Okay, that last post wasn't supposed to be whoring.
But thanks.
Today was an eventful sort of day, and not merely because I genuinely, no-foolin' missed my eleven o'clock lecture by screwing up the time change. Oh, I set my clocks forward, and woke up in plenty of time. I did my morning errands on the computer, composing some rather authoritarian emails on the subject of enrollment (on Friday I had thirty-four students show up in one section - and only 27 desks! - and sixteen and seventeen in the others, respectively); then around 9:30 I left to make some photocopies at the library. I walked on up to the lecture hall (UGA grads: the history building is Physics, and the lectures are in the Chapel... only flat) to sit for forty minutes or so and read through the copies.
Only when I walked down the hall towards the room, who should be standing in profile, lecturing away, but my professor. Yes, I failed to notice that my computer was set not to adjust the time automatically, such that as I moved from my bedroom to my desk, a bonus hour appeared. The fact that I spent most of it working on the roster doesn't quite excuse my having missed class. Good thing the professor and I get along, eh?
Perhaps surprisingly, the day did not go on to suck. A student came to my office hours (!) (to talk about his paper), and better still, Stefka has hers next door during part of the same period. Meghann was around, too (as was Lonnie), so among us much shit was shot, many grievances broached, several hypotheses floated. As always, I am gleefully behind on department gossip, and since society abhors a vacuum, a lot of information needed to be transferred in a short time. When Stefka, Rick, and EM were done TAing for Holocaust, the former two and I went down to Prairie Moon, where some of the same stories were told from a reversed or complementary angle, and entirely new topics (German toasting etiquette) were addressed. Even in the fifteen minutes I spent outside on the benches waiting for their class to end, I spoke (sequentially) with Frommer and three other graduate students.
Friday was similar, in that there were gobs of familiar people everywhere I went (when Frommer saw me sitting on the bench by myself today, he remarked, "Your entourage is missing"). In fact, I ate lunch that day with EM and Jason, and the Wednesday before with the sisters in Serbo-C (their term). The sudden increase in socializing has a strange, televised feel, like we're running a script; it also feels like a lot of pleasant conversation, so I remain cautiously in favor. Cautiously in favor of people, that is, or maybe of talking to them. Hard to say.
After lunch Wednesday I walked over to see V for Vendetta, which my brother, ever the salesman, had exclaimed "has some alliteration I think you would really enjoy." Without taking any stance on the contents of the original comic book, I'll say that the movie has some neat bits but overall failed to awe. I'll keep it short this time. For one thing, I have difficulty enjoying winking, unbalanced political commentary in any form (which is why I rarely watch "The Daily Show," despite the admitted studliness of Jon Stewart), but in this case it seemed even blunter against the showy melodramatic moments involving (no spoilers) fire, rain, and/or Tchaikovsky.
Then I find myself continually irked by the "censorship of fine art = evil philistine government" trope. Censorship is definitely a risky business, but using "The Lady of Shalott" to represent art is a no-brainer, and using it to represent dangerous art is just ludicrous.1 I think it sets the bar too high; by the time a government gets around to censoring British neo-classical paintings, it's probably already criminalized everything worth doing. That's not even on the slippery slope; it's skidded halfway across the field at the bottom. Censorship matters at the level of the offensive, the tasteless, the challenging: the "God Save the Queen" print and adjacent pornography were much better examples of the need for vigilance, in my opinion.
On the other hand, I enjoyed a fair amount of the acting, from Ms. Portman (it's the only movie I've seen her in outside of Star Wars, so you'll pardon my surprise that she can act at all) through the wonderfully appealing Stephen Rea. When V was allowed to take a break from flapping about or angsting, there were some nice scenes, as between him and the doctor. Think how excited Mr. Weaving must have been to play Morpheus this time; by the next Wachowski effort he should be up to Neo himself.
And, of course, The Count of Monte Cristo. Swashbuckling.
On the way to and from the theater, I had to walk through a pod (an intrusion? an event?) of satellite trucks, all camped around a cluster of AV equipment facing the main entrance of the building next to mine. As it turns out (based on research I conducted after typing the previous period), a relative of a just-released hostage was reading a press release: I recognize the exterior lights visible behind the man's head in the video.
This whole update is backwards, I guess, so the day before V was the first meeting of my field seminar. That was 2 1/4 very dull hours of "discussing" the French Revolution, a.k.a. listening to the professor talk about it and kinda titter to herself, while concentrating fiercely lest my face betray my utter lack of interest. Not that the French Revolution has to be boring, but in this case it was. The readings were part of the problem: we had two historiographical essays digging into arguments of interest only to (go figure) historians of the French Revolution, so very few of us (=EM) were actually able to talk about them with any authority. Then for whatever reason the professor succccccccked at leaving the kinds of pauses that might persuade students to participate; she'd wait just long enough for the silence to feel awkward, but not the few extra seconds after which someone inevitably clears his or her throat and speaks.
There are some bigger issues attached to the immediate flaws, too, like the fact that we Eastern Europeanists have to take the European field seminars, but they never include a single book about anything east of Germany (and even Germany plays a lesser role than Britain and France). This week's readings are on Haiti! Not inherently unreasonable - a French colony, after all, that revolted just after France did - but with only ten weeks we'd rather talk about the Caribbean than the other half of Europe? The Russian Revolution does not appear on the syllabus! Why are Eastern Europeanists included in the European History track if the European History track does not include Eastern Europe? SHUT UP, FRANCE. GOD.
Before that occurred none other than spring break, which I celebrated (now in no particular order) by attending a hockey game with Bethany (her first), where the Thrashers lost, BUT later that week they made it into playoff standings, AND we got free glow sticks that were still luminescing three days later. Daniel was on break the same week, so we enjoyed one another's company, and sometimes loathed each other's presence, with the single working automobile a major point of contention (why, I don't know; it's not like I was going anywhere). I dealt with my mother's fondness for Stephen Colbert, and my brother's man-crush on House. James dogged my every step, because he is love. And as of my leaving, I'd created a knot comprising one thousand nine-hundred and eight rayon strands, each one carefully threaded onto the loom, and each one now (not irreparably, I hope) tangled with its neighbors. Weaving with thread: probably not a good idea for beginners.
Virginia mailed me a stuffed Peep, a card suggesting we go to Europe this summer, and a stranger's mix CD she found in a rental car. It's mostly Disturbed and Rammstein, which reminds me that I recently realized the lyrics to "Du Hast" are hilarious. I suspect I'm rather late for that particular train.
Choo-chooooooooooo.
1. Assuming, that is, I'm remembering the scene correctly. Substitute as necessary for accuracy.
Today was an eventful sort of day, and not merely because I genuinely, no-foolin' missed my eleven o'clock lecture by screwing up the time change. Oh, I set my clocks forward, and woke up in plenty of time. I did my morning errands on the computer, composing some rather authoritarian emails on the subject of enrollment (on Friday I had thirty-four students show up in one section - and only 27 desks! - and sixteen and seventeen in the others, respectively); then around 9:30 I left to make some photocopies at the library. I walked on up to the lecture hall (UGA grads: the history building is Physics, and the lectures are in the Chapel... only flat) to sit for forty minutes or so and read through the copies.
Only when I walked down the hall towards the room, who should be standing in profile, lecturing away, but my professor. Yes, I failed to notice that my computer was set not to adjust the time automatically, such that as I moved from my bedroom to my desk, a bonus hour appeared. The fact that I spent most of it working on the roster doesn't quite excuse my having missed class. Good thing the professor and I get along, eh?
Perhaps surprisingly, the day did not go on to suck. A student came to my office hours (!) (to talk about his paper), and better still, Stefka has hers next door during part of the same period. Meghann was around, too (as was Lonnie), so among us much shit was shot, many grievances broached, several hypotheses floated. As always, I am gleefully behind on department gossip, and since society abhors a vacuum, a lot of information needed to be transferred in a short time. When Stefka, Rick, and EM were done TAing for Holocaust, the former two and I went down to Prairie Moon, where some of the same stories were told from a reversed or complementary angle, and entirely new topics (German toasting etiquette) were addressed. Even in the fifteen minutes I spent outside on the benches waiting for their class to end, I spoke (sequentially) with Frommer and three other graduate students.
Friday was similar, in that there were gobs of familiar people everywhere I went (when Frommer saw me sitting on the bench by myself today, he remarked, "Your entourage is missing"). In fact, I ate lunch that day with EM and Jason, and the Wednesday before with the sisters in Serbo-C (their term). The sudden increase in socializing has a strange, televised feel, like we're running a script; it also feels like a lot of pleasant conversation, so I remain cautiously in favor. Cautiously in favor of people, that is, or maybe of talking to them. Hard to say.
After lunch Wednesday I walked over to see V for Vendetta, which my brother, ever the salesman, had exclaimed "has some alliteration I think you would really enjoy." Without taking any stance on the contents of the original comic book, I'll say that the movie has some neat bits but overall failed to awe. I'll keep it short this time. For one thing, I have difficulty enjoying winking, unbalanced political commentary in any form (which is why I rarely watch "The Daily Show," despite the admitted studliness of Jon Stewart), but in this case it seemed even blunter against the showy melodramatic moments involving (no spoilers) fire, rain, and/or Tchaikovsky.
Then I find myself continually irked by the "censorship of fine art = evil philistine government" trope. Censorship is definitely a risky business, but using "The Lady of Shalott" to represent art is a no-brainer, and using it to represent dangerous art is just ludicrous.1 I think it sets the bar too high; by the time a government gets around to censoring British neo-classical paintings, it's probably already criminalized everything worth doing. That's not even on the slippery slope; it's skidded halfway across the field at the bottom. Censorship matters at the level of the offensive, the tasteless, the challenging: the "God Save the Queen" print and adjacent pornography were much better examples of the need for vigilance, in my opinion.
On the other hand, I enjoyed a fair amount of the acting, from Ms. Portman (it's the only movie I've seen her in outside of Star Wars, so you'll pardon my surprise that she can act at all) through the wonderfully appealing Stephen Rea. When V was allowed to take a break from flapping about or angsting, there were some nice scenes, as between him and the doctor. Think how excited Mr. Weaving must have been to play Morpheus this time; by the next Wachowski effort he should be up to Neo himself.
And, of course, The Count of Monte Cristo. Swashbuckling.
On the way to and from the theater, I had to walk through a pod (an intrusion? an event?) of satellite trucks, all camped around a cluster of AV equipment facing the main entrance of the building next to mine. As it turns out (based on research I conducted after typing the previous period), a relative of a just-released hostage was reading a press release: I recognize the exterior lights visible behind the man's head in the video.
This whole update is backwards, I guess, so the day before V was the first meeting of my field seminar. That was 2 1/4 very dull hours of "discussing" the French Revolution, a.k.a. listening to the professor talk about it and kinda titter to herself, while concentrating fiercely lest my face betray my utter lack of interest. Not that the French Revolution has to be boring, but in this case it was. The readings were part of the problem: we had two historiographical essays digging into arguments of interest only to (go figure) historians of the French Revolution, so very few of us (=EM) were actually able to talk about them with any authority. Then for whatever reason the professor succccccccked at leaving the kinds of pauses that might persuade students to participate; she'd wait just long enough for the silence to feel awkward, but not the few extra seconds after which someone inevitably clears his or her throat and speaks.
There are some bigger issues attached to the immediate flaws, too, like the fact that we Eastern Europeanists have to take the European field seminars, but they never include a single book about anything east of Germany (and even Germany plays a lesser role than Britain and France). This week's readings are on Haiti! Not inherently unreasonable - a French colony, after all, that revolted just after France did - but with only ten weeks we'd rather talk about the Caribbean than the other half of Europe? The Russian Revolution does not appear on the syllabus! Why are Eastern Europeanists included in the European History track if the European History track does not include Eastern Europe? SHUT UP, FRANCE. GOD.
Before that occurred none other than spring break, which I celebrated (now in no particular order) by attending a hockey game with Bethany (her first), where the Thrashers lost, BUT later that week they made it into playoff standings, AND we got free glow sticks that were still luminescing three days later. Daniel was on break the same week, so we enjoyed one another's company, and sometimes loathed each other's presence, with the single working automobile a major point of contention (why, I don't know; it's not like I was going anywhere). I dealt with my mother's fondness for Stephen Colbert, and my brother's man-crush on House. James dogged my every step, because he is love. And as of my leaving, I'd created a knot comprising one thousand nine-hundred and eight rayon strands, each one carefully threaded onto the loom, and each one now (not irreparably, I hope) tangled with its neighbors. Weaving with thread: probably not a good idea for beginners.
Virginia mailed me a stuffed Peep, a card suggesting we go to Europe this summer, and a stranger's mix CD she found in a rental car. It's mostly Disturbed and Rammstein, which reminds me that I recently realized the lyrics to "Du Hast" are hilarious. I suspect I'm rather late for that particular train.
Choo-chooooooooooo.
1. Assuming, that is, I'm remembering the scene correctly. Substitute as necessary for accuracy.