Actually, I have no guidelines to offer on how to mess with Texas and live to tell about it; perhaps the secret is not to mess with it in the first place--just approach slowly and make no sudden gestures, as you would with a strange dog.

Austin, TX: Sarah (girlfriend, not sister) and I flew into Austin last Wednesday. We stayed in a very ( Read more... )

Door County, WI is actually named so because of the numerous shipwrecks and dangerous waters around the peninsula--the French called it "Porte des Morts" which became Death's Door, which became Door County, WI, tourist playground ( Read more... )

So, NYC: I used to come here all the time: to visit my great-aunt, to the village, to the area around NYU, to some of the midtown hobby stores, to my ex's apartment, to visit my friend going to Columbia. I'm no NYCer -- not even an outer-Boroughs-type -- but I've almost always been able to find my way around the city, I've always felt somewhat ( Read more... )

My first nights on the West Coast, my dreams are all half-waking visions of ghosts: whenever I wake up, I'm facing a wall I'm not used to, and I can see through it -- there, down those stairs, there's a body; there, though that hallway, shadows moving without bodies; there, in that corner, something like a heart, beating ( Read more... )

• ads for spas convey pure choice, immanent will, body without history
  
• Tanith Lee, Don't Bite the Sun, on an economy that runs on emotion -- to pay, you thank profusely; emotional energy runs the system
  
• Sturgeon as gradual, gentle evolutionist, not catastrophist (oh, but that ignores quite a lot)
  
• The Puppet Masters, Heinlein's invasion novel, takes ( Read more... )

Saturday is unremarkable, mostly; after being in the hotel complex all of Friday I have to get out and see KC some, so I take a bus downtown, to the City Market, which is a big farmer's market, with a few buskers and some country-folk (is there an Amish country near-by, or do you think other farmers adopt the look, perhaps for market-brand purposes ( Read more... )

After editing and practicing my paper on Thursday night, I woke up early on Friday morning, and couldn't hardly bear to practice my paper again. So, I wake up at 6, though my alarm is set for 7:30, and my panel starts at 8:30; I refuse to get out of bed until 7. I'm on the first panel of the day, but I'm the third to go, so I sit between two ( Read more... )

It was on Friday that I was able to place what felt so blisteringly alien about being at this academic conference: no one mentions Foucault. Or Lacan, or Marx, or affect. It's something I've heard before: Chicago is savagely isolated in its attention to theory ( Read more... )

So, here I am in Kansas City, MO, and I forgot my camera's data wire, or I'd post a picture of the tornado shelter sign which was the first thing I saw off the plane. If I wasn't here for work, and if I were here with friends, Kansas City would be pretty fun, I think. Before coming here, I told someone that I like airports because they're liminal ( Read more... )

I'm not all that clear what the lessons are that we can learn from the inverted world (except maybe that inversion is better than eversion -- it's generally better to be backwards than inside-out), or even where exactly the inverted world is (though rumor has it that it may be as close as the nearest mirror, or as far away as Cleveland ( Read more... )