Passe partout, lingua franca, gallumphing gallimaufry
1. Cooking Noir:
"At the moment, I have a lot on my plate. I'd like to push things off to the back-burner, and more carefully watch a few issues, but a watched pot never boils, and I can't tell anyone else to take care of what's cooking, since too many cooks spoil the broth. On my mind, I've got everything from soup to nuts -- in fact, everything but the kitchen sink. I've got a beef about a few things, and I'd like to go spill the beans to the big cheese, but I know which side my bread is buttered on -- they'd just call it sour grapes and advise me to go cold turkey. I don't want to curry favor, but I have to save my own bacon -- I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and if anyone else tells me that these are the salad days, I'll make him eat crow. It's only the upper crust who can say that 'The world is your oyster' -- the rest of us either take that with a grain of salt, or eat our hearts out. They'll say, 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,' and doesn't that just take the cake? If you try and you can't cut the mustard, then your goose is cooked. And if you can, it won't be for long: you're just a flash in the pan, following a red herring called fortune, and saying to anyone who listens that you don't give a fig if you do or don't, but all the time making sure that you do. You're probably saying right about now 'look who's talking -- the pot calling the kettle black.' Well, someone's got to cook the books around here, and now we can finally get somewhere now that we're cooking with gas. But at the same time, I am well and truly fed up with this racket."
2. Recent Calls for Papers (CFPs)
3. Two Years Before the Masthead: the papers I wrote in the last 2 years (papers over 20 pages marked with a *):
4. Spring break, some years wandering in a desert
So, I've decided to visit France and Israel in April: 5 days in Tours, the Loire valley, with my college roommate and his grandparents (with whom I stayed for a few weeks a few years ago) and some other college friends [EDIT: in fact, likely 5 days in Aix-en-Provence]; 5 days in Israel with my sister, her partner, and parents lounging around Jerusalem; then 5 days with just my sister and her partner probably exploring sites of great historical importance. But before that I have to make a Seder all by my lonesome in Chicago. Well, not all by my lonesome -- with a dozen or so friends. My family's Seders, if you've never been to one, tend to be large affairs, and so I wanted my own to be large and varied, but I wonder if I haven't overstretched myself. People will be glad to bring food, I know, but what I really will need are dishes and chairs. Well, I guess we could do it like a theme Seder, as if we were wandering the desert for 40 years. Even though one of the themes of Passover is that wandering is terrible, and it's good to have a place to recline.
5. from The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (1979), by Gary K. Wolfe:
"The alien being becomes the robot, the robot becomes the spaceship, the spaceship becomes the city, the city becomes the wasteland."
"At the moment, I have a lot on my plate. I'd like to push things off to the back-burner, and more carefully watch a few issues, but a watched pot never boils, and I can't tell anyone else to take care of what's cooking, since too many cooks spoil the broth. On my mind, I've got everything from soup to nuts -- in fact, everything but the kitchen sink. I've got a beef about a few things, and I'd like to go spill the beans to the big cheese, but I know which side my bread is buttered on -- they'd just call it sour grapes and advise me to go cold turkey. I don't want to curry favor, but I have to save my own bacon -- I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and if anyone else tells me that these are the salad days, I'll make him eat crow. It's only the upper crust who can say that 'The world is your oyster' -- the rest of us either take that with a grain of salt, or eat our hearts out. They'll say, 'If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,' and doesn't that just take the cake? If you try and you can't cut the mustard, then your goose is cooked. And if you can, it won't be for long: you're just a flash in the pan, following a red herring called fortune, and saying to anyone who listens that you don't give a fig if you do or don't, but all the time making sure that you do. You're probably saying right about now 'look who's talking -- the pot calling the kettle black.' Well, someone's got to cook the books around here, and now we can finally get somewhere now that we're cooking with gas. But at the same time, I am well and truly fed up with this racket."
2. Recent Calls for Papers (CFPs)
- Essays are sought for a book project that takes a Cultural Studies approach to British Heavy Metal.
- The Toys and Games Area of the Midwest Popular Culture Association welcomes proposals for papers and presentations on toys and games...
- Scholarly articles interpreting the lyrics of songs by The Magnetic Fields desired for a book. Each paper should be between 2000 and 5000 words.
3. Two Years Before the Masthead: the papers I wrote in the last 2 years (papers over 20 pages marked with a *):
- The End of Kitsch: the Logic of Kitsch and the Apocalyptic Imagination*
- Moral Suspense in "A Scandal in Bohemia"
- The Scarred Text: Frankenstein/S/Z
- Notes Toward a Universal Theory of Suspense: The Sense of an Ending at the Beginning
- The Shadow of the Author: Suture and the Implied Author in Last Year at Marienbad*
- "a memory of shadows and stone": Bataille's Sovereign Sensibility and Hiroshima mon amour*
- The Colorlessness of Money: The Gold Standard, Race, and Gift-Giving in The Marrow of Tradition*
- (Neuronal Aesthetics Paper -- I forget the title)*
- Black is an Empire: The Misrecognition of Empire in Tarzan and Black Empire*
- Moral Landscape in Poe*
- "I must call Oroonoko, Caesar": Names in Oroonoko
- Mother/Monster Tongue: Race and the Nation in Frankenstein
- Men of Mettle: The Role of Technology on the Frontier in Edward S. Ellis's The Steam Man of the Prairies*
- "to pacify this sense of revolt": The Repression of Desire and the Creation of Identity in H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness*
4. Spring break, some years wandering in a desert
So, I've decided to visit France and Israel in April: 5 days in Tours, the Loire valley, with my college roommate and his grandparents (with whom I stayed for a few weeks a few years ago) and some other college friends [EDIT: in fact, likely 5 days in Aix-en-Provence]; 5 days in Israel with my sister, her partner, and parents lounging around Jerusalem; then 5 days with just my sister and her partner probably exploring sites of great historical importance. But before that I have to make a Seder all by my lonesome in Chicago. Well, not all by my lonesome -- with a dozen or so friends. My family's Seders, if you've never been to one, tend to be large affairs, and so I wanted my own to be large and varied, but I wonder if I haven't overstretched myself. People will be glad to bring food, I know, but what I really will need are dishes and chairs. Well, I guess we could do it like a theme Seder, as if we were wandering the desert for 40 years. Even though one of the themes of Passover is that wandering is terrible, and it's good to have a place to recline.
5. from The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction (1979), by Gary K. Wolfe:
"The alien being becomes the robot, the robot becomes the spaceship, the spaceship becomes the city, the city becomes the wasteland."