness hope so). It is more comfortable, I must admit, even though I am suspicious of being too comfortable.

Whee! Blogrolling!

Can't yet quite get myself to comment on the Washington Post article about the Capitol Hill sexblogger: maybe tomorrow. Am dithering on date blogging, both b/c I actually liked date boy and it seems perhaps a little unkind to blog in detail about him (other than to say, wow! that was fun!) b/c, though it's unlikely to happen, if he runs across this he might be embarassed if he recognizes himself. Also because I am feeling paranoid today about what if someone from work found this blog: the anecdotes I relate about collegial conversations would peg me pretty quick if the right person read this. Ambivalent about that and will perhaps blog it someday, but not now lest it raise the anonymous ghost again.

Instead, I will pretend that I am a man and add to my blogroll. Isn't the whole male vs. female blog bullshit supposed to say that men are all about the networking and linkage and women are all about the private diarykeeping? Maybe I'm not ovulating after all. Or maybe fucking around is merely an expression of penis envy. You decide.

And on that note, I wanna call all y'all's attention especially to The Well-Timed Period, over there under "Procrastination Tools": fascinating blog about all things menstrual, birth-controlly, and obstetric-gynecological. Really good read. Also over there is The Lowland Seed, an odd blog by some guy who talks about sex a lot: I haven't decided what I think about it but he linked me (always a good thing, in this manly world of blogrolling), and I am intrigued by my own inability to figure out what to make of him.

Also, of course, many many more academicish bloggers of all stripes. 'Specially useful: George H. Williams' palimpsest, tucked in the middle of the academic blog list under his regular blog: lots of interesting teaching ideas in there. I heart George (wait, does that make me male or female? Is George gay? I can't remember if it's ever come up.) The Little Professor has a really smart entry on "advice to graduate students about book-buying" that I wish I had read when I was in grad school. Other academic blog notes: there was one interesting blog, called "academia," that I wanted to add but accidentally lost the linkage: if the blog owner (or someone else) wants to give it to me, I'll add it. Also, haven't yet added All Day Permanent Red (not a menstrual blog, title notwithstanding) because it doesn't seem to be loading for me tonight: will add it as soon as I can get my hands back on it, though, b/c again, very good blog, so consider this a pre-nouncement of sorts that linkage will show up in the next day or so.

And in the "Liberal Bias" section, Trish Wilson, with the funniest damn catblog picture I think I've ever seen.

Technical problem

Apparently IE on Mac (and Netscape, too, I think) won't load the blog. Those of you who use blogger: any ideas? I'm not so smart with the tech shit, and I don't know how to fix it.

"Mirame. No piensas: siéntete."

(I don't know if I've done that right, but it's "feel," not "sit down.")

Ok, so the guy who tried to pick me up at breakfast on Thursday:

I had scheduled a pedicure for that morning, hoping it would force me out of bed early enough that I would get some work done that day (which in the end didn't happen quite as planned due to familial dawdling, but whatever). So I was up early, family still in bed, and I thought "hey, I'll try the bakery a few blocks away, have a nice breakfast. Sure beats making my own coffee." So off I go. As I arrive, some guy is entering the bakery right ahead of me, and he holds the door; I thank him and smile, as any civilized person would do. He orders, I order. We both go for an outside table; there is one left. I get there first (plus I'm a girl, so of course he has to give it to me) and he pauses just long enough for me to say, "please, have a seat." He says no, he will sit on the nearby bench, I tell him not to be silly, I'm perfectly happy to share a table, what else are cafes for? I say. I actually do this all the time, and it does tend to freak midwesterners out, but whatever, I think it's good manners so I do it anyway. So anyway, he sits down, thanks me profusely ("you are very kind"), offers me part of his newspaper, which I refuse as I have brought my New Yorker, and we read in parallel, which is pretty much what I had planned.

After about 10 minutes, he says that he can't help commenting on how nice my cake looks, and what did I order? It reminds him of a bakery he used to go to when he lived in Paris....

So of course I ask why he was in Paris. He was making a film, he tells me. We talk a bit more and he somehow ends up telling me his life story about being a political prisoner somewhere in Central America (I don't remember where), eventually making his way to the States, et voila. It's entirely plausible, but it seems odd to me that this guy is telling me this within 20 minutes of meeting me, but hey, whatever. We talk a bit more about origins, etc., and I let on as to how I'm not really from this particular area either. We discuss the ups and downs of this place. I offer as an example my frustrating tortilla story. He tells me of a store in nearby bigger town that sells tortillas, I thank him, and explain that I am actually planning on just learning to make my own. He lights up and asks me to show him my hands, which I do. (No I do not put my hands in his: I hold them up above the table for a second.) He offers to teach me how to make tortillas. I laugh and say thank you, that might be nice. He asks if I like Latin music, which I do, so I say yes, and he offers to loan me a cd of some new artist he likes, let him just get it from the car.

Now, he is obviously flirting; I am not stupid. But I'm feeling okay with this: I don't mind guys on the make, it's a nice sunny morning, I'm feeling flirtatious myself b/c of my upcoming date, and he seems nice enough if a little overeager, so I am thinking, what the hell. I'll borrow the cd, I'll burn a copy, I'll have coffee with him in a week or two and give it back and see if he seems nice or not. I am trying to be open, here. Which yes, idiotic of me, but you know, tortillas! So fine, he gives me the cd, I give him my business card so he can contact me and get it back, he gives me his phone number, I have to go to my appointment, bye-bye.

By the time I get to the appointment, I have forgotten about it. I get home afterwards and Mr. B. asks about the cd so I remember and tell him the story and say that if some guy calls that's who it is, and yes, I have his cd. Mr. B. laughs and says, "ok." We are both somewhat amused when we open the cd case and the cd inside is a Disney cd: tortilla guy did tell me he had a kid, so of course we realize what has happened, and again I plan to call tortilla guy some time next week, make a joke about the mistaken cd. No biggie.

Eventually I end up at work (with pseudonymous kid, which is irritating but will shortly come in handy, as you shall see), and I seem to have missed three incoming calls from a number I don't recognize, but no messages. After about half an hour, a new call comes in. Well, of course it is tortilla guy. He is an airhead, he says, for having given me the wrong cd. I tell him it is perfectly understandable. He says he has to give me the right one. I tell him that maybe next week? Because I will be working late today (Thursday), and Friday I am going into Big City, and I will be working on the house over the weekend. Well, but, he says. He has to pick up his son at some summer camp thing that is being held on campus this afternoon, it will be no problem to just swing by my office. Well, okay, I say. I tell him where it is. He says, "I am turning onto Campus Drive right now," and I realize omg, this guy is calling me on his cell phone from his car and he is on his way over! Well, okay, fine, my office is right at the end of Campus Drive, I tell him, just come on up.

He does. His kid is not with him. I get up and extend my hand: he hugs me. He has not only the cd, but a bag of tortillas. "Please," he says, "I have tons of them in the freezer, I thought you would enjoy these." Oh, thank you so much, I say, this is very kind. Pseudonymous kid, please meet Mr. Tortilla Guy, I say. He has a son about your age. Yes, says Tortilla Guy, pulling out a picture from his wallet. He mentions again teaching me to make tortillas, which I try to deflect by pretending it is an invitation to pseudonymous kid: "P.K.," I say, "Mr. Tortilla thinks maybe you and his kid and the grownups should get together some time and make tortillas, would that be fun?"

Then Tortilla Guy tells me that he hasn't been able to stop thinking of me since breakfast this morning, at which point the whole thing turns from "weird, but maybe okay" to "ok, totally not okay, stop now." So I put the brakes on by saying, "yes, I enjoyed talking to you too; in fact, as soon as I got home I told my husband that I had talked to an interesting person at breakfast who offered to teach me how to make tortillas." (At this point I have to tell you that I do not wear a wedding ring: not for purposes of hitting on men, but because I lost it recently while playing volleyball and would rather spend money on kitchen shit than a new ring right now.) So Tortilla Guy asks how long I have been married. "Ten years last month," I tell him.

Then Tortilla Guy reminds me of my fatal mistake. "But you said you had a date tomorrow night?" he asks. Shit! I did! During our conversation, at the still-talking-about-the-weather stage, he idly asked if I had weekend plans since it is sunny, which I took as a throwaway comment, and said something about going to a play with a new friend on Friday. Shit! Now, if i were a better liar, I would have said, "oh no, it's not a date, lol, whatever gave you that impression?" But I am the world's crappiest liar, especially when I am surprised, so instead I just stammer, "uhm, well, yes, uh, well, my life is . . . complicated."

Tortilla Guy: "I understand. My life is complicated, too. I would like to make your life more complicated."
Me (thinking, fuck! and looking away): "Uhm, well, let me think about that, okay?"
Him (in Spanish, which we earlier established I understand): "No. Mirame. No piensas: siéntete." (I understand Spanish but don't generate it so well any more: what he said was, "Look at me. Don't think: feel," not "Don't think: sit down," so if I've fucked up my translation, please someone correct me.) Then, in English, "You think too much. You need to follow your heart."
Me: "Um, well, thinking is my job, so actually I tend to do that, yes."
Him: "I really think this is fate, that we were fated to meet."
Me (ok, I'll agree, just get out of my damn office): "Maybe we were. In any case, I need to get back to work now..."

So he hugs me again and, mercifully, leaves.

And now I have a bag of goddamn tortillas and two cds that I have to give back to this guy. The cds, not the tortillas. I am eating the fucking tortillas, screw principled refusal of inappropriate gifts. I am trying to decide whether to just turn into the ice queen, or whether to just be frank and tell him that he seemed like a nice enough person at first, but he pushed too hard and made me uncomfortable, so please don't call me again.

You know, I am really trying to be open!! A more open person!! Not such a bitch. But obviously it is a bad idea. So much for self-improvement.

(There must be a sign on my forehead, or maybe I am ovulating or something, because last night on my date, date-guy and I ended up renting a movie and the movie clerk was flirting with me too. I really hope I'm not ovulating because yes, my date went, um, well. We didn't end up watching the movie.

But I will blog about that next time.)

Happy birthday, Lucy Stone

Things I must blog about:

1. The guy who tried to pick me up at breakfast yesterday--whoa there boy, slow the fuck down.

2. Apparently they have, indeed, figured out how to make a typing monkey. This makes me very sad. Poor workaholic monkeys.

3. Must update blogroll; remove sites that apparently don't update, add new ones that I am constantly finding. It is interesting that the open marriage thing seems to be drawing people in. I don't mind this at all, but it isn't what I expected when I started the blog. Hm. On that note, one blog I want to add is this one: good read, pretty layout, and linked me: interesting comments on his link, including something else I want to blog about:

4. The sense that my not-as-freaky-as-it-sounds sex life might, well, freak people out. I found the comment over on Permanent Red about that really honest, thoughtful, and admirable: would like to muse more on that.

But as profgrrrrl recalled, today is indeed date day. Both excited and nervous, and I must to get with the primping since I have to drive to Big City and we are meeting rather early for dinner. Joanna reminded me that today is Lucy Stone's birthday, and I feel it fitting, somehow, to have this date on that day. Lucy Stone might not have approved of open marriage per se., but I feel sure that she would, on principle, approve of my right to do whatever I like with mine. (Perhaps I shall test date-boy by mentioning it and seeing if he knows who Lucy Stone is: no, that would be cruel.) Anyway, I have a busy weekend planned. (Shut up, get your mind out of the gutter! Mr. B. and I are going shopping tomorrow for kitchen supplies and the spending of the research fundage on computer shit.) So I will tell you all on Monday how it (date) went.

Maybe ;)

And now, a little reward

Crappiest part of bureaucratic annual review paperwork over with, thank god. Jesus, what a slog. Maybe the crap that needs to get done this month will get done, now that that pain-in-the-ass is over with.

Now, a reward: some seriously overwhelming cuteness. (Make sure and view all the photos. Like visual dessert!)

Newsflash: the sexual revolution is not complete

So here is the biggest, most annoying problem with having a feminist marriage:

No matter what you and your partner have agreed on, other people will cling to their antiquated notions.

It's the biggest evidence to me that marriage is not just a contract between two people; it's also a kind of social contact (for better or for worse). Like, if you and your partner decide to reverse conventional gender roles--you work the day job, he stays home with kids and kitchen--and you are perfectly happy with this arrangement (ok, reasonably happy). Lovely! You win! You and your partner have done all the hard work necessary in arriving at this decision, you have had principled discussions about division of labor, you have made sure that neither one of you is feeling coerced, that this is how you both want it to be, blah blah blah and now you can sit back and enjoy your domestic life. WRONG. Because now you have to deal with constantly explaining to everyone around you that, "no, this really is what we both want, no, I am not an emasculating bitch, actually this was his idea, no really you can ask him, no, he isn't doing it "for" me, no, we're not doing this to "prove" something, really, we are doing this because it works for both of us, individually and as a couple."

Of course, you could refuse to explain all this, and then you have the fun of hearing the whispered comments, the second-hand hints from, oh, say, your sisters-in-law: "well, of course it's none of our business, but we do wonder. . ."or "oh, I think it's fine," (gee, how big of you) "but you know, mother-in-law thinks you're emasculating Mr. B." And I like my mother in law, but jesus. Or things like snide comments about how little housework you do which make you want to scream about how you did the lion's share of the housework for TEN YEARS, goddamnit, including while you were writing your dissertation and all that time you were teaching but of course that was always invisible.

It starts when you decide not to change your name, of course. You explain it to everyone, and then they get it wrong on the letters anyway. Which, you know, fine; I realize that people kind of default to the "normal" pattern without thinking. But my own father?!? Dude. It's the same name I always had. It's YOUR name. Get it right. And stop acting hurt when I get irritated by it. And then there are the casual acquaintances or new friends who, at some point, you have to tell--"well, actually Mr. B.'s last name is not B.," and instead of just saying, "oh, okay" (I mean really. It's unusual but not unheard of.) they say "really? Why did you do that? Did he mind? What did your parents think? What did his parents think? What about the kid? Don't you think he'll be confused? Why did you give him the last name you gave him? Isn't that weird? Isn't this kind of a weak feminist statement since you just have your dad's name anyway?" and so on. Most of the time I really don't mind this stuff. There's a reason why I teach, and it's because I love to explain shit. But occasionally I'll step back and think, lord. Do I really have to explain all of this to every single person who asks? Do they really have the right to ask? Do they have the right to be irked if I'm feeling tired of it that day and just say something snotty like, "why the hell should I change my name?" and try to leave it at that?

And you know, the sex thing too. You decide hey, it's really stupid to promise never to fuck anyone else for the rest of your life, which you hope will be long, and you agree okay, neither of us is the jealous type and possessiveness is stupid, so whatever, if something comes up or you get interested in someone else, go for it because we both know neither one of us is going anywhere. And this works for you, and it's really not anyone else's business, so you don't make a big deal over it (plus, let's not scare the horses), and really 95% of the time you act just like any other monogamous married couple. But guess what? Let's say you get interested in someone else, and you make a move on them. Surprise! Three out of four decent men (which is to say, any guy who you would be interested in sleeping with, because you're really not interested in creepy assholes) will freak out because you are married and they just can't quite bring themselves to sleep with "another man's wife." Which you know, you have to respect, b/c first of all you can't make someone sleep with you and second even if you could it would be illegal and wrong, and third of all, you don't believe in lying or manipulating people so great. You're just fucked. Or rather, you're not.

Interestingly, Mr. B. has not run into the same reluctance from women, which means either he picks sluttier people than I do, or else (since I prefer to think he has good taste, for obvious reasons) women just have a li'l more progressive attitude towards this shit than men do, stereotypes notwithstanding. Which is actually what I think, given the responses of most of my women friends when (if) I tell them how things are. They mostly say, "wow, I envy you, but my guy would never go for that."

Anyway, this is all apropos of nothing, because the guy I have a date with on Friday knows I'm married and finds it neither offputting nor creepily enticing, so that's not what I'm on about. It's just something I was thinking about on the drive home, the way that you think, when you're young, that you and your partner will invent your marriage on your own terms, and by god, you do that! And it's hard work! And yay you, both of you, for doing the work and picking someone who was smart enough to get it and do it too! But then you find out that it isn't, in fact, entirely up to you. Which is just very annoying.

It makes you really feel for Lucy Stone.

A, perhaps The academic paradox: or, bring on the typing monkeys!

Why is it that so often, when you have a really good work day, the next day you just cannot get anything done? Yesterday I spent all day being super-productive-girl, and today other than dropping my course pack off and dealing with a little email, nothing. And the task I have to finish from yesterday is pretty mindless, too, so it's not like there's some massive writing anxiety there or anything. Just a little feeling of time pressure, that if I could get this stupid thing off my desk I might be able to move on to other, far more important and interesting things before the semester starts. And I started the day with the absolute best intentions in the world, getting up early (9:20!!! shock!!), getting in to the office before noon, settling right down.

And here it is, 6 pm, and I've just not started and damnit, it's 6 pm. I wanna go home. Actually, I wanna go to the hardware store and get some more shit for the kitchen--I feel awfully antsy and restless today, which isn't helping with the "settle down and do your mindless but lengthy bureaucratic task that really should be off-loaded onto a machine, except that there isn't one" problem. I would go with the "I guess I just prefer to feel under pressure all the time" theory except that that really isn't the case, and my gut tells me it's not why a big work day almost inevitably provokes a slothful backlash. I don't know what it is, but it's annoying. I think in this case it has to do with the sense that this thing I have to finish, which really could be done by a typing monkey, is something that is such a huge and massive waste of my time that I somehow believe the typing monkey is going to show up and take it off my hands. Where are you, oh typing monkey???

But you know, fuck it. If the typing monkey is busy elsewhere, I'm going to get out of this office, where clearly I will do no work today, and I am going to go home and see if I can talk Mr. B. into going to the hardware store with me (open 'til 9!!) and maybe if I am a very very good girl indeed I can work on mindless bureaucratic crap tonight in bed. Maybe I can pretend to be a monkey while I do it.

Oh well. Thank god it's only Tuesday.

One thing I like about my job

Is the ability to bring pseudonymous kid into work with me. Not all departments are like this, of course, but mine is; and not all kids are like this, but mine is. Colleagues friendly; pseudonymous kid able to entertain himself with toys in my office for a fairly long stretch of time. He is also useful in smoothing my way with support staff. I love the difference in reception between Ms. Clueless Professor coming in to ask another stupid question and Ms. Clueless Professor accompanied by her cute kid. If you have no kids and have to deal with scary support staff (and who can blame them, when we are always wandering in hassling them and interrupting their work?), I highly recommend borrowing a cute kid somewhere on days when you must run errands and ask about grant allotments, course packs, book orders, and so forth. Slows you up, but makes you human.

More discussion of whether or not blogging anonymously is a legitimate activity for an academic. I was going to say, "why it bothers me so I don't know," but I think it is that very question of legitimacy, which is the whole point of this blog, as anyone who actually reads it regularly realizes. Let's see, I noticed discussion on profgrrl, this and this on Krause, these three posts over on Rana's blog, and Mel's post (where I lied and said I couldn't be bothered to respond, but no bitch worthy of the name can bear to pass up a heated debate). Also a post on a new (to me) blog, with one of those "they all just want to bitch" comments attached (the actual post is far more thoughtful than the response, and I wanted to respond myself, but the site forces you to register and I am lazy.)

Anyway, in light of it all coming up again? Still? I must point out one thing about this particular entry of mine:

"Slows you up, but makes you human" is about more than just taking pseudonymous kid to the office. See, I'm never "just" bitching or talking about mundane crap here. There's, like, subtext and shit. The difference between my blog and my academic writing is that in the blog, thank god, I get to create subtext rather than going through the laborious process of unearthing it and bringing it to light.

Except just this once.

Tortillas

Found out today that there is one store in town that has 'em. The health food store. I guess only hippies eat tortillas.

The up side is I have decided fuck it, I am going to Big City and buy a bag of masa (and some chilis and nopales while I'm at it) and a tortilla press and I am going to learn to make my own goddamn tortillas.

Just as soon as the kitchen is done.

Open letter to the troglodytic motherfucker browsing the bargain DVD rack at the grocery store tonight

Listen up, jackass. I know that this is small town upper midwest, and that therefore it is incumbent upon me--especially as a woman and mother--to be "nice" and pleasant 24/7. I know that ladies are never ever supposed to raise their voices in public, and that moms are always supposed to be sweetness and light. I know also that it is your god-given right to browse for cheap DVDs without having your concentration interrupted, and I know that reading the titles of not-so-recent films and deciding on the relative merits of "Groundhog Day" vs. "Terminator 3" is definitely the kind of mental activity that requires your full attention.

I am aware that you have no way of knowing that I have spent the entire day installing kitchen cupboards, or that my otherwise beloved huband accidentally broke something that I am fond of and that will be difficult to replace, or that I have spent the last 45 minutes scouring this crappy-ass grocery store that's halfway across fucking town because it is supposed to be the best one here and even so it has neither goddamn corn tortillas nor fucking enchilada sauce, or that my kid has specially requested enchiladas for dinner and I have had to deal with his minor tantrum because his little whim can't be fulfilled, or that I have been chasing his hyperactive cooped-up-all-day little ass all over the goddamn megamart while growing increasingly incredulous at how difficult it is to find basic Mexican food in this crappy burg.

But if you ever have the gall to "shhhh!" me again for standing there with my arms full of groceries and yelling at my kid to "come on, already" when he is trying to climb the checkout counter, know this: it will be the last fucking sound you ever make.

I had a "me" day

I feel guilty today because I don't feel as guilty as I think I should over doing NO WORK today. Slept late, ended up talking all day to favorite sex chat person (not the same person as date sex chat person. If this goes on much longer I shall have to think of exciting pseudonyms for them, but I hope to avoid having to do that because, as "pseudonymous kid" demonstrates, exciting pseudonyms is not my strong suit). Consulted with Mr. B. over kitchen cupboard height. Went to grocery store with pseudonymous kid, swung by office to pick a couple things up to do over the weekend if I have some spare time. (Yes, I know, I swore not to work on the weekends and I am not going to make either Saturday or Sunday a "work day" but maybe if I have a spare half hour I might think about one of these things--oh who am I kidding, I brought them home only as a security blanket.)

I did get a very friendly email from Major Journal thanking me (!) for the speed with which I turned around the suggested editorial amendments. Yay me: I had sent the file back with changes in place accompanied by a very collegial email, so I have successfully managed to move the tone of correspondence into "friendly" land, which feels much better than formal "Dear Dr. Bitch, If you would be so kind" land. Further changes were suggested, two of which I really want to resist on the grounds that they bury strong claims. Major Journal wants the first sentence of the paper to be summarizing Theoretical Big Wig's key term, which everyone already knows, moving my first sentence--the claim that My Topic is a variation on Theoretical Big Wig's key term--to second place. This irks me, and it is something I would never recommend to a student: always put your claim first. Topic sentences, blah blah. Plus citing Authorities in the very first sentence just feels so very toadyish.

The other change I don't want is to amend an admittedly rather flip (but clever! I swear!) turn of phrase to a more passive construction that basically says exactly the same thing, but mushily. I hate mushiness in academic writing, there's far too much of it. Also, I am consciously emulating my advisor in making Bold Statements and then backing them up or modifying them--I love how he does that. But I don't want to be the Annoying Person Who Refuses to Have Her Priceless Prose edited, so I shall think on it over the weekend and then on Monday if it's still bothering me, write back and say, essentially, "'Scuse me, I don't want to be a pain in the ass but I would prefer to avoid passive voice and can we please retain my first sentence, which is deliberately blunt and provocative?" Although I suppose maybe the flip / mushy amendment might be the price one has to pay to be taken seriously until one becomes as famous as my advisor and can get away with anything. Sigh. But still, passive voice?!? Really??

I know how annoying authors can be; I've edited stuff for other people too. But I really do hate passive voice and buried claims like the plague.

Huh. Guess I did some work today after all. Thinking about this stuff counts as work, right?

Entitlement, part 2

Ok, I've reinstalled all the comments, sans email addys and links to folks' blogs because that was just way too much work and I would never have done it if I'd had to do that. I'm sure you can all parse that sentence.

Now, I would like to return to the entitlement question. The comments on that were really interesting, and I erased 'em mid-convo; the moment might have passed, in which case I'm sorry. But if not, and we want to pick it up again, we can do that now.

Profgrrrl suggested that I might articulate my entitlement on the blog: an excellent idea. Four things, I think, at the moment:

First, I have decided to spend my leftover start money: I've been hoarding it, wondering what people are "supposed" to spend it on. I've bought a few books and paid for some conference travel, but much of it is still sitting there. Also, since I'm thinking of looking for a new job, I've realized that the smart thing to do is to spend it on non-concrete things, things my university can't force me to give back if/when I leave. I feel slightly guilty about that--am I "ripping off" the university? But of course that's silly (I think). So my plan is to spend it on things like keeping my (excellent) research assistant on payroll once classes start (her summer salary came out of a separate grant); software (which I can simply install on my personal computer and therefore keep, even if I have to give it back); subscriptions to electronic resources; professional expenses like my internet bill; things of that nature. If anyone has clever ideas of other things I should spend someone else's money on, please let me know.

Second, I am going to ask the department to get some more shelves in my office, and a longer ethernet cable so I can laptop from my reading chair instead of being chained for my desk. In fact, I am going to find out if I can get a wireless router and take it off the research money.

Third, yesterday shortly after my freakout I ran into a colleague I really like (he of the "hooker boots" comment) in the hall and went into his office, closed the door, and said, "I've just been sobbing in my office." He laughed, listened, reassured me that it was going to be okay; we talked about some other stuff; when I left I told him to please call me sometime so we can have a drink, b/c "I really need a social life." So part of what I am deciding I am entitled to is to kinda be myself and not worry so damn much about putting up a good front. The work's gonna have to speak for itself, and frankly acting like the brain-on-a-stick is really stressing me out.

So yeah. Spending my own damn money on things I can take with me; asking for stuff I need for the office; deciding to be myself. I'm entitled to do those things. Right?

I hate you all

I had to do the darn pirate thing because all the cool kids were doing it.

My pirate name is "Captain Bess Flint." Which works for me--Elizabeth and all its derivitaves being among the best girls' names ever.

"Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!"

(I don't really hate anyone.)

Oh, and I did those last-minute edits and sent the article back today. And then got started on some other crap. Yay me!

Off the deep end

So yesterday I had a nervous breakdown in the afternoon, and then in the evening I did something completely insane. Wanna hear about it? You know you do.

1. I have this article coming out in the major journal for my field. I'm pretty pleased with myself. I sent the "final final final perfect double- and triple-checked every t crossed, every i dotted" version off just before I took off for summer vacation. Part of my big August plan is to get the next article off to the next journal, all ready for them to jet back at me with the ol' "revise and resubmit" and a list of specific things they want me to do (so much easier than trying to guess). I also have some other fairly big shit to do this month, plus, you know, that whole preparing my courses thing.

So yesterday I get an email from Major Journal saying, one, make a couple more minor changes (ugh, ok, I'll find time somehow); and two, this file you sent us? It has gaps in it. Notes to yourself, incomplete references, unfinished paragraphs. Would you please send us the correct file by the end of the week? Thanks.

And I just flipped the fuck out. What happened? I know I sent them a perfect draft. Omfg, did I forget to save the final changes after all those last-minute pre-vacation all-nighters? Jesus--let me check the file. So I open it, I print it out. And fuck! It does have huge gaps on it. I check the "last modified" date on the file. Yes, that's the day I mailed it. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. But I know I made those changes. . . . Oh. Shit. I know what I did. Fuck me. Yes, I moved the final file to the desktop in order to burn it to disk more easily, and oh my god, did I delete it? Because the most recent file I have in this folder really is so very obviously not a final draft. . . . Oh my god, I am going to have to rewrite this motherfucking essay by Friday. Oh my god. And Major Journal Editorial Staff now knows that I am a moron. I can't ever send them anything else again. I can't finish this article because classes start in a few weeks and I have this other major thing I have to do for my college by the 31st or I will lose my job. Oh my god. Oh my god, this is it. The gig's up, man.

All this while I am sobbing in my goddamn office. Quietly, of course, so no one hears me and finds out that I am a total fuckup. For about, I dunno, 15, 20 minutes.

Then I pulled my shit together and thought, no. I made those changes, I know I did. I spent that entire goddamn day going over that thing with a fine-tooth comb. I printed it out and read over the hard copy, it was good, I know it was done. (Not until much later did I realize that Major Journal also had a good hard copy, and they obviously were saying there was a discrepancy between hard copy and digital file.) Ok. Maybe I did delete that file, but I just can't believe I would do that, there is no way I would throw away even a draft, jesus, I still have drafts of every fucking digressive thought and half-baked initial attempt of everything I've ever written. Ok, it has to be here.

And of course, it was. I'd re-saved it with a filename that had a space in it, so it had moved down the queue. The one mistake I'd made was not labelling the final final draft in red, so that the almost-final draft, which had been in red since that was the one I was working on up 'til the last minute, looked like the final and I'd forgotten that I'd made a new copy before doing those last revisions.

So I printed it up. Yes, that looks right. And I asked Mr. B., please, to look over it and make sure that yes, this is final, no leftover notes "don't forget to check this reference," and so forth hanging around. I know there aren't, but now I am petrified, and I can't check it myself because I will have a heart attack. He is almost done. And yes, it's the final file. He found a missing period I'd left off the end of a sentence, that is all. I am saved from ignominy and shame and utter failure.

The moral of the story is, before you send someone a goddamn disk, open the fucking file and look at it one last time. DUH.

2. I made a date with someone I "met" on sex chat. To see a play. In nearby Big City. A week from Friday. An actual date. With dinner and everything. (I have Mr. B.'s blessing.)

Because, obviously, I am determined to prove that I am the most immature, fucked-up, idiotic person in the entire universe, the kind of person who doesn't do her job and then goes off and meets complete strangers (strangers who are 10 years younger than me, I might add) in public as if I were young and single and had nothing to hide and a normal life.

And am I supposed to fuck this guy? And do I want to? And my god. I haven't fucked but one person in a goddamn decade.

So yes. Clearly I am losing my fucking mind.

Technical difficulties

Trying to reinstall comments... HaloScan insists you keep 'em short.... Y'all say such intelligent things, at length, that I want to reinstall comments entire, and not discourage long comments from here on out.... In the meantime, am having to reinstall comments in sections, which makes reading them a pain, since they scroll backwards.... Suppose I could reverse the order, but I hate scrolling through old comments to get to new ones.... Must look into upgrading the HaloScan thingie so ppl can talk at length.... In meantime, will stop reinstalling comments, which is too bad as there was actually an interesting discussion going on around the "Entitlement" post....

Ugh. Please stand by for a day or so while I figure this darn thing out.

Hey, where did the comments go?

I've installed HaloScan, so all the comments went bye-bye. I'll reinstall 'em eventually. No, really I will. Stop laughing. As soon as I figure out how. . . .

Now content-free

No exciting new post today, I'm afraid: busy cleaning up my disgustingly disorganized office. Nothing to read here--you'll just have to stop futzing around on the intrawebthingy and get back to work.

Kidding! I kid. Who wants to get any work done? Try reading the new blogs I've added over on the side bar. Someday I might even get around to organizing them properly.

Entitlement

Mr. B. made a very insightful observation today. I was telling him about a conversation I'd had earlier with a friend, one of those "when will everyone find out I am really a huge fraud?" conversations, and then I switched to asking him to do something differently in our relationship--specifically, "maybe it would help me get stuff done if you would promise me, say, sexual favors or a massage when I finish my task"--and he pointed out that in my personal life, I have a very well-developed sense of what I am entitled to demand. Then he went on to point out that, when it comes to work, I don't, as much: I tend to worry about whether what I'm doing is okay, what I "should" be doing, whether other people approve of what I'm doing, whether or not I'm asking too much, etc. Then he said, "think about Senior Professor X," (who I like, admire, and wish I could emulate), "he feels completely entitled to everything he has professionally, and never hesitates to ask for what he wants. You should be more like that when it comes to work, just like you are in most other aspects of your life."

He's right. About work I second-guess myself; outside of work, I don't.

How does one go about developing a stronger sense of professional entitlement?

Gee, ya think?

Here's today's random "found on the internet" rant: Married Men Make More Money than Single Men (Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

Hm. Why could that possibly be. Hm. What a stumper.

The article says that one possibility could be that married men "have spouses who share responsibility for household chores and provide other sorts of support and assistance." Yes, yes. "Sharing responsibility" is what the vast majority of married women do. As opposed to "doing virtually all the housework, and don't give me any of that crap about how loading the dishwasher after dinner is way more housework than your father ever did."

Trust me on this one: as a woman whose husband currently doesn't work for money, you get way more done on the job when someone else puts food in front of you every night.

Gotta love the complacent way the article--which I notice is in the "business" section of the paper, under "personal finance"--ends by suggesting that men should all get married--"you may not be any happier, but at least you'll make more money than if you stay single." Yeah, yeah, just put a ring on that bitch's finger--she'll make your life miserable, but you'll make more money. And after all, it will be your money, singular, not your money, collective (so if you get sick of her nagging, you can just divorce her--yeah, you might have to give her some of "your" money, especially if you have kids, but probably you'll still make more than if you'd never married, which'll probably mean that even after you write the child-support checks to your grabby ex, you'll still be in line for a bigger raise) because any contribution she makes to your earning potential is, you know, not actual work or anything. Wives! They're a great investment in your career! Just ask the Vatican!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pick a fight with my husband to prove that I'm exactly the same as he is.

Interesting new (to me) blog

By that guy who does the awesome cartoons on the backs of business cards: gapingvoid. Check out the How to be Creative stuff. I especially like this bit from his entry, put the hours in:

"an hour or two on the train is very managable for me. The fact I have a job means I don't feel pressured to do something market-friendly. Instead, I get to do whatever the hell I want. I get to do it for my own satisfaction. And I think that makes the work more powerful in the long run. It also makes it easier to carry on with it in a calm fashion, day-in-day out, and not go crazy in insane creative bursts brought on by money worries.

The day job, which I really like, gives me something productive and interesting to do among fellow adults. It gets me out of the house in the day time. If I were a professional cartoonist I'd just be chained to a drawing table at home all day, scribbling out a living in silence, interrupted only by freqent trips to the coffee shop. No, thank you."

Yes. That's what I want. To find my job productive and interesting, something that gets me out of the house; not something that makes me feel like I need to engage on insane creative bursts in order to keep the job.

The question is whether I can adjust my head, so as to make the job I've got fill that role, or whether I need to adjust my job, so as to find something that freaks me out less. I kind of suspect the former, because I suspect the thing I want to do for my own satisfaction is learn about shit and teach it, which is what I end up doing in almost every aspect of my life, including the crazy online sex-chatting (which I am insanely, surprisingly good at, apparently, and am dying to write about). On the other hand, I sort of suspect the latter, because the stuff I want to fiddle about with, learn, and then teach, is often crazy shit like sex-chatting or parenting or the ways the web relates to my research, or whatever, rather than the stuff I am formally supposed to be interested in, job-wise. Which I am, but not to the exclusion of all the other stuff. Which actually brings me back to the former, doesn't it? Do the darn job, don't play the "this defines me" game, and go ahead and write about the other shit on the side, for fun. And stop feeling fucking guilty about it.

I think this whole blog is one long project in talking myself out of letting academia scare me.

Dick Cheney is losing his mind....

It would be fascinating and entertaining in a mean-spirited schadenfreude way, if I weren't still worried that these assholes might get reelected. A couple of jaw-dropping stories from today's Google news:

Republicans Sign Along the Dotted Line (Washington Post again: bugmenot.)

"people seeking tickets to the Cheney event who could not be identified as GOP partisans -- contributors or volunteers -- were told they could not receive tickets unless they signed an endorsement form saying "I, (full name) . . . do herby (sic) endorse George W. Bush for reelection of the United States." "

Gotta love the the snark of pointing out that the endorsement form is badly written. And "reelection of the U.S."? Huh?

Paper Reveals Bush-Cheney Organizer Asked Editor to Identify Staffer's Race (Editor and Publisher--are any major news organizations going to pick this up, I wonder?)

"President Bush's re-election campaign is under fire for insisting on learning the race of a photographer for a major daily newspaper assigned to cover Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday."

Apparently the editor's response was something along the lines of you have got to be shitting me, and the reporter "was later allowed to cover the event" (my emphasis). Again, how fucking stupid is this? Asking a newspaper editor to assist a political campaign in racial profiling a reporter?!? Good move, genius.

And an amusing follow up to my half-assed inchoate anti-Vatican rant yesterday, with an entertaining "no shit Sherlock" headline:

Women Criticize Vatican Document on Feminism (Reuters)

I just love this statement: "Such observations could only be made by men who have no significant relationships with women." Bwah!