I woke up early this morning but can't leave my room because the parrot is out of his cage and he'll attack me if I go near the kitchen.

Merry Christmas!

The dog won't play any more tennis ball goalie game with me which means I have to go back to constructing furniture for my mom's new house in San Diego.  I used to think that I'm very good at putting together this flatpack shiz (y'know following directions that require no reading knowledge, counting out my dowels beforehand, etc.) but I guess I've just been spoiled by IKEA.  I mean, my mom should be very thankful she's got a working drawer on her light cherry finish, craftsman-style three-shelf-plus-drawer unit thingy here.  It was looking pretty hairy for a while there between step 8 and 9.

Also, I hung up a picture today. [1]

I'm pleased as a peach to be back in Cali.  It finally stopped raining and warmed up here in SD.  Hopefully there rest of the week the weather will behave.  Christmas is going to be strange enough this year.  I don't particularly want to be trapped inside with the Crazies. [2]

Hungry now.  Ego wants some crackers!

Endnotes:

[1] This is kind of a special picture.  It is supposedly a signed print by Salvador Dali.  Now, it is signed by Dali but a lengthy federal investigation has apparently revealed that the print itself was of artwork that Dali had not created.  A little embarrassing for the estate, and the museum involved in the scheme, but whatever.  Surrealists... you can't live with them, and you can't cover their faces with bugs and expect them to care...  Anyway, when I was very little and Dali was still alive I wrote a letter to him thanking him for the fraudulent painting and included a picture of my own with butterflies on it I think.  My mom sent it to the Royal Hawaiian or whatever museum was in charge of his estate.  And they sent it to him!  And he wrote me back!  And he sent me a big, signed coffee table book of his paintings.  So that's neat.

[2] The Crazies are my mom's australian shepherds, Lance and Bo (whom I call Bobo the Chimp when outside my mom's earshot).  They race around the house, ricocheting off of everything.  And if I have any food they sit right next to me like bobble-head dolls and pant until I yell at them to go away.  And Lance's tail was docked incorrectly so its a few links too long.  This means that if he's wagging his tail near you it feels like somebody is scratching you with their index finger which makes me want to shriek.  Most dogs I like but these are neutral in my book.

About a year ago I swore Atlanta, GA was dead to me.

I would never again fly in and out of GTR (the Golden Triangle Regional airport - there is a euphemism here, I'm sure of it) through Atlanta International.  After being stuck there for nearly thirty-five hours I can, with some real legitimacy, assert that it is an evil place.  Especially Concourse C.  Lots of bad energy in Concourse C.

Anyway, here I am.  Stuck in GTR because our flight into Atlanta is delayed.  I have been told not to worry about making my connection from Atlanta to LA because that too has been delayed.  If I lived in Macon I'd be home by now.

GTR would a be a pleasant and peaceful place if there weren't three competing sound systems (two different muzak systems, one for the waiting area and one for the vending machine area 8 feet away, and Fox News being blasted from the one tv).  The seats are fairly comfortable.  There are only three flights out a day so its never particularly crowded.  And because there are never more than 40 passengers to speak to, a human being makes announcements instead of a loop of british-accented security reminders like in other airports.  And yet it is as if, out of some sort of deep-seated insecurity about being a backwater landing strip, they have to turn up the volume on everything.  Like its not an airport if there isn't a medium roar of ambient noise.

Also of note: what appears to be a trophy case for Century21 real estate associate Doris Hardy.  There's one for "Centurion Hall of Fame" and one for "'Top 50' in Mid-South Region" (I ask how many more than 50 real estate agents are there in the Mid-South Region?) and one for "Only MS office with Certified Integrity Selling Facilitator."  What the crap?  I'm intrigued.  I'm going to give this Doris Hardy a call.

Oooh!  oooh! TSA just opened up the security area!  This looks very promising.  Next stop, well stupid Atlanta, but THEN THEN the City of Angels.  As Daniel says "home to Titos, Applepan, and the team that will not be named (that is not named the Clippers)."  Victory and/or the basic service I paid good money for is nigh!

Smittens!

If, in the next four days, a Boeing 737 crashes through my roof, killing me while I brush my teeth in my ugly goldenrod-colored bathroom (dismaying yes, but I always knew I'd die surrounded by a terrible shade of yellow), don't chalk it up to chance.  It will be the direct result of one of the following (in case you choose to sue for emotional distress):

1. My neighbor has fabricated a holiday landing strip in his front yard.  So bright and so blinky.  Impressive in its ability to both drain the local power grid and misdirect planes.

2. God is smiting me for laughing while Sloane barked at the baby Jesus figurine in said neighbor's illuminated and inflated nativity scene.

First I'd like to say that I kicked a linguistics professor's ass at the ring-hook game at Dave's Dark Horse Tavern tonight.  There's a little hook on a wall and a ring at the end of a rope attached to the ceiling and, well, its the conservation laws lab all over again.  Release the bowling ball on the rope right in front of your nose and conservation of momentum dictates that it will never bash in your face.  Unless you're Mr. Robinson and your AP Physics class hates you and tries to tap the bowling ball a bit as it swings back down the aisle.  I mean, not that I ever did such things.  But I suppose I didn't stop the people that did.

But really meine Lieblings I want to tell you about the signs.  There are two signs in the greater Starktropolis area that make me laugh out loud every time I see them.

The first is a giant billboard mostly taken up by the word "Mississippi", except with the ss reversed so they make you do a dyslexic double-take I guess.  And then at the top it reads: "Our children can't read!" which in itself is already so pitiful and plaintive.  

THEN at the bottom it reads: "We are all losers!"

So comically sad!  I have half a mind to call the 800 number and console whoever answers by pointing out that California is 49th in the country for primary ed.  And its housing bubble burst.  And every year its wildfires drive everyone to the sea.  Rob Lowe's house was worth less than his mortgage AND it burned down.

(And I'll be there in a week.  I'm so excited I could cry.)

The other is actually two signs.  So you know the McDonald's just past the Hwy 12 entrance to Starkville?  Right where it crosses Spring Street?  Yeah, so they have a message up that reads: "FREE LATTES" (you read this and then immediately think, "What the fuck?  Am I in Carmel?").  

Then, you know the Strange Brew coffee place/gas station on the corner?  Well their little message board for their sign is basically right next to the McDonald's one.  And it reads: "IT'S A TRAP!"  I almost drove off the road.

Now every time you enter Starkville by this route you must shout "it's a trap!"

What the crap are "snow showers"?

Does that mean its supposed to snow tonight?

nutty.

Behold the mighty Gobbler, who by his invisible power and with his excellent wisdom made the world...

I browned him skin-side down in a pan and then simmered him in almond mole.  So tasty I almost cried.  Thankful are we for the miracle of the eucharist.

We've been feasting for three days now (sweet potatoes three different ways!  both dot and feather Indian versions!).  And I've allowed for an one-week exception to my ouevo-lacto-pescetarianism for two, I think, very good reasons:

1) Mr. Turk Turkleton is the centerpiece of my favorite holiday.

2) My main reasons for swearing off land-dwellers (both eating them and other activities too such as foot races and board games - I kick ass at Stratego when my opponent is a cephalopod) is environmental/political.  And our turkey here is from the university.  So he's local.  AND he was previously a research subject for the animal husbandry school.  So he's recycled.  Yes, he might taste a bit like growth hormone.

Also, since I've eaten meat for 25 years of my life I don't really feel a strong need to be inflexible now.  Dogmatism to the point of alienating people is for PETA.  Or Christina Firpo (Hi Christina!  I think you're pretty!).

From such discussions of dogmatism we can now segue into our daily Moneywatch 2008 coverage (we do this through in the continuing-to-promote-an-unregulated-free-market-capitalism-in-the-face-of-complete-global-economic-collapse-at-the-APEC-summit headlines).  I'd like to announce that, after 18 months of guilt and self-loathing, I have finally paid off the balance on my credit card.  No lack of consumer confidence here!  Don't you worry kids, I'll fix the economy.  Black Friday has arrived right on time.  Oooh, and look here!  Restoration Hardware has sent me a gift card for 20% off everything in their store!  Who wants vintage hobbycrafts for Christmas?  We will solve this financial crisis through our purchase of one luxury plush teddy bear at a time (eight designer colors!).  And then we will promise to save for real this time (if not U.S. Treasury bonds then gold bullion, in a sock, under the bed).

So I hope you are all having a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that, in the great American tradition, are consuming until your eyes roll back in your head.

I just sat across from a Pulitzer Prize winning historian while he ate the biggest steak I've ever seen.  I think it was fifteen inches in diameter.  Like a meat frisbee.  Or a manta ray.  I challenged him to eat it in twelve minutes or less but without the proper incentive (his meal was free either way I suppose) the challenge alone was not enough.  I guess nineteen year old boys do in fact grow up.  And win Pulitzer Prizes!

Totally unrelated, I was invited to beer tasting party over the weekend that was kind of amazing.  It was mostly faculty from the English department so the descriptions of the beer - we all had to read to the group our thoughts on the beer after each round - were, well they weren't simply "this beer was a little nutty, probably Newcastle."  No, no.  They were long-winded descriptions along the lines of: 

"This beer is the other woman.  Fun, interesting, exhilarating.  You forget about your drab home life and bitter marriage, your lame children.  And yet (sigh)... not worth it in the end."  

Or "This beer is not the student that doesn't do the reading or pay attention in class and yet shows up in the office hours on the last day of class to argue for a grade other than a B.  No, this beer  is the student that is equally lazy but doesn't grub for grades and you give an A- to out of spite."  

Or "If this beer were an actor it would be Bill Paxton.  If this beer were a noble gas it would be Argon." (this was my roomie's description of Stella Artois I think)

Hilarious.  Also way too much pressure to be clever.

Yesterday I was chased by a basset hound.

Tomorrow my brother is coming to visit!

Life just gets better and better.

Gave the Holocaust lecture in my modern German history class today.  Broke my heart a little.  The powers that be want me to teach a whole course on the Holocaust in the fall and, well, its going to be tough.  I told one of my colleagues that I'm going to need a hug every once in a while just to keep my morale up.  I had to get a new liner for my shower curtain today (because my brother is arriving on Friday!  And my current liner is grody with mold!) and, in an effort to cheer myself up, also bought a new curtain with a giant photograph of penguins.  And not those aloof - frigid? - celebrities of the species, the Emperors.  No, no, these are the happy-go-lucky Adelie penguins.  Cheerful little, Cuban-accented (according to the film Happy Feet), sidekicks of the Antarctic.  Nothing like a shiny vinyl impulse buy to make me feel  a little better about genocide.

I arrive in LA on the evening of December 10th!

Pick me up!

Pittsburgh gave me a rash.

Its super-itchy and splotchy.  Like howlie rot.  All around my neck and down my right arm.

Sucks.

Otherwise the conference in Pittsburgh was great!  I got to spend a lot of time with a very dear friend, my favorite jelly donut.  Got a big hug from mein Doktorvater.  Spoke with a couple university presses about promise rings/early contracts, and they seemed at least open to the idea which is enormously exciting.  The airport shuttle driver called me "small cheese" as in "alright small cheese, here we are at the Omni" (he then said he would pay to talk to me long distance about southern bbq - cute).  That's right.  I am small cheese.  But cheese nonetheless.

And can we get a subdued golf applause for Mississippi's showing in the election please?  The presidential race was much closer than expected (kind of close to a single digit spread) and really, most of  us raging liberals here were quite pleased that the state wasn't called for McCain at noon.  In fact, it was the last of the deep south to be called.  Babies scoot before they crawl before they step.

Another lesson learned on election night: don't drink things handed to you by Greig or Scott.  Especially if they involve gin.  Especially if you have to teach the Protestant Reformation first thing the next morning.  Even days later, while calmly sipping Iron City Beers mit meine Kollegen the ghostly scent of gin haunted me.  Oh the humanity.  I still hear the screaming.

Just finished voting for my man Barack!

Went pretty well.  The A-K line was only about 30 people long when I got there so we moved along quickly.  Other than the lack of signage indicating the location of the polling place on the main road (and this is really no surprise as this part of the county has a real aversion to street signs, I can go on and on about it, how it keeps people down, how it keeps people out, how it means all your directions include phrases like "where the old Southern Baptist church used to be" or "just past the dead oak" or "after the sidewalk disappears") and the lack of "I voted!" stickers (I won't lie, I was looking forward to cashing in on my free Starbucks coffee), it all ran smoothly.  I mean, they had those of us "ethnic" looking people out voting in an empty field, writing our choices down on post-it notes, but they promised they'd count them.  

No. No, that's not true.  

Musgrove for Senate!  

From awkward to troubling to kind of terrible, in that order

1. Got off on some tangent with my students about how I only use the first stall in the women's restroom on the second floor of Allen Hall because the others splash water all over you when you flush them.  I mean, I figured out right away.  Like.  Right after the first time it happened... I mean, its not like I'm still covered in my own filth.  I mean, yeah.

2. Trying to dance at a friend's Halloween party in my giant turkey costume.  Nothing makes you feel more like a seventh wheel than when the other six people dancing are couples and you're the only one not dressed like a human being.

3. Apparently our neighborhood is a trick-or-treating hotspot.  Like parents shuttle their kids in from the hinterlands for our diversity of candy options and short distances between doorsteps (or at least a favorable ratio of those two factors).  So we were slammed.  And often by kids that either didn't have the money or the time to put much into their costumes.  Which is fine, no fault of theirs.  But there's something really really disturbing about opening the front door to seven children staring at you rather desperately with their regular clothes on but their faces smeared with fake blood.

It may be the fever-pitch of the final days before the election manipulating my observations, but as far as I can tell, as I take the dog on her evening walks around the neighborhood, she only makes deposits on the lawns sporting McCain-Palin signs.  And its not always the same yard, so its not like she's remarking territory or whatever.  And there are other yard signs out - the hospital bond issue for one - but those lawns she leaves untouched.  Perhaps I am signaling her somehow with my dismayed sighs as we march by.  Or, as stated before, maybe I only notice when there is an antichrist sign, not when there's not.  If only there were a way to double-blind this.  Additionally, this behavioral trend presents an ethical dilemma for me as I am then truly torn about cleaning it up, her partisan poo.

Also, today it was so cold and blustery I had to wear a scarf!  A scarf!  Am I a wimp?  No.  You're a wimp.  Mississippi is a wimp.

Lastly, I'm taking suggestions on Halloween costumes.  Something that can be constructed for $8 or less with materials from either the Superwalmart, the Dollar Store, or the farmer's cooperative.  Is there a way I can somehow use hunter's camo and bulk flouride-free toothpaste to be "a paradigm shift"?

Hey!

It turns out I have a blog!

Sorry, lovable chickadees, for my absence.  One of my very favorite people was visiting for the last five days and I was, um, indisposed.

I just got an email from my old LA roommate - another one of my very favorite people - and she informed me that she just got an ice cream maker.  And that she made chocolate cinnamon ice cream the other night.  I have to admit this set me back a bit.  It was like finding out the guy you dated for years and years went and did something sweet for his new girlfriend,  something that he never did for you no matter how much you hinted about it (y'know, bringing you flowers or cookies or a debt forgiveness plan).  Like I wouldn't have loved to sit around in my pajamas watching Battlestar Galactica and eating homemade ice cream until it ran out my nose?  What has this fiancee of hers got that I haven't got?

Today I got the order form for the MSU Collegiate FFA holiday fruit and meat sale.  I don't usually eat meat but I may make an exception for the Smoked Cajun Turkey.  Proper Thanksgiving fare methinks.  Which means also that by Hui-house-smallest-traces-of-Chinese-cultural-tradition, the day after Thanksgiving will be followed by Smoked Cajun juk.  As my little bro says, we have to rep the Mississippi Chinese.  Yup.

Does anyone want 7 lbs. of Natchitoches Meat Pies?  Because I get a discount as a faculty member.  I'd also like to know what they are.  And if they're anything like frito chili pie, which I ate after a serving of fried pickles, before funnel cake, after already feeling ill from too much street fair food over the weekend.  blech.

My roommate reports that it was Tornado Awareness Day.  Hence the sirens at noon.

I was unaware.

I'm pleased that I promptly put away the pitchfork I was turning the compost heap with away in the garage rather than just standing there with it, listening to the sirens.  Just like I would if a real tornado came.  This is why we practice.

The civil defense sirens are sounding.  Which must mean one of the following:

1. A large tornado is right this instant bearing down on Oktibbeha County (that's right, we're the original OC).

2. air raid.

3. The dead have woken and are stumbling around downtown Starkville, marauding City Bagel and Erin's Salon.

4. The first shot has been fired.  We are for sure seceding this time.

5. The intern just started pressing buttons at random to see what would happen.

6. tsunami!

7. giant eagles!

8. The fire station just had its 1 millionth customer.

9. a bank run (the state pension fund collapsed?).

10. The chickens have turned on their keepers.  The poultry science school is under attack.

So, because there's something pitiful about spending the last minutes of one's life working on a lecture about the Gregorian Reforms of the Catholic Church, I think I'm going to go get myself a bowl of ice cream and goof off for a bit.  Maybe call my loved ones...

oh my god the Metropolitan Opera is restaging Dr. Atomic.

I wanted to see it in 2005.  I want to see it now.

It is history of science.  It is music.  It is John Adams.

There are like eighty-five different reasons that it is me.

Also, the recent wind storms have resulted in strange behavior by the local fauna.  As follows:

1. squirrels, as far as I can tell, wander out to the ends of the tree branches in order to be flung to their death in the middle of the road.  Or at least the road was littered with unsquashed squirrel bodies this week and I can't think of any other explanation (there's a why did the squirrel cross the road joke in here somewhere).

2. beetles wander into the house, flip onto their backs, and kick their legs in the air frantically (me! me! me! me!) until I right them and chase them back outside.

Beetles - 1

Mammals - 0

Tonight I go to a Trotsky cocktail party.  I have no idea what to expect.  There's just no way that mead and cabbage can be classy.

When you watch the debate alone, in rural Mississippi, nobody can hear you scream.

It's Existential Crisis Tuesday!

It probably isn't helping that its pouring rain.  And that I have the Tony Takitani soundtrack on repeat.  Then again, if I'm ever in a place in my life where Sakamoto's piano isn't deeply moving then I need to seriously take stock of where my moral center wandered off to.

As if I'm not all wound up in my head taking stock right now anyway.

I haven't written much these last few days because little has happened.  We're on fall break so I've been hunkered down in the house reading Cormac McCarthy novels (also not helping my increasingly Manichean worldview) and trying to get ahead on my lecture prep.  I journeyed to Alabama for some shopping on Saturday (yes, I need to cross state lines to buy the bras I want).  I guess I shouldn't be all that surprised that sizing varies regionally but it sure seems like vanity sizing is a little out of control here.  If I'm a size small in sweaters here then, well, where do people that are actually small buy clothes?  Gap Kids?  Tennessee?

Also I want to complain about the fact that I've managed to aggravate an old shoulder injury in such a way that it really hurts when I run.  AND too much yoga recently has made my hamstrings super tight.  I honestly can't walk like a normal person right now.  I kind of lurch around with my shoulder down like some character out of a Victor Hugo novel.

Good God, look at all this name dropping.  

I am quite the intellectual snob you know.  

I daintily litter the waters with little morsels of high culture

to hide the fact that I might be drowning.

I own only first editions of Goethe.

Am verbiage incarnate.

It's funny that

A comment like that

Was kinda made to,

I don't know,

You know...

Reporters.

* I highly recommend Hart Seely's article on Sarah Palin's poetry here.

Unicycle Watch 2008

Now they carry hockey sticks.

Sunday is Waffle Day!

I ate twenty-three...

Four days straight with no pants whatsoever!

Roomie is gone!  I have the ranch all to myself for fall break.

Finally, a reprieve from his watchful eye, ever scrutinizing, ever judging, ever eating canned soup.

I have all sorts of grand plans to organize my syllabi for next quarter, get ahead on lectures (none of this winging Nietzsche nonsense anymore), buy plane tickets to Pittsburgh, and finally catch that eNORmous spider that has been scurrying about the bedroom floor all week.  I pointed it out to the dog and she looked at it, looked at me, and walked out the door.  Worthless, that one.

The weather is now perfect.  75 degrees, no humidity.  I love it.  Perfect for long runs.  Earlier this week I was passing through this wooded section and looked over to see three deer and a fawn loping along side me, about twenty feet away.  And I think I saw a fox too.  Its a Mississippi wonderland.

Come visit!  You can try on all my roommate's clothes while he's gone.

What's up with the flying jerk?

We have a new resident.  A blue jay that likes to spend the early part of his mornings tap-tap-tapping seed pods against the gutter rail.  Its more than a little annoying.

In the great American spirit of introducing new species to address specific problems without contemplating the effect said introduction would have on the ecosystem as a whole, I'm thinking of tossing a badger up there in the gutter.  Or a python.  Or a baboon.

I just took the Grey's Anatomy personality quiz (which doctor at Seattle Grace Hospital are you?!) for which I feel dirty all over.

This self-loathing is compounded by the fact that I am, apparently, McSteamy. 

So we are, apparently, listening to the best of Queen tonight.

My roommate, Freddie Mercury, and I are spending a quiet Saturday night at home.  My mom was supposed to visit this weekend but she's been done in by a back injury so our Hui Girls Gone Wild tour has been cancelled.  Which is fine actually.  I need to catch up on sleep and grading and midterm-planning.  And Brian May.

So the bus tour certainly was a trip.  The most surreal/hilarious/inappropriate part was the intermittent narration by some little old man they found (and I mean old, he was drafted for WWII out of college so, what, in his nineties?  I was worried he was going to die on the trip.  Or at least fall over and break a hip) that used to teach in the vet school or I don't know what.  Anyway, he grew up in the Mississippi Delta region and had lots of things to say about that.  He'd start some story about the South during segregation and then trail off for thirty seconds or more and then start up with some unrelated story about cotton gins or war bonds or whatever.

"When I was growing up around here we had a bus that would come by our house and take us to the school which I guess was alright.  I would have to bring my lunch... (very long pause)  ...when I got back from the war I sent a box of valentine chocolates to that pretty girl I met down at the community college near Meridian and I guess that was alright with her 'cuz she said that I could see more of her... (very long pause) ...we didn't have tractors like these when I was comin' up..."  It was like having Grandpa Simpson as our tour guide.

Anyway, we visited Canton, Mississippi, site of the filming of such movies as Mississippi Burning and A Time to Kill and My Dog Skip.  It does have a very pretty little town square with a courthouse in the center.  And some beautiful antebellum homes.

"They say that the reason that Grant didn't burn Canton when he came through was because it had been built by freemasons.  Though I think also they say that the women of Canton we're very hospitable.  That they were very, you know, obliging..."

Stick with the freemason story, old man.  Apparently also, the women of Canton wouldn't allow Grant to take down the metal dome of the courthouse which, according to calculations, was too heavy for the support structures of the building.  And since then some other engineers have similarly recommended that the dome come down or be reinforced.  The nice lady from the Canton, Mississippi Welcome Center proudly explained that three times now they've been warned about the dome but in 175 years the roof as yet to cave in.  A big fuck you to meddling outsiders and their laws of mechanics and tensile strength.

Then we got a tour of the Nissan factory which was pretty awesome (they have all sorts of robots and mechanized soldering machines but the steel stamper was my favorite), though I did get a little sleepy (we had to be on the bus by 6:15) and almost fell off the tram.

"When I was comin' up we'd put all the corn in a wagon..."

And then there was the catfish processing plant in Tchula.  Now, I'd misunderstood and was really looking forward to this, thinking that we'd be out at the ponds tossing in food pellets to watch them frenzy.  But no.  We entered through the door of the kill floor.  They use these vacuum hose things to suck the entrails out of them.  And have these terribly dangerous looking band-saw-like de-skinners for ripping the flesh off the hands of sleepy workers (actually, they said they hadn't had a machine-related injury in 20 years).  And then there was the trimming area where the filets (pronounced fee-lay) are hand cut.

"I had a bucket once..."

I thought all of this was very interesting to see and not as gross as I'd expected (our bus parked next to an enormous bin where the guts vacuum deposited its winnings in gurgly plops and THAT was gross as was the fact that my pants dragged on the floor a bit so they absorbed quite a bit of dead catfish water).  But, as my roommate pointed out later, there was something deeply disturbing about rolling up in our fancy bus and  peering over the shoulder of these workers that had to stand, in plastic ponchos, in dead catfish water, trimming fee-lays all day.  And these are the ones that could afford the gas to get to work.  Many apparently can't.

"and the kudzu there, it could fill up a gully so you couldn't even see it...  you could fall in neck-high in kudzu...  and then you'd be stuck."

Then we went to a working farm.  Or valiant bus driver braved the dirt roads so we could see a combine harvester at work up close which was cool.  Like a safari.  There is a special place in my heart for big, industrial equipment like this.  Big cantankerous rhinos.  

And that's about it.  They took us to a very nice hotel in the middle of the very poor town of Greenwood (the first time I've seen an armed security guard since arriving in Mississippi), home of the Viking stove factory.  We had a wine and crudite mixer with local power-brokers.  I'm sure I impressed the city councilmembers with my dead catfish pants.  Also, the vice-provost was telling me about George Wallace and how he wasn't very tall and, pointing at me exclaimed, "short!  short like you!"

I am short like George Wallace.  Don't quite know what to make of that.

"and those black boys, we didn't mix much with them.  I found out they had to walk two or three miles to their school... so... I had a bucket once..."

Road Trip!

Today they are piling all of the new faculty into a bus and driving us out to the Mississippi River Delta for some sight-seeing, the Nissan plant among other things.  I'm way too excited, perhaps because I'm envisioning something like the bus trip my brother I took to Koh Chang years ago.  Its certainly possible that they will serve juice and fish crackers.  If they start playing Thai music videos I'll start shrieking with joy...

It arrived in the mail today

Dental News & Views

(vol. 16, issue 9)

Ask the Experts... We love your questions!

Question 1: Do I have to floss every tooth - even if there isn't one next to it?

I find it both funny, troubling, and sad that this is the first question (their answer was: It's your choice!).

Today the dog learned what a box turtle is.

Today I learned a delta blues turnaround to a B7 chord.  And I'm darned pleased with myself.

This weekend has been one big jam session.  Friday night was my Rock Band debut.  I can really channel The Clash on drums set to medium difficulty.  And THEN today one of the philosophy professors, who used to tour with some east coast indie band, came over for a piano-guitar-banjo playdate.  Turns out, comrades, that I am a rock god.

Step 1: Steal the underwear.

Step 2:

Step 3: Profit.

Unicycle Watch 2008

Robin has finally gotten the hang of it so the Dynamic Duo can tool around together now.  As they passed by our house just now they were having some sort of argument and one threw something at the other.  And then they kind of circled around each other shouting.  And then they were both off their cycles throwing - of all thing - small cartons of milk at each other.  

Some thought questions: Why do they have so many little milk cartons with them?  And if they need so many so badly why are they so quick to start hurling them in the middle of the street ("Don't you mess with me or I will totally lose my calcium on your ass.")?  Or is this part of the training for the single-wheeled dairy cavalry neighborhood watch?

So. weird.

So I had my heart broken last night.

Absolutely crushed.

Every single one of the three avocados I bought yesterday were slimy and grey on the inside.  

And smelled like old meat.

We had a quiet burial for them in the compost heap out back.  My roommate did a beautiful liturgical reading.

I have decided that Mississippi is one big bureaucracy graveyard.  It is where inefficiency uses the last of its meagre energy stores before grinding to a complete halt.  The sun-bleached carcasses of previous interfaces, databases, failed anti-poverty campaigns - creepy temples to failed institutions - litter the landscape.  This is where helpdesks come to die.

Recall that I was instructed at the ITS helpdesk to email them (at the helpdesk) about my need for an admin password in order to finish setting up my printer.  So I did that.  And I got an auto reply telling me what my service ticket number was.  Excellent.  We are moving forward.  Ten days have now passed so I thought I'd call the helpdesk (showing up there in person apparently has already been determined to be completely ineffective) to follow up.  The auto navigating thing has me enter my ticket number.  Done.  Hooray for progress.  Then we move on to ringing.  The guy that answers asks me for my ticket number.  Hm.  Lateral step?  A step back?  I explain to him what the issue is (apparently having my ticket number doesn't give him any access to whatever sort of service file or post-it note or vague memory of my email exists).  He says he'll email the person who is responsible for that ticket number about my problem and that she'd be contacting me soon about it.

Um.  So we're back at the beginning then?  Isn't that what I did ten days ago?  And wasn't this supposed to be taken care of six weeks ago when they were setting up this computer for me?  All I need is someone to walk out the ITS door, turn left, go up a flight of stairs, turn right, come into my office, and then enter the admin password.  The biggest frustration is that their sluggishness is keeping me from taking care of it myself AND its not like this is a problem that can just resolve itself when ignored long enough.  It is a rare, passing moment when I identify with Dagny Taggart.

Did anyone notice, by the way, that the contractors under criminal investigation for the botched demolition of the Deutsche Bank building in Manhattan was some shady group that renamed themselves the John Galt Corporation?  

I noticed today where they hide the shallots at Piggly Wiggly's.  Yes I bought shallots (they cost, by the way the same as four fresh catfish fillets, a reasonable $2.50).  I would have bought arugula too if they had it.  And white wine if they sold wine at all.  So there.

Off for a shallot and beer snack...

I am going to make a little sign, in Baskerville Semibold font, to hang next to the other sign giving my office hours and email address, that reads as follows:

No, the professor is not married.  But that does not mean it is appropriate to ask her out on a date, especially during office hours. 

What a strange day...

I was so sleep-deprived and jumpy from various preceding events that I actually screamed when a butterfly fluttered near my face on my way to fetch lunch.

It was bound to happen eventually.

I heard a Radiohead cover played on a banjo last night

and

I was wandering around a street music festival thingy down town last night with a couple of philosophy professors, deep in a tipsy conversation about Heidegger (of course I was tipsy - why else would I even attempt a Heidegger discussion with philosophers), when I was accosted by a small little blond girl waving around a plastic red cup and claiming to be one of my students.  I felt really bad that I didn't recognize her but then again, in a 200-person lecture, the faces all kind of blur.  I also didn't really know what to say.  Don't do drugs?  Quick, give me three social consequences of the Punic Wars that, in turn, contributed to the collapse of the Roman Republic?  

How do I convey coolness and authority in a way that doesn't seem too measured?  How do I become an enlightened despot without sacrificing authenticity?  

How did I not notice it before?

Like the tell-tale bump of a third trimester pregnancy...

Two things:

1. The scrolling sign at the Express Lube at just past the BP at the Montgomery-Highway 12 intersection informs us that "Tuesday is Ladies Day!"  I've blankly stared at this sign almost every day, waiting for the light to change, and only today did I realize that I don't know what this means.  Will I get a discount if I roll up for an oil change tomorrow?  I'm just positive that crumpets and lace doilies be involved.

2. There is a little drive up building, between the barber shop and the shaved ice/beignet wagon, before the old armory, again on Highway 12, that has a little keypad thingy that, wait for it... dispenses bulk ice!  I think this is just great.  Like an atm for ice!  I wonder if these are normal around here.  I find it amazing.  Like the automated key-maker at the hardware store.  I'm trying to think of a good use for 200 lbs of loose ice (only $15!).  Transporting a sea lion?  Finally perfecting my cold fusion device?  A four-day sangria bender?  I'd have to find bulk oranges.

Oklahoma's son, Will Rogers, once said:

"If dogs don't go to heaven, I want to go where they go."

Kind of makes me want to cry...

I honestly don't know how the week flew by so quickly.  Maybe the breathless Hurricane Gustav coverage?  Or my total inability to not watch all of season 3 of The Wire in one sitting?  Anyway, it turns out, if you're not paying attention, time passes.  Not such a profound observation, really.

I set up my voice mail on my work phone this week.

And I was chased by a dog on a run.  I've been chased by dogs once or twice before but they were, well, they weren't particularly fierce.  Mostly they thought it was a game and kind of jogged along with me, yapping their happy bark, wagging their happy tails.  This one though was on duty.  Like, I really needed to get out of there.  Granted, his little dachshund feet weren't going to get him anywhere fast but still, sharp, angry bark=deadly jogger assassin.

In a flurry of domestic I-don't-know-what, I erected a chicken-wire structure that can easily function as either a compost heap or a chicken igloo.  Then I went crazy trimming back our trees and shrubbery and tossed all the yard waste in.  Hedging shears are just about the most fun yard tool (the garden hose will never win because its such a pain to wind up, those aerating cramp-on shoe-thingies though... a close second).  I did some magnificent work with the hedges here.  Or at least up until I disturbed a wasp nest.  Mean fuckers.  Ruthless.  They're the like the Ancient Assyrians of the bug world.  I find obscure references like this funny because I know the tiniest little bit about Ancient Mesopotamia now/give college lectures on the subject.

I'm madly in love with my compost heap.  I may or may not mutter quotes from Macbeth when stirring it, my magic cauldron of organic waste.  My roommate pointed out that I was going to start gaining weight because I seem to be eating more just for the glee of adding rinds and stems and uneaten hummus to my heap.

Status of my battle with the printer: Ongoing.  I went to the ITS help desk to ask for the admin password necessary to load the software.  They told me there to email the ITS help desk and they'd get back to me.  This does not bode well for a quick and bloodless resolution.

Status of my battle with the university textbook store: A tenuous peace has been negotiated.  I unintentionally roped the Vice-Provost into the mess which I think gave my saber-rattling some legitimacy (it always helps to have NATO allies) but I think I may have shown my hand too early.  This will put me at a disadvantage in the anticipated flare-up when I need to order textbooks for next semester.

And NOW I am off to the first MSU home game.  Or, actually, the tailgating of the first MSU home game.  BrrreaaAAAAGH!

p.s. Diesel, I will be back in LA for a visit in December at the latest, but possibly earlier.  There are a lot of ins, a lot of outs, a lot of what-have-yous.

Unicycle Watch 2008

The latest update:

The tall skinny kid that wears jeans and the Indian Jones-like fedora is getting quite proficient.  He zips around at a pretty good clip now, even talks on his cell phone while negotiating left turns (though he does cut them a little tight).

Other kid with no distinguishing features whatsoever, well, he's clearly not keeping up with his unicycling exercises.  I see him walking his cycle around, head down, defeated by a single wheel.  Listen, son, if you can't execute your quirky affectation well then you need to just drop it.  If you're bad at being nerdy then you're simply a loser.

wow.  Just woke up from my post-teaching nap and realized that its already past 4 pm.  And there's nothing to eat here except dried beans, a jar of homemade pomegranate preserves, and an enormous bottle of corn syrup (neither of which are mine, but I want to ask the landlord now if he uses them together).  AND actually, with Gutav barreling down and the holiday weekend coming up, crap, I really need to just go to the store.  Come Tuesday half the town may very well be obliterated... and then...  THERE WILL BE NOONE TO SELL ME FOOD!

And guess what my feathered friends?  We have a surprise for you on the show today.  Our very own Matthew Eric Wise is coming to town this weekend!  Now I have a date for the Chiggerfest.  AND my own personal FEMA representative.  (Note: Matt does not actually work for FEMA but for the CDC on a very prestigious post-doc fellowship thingy.  And he probably doesn't do a whole lot in terms of disaster response (the obvious jab here is to point out that FEMA doesn't either but I feel like as a recent arrival to a Katrina-ravaged state that I should keep such jokes to myself, yes, I'm nesting parentheses again) but I've decided this is a new and fun way to tease him.  Next time you see Matt Wise everyone, be sure say something to him along the lines of "Hey, you work for FEMA right?  You're really good with sandbags?" or "Hey, do you know Michael Chertoff?  Do you think you could get him to sign a photo or something for me?")  Anyway, it will be really nice to see a familiar face around here.  I'm going to show him all the hot spots.  The fried alligator joint.  The Superwalmart.  Where the really big dog lives at the end of the cul-de-sac...

I just made the perfect soft-boiled egg!

This has been a significant personal goal for most of my adult life.  It's a much more delicate process than people realize.  You have to bring the water-egg combination to a boil slowly and then, once its boiling, coddle it (yes, in fact gently overprotect it - remove the pot from the heat and put the lid on) for approximately five minutes.  Cooking time varies from pot to pot and stove to stove.  Or at least this is what I've told myself.  It's likely that the real issue is that I've convinced myself that I can intuit the cooking time (this has been a life-quest after all, a spiritual journey of forgiveness and fortitude in which I learn that I am one with the universe, that I am the universe, that the universe is me) and am just easily distracted in the morning and end up boiling the poor little ovum for twelve minutes or more.  Anyway, today I did it (and have no idea how).  A moment of happiness in an otherwise mediocre week.

Oooh and the sun is back out!  At least until the next hurricane arrives in five days to once again obliterate the Gulf Coast.  Even the name Gustav sounds so much more menacing than Fay (Fay just reminds me of dopey Weimaraners).  My roommate explained to me the hurricane-naming protocol yesterday.  Did you know that they use only an 18-letter alphabet (this is how we got from Katrina to Rita in a matter of weeks)?  In most hurricane seasons this is enough but in, like, 2003 they ran out and had to dip into the Greek alphabet (does anyone remember Hurricane Iota?).  They now have the Hebrew alphabet ready to step up too if they ever make it through the Greek alphabet too which, with global warming and the imminent increase in major, hurricane-like weather, is increasingly possible.  Fascinating!  My roomie is a wealth of meteorological information!

Um.  Just had a frustrating/embarrassing moment.

I got my umbrella tangled in my hair.

Operator-person-lady: "Hello!  This is United Mileage Plus Customer Service!  How can I help you this morning?"

Me: "Hi.  Yeah, I just moved and would like to change my address with you guys."

Operator-person-lady: "Okay!  Well I'm happy to help you with that..."

Me: "okay."

Operator-person-lady: "Okay!  Let me see here...  um..."

Me: "..."

I'm not really sure what we're waiting for but I figure silence is the best strategy for me so as to not cause confusion with attempts at further clarification.

Operator-person-lady: "Okay!  Can you give me your new zip code first please?"

Me: "Sure.  It's 39759."

Operator-person-lady: "Okay!... so this is Mississippi?"

Me: "yes."

Operator-person-lady: "And your previous zip code was in California?"

Me: "yes."

At this point I'm a little irritated, partly because I'm not quite sure why this process is so cumbersome and also because I think I detect a tone of... incredulity?  judgment?  Turns out it's mostly just confusion.  Maybe imposing awkward silence isn't the best policy.

Operator-person-lady: "Um...  Okay!  Now could I have the town please?"

Me: "Uh.  Yeah.  It's Starkville, Mississippi."

I want to ask how the postal code doesn't already give her this information but her long pauses and sighs and the frantic clattering of the keyboard in the background suggest that this whole task is clearly on the verge of overwhelming her.  But then the fun part begins...

Operator-person-lady: "Sparkville?  Okay!  Now I-"

Me: "Wait.  Did you say Sparkville?  It's Starkville."

Operator-person-lady: "Yes, Sparkville."

Me: "So are you putting down Sparkville or not?  The town is Starkville."

Operator-person-lady: "...."

Me: "Um.  Starkville.  Like stark.  Like empty and devoid."

I'd like to point out that I'm sympathetic to the fact that some people have trouble hearing.  I, for one, have a diagnosed hearing problem and I have trouble understanding people all the time, especially here in "Staaahksviyull, Mih'sippi" where nobody bothers with consonants.  But!  But!  She's a telephone operator!  If nothing else she should be good at hearing.

Operator-person-lady: "Okay!..."

Me: "Kind of like stork?  The bird that delivers babies?"

Operator-person-lady: "Sporkville?"

My brain exits the conversation for a moment to ponder this.  Perhaps this operator is an outsourced worker in a faraway land and perhaps this cultural reference to storks delivering babies is lost on her which is fine.  No hard feelings.  But where, tell me, on this earth, are sporks used to deliver babies?

Me: "No.  Starkville with a T.  T like in telephone.  Not P like in purple.  T."

Operator-person-lady: "T like in Tom?"

Me: "...um.  sure.  like in Tom."

Or Telephone!

Operator-person-lady:  "So Starkville!  Okay!"

I want to stab my eyes out.

It turns out that it's not going to stop raining, like, ever.

Does anyone know how long a cubit is?  I feel like I should start a building project...

After my three hour nap yesterday (footnote 1) mon compagnon de chambre and I stopped by the College of Arts and Sciences happy hour.  The Vice-Dean of the College invited me to his Labor Day Chiggerfest party-thing.  I was instructed the bring my own life jacket and side dish (footnote 2).  And the Dean-Dean re-invited me to his football tailgate.  He also explained to me the alcohol rules for the MSU campus.  There is a common misconception that it is a dry campus.  It truth (footnote 3), it's a jumble of rules and regulations about what type of alcohol is allowed in various zones.  Hard liquor vs. beer.  I think there are little white zinfandel jurisdictions scattered about but nowhere you'd want to be - Aquaculture's nutritional science wing, for example.  Anyway,  it turns out that the A and S Dean's tailgate is technically in the hard liquor zone but between the Provost's dignified presence (apparently it's his favorite tailgate, though his wife is head of the organizational committee - there's an organizational committee!?) and payoffs to law enforcement, beer flows freely.  I'm getting pretty psyched about the first home game.

As the happy hour event began to wind down (my tab was $4!) a bunch of us junior faculty went to a new bar/restaurant for dinner.  I had my first catfish po'boy.  Decided for sure who my new best friend is going to be (footnote 4).  The very best part of the evening though was the over-21 wristbands they gave us.  I needed a philosophy professor to help me put mine on which was a little embarrassing.  Printed on it was the following:

Ross Kelley & Hosford Attorneys, PLLC

323-0844

Starkville, MS    Westpoint, MS    Tupelo, MS

Awesome.  

I think I'm magneting it to the refrigerator.  Roomie pointed out the only thing that would have topped this is if they listed a bailbondsman.

Okay, off to watch the Biden announcement!

Footnote 1: It sounds decadent, yes.  And certainly I will flaunt it as evidence of how academic life ain't half bad.  But it was entirely necessary given that I'd only had four hours of sleep the night before after being up super late prepping my Ancient Egypt lecture.  The lesson learned is that one can spend hours scouring the internet for the perfect image of a mummy (you want to see the shriveled body of course but not one that's too gross or has hair or fingernails as to be upsetting - 8 am is too early for 4,000 yr-old hair and fingernails) and the students will be just as unimpressed as if you had simply drawn one on the chalkboard.

Footnote 2: I'm envisioning an afternoon of swarming, biting, disease-vectors, near-drowning, and cold slaw.

Footnote 3: This is more of just a note to myself to remember to start more sentences this way.

Footnote 4: She's awesome.  We're taking our respective dogs for a hike tomorrow in the wildlife refuge tomorrow, weather permitting.  Tropical Storm Fay (or as my Mom calls it: Massive-Hurricane-that-is-headed-straight-for-you Fay) needs to take a time out.  Or make a right turn.  Alabama always gets all the breaks.

Things that are bigger in Mississippi:

Bugs

Parking spaces

Bathroom stalls

Toilet paper rolls

Turnips

Jack Russells

I'm trying to figure out the connection.

I wear big girl underpants

I've decided that those plastic children's toys/work stations designed for ages 1-5 -- y'know the really irritating ones where the kid puts a colored plastic block through a hole and/or presses some large illustrated button and/or turns a little crank and tinny music and delight ensue? -- are excellent training for setting up a HP C7280 All-in-One Printer, Scanner, Fax machine.  You go through all these steps pressing various beep-and-chirp-inducing buttons.  You actually load separate little brightly-colored ink cartridges in their matching brightly-colored docks.  Then, when the contraption refuses to do what you think it should (like, print shit) you throw a tantrum and march down the hall, hit a colleague, and steal his toy.

Tangelos!  

I love tangelos.  Second to persimmons they may be the perfect fruit (I also have some fond memories of mangosteens, the Jewish mangoes of SE Asia).  I was starting to feel like the only fruit I was buying was shipped here from California, not so local, not so sustainable.  So I checked out the local grape, the muscadine, that is coming into season here.  Strangest grape ever.  No wonder its used to make an unloved wine.  Thick, sour skin.  A squishy middle that kind of ejects itself out on your initial bite.  And then SO many big bitter seeds.  Its like a multi-step process to eat and, well, the ratio of work to happy fruit-ness is maybe one-to-one.

Hm.  Tangelos are superior.  Efficient.

I did my first Western Civ lecture today.  8 am.  The Neolithic Revolution.  Let me tell you those kids were dazzled.  I told them their first assignment was to work the date in which the wheel and/or plow was developed into a conversation at a party this weekend.  A couple diligently wrote that down so we'll see.  Spreading the knowledge.  It's not a job.  It's a calling.

Oh!  I also was asked today by one of the PhD students here to be on her dissertation committee!  I have my very own duckling already.  I'm so pleased.

Totally unrelated, tomorrow I may fling my printer off the roof of Allen Hall.

Oooh and maybe the muscadine grapes too since I'll, y'know, already be up there.  And, shoot, maybe this crappy remote here too.  I should make a list. 

And what the crap is going on with the Olympic coverage?  Why are they showing the gymnastics medalists showcase thingy?  Aren't there still actual events going on?  Oh.  Track and Field is up next.  Sweet.  Be honest, did you know that there was a country called St. Kitts and Nevis?

runrunrunrunrunrunrun.  Damn, the Jamaicans run fast.

Right now there is a flying ant with a stinger cruising around my bathroom.  This is the second one I've seen in two days in the house (Sloane had a mighty battle with one yesterday that, honestly, ended in a bit of a draw).  I hope they're not invading.  Also, if it has wings and a stinger is it still an ant?  

Doesn't that just make it a wasp?  

Or a helicopter?

I think the first day went pretty well.  There's not much to report.  I think one of my students is named Tucker, which seems quaint and cute somehow but maybe only because I think of Tucker Carlson as less than four feet tall and covered in mud that he slipped and fell in (and that makes Tucker Carlson quaint and cute in my book).  I got them to talk a bit, even interrupt each other, which I'm pleased about since the students here are rumored to be pretty quiet.  I would say my only unforced error was getting way too distracted by the biggest rubberband ever that I found on the little podium thingy.  It was huge!  Like maybe half inch think and could fit around my wrist maybe five times!  I wanted to stretch it around the podium or slingshot the whiteboard erasers into the hallway but I thought it would detract from our discussion of the very real dangers of the forest in the 18th-century German-speaking lands.  Not that this kept me from winding and unwinding it around my wrist the whole time.  Who doesn't love enormous rubberbands?  I should have just cancelled class.

The best part is my shiny new Hannah Montana lunch box

This is it!  My first day of school!

I spent the evening fussing over what to wear and ironing all the elements of at least five different ensembles.  Its times like these that make me miss the green sweater I lost in Berlin two years ago.  It was such a nice light wool-blend.  Fit just right.  Tight enough to look polished not so much as to look like a hussy.  I just know it would be the solution to all my wardrobe crises.  The sweater that got away.  I'm sure its covered with mud under the shrubbery somewhere between the Max Planck and the Kaiser's grocery store.  I hope it thinks of me from time to time too.

Oooh!  Oooh!  Also, my roommate is going to start up a board game night.  I'm pretty excited.  I like that his more extroverted nerd-dom is drawing out my shy, inner nerd.  Actually, who am I kidding?  Its not like its a big secret.  I guess I'm just excited to have found a kindred dork spirit.  At least until I've kicked his ass at Stratego.  Do they deny tenure for making a colleague cry?

Okay, off to throw chalk at the kids!

With my mind on my money and my money on my mind

So a while back my department chair sent me some announcement that Snoop would be playing at the local dive bar here last February or so.  Apparently some of his (D-to-the-O-to-the-double-G, not the chair's) family is local but I think the chair wanted to make me feel like Starkville, MS is on the map.  Which it is but only, you know, LANDSAT maps.  Or whatever.  Anyway, I replied to the chair's email with some comment about how Snoop and I go way back, referring to trick-or-treating at his house.  Now, in my head, I was thinking of how Pomona students used to try and approach his Claremont McMansion only to be stopped at the driveway by the security detail.  Also, he'd sometimes play pickup basketball on the court down near Wig Beach.  So, he was, like, around.  But I don't think I ever saw him from anything closer that afar.  This is why I will have a great career as a historian.  I exaggerate connections in an effort to inflate the importance of my commentary.

Well it turns out the chair, big gossip that he is (like, in every way, I think he's 8 feet tall), has spread the rumor that Cordozar Calvin Broadus Jr. and I basically grew up together in Long Beach, playing checkers, braiding each other's hair, etc.  And I heard this from a grad student, not from the chair or some other faculty member.  This is no controlled burn obediently stopping at the cleared-brush zone.  Its made the jump to the student population.  Wonderful.  I anticipated being treated like a bit of an exotic species here, being from the west coast and all, but really, this is not the LA I'm from.  And he has family here!  What if someone stops me in the ketchup aisle (yes, there is an entire aisle devoted to ketchup) at the Piggly Wiggly's and calls me out!

So now I feel like I need to do some damage control.  Maybe I'll request some time at the upcoming faculty meeting.  I thought I could do some neutralization work at the informal College of Arts and Sciences happy hour this evening but it didn't go down after all.  Bah.  Next week.

Yes, I generate new things to worry about out of thin air.

The other consequence of not getting trashed with the Deans tonight is that I now have a quiet evening ahead of me to take my newly-tuned piano out for a spin.  It took the blueberry farmer four hours to get the piano back up to snuff (yes, the blueberry farmer strikes again - he was the musician for the new faculty reception the other day too and is, in fact, the glue that holds Starkville together) though the last hour of it was basically a tutorial on playing blues piano.  Which was awesome.  He was showing me all sorts of different styles and which how to nail the blue notes and all that.  We might meet up in a few weeks to play a bit.

I'm SO excited.

Beware the Minotaur

There is a certain circle of Hell - after the river of Phlegethon, before shopping at Circuit City with Ellen Lin - in which a piano is forever being tuned.  The bending notes, the buzzing of interference beats, there's no escaping the onslaught.  It crossed my mind to hide in the bathtub under a blanket but I don't think I can get a very good wireless signal in there.  My dissertation begins with a quote by Murray Schafter: "We have no ear lids... We are condemned to listen."

Indeed.

After months of controlled testing, I have determined that, regardless of  which position I sleep in, my elbows will go numb some time in the night no matter what.

Also, I met a new faculty member of Poultry Science today.  

Finally, so many of my big questions can be answered.

It turns out I live in the tropics.

It is currently 85 degrees, muggy, and pouring rain.

But where are the toucans?

(then in my head I say: "who can?  two can!")

Marcialito, sweet boy, you need to brush up on your Folk-Indie Rock bonafides.

Sam Beam is the frontman for Iron and Wine.

He sings to me and me alone.  And maybe Christina but only because she is standing next to me.

So this is the second day in a row that I've noticed these two kids passing in front of my house, walking their unicycles.

hm. 

dorks.

A sign I saw today

Posted in the women's bathroom on the second floor of Allen Hall (my local bathroom):

BE COURTEOUS OF OTHERS!

If this bathroom needs a spray THEN SPRAY IT!

If you don't like the spray THEN DON'T TAKE IT! 

You didn't buy it.

USE ANOTHER BATHROOM!

Jeez.  I've clearly stumbled into the middle of  a mighty battle.

Spare the innocents!

We only want to pee in peace!

I'm pretty pleased with myself

I just ate six waffles!

breeaaw!

Fairly early in life I established that I was afraid of things flying at my head.  Not such a bad instinct if one lives in a war zone or near a volcano.  Probably means I should never have tried playing goalie in water polo.  Anyway, its too bad I spent my childhood living in fear because the tragic consequence is that I never got good a beach volleyball.  How awesome is beach volleyball?  I can watch all sorts of other Olympic events and be impressed by the athleticism and the human drama and whatever but there are few that I so badly want to jump up and do.  It just looks like so much fun.  Too bad I'd be terrified of the ball.

I'm spending way too much time watching the Olympics.  My roommate and I were discussing making a drinking game out of the coverage (drink when one of the three occurs: a) a sweeping generalization is made about the 1.4 billion people of China - "tonight is the night the people of China have all been waiting for... tonight the people of China stand tall..." (also racist?  yes, I just nested parentheses) b) a bit of not so subtle subtext about China being very disciplined and/or dangerous both gymnastically and geopolitically c) Bob Costas refers to some Taoist wisdom or quotes Confucius, seemingly off-the-cuff) which has made even the filler chatter interesting.  And the commercials!  Aren't we glad that Morgan Freeman is going to be okay?  VISA would have had to really scramble.  AND!  AND!  AT&T used my very favorite song by The Decemberists!  Ex-citing!  Why would I ever leave this house and its really big television?

Actually, I think I'm going for a run soon, before the sky opens up and really pours.

If you see my brother be sure to ask him about the nice little Saturday he spent with Baron Davis.

If you see Sam Bean as him why he doesn't return my phone calls.

mmm, so I think we should all just agree right now that Sam Bean is the sexiest man to ever wear a sweater vest.

okay, okay, time to catch up

I think I've said it before but I will say it again.  Eric the First Year is quite the scold.  Also, not as bendy as he claims.

But we should move on.

I have arrived in Mississippi.  

It's country.  Like, country.

Here is the end of my street:

Here is  the dog in front of our porch swing:

I was trying to get her to actually sit on the swing and puff on a corn cob pipe but she wasn't having it.  She has recently discovered the joys and frustrations of hunting frogs (she can't smell them so she has to rely on her just okay eyesight) and spends most of her days strategizing, drawing parabolas of hop-trajectories, calculating cross-breeze sheers, etc .  Apparently she can't be bothered with photo ops.

As you probably can't tell from the photo, we live in a very pleasant neighborhood.  I think its mostly MSU faculty here.  Most of the neighbors have introduced themselves and everyone is incredibly friendly.  The Southern Hospitality thing is no joke.  EVERYBODY waves and says hello.  And the department faculty have all been checking in on me regularly, as promised.  I've run into people I know while shopping at the Piggly Wiggly's (they have a Piggly Wiggly's here! Just like in the movies!).  It's all very quaint.  I like it.

I'm trying to keep a running list of ways in which rural Mississippi is like Los Angeles.  Thus far I have the following:

1. The mornings - like, before 9 am - are the very best parts of the day. 70 degrees, sunny, a slight breeze, everything moist from the dew but not yet humid/smoggy.

2. People drive crazy.  It doesn't help here that the stop signs are faded and the street paint has been completely rubbed off.

3. Lawn-obsession.  There are some beautiful lawns here.  It helps that there is plenty of rain but people also devote a lot of time to lawn care (MSU actually has a Turf Department that is separate from Groundskeeping).  When my Dad and I were returning our rented dolly to the local hardware store we spent some time looking over the tractor mower selection.  I have to say, the Husqvarnas are superior to the John Deeres all around.  For one thing they come with roll bars, which seems to me to be a pretty basic safety feature.  And they have seven different settings for blade length.  They are also bright orange.  I wish our lawn were bigger.

4. Holier-than-thou attitudes.  Sort of.  I saw a vanity plate on a Pontiac GT yesterday that read: GODS GT

In other news, the piano was safely extracted from the truck.  It was both terrifying and amazing.  I fully expected to witness (from my safe perch guiding the piano out of the truck to the open arms below) the death of the blueberry farmer, my father, and the future of the MSU history graduate program.  I'm hoping the grad students eventually need rec letters from me (though they do US history so its unlikely they'll ever ask me) so that I can praise both their piano-pressing abilities and their nuanced understanding of current historiographical trends.

I keep expecting something to come out of someone's mouth that I find stunningly offensive, but it hasn't happened yet.  Not even close.  The other day the black woman helping me sort out my textbook orders at the university bookstore scolded me for not knowing my course number by cheerfully saying she was going to whip me but that wasn't so much offensive as baffling.  As I understand it most locals here are either direct descendants of slaves or slave-owners.  I had no idea how to respond to that.

Okay, I think that's all for now.  I'm going to go make a sandwich and read up on the Olympics and/or war in the Caucuses and/or Bernie Mac.  

Sweet, sweet broadband.

Sing to me my darling.

Did you think I'd been pinned under the piano for the last week?

I have arrived in Mississippi, land of sparse and well-protected wireless.  I'll write more in a bit after I get through this backlog of emails.  For your amusement, a picture I took this morning:

Look!  This enormous bug has found a quarter!

I've never been so happy to see a Chili's.

Shawnee, Oklahoma is tops.  Green and lush.  Fewer biting things.  More to eat than the meagre pickings of a truck-stop Subway Sandwiches.  As a non-voting member of Cherokee Nation, I'd like to say that I for one think we should all be pleased that the Trail of Tears didn't end in Tucumcari, New Mexico.  Much better selection of chain restaurants in the Sooner State.

Tomorrow is the big day!  If I weren't so stiff from folded up in a Honda Civic for three days or so sleepy from my chocolate-lava-ice-cream extravaganza, I'd be breathless with excitement.

Ego is tired of eating in diners.

This road trip would go a lot faster if the dog could learn how to use a funnel.

New Mexico is okay.

Also - and I realize this is an Angeleno thing to say - what is the deal with all the biting bug-mosquito-chigger-biting-biting things?  The problem is all this wild, open space.  In Los Angeles, where every last blade of grass has been properly tucked under a layer of solid concrete there are no bugs.  Correlation or causation?

Ego wants a grilled cheese sandwich!

piano moving, lowering really

So the blueberry farmer and I are confirmed.  This friday, he, his nephew if he's out of rehab in time, my Dad, and two large grad students that I've managed to bribe with a case of beer, will be shoving my piano off the back of the trailer.  Supposedly a ramp will be included with the trailer but I've been promised such things before (note to Zack at Pack & Ride Shipping: I will be blaming my crushed spine on you and your baseless reassurances about the ramp).  Death by piano, here we come.

In other news my grubby little civic is filled to the brim with $3.99 gas and four new quarts of oil.  Also, copies of Mach and Kulke's 1870s correspondence, chocolate chip cookies (thanks again Sarah and Robert and Eleanor!), and a pit bull.  My Dad should be arriving momentarily and then we're off to Flagstaff, AZ.  Whee.  Its nice to finally be on my way after all these months of half-assed planning.

It hasn't totally hit me yet that I'm leaving the westside of the universe forever.  I got a little weepy leaving LA last week but I'm guessing its going to slam me harder in the next few days.  sad.  sad.

and so it begins...

Hello chickens,

Today I'm hanging out at Ellen's resort/apartment while she's away at work.  So far I've spent three hours in front of her enormous television and eaten all of her cereal.  Later I may go for a swim.  

In an effort to not feel like a completely useless lump I decided to look into piano movers for the unloading part of my move.  Apparently there is only one step to get into my new house but the bed of the moving truck is about chest high so there's no way to get a piano off without either a ramp (which according to the moving company is not available because it was impounded in Vegas - yes, sketchy, what kind of trouble can a ramp get into?) or a lift.  So I thought I'd look into local piano/furniture movers to get the piano and maybe a few other large items off the truck.  The LA version of this cost about $150 for maybe twenty minutes of work but, well, I can't lift 600 lbs like the old days.  My Mom suggested calling the MSU music department for recommendations which is as good a place to start as any I suppose.

So I called the music department with my rambling request.  The secretary was very nice and helpful and asked about Los Angeles and my move and said I should stop by the department next month.  And her accent was so deliciously charming.  She gave me the name and number of someone that does tuning and repair and would know of movers if he couldn't do it himself.  Called.  Listened to the following message (imagine a deep southern drawl):

"Hi.  You've reached Reese Blueberry Farms.  It's blueberry season!  Fresh and sweet, order your blueberries today.  Please leave a message and we'll return your call as soon as possible.  Have a blueberry day."

huh.

Do you think he works on pianos on the side?  I suppose if he's running a farm he has some sort of truck with a lift?  I tried to leave a message but the machine reported that its memory was full and hung up on me.  I guess I'll try back later.  I find this hilarious.

like herding cats

With a few exceptions I have now decided that early twenty-something frisbee-playing college boys are completely irresponsible and absolutely infuriating. I'm thinking of imposing some sort of moratorium. Certainly one should not commit to a 1600-mile ride-share with them. I nearly left one behind in Seattle this last weekend. It didn't occur to him to call any of us (he didn't have his own phone so we couldn't get ahold of him) until 4 hours after our planned departure time. Nor did it occur to either of them to sleep the night before the big drive. Stupid. Boys.

Other than the drive though Potlatch was awesome. The weather was perfect. My team was perfect. I have a mini-crush on Bones all over again.

And now I'm back in Los Angeles for one last taste of Socal. T minus fifteen days...

Who gets so drunk that they throw their chair across the lawn at a wedding?
tacky AND cliche.

Wedding!

An extravaganza of paper-mache turtledoves, I'm sure.

I've spent the last two weeks loading my moving truck, battling a spider infestation and other odd jobs around my Mom's house in Davis, and bouncing from couch to couch in the last week.  On Tuesday I forgot to brush my teeth.  And now I need to pull myself together for a wedding?  I should find some nail polish.  I have no idea how to be pretty anymore.

I'm in Concord at my Dad's house right now, surrounded by wild fires.  Pony finally has a nice big yard to, it turns out, get completely muddy in.  I had to interrupt my breakfast to wrestle her and the hose in my pajamas.  Fun.  My cereal tasted like dirt after that.

Some highlights from the last few weeks:

1. Moroccan food in San Luis Obisbo.

2. Driving the 101 from LA to SF.  Never thought I'd describe a freeway as pleasant.

3. Left my cell phone on the kitchen counter in my apartment after calling my landlord to tell him I was leaving my apartment keys on the kitchen counter and locking the door behind me and then doing that.

4. How many California missions have you been to?  Have you been to Soledad?  San Juan Batista?  'Cuz I have.

5. Turns out many people in Little Tokyo like to talk to you about their dogs.  Kind of unexpected.  Ellen pointed out that these were people that were on the streets of Little Tokyo in the middle of the day, as if that made them shiftless.  Was she saying I was shiftless for wandering the streets with my dog in the middle of the day?  Maybe all these people were just recent PhDs.

6. The take-home message of the Doctoral Hooding ceremony is that PhDs don't know how to write their names phonetically for the announcer-person.

7. I have now read most of the Julia Child French cooking bible.

8. I did not know that $50 of gas could fit in my car.

9. I'm giving Hemmingway one last chance.  If The Garden of Eden doesn't do it.  I'm giving up.

10. My old roomie Ting is engaged!  I'm a terrible person for not calling her with my good wishes but as explained above, my phone was being held hostage by 1280 Barry Ave.  Today, today.

12. Eleanor Starks Cardena is very cute.  She did have a gurgly poop while I was holding her though, so I think our friendship is still in neutral.

13. My trailer has made it to the storage terminal in Alabama!  The floodwaters were crossed without incident.  Now I only need to worry about it being pilfered or exploding into flames.  At least insurance covers that.  Oh, and hurricanes which are not covered by insurance.  Nor are packs of marauding alligators, though I don't know what they'd want with all my history of science books.

14. wasabi-peas!

And Now We are Seven

Yesterday was my brother's 23rd birthday.

He is the very best person I know.

I know.  Its been so long.

I was frantically busy with graduation and moving out (the stories cometh).  

Now I am relocated in Davis for a few days, relaxing in the stupid hot.  Tonight I'm going to a Monarch's game with my Mom.  Kevin who?  We're all about the WNBA in this house.  My mom laid out a purple t-shirt for me to wear first thing this morning. 

Also, I found a spider in my bed yesterday.  A spider!

Okay, off to shower.

My dishwasher is making a strange squirting sound.

Is this normal?  I never use the stupid thing.  

My dried bean/grain/sea salt storage jars are going to be so shiny clean for their spankin' new Home Depot box!

I want to do a guerrilla garden with the last of my balcony plants.

Does anyone want to join me?  If its to be done before I move out it will need to be in the next few days which may not be enough time to find the appropriately neglected bit of dirt and coordinate an under-the-cover-of-darkness planting.  I'm going to scout places tomorrow on my run.  Alternatively, I suppose I could leave my scraggly succulents and lime tree and thyme and curry plant with someone until I return.  Anyway, let me know if you're interested.  This article has gotten me fired up. Get fired up!

Fun at Home Depot!

I absolutely love Home Depot.

I love the way it smells.  I love its ridiculously high shelves.  I love looking at the paint samples, and perennials, and cordless drills.

I stopped by on Thursday after lunch with my bro.  Its a good thing I'm moving or I would have spent way too much money.  So many handy things!

The other fun thing about going to the hardware store alone as a girl is that it makes for interesting sociological study.  Back in 1999 when I was doing a lot of sculpture, I got a lot of helpful advice on hose clamps from a guy named Vincent that as far as I could tell was not an employee.  When I worked at the Smithsonian field station in the backwoods of Maryland I was ignored by cashier until I ran back to my F250 truck to get my wallet.  Amusing, this strange world of contracters and plumbers, among whom I am so alien.  Anyway, this last week as I was leaving and showing my receipt to the guy so he could check and make sure I wasn't stealing washers or whatever, he asked what my astrological sign was.  Hahahaha.  Hilarious.

AND I am now the proud owner of 20 collapsable cardboard boxes, plastic sheeting, and a handsome roll of bubblewrap.  I built all my boxes and made a giant tower/mountain thing and it really took all the self-control I had to not take a running leap into them.  Seriously.  I stood in the middle of the room weighing the pros and cons for five minutes.  Decided I'd wait for the flip side.  Had to pack them quickly before I changed my mind.  Right this second Sloane is actually rolling on the bubblewrap though.  I'm not going to be laughing when all my wine glasses show up in Mississippi broken, I'm thinking.

I'm so deliciously happy with life right now.  I sleep.  I sit in the sun.  I have all these crisp new boxes and pens in which to organize and pack my life.  Mmmm.

A life limited to twist-off tops...

my roommate apparently took the bottle-opener with her when she moved the last of her belongings out last weekend.

She left a Dell power cable though.  Shows where her priorities are...

Thought of another one

As I sat stuck behind the #5 Big Blue Bus today watching the light go from green to yellow to red while some passenger stood in the doorway not getting on the bus until some lengthy discussion with the driver resolved, I realized something.  I have never seen all the Big Blue Bus lines.  There are at least fourteen lines yes (though perhaps not a #13)?  And I have seen the #1, #2, #3, today the #5, the #8, #12, and #14.  So there are four lines out there I've never seen.  Where is this #9 they speak of?  Anyway, a before-leaving-LA project.

Also, holy jesus I have a lot of whiskey in my apartment right now.

Willkommen!

The email dialogue with my soon-to-be-department-chair that followed my turning down my faculty housing offer in order to live with another new hire in the house of a faculty member that is going on leave all next year.  Yes, I turned down my own place but really, $650 for two-bedrooms seems so steep compared to sharing a three-bedroom place with a proper yard for $325.  Yes, yes, its crazy cheep rent.  But I think that's because there are marauding packs of alligators that wander the streets at all hours picking off household pets and young faculty.  I mean, I've heard.  Alligators and tornados.  And crushing poverty.  Anyway, the exchange:

THE CHAIR: Glad you made that choice Alix.  I was and am looking forward to seeing the true story of how two strangers picked to live in a house... work together and have their lives taped... to find out what happens when people stop being polite... and start getting real.

me: Hah.  That's exactly how I was thinking about it.  Now at least this Matt fellow HAS to be nice to me.

THE CHAIR: If you think the cameras will make Matt be nice to you you're obviously not an avid devotee of the show...

Ah, hilarious.  How awesome is my department chair?  He has a little white poodle named Hailie Jade after Eminem's daughter.

Also awesome?  That this Matt fellow is like Scrabble champion of the world or something.  He'll wander into the kitchen for a snack or something and I can point at him and shout: "Quick!  Five letter word ending in C with a triple word score in play on the third space!"

Fun!

Furtherly awesome?  Obama's speech tonight.  I got a little misty at the end.

And lastly awesome, mostly in a BEHOLD THE AWESOME POWER OF THE REPRODUCTION IMPERATIVE! kind of way:  There is a stack of 11 newborn diapers sitting on my desk here.  They're weirding me out a little bit (though I have been brainstorming fun craft projects for which they can be used - attach some cord and you've got a nice hanging plant basket, stick to together and stuff them and you have a cute little throw pillow...).  No, they are not for me or the dog or some cephalopod gestating in my belly.  They are on route to be delivered to Sarah and Robert from Matt and Ligaya (their baby, Malaya, ambitious squirt that she is has already moved on to infant).  Speaking of ambitious squirts, unless the horror show is going down right this instant, I believe that baby Eleanor had 29 minutes left to make her date with the cold, hard world.

I am done.

I filed on Thursday.

(definitely forgot to bring the large envelopes with my title page and abstract stapled to the outside that not included in any of the filing instructions.  the mean lady scolded me for not knowing about the secret envelopes and then said it didn't matter since she had a lot of leftover ones.  fun.)

You must now all address me as Dr. Alix or Dr. Knowledge or Professor Cupcake.

I have, since the deed, done in no particular order, the following:

Drank.

Had a conversation with the produce guy at Pavillions in which he tried to convince me to become an elementary school principal.

Caught up with some friends on the phone (poor Kate, hopefully she's not still stuck at BWI)

Journeyed to San Gabriel.

Been hit with waves of panic that Thursday was all a dream and I have now missed the filing deadline.

Felt the faint stirrings of post-partum depression.

Made phone calls about shipping pianos (had a nice chat with a guy named Vince).

Passed out in a gutter.  Maybe.  That part is hazy.

Slept so much that my eyes now itch.

[segue here out of list format]

Which, well, its been two days now of itchy eyes and its starting to really bother me.  What could it be?  I think I'm going blind.  In fact, I'm sure of it.  Sloane will be the worst guide dog ever.  She doesn't look before crossing the street and mostly just guns for open garbage cans.

My roommate came back this last week to move the last of her stuff out.  So now I have the complete run of a two bed/two bath apartment.  I'm thinking of setting up a giant Candyland board.

Oooh!  Oooh!  So now that I can think beyond my dissertation filing I can think about leaving LA.  I'm moving out of this apartment in two weeks (eep!) and out to Mississippi (I learned this weekend from Dr. Ron that locals refer to it as "The 'sip") at the end of July.  Soooo, I need to do all the touristy LA things I've managed to miss out on in the eleven years (Jebus) that I've lived here.  So I'm taking suggestions.  Here's what I've got so far:

1. SoCal taco tour

2. make-out with celebrity under 45

3. I guess the Getty Villa, LACMA, etc. 

4. San Gorgonio/Mt. Baldy

5. Working up the nerve to tell off that mean librarian in Biomed.  Seriously, I want her spirit-broken and crying.

Should I be alarmed that my fingers are turning blue? Should I drink more water?

Tomorrow I file so this is it!  The final push to finish my dissertation, frantically, miserably...

Guns n' Roses makes it a little better.

Softly, softly catch a monkey

I could catch a monkey.

Me: Dude.  Pone.  You're getting a bath as soon as the sun comes out.  You stink.  I can smell you from all the way over here.

Sloane: hm?  What was that?

Me: Bath.  You stink.

Sloane: Yeah, not so much.  I'd rather just lie here with my head on your pillow eating jelly beans while you write you slave over your dissertation revisions.

Me: Seriously.  As soon as the sun is out the balcony for you to dry in you're going in the tub.

Sloane: Do you want the green ones?  I don't like them.  They're too sour.  I've licked them all but I'll just set them in a sticky pile here on your pillow.

Me:  I'm just warning you so you can mentally prepare for your bath...  Come here so I can take your collar off you now.

Sloane:  Whatever.  Hey, are you done with the computer?  I want to update something on my Facebook page.

Those no-good neighborhood kids, racing up and down the street in their helicopters...

This old woman can't get a moment's peace.

There is a dramatic rooftop rescue unfolding outside.  Or the delivery of a water tank to the roof of one of the apartment highrises across the way.  For the most part I like helicopters.  I class them with cranes and sea-planes as mechanical marvels that I will stop and stare at, mouth agape, from time to time.  But this particular helicopter has been hovering at the Barrington-Wilshire intersection for a good forty minutes.  The whup-whup sounds are reflecting off the other big buildings and its becoming a bit annoying.  I can't imagine what is so important that they're paying someone to hang out over a residential area at 9 am on the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend.  I'm half-inclined to walk over and check it out.  Do you think its just a larger version of that arcade game where you try and operate the giant claw to pick up toys from bin?  Do you think there's an enormous stuffed rabbit lying in the middle of Wilshire, all lavender and eyes begging for you to be the cute little girl to take it home?

And what is the deal with this weather?  Its actually getting darker as the day goes on.  Its May in Los Angeles!  I don't live at the southern tip of Argentina for many reasons, but one of them is the weather.

Yes I am spending the evening in, revising as always.  But I wouldn't have it any other way.  Who cares about Hugo Riemann's psychophysical studies of undertones as a basis for his theory of harmonic dualism?  

I, apparently, do.

oooh!  oooh!  My advisor signed off on my dissertation!  This is huge.  I already had two others, but - as Matt kindly pointed out when I was pleased with myself about getting those - they were the low-hanging fruit.  Mein Doktorvater, however, is the big fish.  And the discerning fish.  He did not get so large by recklessly rushing into open waters, or gobbling up every pudgy worm that may or may not be attached to a hook...  I've lost track of where I was going with this.

Can you tell I'm getting hungry?  Time to go reheat the quinoa for dinner.

I collected my regalia today!

I feel a whole lot closer to the end now.  Sloane and I paraded around the apartment in the full get-up pretending to be wizards.  The velvet feels so soft.  And the lining isn't going to chafe on my naked skin...

The very best part though is the hat.  Here's a picture of me in it (behold!  I am figuring out how to import images!).  I am eating a turnip.