Random Updates

• after being slothful and avoiding my writing all weekend (that includes Friday, actually), I managed to get to a coffeeshop and work today. Hmm. Looking at my notes (I sign myself in and out to keep me slightly more honest), I only wrote on the new section for an hour today. That's not much; I will try to work more steadily tomorrow. (see why I need a punch-clock?)
• and though I grumbled and was tired and did not want to get up, I actually did get up and do yoga. Yay! Ideally I'd walk too, but my desires to make lots of progress on the article and to get in lots of exercise are in conflict with each other.
• Speaking of my article, I may have to kill my brother and my dad, who I told that I was working on a new project. Since that was a month ago, they have decided this must mean the project should be done right now. I keep getting "well, aren't you done yet?" comments on my phone calls home. Argh. Of course, with my dad, explaining to him that humanities articles don't work like engineering papers isn't going to do anything from one conversation to the next. Ah well.
• I like the library here. Our holdings might be pretty pitiful, but all the upper floors have windows on all sides and they have put group study tables around the perimeter, which allows me to bask in the light and a view. I find that really nice when working (after lunch I went there to type up booknotes and prevent myself from taking a nap.) It's also quiet --- deathly quiet even though we are in the middle of summer session. Heh.
• Speaking of summer session, I should prep my online summer class. Sometime.
  
• Speaking of avoiding naps, I accidentally pushed myself very hard in that yoga session and suddenly found myself in the middle of a nap attack right before lunch. The cats took full advantage of my sudden loss of consciousness to drape themselves all over my body.
  
• What that will mean if I am to die in my apartment and not be found for several days, I don't want to know.
  
• I have a rice-related update for you all but will make that a separate post. Or not, as I am strangely tired and unwilling to upload the pictures (yes I took pictures for you).
  
• I got caught in the rain in the laundromat yesterday, my clothes all dried and folded but unable to leave because of aforementioned rain. Met some real characters but have a half-written post going on that.
• I shouldn't check my blog reader in the middle of the day, because I have no willpower and waste valuable midday time reading them instead of working and then have no posts to read in the evening after dinner. Alas.
• I am going to visit the fam in California for a bit this summer. I might be more homesick for the place than the family.
  
• I have yet to win the lottery or have a rich distant relative remember me in their will. I could really use that at the moment.
• I don't really have anything else to post.
  

Rice Cooker?

I have killed my rice cooker. Sigh. I noticed it making lots of funny noises last time I cooked up rice and finally I put water in the pan to check for leaks and held it up to observe drips. It has a hole slightly larger than a pin. Grumble.

I must have bought this as a senior in college. I hadn't thought about the life spans of rice cookers but that is a pretty long time.

My first reaction was to do nothing. Nothing, that is, except eat things that were not ricey. See me trying to control my spending? Unfortunately, I lapsed and went to Kohl's to find cheap t-shirts. I now have a huge pile of t-shirts to wash and put away, and a couple bras that I hope will actually fit comfortably for more than a week this time. Dangit. So, I spent money, and really my ideal solution would be to learn how to cook up rice in a saucepan instead of buy a rice cooker.

But where's the fun in that? Also, I only eat brown rice, the short fat grains. Tasty! And, all heart-goodness-y. Is it hard to cook brown rice in a saucepan?

You know how I dither about (oops sorry, "research" the best consumer value) before I actually go and choose anything, so we might as well begin the discussion now. I will then be ready to make a decision about when school is ready to start.

What's a good rice cooker? Do you have any favorites? Recommendations? Anything you know does brown rice well? I don't need it to make bread or porridge or the crazy stuff some of these things advertise, just make rice.

In other news, I want a coffee-making robot. But I wouldn't have him actually make any coffee, just clomp around the house scaring the cats. See?



Cuuuute.

Crazy-Ass Movie Review Episode Two: The Unknown!

The Unknown (1927), being what is known as a “programmer” or the kind of filler movies they cranked out as fast as possible in the days before sound, is probably not as good as the last crazy-ass movie I reviewed, Baby Doll. But it is directed by Tod Browning, who made Freaks, and stars Lon Chaney, the Man of a Thousand Faces. And even though it’s a silent film and therefore a little more difficult to watch, it definitely has plenty of Weird. Ohhhhhh yes.

You clearly want to watch this. No? Well then, you won’t mind me giving away the whole plot. Chaney plays Alonzo the Armless Wonder in a gypsy circus. I know! You’re thinking that this has got to have a lot of deviance and depravity and deformity, considering that its another circus movie by Browning. Well, honestly, I could have used more depravity, but Chaney is an amazing actor.

See that? I can't really get a screencapture of how good he is as an actor because his skill is in the quicksilver way he flashes through emotions. Want to see Chaney go from lovesick to possessive and controlling to brutally murderous to insane with jealousy to almost hiding a sneer of hatred and plotting behind a smile of goodwill? All in a single take? He is good. Good at eeeeeeevil, I mean.

Amazingly, this is one of Joan Crawford’s very first starring roles and it was so strange to see her on screen in this. She didn’t really do much acting, per se, but she is still magnetic --- I can see why they say the camera just loves her --- particularly when she’s still, her beauty just glows through at you.

Damn, that’s hot. Crawford plays Nanon, the gypsy daughter of the circus owner, and she is pathologically afraid of men, because they are always trying to put their hands on her. Here’s where Browning has a little fun, making a little allegory of how the good girl is innocent and frightened and has to be initiated into sex.


She’s a passionate little spitfire, but men’s … hands … just leave her terrified, and she shrinks away when any come into contact with her. The only man she is not afraid of is Alonzo, because … you guessed it. He has no hands. And he swears to protect her for ever, for he loves her. And he confesses to his friend and henchman, the evil dwarf (how could we have a Browning circus movie without an evil dwarf?) that he must own her, that he will possess her at all costs.

But here’s where the fun gets a little perverse, or the perverse gets a little fun, depending on how you like it.

Arms!

The character you thought was safe and protective because of a lack, actually possesses an excess. And who would go to the trouble to hide in a circus as an armless man, but a murderer who is wanted for strangling so many people!

Browning externalizes this inner depravity by making this killer-disguised-as-deformed actually deformed under the disguise:

I told you he bore an excess of signification. (That’s what she said.) So, while Nanon kisses Alonzo and allows him to touch her because she thinks he lacks those strange and scary … hands, he is actually doubly depraved! Maybe even triply, because, you know, he’s got a whole ’nuther … ok, just nod your understanding because the dirty metaphor doesn’t really hold up if you look at it too closely. Which is Nanon’s problem, after all!

I should have mentioned up at the beginning that Nanon was part of Alonzo’s act. Just in case you didn’t pick up on the idea that we are substituting for something with those … hands, Alonzo’s act consists of using a gun to shoot Nanon’s costume off her body and then throwing knives to make an outline around her silhouette. Look at all that masculine power and prowess Alonzo has even without any arms!

Oh wait, that’s not Alonzo the Armless wonder, that’s strong man Malabar, the guy who gets fresh with Nanon, bending a massive bar with … ok now this is just getting silly.

Anyway, the problem is that Nanon has feelings for Malabar the strongman, but is also afraid of him and his manly hands. His difficulty was that he was just walking up and grabbing her and throwing her around roughly, which you gotta admit is kind of a drag when you’re just walking down the way to get some chow after a performance, minding your own business. Once he learns to go slow, offering her flowers and saying he loves her and wants to be around her forever and that he understands she is afraid when he touches her, the relationship improves. They start walking around places together and she gradually brings herself to trust him and look at his … hands, and one day they just happen to be walking on a ledge or wall or something and she slips and he catches her! With his hands! And after she gets over the shock for a minute she decides she really kinda likes it and hey, they should get married.

(from the Dialogue Slide: Now I understand what you are afraid of. Jeez, make it more obvious, guys.)

No baby doll this girl. Even when she is supposed to be looking terrified she looks like a man-eater. Which is probably why she was able to move up into stardom.

Anyway, to make this review longer than the actual film, let me point out what Alonzo the not-really-armless-wonder has been doing. Upon being told by his sidekick the evil dwarf that he can’t let Nanon hug him anymore because she might be able to, um, feel through his disguise, Alonzo makes plans to propose to her and then despairs of what will happen on their wedding night; what will she do when she first sees him naked? She’ll be expecting to not see any … hands, and instead she would see hands! Craaaaaaa-zy hands!!!! She might even recognize that he is the strangler who keeps mysteriously murdering people wherever the circus group goes, including even her own father at one point! (Forgot I left that out.) So he comes up with… a plan.

What sort of secret sexual past does this doctor have, I wonder? Whatever it is, he knows the truth about Alonzo’s … hand, in all its queer deformity. Ohhh, yes, I think there was some major deviance here, for Alonzo blackmails him and tells the doctor he must do whatever he says in order to keep Alonzo silent.

So, just like he is ordered to, he secretly saws off Alonzo’s arms. Operates. Whatever. The point is, Nanon was deathly afraid of men’s … hands, so Alonzo hides his past evil secrets by becoming what Nanon thinks he already is by amputating his … hands. When really, all she wanted was a little romantic foreplay before being, er, manhandled. That and for him to not kill people, like her relatives. I hope all you guys out there are taking notes about What Women Really Want.

And what does the now-really-armless-wonder Alonzo do when he returns and discovers that his sacrifice was for nothing and Nanon got over her fear of … hands and plans to marry this dude?

He acts up a storm, like he was going for the first Oscar!!!

Cue insane maniacal laughter ... now! Seriously, this scene is just amazing and he was awesome.

But then, he hatches… another plan!

In a nice piece of symmetry, he plans to sabotage Malabar’s act and instead of Malabar mastering and overpowering wild horses, they will tear out his arms! Mwahahaha!

And did I mention that Nanon ties her husband up to wild horses and then cracks a whip to excite them into a fury? That’s hot. That’s … ok, I should just move on now.


To sabotage the act, all Alonzo will have to do is push that big lever over there … but ohno! However will he do that now that he really has no … hands, instead of just pretending it is so?

Well, he’s manly enough to do it, and he does! Unfortunately, it being a Hollywood film from the 20s, we do not then get to see Malabar’s arms ripped out and Alonzo win his vengeance. In fact, the evil plot is foiled, Alonzo is accidentally killed by the horses, and good and justice is restored to the world. Bummer.

I wish it had been darker and dirtier, but I’ll take what I can get. For all its salacious hinting at deviance, I give it a round of applause.

Or would that be two thumbs up?

Moving House? You know how I am about decisions

Ok, so you might remember that I am here with a big group of postdocs, and at the beginning of the year we were spread all out all over the city. Now, several of them have moved in closer to each other in the Student Ghetto, and Angry Anarchist Postdoc is looking in to moving in upstairs from one of the postdocs who is my office mate. I am kinda against moving this summer, in that I hate moving and the time suck and the backache and the fear that all my nice stuff will be dinged up and all my cheap stuff that barely survived the move will be destroyed, but I am also feeling the urge to move closer to them. Hmm. Help me think this through.

Now --- ok, have you ever visited Yale and the area that used to be nice and campus-oriented right around the campus fell apart and became a bastion of Section 8 housing and racial resentment? Postdoc City kinda has that too, but more class-related than race, I'd say. If you want a new place where the residents have middle-class or professional jobs and there is a working kitchen and heat/ac, you move where I did, the circle around the edge of town. In the middle is a burned-out, postindustrial wasteland, that's the downtown, and across the freeway from that is the university and the hundred-year-old houses that have all been chopped up for student apartments and places that pay cash for gold, which seems to be the major business around here.

In short, it's not gentrified, it's not cute, it's not walkable, but I would be close to school and the other postdocs. I'm kind of a loner, but I really am liking this idea of moving closer to them. Except that I had already decided against it. And my sister might kill me because right now I have a nicer kitchen than she does.

********

And now an update, before I'd even actually posted this post. This ad for a "cottage" ---- that is freestanding 1 bedroom house about a block from my friend the postdoc appeared on craigslist, and when I called about it, they said they had already had several people make appointments to see it, so I asked for an appointment right then and there and asked my friend to meet me out front. Hmm. So having seen it, it is a bit grottier than I wanted (instead of freestanding, it's more like listing to one side, and the floors are a bit warpy, and the inside doors probably don't close well), and is only $50 cheaper than my current nice shiny place, and they clearly took the pictures from a good angle to hide the fact that it hadn't been painted. But. There is another place that I happened to mention to Angry Anarchist Postdoc and he went to see it, said it was gorgeous, but was a downstairs unit in a house and he would never do that again. So I emailed AAP this listing and might go check out the one I sent to him originally. But, I don't know. You'd think writing all this out and then going to see a place would help me decide. Maybe lists?

Current House Pros:
new! clean! gorgeous! everything works!
has a dishwasher!
has a high efficiency heat pump/AC and is built to be super energy efficient!
very quiet
good back porch w. lots of birds and trees (no covering)
spacious
would not have to pack anything or move it until I get my tt job (or go live in a van down by the river)

Current House Cons:
kinda far from school and postdocs
no sidewalks in area, so must drive everywhere
can't go outside on porch in the rain or after 11:30 when the sun is out and annoying
I have W/D/ hookups but no washer or dryer here

Hmm. Dunno. I will email that first place I sent out and see if it is still available for a walkthrough. It looked nicer and more kept up than the first place, but it is a house divided into 6 rentals and the kitchen looks teeny with no dishwasher. On the plus side it is very close to school and pretty close to the postdocs, though probably pretty loud due to all the students in the area (frats are the next street over.) There wasn't all that much else with a "for rent" sign in the yard otherwise, and the only places we saw lots of availability were the places on the non-frat side of the frat street. I'm not up on being that close to party town, particularly if students don't party there but out at the bars circling the town --- that means they are all coming home drunk and loud and running over my cats or something.

Sigh. Why can't I make up my mind about anything? If stuff was like 100 or 200 cheaper, or you could guarantee me a dishwasher and good quality AC, this might be an easier decision to make. But, of course, right now I'm waffling.

A Day for Exclamation Points!

Yes!!!!!! I am awesome!!!! One hundred percent pure organic free range awesomeness. I felt so full of energy when I woke up. (at 7!!!) I did 40 minutes of yoga and then took a walk! Whoo-hoo! I can feel all the muscles of my legs and butt --- not in a painful way, but like they're saying "Hey baby! Hells yeah we exist! We are right. here. Oooooh yeah!"

Then I wrote on my article, Floyd, for 40 minutes, and after I took a shower I scrubbed up the whole bathroom and did a bunch of cleaning! And then had lunch! ...aaaaaaaand I have a feeling that my energy might slack about now. Which is fine; I've done a good day's work already. I'll go type in booknotes from this book or the biography I've been reading for Floyd now. And may possibly go get groceries later.

It's just so nice to wake up and have a lot of energy after dragging along by so much the past week, especially when it was a day you didn't plan on being particularly productive. You know what? I had counted stuff and thought I might be able to finish this subsection by Monday, and if I keep working hard, by the end of Monday, I just might!

Grumble grumble clothes these days

Ok, I know I said I was going on a financial diet, and other than buying tp and stocking up on coffee one day and filling up the gas tank another day, I haven't spent any money, which is good. Unfortunately, to really improve my finances I'd need to not spend any money at all for anything discretionary for the entire summer. That's pretty outside of my level of willpower. Especially when you consider my casual summer clothes are looking pretty shoddy and worn. This is why I was at the Old Navy this morning. And I bought stuff, to my disgust --- and not even disgust at me breaking my budget; I'm pretty pissed off at them.

See, I live in cheap, brightly colored t-shirts. And I may be turning into my parents, who are still stuck in pre-70s-inflation price standards and think that no single item of clothing should cost more than 20 dollars, but I don't want to spend a lot of money for something that's not in any way special or embellished. So while I raise an eyebrow when my parents say, "you paid more than 19.95 for those jeans? Insane!" I kinda do have that expectation when it comes to a plain red or blue t-shirt. It's freaking mass-produced, people. And there aren't that many special seams, and no rivets or nothing. Don't tell me it costs anything like 10 bucks to make.

So I have been peeved at t-shirts on the internet, which for some reason are running around 50-60 dollars for anything cute. I will go stock up on a bunch of colors for cheap at Old Navy, I told myself. But when I got there, the fabric was so thin and slubby I could see through it! Old Navy people, I know you are maximizing profit, but fuck you! I do not want to buy multiple t-shirts and layer them; it's too damn hot here!

My other complaint was the cut of the neckline: on t-shirts that basically fit me everywhere else, the scoop neck was cut so low it almost followed the edge of my bra. Even the "crewneck" was much lower than I would define it, and the v-necks were just unacceptable. I have wondered, off and on, in my journey toward crotchety get-off-my-lawn-you-are-going-out-in-That-elderlyness, why so many of my students, regardless of the location of where I am teaching, seem to insist on totally inappropriate tops for school that show off their entire rack. Now I know: it's not so much that they are saying, screw you, rules of appropriateness! They are just too dumb young and inexperienced in the ways of the world to realize that if the cheap and popular shirt does not fit them well, don't buy it. I think it has way more to do with the power of the fashion industry, which is not offering other options right now, than any actual decisions or conscious thinking on my students' part. Which sucks because when everything is becoming pornified and women's bodies completely sexualized, including this PETA ad:


then it's hard to even get students to realize that they are being sexualized/objectified as much as they are. Maybe I'm wrong for insisting certain levels of cleavage are only appropriate for certain venues, but I think work (school=work) is a place where you should not have overtly sexualized bodies, and I would rather my students learn that than say, hey, let's just throw out all the rules of appropriateness and class. (do I go off on my rant about visible bra straps? Nah, one rant a day.)

But mostly I would like cheap and easily available options for those of us who have some extra weight to cover our bodies. News flash to the designers: America, statistically speaking, is overweight! Maybe just a few pounds, maybe by a lot. And most women are at or below 5.5 in height. So, really, Old Navy, most of the women --- and even the teens --- in America are not tall, thin, broad shouldered, A-cup shapes like your mannequins here. When I tried on a scoop neck in your store, I had three inches of exposed boobs and the bottom of the shirt almost touched my knees. Please embrace the square over the thin rectangle for your fitting.


And, funny, when I went looking for "pictures of girls in t-shirts" to accompany my post, weirdly enough, I couldn't find any of what I was describing, even though I see it at school all the time. All the pics were of these extremely thin women with no boobs, who look fine in a low scoop tank because they couldn't show any cleavage without some major structural garments underneath. (But then I typed in "cleavage" for an image search and got to see a lot of what makes me sad about humanity. Sigh.) But I did find this blog post that I liked, which shows some pics of "regular women" and asks "how do you feel about showing cleavage"? Go read the discussion (oh, the final pic of the girl in the blue dress --- minus her flat skinny waist --- looks the most like me in the dressing room today) and leave your own take on the whole dress/appropriateness/fashion industry/weight/gender issue here. Or any other related comments. What do you think?

If it's not one thing, it's another

You know, I'm basically only running the AC at night. It's fine in here now --- the thermostat says its 75 and it feels perfectly ok --- and I'll just deal with the hot upstairs by not going up there. The fact that the sofa is directly in front of the window (which the cats ate the blinds for) is something I'll still have to think about, though.

No, this time I couldn't sleep because of cramps, argh. After tossing and turning while my inner organs played the equivalent of techno music in my midsection (thump-a, thump-a thump-a), I finally gave up and tried to hunt down some sort of medicine. And took the very last of my Midol, which was the daytime, caffeinated version. Sigh. And definitely no yoga for me, since I feel tired and achy and crampy.

So, yeah, didn't get much done today. I re-typed a handwritten paragraph that I wrote yesterday, and then decided that, since I felt like crap, I should just do a bunch of other crappy things. So I flea-treated the cats and made all sorts of calls about my health insurance and made dr's and haircut appointments. I hate phones. And am I done with all those annoying things on my list? No, of course not, because those are the types of things that it just isn't possible to finish off in one go-round. There was a long digression where I had to go to a bunch of websites and call various people to figure out what my health insurance policy number was and why I have two different cards with different numbers. (The answer? I don't know. But I do know which is the real number, and now I can give it out when making dr's appointments, so problem resolved.)

I also got more books from the library and did some stupid campus errands, which are not all finished either. And started compiling a to-do list to prep for when I go back to visit California (yay!) for July. If I'm not careful, though, I will pack everything immediately and then suffer because I'm not leaving for an entire month. Heh.

And, I also got ice cream. It can't be helped. I grabbed blueberries on a whim while at the grocery store last, which is silly, since I don't really like straight-up blueberries. But they are very good on some vanilla ice cream and I will just pretend that the antioxidants counteract all of the fat and calories of the ice cream. Mmmm. I may need a second helping.

Tomorrow, yeah, that's it. Tomorrow will be the magic day when I both want to write a lot and make tremendous progress. Yes, tomorrow will be the day. Oops, when did I schedule the haircut appointment? Ah, crap.