Calmer Than You Are

More Specific General Advice

2010-08-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

Hey, nativist, xenophobic, homophobic activist: stop being crazy. And certainly stop using the rhetoric of liberty. As much as it threatens your white, Christian, patriarchal, heteronormative ascendancy, you should not have the liberty to oppress others.

Musings on Christians

2010-08-03T07:50:00.000-07:00

A few things I have learned thus far from my (admittedly faithless) reading of the New Testament: a) wealth and Christianity are pretty incommensurable, which menas that a rich "Christian" is a hypocrite (here's to you, Joel Osteen); b) condemnation of anything other than lack of faith is dubious, considering that Christ spent most of his time among the diseased and the "sinners"; c) Christ seems to have abrogated the statutes of Leviticus, which includes the line about "a man lying with another man is an abomination"; d) even if he did not, he certainly was more concerned about divorce, so "Focus on the Family" shou...ld really campaign against divorce rather than worrying about gay marriage (let's see the push for a constitutional amendment, you self-righteous assholes); e) Jesus - especially in Luke's account, but elsewhere as well - was kind of a dick; f) but not nearly as much of a dick as Paul, who seems to be single-handedly responsible for much of Western sexism; g) if you really believe that all of this is actually the Word of God, you'll probably believe just about anything, because h) God needs a better editor. i) Were there five loaves of bread or seven? four thousand people or five? j) If I were writing about someone who ascended into the heavens, I feel like I'd spend more time describing it than Mark: "So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of God." (16:20) I think my first words - and here I'm channeling Ricky Gervais's comments about Humpty Dumpty - would be: "Once there was this guy who flew up to Heaven."

Finally, Christianity combined with capitalism is a powerful force, and Nietzsche is spot on in his critique of it: what better way to ensure that the oppressed do not confront injustice and inequality than by promising them that their reward for good behavior and piety will come in the next life?

General Advice (and so on)

2010-07-29T09:35:00.000-07:00

General Advice:
On the radio this morning a woman launched into full-fledged spiritual guidance for the general public. Aside from the obvious difficulties with providing general advice to the general public - i.e., there is no such thing as a general public, and general advice completely ignores context - the real problem seems to that everything becomes way too general. "Face your obstacles with optimism" or "Embrace your weaknesses" or "Access your inner self" are all so general that they become meaningless.

Instead, I would like to start offering advice that is reigned in on at least one level: either specific advice for the general public (which, of course, does not exist), or general advice for specific people. Every so often, then, I will offer unsolicited advice to someone about something. Hopefully this will become a "rules for living" kind of thing. Hopefully it will become more and more aggressive and time goes on.

Today: The person you think is someone you know from another part of your life is almost never that person. Stop staring.

Ice Cream

2010-04-18T13:12:00.000-07:00

Riding my bike to campus
On a beautiful Sunday afternoon
I saw my father,
Sitting on a bench by himself,
Reveling in the solitary enjoyment
Of a dish of ice cream.
He was thirteen years older
Than the last time I saw him,
And he had re-grown the silly moustache
My mother made him shave
The year before he died.

The Pleasure Principle

2010-01-12T16:01:00.000-08:00

Here's my dramastic response to the conversation about the profession on JR's blog post (it's currently "awaiting moderation" on her blog itself).

Marshelle's point about empathy—which is essentially the liberal humanist doctrine that art has the power to transform us into better people—is unsatisfying, not least because it doesn’t hold up: Marshelle has read plenty of literature, but she is quite possibly the least able to “consider life and its dilemmas from perspectives other than one's own” of anyone I have ever met. Perhaps more importantly, though, art very often reinforces rather than undermines the set of political and social relations that lead to the prejudice, extremism, and blind individualism Marshelle describes. Does Book V of The Faerie Queene, for example, teach religious tolerance?

Something similar could be said about preserving culture and history: how much should we really want to preserve, if our own culture and history includes so much ignorance and inequality, so much oppression of other peoples, so much mistreatment of nonhuman species? What "preservation of culture and history" suggests is a continuation of patriarchal, capitalist ideology. Is that what we should be teaching?

Critical thinking has always been our fallback, but what does this mean? Do we need literature as an object in order to exercise such critical thought?

What we really do is teach students to talk and write in a certain language. I'll just go ahead and quote Terry Eagleton, whose ideas I have been paraphrasing anyway: "Literary theorists, critics and teachers are not so much purveyors of doctrine as custodians of discourse. Their task is to preserve this discourse, extend and elaborate it as necessary, defend it from other forms of discourse, initiate newcomers into it and determine whether or not they have successfully mastered it. The discourse itself has no definite signified, which is not to say that it embodies no assumptions: it is rather a network of signifiers able to envelop a whole field of meanings, objects and practices." The "embarrassment" of literary criticism, he continues, is that "it defines for itself a special object, literature, while existing as a set of discursive techniques which have no reason to stop short of that object at all" (Introduction to Literary Theory 177ff).

What we really do, then, is teach something like "discourse analysis," and if we're good at it we might be able to demonstrate the ways that discourse is both a component and a product of power. Andy's suggestion about teaching writing is the flip side of rhetoric: if we can teach our students to recognize discursive techniques, we may also be able to teach them to apply these techniques for themselves.

None of this really explains why we still think Shakespeare is valuable, or why we ask students to memorize the plot and principal characters of Frankenstein. The latter is probably because we feel like we need to test them on something; the former is probably because we like Shakespeare. (There's more to it than that: we are told that we should like Shakespeare, because those who have come before us have decided that Shakespeare is somehow valuable. Still, if we were to trace that determination back far enough, I imagine it would have much more to do with pleasure than most of us are willing to admit.)

Like a turd just dropt on snow

2009-12-20T12:16:00.001-08:00

What I like about Wyatt is his fascination with turning away. Most of the time he's obsessing over a woman who has turned away from him - "But all is turned, thorough my gentleness, / Into a strange fashion of forsaking" - but sometimes we can catch glimpses of that moment when he too wants to let something go: "I leave off therefore, / Since in a net I seek to hold the wind."

Still, he never really leaves off. He has too much Petrarch in him; his pain is too potent. His dismissals are always incomplete, as he holds on to the injury done to him in order to write about it (and here he has an excuse built in, which, even if we would call it misogynist, makes "her" somehow less culpable):

I will not wail, lament, nor yet be sad,
Nor call her false that falsely did me feed,
But let it pass, and think it is of kind
That often change doth please a woman's mind.

We see the same thing in those poets who lash out rather than turn away. Jonson purges his characters of their humours and sends them offstage, never to be seen again, but they're never really gone: he has had to hang on to them for most of the play in order to excoriate them at the end, and so they return, again and again, every time the play is performed. Swift's poetry might sting, but he still needs to hold on to Richard Tighe in order to say that Tighe's face is "Like a turd just dropt on snow."

A complete turn (or a total dismissal) would have to be a poem about something else entirely, a poem that contains no trace of the subject that is not being discussed. And what's more - here's the tricky part - is that every subsequent poem would need to be free from that trace. These would be the poems that do not acknowledge the possibility of recovering what has been forgotten; these would be the poems that come after forgetting.

This isn't 'Nam. This is [karaoke]. There are rules.

2009-12-18T14:13:00.000-08:00

1) No fucking Billy Joel.

2) "Atrocious," when said with the right tone of voice, should be interpreted as a compliment.

3) Arrive sweet, but not already hammered. Hammered should come later.

4) Do not make eyes at Undergraduate Wisconsin Grandma Headband Guy.

5) Talk through all instrumental breaks.

Profile of a Sociopath

2009-12-17T13:54:00.000-08:00

- Glibness and Superficial Charm

- Manipulative and Conning - They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used.

- Grandiose Sense of Self - They feel entitled to certain things as "their right."

- Pathological Lying - Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities.

- Lack of Remorse, Shame, or Guilt - The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.

- Shallow Emotions - When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love, and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.

- Callousness / Lack of Empathy - Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others' feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.

- Poor Behavioral Controls / Impulsive Nature

- Irresponsibility / Unreliability - Not concerned about wrecking others' lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.

- Promiscuous Sexual Behavior / Infidelity

- Lack of Realistic Life Plan / Parasitic Lifestyle - Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future; poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.

Two Things

2009-12-15T13:43:00.000-08:00

A mistaken venture on Facebook - I'm generally better at controlling myself - has at least yielded two observations:

First: good lord, good riddance. Ugh.

Second: His quotations celebrate the fact that he's a selfish prick, as though he's doing something new, as though he's the first selfish prick in the history of the world, as though a total lack of consideration for the people around him is the way to create new forms. "Non-conformity" to the "custom" of treating good friends with a semblance of respect is really charting new fucking territory, Copernicus.

Shit Happens

2009-12-09T14:48:00.000-08:00

Say it with me, buddy.

Today is lucky number 13, which, for those of you keeping score, is half my life. Turns out that's a tougher pill to swallow than I thought it would be. Half my life has been aftermath - grief and anger and bitterness and the horrible, horrible feeling of forgetting.

The Lost Semester

2009-12-07T08:39:00.001-08:00

Last night I had my first legitimate academic thought since Prelims. Fuck you for wasting so much of my time.

Etiquette

2009-12-02T21:52:00.000-08:00

Nothing screams "we didn't expect to/deserve to win" like rushing the court in early December. And that's unfortunate, because Wisconsin clearly deserved to win that game. They led from start to finish, they shot lights out early and played solid defense late, they controlled the tempo of the game and manned up on Singler when they needed to.

It's disappointing to see fans ruin it for the team that worked so hard to convince everyone that they meant business.

I'm glad to see Duke lose early. Maybe they'll learn something this year, rather than going 18-0 and shitting their pants six games into their conference schedule. I just didn't really want to see them lose to the only other school that has given me a degree...

Intimations of Irresponsibility

2009-11-30T16:16:00.000-08:00

I have almost no shit to do (which is why I'm here right now), and I have too much time in which to do it. The problem, as I was mentioning to my lunch buddy today, is that my current schedule affords me too much slacking room. In the past few years, I've managed to balance coursework with teaching in such a way that the building stress at the end of the semester makes me incredibly productive. This semester, though, I've found myself unable to do nearly as much work as I want to do. This isn't necessarily because I've stopped being a responsible graduate student; I've lost this semester due to forces outside of my control. (It's difficult to write a dissertation proposal when you're busy drinking until you can't feel feelings.) Still, it's hard to imagine myself looking forward to the light at the end of the tunnel when I can't even tell that I'm in a tunnel.

This semester hasn't been all bad. I figured out how to run, which I might not ever have done if the people closest to me hadn't squeezed out a Cleveland Steamer on my life. I've started drinking with new people who have interesting things to say. I've seen some theater. And the old hatred isn't entirely gone: I still loathe this time of year, which, even if it is only fleeting, represents all that is wrong with the world.

Seriously, though, how did I become this person? How did I get to the point where I don't really feel guilty for not doing more work? I have always been a firm believer in personal responsibility, and I'm rather ashamed (not to mention underwhelmed, but that's a different issue) by how little I have been working.

Thankfully, it can only get better.

This is Why I Avoid HCW

2009-11-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

I should really learn to stop saying things like, "I haven't seen either of them in over a month." I shouldn't even think it. I especially shouldn't dig up dead topics during lunchtime conversations, because that shit apparently just comes back to bite me in the ass.

On that dead topic, though: whatever the outcome, history will not be the judge. Even though I'll forget them - and how! - I won't forget being lied to and dicked over.

Thank You, Dennis Leary

2009-11-28T22:43:00.000-08:00

The quote of the holiday weekend: "Cranberry Ale! Cranberry NUT CRUNCH FUCKING ALE! Cranberries and beer do not go together. One's for bladder infections; one's for getting DRUNK."

A day in Cleveland with a college roommate who will never, under any circumstances, betray me, a roommate whose worst-ever crime against me was wanting to have the apartment to himself the same night I wanted to have the apartment to throw a party, a roommate who will never forget that I hauled his naked, sweaty ass into his bed while he whined about needing more Wild Irish Rose, rekindles both love and hate.

Mausty: may you be blessed this month with a beautiful baby girl. I hope she has your sense of humor.

To the other, who has failed others:

Cause It's Wednesday

2009-11-18T19:22:00.000-08:00

If I were to criticize myself for any aspect of my recent behavior, I would say that I haven't been angry enough. This is significant for several reasons.

First, it means that I've gotten over a relatively traumatic event - complete abandonment by the two people who worked the hardest to convince me that they were my closest friends here - almost too quickly. Five weeks ago the very name of either sent me on a downward spiral; the thought of seeing either was unbearable; actually seeing either made me physically ill. Today I can hardly muster the energy to say "fuck them both." What I don't want - and what I'm guarding against - is a relapse, just like every time I found out some new piece of information that pushed the date of their true-love fucking back closer and closer to unconscionable.

Secondly, it makes me question my judgment. Not now: then. On one side, I privileged someone else's feelings over my own and ignored her insecurity and immaturity, even though I knew it would eventually lead to the end of our relationship. (That's almost too predictable.) On the other, I was actually fooled by someone who professed the same kind of loyalty I feel towards my closest friends. His ironic self-condemnation for his lack of judgment, as it turned out, was not so ironic.

Thirdly, I am now forced to ask the following question: if I don't carry the rage, who will? Others are far too willing to accept the new status quo because it doesn't apply directly to them. I can't entirely blame them, because three months ago I acted the same way. I didn't know all the details, and I didn't want to know. I didn't think about how the friend who was acting badly could suddenly act just as badly towards me. But then someone else's business all too quickly became my business. If I'm not as upset about this as I once was, their blatant disregard for the other people around them - their unbelievable selfishness, their appallingly inconsiderate pursuit of their own immediate pleasure at the expense of those they claimed so ardently to care about - will go unacknowledged. Shouldn't there be consequences for such behavior?

Lastly, my apparent rebound will make it all the more confusing to everyone else when I flip my shit the next time I see them together. I will be the only one in the room who is upset, and therefore I - not the shitheads who couldn't even be mature enough to tell me the truth about the way they were fucking (me over) - will be one making everyone else uncomfortable. That's not a position I look forward to.

But that's only if I were to criticize myself.

Rather Cocksure of Facile Conjectures

2009-10-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

I found the title of this post in the margins of a mid-twentieth-century tome entitled Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature, in cramped-but-confident old-man script. The commentator was right: the author's suppositions about John Marston - an author he hated so much that he needed to devote over a hundred pages to an explanation of Marston's poetic, dramatic, satirical, and personal shortcomings - were ridiculous enough in several places to make me laugh out loud.

I hope someone will write that in the margins of my book someday.

Musings on Scatology

2009-09-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

I think I have learned my lesson about eating and shitting. They should be separate activities.

This is distinct from someone I know, who shat where he ate so many times that he eventually had to resort to eating his own shit. When he got tired of that, he decided to eat his friend's shit. Now a profound stink - hardly covered with Old Spice - follows him wherever he goes.

You keep eating shit, buddy.

Holy Fucking Shit

2009-08-05T22:03:00.000-07:00

Prelims is painful.

There's so much I haven't read.

Law school, here I come.

So I Might As Well Drink

2009-05-16T19:04:00.000-07:00

According to Lydia Davis, Samuel Johnson is indignant that Scotland has so few trees.

Graduate school has made me bad at leisure time. When there are no portfolios to grade and no papers to write, I quite literally do not know what to do with myself. I don't like television enough to waste a day in front of it, and I only have a few channels to choose from. I get kind of anxious staring at the stacks of books I haven't read in my apartment, and I generally open several, read a few pages of each, and put them back on the shelf.

I'm not that good at sleeping, or I would spend more time doing it.

This is about something much bigger than my inability to lounge: this is about the fact that I am a graduate school monster, incapable of doing anything unrelated to graduate school. And this terrifies me, because graduate school sucks.

Why Lucian is Awesome

2008-11-24T08:02:00.000-08:00

This is from Dialogues of the Dead:

Diogenes: “But, my handsome Mausolus, of your beauty and strength nothing more is to be seen, and if I should call in question your advantageous figure, you would not be able to give the judge a reason why your skull is more beautiful than mine. Both are peeled and bare, our teeth grin on both sides in like manner, and instead of eyes we have both empty holes and flat, apish noses. As to your monument, and the costly marble of which it is built, the inhabitants of Halicarnassus may certainly have reason to shew it to strangers, and to think much of themselves for possessing so great a work of art within their walls: but, my comely gentleman, what sort of enjoyment you should have of it, I see not; you should then only say, that you bear a heavier load than the rest of us, since you have an enormous heap of stones lying upon you.”

The Insidious Effrontery of Ontology

2008-11-23T22:08:00.000-08:00

Norman Young wanted
To say something new.
I matter! he cried,
But none could hear him
Over the clamor,
Clatter, bustle, and
Discord of the world.
He sat and thought, but
Grew impatient when
Thinking was painful.
He resolved to yell
As loud as he could.
I matter! he screamed.
His voice unsettled
Buildings and houses,
Cracked windows, unmoored
Ships, but returned to
Norman unheeded.
I know, he thought, I’ll
Go somewhere higher:
Surely they’ll listen
When I’m above them.
He found a soapbox,
Stood upon it, and
Addressed the masses.
Brothers! he shouted,
Hear me—I matter!
And finally, finally,
He caught the notice
Of a passerby.
That is nothing new,
The man said curtly,
And he tipped his hat
And kept on walking.
Norman stood silent
Alone on his box,
Musing for hours.
Of course, he realized,
How stupid I’ve been!
How can I think I’ll
Say something different
When I don’t know what’s
Already been said?
He strained to listen,
But could not make out
A single voice in
The roar of the world.
Disappointed, he
turned to books. All things
Worth saying, he thought,
Are set down in print.
When I have read all
There is to read, then
I’ll know what’s been said.
Norman sat for days,
Weeks, months, years, decades
In the library.
His hair grew, his skin
Stretched, his face wrinkled.
He lost himself in
Homer, Persius,
Aristophanes,
Horace, Juvenal,
And witty Lucian.
Certainly, he thought,
They’ve covered a lot.
He picked up Chaucer,
More and Erasmus.
His teeth turned yellow,
His eyes strained to see.
He skimmed through Wyatt,
Nashe, Middleton next;
He was awed by both
Shakespeare and Jonson.
Dryden bored him, but
He found Rochester,
Pope, Gay and Fielding
Simply delightful.
He laughed a filthy
Laugh, and lost his teeth.
The flesh rubbed from his
Fingers and peeled from
His face; he smelled of
Mildew and decay.
Pus oozed from his pores.
Surely now, he thought,
I can stop reading.
There’s nothing more that
Can be said. But then
He came across Swift.
One more, he thought, can’t
Possibly hurt me—
But he was poisoned
By the harsh whip of
Anger, invective,
And hatred he
Found in those pages.
He stood, dead already,
And stumbled outside,
Knowing at last how
Little he mattered.
So what? What matter?
He thought, and mounted
The soapbox again.
His arm came out of
Its socket. His legs
Crumpled. His head sagged.
He fell to his knees.
I can say nothing,
He mouthed, but nothing
Came out.

The Bills Shit on My Life

2008-11-18T08:32:00.001-08:00

Now that the Phillies have won the World Series - quietly, when everyone's back was turned, because we were all watching campaign commentary - maybe someone, somewhere will start paying attention to the fact that Buffalo fans are the most shat upon fans in the country.

We have teams in two major sports, neither of which have ever won a championship. (The Bills did win two AFL championships, in 1964 and 1965. But they haven't won since the merger in 1970.) The Bills made it to the Super Bowl four straight years and lost all four years. They haven't been to the playoffs since the 1999-2000 season, which ties the Detroit Lions for the second longest running playoff draught (the longest is held by the Cardinals, who last went to the playoffs in 1998, but they are a sure-in this year).

The Sabres made it to the Stanley Cup in 1974 - but lost - and again in 1999 - and lost again. That year, Buffalo lost on Brett Hull's no-goal in double overtime. They have made it to the Conference Finals twice in the past three years, but they don't seemed destined for greatness this year.

It is true that our minor sports teams have fared somewhat better. The Bisons (who, I just discovered, are no longer affiliated with the Indians, but with the Mets) have won their AAA league crown 3 times since 1979, the most recent of which was in 2004. The Bandits, our professional lacrosse team, has won championships 4 times since 1992. But the Blizzard (indoor soccer) never won anything before their league collapsed, and the Destroyers (arena football) were pathetic before they moved to Columbus.

The early '90s were our glory days, when the Bills would win (and then lose). Since then, we've suffered through a Homerun throwback ('99 Titans) and a handful of solid Sabres teams (especially the '06-'07 team that won the Presidents' Cup), but we've gotten more or less complacent with our mediocrity. We know we're going to lose. We expect to lose. We're great fans: we love our teams even though we are horribly and depressingly resigned to failure.

Then why, why did I start to believe that the Bills were really coming together when they started out 4-0? Why couldn't I have just kept my hopes and my expectations to a minimum?

The worst part is that I can't say, "Fuck you, Buffalo," and move on. I just can't.

Fcuk You, AT&T

2008-11-01T16:35:00.000-07:00

There are two things that have recently come to my attention. First, I find myself in a murderous rage infrequently - perhaps even disappointingly infrequently. Secondly, the times that I am deliriously homicidal are almost always related, in some way, to either the cable company or the cell phone company.

I have spent more time arguing ridiculous charges, calling either or both companies out on neglected promises or breaches of contract, asking to speak to supervisors, and endeavoring to explain to the misguided - though frequently well-intentioned and occasionally blameless - customer service agents that what they have just told me defies reason.

The worst thing is that I don't particularly want the services that these companies offer. I need the internet; I pay for cable because it is only a few dollars more to get both cable and internet than it is to get internet service by itself. I use my cell phone, but I certainly don't need the internet on my phone. I always let myself get talked into the "you'd be stupid not to do it" argument, because, well, I'm just trying to get through life without looking stupid. (Like Brian Reagan, it's not going so well.)

So I agreed that it would be silly to get the new phone - which I needed, because the old phone was unusable - and not pay a few dollars a month for the discounted (but unlimited) internet service that went with it. I've used it occasionally, usually to check the news on the bus. Again, I paid for unlimited internet service. Why, then, was my cell phone bill last month $969?

Another Reason to Find an Alternative Source of Energy

2008-10-20T08:11:00.000-07:00

If we can cure ourselves of our oil addiction, will that mean the end of Nascar?

America, Fuck Yeah

2008-10-07T13:30:00.000-07:00

It's come to my attention that I suck at blogging.

I've also had several conversations recently about the tendency for American voters to cast their ballot for someone as much like themselves as possible. This tendency, it seems to me, is absurd.

At some point elections shifted from principles to issues. Rather than voting along the lines of whichever party one identified with - Federalists, Democrats, Whigs, Republicans, Bull Moose, Progressive, whatever - Americans began choosing their elected officials based on where they stood on the key issues. Abortion, gun control, free speech, taxes: these became the things that mattered for distinguishing between candidates, because in their constant appeal to typical Americans, the principles of government on which political candidates stood collapsed into each other.

What we have witnessed in the past ten years or so, I think, is another collapse: these issues that candidates still claim are so important have not gotten any closer to resolution, but political candidates have realized that their approaches to these issues must be safe. Instead of differences of opinion, then, we, the electorate, are presented with theme and moderation. (That's my clever play on theme and variation.)

Wonderful. In both cases, centrism is the name of the game. But if principles and issues are no longer at stake, what's left?

I'll tell you what's left: pathos. Emotional fucking appeal.

Emotional appeal, it's true, has always been present in American elections. But it's never been a matter of such urgency. A political candidates' job is now, first and foremost, connecting with the American people. Letting them know that s/he is one of them.

This is what we want. An ordinary American - a reality television loving, Nascar supporting (in the middle of an oil crisis, no less), individual first, leave me the fuck alone ordinary American - to make decisions on our behalf. Fuck the best and brightest; fuck the collective; we want someone we can identify with, who is going to protect our interests.

I'm terrified.

It's Because I Hate You

2008-03-22T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here are the top ten things that I hate right now, in (as far as I can tell) descending order.

10. Billy Packer. This prick bastard son of Satan doesn't ever seem to die, as much as I wish evil upon him. If I prayed, I would ask the omniscient, omnipotent, anthropomorphic, Anglocentric, American-loving God to smite that chicken fucker. Whose brilliant idea was it to give him the microphone, and who listens to him talk and nods their head in agreement? Who offers him contract extensions? How many angry "kill that asshole, please" emails and letters does CBS have to dismiss before they finally pull the plug from his back?

9. Winter. I may have spent my childhood in a snowy region, but I hated snow in March back then just as much as I do now. Now that I no longer ski, I have no need for snow, or for the ice that caused my car to slide into the house on the side of the too-narrow driveway that leads back to the parking spot I pay too much for so that I don't have to pay for the inevitable parking tickets my landlord guaranteed me I would not get on the street in front of my apartment. Whose brilliant fucking idea was it to build a civilization in these states, even if there were plenty of trees to cut down a century ago? They could have left much more easily than sticking around and dying in the cold. And why is it that we let the backwards, deep-frying, superficial, intolerant conservative Jesus freaks dominate those areas of the country that have reasonable weather conditions? Why do I have to move to either Madison, WI or Boulder, CO to live in a liberal community? New York isn't bad. Maybe I'll follow the academic exodus, just because the weather is better.

8. People I don't know. They're always going to be pricks before you introduce yourself, which is why they're all more or less intolerable. Take those shitheads at the bar the other night, rooting for Belmont over Duke. Sure, I was nearly rooting for Belmont as well, just so that I didn't have to suffer through the travesty that I knew all too well would happen this afternoon, but these guys couldn't be louder or more aggressively sophomoric. Perhaps if I had introduced myself and gotten to know them, I might have changed my mind and thought, huh, they're not intentionally moronic assholes; they're just having a bad day. But refusing to do that - standing my ground and letting them eat away at the very nerve center of my brain one precious fellow-human-loving cell at a time - allows me to hate them with more earnest.

7. People who walk directly behind me. I'm never going to get over this. People walk at different speeds, and I accept that, but if we are going to continue to live together in society - actual, not virtual - then you might as well learn a few ground rules, the first of which seems to be DO NOT FUCKING WALK DIRECTLY BEHIND ME, especially when I'm trying to carry on a conversation. I simply fall apart; I can't think; I can't talk; I can't do anything except activity despise the person behind me until they have either wised up and moved beyond me or walked directly into my back when I stop abruptly.

6. Exclamation points. This is self-explanatory.

5. Scales. I'm tired to listening to people who are thin and fit and healthy worry incessantly about their weight, to the point where it dominates conversations, decisions, and thought processes. I am especially annoyed when these people are way too intelligent to buy into the way body image is constructed in our society. It seems that many of the same people who are able to both recognize and denounce the array of advertising phenomena that go into creating these unattainable, unrealistic, and frankly unattractive ideals are the most susceptible to them. Stop worrying about your weight unless you are a) on a high school wrestling team, b) overweight enough to worry about your health, or c) concerned about having a heart attack before the age of 30.

4. Money. It's easy to hate what you don't have.

3. Food Shopping. It takes so much time out of my schedule, and every trip to the grocery store is a reminder that I never learned how to cook. (Laugh at me all you want, but in my defense nobody has ever bothered to teach me; to give you an idea of my mother's culinary skills, most trips back home involve me chipping in for takeout (see #4). She can cook when she feels like it, but she just never feels like it.) This, in turn, is a reminder of all the other things I should know how to do but don't: any kind of handiwork, simple arithmetic, play videogames, take apart a computer, relax. It's an overwhelming experience of ineptitude, hunger, and despair. I inevitably leave disappointed in myself. What's worse is that I buy only enough food to last four days, which means that for two full weeks after the bananas, milk, cereal, frozen pizza, mac and cheese, and bread are gone, I have to spend too much money (again, see #4) eating out.

2. Graduate School. Nothing makes me feel dumber than spending all of my time working for negative reinforcement. Never in my life have I worked so hard to feel so stupid, and the worst part is that the overwhelming evidence indicates that I was stupid to even come to graduate school in the first place. Professors are leaving, the degree means about as a stalk of moldy broccoli does to a starving lion in terms of finding gainful employment, and I could have been doing other things in other places. Once I do finally finish classes, take prelims, and write a dissertation, the odds are fairly good that I'll end up at a no-name school in a no-name town in nowhere, Texas, teaching freshman composition to kids whose idea of an academic essay means a more formal, stylized, and detailed summary of their personal life to age 18.

1. Duke Basketball. If you're going to root for the most hated team in all of American sports (a phenomenon which has never been entirely clear to me; is it just envy? Am I missing something? Is it the elitism of Duke? Because I've been there, and, with the exception of a privileged few, the students at Duke are every bit as insecure about themselves as college students anywhere else in the country), they might as well fucking win. Otherwise it's just a matter of getting shat on while everyone you know consoles you by rubbing the shit further up your nostrils. The entire country is not celebrating that UConn lost in the first round, but they are for Duke. (This is something I would like to explore further. I'd like to know why it is that Duke students taunt opposing fans by sticking their arms out and wiggling their hands, but when I wore a Duke shirt in the Comcast Center in Maryland the security guard warned me that I might get killed.) I know it's me; I know that the Buffalo curse just extends to Duke and that I will never see a team I love win at anything. I know that I will continue to devote entirely too much of my time to a group of over-hyped athletes that will continue to let me down. It might be time to join one of those "I hate Duke" or "Duke sucks" websites. I'll buy the fucking t-shirt, I'll put the fucking bumper sticker on my car, I'll pay the fucking yearly dues. I'll root for Georgia Tech. Just make everything else go away.

2008-02-26T16:25:00.001-08:00

And it’s self-
Centered, self-
Induced, self-
Perpetuated,
Solipsistic. It’s
Meaningless.