Thunderstorm

It has been so long since I saw rain I have almost forgotten what it's like. My cats, for example, had never experienced rain, much less thunder and lightning, before last night, so understandably they were pretty freaked out. Timido is still under the couch as of right now, which makes it close to 24 hours. I've moved his food within smelling distance and hope that will coax him out ... and I am not thinking about whether he has needed a litter box yet. (Denial is a wonderful thing.)

It was good to feel cool wet air --- air that smells like rain and not humidity, because they are nothing alike to smell --- and I loved that a chill breeze had blown up for me to enjoy. There was the ever-so-soft pattering sound of rain --- scattered and patchy, of course, and it stopped quickly as would be expected for semidesert California. And then the lightning flashes began.

Began, but no sooner had I seen the huge flash but there was a sound like an echoing explosion. The cats were astounded; even I was frightened. As a kid I had taken a bus tour of the Grand Canyon rim with my family and lightning struck a tree about 20 feet from us. It was so cool: at that distance, the entire sky and all the air around you lights up a ghastly purple, there's a more intense spike of purple jagging down from the clouds and then, with a boom!, suddenly a huge gnarled cottonwood tree near you is completely ablaze. One thing I miss about the West (as opposed to the California West) is the constant thunder and lightning, and random rainstorms that last about a half hour every afternoon at 4. And "sunstorms," when one side of the street is being rained and lightninged-on but the other side is dry and cloudless and sunny. Trippy!

So I thought I knew from thunderstorms. But these lightning strikes scared me! Maybe I'm in a canyon of buildings and it echoes a lot, I thought. Then I heard sirens. Then I heard about 20 times the sirens, and they weren't stopping but getting ever closer. And then I smelled, over the rain, a charred, dirty burning that you get when you're burning something way bigger than a campfire. Or, I thought, the lightning really did hit something, very close. Ugh, there certainly have been a lot of fires lately ---- if the town isn't going up in flames it's my street.

So I went outside to the "balcony" ---- ie the little pathway all our front doors open out on ---- and saw a neighbor who is never around. "It's close; something around here got hit. I smell rubber burning." He peered over the railing and lit a cigarette.

"Wow. Crazy. That must be 10, 12 sirens. Did it hit the hospital or what?"

Just like last time I went and wandered, looking for signs I'd need to pack up my cats and evacuate. The rain was barely a mist now, but chilly. I couldn't see any signs that it was burning down our street so I went back inside and hoped that the rain or perhaps firefighters would put it out, or at least warn me somehow before my dry-as-tinder old apartment complex was in danger.

(I found out today that it hit an electrical transformer and started a fire ---- and yes it was very very close, so my cats and I feel slightly justified in our bestartlement. --- ps that is now officially a word.)

Except for the whole terrified-cat-permanently-under-the-couch thing, I'd love for us to see more thunderstorms, or heck, at least a little rain since we're in a drought even by California standards. But then I'd be confronted with the problem of what to wear when teaching, like today ---- how do you dress for cloudy, 88 degree weather with high humidity and a 20% chance of more thunderstorms?

I went with go-go boots and a miniskirt. Maybe there's something to that whole undergrad fashion of Uggs and daisy duke shorts after all. Nah, I'd never admit it.

Update: I went out to dinner and see people for drinks last night and when I came back the cat was out from under the sofa and demanding to be fed. So all is well. At least, as long as I don't think about what might be under the couch.

Self Portrait Number 291: Fish Happens

Nuh-uh! Job Market Season Is So NOT Soon

This exercise in denial and self-deception brought to you by Dissertation Buddy, the letter X, and the number 3....

Dissertation Buddy: So my advisor was looking at a draft of my job letter and mentioned that the MLA JIL will be out very soon.

Me: Yes, but not for quite a while.

DB: Oh. The end of September?

Me: I think it goes live on the web site on Sept. 15.

DB: So it is very soon.

Me: What is?

DB: When the job list comes out.

Me: No, we've got quite a while yet.

DB: No, that's just a couple weeks.

Me: (sticking fingers in ears) La la la la la la la I can't hear you! Tra la la neener neener.

DB: Ah. Denial much?

Me: (taking fingers out of ears) It ain't just a river in Egypt baby!

. . . . .

So, I guess that soon I will have to deal with the impending job search as it is approaching Market Season. You can tell because the light is changing, the days are starting to get shorter and the Crazy Loons advanced graduate students are migrating back to their autumnal resting grounds to begin a most bizarre and stressful courtship process. Hybrid creatures all, the Advanced Graduate Student's courtship (which much be carried out successfully before molting and becoming an Assistant Professor) involves a gathering of materials similar to the squirrel's hoarding of nuts, an intricate dance of dizzying complexity, and a truly wasteful process of attrition, with only one survivor actually completing the entire process compared to the hundreds of unsuccessful candidates. Strap yourselves down, folks, 'cause this blog's about to go on one hell of a crazy ride!

(Um, ok, maybe in light of the last post I shouldn't be ordering people into restraints ... Oh, hell. Just give me a job already, ok?)

Foucault's Doohickey

I noticed upon viewing my sitemeter stats that at least 5 or 6 people have come to my site from a search for “Foucault” and “doohickey” or some combination thereof. Is it special doohickey season, or the man’s birthday or something, that prompted this veritable run on Foucauldian doohickeys, not to mention thingamabobs? And was this really what you were looking for? (did somebody write something about my site or link to it that people are trying to find? Who’s talking behind my back? Ok, end paranoia.) Well, far be it from me to disappoint my readers or searchers ---- I shall, indeed, give you Foucauldian doohickeys!

First of all, I should point out that if you want an experiment that will demonstrate the rotation of the earth, you’re looking for a pendulum named after the French physicist Leon Foucault, who is not the Foucault you will be finding here. However, Foucault’s pendulum is quite pretty and fun to watch, so here is a Foucault pendulum in action at the “Musée des arts et métiers” … at least for a few seconds before the bored camera-wielding tourist starts looking around.

Here, have a still photo of a Foucault’s pendulum too:

…as you can see they look quite nice, especially when there’s an elegant gold plumb-bob and fancy compass rose inlaid in the floor. If you go look for more pictures, you’ll notice that lots are in beautiful classical or gothic archways with naves and pilasters and architectural details and things. Mmm, architectural details! Tasty! (Can you tell I grew up in the Western US in the 70s? Square white boxes of rooms, people! The “mile grid” and International Modernism and all that puke! I will go off on this favorite rant of mine in a later post, don’t you worry.)

Anyway, if you’re here for truly Foucauldian doohickeys you know that these pretty science toys are not the real deal and you are waiting for me to bust out with some implements of torture, for some good-old-fashioned Discipline and Punish. Aw yeah. Because this blog is not all about the physics of the earth’s rotation, nor, really, about the novel by Umberto Eco, which I haven’t read but I heard it was nice; no, this is a blog for poststructuralist theory, the hardcore, straight-up-no-chaser kind. Especially that by Michel Foucault, French philosopher, historian, and social critic. And I will deliver:


Ohhh, yeah. Isn’t it so … gridded? Doesn’t it give you that little frisson as you contemplate all areas of your life being quantified and squeezed into those little tiny spaces? What? What!?!? That wasn’t what you were looking for? What the hell! Maybe you want something a little more gender specific? Ok, here’s a favorite:

Now there we go… you’re right. You need to bring together a whole arsenal of implements to really get the effect of the power/knowledge system. Some people say the medical gaze is best, but I say the fashion gaze gets that gridding and standardizing and melds it with an internalized Panopticon! Speaking of, have some actual Panopticons:

You’ll note that the internal view is from a contemporary prison in Spain and the external view is from Los Angeles, where they have the largest jail in the world. I love me some Panopticons!

What is your problem? These aren’t implements of torture? They’re not sexy enough? You were thinking something a little more BDSM? Oh. Well, I blame the American translation. See, Foucault’s book in French is called Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison, which links back to surveillance, not torture, and his claim is that society threw out all that flashy, spectacular, sexy torture stuff for shit that would be more effective. (I gotta say, I love the guy, but his History of Sexuality, vol. 1 was pretty much the least sexy book I have read. Where were the body parts and the desires? It was all about the diffuse and anonymous workings of power, and how power was to be defined.)

So if you want the bondage and the sadism and the masochism, honey, actually, you’re going for the child’s play. The froofy cocktail with fruit and umbrellas, rather than the straight shot of Everclear that is a timetable. S&M is actually about the stylization, the overtheatricalized performance, of modern workings of power. The more showy, and less effective, dramatization of power compared to the internalization of the Panopticon, both in terms of cost and in pervasiveness. Why spend all that money paying a torturer and inspectors, who can’t be everywhere, and need, you know, pensions and health plans and all that shit, when we can implement a system whereby citizens police themselves and their other citizens! Who better to become a jailor than the prisoner herself? She’s always there already!

But that’s what’s so great about the Bush administration; after hundreds of years of replacing the inefficient old systems of torture and spectacular power with more seamless, integrated, standardized systems of rationalized time and space and regulation of docile bodies, they’re bringing sexy back! They said, tomato, tomahto, why do we have to choose between the great taste of rationalized corporate control on the one hand and the less filling of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib on the other; postmodernism is about both/and! We can have it all! In fact, the very spectacular, flashy nature of torture and all the emotional buttons it pushes can serve as a wonderful distraction from the increasing ratcheting up of pervasive, anonymous power; the largest prison system in the world, the disappearance of undocumented workers or Muslims, stifling of political dissidents, the massive transfer of wealth through mergers, corporate welfare, and the simultaneous unraveling of the social safety net, the atomization of American culture into libertarian-esque hyper-consumerism…

Ugh. I think I made myself sick. Even I can’t handle mainlining that much crap.

I have rocks in my head

I have made it through another week of teaching my intensive summer class (to all you who are starting fall semester: Haha! Neener neener! I have three more weeks of summer session and then, I think, two more weeks before FQ begins. Take that, people who all crowed about being done in May! Ok, kidding.)

The problem with summer teaching (ok , there are many problems, and money is probably more pressing than exhaustion, but what the hell) is how worn out I get and how it becomes The Class That Ate My Life --- leaving me too exhausted to do my diss work or anything fun and relaxing beyond staring slack-jawed at various blogs and mindless websites, too burnt to even post my own ramblings most of the time. You'd think I'd go relax on the beach or see a movie, but I can barely pull myself off the couch to heat up some dinner. You know, if I had a lot more money and was more photogenic, I could afford to check in to rehab for my "exhaustion," or afford the substances our paparazzi teens have been using that produced their said "exhaustion," but, when one is a grad student, one cannot afford the Betty Ford, nor does anyone care if she's tuned in or checked out, so whether or not us cogs suffer from exhaustion is a moot point. Subaltern cannot speak, and when she does, no one cares, and all that. (Dean Dad was musing on "exhaustion" the other day, and this is my half-assed response.)

However, I may have some additional health problems that are exacerbating said exhaustion, and they sure as hell don't include going for three days on only lettuce and Special K. A few years ago I had strange, horrible dizzy spells that seemed caused by nothing ---- just out of the blue I'd turn my head and feel the overwhelming urge to puke. Rolling over in bed felt like I was on the boat in A Perfect Storm or watching The Blair Witch Project. After figuring out that this was not morning sickness (whew!) but also wasn't any normal flu or food poisoning, I finally went to student health, sure I had some mysterious and rare cancer or brain tumor.

In a way, what I had was worse, as it's not treatable and is one step up from complete psycho-somatic malingering. My dr. told me I had labyrinthitis ---- that I had calcium buildups inside my inner ears (who knew!) and sometimes these break off and float through the liquid in the inner ear; you know, the stuff that sloshes around as you move and you use it to keep your balance. Swishing a rock around in your inner-ear juice produces the same effect, to your brain, as riding a crazy roller coaster or turbulent airplane. Yes, I was getting travel-sick off the mere act of rolling over in bed ---- and I certainly wasn't doing anything exciting in bed otherwise, more's the pity.

"Eventually these deposits dissolve on their own," the doctor told me. "There's no way to treat it except wait it out." When I pointed out that I was constantly waking myself up at night and having to fight off nausea (except for the one horrible time I did not fight it off successfully --- your body doesn't know the difference between real seasickness and inner-ear-imbalance queasiness; it'll puke either way), she shrugged and wrote me a prescription. "I thought there's nothing you can do about this," I protested (well no, I gladly took the paper). "There's not; this will just make you not care," she replied. I looked at it, hoping for some Valium or something they popped in Valley of the Dolls; it was Dramamine.

Sigh. If I had any cred in this world it probably dissolved when I told my friends that the simple act of rolling over in bed could incapacitate me. I'm just not cut out for the high life, I guess. This is another of those "my god how could you live outside the protective bubble of grad school" injuries that nonacademics like to mock, like paper cuts.

And why would I bring all this up now? Well, the last time I had labyrinthitis, even turning my head, much less rolling over, made me sit bolt upright and grab for the bucket. But I think that I'm having a much less severe version right now that is messing with my sleep. I think it's enough to disturb my sleep at night, but not to actually wake me up fully, and is adding to the feeling of exaustion and why I feel like I haven't gotten any sleep when I get up in the morning (which is why both Wed. and today involved going back to bed and not doing any work at all --- well, I have high hopes for this afternoon, as I don't have to teach and should be alert by then). So, I have a plan, being a great one for plans:


I'll keep you posted how it goes.

Eating Strange Things

Ever have one of those days where you're quite hungry and having a meal doesn't quite make you feel finished? And so you eat a little something else here, and there, and suddenly you think about it and realize you just had one of the strangest extended meals ever?

Today I got home and was quite hungry. And tired. And thirsty (this is post-summer teaching, remember). So I drank the last of the fizzy flavored water and popped a veggie burger in the oven. And got out all the burger fixin's. And, since it was going to take a little while to cook, I rinsed off the raspberries I bought yesterday and ate them all. (yum.)

All well and good; you don't want your fresh raspberries sitting around getting old, do you? But I was still hungry, so I had some olives. Because they were there in the fridge. And then a pickle, since I was slicing up pickles for the burger anyway. And then I ate the other half of the tomato remaining from what I was going to put on the burger.

Then I had the burger, complete with tomato slices, ketchup, pickles, and lettuce. Oh, and a bun. Seems pretty normal so far, eh? So I ate the rest of the salad mix too (if you buy it in a bag and just dump it on the burger it's way faster to make.) Then I got out some carrots and celery and salad dressing, even though I didn't have any more salad leaves, because the salad mix had put me in the mind for salad.

But after the salad-free salad, and some more olives, and a couple crackers, I realized, what I really wanted was chocolate. But I don't have chocolate in the house, so I made some popcorn. Because those two tastes are obviously the same, aren't they? No, actually, they are not, and neither was the strawberry popsicle I had after that. And the juice I drank to get all that saltiness out of my system wasn't filling. At this point, I'm starting to run out of edible food in the house even though I went to the grocery store yesterday ---- I could soak some rice and beans, or eat a raw eggplant, or ---- I went back to the pickles. I'm also eyeing the last crumbs of parmesan cheese that I didn't finish when I had pasta the other day.

At this point, I start to realize that if you had put all of those things on a plate together I would have been pretty put off. What's next, sardines? Actually ... no, stop it!

Ok, that does it. It got cold, so I won't go to the corner ice cream place; I will instead trek upstream back to the supermarket and get me some real chocolate.

Who knows what the hell else I'll bring back.

Psychoanalytic Construction Company?

"Lack Management" ---- I hear they're good but they never finish ...