Truffled Eggs and Other Little Luxuries

Have you ever eaten a truffled egg?

A truffled egg is rich, creamy, salty and aromatic. It's impossible to accurately describe the smell and taste of truffles, but they're sort of earthy and other worldly at the same time, like decomposing leaves if decomposing leaves had a more pleasant aroma--fetid, encompassing. Truffles smell woodsy, too, but not in a typical cedar, pine, evergreen way. More like dark, dangerous woods woodsy; truffles are culinary sorcery.

Sometimes, when T-money is out for the evening, I cook truffled eggs and sauteed veggies for supper. Tonight I sauteed diced potato, red bell pepper, and petit pois with garlic, olive oil, and herbs de provance, and ate them alongside a truffled French omelet, satiny smooth on the outside and custardy inside. I sat on the couch and relished each rich bite.

The best part about this treat is that it's an affordable luxury. I've been using the real stuff because my friend Erin gave it to us as a wedding present, but Trader Joe's makes a decent faux truffle oil that has almost the same fug and flavor as real truffles. It's also healthy! Eggs are a great source of protein and iron, and everyone should eat more veggies. Adding truffle oil gives a boring supper bang and glamor. It feels good at the end of a long work day to treat your nose, tongue and stomach to something special. Perhaps especially now, when so much of the news is dour.

This blog post is a call for indulging in little luxuries (I can think of at least two close friends shrieking at my hypocrisy right now, but I am being serious). If you're anything like me, you spend a lot of time working and more than a little worrying about spending money. And it's important to work hard and to save money. But, it is also important to enjoy life. And that is why you should indulge in red lipstick and body scrubs, long walks, really good coffee with cream, warm pajamas, lazy time with your sweetie, netflix, and truffled eggs. I've been adding baking my own bread, fantasy novels, blogging, and crocheting to the list, but little luxuries are flexible--just do the things that make you very happy.

Tonight, having savored my omelet, I am going to give myself a pedicure and watch a movie starring Viggo Mortenson. Tomorrow I have a rehearsal, grocery shopping and laundry to do, thank-you notes to write, and dramaturgical research to do, and Monday I must write my spring syllabus, but tonight is greedy, selfish pleasure time.

Snow Angels

It's snowing!

The first, and possibly only, snowfall of the year is blanketing our pretty city. The roads are icy, the wind is vicious, and people are in the kind of festive mood usually reserved for Christmas morning and the first sunny day after our long, rainy winters. I made a delicious breakfast strata with sage pork sausage, cheddar, the bread crusts from my bridal tea, eggs, and milk, which we ate on the couch watching Survivor. I walked to the wine store to buy a birthday gift for my dad, and the snow and cold made the barrel-filled shop feel all the more rich and inviting. I bought myself a vanilla latte (an unusual luxury) and a coffee for the homeless guy selling newspapers outside the coffee shop. The cat's been alternating playing the snow and snuggling in our laps, and T-money's playing WOW. And now I'm home baking whole wheat bread and wondering how on earth we're going to traverse the steep hill to my parents' house in our not-4 wheel drive vehicles.

I should definitely be cleaning out my closet, which is a disaster, but it's so much nicer to be spending my one day off a week sitting on the couch, blogging and reading the dumb and yet incredibly alluring fantasy series T's got me hooked on. I've also been daydreaming about my cousin's wedding, because she called me this morning to tell me she's engaged, and I'm so happy for her! I get to be the matron of honor! (How weird is that: matron of honor? I should have a enormous bosom and shrill, commanding voice. Time to get out the breast cake again.) It's especially nice, because she made my wedding so wonderful, and now I get to reciprocate. I also get to write an equivalently mortifying wedding speech, but enough of that because K is the only person who reads my blog on a regular basis, and I don't want her getting any ideas.

So...it's nice to be snug in the apartment on a wickedly cold and happy day with my adorable husband, who "erroneously" claims to be wasting away. ("Erroneous" is his addition to this blog post. He loves the word, and uses it incorrectly as often as possible.) Soon we'll venture out into the cold, but for now we'll sit content, cozy and still.

10 Minutes for Mumbai

1o minutes is not sufficient time to think and write about the attacks in Mumbai this week, but it's all I have this morning and it will have to do. I just read an interesting op-ed in the NYT about the "sin city" status of Mumbai in the South Asian world: because Mumbai is the economic and entertainment center of India, and so many wealthy Indians and westerners flock there for business and pleasure. Muslim and Hindu radicals have long targeted the city for its transgressions, replacing, as the op-ed writer suggests, the bloodless quest for lucre with the bloody public slaying of the irreligious.

I think it's a good time to remind ourselves that the quest for lucre is not bloodless. It's just that all of us who live well, and want to live better, don't have to see the humanitarian consequences--collateral?--of our consumption and dreams. The fact that the modern Western concept of success is built upon an Indian graveyard of third world labor and environmental pollution is not a justification for violence. But it is irrefutable, and it may lend some insight into the motivations of the Mumbai terrorists.

I know that it is possible that these men, like other terrorists, are just unhinged religious fanatics who want to impose their idea of God onto everyone else. But that is too easy an answer, and it allows us no culpability and no possibility for discussion, self-criticism, diplomacy, or societal revision. Religious fanatics exist, but I think that they are primarily charismatic individuals who manage to attract mass followings because those following are feeling unfulfilled. Maybe because they're poor and disenfranchised members of the global community; maybe because they see through the Western dream Shangri-La to the heaps of garbage pushed into the corners and out of sight. Maybe because they are that garbage.

So what can we do? Because this killing, it is so wrong.

Correction: Wao-za

The Watcher reference in Brief Wondrous is an allusion to The Fantastic Four, not Buffy the Vampire Slayer. For those of you who, like me, never read superhero comics, The Watchers are a cosmic race with total knowledge of coming events (especially catastrophes caused by evil doers). They can also manipulate the time-space continuum and molecules, change physical characteristics, project energy, and create high tech gadgets. The catch is that the Watchers do not allow themselves to share their foreknowledge with other races, as doing so once lent to the destruction of an entire race. Despite the Watcher-wide prohibition on warnings, the Fantastic Four have a Watcher who lets them know when Galactus, et al are planning world demolition.

Okay. So armed with that knowledge, we have to do some serious thinking about the role of the narrator in Brief Wondrous. Is he implicating himself in Oscar's death because he failed to pay sufficient attention to threats, failed to understand what Oscar was planning? Or, is he (Yunior? Diaz?) making a broader statement about the impotency or ridiculousness of the whole Watcher fantasy; no warning is going to overrule Oscar's all-consuming need for requited love.
Or poonanny.

And that's where the book gets troublesome.

Wao-za

Now deeply entrenched in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. Making me miss graduate seminars and the assignments where one student would have to prepare a brief presentation and several discussion questions for the text of the day (I know, how dorky). I just have so many questions, and I'm afraid of alienating my fledgling book group.

First--and obvious, okay--who is the primary narrator? I have a hunch that this will be revealed in a body-slam conclusion and I'm willing to wait for it (I've never been one to purposefully anticipate plot twists, and I dislike the pleasure other readers take in getting all Dupin on a text), but I'm getting a little tired of all of the "Watcher" nonsense. I get the allegory--well, actually, that might be another question.

So far the novel cleaves most tightly to the Lord of the Rings, but there's Star Trek, Buffy, and some video game, D&D, and genre fiction references I'm too mainstream to fully appreciate. The narrator positions himself as the Giles to the de Leons' collective Slayer, but these aren't redemptive characters. And their troubles, for all their primacy and focus in the novel, are just a part of the ebb and flow of the loud, poor Dominican communities that dominate the upper, upper westside and I guess parts of New Jersey. It's not that what happens to the de Leons isn't epic, but that a lot of poor bastards from third world countries who come to live in the slums of the U.S. live lives of just such immense proportion and little importance. Is it fuku, as Lola asks, or just life? Life is fuku; life in the diaspora and life in the motherland. Life in one's body. So maybe the Buffy relation is accurate: the de Leons live on a shifting Hell Mouth and need all of the ferocity and violence of a vamp killer to maintain, if not seguridad, then simply being.

Okay: another two questions. Why the footnotes and much more interestingly, why the Dominican Spanish, which alienates the non-Dominican reader from the text, building a barrier, preventing full disclosure of the lives and events of the characters? It's a prose simulation of the invisible storm-proof windows between cultures. I read Spanish and have trouble deciphering the slangy verbs and unusual syntax of Diaz's characters. The narrative feels foreign, like the trip to Guatemala where T and I wandered around, talked with indigenous Guatemalans and Antigua Guatemalans, ate rice and beans, climbed a volcano through thickets of coffee plants, and at the same time seemed to occupy a second country, where we got the tastes, smells, feel of Guatemala, but nothing of its essence. That's how I feel reading this book. Like I can see Beli's luscious and immense t&a, but I don't get their beauty.
I feel so white.

And finally, though this question may be a function of where I am in the text and so unnecessary, where the hell is Oscar? For an eponymous antihero he takes up a fractional portion of the narrative.

I like Junot Diaz, and I like this novel. The sentimentality I was worried about, coming from the cuteness (which loses its toothache sweetness in the shadow of the twin terrors of Trujillo and self-hatred), is not present. This is not a walk through the post 9/11 city with Foer's Oscar and his "heavy boots." This is not a self-satisfying rumination on love or even ruin. Through devices that could grate--dialect, abruptly shifting perspectives, nonstop nerd allusions--Diaz manages to create a cultural universe of playas (not the beaches, the Romeos), sunburn-mean Dominican mamas, Catholic viejas, gangsters and dictators, longing and anger and dreams that (I suspect) is real. And really, really sad.

What I'm Reading

Reading Peace Like a River, and starting The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I like the first novel, find the narrative engaging and funny, the writing surprisingly accurate given that the main character is an 11-year old boy (so often authors instill way too much maturity--intellectual and emotional--into theoretically prepubescent narrators--Leif Enger narrowly misses this mistake by writing a retrospective text). The only element I really dislike is the messianic, mid-western wholesomeness of the plot; the biblical allusions are self-conscious at least, which implies a level of authorial honesty, but the miracles and joyousness in the Lord can be hard to stomach.

I'm only five pages into the latter novel, but I can already tell that the narrative voice(s) are contrived. Not inauthentic--Junot Diaz is a Dominican American writing from a Dominican perspective--but maybe too cutesy and too reliant on a text-specific dialect to make ideological points. I'm desperately hoping that it doesn't go the way of Jonathan Safran-Foer's work, which is also well-written, clever, and so painstakingly constructed that no accurate human characterization or emotional truths emerge from his fiction. I'm going to have to tread carefully in the Diaz waters to make sure that I'm not seduced by the humor and manipulated by the already emerging language game into believing the text to be far more profound, and better written, than it is. This is sometimes my problem with Safran-Foer.

Trying to finish In Defense of Food, which is interesting, but not for 300 pages. Maybe because I already know to eat whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and have no objection to butter over margarine. Speaking of which, I'm hungry.

Uh, what else? Just finished The Twentieth Wife, which is definitely a romance novel but about Moghul India, so I justify it as educational literature with a lot of juice. I'm trying to convince myself that the same rule applies to Phillippa Gregory's Henry VIII novels, but it's considerably more embarrassing to be caught with one of those. Somehow the corsets and lurid sex scenes strip Gregory's stories of intellectual value.

On the list for future reading is Flannery O'Conner (finally) and 18th and 19th century gothic literature. They seem like a good pairing: Catholic lit. with lit. that demonizes Catholics. And in such delicious, morbid, insidious ways.

Whole Grain Politics

Two things I need to mention right away, because I don't have time this morning for witty prose and digressive introductions.

One, I had the most disappointing discussion with my students last night about food. I could not for the life of me interest them in a conversation about the ethical implications of how we source our food, or get them to follow me into thought about how what we eat both causes and is a symptom of other national and global instability. This is the first time I have ever taught this unit to a disinterested classroom and it was frustrating. I finally said to them, "So basically, the world could crumble because we're misusing resources, and we're all too lazy or selfish to do anything about it." And they replied--oh my breaking heart!--that they would care when something catastrophic occurred.

And two, I read this in the paper this morning, courtesy of a Republican party member:

"The most important question for Republicans in both the House and the Senate — and for the future Republican chairman — is how forcefully to take on Mr. Obama once he becomes president. Richard N. Bond, a former Republican chairman, said he thought the Congressional Republicans would — and should — take on Mr. Obama aggressively. Mr. Bond suggested that Republicans should not be deterred by the enthusiasm inspired by Mr. Obama’s election, which he argued would be transitory.“When people wake up from their Bush hangovers, six months from now,” Mr. Bond said, “it is my belief that they are not going to be buying into some of the things that Obama will potentially be doing. You have a real potential for these guys making a fundamental misjudgment of this election. They just didn’t want George Bush anymore" (Nagourney, NYT).

Maybe instead of plotting their next move to further destroy the sanctity of democratic government and our economic system (I'm not sure Henry Paulson really needs any help destroying the economy), they should figure out how to work with the new president to ensure an increasingly stable infrastructure and foreign policy. Our country is broken and it needs to be fixed, not fought over.

Maybe they're waiting for "catastrophe," too.

Proud to be an American

I'm used to belittling that phrase, "proud to be an American." For a long time now, patriotism has been co-opted by country music and the Republican Party. And the redefinition of "patriot" to mean card-carrying member of the NRA, pro-lifer, evangelical Christian, conservative, middle class, war mongerer, borderline xenophobe has exempted me from even wanting to participate in the American collective. In fact, most of the educated people I know are cynical bastards for whom faith in the democratic process is a sign of idiocy.

So it is with trepidation, shyness, and not a small degree of social fear that I say tonight that I am proud to be an American.

Tonight we elected Barack Obama to the presidency. And while I know that this election is only the tip of the iceberg and that it will take years to correct our economy, our global standing, and the national infrastructure, I have never before felt so hopeful about a leader. Not only did Americans finally manage to elect someone intelligent to the position, but he's the first black president of the United States. And while I resented McCain's emphasis on Obama's race in his concession speech, which stripped Obama and his campaign of any significance and accomplishment beyond being historic, the fact that he's black really is incredible.

Listening to President Obama's acceptance speech tonight was the first time that I agreed, "yes we can." It was the first time in a long time that I thought, the democratic ideals of justice and liberty are still accessible to us; we can begin to make up for the last eight years of greed and corruption and cruelty; we have the power to mend education, health care and environmental policy--we just have to roll up our sleeves and do it.

Tonight I feel like action is possible.
My sleeves are ready.
Let's go.

3/4 Crowns and other notes from Banalia

A few minutes to post on my blog and then bedtime.

Trying to gear up for another week in Book Hell. I called around to different tutoring centers today and no one is hiring (yea recession!). Then I went to the dentist, where I was confronted with a $1500 estimate for the work that needs to be done on my old fillings. Did you know that silver fillings are 70% mercury? Jesus. So of course they have to come out and be replaced by porcelain crowns or some such, for about $450 a pop. Hey, isn't each tooth worth a month's rent?

Life is so absurd. The day was marginally saved from being utterly dismal by the amazingly delicious butternut squash and Parmesan gratin I made for lunch, and by my students' spirited discussion of the rhetorical gaffs and triumphs of the third presidential debate. Oh, and Kate sent me a birthday present that I really like. It's a seasonal cookbook with all sorts of recipes for cheap, local produce. And then, the kitty is especially cuddly today and it's always pleasant to have a warm, soft purring machine parked next to you on the couch. So in retrospect, aside from being depressed about my career and lack of considerable capital, it was a good day.

I'm a bit too tired for sharp political commentary tonight; hence, the diary-like aspect of tonight's post. I'm sorry, dear readers. Sometimes it feels good to write things down even when they are globally insignificant.

Seeing Red

And no, I don't mean elephant red. I mean cartoon character red, with steam shooting out of my ears in angry huffs. I'm feeling very frustrated today and have no outlet for this excess of bookstore-driven rage.

In general, I'm very content. I love my husband, second job, theatre stuff, and new hobby of baking bread each week. I've been talking with E and B and the serious readers' book club looks like an eventuality. I think everyone will bring fascinatingly different books to the table, which should lead to great discussions and a lot of new knowledge. I've also been invited to join a book club of ladies I really don't know, other than having met a woman, Kate, at a dinner party. I don't know that I'll like it, but it's nice to at least have the possibility of making new friends. Plus, it's almost my birthday and while I don't have anything planned, I did take next Saturday off from work just to give myself a whole weekend at home. I have to grade papers next weekend, but whatever. When am I not grading papers?

It's just that whenever I think about the bookstore--and I have to for 5 days each week--I feel so disappointed and depressed. There is good reason for these emotions. For example, I spent yesterday opening cartons of books, arranging the books on a table in numerical piles according to the last digit of the isbn #, taking large piles of these books to carts labeled with the same number, and then carrying duplicate titles to stacks on pallets, also labeled with corresponding number values. While I engaged in this stimulating exercise I got to listen to a coworker justify my below-standard wages and make passive-aggressive statements and facial expressions about my job competence. There was nothing wrong with my book piling technique, and as far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with any of my job competencies, but Jonathan felt compelled to insult me all day anyway. Sometimes--yesterday would be one of those times--I feel less like I have a job and more like I live in the circle of hell that Dante's editor excised from The Inferno because it was so boring. I would also compare the toxic social atmosphere to the jail scenes from Invitation to a Beheading, but unfortunately I can't disappear my colleagues by wishing them gone.

I was poised to quit the other day, but I worry about finding a new job in this economy. I've also been thinking a lot about getting a teaching certificate so that I can work as a public secondary school teacher--or at least be more competitive in the private and charter school sectors--but the idea of going back to school for a third graduate degree is appalling. Besides, where would the money come from?

I do feel myself dying inside with each day I work at the bookstore, and I don't mean that in a melodramatic way. It's just hard to spend 8 hours each day being treated like an idiot and doing mundane tasks when one is not an idiot and is capable of more. The longer you spend being treated like an idiot, the harder it is to remember that one is not dumb. I worry that I will slowly devolve into Lorie, the older woman at work who seems to communicate through monosyllabic nonsense: when you accidentally cross her path in the warehouse, she goes, "beep, beep!"
I work in The Inferno as re-conceived by Richard Scarry.

I know that feeling sorry for myself is pointless, and that action is the only cure for unhappiness like mine. I have to motivate.

I might start by writing a series of essays about the banality of the warehouse.
I might apply for the language arts teacher position and the corporate writing job I saw advertised on craigslist.
I might live off my savings for a while, while I try to write and tutor under the table.
I might fly into a rage at my fat boss one day and quit after enumerating his managerial flaws.
I might do all these things.

Except that last one. Wouldn't want to hurt his feelings.

Like Coffee but Seedier

I have a presidential election news addiction. When I'm not working, doing chores, or socializing, I'm on the computer reading about the election. The New York Times and Salon.com are my primary dealers, but I'm not above occasional rendezvous with Yahoo News or YouTube. Sitting with the latest political tidbit has become a comforting habit, like drinking coffee first thing in the morning. I feel wrapped in the world, with the political junkie's pleasing, brainy high. McCain's missteps? Bring 'em on! Obama's elitism? Let's talk! Palin's platforms? Hellooo, mama.

But when, 10 minutes ago, I found myself reading about Palin's expensive wardrobe as though this were her primary flaw as a vice presidential candidate, I had to pause. How much information is too much, and too little at the same time? I think it's funny that the RNC purchased designer pumps for the princess of plumbers, but it's also totally unsurprising and irrelevant. Of course she's wearing expensive clothing. She's a well-off politician who needs to look good right now in front of the camera. Besides, there's no honesty to her "'I'm a real American Joe!" act, anyway. Unless the average American shoots wolves from planes, has her pastor protect her from witchcraft, and absorbs foreign policy experience from geographical pseudo-proximity, Sarah Palin escapes any normative definition of "American." And since her support base is comprised of men who think she's hot (see "Among Rock-Ribbed Fans of Palin, Dudes Rule"), why not dress the part? Her whole bid defies reason; why should what Palin wears make any more sense than the rest of her campaign?

Fluff articles like the one on Palin's clothing only do two things: they provide catharsis for nervous Democrats who fear McCain's come-back potential on Election Day, and they distract readers from real news. Tomorrow morning Republicans will be crying foul about Democratic smears on Palin's pantsuits, and Democrats will be pointing to her outfits as further evidence of Republican dishonesty and the McCain campaign's horrific managerial style. When, of course, none of this matters. Everyone who knows that McCain and Palin are hypocrites will continue to know so, and everyone who disagrees will continue to support Rush Limbaugh's favorite hockey mom. At this point in the this surreal election I wouldn't blink if Palin wandered onstage naked to the soaring chords of "Free Bird" and McCain declared the event a great moment in American feminism.

Point being, why am I reading this nonsense when I should be in bed?

I'll think about that tomorrow. In the mean time, console yourself with this thought: If she does become our VP, at least she'll look good on those lunch dates with Carla Bruni.

Gratification! Or: Why I Sometimes Love Americans

Read Bill Kristol's column in the New York Times today. And then read the readers' comments. With the exception of one commentator, everyone inspired to write in (I was, too, but so many people felt compelled to respond that the paper closed the forum) blew apart the logical fallacies inherent in Kristol's dichotomy of the "elite" and the "vulgus," or common man. According to Kristol--apparently representative of the everyman, with his PhD, White House positions in two Republican administrations, own political magazine, and contributor status with FOX News and Special Report with Brit Hume--Joe the "I can't seem to pay my taxes or find my license" Plumber is a savvy analyst of the current fiscal crisis and war in Iraq, and Sarah Palin's lowest common denominator populism is actually exemplary of the democratic process. You see, because "vulgus" means people, and a democracy is a government run by the people! So to be vulgar is to be democratic and to be elitist is to pave the way to totalitarianism. I mean, duh.

Thank you, Bill Kristol, for illuminating the democratic process.

What Bill Kristol is forgetting, and this exposes his own elitist assumptions about the masses, is that there are "elitists" in blue collar jobs in America. There are people with good educations and analytical talent working as teachers, bus drivers, janitors, retail clerks, construction workers and stay at home parents. I know, because I am one of those elitists. We make shit for pay and we work two or three jobs for health insurance and we know that buying a home and having a decent retirement account will be very difficult. Demographically, Americans like myself are allocated to the domain of the vulgus. And the vulgus likes the vulgar politics of the Republican party.

Except, and this is what made the reader comments so heartening, many Americans are insulted and repulsed by Kristol's wiggly act of redefinition. There is a keen difference between rule by the people and in the people's interest and mob rule. Mob rule allows the people to dictate policy according to prejudice and whim. Mob rule is a terrifying and magnificently effective political strategy because it is devoid of critical insight. Mob rule vulgarly asserts that there is a clear answer, usually in the form of a person or persons, to complex problems like the housing bubble and terrorism, and some Americans like clear answers because they don't like to think. Kristol is banking on this constituency to back his claims about the true nature of the U.S. government.

But luckily for us there are at least two major problems with Kristol's assumptions. One, the people who would support (or wouldn't notice) his rhetorical slight of hand probably aren't reading his column. And two, those of us who are, Republican and Democrat, probably don't like being referred to as vulgar, or associated with the xenophobia, multicultural ignorance, anger, falsehood and ineptitude that has characterized the Bush administration, the McCain-Palin campaign, and the far right that continues to support the formers' failed policies.

There is no question that there are ignorant bigots in America who genuinely believe that all Muslims are terrorists and anyone with a college education is out of touch with reality. This is a result of structural inequities in education and the economy that need to be addressed by the next president. What angers me is that instead of renouncing and addressing the root causes the nation's vulgar ideologies of race and poverty (see above inequities), the educated professionals in the conservative wing of the Republican party are holding these destructive ideas up as the epitome of democracy.

So I want to say thank you to all 600 people who wrote into Kristol's column to renounce his suggestions about democracy. We may not all have PhDs or White House staffer jobs waiting for us, but we are the opposite of vulgar. And in the present historical moment, that's downright elitist.

The Domestic is Political

My blog posts are getting a little pedantic; even I'm tiring of seeing the tripartite phrase "social, political, cultural" that precedes half of my comments about the presidential election and Americans in general. I blame it on spending 80% of my day listening to NPR and on having read too much feminist theory in grad school. And maybe just a little bit on my predilection for soap-boxing in print, where no one can evict me from my post.

But I'm tired of politics today. There's only so much bad news a body can absorb before it shuts down to take care of more immediate privations like hunger and sleep.

I've been thinking a lot about hunger over the last few days. In particular, kicking my fledgling program to eat and live more sustainably up a notch. Our summer farm box deliveries end this week, and I'm going to miss how easy it's been to eat seasonally. I'm contemplating signing up for a year-round program, or at least forcing myself to buy seasonal, and when possible, local produce from New Seasons. While a winter diet of cabbage, potatoes, and onions sounds more like a throwback to my impoverished Eastern European ancestors than a feast, it's the ecological and economical way to eat. Besides, lots of yummy things are available in the winter, like satsumas and dark leafy greens. Incidentally, I have a new baking book with a recipe for oniony greens pie, which I cannot wait to make. And T and I eat meat, so there are plenty of healthy roasts, stews and casseroles to tide us over until spring. I'm afraid that T will complain about the absence of summer foods like fresh tomatoes--we both love tomatoes--but he doesn't do the shopping, so I possess all the culinary power in the household. He will bow to my will. Bwa-ha-ha!

Moving on...

I'm also going to see if my mom wants to share weekly dairy deliveries from a local farm, Noris Dairy. They actually bring fresh milk, cheese, yogurt, and butter in glass bottles to your door, for no extra charge. The products are a little more expensive than the grocery store organic brands, but I figure the extra dollar goes towards maintaining a healthier relationship with the agricultural community and to supporting small farmers. The only problem is that T and I definitely can't eat $18 worth of dairy a week, which is why we need a dairy pal.

And then, I'm investigating buying into an animal, like buying a quarter of a cow. The problem with this is that: (1) that's a ton of meat and (2) we'd have to rent a storage locker or something. I can't see our landlord agreeing to hanging a gigantic haunch of meat in the basement. Where it would rot and foster maggots, anyway. Though, the silver lining of that plan is that hospitals are starting to use maggots to clean out gangrenous wounds. The festering haunch might provide me and T with a tidy side income.

Finally, when we get a house I will expand my potted garden into a wonderful veggie paradise. And then I'll learn to can and make preserves. Until then I can add a veggie or two to my summer container garden each year, so that I learn how to take better care of plants. Everything basically flourished this summer, but the tomato plant lost all of its leaves and smells somewhat suspect. It's still producing tomatoes, though, so maybe it's a balding exotic?

I've also started baking our bread, and am experimenting with whole grain wheat and rye flours. And--this is the coup d'etat, I'm so excited--I think I'm going to try making cheese. I'm going to ask for a kit for my birthday.

When I have a little more time I'm going to search out some like-minded women so that we can help each other live better. There's so little that we can single-handedly control, you know? Like the job market, which sucks, and the economy, which sucks enough that I feel afraid to leave my horrible job at the bookstore, and the frustrating ignorance and apathy of a lot of Americans. At least I can fill my fridge and our bellies with wholesome foods, and go to bed knowing that I'm doing something genuinely good every day, something that helps people and the planet.

I need to start.

What's in a Name?

I'm feeling jointly optimistic and unhappy this morning, after reading Frank Rich's excellent op-ed column on the Barack Hussein Obama fever currently gripping the Republican party. Rich provides substantive empirical evidence of race baiting and fear mongering by Palin and McCain at campaign rallies; his examples corroborate the terrifying articles and photos I've seen in the local newspaper about campaign attendees shouting things like "Obama is a terrorist" and "socialist pinko" while Palin and McCain look on benignly.

I was pleased to see a widely read and respected media figure writing a comprehensive and damning report of McCain's antics. And many of the NYT's readers agreed--there was a heartening display of disgust from both Republicans and Democrats. But there were enough comments about the absurdity of Rich's claims; enough comments that did not posit evidence to the contrary, but simply repeated the fallacious connections between Obama and radical Islam and Obama and the Weathermen (for god's sake, he was 8) and Obama and socialism, that I worry about America.

To be fair, racism, ignorance, and the mob mentality are old allies of the American people. It is a self-congratulatory and false narrative that America is, always has been, and always will be a place of unfettered freedom. Likewise, a lot of Americans have always been dumb and will continue to wallow, proudly, in their ignorance because, as one of my high school friends admitted to me, "thinking is hard." Palin and McCain are not inventing the wheel by catering to the political, social and cultural ignorance of their supporters. They are simply ensuring that this ignorance will persist.

That is a grave social injustice.

It amazes me--no, stuns me--that in a country that relishes the specter of the Nuremberg Trials as Justice in the works, where political leaders repeatedly hold up the Holocaust as the gold standard of political metaphor, we would see, in 2008, angry mobs repeating lies about a black man. It doesn't surprise me that the mobs don't understand the difference between Maoist communism and socialized health care, or that the name Hussein is identified as Islamic extremist. I'm not surprised that there are a lot of people out there who hate black men. I'm accustomed to American stupidity. This is a mean thing to say, but I have little respect for the cognitive abilities of a lot of my fellow citizens.

But I am surprised (why???) that the two highest profile American republicans are actually inciting discrimination! That they stand there at their rallies and allow people to conflate black with terrorist with educated with communism with cultured with Islam with anti-war. So that to be a well-traveled, educated black man with a Semitic name who protests a failed foreign policy and advocates health care for all Americans is to be a "pinko terrorist." Because, you know, "pinko" and "advocate of totalitarian theocracy" are identical concepts.

Maybe it all comes down to education. I like to bewail my liberal arts degrees because I work in a warehouse to support a fledgling career as a college writing instructor, and I feel like the American dream failed me. But I wouldn't trade my education for the world. I've read Marx and Engels, I've studied communist Russia and the history of Islam, I've discussed Habermas's mourning of the dissolution of the public sphere, and written papers on what a globalized society really means. I'm not a genius or an expert on these issues, but I know that "pinko terrorist" is a logical fallacy, and I know what a logical fallacy is.

I know that if I ever found myself chanting discriminatory rhetoric with a mob (anywhere other than an anti-war rally) I would be abdicating my intellectual independence and claims to any sort of morality.

I know that a name is a name. And that actions speak louder than words.

you spin me right round, baby, right round

It's dangerous to gloat, or even remain steadfastly optimistic about political successes in turbulent America, but Joe Biden did a good job tonight in his debate with Sarah Palin. Granted, he's about 700 billion times smarter and more experienced than Palin, who clearly kept returning to memorized lines about mavericks, Alaskan energy policy, and the imaginary tax burden that Obama is planning for the middle class. She even admitted that she wasn't going to answer the questions she was asked, which I found extraordinary. Also of note were her cheerful pronouncement that she only had 5 weeks of experience in national politics, and her repetition of the word "maverick" whenever she couldn't answer a question with "In Alaska..."

But I want to break this down a bit. Here are my highlights from tonight's debate:

1. This one time, at band camp?

We know that Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla and is governor of Alaska. We know that she's a real maverick who fought big business interests with a Washington outsider's tough as nails approach. We know that she endorses off-shore drilling, and is skeptical about global warming. But these statements, no matter how often they are uttered, are not appropriate answers to questions on foreign policy and health care. She is not running for Vice-President of the United States of Alaska. Also, repeating ideas does not make them true.

2. I don't hear you...

It amazes me that after both Obama's and Biden's logical repudiations of how McCain and Palin are spinning their tax proposal, the republicans continue to insist that Obama wants to tax the middle class. In reality, Obama's policy taxes people who make over $250,000 per year. McCain's tax policy primarily benefits corporations by cutting the business tax and creating new middle class taxes, such as the proposed tax on employee health insurance. McCain's fiscal policies are not dissimilar to Bush's. Both men have been career advocates of deregulation, military spending, and privatizing social security and health care--programs that other first-world countries consider basic human rights. Despite her Joe 6-Pack act, Palin also has a history of raising taxes on the middle-class. This isn't to berate her windfall policy on oil taxes, because that seems (as far as I can tell, and this is new territory for me) okay. But a tax hike is just that, regardless of its beneficiaries. So, despite the transparency of their lies and hypocrisy, McCain and Palin keep misrepresenting the democratic tax proposal. Biden was really clear and factual in tonight's rebuttal of this nonsense, but I worry that the American collective psychology is resistant to logic.

3. Joe Six-Pack

Let's just cut the crap. No one in this campaign--Obama, Biden, McCain, Palin--are suffering with the middle class. If any of them are drinking Coors Lights, it's because they have bad taste in beer.

4. The sky is falling!

This highlight is tangentially related to the debate, but it counts. If you've been paying any attention to media sources over the past few days, you'll have noticed an unsettling phenomenon. Banks are floundering. Stocks are down. The government is considering a really poorly conceived bail-out plan. These events are not what's unsettling me, though of course such economic upheaval is disconcerting. No, what's unsettling is that the media tells people to panic, so they do. Last week, Americans convinced their lawmakers in the House that Paulson's and Bernanke's bail-out plan is, to be nice, not very intelligent. Washington was floored by failure (you'd think they'd be used to it by now) and responded by saying, "But you're panicking, remember? You're really scared right now! Your mortgage, and your small business, and your 401K, and your little piece of the American free market dream! It's time to freak out, people!" So what do Americans do? They panic! They call into NPR and make asinine comments about how a bad plan is better than no plan at all. I suppose this is a corollary to the logic that attacking Saddam Hussein is better than not catching Osama bin Laden.

I'm reading Slaughterhouse 5 right now for the first time, and am struck by the narrator's apathy for political and emotional disaster. Death is always followed by "and so it goes," and unusual events by "and so on." I know that this is an ironic gesture by Vonnegaut, that beneath the casual prose is an ardent attack on war and America's master of the universe teleology. But is unsettles me nevertheless, because I suspect that that is how we live our lives.

The bail out plan passed Senate today. And so on.

It Isn't Easy Being Green

I wonder if I should begin cultivating the Depression-era eccentricities of the World War II generation, like collecting bits of string and reusing old tea bags. It probably wouldn't hurt to begin clipping coupons, but coupons are almost never for the organic and local foods I like to buy. On the other hand, eating only seasonal produce would definitely help cut down on costs. I really need to start doing that.

Okay, I'm getting off track. What I mean to be talking about is the current fiscal crisis. It's apparent that the good old days of capitalistic excess are waning, and a deep pit of debt awaits my generation and those who'll come after us (presuming humanity doesn't destroy the planet, and the Republicans don't destroy civilization, before future generations can begin repaying China). No one is saying the word "depression" yet, but with banks floundering and the job and housing markets in arrears, it's pretty clear that fewer of us are residing on Easy Street., and even fewer can anticipate doing so any time soon.

I discovered today that I make so little money as a part-time adjunct professor and full-time bookseller (note: 50-70 hours of work per week) that I actually qualify for food stamps. I won't use them, because government assistance should only be for those people who genuinely can't get on by themselves, but it's scary to know that in 21st century America a woman with two graduate degrees and a healthy work ethic isn't making much more money than a McDonald's employee. This is our position in history. Intellectuals are relegated to the societal refuse heap while corporate bimbos (male and female) climb the socioeconomic ladder; my only solace is that with the way the economy is going, we're all pretty much fucked in the end. Those bimbos probably bought houses that they can't afford with subprime mortgages. Suckas!

I know that's not nice. I'm really just bitter that I chose the path of unlimited resistance and have no idea what I'm doing with my life. According to current cultural values I'm a useless person. I'm not a Christian; I make no money; I buy very little.

I don't know why this post is about me, when I meant to write about the fall of A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers. I guess because--like everyone--I'm now trying to understand what the future will look like. Will we soon be crowding at the docks for a day of hard labor, followed by a trip to the soup kitchen? Because that's basically what I do already, except that I make my own soup. How bad will it get?

There is a silver lining to all this chaos, however. And that is that we will have to mend our ways. Me, T, everyone. We'll have to save those bits of string, and learn to cook on an even leaner budget, and stop treating ourselves so much, even to little things like a drink out or a movie. We'll have to stay at home more with our families and play games and read. Talk. There are worse things, as long as we have enough to be healthy and safe. I just hope we haven't gotten so far away from the simple pleasure of togetherness that we are unable to return when times get even harder.

T-H-I-N-K

I have my differences with Thomas Friedman, but there are a couple of issues on which we agree. One is America's need to develop alternative energy sources and gradually relinquish its reliance on oil, foreign or otherwise. The second is our preference for Barack Obama, if for no other reason than the repugnancy of the Republican alternative.

To be fair, I am biased toward the far left. I would like to see universal health care; the dismantling of the hegemonic insurance and pharmaceutical industries that simultaneously market illness and provide poor health care coverage; widespread public education reform; investment in alternative energy; less xenophobic immigration procedures; budget surpluses; less military spending; and of course, an end to our recent imperialist quest to remake the world in our image. Given the alarming evidence that America is a democracy in decline, I seriously doubt that the world would be safer from terrorism should every country adopt our model of self-government.

To be fair, I am not coming into this election season with an objective attitude toward the two parties. I already favor Obama because of his positions on foreign and domestic policy, and dislike McCain's emphasis on aggressive military engagement, Alaskan oil drilling, tax cuts, and a culture war campaign style that cultivates a politics of stupidity.

But it is this latter issue--McCain's encouragement of American intellectual laziness--that really upsets me. In last week's New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert wrote, "While watching the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gibson Thursday night, and the coverage of the Palin phenomenon in general, I’ve gotten the scary feeling, for the first time in my life, that dimwittedness is not just on the march in the U.S., but that it might actually prevail." To support this fear, Herbert recounts TV commentators' defense of Palin's inability to explain the Bush Doctrine, during which they argued that very few hockey moms could explain what it is. Alas, they are correct: very few hockey moms could explain the Bush Doctrine. This is an indication that most Americans (for after all, the sports mom in her SUV minivan is the iconic image of the normative American family in the 21st century) don't pay enough attention to current events, even when those events are shipping their sons and daughters off to a preemptive and baseless war. Their correct appraisal of Sarah Palin's ignorance of Bush's foreign policy as the American norm is also an indication that Palin is a poor choice for second-in-command. Do we really want a leader who can't explain why we went into Iraq in the first place? How is she supposed to help end the conflict when she can't self-critically confront, assess and correct the mistaken ideas that led to anticipatory self-defense on foreign soil?

But I can't just target hockey moms and Palin for their political stupidity. The fault lies equally with the McCain campaign; the Republican base; the quasi-Democratic feminists who are so desirous to have a woman in the White House that they willingly ignore Palin's actions against female reproductive rights and other minority groups like gays and lesbians; the media, which instantaneously fostered a cult of celebrity around Palin, without noting that this cult was exactly what the McCain campaign wanted to deflect scrutiny of the presidential candidate (and could I just add that a month ago McCain was criticizing Obama's celebrity status?); and with Americans in general, who--for some reason that I have failed to find--JUST DON'T THINK.

After eight years of trite justifications for fiscal and political disasters like "we're fighting the evil-doers" (who are we, Batman?) and "America is not in a recession, just an economic slow down," you would think that Americans would want detailed answers to difficult questions. That Americans would be tired of the way someone "like us" runs the country. That we would want an "elitest" leader, with 8 years of experience teaching Constitutional Law, with 8 years as a State Senator, representing a district with more people than live in Alaska, with a Harvard law degree, and an understanding of foreign cultures, with four years as a U.S. senator, again representing more people than live in Alaska, with a reputation for erudition, critical thinking, and speaking his mind. Not to mention someone without a laundry list of ethics violations.

I don't want to idealize Obama, whose platitudes I could often do without, but point out that "elitist" is just another word for qualified. And not all Americans are qualified to lead. But we are all qualified to think. So when did we, as a society, relinquish that right? When did we start relying on other people to tell us what we think, and what our values are?

In Freedom of Thought, Voltaire notes that as long as people are uninterested in practicing their freedom, there will always be tyrants ready to seize it. Americans forget that there are tyrants among us.

Painting the Pig, or Palin in Comparison

Hark ye, take care, for a she-beast lurks these woods.

A she-beast with little rhetorical ability, less knowledge, and a frighteningly large following of people who obviously don't use the gray matter lodged between their blind eyes.

Sarah Palin makes me so mad that I don't even know where to begin!

For one, "feminist" my ass. Hillary may drive me crazy with her first-wave pantsuit feminism, but at least she thinks women should have reproductive rights. At least she knows what the Bush Doctrine is. At least she doesn't justify her social ideology with Biblical injunctions. At least she was smart enough to take on reporters and the public without having to be holed up somewhere studying lines about what it means to be vice president.

And people don't care! They don't care. They see a vagina marching towards the White House, and think, "Oh wow! A vagina! Gosh, aren't we progressive?"

These idiots don't realize that vaginas don't hold political views. (I should know. I have one. It is remarkably mute on foreign policy.) But brains have opinions, and brains, according to pop culture's militant (and let's just be honest, grossly outdated, simplistic and ultimately self-defeating, yet effective) feminism, are gender neutral. So, a brain with the intellectual and character limitations of Dubya does not make for a progressive vagina. In fact, it makes for a vagina that doesn't believe in its own right to health, safety and emotional well-being.

Or that of any other woman.

If people were to strip Palin of her sexuality, as feminism demands, they would see nothing but an ignorant honky bitch with the audacity and the narcissism to believe that all it takes to pull the U.S. out of its national and global mire is a few years as mayor of a town of 5,000 and not even one term as governor of a state with more bears than people. Her devout conviction that what this country needs is a straight-talking evangelical conservative who's "just like us" (as if we haven't tried that one before) belittles the fragile complexity of the United State's socio-economic and political condition, and soils the gorgeous ideals of democratic process written into our Constitution.

Secondly, the woman is just plain ignorant. If she was up to the task, the McCain campaign wouldn't be hiding her from the "un-deferential" press (again, who hears the dying cry of democracy in America?). They wouldn't be making her memorize canned lines about Islamic extremists. Quite frankly, if the McCain campaign was remotely confident in its ideology and its presidential candidate's ability to make persuasive arguments, they wouldn't be hiding him under the skirts of the honky bitch they have hiding from the press.

Thirdly, and I guess I should stop, because I could go on, Sarah Palin is a bad mom.
Yeah. I said it. Call my vagina sexist, but a mom who leaves her pregnant 17-year old and her newborn baby with Down Syndrome and her son in Iraq to the care of others while she plots her course for total annihilation of whatever possibility America had for political redemption is a bad mom. What she and so many anti-abortion activists forget is that motherhood is not just carrying a fetus or birthing a child. Motherhood is a life-long commitment to those beings you've flung into the world. Motherhood is working to give those beings safety, and comfort, and unconditional presence. Motherhood is staying the mother fucking course.

Don't run for vice-president as a feminist and a mom and an agent for change when you are none of those things.

Don't insult those of us who are one or two or all of those things.

Don't strip us of our bodily freedoms, and religious tolerance, and yearning for a resolution to the crises facing us, and tell us that you are just like us.

I will never be like you, Sarah Palin. You are everything I hate about America.

Crossroads

I don't know. I should go to bed now, so this will be brief. I'm getting married in a week, which is very exciting. But I lost a potential job today, which is less so. I can soothe my frustration with the knowledge that I was a finalist for the position, but once again the reasons for my not getting the job sound horribly similar to the sounds of my scampering away from a PhD, in a fruitless search for more normal pastures.

My dad says I run away from who I am, which is an "intellectual" (a curiously 18th century word, really, more applicable to those amazing female salonieres; to a time when it wasn't pretentious to self-identify as thought-full; a word allocated to Oxford men with pipes and tweeds, and not to me). I don't know. (Again.) I'm not so brilliant. I knew that at school, and so left. There were a few professors who enjoined me to stay, but I never understood why. My writing can be disorganized. I don't always speak articulately. Benjamin and Deleuze and Levinas swam in my brain, pausing for brief moments of clarity and application before getting lost again in their strokes. I am not so brilliant. But then, I am not its opposite, either. There were moments.

So what do I do? My dad says quit the menial job and dedicate myself full time to teaching. Live off my savings for a while and stop exhausting myself with these 70 hour weeks for a pittance. Doing so scares me. I don't like not making money. A big part of me just wants a "grown-up" job like my friends have, where they sit at a desk and have meetings and behave in adult and scheduled ways. But I know, deep in my gut (or maybe this time, it's my brain speaking), that I'm not like my friends. I can't sit at a desk and push (important) papers around; I'm not ultra organized; I don't know and don't care about PowerPoint presentations. I don't ever get the office jobs I apply for, and apparently I've taught "too much college" to teach high school.

Am I failure? Did I run away from the PhD because I fell in love, and because I was lonely, and because I saw brilliance in others and mediocrity in my own ideas and I grew afraid? Yes.
Yes.

I ran away, but there's nothing for me here like I thought there would be. So what do I do?

Pyotr Went to Heaven and Little Chef Went to

Ah, Pyotr.

While Chas and I were in between adolescent grappling I went to Spain, but not before winning the angelic devotion of Pyotr the Protestant. PP was gentle and sweet and afflicted with acne, which formed a sympathetic bond between us. PP was also evangelical, and a great portion of his love letters were devoted to sincerely hoping I would come to Jesus. I didn't know that evangelical Protestantism existed--actually, I still don't, outside of the Puritans--and I sure as hell didn't want to come to Jesus. But I liked being doted on, and he was funny and smart and really cute beneath his pimples.

Our relationship was primarily imaginary because I lived in Spain the entire time, promptly dumping him for Chas a few days after I returned to the States. Pyotr and I came from such different backgrounds. I remember the one and only time I visited his home--where he and his ridiculously pretty and popular, and thus repulsive sister were home-schooled--I was treated like an exotic specimen. "A Jew! Tell us, what is it like to be a Jew?" I was surrounded by a sea of friendly, eager faces, all awaiting tales of who knows what: abstaining from pork, speaking Hebrew, bloodletting little Gentile children to make the Passover matzot. I was stranded in a sea of beaming Protestants; Yentl Phone Home.

But for all the religious culture shock Pyotr and I had a lot in common. Acne, as I said. We liked Blues Traveler and doing theatre. We were both shy, and I think not passionate for each other. His family moved later that year, and I'm sorry that we didn't keep in better touch. I do run into his mother occasionally (his parents relocated), which seems to fill her with an irrational exuberance. I have to say, there's nothing quite like running into the mother of the boy you callously dumped after he wrote you love letters for months, only to have her say, LOUDLY, to her husband (who really couldn't care less): Oh look! It's Pyotr's little Jew! Remember her, honey? The little Jew!

I think we all fantasize to some extent that we leave indelible marks on our former loves, subtle lines of emotion that ride through our veins undetected, until they are recalled by a song or a smell, or someone's mother. And I think we hope that these marks contain essential, but incomplete elements our beauty, just enough to invite nostalgia and the smallest tug of longing.

To think that my mark is Judaism is odd and hilarious (does he hear the word "circumcision" and think of me?). But for Pyotr's world, defined as it was by Jesus and Mary and Joseph, I imagine it's a dark, deep and meaningful mark. A souvenir of his sojourn beyond the known world. And an irrepressible reminder that he made it home safely.

Reader: The final line is for dramatic purposes only. Pyotr is a lovely and open-minded man. And contrary to all indications, his mother is not an anti-Semite.

The Lost Boy

I was going to begin my review of men with my first serious boyfriend, but my cousin noted that it would be remiss of me to forget my first "love," Chas. Chas, also known to us as El Hijo con los Ojos Azules, had straight blond hair long enough to fall into his blue-green cat eyes, and a sly smile.

Chas was the first authentically cute boy to have a crush on me, skinny bones jones that I was. He liked me enough to come uninvited to my batmitzvah and grin at me while I carried the Torah through the sanctuary. He brought me a rose on my 14th birthday that died in his locker. He gave me my first french kiss during a game of truth or dare that, to be honest, I accepted with a mixture of disgust and relief. (I was relieved to be kissed; rather disgusted by what it entailed.) He sent me letters when I lived in Spain. The following summer Chas would be the first boy to really kiss me during an evening picnic. It didn't matter that he went on to kiss several of my girlfriends, each one with a incrementally larger bosom and proclivity for drug use. I was the first, and that carried some weight. Maybe I didn't fit his teenage beauty ideal, and I was the queen of Just Say No (I actually joined SADD in middle school), but Chas always liked me just a little bit.

The sad news is that Chas disappeared, and I'm pretty sure he's had problems with drug or alcohol addiction. I don't know if he went to college, and a Google search pulls up nothing, which is quite unusual today.

I don't think about Chas that often, certainly not like I think about the college years, which hardened my heart against hipsters and sensitive male singers. But unlike the later boys, Chas is still a kid in my head, and as such he elicits a sympathy and worry that originates deep in my gut. I want him to be okay, and to be alive, and to be happy.

For this reason I'm using his real nickname. It may trace a more definable path to my identity, but I kind of doubt it. Even less likely, but more importantly, if he ever stumbles across my blog, he can leave a message. This post is a little blinking light out at sea. A mooring for a man whose boyhood I hold dear.

The Ever Plant Yielding Seed

Behold, sayeth the Lord, I have given you ever plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth (Gen 1:29).

Party on, spoketh my student, who made the claim in his homework assignment today that laws against marijuana segregate people just as harmfully as racial segregation once did, and who used the above biblical quote to back his claim, just like MLK in his "Letter from Birmingham Jail."

On the one hand, I have to give him props for recognizing a successful rhetorical strategy and mimicking it in his own argument.

On the other hand, WHAT???

When I stop laughing over the phrase, "It fits right in when how segregation is unholy," and cease imagining ascetic potheads taking to the desert with only a bong and some Cheetos to protest their adherence to the five-fingered leaf god, I will find something pithy to say about the fact that my student compared access to drugs with a law that limited black people's access to human rights.

LOOK OUT: Now that my nuptials are really drawing nigh, I think it's time to revisit the Ghosts of Boyfriends Past. Coming soon, the Sensitive Ghoul of the Nascent Indie Rock Scene. He came, he sang, he...well you'll just have to read it now, won't you?

Gotham's Dark Nights

We saw The Dark Knight this weekend (by "we" I mean T and myself, not myself as Queen). Wow. Really, wow. I like superhero movies in general, and I've always liked the Batman concept of billionaire playboy by day, slightly irredeemable crime fighter by night, but Dark Knight unquestionably moves the genre into "real film" status. (I have to admit that I've heard a similar claim for Sin City, which I haven't seen.) Christopher Nolan's take on Batman is particularly interesting, because his superhero is a little unlikeable and spoiled. Also, Christian Bale's Batman voice is hilarious and pathetic. I think this is purposeful--it shows the artifice, the construction and vulnerability of Bruce Wayne's disguise. Batman is brave and high tech, but he's also a little ridiculous. His batman outfit and husky delivery and underground lair are not wildly less weird than the Joker's face paint, which is not entirely out of place in angular, shadow-filled, no place Gotham. The whole world of the film, while mirroring the random violence and shifty politics of our world, is an unmoored dreamscape where the scariness of what is not normative--clowns, superheroism, violent crime--is amplified by the fact that it's not balanced by the presence of normal people and places. Nothing is quite right in Gotham. The streets are all alleyways, and everyone knows who the district attorney is. It's a demented, enclosed space of nightmare.

And the movie is genuinely that complex. That's why it's such a triumph. Yes, it's filled with action sequences and batman gadgetry, and some of the metalanguage (Joker to Batman: You complete me) is at once sarcastic and symbolically sophomoric. But in the Joker's leaking, painted leer and random violence, and in Bruce Wayne's unheroic responses to the Joker's devastation, there is a corollary to our own ethical position in history. The movie raises a provocative question about the role of heroes in a world bent on meaningless self-destruction. Or, put another way, it asks whether or not heroism and its attendant virtues--honor, truth, freedom, sacrifice--are any way to fight a dirty war.

Words, words, words

Shout out to Anonymous: I liked the George Saunders quote. I'm not sure I'll be turning any of my characters into milkshake slurping chimpanzees with marital problems (and to be honest, I prefer the realistic description, "Lisa sat at a black table," to "Lisa languished in an obsidian abyss"), but I adored the comment. I have half a mind to think that you're my mom commenting anonymously, but Saunders isn't her style. You're too pretentious and self-reflectively clever to be my mother. I wish I knew your identity. Anonymous.

Well, I was going to title this blog post "Bringing Up Baby" and discuss my flickering yen for an infant, but the literary comment put me in a different mind frame. I've been trying the writing thing, but I'm not sure I like it. I have fun for a while typing away at a short story, but when I read it the next day I think, yeesh. I have very high standards and a good eye for talent, which is why I'm a good literary critic. But, these same high standards and instinct for artistry leave me with no option but to chuck my stories in the trash. I think nonfiction is more my forte, and I'm just not sure yet whether that nonfiction has to be critical or theoretical to be decent. I hope not, because I kind of kicked that career to the curb by leaving graduate school to live in Portland with T-money, but I have to admit that the best writing I do is the dramaturgical stuff for the theatre. So...we'll see.

Perhaps Lisa will be in that obsidian abyss before long.

I'm a Little Surprised

It seems the fates are conspiring, because several miscellaneous individuals in the last few days have told me to become a writer. (Yeah, I know how revoltingly hubristic that sounds coming from a mediocre blogger. No need to comment.) It's actually a little weird. T's uncle, his dad, my parents, T himself...perhaps I should be made skeptical by the fact that the only people encouraging my writing are relatives who are kind of forced by filial ties to think I'm a genius. My father even told me that I'm very funny, albeit he thinks often unintentionally. Uh huh.

The thing is I think being a writer sounds perfect. Getting to work from home, rising each day early enough to water my plants and drink some strong coffee, and then settling down to write. That's my favorite way to work; as much as I hated the stress of having to produce original scholarship every 11 weeks, I really enjoyed the finals week schedule during graduate school. You think and write furiously for maybe 8 hours, and then enjoy life. Watch a movie, read a novel, go to the gym. I kind of do that now, except that I spend 8 hours a day performing menial tasks in a house of cards attempt to climb the corporate ladder, and then spend several additional hours catering to my students' needs. It's a funny life, I guess, but funny stupid. Funny pointless. Funny turning me into a cynical bookselling soul-sick pawn to the Man who has actually started fantasizing about the life of a stay at home mom funny. It's just so worthless!


And just to confirm my suspicions that a monkey could do my day job, nepotism has landed a really dimwitted 17-year old in our department for the summer. Really not good for office morale.



The real problem--and this is a doozy--is that I have no idea what on earth I would write about. I'm in the process of writing a short story, but I'm keeping it under wraps in the off chance that it's terrible. So aside from my story, and my blog (which is grossly inconsistent and only has two readers anyway), what do I have to share with the world that might also be lucrative? And don't suggest a fictionalized account of my travails as a lowly bookstore clerk come college professor, because that's what my story is about, not that I'm saying anything about it because it's so totally under wraps.

So, dear readers. Suggestions?

Theorizing Thin

I know that no one has sympathy for the skinny girl. American culture has taught us from an early age that skinnyness is a physical attribute both to aspire to and to despise; like anything we desperately want, our feelings for it are a contradictory mix of lust for and repulsion of the desired object(ive). It is not us, so we want it. It is not us, so we distrust and mock it with humanity's unique xenophobic psychology. In most people's troubled attempts to become united with their potentially thin selves, they realize the inevitability of imperfection and so begin to loathe skinny. Call it superficial Lacanianism. Or the Freudian haute couture.

The thing is, being skinny has a few marked disadvantages. I'm starting to experience these disadvantages more frequently as I get older, because clothing is designed for women with at least a modicum of curvaceousness. In my current search for clothing that doesn't look like it spends 8 hours a day in a book warehouse, particularly a few pretty pre-wedding pieces, I've spent hours trying on dresses in stores that range from the nice to the Forever 21 to no avail. Either they sag in the front, or they droop in the back, or they make me look like an underdeveloped whore. I'm beginning to think that I either need to learn to alter clothing or start stalking fashionable Japanese exchange students.

What skinny seekers don't realize is that it's as depressing for a woman as tiny as myself to shop as it is for someone who's a little overweight; both of us leave stores feeling a little less feminine than when we went in, a little less pretty and alluring.

A Clinton supporter would point out right about now that it is foolish for women to pin some fraction of our self-worth on appearance, but I believe that doing so is hard-wired. Before women were social beings we were biological beings, and being attractive aids survival. You don't see any Neanderthal ladies prancing around, do you?

Okay, poor, anachronistic, and pseudo-scientific reasoning. Nevertheless, I think I'm correct to suggest that superficial qualities impact the way we feel about ourselves and the ways that others view us. As a result, when nothing fits I feel un-gendered and ill at ease. There are women all around me with boobs and hips, and men with penises, and then there's me: skinny bones jones with no easy physical allocation in the world.

Am I exaggerating? Well, yes. Theorizing about something always imbues it with more dire significance and bullshit than it deserves. There are good things about being skinny, too. For instance, I can fit into my fiance's grandmother's wedding suit, and a lot of other cool vintage items. I can squeeze past slowpokes on the sidewalk without appearing brusque. I can eat dessert twice a day and tell myself that it is all part of the the great Breast Cake Plan. I am sleek and muscular and lithe like the Arctic fox.

It may sound trite and impossibly difficult, but it is genuinely best to feel comfortable in your own skin and to love your body. I find this easier to do when I don't go shopping, which goes a long way toward explaining my wardrobe. Do I wish I had a bosom that required a bra and hips and that made my 24-inch waist look impressive? Yes. Do I have a pang of jealousy when my voluptuous goddess of a best friend shows up looking like the Marilyn Monroe to my prepubescent Gabbie Hoffman? Yes. But I try to desire the things and experiences that I am capable of attaining without plastic surgery.

Besides, no one likes a whiner. Especially a skinny one.

F is for Fabulous

This should be brief, because it's past my bedtime and I haven't yet undergone my extensive preparing for bed routine. I assume most women have such a routine: wash the face, apply toner and any special creams; brush and floss; remove contact lenses; pluck errant hairs; contemplate one's image for a moment; moisturize hands; fold and put away clothes; crawl into bed to read for a bit. It's markedly different from the male routine, which is oblivious to facial and dental hygiene. T-money is of the opinion that "sleep happens" without needing to ready oneself for it; while he is logically in the right, I maintain that this phrase was funny four years ago and its humor is now long past its expiration date. Besides, I have minty fresh breath and a clean visage when I slide into bed. He doesn't have to kiss the evening's enchiladas goodnight.

Old enchiladas aside, I'm a bit bummed out on the teacher front tonight. It looks like 3-4 students from my morning class are going to fail, just for lack of trying, and about half of my evening class, for lack of showing up. I ran into a past student at the bookstore today, who reassured me (without prompting--art students are really weirdly attuned to professorial ego) that I'm a good teacher and my students are to blame. Ah, who knows. I appreciated the sweet words coming from his bepierced lips. I've just never failed so many students. Not even the quasi-illiterate Samoan football player, who I passed out of pity for his sports scholarship (I know, I know. These kinds of favors to athletes are unethical and are leading to the dissolution of higher education. But you look a giant boy-man in the eyes and tell him his dreams of going pro are about to be dashed by his poor understanding of pronouns.). It's disheartening. To paraphrase one of my best friends (and loyal blog reader), if everyone just did what I told them to do when I told them to do it, the world would be a better place. Certainly the writing classroom would be!

I'm going to have to lay the smack down in my summer course. No late work! No emailed papers! No sob stories about cats falling from third-story balconies! No being a punk ass pain in my butt.

The butt that now is going to pack herself off to bed. After a 20-minute cleansing, of course.

Like Lightening, I Strike so Quick

Several things irritated me today.

My co-worker, B---, whose bad moods cast a pall over his immediate environment, in which I often have the misfortune of being located. B---'s crankiness is a contagion that infects the rest of the "team" (let's pause to mock the corporate world's ironic and futile attempts to mimic natural social conditions). But my irritation runs deeper than that. I hate the sight of his squirrely face squinched up in type-A agony deep in the root of my being, in the churning seat of my passionate liver. I detest his narrow cranium and upturned-but-not-in-a-cute-way nose, his scrawny biker calves and his shaved head. Actually, B--- shaves off all of his hair, probably to elicit more speed from his already frenetic body. Being near him increases my blood pressure and induces murderous fantasies.

Oooh. Yes. B--- is numero uno in the day's irritations.

Number two would be my boss, also a B---. He's just fat, lazy and incompetent. I mean, really. Fat. Lazy. Incompetent. He also smokes, and while I accept people's freedom to engage in self-destructive habits (maybe his addiction is proof of natural selection working in our favor), it just adds to his grossness. There's nothing worse than a large smelly idiot giving you poor instructions for activities you can do quite well on your own.

To be fair, I tend to resent authority figures who are less educated than myself. Which is totally pretentious, I know (I mean, look at where all that schooling's brought me). Nevertheless I stand and listen to one B--- drone on, while the other B--- does his best impression of an angry human tornado, and I ponder the uselessness of my life. How did I reach this point? Why am I such a failure?

Being around the B---s is really bringing me down.

Since I'm targeting people for slander, let's move on to Hillary Clinton. She LOSES the primary race. She throws a completely illegitimate hissy fit about counting ballots that she'd previously promised not to be on. She actually courts votes based on racism and ignorance, and uses passe first-wave feminist rhetoric to woo women of a certain age. And now, when she could gracefully say, "I have run a phenomenal race. I am proud of myself, and disappointed by very narrow defeat. But it is time to unify the party and stand behind the winner," does she do so? No! Instead she makes incendiary remarks referencing the popular vote debacle in 2000, inferring a situational corollary between herself and the far more dignified Al Gore, and then announces her desire for the vice presidency. How, in the names of the founding fathers, can Obama now select a different running mate without provoking the ire of millions of Clinton supporters?

Who may comprise my final beef of the evening. All those people who say they'll sit this election out or grant victory to McCain--our jowly, war-mongering Republican contender--rather than vote for Obama? Yeah, they may be worse than the B---s. They're definitely worse than Clinton, although I think she encourages their behavior. They are so small-minded, so critically un-attuned to what is at stake in this race both domestically and for the U.S.'s global standing, that they are willing to relinquish their democratic IMPERATIVE (and I don't mean party, I mean political right) to vote. And that, imaginary readers, is really irritating. Think for a minute of all the Zimbabweans suffering state-sanctioned violence and the curtailment food and health aid right now because they deigned to elect a new leader. Why don't we do Mugabe a favor and send all of the Americans who don't want to vote there, and trade them for people who appreciate political privilege?

And let's send the B---s with them. Mugabe can have them.

Eggplant Parmigiana

YUM. I'm too drained from reading student papers to say anything of substance, but I wanted to share my new eggplant parmigiana dish, courtesy of Gourmet Magazine. I should preface this by admitting that I usually find eggplant disgusting. But it was a good price at the market, and I believe in trying new things (or old things different ways). And what a lucky thing that I do, because this parmigiana is savory, salty, spicy, rich and healthy all at the same time. I served it with a lemony Caesar salad (minus croutons).

Peel and slice two large eggplants (or however many small or large eggplants you desire) into 1/4 in. slices and brush both sides with olive oil. Place on an aluminum foil-lined baking sheet and roast for 20 minutes at 450 degrees F (flipping once). Set aside.

In the meantime, get a lovely tomato sauce bubbling. (I actually did this first, but I like to let sauces simmer for a long time.) Make it a tad bit on the salty side to compensate for the blandness of the plain roast eggplant and mozzarella. Start by adding a healthy amount of red pepper flakes and 2 cloves of minced garlic to a nice slug of olive oil. (One of the secrets to an amazing, rich Italian tomato sauce is a liberal slug of olive oil.) After a minute or so, add a 28 oz can of diced organic tomatoes and let it simmer until it thickens. Then add 1/4 C Parmesan cheese. Set aside.

Make individual parmigianas by layering: a slice of roasted eggplant, spread with some sauce, topped by fresh basil and a slice of mozzarella, followed by another slice of eggplant. Etcetera. Repeat until you have a well-sized eggplant tower (I found three slices sufficient). Keep the cheese layer moderate, to prevent greasy pools of dairy from mucking up the glorious acidity of the tomatoes and the gentle sweetness of the eggplant.

Pop the parmigianas back into the oven until the cheese melts and starts to brown in places.

Enjoy!

postscript: I find the current Michigan-Florida delegate debacle horrifying. Why don't we just save Bush the trouble and make the democratic process entirely obsolete?

Light the Path and Let Them Lead the Way

I had the following email conversation with a student this week:

Me: [to all students] Please remember to bring your first graded rough draft into class next week in order to receive credit for it.

Student: [several days later] I can't find my rough draft anywhere!

Me: You did not turn in a rough draft.

Student: [several days later] Does that mean that I won't get credit for it?

I teach writing. I like to think of my purpose more broadly than that, however, extending my job from teaching prepositions to instructing young minds in how to think critically. I assign readings inspired by current news items (celebrity voyeurism, the ethics of torture in the war on terror, polygamy, you get the idea), and maintain high expectations while being patient and nurturing with their mistakes. I really love my job. There are times when the communal discourse is so passionate and thoughtful, ideas flying around and myself in the middle, sharing pithy bits of theoretical knowledge and telling jokes, writing down interesting ideas on the board. And then there are the times when my students sit, stone-faced like statues of really dull gods; when they forget to turn in work, and to finish the readings, when they skip paper conferences (for which I do not get paid), and when they skip class.

We've had a lot of those times this term.

Somehow my 20-year old students have made it through two decades of life, apparently without thinking much the entire time. I know, this is incredibly hard to imagine. If you're like me, your brain is constantly awake with thought. Not all of it brilliant or even interesting to anyone else, but it is nevertheless active, questioning, engaging the world in an ever-changing dialogue. Maybe you hold fake conversations in your head, like I do. Devise fantastical scenes of drama and happiness; repeatedly compose your wedding vows and future Oscar acceptance speech. Imagine an alter-ego who is a UN human rights lawyer or a diplomat, because reading about politics gets you excited.

You probably READ.

Not so my students. I don't know what they do. And I wish I could just dismiss them as stupid, but the fact is that most of them are pretty smart. Not all--I've definitely had the wrestler with the thick folds of skin at the nape of his neck and across his brow, connecting his eyes and giving him a look of permanent idiocy; the pretty dumb blonde; the illiterate football player; the plain dumb kid with no extracurricular talents in evidence; all of whom happened to be studying primary education (oh mama and we come full circle!)--but most students are intelligent. They just don't care, or they expect to coast through class without trying. Maybe they assess my youth and casual teaching style and think, what does she know?

Here's what I know:

The world is composed of arguments and conversations. Most of the information in these arguments and conversations is highly subjective, laden with unseen biases and smooth-sounding logical fallacies. You either learn to read these dialogues for what they are, or you thoughtlessly vote to invade Iraq.

My students invade Iraq every time, because they don't appreciate the power of language and they don't want to do the hard work of thinking. It is very, very disheartening.

The Devolution of the Written Word

We run across the most ludicrous book titles at work. For example, Why Paint Cats: The Ethics of the Feline Aesthetic (really, why paint cats?). Or, What Your Poo is Telling You and The Truth About Chuck Norris: 400 Facts about the World's Greatest Human. The latter book is actually fairly informational. For instance, did you know that the movie Anaconda was filmed in Chuck Norris' pants?

At any rate, considering that apparently anyone can publish a book nowadays, I've decided to start my own list of preposterous future book titles. Right now I'm partial to The Ties that Bind: Bondage for the Entire Family, inspired by a slew of awful romance novels like Nauti Nights and What's a Ghoul to Do? There's an entire genre dedicated to horror and supernatural romance! Vampiresses are really in right now, as are demon slayers with man problems.

I don't know about you, but vampires just don't do it for me. Sure, Angel was sexy in a Neanderthal way--low brow ridge shading brooding eyes and sharp canines--but I prefer men who don't collude with the dark forces. I also have no desire to be a vampire myself. Blood is gross, and drinking blood is grosser. As I've said before, I'd rather eat a cooked raisin.

It is interesting how many people fantasize about having paranormal power, and how much of that fantasy is sexually charged. I think it must be an expression of an existential desire to understand the metaphysics of the world, and the world's political and spiritual super-structure. It's kind of awesome, if not totally reassuring, to think that earth's evil is embodied in some creepy looking physical beings, rather than "evil" being a psychological concept or drive generated by the human mind. You punch, stake, or roundhouse kick the bad zombie, and voila, peace on earth is reestablished.

It would be trite to now go on a rant about how life isn't that easy. Besides, I have to get dressed for another really exciting day at the bookstore!

So in the interim between this and my next blog, ponder this:

Why Paint Cats?