Workloads

Finals week is over, but that does not mean that work is over for me. I'm not sure if I have mentioned this here before, but I have some incompletes left over from the previous terms. Therefore, I am planning on taking off the next term to finish these incompletes up. This means developing a solid work routine that I stick to: read, write, meet with professors, and write again. My old system of working like crazy at the last minute of a deadline, or working day and night for a handful of days to get a final paper done, is dead and finished. That system does not work anymore. My plan is to develop a balanced approach where I can write every day, and then take time off to decompress from the stress of the exertions. I suppose this is not unlike starting an exercise routine in that it requires a lifestyle change for a permanent result. The raw intellectual ability is not an issue, but rather the issue is the development of new work skills and basic discipline.


Winter

But I think that this is not such a bad thing. The temptations to do other things, like watch television, as a means to avoid sinking under the weight of unpleasant emotions must be overcome. This is where the lessons of Beowulf come back to me. The traditional means we use to slay our monsters do not always serve us. Like Beowulf, one must be able to toss aside the sword and use one's hands to overcome their Grendel, even though it may feel more difficult. These next few weeks will be a new beginning, a pseudo-do-over.

Volcano Again!

In October, I wrote this brief post when Mt. St. Helens (Aka: Loowit) first began getting attention. I am reposting the camlink here because the mountain is rumbling again.



As you may have heard in the national news, the volcano had a relatively small eruption yesterday with a plume of ash and steam. I'm just a bit too far away to see it from my house, but my parents saw it from their house, which is still pretty far away. I did not live in the Pacific Northwest when Mt. St. Helens really blew its top in the eighties so some of the information that comes across the television news is interesting.

For example, if ash falls on the windshield of your car, don't use the wiper blades if you can help it because you'll scratch the heck out of the glass. Furthermore, your car's air filter will clog up with ash something horrible. And if you happen to live near the mountain, move already (or get volcano insurance). The daylight images from the Volcanocam have been really interesting lately. Check it out.

Two Academic Papers

The building that you see below is the place where I should be spending the majority of the next several weeks. I have two very important papers to write, but I am having some difficulty deciding what they should be about. Briefly, the first one should be about the nature of the "Victorian City," more specifically 19th century London. The second paper needs to be connected to the idea of "Sacred Violence." I do not have any strong leads on either paper, and I fear that this might have something to do with not knowing as much Literary Theory as I think I should.


Library

For the first paper, the Victorian City, I am completely at sea metaphorically speaking. I figure that I might try to do something about the nature of physical space and how class differences worked in those spaces. I guess what I mean to say really is this: if you were rich in the 19th century you had more space, more mobility, but if you were poor, you were more confined. Unfortunately, I don't know if this is something that I ground in some kind of theory. Right now, this thought is an observation and does not rise to the status of a fully realized, academic thesis yet. An added restriction for this paper is that it must include some kind of connection to Dickens Bleak House, but what that connection is I haven't the foggiest idea yet.

The second paper I may have better luck with. I am going to return to some earlier work that I have done on Tim O'Brien's book, The Things They Carried. All of the stories in this collection are about a group of American soldiers during (and after) the Vietnam War. I have managed to write two other papers about two different stories in this collection before. I think I can write another paper about a third. By using "How to Tell a True War Story," and some research I did on psychological Trauma, I may be able to analyze how this seemingly secular war story has an element of sacred Trauma within it. However, I will be leaning heavily on the scapegoat elements within it and that may be stretching the story further than it will bend. But there are other stories in the collection that I could try work with as well.

I think my main project will be to swallow my pride, gather my courage, and talk to my professors about my paper plans. Even though they may not be happy with my admitting that I am not further along in the process as I should be, it looks like I am going to need some assistance to get something turned in to them by the end of the term. With the end of the term in mind, I am really going to be focusing on catching up on my reading assignments during the next four days. My only choice is to work steadily through this mess rather than doing what I normally do: which, specifically, is finding novel ways to avoid it.

Dreariness

The end of the term is fast apporaching, so with that in mind, I really need to find a to get all of this term's work done in the next three weeks. Projects of note are two seminar papers, and one book review, which of course, requires reading the book. I have been doing pretty good with my assignments lately, but even still with my increasing productivity, I still have a backlog of stuff to do. This past week has been characterized with meetings with Professors and Program Directors. I think I have passed beyond regret stage about what I should have done, but I still can't help think that I really should have done this during last year.


Dreary Winter

As far as my personal life goes, I think I am getting a grip on my the balance between school and personal non-academic interests. Although I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination, I have found that my knowledge as a blogging hobbyist is proving useful and interesting to the few people who know me. I have a paper pending about the nature of blogs and hyperlinks, but it has been a few months since I have worked on it, and I already see that I am going to have to revise it. Some of the information is already out of date.

As for the above picture, I think it represents the kind of drab winter days that have been visiting here lately. The iron grey skies carry a chill that is most intense in the mornings when you have to scrape the ice off your car's windshield. On these days, it is almost a disappointment if the sun happens to come out in the afternoon. If, like me, you are dressed for the cold, the afternoon combination of the lunch induced drowsiness and unexpected warmth sap all my internal reserves for concentrated study. Plus, for some reason, the whole building in which I work is constantly overheated. Even if it is only 40 degrees outside, it is sometimes necessary to open a window.

Resolved and Figment

I'll try to post here a bit more frequently if I can. Now that I met with the appropriate advisors and professors, and now that I have resolved some of my issues here at work/school, I feel I can do a bit better about posting with more consistency. Of course, there will still be stretches of days at a time when I will have to put my blogging priority on the back burner (probably no longer than a week), but I am still committed to it and therefore will continue to do it for the forseeable future. I think I am fairly visual person, and I am enjoying posting pictures here on my site. I am not a photographer by any stretch of the imagination, but I think the pictures look nice here, and it can be an interesting hobby of sorts when I am in the mood.


Winter Fountain

Today, after the high-water-mark of resolving a months long school issue, I decided that I needed a short break from the study routine, so I spent a little over an hour at the University Ary Museum looking at some of Andy Warhols' most famous prints. Of course there were the popular Soup Cans and Marilyn Monroe displays. There were also some interestings ones of Jimmy Carter and JFK. I am not sure what to make of Warhol. Now that I am older, and can look back with some perspective (no pun intended), I realize how many people in the 80's tried to copy him. The large blocks of bold neon colors and the sketchy lines next to those colors, most of which is layered on a screen printing of a celebrity really brought that realization home. Seeing his works in person is really a lot different than looking at them in some art book. I have a new found appreciation for his ability to make a artistic composition out of his "manufactured" approach.

But part of me wonders if Warhol should not be remembered most as a comedian than as an artist. Some of his statements really seemed to me that he enjoyed putting the public on. He claimed that he thought it would be best if instead of dying, one could just "vanish" or turn into "sand." He also said that he did not want anything printed on his tombstone, he just wanted a plain slab of rock. But in the same quote, he amended his comment to indicate that the one word he wanted on his tombstone should be "Figment."

Nineteenth and Twenty-Fourth Centuries

It has been over a week since I last posted, for which, all I can say is that the delay is like a result of my struggling with the increasing press of work at school. It is time to really start thinking about term paper topics for my seminar papers due in about five weeks. Research should start to take priority which means that I should be spending more time reading in the library than anything else. I would really like to read at home, but I have found that the allure of shows like Battlestar Galactica, Futurama, and Star Trek Deep Space Nine is nearly impossible to resist. My Victorian City class demands that I spend more time in the 19th century than the 24th. Thus, I commit myself to the Library on campus.


Rain

As far as spending time in the 19th century goes (specifically: London, England), it has actually been quite interesting. In 1851, there was a "Great Exhibition" of nations that drew large crowds to the "crystal palace" to see the so-called great accomplishments of mostly Western Nations. For example, the Americans brought their sewing machine (or Singer brought it, I guess). But one of my favorite displays was one from Germany which displayed the new achievements in Taxidermy. One display of animals had about five stuffed cats drinking tea, while another cat played the piano. It reminds me of the famous "Dogs playing Poker" painting that you see in thrift stores. This particular German display of animals in human poses was so popular that two policeman had to guide the crowd through the exhibition and prevent the usual crowd type problems. In any event, that is all for now. More on all of this later, I suppose.

Graduate Students and the Four Groups

On Tuesday, the professor for my class veered away from the lecture for a few minutes to tell us about how grad. students are the only group at the university who "know" they are not the top of the educational heap. He said that there a four groups at every university: Faculty, Administrative Staff, Undergraduates, and Graduates. The first group, Faculty, can say, "without us, there would be nothing to teach." The Administrative staff can say, "well, without us to organize the schedules, facilitate the registration, and pay everyone's salaries, nothing would happen." And even the undergraduates, who make up the majority of the student body can respond with, "we are the people who pays the money into the system by taking these classes. Without us, there would be no-one to teach."


Working at Night

The only group who really "knows" that they are NOT the top of the heap are the graduate students. They are the only ones who recognize that they are working for some other purposes, usually another professor. And the graduate students wind up doing the bulk of the drudgery work such as "grading papers, doing class prep. work, etc." I admit that I haven't heard this before, and when the professor said it, I felt that it was at least true for the college where I am at currently. Perhaps it is true for all colleges. I know that I have graded more than my share of papers, and I haven't even taught a course yet.

As far as my own academic work goes, I am still behind. But, I think I can catch up. I have a plan that might work, and what is more important, a new attitude. I now know that all I can do is my best work and turn it in, which essentially means to me that I don't have to strive for perfection. I can strive for "good enough." I have heard people say this before, but only now is the realization of it sinking in.

Shouting

The other night I was shopping at my local grocery store because I had run out of milk and eggs. It was about 10:00 p.m. at night, and on Saturday night. From the looks of the shopping crowd, there were more than a few decrepit-looking bachelors or young people on a "beer run." This is what happens when you shop at the grocery store at night. If you shop at the other end of the day, say around 6:00 a.m., you will be more likely to run into people over the age of 60. In any event, this stop at the grocery started out to be uneventful, and like most things in my life lately, dull.


Summer Tree

When I parked and got out of my car, a young woman, college aged shouted at me: "JOE!" I stopped and looked at her out of the corner of my eye. I wasn't sure she was talking to me. "Hey, JOE!" Okay, now she was talking to me. I looked at her. The passenger was laughing. The woman shouting at me, oddly enough, looked a little shocked, perhaps even slightly scared. Something weird was up, and she expected some kind of an answer. I said, "uh, no--sorry. I'm not Joe." "You not!?," she asked incredulously. "No," I said and proceeded to walk away. Next, for some reason, she decided to start cursing at me and saying some things that would make a sailor blush. "HEY! YOU &*&%^?! Why don't you (expletive) effing (expletive) You (expletive, curse word, and you guessed it: expletive)!!!!" As she was still shouting at me when I had made it halfway from my car to the front of the grocery store, I decided to stop. I turned around and walked straight over to her car. I got within 5 feet of her car and made a big show of reading her license plate. She stopped yelling. Without saying a word, I walked inside the store and did my shopping.

When I was done, her car was gone. So I went home without incident, and went to bed an hour or so later. But, this kind of thing really makes me wonder. Why do people do this to each other? I am a stranger to her, and the funny thing is, I think she knew I wasn't "Joe" all along. For some reason, maybe the thrill of adrenaline, she wanted to yell at me. In a weird way, the whole shouting episode makes wish it was August. I took the above picture then, and I keep thinking of how I would do some things over again if I go back in time to then.

A Slump to End Them All

As you can see from the bottom of my post, it is about ten o'clock. I got back from my class on violence about an hour ago. And, believe it or not, I have two books to read in the next thirty six hours. Subtract the time I need for sleeping, eating, an going to an appointment to the dentist tomorrow, and you'll find that time is actually much shorter than that. I've been able to read books in a single day before, but 650 pages of small typeface is going to be a killer, and I am not sure that I can really do it. It has me a bit depressed. Okay, I'll admit it, more than "a bit." But there is nothing that I can really do about it.


Bicycle and Car

Although I no longer have a cold and feel fine physically, the rather immediate school stress combines with the ongoing and increasingly difficult stress of my new home situation (I'll not go into it). I know it is a bore to read about other people's problems, especially on other people's blogs--but I got to tell you--I'm having more trouble than I normally do. Another way of saying all of this is: I actually have some good reasons for complaining this time.

One of the ways that I have been coping is by working on my webcomic in brief intervals during the day. It gives my brain a rest from the constant studying, and it helps me stop dwelling on my problems for a time. I admit I am becoming more attached to the webcomic than I ever suspected I would be. I really want it to become more popular, like Beaver and Steve or something like it. And I wish I had more feedback about my comic and how to make it better. My current stats suggests that traffic is increasingly slowly, but I wish it could go a little faster.

Out of Commission

For the last five days, I've been pretty sick with a nasty head cold. One the consequences of which has been that the dentist appointment that I had scheduled for today was cancelled. I've been spending most of my time writhing on the couch under a blanket or lolling on my bed looking like death-warmed-over. When I've been forced to attend class, I've tried to sit in the back next to window and cough discretely into my sleeve. Yes, I'm sure I annoyed the hell out of everyone with my icky display of illness, but when your graduate course only meets ten times in a term, you have to go to every class. However, that has been balanced by my recent realization that most of the students in the class were nerdier than I remember.


Reach for the Sky

So, I've been trying to do my best during the last few of days of illness, but it hasn't been too easy. The physical illness, in a way, is a just a token of the larger, more intense personal issues with which I have been struggling during this past half month. Work, which for an English Graduate student means reading and writing, has been both a refuge and a distraction from these other problems. Currently, I'm reading Charles Dickens Bleak House, a novel which is supposed to paint a portrait of 19th century London. It is sometimes been a challenge to wrap my poor, ill and infected head around a Victorian sentence structure, but I have been able to follow the gist of the plot anyway. Also, I've been reading Flannery O'Connor. There's nothing like a weird story than one written by her. And, of course, Faulkner will be coming soon. But by that time, I hope to be feeling much better.

School Again

The first week of classes here at the University are over, but I am not sure that I have fully got in the swing of things yet. Too much has happened during the last three or four weeks for me to have fully processed all of it yet. In many ways, I am still trying to recover some lost equilibrium. I know people talk about finding their "centers" or becoming a "centered" person, and I think that is what I may be trying to do, but I admit that I hate that terminology and cliche.


Farm Chickens

One of the major things on my plate for this week is figuring out how to resolve what, exactly, I plan to do in September, nine months from now. Nine months from now seems like a ridiculously far away date right now, but if I am planning on getting a PhD., I will need to apply to a school during this next week. It would have been better if I applied during the first of part of December, but as I was functioning on such a basic level emotionally, I was barely able to meet some basic needs. To be honest, I am still having a hard time thinking or planning for the future, but circumstances demand that I do, so reluctantly I will. This is the first thing on my to do list for Friday morning. If I can crank out the applications, I may still have a decent chance. I am still waiting for the results of my GRE English subject test, something needed for applications. I will let you know how I did when I get them.

Birthday Sabbatical

Well, I didn't plan on it but it seems that I have taken a month long, winter break, sabbatical. I won't go into any details about it here because it is too personal. Suffice it to say that I haven't been doing too well personally. I've had to go through some major life changes, especially within the last two days. These are the kinds of things that stay with a person for a long time. And even though I never seem to stop saying it here on the blog, I really am going to be super busy for the next few weeks. The reason: I am finally going to complete my unfinished school work. Everything is on the line.

On another note, today is my birthday. I don't normally come up with new year's resolutions because I am thinking about B'day kinds of things, so I am too distracted. But this year, I think I will try to go to the gym more often, learn to cook, develop my webcomic more, be more reliable, and generally be more consistent and confident as a person. Oh, and I will finish all of my school work. This summer and fall will be very interesting regardless of anything I do.

Finals

So this will be a very quick post just to let everyone know that I am knee-deep in work right now trying to slog the last of the term's papers. It is amazing how work these silly things can be, and perhaps the most frustrating thing about writing papers is that no matter how many of them I write, they never get any easier to do. In fact, sometimes, they are considerably harder. Of course, this could be due to a variety of reasons: my personality, the course level, the increasing demands of professors, etc.

Currently, I am working a paper for No-No Boy by John Okada. I think that it is a great book and could probably give a pretty good formalistic (note: jargon) reading of the book without doing any extra research. But of course, research is absolutely required, so the desk in my office is slathered in academic papers that only a handful of people have ever really read. But, I am not complaining. Last year, I wrote a thirty page bibliography for research I had done for my first graduate level paper. It was one of the most challenging things I had ever done, but I was glad I did it. I suspect that I'll be glad when I finally get this work done as well. I can't wait until it is all finished.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

For the Thanksgiving Holiday here in the States, I visited my girlfriend's family and had a wonderful meal of turkey, ham, and broccoli. (I know Canada already had their Thanksgiving a month before.) I wanted to post a picture of the delicious meal, but unfortunately my skills with the digital camera were sorely lacking the day I took the picture: everything turned out grey. It was an interesting holiday in that the most memorable part of it was spent raking leaves for my girlfriend's uncle who had recently had heart surgery and was still in the hospital. The raking work was messy, but I like the fact that we were helping out someone who really needed it. The town in which they live is very pretty, and I realized being there that part of me missed it. I hoped they enjoyed sharing their holiday with me, and that I was not too much trouble.


Thanksgiving Visits

That weekend, I made a special trip by myself to visit my family. (The picture above is of the barn at their place.) Most everyone was at my parent's house this time as my sister had driven up from her college in California. I spent some time catching up with them about what they were doing. I took a lot of pictures, but with exception of a few non-identifying photos of things like the barn, I won't be posting them here on the blog. They're the kind of family photos most people would find boring anyway. As for the nutria I mentioned in the last post, I haven't seen any lately, but wouldn't you know, I did see a possum. Sometimes, you can't win.

Ned the Nutria

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of ever seeing a nutria, then let me paint you a picture. Imagine a New York rat: a long tailed, beady-eye animal, with large teeth protruding front teeth. Now, imagine that rat growing to the size of a small beaver, throw it into some waterway like a creek, a ditch, or even marsh, let it live there to munch on weeds and whatever else it eats.

Now imagine that it is dark. You have come home two hours ago. And because you live in crummy student housing, you need to take your laundry to a building across the parking lot. You walk past the bushes and assume that the rustling you hear is just the neighborhood cat, a pleasant but annoying creature always trying to sneak into other people's apartments. While looking at the bushes for the invisible cat, you nearly miss stepping on the giant rat creature obliviously munching on acorns under your apartment mailbox. Since you have startled it, it dashes off towards the creek with an animal burst of speed, which startles you. Simultaneously, the rustling in the bushes dashes off towards the creek. After removing the various laundry items that you, in a fright, accidentally threw up into the oak tree, you realize you have met a nutria.


Ned's Home

I had called a couple of times before to complain about these rat like disease carriers, but today, I finally went to visit the apartment manager to complain in person. As the creek behind the apartment we live in is actually a wildlife refuge, the manager says that he will have to call the fish and wildlife department. I know that the nothing will likely be done because, as I go to a state college, and the creek is a local park, I am officially in bureaucratic purgatory. Ned the Nutria, you have won the day my friend. If I can capture him on camera, I will try to post the picture here. For now, I can only be content to post a picture of the creek in which Ned lives.

Fall Changes

It has been a full nine days since my last post. Things are getting busy around here, especially because it is getting closer to the end of the term, and I have a lot of work that I need to complete. I've got about two and half essays to write in about as many weeks. I'm not sure that I will be able to get it all done, but I have definitely changed some things about the way I have been working in the past. Rather than keep doing the same thing with more intensity, hoping things would somehow change, I decided I needed to do some completely different things to try and effect a permanent change.



Money has suddenly become an issue, which, is seriously making me think I should apply for a job over the winter break. I have noticed a few temporary agencies around town, and considering how winter shopping season is about to get in full swing, I figure I should be able to get a job an earn a few hundred dollars. I definitely need the cash. Still, I try to maintain my sanity in small ways: through time spent with my girlfriend, taking digital pictures when I can, and working on my comic occasionally. It definitely helps.

Fish Dreams

Last night, I dreamed I was a small exotic fish in a very large municipal pond of some kind. I enjoyed the wash of water rushing through my gills, and I enjoyed the strength with which my body threw itself against the barely rocking currents. Swimming forward towards the pond's above-water concrete edge, over towards the waving underwater vegetation and the kelp-like shapes of the fresh water plants, I found myself caught in the tall leaves, leaves which were poisoning me. The shock of the idea of being poisoned affected me more than the mere reality of it. Assuming a human shape, I climbed out over the edge of the pond to try and find the comfort of people I knew would take care of me, cover me with a warmth that would negate the poison of the leaves that were prickling at my damp skin.


Fish

Although I enjoy dreams in which I am other animals or people, I did not enjoy this one too much. At the same, for some reason, I can not stop thinking about it. Here it is nearly twenty-four hours after I had the dream, and I can still hold some of the imagery of it in my mind. Most dreams leave me after being awake for twenty minutes. It has affected me on a deeper level than I guess I really want it to. On a completely different note, I do appreciate the poetry of the dream, even though it bothers me.

Projects and Introspection

Last night, I finally finished a minor project for school that I had been working on for the past couple of weeks, and, thankfully, I think that I managed to do rather well on it. I will know for sure when I get my grade for it, but the instructor told our group that she thought we had did well. I definitely needed the academic ego boost. It will help when I turn my attention this week to the unfinished projects I am still working on from last term.

Primarily, we were discussing John Okada's No-No Boy, which for me, is a novel that depicts a young Japanese-American man's struggle to define what it means to be an American in a society that had rejected him. Although I live on the West Coast of the U.S.A., I think that we do not hear enough about the internment of Americans in these camps, even now when such discussions--hell, "cultural battles"--are being waged over what it means to be an American. There are all kinds of memorials, observances, and reminders of other parts of our history, why not this part? Just as most kids on the west coast here know about Lewis and Clark, they should know about this as well. If anyone ever had a desire to read this book, they should read it as soon as they can.


Waterfall Fountain

Finally, despite this press of work, yesterday my girlfriend and I decided that a trip the beach was necessary to take a time out from all of the stress and hassle that normally builds up from daily living. Just as one has to occasionally clear out the fridge from spoiled food, or clear out the accumulations of clutter in your living room, one should clear the soul and spirit from the clutter of daily routine with a refreshing communion with nature. There really is no place like the beach. I wish we had taken pictures, but we did not have a camera with us. Today at least, even though I am immersed in the daily routine of work again, I can still enjoy the mental images of yesterday's sunset at the coast and enjoy the feelings that were inspired by time well spent with my girlfriend.

NaNoWriMo

One of the things that I've always wanted to do was write a novel. Of course, I've dabbled with writing for several years, the most significant portion of which has been free verse poetry. (I try to take an imagist tack in the poetry as much as possible, and therefore I avoid meter, rhyme, and other things traditionally considered poetry. Like I said, I am a dabbler.) But, I have not really delved much into prose, except for a couple of ridiculously angsty short stories I tried to write on my own in my early twenties and a handful of short stories I wrote in my creative writing college classes. Therefore, when I came across the NaNoWriMo website, I figured it seemed like a good thing to try. Short for National Novel Writing Month, the NaNoWriMo group encourages everyone to write a novel in a single month and to keep track of their progress on their site. I figured, what the heck, why not give it a shot? As it is completely free, I created a user profile and signed up.





Their basic advice about writing is pretty sound. The thing they say is that the most difficult thing about writing is pounding out the first draft. Having written countless college essays and term papers, I can concur. Many of my composition courses, or training classes to become a composition instructor, have said the same thing. Consequently, emphasizing quantity over quality, NaNoWriMo is encouraging participants to write 50,000 words during November. As I still have a lot of my own work to do (writing several essays for college), I already know that I will fall far, far short of this goal. As with all of my creative writing, I only intend to dabble, which means I will work on this "novel" during slow moments, or when I can't stand to write another academic word. These brief moments of novel writing will be a way of loosening the stiff writing muscles for the heavier work of writing term papers. (I haven't forgotten which side my bread is actually buttered on.)

And I have a past history of doing something similar to this. During my undergraduate days, I would often try to write a poem or two (usually a bad one) before launching into writing a rough draft of an assigned paper. The assigned paper would generally come more quickly and be bit better after doing so. It is roughly analogous to stretching before running a marathon. And that is how my priorities are going to be, the real marathon is not writing a novel, but getting my own work done. The stretching will be the NaNoWriMo project. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Progress and Outlook

I finally got my computer cord during the end of last week, and I have been catching up on my internet usage for the past couple of days. I am also trying to get as caught up as I can on some unfinished projects at school. Yes, I have two final papers left over from the previous term that I need to finish quickly, as well as final papers from this term that I need to start soon. For those of you who are keeping score, these two papers that need to be finished are completely different from the previous two papers that I had talked about in months past. I did not do too badly on those papers, although I wish I had done them sooner.

Tonight, I am going home to clean up the house for upcoming inspections from the student housing office. Lest you think me an incorrigible slob, I must tell you that I am not being singled out for said inspections. Since I go to a state university, and have student housing (which by default makes it government housing), the entire student complex of over 1000 units is being inspected. They did this last term and I passed with flying colors, but that was merely because I had barely lived in the place for more than a few weeks before they came over. Now, after a full year, the house has more of a lived in feel, instead of the bare, stark, institutional feel it had back then. Consequently, I will need to make sure that the house is clean top to bottom. It should not be too hard.

But then it will be back to working on my papers. I am going to need to have the one done by tomorrow night or Wednesday. I think I can do it, but it will need some solid dedication on my part and a commitment not to get to get distracted.



Yesterday, I read the novel The Flower Drum Song by C.Y. Lee. According to the instructor, this was popular novel about a family in Chinatown that came under attack in the seventies for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about Asians. After reading, I have to admit that I was uncomfortable with some of the portrayals of women in the book, but I chalked it up as being a product of its time (which was the late 1950's). Of course, the book doesn't come close to the 1961 Rodgers and Hammerstein movie musical of the same name for stereotypes. In fact, the movie blows past harmful stereotypes straight into full-on racism and sexism. The fresh-off-the-boat Chinese woman Mei Li has no other desire than to get married to a stiff shirt who suffers from a father who apparently acts too traditional. I won't go into too much detail except to say that the younger son of this too-traditional father is wearing either a New York Giants baseball uniform or a 1776 American Revolutionary fighter costume through half of the movie. I did like the Samuel Adams Fong (no kidding!) character in that he seemed to be channeling a kind of Dean Martin persona with all the attendant 60's lingo. But, it is a movie I probably won't be seeing again soon.

A Conversation

The following is an actual transcript of a conversation that I had with my computer last week. To provide the appropriate background, I must tell you that I am college graduate student majoring in English, and therefore have a daily need for a computer to do research, note-taking, and of course, word processing. (Furthermore, I am a level 10 nerd, with plus one (+1) modifiers to all around geekery.) My computer is a laptop Toshiba Satellite A45-S150; let's call it Toshi.

Zhaf: Well, Toshi, time for another session on the Internet.

Toshi: Dude, are you kidding? That's like the third time today. Don't you have a book to read or something?

Zhaf: Yeah, but I just want to check my e-mail to see if the school has sent me something important.

Tohsi: Hah! You just want to post something on your other blog, and you use school as an excuse.

Zhaf: I do not!

Toshi: Right, and I'm not a computer. Listen, I'm so sick of eating all the cookies from the countless websites you visit, I could lose my "chips."

Zhaf: That's an exaggeration.

Toshi: Uh, actually, I do feel a little sick. My cord hurts for some reason.

Zhaf: Oh my god, your cord is frayed! When did that happen?

Toshi: Man, I don't know. Ow! Don't jiggle it! That makes it worse.

Zhaf: Just let me plug you in for a little bit to see if you'll take a charge. (a short moment later) Whoa!

Toshi: OWWW! Holy Crap! What did you do? That really, really hurts!

Zhaf: When I plugged you in, there was shower of orange sparks that shot out from your cord and melted the nearby plastic.

Toshi: Aw, geez. That's just great! Why don't you set me on fire to see if I will put myself out! Not a smooth move, dude.

Zhaf: Hang a second; Let me see if I can get you a new power supply.

At this point, I call around to several different computer and electronic stores around town. Although one could theoretically buy something called a Universal Power Supply that will fit most laptop computers, nobody within a 60 mile radius has anything that will work specifically with my particular brand and model of Toshiba. I call the warranty people from the store I purchased Toshi, and after much wrangling, I manage to get them to send me a new one free of charge. Unfortunately, it will take 7 to 10 days for it to get here.

Zhaf: Bad news, Toshi. It is going to be awhile before I can get you fixed.

Tohsi: Bad news for you, not for me. It looks like I am going to get a weeklong rest from your grubby fingers pounding on my keys.

Zhaf: Um, whatever. Look, I am going to have to let you sleep for about a week. We'll talk again when your part comes in.

Toshi: Good night, man.

And that is where I am now. I am using other people's computers to do most of my computer work, but for the most part, I am not using a computer near as much I used to do. I've actually been reading more. What that means for this site is that I will not post as much as I used to. I know I sound like a broken record when I say that (heck, I sound like a hundred broken records--a broken jukebox!), but this computer issue will be the reason why I don't post for now. I'll be back when the power supply arrives, which I hope is real soon.

Academic Monuments

I finally met my new office mate after three weeks of school being officially over. He seems like a very interesting person who wants to focus his English studies in film, which, as far as I am concerned right now, seems about as good as anything. I need to figure out this whole program of English study for myself sooner rather than later. I am still interested in books, but I hardly have time to read anything outside of what I'm assigned. I can't imagine having the time to watch a bunch of films, even if they are for a class I am taking. At this exact moment, I have about two hundred pages of rather dense material to get through of The New Rhetoric, a long treatise on the nature of rhetoric. I think I can follow most of it, but it is testing my ability to concentrate on the subject.

Anyway, My new office mate has be rearranging the other desks lately, and recently wanted to know if I cared whether or not he moved bookcase. Since I'm a pretty easy-going guy, I said that whatever he had in mind was fine with me. But, the thing about the bookcase is that at least one hundred student portfolios are sitting on it, waiting for students to come back and pick them up--something that the students have generally seemed reluctant to do. (These portfolios contain the three essays and three rough drafts that this cirriculum requires them to do, plus all of the writing they ever did in class.) Consequently, even though the students have long graduated, even though the graduate student instructors who taught the classes have moved on, the portfolios remain waiting for a pick-up that will never happen. They are sort of a dust-covered monument to the undergraduate, academic past.

In any event, the new office mate moved all of the portfolios to a couple of the desks that are not being used. As he has brought attention to these portfolios, I became curious about them and decided to thumb through a couple. I was most interested in the previous graduate students, the past teachers of these portfolio authors, because I am currently in the position--hell, I am in the same damn office--that they themselves used to occupy. I noted their names and began to google them to see what greener pastures had lay in store for them after investing their time and money in this particular instituion. Perhaps their success would indicate what may lay in store for me if I worked hard enough.

The results were sobering. Out of eight names, only one turned up: Brian S. And he currently works in an all girl boarding school in Conneticut, not a University or a Community College. I suspect that the only reason that he was able to get the boarding school job is that those types of jobs are harder to hire for, and therefore will accept anyone qualified person willing to work in those conditions. You will not find many people willing to choose to live with their students beyond the normal teaching day. Part of me had hoped that because the program I am at focuses so heavily on its unique approach to teaching that all of the students would be more valuable, and therefore more hirable, in the work force. I expected to see more than half of the names as instructors at community colleges around the country, and even one or two at a full fledged University. They, apparently, are not. I need to really laser my efforts here to not only overcome the previously difficulties I have had, but to acheive some measure of distinction that will help me get a lucrative job in the future. I am doing a pretty good job with my comments in class, but I need to keep up on the all of the homework and improve my writing skills by at least one thousand percent.

Ghosts and Warriors

Today I finished reading The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston for my Asian American Literature course. I am not sure what to make of this book. On the one hand, it declares itself a memoir, but interwoven throughout (in some places more than others) are mythological elements that fight against its being classified as a traditional autobiography. Overall, I enjoyed it, but since this reading was for class, I feel I need to understand a bit more.



For example, in the first section, a young Chinese girl, lost in wilderness, is found and taken care of by two mysterious old people who train her to take revenge on the the people who have made her homeless. She is trained as a swordswoman, like the traditional figure of Fa Mu Lan, which apparently is akin to Joan of Arc. (That is, all of this happens if I understood the narrative right.) The elderly couple is described as magical beings who hardly eat, and have powers of prognostication thanks to their crystal ball, which isn't a crystal ball but actually a magic drinking gourd. Contrast those images to the final section where a young Chinese-American girl working at the family Laundry in New York is frustrated by her mother, while she simultaneously struggles to define who she is and how she fits in the Western World.

I am oversimplifying here, but the thoughts that come to my mind are this: as this book shapes itself as an autobiography, should one think of the mythological elements as an ideological framework in which the more realistic elements are grounded? What I mean is this: does the mythology provide a framework that gives readers with no knowldege of Chinese culture a cultural background that is necessary to understand the autobiography? This book reads more like a novel than anything else, and as a novel, I am thinking along the lines of the "magic realism" style associated with Marquez. I think all this might be happening, but then again, I also think this is too technical for my blog, and I should be putting this on the class site instead. Actually, I think I am going to do that right now.

Volcano!

As everyone who has watched the news in the last several days already knows, Mt. St. Helens has been making some noise and has generated a lot of interest. My grandparents happened to be painting their deck when the big blast occurred in 1980. They watched helplessly as ash fell into the wet paint ruining it. Then it was tragedy, but now, it is a family story (which most of us think is kind of funny). Now, my parents live in that house, and the grandparents have moved ten miles to be closer to town. And guess what they are doing? Painting their new deck for their new home. I know it would be a lot of money to repaint a deck, but if ash managed to make it down here in a new explosion to ruin their paint job, I really would find that hilarious.

Anyhow, while looking, I found this link to the live webcam from the Johnston Ridge Observatory (named for the scientist who died in the 1980 blast). In the interest of science, I present the following to you. Enjoy.



UPDATE: October 4th, 8 a.m.-- Scientists have said that the lava dome, that big bulgy thing in the crater of the volcano that acts like a lid on a shook up soda bottle, has moved 50 to 100 feet! They were concerned when it looked like it had moved just a couple of centimeters. Another thing I have heard is that Volcanoes in the Northwest have a tendency to explode, shooting out plumes of ash rather than erupt with rivers of lava. It looks like the darn thing could blow at any minute. While I hope I get to see it when it happens, I also hope noone gets hurt.

UPDATE 2: October 4th, 6:00 p.m. -- This information about the Volcano is really interesting. I found it on one of the US Geological Survey sites:

Northwest Indians told early explorers about the firey Mount St. Helens. In fact, an Indian name for the mountain, Louwala-Clough, means "smoking mountain". According to one legend, the mountain was once a beautiful maiden, "Loowit". When two sons of the Great Spirit "Sahale" fell in love with her, she could not choose between them. The two braves, Wyeast and Klickitat fought over her, burying villages and forests in the process. Sahale was furious. He smote the three lovers and erected a mighty mountain peak where each fell. Because Loowit was beautiful, her mountain (Mount St. Helens) was a beautiful, symmetrical cone of dazzling white. Wyeast (Mount Hood) lifts his head in pride, but Klickitat (Mount Adams) wept to see the beautiful maiden wrapped in snow, so he bends his head as he gazes on St. Helens.

I want to hear more of these kind of stories about the mountains in the news, rather than see reporters get excited every time there is a belch of steam. Oh, and one final thing, don't make that Sahale guy angry. Apparently he has a temper.

Old and New

School officially started yesterday, and like thousands of college students before me, I stood in the lines to buy a parking sticker and get books, earlier. Fortunately, as I have done this for so long, I don't have to stand as many lines as I used to. Even in both of the lines I stood in yesterday, there were at least a couple of freshman who stood in line for half an hour before realizing or being told they were in the wrong line. Been there and done that, but thank God that I know better now.

The financial aid line I stood in the other day was the only line where student's parents stood with them, which is because it is about money. But it was interesting to watch the parents and how they behaved in line. Almost every mom and dad took one of the flyers outside of the door and made their kid read one in a gesture of "you-better-think-about-this-now." The students were too busy watching each other, or pretending not to watch, to pay attention to anything their parents were saying. The one exception was a dad who was standing in line by himself because the daughter got upset over something and stormed out away from him. I felt a little bad for him, because unlike the other parents who were dressed in a New England fantasy of middle class, this guy looked like he climbed out of the woods after a month of logging. He wore jeans that were visibly caked in dirt and wore a stained white T-shirt. Later, the whole family returned to ask him what he wanted from Burger King. In a way, it was refreshing to see him there in line because he was an antidote to the bored sterility of everyone else. He seemed to be a little excited by the whole college thing.


1984

But it was not all standing in lines on the first day. Besides working on unfinished projects, I struggled with the new desk I have in my office. The lower drawer gets stuck and, unlike other stuck drawers, I have not find the right technique to get it open. Part of me wants to say this is a security feature, but then I worry my files getting stuck in there forever. Therefore, I pulled in out the other day and found a shopping bag with the magazine card and receipt you see above, circa 1984. If you click on the picture and expand the image you can see where I've underlined the dates in red. Besides the fact that something as humble as a subscription card to magazines is actually a snapshot of American culture, I was intrigued by the the similarities and difference of the college experience then and now. You'll see Dustin Hoffman standing next to himself as Tootsie, The Computer as Time magazine's "Machine of the Year," and Steve Jobs on the cover of Fortune Magazine in a funny business suit. (Sports Illustrated does not advertise their swimsuit issue on the card which make me wonder if it was something they did in 1984.) But, what gets me is there is no reference to credit card numbers on the sign-up. And it is obvious that this card is just like the standard bundle of crap that gets stuffed in your book when you buy it today. Of course, what is missing are the three credit card applications that also come with it.

I have to say that the People Magazine secondary headlines crack me up. (They're printed larger on the back of the subscription card.) They are as follows: At Home with Mom-to-be Marie Osmond, TV's Sexiest Fitness Program, Is Rock Dead, and The Herpes Dating Service. Three words: Oh my God! I have no more comment.

Begin Again

School officially starts of Monday, but I have already gone to a week long conference for graduate teachers of composition, something which was a little intimidating at first, but also a bit exciting. I'm not sure how teaching my first class will go, but I have already made up a syllabus that I think might work. Of course, it is a bit heavy on course work (reading responses), but I'm sure I could make it work. Actually, having a lot of work for students to do is comforting for me as teacher because I know that even if I screw up all the lectures, I can fall back on what they've read. It might mean more grading for me, but as a first time teacher, it is something that I can have a little control over, so I say: bad for them, good for me. Really, I'm pretty sure it won't really hurt them. If the work does happen to be too much, I can always ease up later.


The Creek

During the conference, I have been a little surprised at some of the advice that the other, more experienced graduate students have given the prospective teachers. Having been myself a student for the last several years, it is fascinating to have another peek behind the curtain and see the kinds of things that instructors do when teaching, the tricks they use. For example, when students get upset with certain policies, like your late policy, instructors blame it on the syllabus rather than themselves. Even though they wrote the policy, if they say, "well, it's on the syllabus," most students will sigh, relent, and eventually accept that the piece of paper said so. Somehow, the paper carries more weight and authority. The other thing that surprises me if how often SOME instructors are willing to lie. (I emphasize some because it is clear that not all of them do it.) Just one example: if instructors allow students to choose which essays they want to read for the term by having them write their top three choices on a piece of paper, and later that night while reading their choices the instructors discover they're not comfortable with the student choices, they will lie in the next class and say, "well, it turns out this article was the most popular," even though it wasn't. I have to say that I have heard both of these things from professors, about the syllabus and had to do the choosing articles thing, and it never really ocurred to me that instructors would use these tricks. Man, I was naive. Today, I meet with the Composition Director to discuss my own syllabus and get advice on it. I hope all goes well because I spent a long time working on it.

Closed Captioning

Just during the last few years, I have developed the habit of turning on the captions of the televison whenever I am watching it. I'm not sure about the precise reason why I did it--perhaps too much noise, or maybe I was trying to be quiet for someone else--but, I have become attached to them. Even though I worked at a facotry for about ten years in a high noise (and chemical) environment, I do not have significant hearing loss and can hear most everything just fine. Perhpas another part of the reason is that I prefer reading, and bizarrely, having the captions on the television allows me to read what I'm watching.

Of course, the captions have their idiosyncracies that most people may not be aware of. First, it doesn't caption everything a person says. The captions sometimes skip over complex phrases or slang to produce a written "Stop!" from a spoken "Get your can back here, McBain!" And sometimes the captions from a previous television show or commercial will hang over a non-captioned show or commercial. Recently, over an advertisement for a local business called the Dance Factory hung the words "Navy: It's a way of life." Maybe they were talking about this Navy, still the dancin'est Navy on the planet. But my favorite captioning moment is NOT when you see gibberish on the screen (as in "zxye vrsh ts!"), but when the captioner seems to give up, especially in the late night programs like Jay Leno or David Letterman. The conversation goes too quickly for the live captioner to keep up.

Frankly, I am a little worried about hearing loss in the future. I may have a genetic predisposition, thanks to my biological father. And I already have to ask a few people to speak up, or turn up the television. Hearing is something that you have to take care of because you could lose it. I suppose the other reason why I read captioning is to give my ears a rest. I want to be able to hear things on my own for a long time to come.

Rain and Reflections

For the last several days, my girlfriend has been in Hawai'i with her family enjoying the tide pools, volcanos and lava flows, and above all else the ocean. Except for the suana like heat and humidity, it is what everyone says it is: a tropical paradise. Her descriptions of how great it is there have reminded me of how much I miss her. So, I have been left by myself to work on my various papers and to get them done. So far so good, but I need to keep up my working pace and productivity during the next week to get them all done by the end of the month when school finally starts here.

The weather here has been decidedly cool and rainy, and it has been that way for the last several days. Consequently, my mood has changed somewhat. I don't like to think that mood is affected by the weather, but I have to admit that, to a small degree, it is. The bigger story here is that things are moving on here at school, sometimes without me. The Ph.D. students are taking their qualification exams, which frankly, I am worried that I wouldn't be able to pass it even if I was taking it. As a Masters degree student, I don't--at least, not yet. The mailbox that I was able to access from the hallway has now moved inside the office, something that has a bigger impact on than I think it should. It is a symbol that I will not be teaching in the fall. Only student-teachers have these mailboxes. To access my mailbox, I will have to go inside the office, and look at the faces of the administrative staff who know I am not teaching. I'm a little worried that I have missed some important handouts.


Rain on Bamboo

Now, to be fair and realistic, I don't think that anyone really cares a whole bunch. I mean, big deal, right? I am just another face in a constant parade of faces who have marched through these budilings over the years, and unlike the professors who sometimes stay for years, even in the best case scenario, I will only be around for another year. I am not the first who has been in this situation, nor will I be the last. The only thing to do at this point is to start from where I am and move forward. If I can't try for being the model student anymore, I can certainly try for the most improved. Every day is a new chance, a new opportunity to make a fresh beginning. That is the advice I try to keep in mind. And it ilustrates something that I have been trying to do a lot lately: that is, focus on the positive and try to be optimistic in order to propel myself forward. Over-worry, anxiety, and having regrets about the time that has passed only paralyzes motivation.

With that in mind, there are some positives that I can focus on right now. First, my computer is paid in full. Thanks to some help from my sister, I now have a computer to help me do the work I have chosen to do. Another positive: I am still enrolled here at school, and I have even bought books for my next term. (One of which is No-No Boy by John Okada, a book I have wanted to read for awhile.) Soon, I will visit the gym because that is another thing that will help my mood, but after I have written some solid pages for my paper.

Making Fiends

The first episode of season two is finally here, and I had to share it with everyone. What the heck am I talking about? No, not the new fall lineup on NBC, ABC, or CBS, but the new fall lineup of web cartoons! Okay, not really a whole line up, just one--Making Fiends--but already one of the greats. With classic lines like, "No! I am not a cheese," how can one resist? Created by Amy Winfrey and released monthly or so, many episodes pit the fiend-maker, Vendetta, against the friend-maker, Charlotte. The animation is good, and the jokes are pretty funny. If you haven't checked it out already, you should. Everyone should include a link to the Making Fiend site. And no, I do not work for them, or am otherwise associated with them, but yes, I still think you should check it out.

Three Links

Normally, on my blog here, I write about how I cannot seem to get any work despite my best intentions. Writer's block is indeed a terrible thing, but constantly talking about it here can only lead to eventual boredom. My girlfriend has observed that I have been singing a one note song for a few months, and truly, this was valuable feedback. I have primarily been griping about papers that everyone seems to be sick of hearing about. Every writer should consider the needs of the audience. And I am no exception to the rule. Therefore, even though I plan to continue to use this blog as a soundboard for my own thoughts, I figured I would present some links to other sites I find interesting and which I think you should see. There can be more boring posts about my papers later.

First, Pax Nortona has a rather harrowing account of being rescued by paramedics after experiencing an angina during memorial day. Fortunately, I have never had to be transported to a hospital in an ambulance of any kind, but my sisters have. Once my sister had a grand mal seizure, and I sat with her on the floor and held her until the paramedics arrived to take her to the hospital. It was a little scary. And it reinforced a strong, personal knowledge of the fact that no matter how long it takes for a EMT crew to arrive (or a police officer) it is always too long. However, it is nice to take these services for granted.

Which brings me to the second post, Bhutan. This blog is an account of an American othropedic surgeon (I think) who has been working and traveling in the small Asian country of Bhutan, apparently the only Buddhist Kingdom on the planet. As he says in his posts, infection is constantly a problem because patients usually can only get treatment a couple of days after their accidents. Some of the imagery has been hard to see as he sometimes posts pictures of the injuries he encounters, but other images of his travels within the country have been fascinating. It has been interesting to follow this blog over the past couple of weeks and think about the contrasts between the country in which I live and the country of Bhutan, a place many people may not have even heard about. I think that this is the best kind of blogging, the kind that both opens the world up to you and makes you think critically about important issues.

The final post is a fascinating magazine interview with Alexander Yuvchenko, one of the engineers to survive the meltdown of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the eighties, an interview found in New Scientist magazine. (I found out about this through the blog Incoming Signals, a cool site for interesting links that should be occasionally checked by everyone.) For me, the scariest part of the whole interview is when Yuvchenko describes the eerie blue light emanating from what was left of the reactor core and shooting up like a laser beam straight into the night sky. Definitely required reading for anyone who remembers the incident, or anyone worried about the nuclear power, nuclear weapons, or the future. I distinctly remember how the news organizations from that time were tracking the radioactive cloud that traveled the in the jet stream of the northern hemisphere of the globe. If you don't already know about the Chernobyl accident, you should.

That's all of the links for now; now, it is back to work on those papers I mentioned in the beginning of the blog. I am getting over the worst of the writer's block, and I recently received some good news that I hope encourages me to success in the future. I'll probably post about that good news later, but for the time being, here's wishing myself luck.

Fall Approaches

I haven't been feeling myself lately, partially I think because of the change of weather. It has been a little bit cooler and a bit more cloudier, especially in the morning, all of which is a reminder that school will be beginning soon and I still haven't yet completed my papers from spring term. I know that I have complained to much here about something that has largely been within my own control, therefore, I will try to keep my thoughts about the unfinished work short.

Although I forget in which book I was reading it, I recently came across some advice for overcoming writer's block, something that every writer supposedly experiences at one time or another. This is my first real, a most severe case of it. I have put off assignments before. In my undergraduate days, there were a couple of 3-5 page papers that I put off until I was sometimes the very last person in the computer lab when they shut it down at 2:00 a.m. and the first person to be there in the morning when they opened it at 7:00 a.m. A marathon session at the computer would be all I needed to get the work in on time. Part of me does not want to believe that I am experiencing writer's block at all right now, but the facts are staring me in the face. Feedback, wanted and unwanted, from my girlfriend and my family has helped me see the extent to which this has affected me, and by extension, them. And it has not been pretty.


Fall Approaches

Anyway, the advice in the book was simply this: A famous writer says that she allows "sentences to be as stupid as they wish." I think that my problem is that I have placed so much pressure on doing these papers perfectly, I have nursed too many fears that the paper will earn a poor mark, I have wasted so much energy worrying about a future not being at school anymore, that I have become paralyzed. I keep waiting for the perfect sentence to spring into my head so I can put it on paper. The trouble is (and I intellectually knew it all along) that the perfect sentence is developed later, like muscles, on the skeleton sentence you place in the draft. This is basic writing process kind of stuff.

In any event, with the new approach of letting my sentences "be as stupid as they wish," I am going to try to knock a full draft of my half-completed paper either by the end of today or at least by sometime tomorrow. This has to been done because there is no more avoiding it. I will post another brief blog entry when I have it done. Until then.

Maintenance Needed

Even though I have been working really hard to get everything completed as far as my papers go, life continues to go on without any regard for how much work I have left. I can't very well ask for the world to stop spinning for a couple of weeks so I can get it all done. So this morning, I had to take care of something that could not wait, my car needed some maintenance. The battery was starting to complain with the universally recognizable "urrr, urrr, urr" sound that meant it would soon die, or commit suicide, in place not of my choosing. Also, the brake light had been on for about a week, which to my mind was getting to be too long, as I was having nightmare vision of shooting off the edge of the coastal cliffs frantically pumping the brakes to no avail. Here's me: "Ahhhh!" And then, the brakes go: "Do what? What did you want me to do? Oh, and quit stomping on my head."


Maintenance Needed

Therefore, last night, I checked the fluid in the battery, which appeared to be fine. (Of course, the secret here is that I wouldn't know if it wasn't fine. All I could check on was whether or not it was full or not. It was full, thank goodness.) Then I poured a dilute solution of baking soda on the battery terminals to see if that would somehow help. I must have used too much baking soda because there was plenty of green toxic fizz bubbling all over the top of the thing to scare away a nearby cat. It reminded me of when I worked at a local factory. ("Dude, drop a little of that hydrochloric acid in that caustic soda barrel, will ya? It'll be cool!" Meanwhile, BOOM!) I then filled up the brake fluid reservoir, which took me forever to find. Apparently, it is super important not to get dirt or dust in the reservoir, and so I didn't. But that was a bit of a challenge--half of the car is made from dirt, and the other half is held together by it. Then, I drove around on the freeway for about a half hour to see if that would charge up the battery. I'm not the most mechanical guy in the world, but I impressed myself by being able to do this much.

Unfortunately, while the brake fluid fixed the one problem, the battery was still having trouble. So after driving my girlfriend to work, I drove the car to Les Schwab and bought a new battery. Apparently, this was the last trip I was going to get out of the car because it died immediately after I parked it. The battery is dead, long live the battery! The mechanic said that the battery was at the end of its life cycle anyway, since the battery was only supposed to last five years, which was as long as I had owned it.

Of course, the really fun part of this story is this: even though the battery will get the car going and keep it going, the alternator is bad (according the mechanic and his battery-o-meter). Therefore, the alternator will have to be replaced. And in his words, it will be a real "difficult" to get out. His wording made me think that he assumed I was going to do it myself. I guess I look like a so-called "good 'ol boy" to most mechanics; therefore, they often assume I should know how to rebuild things like carburetors and diesel engines, since that is what I should be doing with my time on the weekends. They happily took my 60 bucks and wished me, and my nearly-dead alternator, well. Sometimes, even though I like driving, I really hate cars.

Buck Rogers: Attack of the Seventies

This morning, after making breakfast, packing a lunch for my girlfriend, and sending her off to work, I watched a few moments of television and saw something that I had not seen in nearly twenty years. On the Sci-fi channel they were playing re-runs of Buck Rogers. Wow, what a cheesy 80's show! How many references can one show make to Disco? It is sobering, and a little scary, to realize that this thing had won some emmys. Even as a kid, I remember thinking to myself that it was a little silly, but I had no idea how silly until I saw this particular repeat, which coincidentally was an episode that I remembered as one of my favorites, Cosmic Whiz Kid.

To summarize, Gary Coleman (yes, that Gary Coleman) plays Hieronymous Fox, the president of some other planet of humans. He is a child super genius, who, like Buck, is from the twentieth century, and who is kidnapped by some intergalactic criminal. Why? For ransom of course, 2.5 pounds of pure quadrillium to be exact. So Gary's bodyguard, a woman named Dia Cyrton, kidnaps Buck Rogers in turn to rescue Gary, right while Buck is listening to Three Dog Night (yes, that Three Dog Night). Oh the humanity! As a bodyguard, I have to say that Dia seems pretty useless, so all of the standard nerd questions apply here. Questions like: how come the president of an entire planet only has one bodyguard, a slight female, who, as far as her bodyguard role is concerned, dresses in spandex, is completely unable to fight the bad guys, and shamelessly flirts with her own captive when effecting a rather leisurely rescue? The best part of her "outfit" is that she carries a metallic purse everywhere she goes, which apparently she keeps her laser blaster and nothing else. But get this, Gary escapes on his own, eliminating the need for a rescue! What was the point of this show again?


Buck and Gary

As a kid, I thought the show was pretty cool because of the laser weapons, the awesome looking spacecraft, and, looking back on it now, the easy to understand plots. The robot, Twiki, I never really liked much--bee-dee, bee-dee, beep! As an adult, I wonder how this show ever got made. It looks like it was riding the success of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Battlestar Galactica--all of which have had their share of silliness. Of course, absolutely nothing beats Buck Rogers in that department. When I left to go to school, our hero Buck and an official delegation from another star system were watching a special Earth performance of--ROLLER DISCO!. If aliens ever do invade to try take over the planet, and we show them stuff like that, I am sure we could easily defeat them by taking their weapons while they were doubled over on the floor laughing hysterically.

Childhood Flashbacks

When I was about ten, my mom married someone who she probably shouldn't have, and as he had kids, I was introduced to a new step-brother and sister. At the time, being a kid who was not practiced in the art of self-reflection, I adjusted to this new fact pretty well. This new brother and sister were not over for a visit all of the time, but enough for us to get to know each other fairly well. My new step-sister was an interesting companion. I remember playing my colecovision with my step-sister and excluding my other sister from whatever we were doing. It was not the enlightened thing to do, but I was about ten, and as the cliche goes, kids can be cruel. Of course, this arrangement did not last long as my mom divorced that guy, and the step-sister and step-brother faded away into my personal history.

That is, until today. My ex-step-sister (could there BE any more hyphens!) decided to vacation in the area from Texas, and she thought it would be fun for a spontaneous visit. We somehow agreed to meet at a Starbucks for coffee. I suppose I could have been more hospitable, but I wasn't expecting her to show up in my town, so it had to be Starbucks for the time being. We didn't catch up on what had happened since we last saw each other so much as we were reintroduced to each other for the first time, again. It was slightly odd, but the bottom line is that she and her boyfriend seem like very nice people. They're some of the good guys.


Filming

Nothing much else has happened lately, except on Friday when they were filming a movie on campus. And this was not one of the those small student produced affairs that are likely happening here all of the time, this was an official, full-production-values Hollywood type of thing. But I am guessing, in Hollywood terms, this was a rather small affair. Still it was interesting and drew quite a crowd. I couldn't get close enough to see any of the acting, and I tried to take a picture of the filming as it was happening, but nothing turned out well. As you can tell from the above picture, there were official acting trailers and equipment vans that were parked along the normal pay parking spaces. What you can't see are the vans and trailers parked up and down the street. If I hear which movie they were filming here, I'll post an update.

In any case, my work continues. I'm still trying to hammer out a respectable paper that can be turned in tomorrow morning. I feel pretty good about it, and what is more, I should have a grade on another paper that has been previously turned in. Thankfully, things are beginning to look up. All of these incompletes should be done either by the end of this week, or the middle of next. A lot of it depends on how the professors are able to work with my schedule. I can't tell you how much I (and everyone else) am looking forward to finally being rid of these monkeys (Eek oop oop!) on my back.

Giving them the Business

Way back in January, I did not have much of an internet connection. So I decided that I would try to install some earthlink software so I could use it free for a couple of months before I figured out something better. Unfortunately, the Earthlink software wouldn't really work on my computer because the computer was manufactured sometime between when the earth first cooled and people began building pyramids. Oh well, I thought, I guess I'll have to figure something out sooner than I thought. And of course, I promptly forgot about it.

That is, until July, when I noticed that there were charges on my bill from Earthlink. When I called up customer service, which took me a long time to do because their 1-800-number is a kind of a secret, the person on the other end of the line was less than helpful. I was frustrated, so I asked him if he as a representative of Earthlink was going to charge me for a service I never used, essentially taking money away from me and giving me nothing in return. Of course, the guy said that was exactly what he planned to do, and other than cancel my service, there was nothing else we would do for me. Let's just say it was a bad day for me. But once again, I decided that I would forget about it and chalk the whole thing up as a learning experience.

That is, until today, when--guess what--I received a bill from Earthlink charging me $37.00 dollars. You might ask: for what? Good question. I haven't the slightest idea, something about a return item charge and an associated return item fee. Apparently, they not only want to charge for not only for returning something, but they want to add an extra charge on top of that just because they apparently hate to have stuff returned. Of course, I think this is wonderful policy. However, I guess I should clarify that it is wonderful only if you want your customers to hate you. It is exactly the kind of thing that inspire people to create "I hate so-and-so company" websites.

You might think that I would call the company and ask them what the hell they were smoking in their accounts receivable department, and that is just what I did. Fortunately, I got to talk to a guy who seemed to actually working for the forces of good. He said he did not know why my account had not been cancelled the first time. There was even a note in his computer saying that I had called to cancel. But, even better, he also saw that I had never used the service (how they can tell I don't know). Therefore, not only was he going to cancel the unknown $37.00 charge, he was going to send me a $90.00 dollar refund. Holy Crap! This sort of thing is not supposed to happen. I am so used to being told poor customer service is somehow my own fault that I was truly shocked. I made sure to tell the guy that, not only was he doing a great job, but he had made my day. I told him he had redeemed my faith in humanity (but only just little bit).

This is in direct contrast to a phonecall I received at 8:30 a.m. the other morning. I figure someone calling that early must be someone important, like a family member or a doctor, with important news that can't wait until a more decent hour of the day. Of course, it was telemarketer.

Incredulous, I said: "Do you realize it is 8:30 in the morning?"
The telemarketer says, "Well, I am sorry sir, but we are in our legal right to call."
I said: "Okay, well take my name off of your whatever list so I don't get called by you guys again."
She, "our whatever list?"
I, "Yes, I believe that I am within my legal right to request that you put me on your do not call list and that is exactly what I am doing right now."

And then she hung up. I wish these major corporations would figure out a better way to sell their products, and I wish that old people had someone to talk to. They're the only large group of people I can figure who are buying stuff on the telephone. Please people, do your civic duty and make them (the telephone sellers and the telephone buyers) stop. Please make them stop.

The Score: (2/0)

It is almost the end of the week, and I am still very busy at work trying to crank out the last of the papers that have been dogging me since the end of last term. Thankfully, the monster paper that had been eating away at me for months is finally complete and turned in, and now, I only have one and a half more to go. (The score mentioned in a previous blog is now: 2/0.) It is has not been easy to churn out thoughtful, academic words on paper, but, other than the extreme time crunch right now, I feel better about getting it done now than I did three or four weeks ago.


summer benches

I have finally turned a corner on this block I had, so, if all goes according to plan, I should have all of this work done by Monday--every last stinking bit of it. That means, no more reading about me here in the blog griping about work I have to do, something which, it has been pointed out to me, I have tendency to do. However, I also did not want to give the impression that I have abandoned my blog, so I present to you a picture that I took in June. Enjoy.

UPDATE: I guess the game is not going as good as I initially thought it was. One of the papers that I turned in, the small two page prospectus, was not quite up to snuff according to my professor. I'm not sure if this means that I have to redo it, or if I have to take the bad grade for it and move on. (Is the score back to 2/1, or does it remain at 2/0?) On the one hand, I am grateful for the feedback during the summer. I mean, he could have chose not to read it until the beginning of fall term. However, I was really hoping that the paper would have cut it. I was depressed for the rest of that day figuring out what my next move should be. This might change my upcoming plans for the fall, but I'm still hoping that I can pull it off afterall.

The other day, I ran into a small group of fellow graduate students talking about their summers. I did not have the courage to ask them why they were there for fear of exposing myself as someone struggling with the program. Unfortunately, I fear that they might have been on campus that day for a mini-conference about the fall classes they will teach. If that was indeed the reason why they were there, then they already know something is up by virtue of my not being there with them. Since there is nothing I can do about it now, I will not expend any more energy worrying about it. As for the papers and finishing up the work that I am mired in, I am thinking that now is the when the real test sets in. Although I have set myself on a new path, and changed some old behaviors, the novelty of the change is wearing off. Consequently, I am going to have to figure out a way to push my way forward and finish all my work, even though the chain of monotony is beginning to pinch a little.

Thieves (Phishing)

Although I've not had a laptop for very long, not even a full year yet, I've already become very attached to it. I use it to write my papers, develop my blog, and yes, I use it to help manage my finances. I use both Quicken, which I think is a great way to track my money, and the online services of my bank. Rather than be charged $1.00 for an ATM mini-statement because I can't figure out if the Costco hot dog I want to buy will put me over, I can surf over to my bank, log on and see what they say I have. Sure, I could try and keep track of it by writing it all down, but that takes too much time and math than I really want to put up with in a day.

Other than be impressed with the convenience of online banking, I really thought nothing much of it. And I thought nothing much of the following E-mail I received in my junk e-mail folder this afternoon.

Dear US Bank Customer,
During out regular update and verification of the Internet Banking Accounts, we could not verify your current information. Either your information has been changed or incomplete, as a result your access to use our services has been limited. Please update your information.
However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension.
This notification expires on August 11, 2004

To update your account information and start using our services please click the link below: [link to their phony USBank page which looks like the real thing]

My online E-mail accounts are always putting things in the junk e-mail folder that don't really belong there. Like movie cowboys, they put stuff there first and ask questions later. I dutifully logged in with my screen-name and password and began filling out their form. Until I realized that they were not supposed to be asking me for my debit card and pin number. Too late, I looked in the corner of my screen and saw that the lock was in the open position. I had fallen for it.

I quickly logged onto my online account and saw that thieves had already downloaded a personal banking statement. Consequently, even though I had not keyed in my debit or pin number, they still had my account information because I had inadvertently given them my online id and password. Quickly, I called the USBank number and found my way through the phonetree to the place where I could report fraud. The woman on the other end of the line was friendly enough, but I had to cancel everything. They said that they were going to send me replacement checks and a debit card as soon as they could. All of this has been really aggravating, but I am kicking myself for not noticing that the site was not encrypted earlier.

But this is not the only run-in I've had with thieves this week. Yesterday, my girlfriend's car was stolen. Fortunately, it was recovered that same morning but not before they made off with about one hundred dollars worth of camping supplies and equipment. You may remember from my post in May that my car had been stolen as well. Like that last time, the thieves had driven the car only a few blocks away, and they had ransacked it looking for any items of value, but unlike last time, they actually found something to steal and, in all likelihood, sell.

The police officer this time was a nice young guy who said that car thieves usually use a worn out keys to get the cars started. He said that they can just walk up to a car as bold as brass and have it running in a couple of seconds. He took some fingerprints off of the rear-view mirror before releasing the car back to us. My girlfriend went through many of the same emotions I did when I had my car stolen.

What is wrong with these people? I know that there is a lot of hardship out there, like homelessness and drug addiction, and these things can sometimes lead some people to desperate actions. Intellectually, I know that being detached from material possessions is a virtue that should be developed. But what happened to kindness and consideration for your fellow human being? I can't see what would give an otherwise normal person the ability to take without permission something that does not belong to them. Could you do it? Could you steal someone's car in order to sell the things they left inside? Would you empty out someone's bank account of their last twenty dollars? I don't think I ever would or could, especially after knowing how it feels.

UPDATE: Apparently, this kind of "phishing" for sensitive information is on the rise, and it doesn't just target USBank. Many corporations are being "spoofed," in order to fool customers into giving up sensitive information. If you don't know what "phishing" or "spoofing" is, look it up on Google news. You'll need to find out sooner rather than later, especially if you do business on the Internet. Here is a news article that discusses the issue. If you have a suspicious e-mail that wants you to update something on your account, find a way to report it. I realized too late that if I had read this bogus e-mail carefully, rather than respond emotionally to it, I would have discovered the gramatical error. (Did you catch it? Here it is: "Either your account has been changed or [IS] incomplete." I seriously dislike these kind of people.) While I haven't read all of it yet, this site [antiphishing.org] appears to have some excellent information about the evil tactics these people use and some good information on how to protect yourself as well. Recommended reading for everyone.

Ongoing Work

So while I didn't do as much work as I may have wanted to over the weekend, I did manage to get some good work done on my papers, including reserving the requisite research books from the library. (Now, I await an e-mail from them letting me know when to pick them up.) I'm already going through two books on Victorian Ideas about race and ethnology rather solidly, and the books I am awaiting on are all about blogging. Today, I will spend some afternoon time in the library checking out some books on Kenneth Burke. It's a mad rush to get all of this done, but I am both optimistic and hopeful that I can pull it off.

In a way, I can't wait to write my paper about blogging. I've been reading the articles on this site "Into the Blogosphere," and I find some of the ideas a bit interesting. Of course, gathering from what little I have read of it so far, it is chock full with the academic jargon that so many people find painfully boring to read. I think that t here is such much to do with this field right now. Of course, one of the things that has been coming in the media lately is how blogging is like any other fad; therefore, it should be ignored until it goes away. While the hype surrounding it may die down a little (as more and more people get sick of hearing about blogs), while a new technology may supersede it, that idea of having your own site for personal expression on the web will not likely disappear, even though the form may change. To me, that is the crux of blogging. Therefore, it is as worthy of academic attention as anything. After all, if the English graduate students of the eighties can write long dissertations about Star Trek, why can't there also be studies about blogging?

Also, perhaps on a different tack, I guess I want to mention how I've been using Microsoft's One Note a lot lately. Mostly, I use it to write out my thoughts about my research papers, to include snippets of the stuff I am reading, and to do some of the pre-writing that I find necessary to do before I draft my actual paper. While some people might find this a little uptight or downright annoying, compared to the old way I used to do this kind of thing (write everything out on loose sheets of paper I couldn't read or find later), I find this method a little easier. Of course, it makes me think that the real cool use of this program could come from using one of the new-fangled tablet PC's. The ability to write and draw in this program is a little tantalizing, but alas, this remains a financial impossibility for the foreseeable future. Perhaps one day.