DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT OBSESSED WITH MY DOG.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Ha ha. Those of you who know me in person would know that [a cuddle party] would be my own personal hell. No touching! And yet, I think it's a wonderful idea and would love to see it in action sometime... (Via [pmuse].)

      >> 8:18 AM
 

Because we have such different schedules, sometimes the only time my Rob and I get to talk to each other is between four and five in the morning, after Rob has returned from work, had dinner, played with Giles, and then woken me up from the couch to go to bed. I'm usually just partially awake -- a state I love -- and can still feel parts of the dreams I had earlier in the night lingering in my forethoughts. We catch each other up on our days and on what Giles has been up to on our respective watches as we lie in bed. It is my favorite time of day.

This morning as I stood by the bed naked first thing after getting up, Rob rolled over and said sleepily, "I have to figure out how to wake up to this view every day."

      >> 8:04 AM
 

Wednesday, September 29, 2004


      >> 5:25 PM
 

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

[Holy shit!] Fox News in Arizona accused feminist students at a university of encouraging out-of-state students to commit a felony by registering to vote in the state. Thing is, university students actually are allowed to vote in the state where they attend college, whether or not they plan on being long-term residents there.

      >> 8:18 PM
 

I am feeling stupid and realizing that I can never attain the facility with ideas that other academics have. Sigh.

      >> 8:07 PM
 

[Margaret Cho]:

The terrible thing about invisibility is the lengths that we will go to in order to be seen. If spouting racist propaganda and being a tool for the conservatives are worth the right to exist in the monochromatic world of right wing political pandering then I applaud Malkin's effort. She inflames the need to uphold the ideals of equality and fairness, and she puts a new face on hate. I'd be happy to argue with someone who looks a bit like me for a change.

I'm not so inclined to think that it's a good thing we've got more visible racists of color against whom we can argue. I'd prefer racists to disappear altogether. But still, an interesting argument to make. What is really troubling is the way multiculturalism is now a possible anti-progressive project rather than being by virtue of a celebration of diversity something that challenges the status quo.

      >> 4:12 PM
 

Monday, September 27, 2004

[Jon Carroll]:

Is it important that Republican senators get the death penalty? Perhaps not. But it is important to sow fear and discord among the people, so they will be placid and suggestible. I am doing my duty under the Patriot Act. I call on all Republican senators to turn themselves in and surrender their votes.

      >> 9:10 PM
 

Assholes. I just opened my credit card bill and discovered, as I had feared, that [Earthlink] has started charging me a monthly fee for keeping my e-mail address. I knew this would happen. When I called them two months ago to cancel my dial-up account, the woman convinced me to keep the e-mail address for a month for free. She never mentioned, of course, that they would start charging me $6 a month after that. So I called them AGAIN just now to close the account completely. Of course, I had to navigate the extensive phone menu AGAIN that doesn't have any option for cancelling an account. And then when I finally got a live person, he put me on hold for ten minutes before someone in the cancellation department picked up. And then, she had all these questions about why I wanted to close my account. And she wouldn't let up. I finally just said, look, cancel the damn account I just don't need the e-mail address and I don't want to deal with you anymore. And then she insisted that I should keep the e-mail address for "free" for another month, of course not mentioning that after the month they would start charging me again. Grrrr. Then I got angry and told her to close down the whole thing AGAIN and that I don't want anything to do with them again. She then said that they would close the account at the end of the biling cycle -- on the 5th of October. I said I would prefer it be closed right away to avoid any problems, but she said that she could not do that. If I get another charge from them, I am totally going to go ballistic. Stupid business practices that keep charging you for services and offering you "free" months when you want to cancel. Grrrr.

      >> 7:50 PM
 

It's insane how much I love my puppy. I'm not allowed to love anything this much.

He just barked at me when I was singing loudly and off-key at him.

      >> 4:46 PM
 

Woo! I just got official notice that my paper on rethinking Asian American jurisprudence through queer legal critique got accepted for the [Asian Americans and the Law] conference next spring. I really want to go to the conference and am excited that I will also be going "officially" to present a paper. I want to see every single one of the invited speakers. They are all awesome scholars of work I've admired since I started delving into Asian Americanist work.

      >> 12:15 PM
 

Sunday, September 26, 2004

[Black Cat Crossed Pass]:

The Taiwanese people we know at work were constantly asking him when we were going to have kids, because we are so cute together and would have cute kids. And of course we are getting old by Taiwanese standards.

Ha ha. I know only too well. (See previous post.)

      >> 7:59 PM
 

OMG! I just got accosted by my grandmother on the phone. It's awful! AUGH! She was asking if I had a girlfriend! And I didn't know how to respond! And she kept asking if there were Chinese/Taiwanese girls here for me to date. And she kept saying that I shouldn't be picky since I'm getting old, and I should just go ahead and marry any Taiwanese girl I find. AUGH!!!!!! Plus, she doesn't speak English, so we had this stilted conversation in Taiwanese. I can understand it mostly, but I have the hardest time finding the words to respond to her questions or forming the words in my own mouth. AUGH!!!!! Grandmother! Asking when I'm getting married!! Augh!!!!!!!!

When she first asked, she was like, do you understand what I'm asking? And I said yes, but I should've been like, ummm, why would I want a girlfriend? Don't you know I have a lovely boyfriend? Ha ha. If only.

I'm such a bad grandson, too. She's actually in South Carolina at my cousin's place. But I'm avoiding driving down to visit them even though technically I could make a weekend trip out of it. AUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I may have to reconsider my friend's (joking) offer to get married so that we can get a whole bunch of gifts from family and then have a celibate marriage "apart" with our own boyfriends.

      >> 2:41 PM
 


Look! It's fall! Orange, yellow, and red leaves! Yay!


Fall is definitely my favorite time of year here. And today I noticed some wonderful signs that the season is finally here.

I'm having a late lunch of more vegetables-and-lentil soup with pita bread after returning from the [2004 Carrboro Music Festival] where I saw friends [The Standbys] perform. It was a nice afternoon to be out listening to live music. Lots of people came over to say hello to Giles. It's weird how dogs are one of nature's most effective social lubricants (after alcohol, of course).

      >> 2:21 PM
 

So, my brother is planning on making a go of becoming an actor. Fueled by rage against the infamous [William Hung's] pandering to crass racist love, my brother went out to act in some independent films. Though he has been in just a few supporting roles for some low-budget films, he has found the camaraderie of other would-be actors refreshing and encouraging for his goal of challenging film and media stereotypes of Asian American men from the inside. In the last few months, my brother has also gone out and gotten head shots, sent them out, and gotten a contract with an agency in LA in commercial and print advertisements. Now, he just has to figure out how to tell the parents about his plans and decide how best to make the move to LA (get his own place, move in with a friend, crash for a few months with friends....). It's really exciting to see him dive into this work, actively researching what it takes to become an actor, talking to people about their experiences in the acting world, and so on.

Link o' the day: [States Writes], a directory of states' newspapers and some blogs with color-coded presidential voting expectations.

      >> 11:25 AM
 

Saturday, September 25, 2004

The Study Abroad application deadline is this coming Monday. One of my summer class students asked me for a recommendation last week, and I gladly wrote him one. He's only the third or fourth student to ask a recommendation of me. And so far all of the students who have asked me for letters have been ones I'd gladly recommend for their pursuits. But just now, I checked my e-mail and saw that I received today a message from a student I had asking me to write her a letter for a Study Abroad program, deadline on Monday. Though I recognized her name, she was definitely not a student who stood out in class. I looked her up in the directory and figured out I must've had her two years ago. In any case, I wouldn't know what to say in the letter. I think I might just tell her I don't have time. Or just respond on Monday and pretend I didn't get it until then.... In any case, I always ask my students to provide me information about the program/job to which they are applying as well as some draft of their application essay or a statement about why they are interested in applying. I'm not sure this student would be able to give me that material in time if she is just now looking for people to write her letters....

      >> 7:17 PM
 

I've been in a cooking mood lately. At least I'm trying to convince myself I am. I'm going to see if I can go a whole week without eating out. Last night I made baked potatoes for Rob (and a little for me). He didn't get home until almost 2 am, though, so they languished in a lukewarm oven for a little over an hour. They were still pretty good, if a bit cool.

Right now I'm waiting for my vegetables-and-lentil soup to finish simmering. I'm starved. It's really late for lunch. (I didn't wake up until 11 am, though.)

      >> 3:24 PM
 

I wanna see [The Forgotten]. Can I see The Forgotten?

      >> 2:33 PM
 

We went for a quick stroll again to the lake, this time with the boyfriendly guy. I am so sore from that little bit of jogging yesterday.


At the water's edge.



Look at his crossed hind legs!



Hiding under the wooden bench.


I can't believe Giles hasn't died from poor care yet.

      >> 1:40 PM
 

Friday, September 24, 2004


Sunset at Jordan Lake.


I took Giles dog for a quick run around a short loop at [Jordan Lake]. It was dark and spooky in the woods at sunset, but we were rewarded with a pleasant view at the lake edge halfway through the loop. Now Giles has settled down a bit and isn't whining pitifully like he was when I first got home. Silly puppy; he'd only been home alone for three hours.

      >> 6:51 PM
 

Zeste | Aug 04, 04 | 12:03 am ET
 
No soul. Just look at her. No soul whatsoever. And to sell your soul to be a columnist of all things! If she was a rock star, I could understand it. But to be a fucking columnist!
 
Ack.

Ha ha. Some great [photoshopped parodies] of Malkin's In Defense of Internment and accompanying comments.

      >> 9:36 AM
 

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Back from a wonderful talk by [George Elliott Clarke] on the differences between African-American and African-Canadian writing. Comparative Canadian-US projects are really interesting because they really reveal the US-centered-ness of much cultural criticism about diasporic communities and identities, especially stuff on race. Clarke's major argument was that African-Canadian writing and "African-Canadian" itself are not at all equivalent to African-American writing and "African-American" for many reasons including the different relationship of Canada to Europe (England and France) as well as its relationship to America.

Giles now has both a stuffed duck and a stuffed frog for play.

      >> 9:56 PM
 

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

[Run by native people, the museum tries to show them as a diverse, vibrant ethnic group, rather than a quaint curiosity of the American past. It is also yet another high-wattage sign that Indian country is in a new era of advancement and hope, even as it continues to be weighed down by poverty, poor education and social and medical ills.]

      >> 6:24 AM
 

It's probably bad that I hate everything.

Just waking up from having totally passed out on the couch. Rob came home in the meantime, hung out for a bit, played with the dog, and then retired to the bedroom. I must have been grumpy when he tried to wake me up to move to bed. Sigh. I wish I were more "adult" and had my life and time under control. Instead, I'm staying out here at the table continuing with grading.

I dream of a world in which people don't have to work a job (or [four]) to live but one in which people conscientiously spend their lives making it a wonderful, vibrant place in which to live.

      >> 3:13 AM
 

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

OMG! The guy at the movie theater box office just totally laughed at me. Granted, I was asking a stupid question -- do you allow dogs in the theater? -- but he actually LAUGHED at me. Feh.

      >> 3:02 PM
 

[We are witnessing here a well-known phenomenon: a lie, sufficiently repeated, is starting to transform itself into truth.]

Yucky. I was on the phone with a friend watching the end of Michelle Malkin's q&a session on BookTV. We screamed at her. We gasped at the arrogance of her responses. She is such an idiot. She tells lies like she is the only one able to see the truth. She argues that all Japanese/Americans during WWII were rightfully imprisoned because there was this shadowy network of saboteurs. There has to date been absolutely no evidence that there were any saboteurs let alone well-organized networks of them. Scholars have long since proven how General DeWitt who drafted the memo to President Roosevelt about the danger of Japanese spies had no basis for his claims. And then Malkin also claims that since the west coast was under martial law, of course it was legal to spirit away Japanese/Americans and dispossess them of their property, adding that the martial law also named Germans and Italians as people to be watched. This addendum is entirely bullshit for two reasons. One is that German and Italian/Americans were not imprisoned in large scale and without exception like Japanese/Americans were (though I have a friend doing research on some possible exceptions she has uncovered of Japanese/Americans who were allowed to stay on the outside of the internment camp fences). Second is that one of the arguments against Japanese/Americans were that the immigrant generation were not US citizens and therefore still claimed allegiance to Japan. But, hello?, Japanese immigrants, as with all other Asian immigrants, were not allowed to naturalize. So in a feat of circular logic, the fact that US laws had barred Asian immigrants from naturalization to US citizenship was evidence of their continuing allegiance to their countries of origin. In contrast, German and Italian/Americans were not barred from naturalization and could become US citizens, thus "proving" that they were not beholden to Germany or Italy and therefore not risks for betrayal. (As far as I remember from history books, only German and Italian nationals were even monitored or imprisoned for alleged sabotage.)

      >> 7:57 AM
 

Monday, September 20, 2004

[Bérubé quoting Hall.] I'm of two minds about this argument by cultural studies people that lefties just don't get how incredibly successful righties are able to make of their policies and worldview the common sense understanding of things for the masses. I definitely agree that lefties need more nuanced analyses of why the masses of people agree with policies that really only injure them and help the rich. But I really don't agree with what some cult studs (such as one at my campus, to remain nameless) emphasize -- that righties understand political discourse better than lefties. I think the problem is that in terms of cultural analysis and critique, leftist have generated some of the most interesting and useful theories; unfortunately, right-wing politicians have co-opted and put into practical use those critiques by re-valuing the things that leftists want to devalue.

      >> 8:57 PM
 

Bored now. I finally picked up the sixth season of [Buffy] on dvd with my Borders rewards certificates. I am so tired right now. I should be grading papers. But I think I will go watch some Willow mayhem.

This teaching literature thing is both incredibly enervating and incredibly invigorating. Today we discussed Maxine Hong Kingston's Tripmaster Monkey and Herman Melville's Benito Cereno, respectively, in my women's studies and major American authors classes. Discussion in the first class, in the morning, was like trying to run through quicksand. The more I talked and posed questions, the more silent the students got and the more mired in that awkward silence of bad classes we got. Only one student out of the six actively took up my questions and tried to raise her own points about the first chapter of Kingston's novel. It really seemed like the other students hadn't really read or they were remarkably uninterested in what was going on. Kind of surprising, though, given their intense engagements with the other stuff we've read. And in this first chapter, there's a lot of crazy shit, to say the least. I mean, the protagonist Wittman literally goes ape shit -- he acts like a monkey in front of the woman he's alternately trying to impress and trying to "test" to see if she is "real" enough for him. I also thought that having discussed in a previous class meeting the Frank Chin - Maxine Hong Kingston controversy would allow them to see how Kingston is totally poking fun at Chin's masculinist rage and yearning for a heroic authenticity for Chinese Americans. Discussion in the afternoon class wasn't all that exciting, but at least the students began to frame a reading of the story in useful ways -- focusing on the depictions of slaves/savages, reading through the character of Captain Delano, and picking up the trustworthiness of narrative authority. What was exciting was last week's discussion of ["Bartleby"]. Wow did the students have a lot to say. I could recount all the things they said and the remarkable depth in which they analyzed the story. But frankly, I would prefer not to. (Ok, that was lame.)

      >> 7:17 PM
 

Sunday, September 19, 2004


Today, I got this cool "I hate everything" bunny at the vend-a-toy at K-Mart.

      >> 2:09 PM
 

Saturday, September 18, 2004

I hope this doesn't backfire on me, but I am so tired of people hotlinking images from my page for their guestbook profiles that show up whenever they post comments on their friends' web sites. I decided to swap out the images they stole from my page (and didn't even have the decency to save to their own server first) with [this beautiful picture] of our goddess the evil one Britney Spears. It's not that I feel upset my photos are being taken without acknowledgement or circulating the web out of my control because I know that putting images on the web means putting it at the mercy of people with web access, but I am annoyed that people are able to draw on my server to load these images repeatedly for their own site. I chose the image of B.S. not for any particularly misogynistic or lascivious reasons but because I thought it would best make the hotlinkers feel dirty and ashamed. Yes, I am vindictive. Given their personal web sites, they seem to be people who would be horrified to be associated with Britney in any way (as admirers, etc.). Grrrr. I'm also going to try to prevent [robots] from crawling my site since I think most of these hotlinkers are finding my images via search engines like wonderfully powerful [Google Image Search].

      >> 10:46 PM
 




I'm in my campus office right now with Giles. Poor puppy. He's totally terrified. I think he doesn't like the cold tile floor and the quietness of the building, devoid of human activity or noises from the world outside. He is being such a good dog now, though, as he always is when he's scared or sick. He isn't biting my hand when I feed him treats. He isn't whining or barking. He isn't jumping on things....

These past few weeks, I've been kind of caught off guard lots of moments with this overwhelming sense of happiness. I don't usually talk of these things for fear of jinxing it all, but isn't that just silly superstition? Is it silly to gush about being in love? And I'm not talking about with my new dog but with my wonderful Rob. It's not that I haven't felt this way all along, but for some reason these past few weeks these moments have felt like sudden realizations, like those moments when you feel that you are falling in love with someone for the first time. Maybe it all has to do with the fact that we are taking care of this dog together, sinking our teeth into that weird emotional morass of family-ness...

      >> 10:07 PM
 


      >> 6:49 PM
 

Friday, September 17, 2004

[Don't Think of an Elephant!]

      >> 9:21 AM
 

Thursday, September 16, 2004

From the candid camera files:






      >> 4:17 PM
 

Woo hoo! My computer's fixed and I'm back! It was weird not having an internet connection at home and also not having access to my documents or calendar. I think I must've missed some appointments in the last three days....

      >> 3:15 PM
 

Sunday, September 12, 2004

I've got CNN on in the background, and I swear, OMG, they're talking non-stop about terrorism and how vulnerable the US is. Every story either emphasizes how unprepared the US is, even three years after 9/11, or how inevitable a (nuclear) terrorist attack is. There have been "news" stories about how Al Qaeda operatives can easily buy nuclear weapons from North Koreans in Macao, how terrorism is endemic in the UK (regarding Northern Ireland), how the Russians are grieving over Chechen terrorism, etc. What are really odd to me are all the stories speculating on how a terrorist attack (nuclear, chemical, whatever) might actually play out targeting LA, NYC, or other major US cities. I know there are plenty of people who devote their lives to doing these studies, figuring out where rogue terrorist organizations can get their hands on nuclear weapons, and modeling what would happen in case of a terrorist attack, but it is still very odd for all of the "news" coverage to be on these possible nuclear terrorist attack scenarios. I guess that whole news about a mushroom cloud in North Korea (the US claims is not a nuclear blast) is really getting people worried.

      >> 10:17 PM
 

Thursday, September 09, 2004

I'm trying to teach doggy to speak. He's freaking out. I guess woofing at him isn't the way to go.

      >> 6:08 PM
 

Mmmm. Suffering through a rambling, pedantic talk. Glad for laptops and wireless access.

      >> 3:51 PM
 

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

So, groan. The day begins and I'm not prepared for classes at all. Plus, I have so much left to do in my prospectus by Friday. At least I know this in advance rather than the day of as it usually happens for me (that's when I would start working on it). Time for some speed reading and lesson planning.

      >> 6:55 AM
 

Tuesday, September 07, 2004


      >> 8:45 PM
 


OMG! Look what I got at the store today! Gummy Krabby Patties!!

      >> 8:22 PM
 

Aha! I just got rid of a cricket in the apartment with the help of my dog. I knew there had to have been a cricket inside this morning.

      >> 7:54 PM
 

Whitman as forerunner to blogger rebirths?

Forgive me for making this spurious connection, but I've just spent two weeks teaching [Whitman's poetry], and now I can't help but think that the interesting conflation of self and text in Whitman's work mirrors the way blogs, more than autobiographical or journal-like, seem to stand in for the author-function.

In particular, I'm thinking about how long-time bloggers often take hiatuses (hiati?), noting that when they return, they will have reorganized their lives, the purpose of their blogs, and the very presentation of their selves on-line. It's more than just simply redesigning a site or coming back after a writing break. There is this claim that the newer version somehow gets at the new person. And of course, there are also those bloggers who reincarnate themselves under new names, at new web sites, for various reasons including a desire for continued anonymity but also for that sense of reinventing themselves.

What is different in this comparison is that Whitman's Leaves of Grass was more of a closed text, even as he constantly added poems and revised old ones. There was a book that he published. That was his Leaves of Grass, and each new edition was somehow linked to his continuing growth as a person and poet. He also had that weird, partially-Transcendentalist vision of the self, soul, and universe that made it easier to claim the coincidence of person and poetry and world in some cosmic perfection.

I guess where I differ from both blogger rebirthers and Whitman is that I don't see my writing or site as being so fixed. It does somehow represent or get at who I am, but that entity -- the me -- is nowhere near stable, constant, or even in equilibrium. Some people think that means I've yet to find myself. I like to think that it means I will be ever-changing, driven by my pasts but never tied to them (or a singular version).

Whatever. I should totally be working on my prospectus now.

      >> 9:24 AM
 

P. S. I love my gas stovetop.

      >> 8:12 AM
 

We do live right next to a woods area, so the bug sounds are loud anyways. But I swear there is one of those whirring insects in my apartment right now or perhaps in the central air system. I can't pinpoint its location, but it is loudest against the wall farthest from the windows. The insect stops making noise whenever I approach that area, too.

I wished our doggy liked us at least half as much as he loves everyone else. :(

      >> 8:01 AM
 

Monday, September 06, 2004

My doggy is so over me. :(

Why do people link directly to images on my site on their web pages, especially without any acknowledgement?

      >> 9:29 PM
 

Oh yeah. [Happy Labor Day!] (As I go off to work...)

      >> 7:43 AM
 

OMG! This is so cool: [FROG DISSECTION]. It's an on-line dissection site. I think the only animals I dissected in science class were earthworms and squids (which mom volunteers then fried up for lunch). At one point I dissected a cow's eye as well. I don't think I could've done the fetal cat thing. *Shudder.* (Link via [this article] on Virginia's new law requiring alternatives to class dissections.)

      >> 6:41 AM
 

Where does the weekend go?

I've reverted to [General Foods International Coffee] at home rather than doing without any coffee. Can't say it's "real" coffee, but it does the job -- gives me a hot beverage with some coffee-like flavor. Maybe I'll get a coffee maker, one of those single-serve brew kinds, because I'm the only one who drinks coffee here (unless I can get Giles to love it) and try to have only one cup each morning.

Anyways, I'm sitting here with my hazelnut coffee and I'm wondering where the weekend went. I only just barely finished the reading for class this morning about six hours ago before going to sleep. I was so tired I didn't even hear my alarm go off the first two times this morning before I reset it for an hour later. (Rob had to get out of bed to calm Giles down because apparently the dog was growling at the alarm clock's beeping.)

Will today prove to be as unproductive as Saturday and Sunday? Only time will tell...

      >> 6:28 AM
 

Sunday, September 05, 2004


      >> 4:51 PM
 

Whoah. I didn't realize that annoying ["I'm Lovin' It"] jingle for McDonald's is a [Justin Timberlake] tune. It's also frightening to realize (constantly) how much this idea of consumer trends and being in touch with what makes people go into a buying frenzy is such a coveted thing. Consume or perish!




And am I being cynical or are all these various groups championing youth voting really just undercover target-marketing ploys? Look at [Declare Yourself], for example, (the group my [Christina] is involved with) that has a web site section called "ORDER STUFF."

      >> 2:55 PM
 

Hmmm... Is it true that Australia only has four international airports? I'm looking into plane tickets there for a conference around Thanksgiving that I want to attend. But it looks like over three thousand dollars is the price for a ticket! EEK!

      >> 10:16 AM
 

[Bob Mould on major record labels and mp3 blogs.]

      >> 9:33 AM
 

Ok, first things first. I gotta prepare for tomorrow's class, get that out of the way. And then I need to revise my dissertation prospectus substantially. I'm supposed to talk it over dinner tonight with some friends. And then with another set of friends, my writing group, I'll be sharing the actual writing on Tuesday. This thing needs to get into my faculty committee's hands by Friday. It's all happening too fast (but not fast enough!).

I got to clean up some dog poo this morning. Wasn't that fun? Apparently, he decided to leave us a present at some point last night between when Rob got home and when Rob put him in his crate for the night. The joys of dog ownership.....

Mmmmmm... [Teen, sinister rabbit get second chance]:

"Donnie Darko" may be the Everest of adolescent angst movies. A smart, emotionally troubled suburban teen wrestles with the usual stuff -- identity issues, bullies, well-meaning but clueless parents and various school absurdities -- and a few things considerably stranger. Early in the film he may enter a parallel universe involving events and images loaded with metaphysical and religious overtones, and he may get a chance to save the world.

      >> 8:51 AM
 

Saturday, September 04, 2004

Can you tell I totally need to be doing work right now? (And that I need serious color help?)

      >> 11:47 AM
 

Friday, September 03, 2004


      >> 5:27 PM
 


My weird-ass dog runs around the apartment,
whining, with his screaming rubber chicken.

      >> 4:43 PM
 

On my way home from class today, I checked out Roger Schonfeld's [JSTOR: A History]. I heard about this book back at the wedding I attended in New York. The author was one of my classmates. How jealous I am that someone my year already has a book out from an academic publisher! In any case, [JSTOR] rocks, and it'll be interesting to find out a bit about how it got started. I'm not sure if this particular book will make for the most exciting reading, though it does try to situate the emergence of JSTOR in discussions new information technologies, business and economic models for non-profit organizations, and academic libraries.

      >> 3:54 PM
 

Thursday, September 02, 2004

For some reason, the good people at the [Durham Animal Shelter] can't seem to get my last name spelled right. You'd think a monosyllabic last name would be the easiest to copy letter for letter correctly from all the forms I've filled out for them. Sigh.

      >> 5:06 PM
 

[Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?]

      >> 10:04 AM
 

I am way too proficient at wasting time....

I have gotten some e-mails sent out this morning, ones that I've been sitting on for months. I'm still trying to pin down a date and time for my dissertation prospectus meeting. Eeks. I'm hoping by the end of this month to be done with it all and just writing, writing, writing.

Now I'm off to Elmo's for breakfast!

      >> 8:42 AM
 

I've always found discourses of the past -- traumatic pasts, nostalgia, the importance of memories in identify-formation, and so on -- particularly compelling. But recently, I've decided that I am fed up with all this obsession over what happened in the past, the constant dwelling on things without any sense of moving on. I'm fed up with the idea that we are all doomed to repeat forever and ever in only slightly-changing iterations early moments in our lives, our first relationships, etc. I'm going to focus instead on the future, on futurisms, on futuristc things. I want to read more utopian fictions (that aren't covert lamentations of a lost past). I would even prefer dystopian fiction for the sheer possibility of moving forward, even if it is towards destruction. I'm kidding myself here, of course, since both utopian and dystopian fictions inevitably get narrated through the idea of the past as well. I'm looking for narratives of constant becoming, of the always possible, rather than of what was (or was lost). If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know.

      >> 8:15 AM
 

Wednesday, September 01, 2004

Dude, what gives? Have I mentioned how I hate Chinese people? I just saw Hero. What a load of tyrant-apologia crap! Epic and beautifully shot, but totally just wrong wrong wrong. Blah blah uniting warring kingdoms. Blah blah blah imposing a dominant language. Blah blah blah bringing peace to the land. Just totally crazy justifications for the imperial ideologies of the Qin emperor. And of course there's no acknowledgement that China in all its vastness really does still contain many different ethnic groups and regions that would prefer to be separated from China at large (Tibet is the most famous example). It's all yay celebrate the greatness of our land China as if everything were peachy keen. As Rob put it, wow, finally a movie celebrating the poor misunderstood tyrant. I'm sure there are loads of people having a field day writing about the popularity of this film in China two years ago.

      >> 8:13 PM