reason no. 247

why I cannot move back to the US: customer 'service' and the blood pressure. I no longer have any defenses when it comes to dealing with those underpaid, overworked, hassled and I'm sure otherwise lovely people one speaks to on the phone when calling, well, anywhere in the US. Leaving aside entirely the computers one has to 'talk to'. (there should be another verb for this) I tried to ring S at his fancy-shmancy corporate chain hotel in Chicago and got a computer-generated (female of course) voice that supposedly directed me to the guest directory but then didn't. Had to press 0 for the operator (always try 0, of course) and then finally (through a female human) got connected.

Today I dealt with our lovely insurance company here in the UK, which was sort of fine (they've messed something up, we need to renew, they sent a letter on the 22nd with a 'if you don't respond in 10 days you're no longer insured' notice that I received today, on the 31st). But my blood pressure was unbelievably high. I gathered all of the paperwork around me like some sort of stress barricade, set up my gunmen, ran reconnaissance through the depths of the records, put on my game face, and rang them. It was okay. But I could not do it in the US. I would retreat to my normal fetal, under-bed position in which I convinced myself that (a) we didn't really need a car or house and (b) even if we did, who needs insurance anyway? Better to retreat from the world than talk to someone who will be mean to you on the phone.

Perhaps I sound like a baby. I should just deal with this fallout of late capitalist life--because, hey, I'm not starving, and hey, the person/institution/company doesn't actually have my life in their hands. Or at least only in the abstract--in the accumulation of heart rate and uninsured lifestyle that many of my friends and family live in or have lived in for multiple months/years/on-going periods of their lives. So I guess I do think it's important.

One of the ways I do convince myself to pick up the phone (both here and in the US) is by reminding myself what a crap job the folks on the other end of the phone have, dealing with angry people who have just received anonymous letters that scare them shitless and then make them mad. And then I think how much time and love and space and thinking could be re-routed--time now spent on the phone to Social Security, Medicare, hospitals, HMOs, insurance companies, telephone companies, broadband services, credit report agencies.

How much art, music, genius inventions, great TV, smart solutions to seemingly intractable problems--how much have we lost of that to the barricades of paperwork, lists of anonymous-yet-named customer 'service' people (Ashley, Sandy, Carrie, Andrew), and blood pressure?

no place like it

the A to Z is back on the shelf, the laundry is going, bags open on the floor--it can only mean that the London phase is over and I'm back in Swansea. very exciting and strange. the trip in numbers:

plays seen: 5
films seen: 2
exhibits seen: 3
museums: 6
libraries worked in: 3
hair cuts: 1
bikram sessions: 3
markets: 3
Hampstead Heath: 3
Regent's Park: 2
wagamama: 5
books purchased: 2 (I know! such restraint!)
books read: 1.25 (who has the time?)
days over 25C: 2

I feel like I was away for about 6 months overseas. Well, London is in another country they only speak the one language. what to do?

Welcome to the Wellcome

Should have been researching here all along. they have things like, um, internet for free? Sure they have a fraction of the number of researchers of the BL across and down the street, but still. this is called civilisation. we need our wifi. and we need it gratis. vielen dank.

I heart medical research libraries.

NHS, vol. 2

Turns out I have Plantar Fasciitis. Note to all runners out there: don't forget to stretch and update your shoes! (I did the latter, but have been remiss with the former.) This is good news in that I don't need to stay off my feet, but bad news if walking around London turns out to be excruciating.

I won't provide the detailed time line of my experience, as I did last time. But I have to make one small comment in regard to the health care 'debate' over at FFB. My wager is this: if every American could somehow have their own encounter with a national health system like the one here, then there would be national health insurance in the US within one election cycle.

No. 3's experience, by the way, perfectly mimics the one that R had about 5 years ago. They don't know what to do if you don't smoke, and getting through the bureaucracy is impossible.

In stark contrast, this morning I made one phone call at 8.35am, was on hold for less than 1 minute, made an appointment for 9am the same day, saw the doctor at 9.04, and then had an actual intelligent conversation with him. I left his office with (free) prescription in hand at 9.10.

walking

we're off to London tomorrow for a few weeks, which will be lovely. we are staying near the BT tower, going to the BL for research, sure to see the BM show on Japanese consumer aesthetics (shiny! smooth!), and generally doing things that involve two-letter acronyms starting with B. I don't think we'll be doing BY (Bikram Yoga) because it's insanely expensive. but it does have the acronym. hm. dilemma.

fronesis bruised his foot while running on a beach barefoot the other day, and thus cannot walk. this is a problem not only for London but for *life* which I suppose is a good sign about our lives right now (we commute on foot) but not so good in terms of immediate plans for the London. we are off to procure crutches today so that other bits of his body--arms, armpits, shoulders--will hurt as well. good plan? don't know.

much jealousy re: iPhone, and how unfair it is that Apple didn't merely send us one for free given that we have single-handedly (or four-handedly, as there are two of us with two hands each) converted about 2.2 million people from PC to Apple. Okay more like 15. But still. And we want a new iMac too, since we're wishing.

more from the big city.

nothing to report sir

not much going on around here, except that approx 50% of our blogging audience will be or has already visited in the weeks plus and minus this post. and so it seems pointless to blog in this situation.

or entirely pointy.

Finished HP7 (reading)
Saw HP5 (film)

Review: mixed. See FFB's point regarding the references in the film to WWII and various 1940s (and earlier) era films that incorporate the media-as-character/narration/exposition. Well done here. Effects kinda sucked--esp. in the last quarter. What happened there? I mean--it seemed like they just decided not to really 'do' the last quarter of the book, am I remembering right? Hm. It just seemed a lot more engaging/complex/interesting in the book. I suppose this is almost always the case. But I remember it being more visually interesting in the book.

I'm not a Harold Bloom like snob (okay maybe a wee bit snobby, but not Bloom-like) so I found book 7 satisfying in its genre. But it's not a well-written series. I yearn for well-crafted, well-written fantasy/anglophile work, and book 7 only made me cringe about 10 times, which is pretty good. Rowling can't do transitions (hence the 'endless series of previews' effect of the movies from the books) and she doesn't really foreshadow--she has the characters notice things that obviously will become important later--it's: Harry notices X, can't quite remember why it's important, shakes it off. reader: note to self. remember X. will be important.

These sorts of things can be done with more skill. But the books are worth the few hours they take to read. Still. yearning for quality fantasy stuff. and not in the Azimov vein. In the Marion Zimmer Bradley/Phillip Pullman/Neil Gaiman vein. Suggestions?

new feature! Boot Sale Update™

'Reading the Tarot of the Boot since June 1923'

This week it was, as we expected, all hamsters. Initial sightings of the top seller I Am Your Pet Hamster (I Am Your Pet) ominously presaged an entire bootsale's worth of Hamster-related paraphernalia, primarily in the form of cages, runs and what came to be referred to as 'hamster kit'.

Golf faded a bit this week in relation to earlier weeks, with only two boot-salers offering an assortment of rusted clubs and a selection of discarded, yet well-meaning golf gifts, including the knock-off nalgene bottle stuffed with cheap plastic tees. A sign of the impending apocalypse? perhaps.

We await confirmation in next week's boot sale reading, when we anticipate a turn to the mundane echoing of broader consumer culture with 'Potter mania'.

Perspective

The amazing thing about this speech from Olbermann is that his level of anger and the depth of his utter indignance are both perfectly reasonable and rational in light of the facts – yet no one else sounds like this. That is, the amazing thing is that most Americans' response to the news this week was to see it as business as usual. Every analyst noted the brilliant tactics of Bush in the first debates in 2000: he lowered expectations to such a depth, that even though he looked like a moron compared to Gore, people thought he'd done well. He seems now to have reworked that chapter of the playbook: he has normalised the subversion of the rule of law to such an extent that nothing he does is surprising. I think the normalisation is more frightening than the basic facts themselves.

Here's to Olbermann for maintaining his indignation.

Of Course it's the UI!

The Fly makes a quick mention of his first live iPhone experience, and he comments as follows:

I got my hands on an actual iPhone over the weekend, and I'm now buying into the hype. It's not so much the phone itself that deserves the hype as the UI.

My response: of course, of course, of course. Most of the critics and some of the fans miss the point: the iPhone doesn't really perform all that many functions not already performed by other phones. That's not why it's important - indeed, revolutionary.

Remember, it's not as if the original Macintosh was so amazing because it ran applications or performed functions that no computer had ever performed. It did pretty much the same stuff as an IBM machine running early DOS did. It's how it did it. And the how effects the who and the future what. (I'm thinking of Trademarking the 'future what'.) Because of the way the Mac did what it did (because of the mouse and the GUI) the personal computer revolution was possible. Now almost everyone uses computers, and they use them to do things almost unimaginable 25 years ago.

With the iPhone all this means that so-called smartphones that were once the preserve of geeks and Business-Types (different kind of geeks), will go mainstream (but please let us hope we stop calling them 'smartphones'). The device is revolutionary because at a certain point down the road everyone will think it is normal and necessary to check your email, surf the web, and watch a movie on your 'phone'. And we will do all sorts of other things on our 'phone' that I can't really think up right now, but with the iPhone UI in place I'm confident that lots of other clever people will think up.

I also wonder if we can't speculate about the iPhone and its followers in their capacity to eventually encroach on the laptop market. For people that don't write a ton of text, there will no longer be any reason to have the laptop with them when they go places. It's thus conceivable that the iPhone will replace the personal computer for many people for many tasks.

Much of this gets lost in the hype, because the hype focuses so much on marketing, sales, and money, on the one hand, and on the personal consumer choice to buy an iPhone, on the other. But the revolution that the iPhone is launching will go ahead whether or not Apple makes billions of dollars on it, and it will go ahead whether or not your or I buy an iPhone. Most importantly, these three dimensions (1. Apple sales 2. consumer choice 3. revolutionary status) must be separated when judging the iPhone. I can only speculate wildly about the first as I don't know the ins and outs of the phone market, of Apple's business model, etc. I'm sure Ryan could give us a guess that is much better educated. My guess is that they will make tons of money, but there are a million ways that they might not. And I want them to make money simply so that Steve Jobs can invest it in the next great thing he's dreaming up. As for the second, I doubt I'll buy an iPhone within the next 8 months, as I don't want to pay the price premium, and as I remarked earlier, my current uses for such a device are extremely limited. I know that the fly won't buy one within the year, and I'm sure that many people's parents will never buy one.

But I'm confident about number 3. One day in the future folks will wonder how all of us ever got on with life without the ability to tap and pinch and drag our fingers on our 'phones'. (Also be sure to check out Dan's great iPhone-related entries, here, and here. It's probably not my place to out the guy, but I have to tell you: 12 months ago he'd never even owned a Mac.)

what I've been waiting for

FFB has posted about running a few times over the past week or so--they are much more serious about the running than I, but I am very excited about the gmaps pedometer they have linked to today. While it doesn't work so well if you run on an un-mapped trail (as I do, which is awesome), it does give a sense of length *and* allows you to map out routes in new cities/areas you might be visiting. Well, that is if you are in the US, Japan, China, or the UK. Still--very cool.

This pic is our running route when we lived in London for a month or so ages ago. pre-9/11, if you can believe that. I know! I thought nothing happened before then too!!



And a route I ran with a friend in SF last time I was there...

technology is cool.

spooks

not the best week to be in Britain, this past week. what with car bombing attempts in the west end (er, not too far from a flat I'm attempting to rent for a week or two mid-August, er, may indeed have to rethink that one), floods up north, and then oh yeah the whole flaming gasoline/kerosene filled vehicle airport bombing attempt at Glasgow.

I am oddly and utterly fictionally calmed by having watched the entirety of series 5 of spooks over the last few weeks. I know Adam Carter can save us. I know he's on the job. despite the fact that he's utterly having the breakdown because of his wife's death and being tortured by his best childhood friend that one time in Serbia and all the rest...I know he can save us. oh yes, and despite the fact that he's, well, a television character. works for folks in the US with Jack Bauer, right? (only Adam is so cuter and hotter and smarter. y'all must see spooks. all y'all.)

In the US it's called MI-5, runs on A&E, available on DVD under that name as well....

the book list at right is a lie.

I have recently discovered that I am in fact reading about 347 books simultaneously (give or take 336ish. Okay pretty much take 336ish) I didn't realise this, and I suppose it depends on your definition of 'reading' and how actively one wishes to interpret that particular verb. One could also say that I am currently in the midst of many many more books than I realised. Not counting books of short stories, which of course, can be read in smaller chunks (hence the 'short' bit), and not counting books I'm reading that are 'work books' I am currently reading/in the midst of:

Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan (in the edition at right)
Blue Arabesque, Patricia Hampl
The Other Side of Silence, Urvashi Butalia
Prisoner's Dilemma, Richard Powers
The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco (part of the mystery of this book, I'm convinced, is that in fact one never finishes it.)
and of course,
Merch y Felin: Dyddiadur, Eliza Helsted, Manceinion, 1842-1843, Sue Reid and Meinir Wyn Edwards

As someone who is normally a one-book-at-a-time type reader, this is a bit weird. Oddly, I feel fine picking up on page 2million, 94thousand of Eco's text after a gap of several weeks. I'm not sure how this happened. it is nice, once again, to have books scattered around the house.

update: forgot one...The Dictionary of Maqiao, Han Shaogong, trans. Julia Lovell

new spam phenomenon

has anyone else been getting this new form of spam? I can't find the post that someone in my small hermeneutic blog circle wrote ages ago about those image-spams to get past the text spam-filters and thereby sell you things. The post detailed the problem of load to the e-mail system: these spams were larger than text spams and thus more problematic for the overall health of the interwebs.

The ol' viagra-image-spam weighs in at about 10-20 Kb; the one with the attachment of random devotional music in the picture above weighs in at 500K. I've received this as well as a scanned 'personal letter' of fairly random sentences and other things--none of these seem to be attempting to sell me stuff directly. Leading me to conclude they're of the spam variety that seeks merely to get a reply of some sort in order to confirm your email address and then truly spam you. Or there could be something hidden in the jpg files to destroy my computer (doubtful). Or maybe if you play the hymn backwards it spells out L-U-C-I-F-E-R or similar. Or, if you start singing it at the moment the lion roars in Wizard of Oz....hm. Anyone else getting these? or just me?

on silence

been busy, I suppose, although not in the traditional hyper-Protestant work-work-work sense. more in the: it's the weekend. one should not open one's computer sense. and the: wouldn't reading a book be a Good Thing right now? and talking/iChatting/video chatting with friends in various portions of the globe. and during the week, some working. and cooking. and (horrors) gardening. so the silence on the blog.

part of it also is the enjoyment of reading other folks who are smart say stuff, whether friends in this small blogging universe or the essays at opendemocracy.net. I've also become addicted to woot.com's posts despite the fact that the chances of me buying something from them are slim to none. but they are funny.

Also funny: Flight of the Conchords (HBO, see also here)
also fabulous: John from Cincinnati. almost makes up for them cancelling Deadwood a season early. not quite. but almost.

watch more TV.

tide is changing

mtg posted earlier about the glories of mac and the odd speed of time as regards technological breakthroughs--bathrooms and running water inside the house! films and news delivered to your living room through the air! then in colour! intercontinental verbal communication facilitated by booking through an operator! now video chat instantly with multiple people around the globe (some of whom will no doubt be in their pajamas as, well, we haven't solved that whole 'world is somewhat round' thing with the time and the sleeping at night and the similar issues. but still cool!)

I think the tide is changing. who would have possibly predicted, during the era of the Netscape wars (remember? when Bill Gates was evil and hadn't yet given away lots of money?) that Apple would be launching a web browser for both PC and Mac. I wouldn't. I'm flabbergasted. Our IT person has decided to purchase a new computer at home--a 20-inch iMac with iTV and the works. Why? because she thinks the tide is turning. she thinks she might need to know Macs as well as she knows PCs. intriguing.

'all girls' big brother

someone must have posted on the gender-bending nature of big brother's voice itself--it can be female, male, a bit of both, and it is always referred to and addressed as 'big brother'. this small, perhaps too subtle element of gender twisting was enhanced at the start of this current series of big brother, which began with an 'all girls' house.

but was it?

the rhetoric circulated around the girl-only nature of the house for the first two days they were in there (a 'male' joined the bunch on Friday). the 'girls' were far from uniformly 'feminine' 'girly' or even 'girls' at all. the age range stretched from the 17 year old blonde twins who screeched for most of the first day or so and were over-the-top girly, well past the point of purposive performance of girliness. (one of the other housemates commented that she felt herself becoming more girly in the face of their girliness. is it catching?) On the other end, a 60-year old grandmother represented a different kind of person, it seems to me not very 'girl' at all--er, woman, perhaps? and then the raver whose bios on-line centre on the fact that she 'has not worn makeup in 15 years'. omigawd! how can she live like that!

so I argue that in fact it was never an 'all girls' brother-hood. rather it was a range of competing genders, some very much queering the norm, from the dress-alike twins bouncing around the sofas to the woman sunbathing to the pink-haired, no makeup individual defying all gender categorisations.

I'm pulling for the lovely Welsh girl, of course.

Just in Case

I know that the chances of there being a person out there who reads this blog but does not read TheOddsAreOne are very slim indeed. But, just in case, I feel it necessary to point out to you that over the past month or so while things were going nowhere here in SecondAmericano land (to be honest, I'm on my third one right now), The Fly has been becoming the blogging Rock Star that he always already is.

Don't miss the poignant insights on everything from AI to the 2-4-6 double play, and don't miss the fantastic, free music.

Go now, Go!

Next!: I don't know, reports on the new Big Brother; questions about how to write a preface?

Socialised Medicine

Last night T's (R's?) illness got much worse, turning into a very painful ear infection. This led to new cultural experiences, as medicine, drugs, doctors are all different under the dreaded 'socialised medicine'. Here's the timeline:

9.30pm, last night
I rushed out to pick up some paracetamol, as we had none in the house. So I had to go to a tiny corner shop that was open late, and wasn't even a pharmacy. I expected to pay that ridiculous premium for buying drugs at tiny stores. Sure enough, they only had a small selection of things behind the counter that I had to ask for. Cost for a bottle: 39p.

9.15am, this morning
We call the local surgery. They pick up on the first ring. The conversation goes like this:
T: I've been sick for a week and think I need to see a doctor
Nurse: OK, what's your date of birth?
T: blah/blah/blah
Nurse: OK, how is 10.30 this morning?
T: OK

10.28: Leave the house for the surgery, it's easily 1/4 mile away.

10.29: Arrive and check in at desk.

10.30: Name called.

10.36: T returns from doctor with filled out prescription

10.39: We drive up the street and arrive at the pharmacy.

10.42: T returns from pharmacy with prescription. Cost: free.

10.44: We arrive back at home.

under the weather

what does that phrase even mean? when was I over the weather? I've been sick for all of bank holiday weekend, which, while a bit rainy was glorious on Monday, the actual holiday. So I've been out of the loop on the whole 'world events' thing. which is dangerous these days when you're sick:

The bird flu outbreak in Wales
From my favourite epidemiology blog. oh yes. we all should have a fave. Effect Measure is mine.

The story doesn't list where in Wales, as well, it's a smallish place. But mountains make a difference, as does lack of infrastructure joining north and south. luckily for me, outbreak is in north Wales (the 'ol gogledd cymru, folks) near Conwy. Lovely castle town up there. nice bridge.

but not to panic. very rare. I have not plucked any chickens or been near live poultry for many years (blocked memories of farm camp in Byers, CO). so my illness is likely just a run of the mill cold.

it does mean that we've been catching up on the movies. so flash reviews (in order of viewing):

Miami Vice: don't see it. so sad. could have been so great. and yet no.
Inside Man: um, I wanted to see the hotness of Clive Owen [see his hot BMW films--perhaps his best work] and all I got was a horribly-done flashback movie [see here and here] with him in a jumpsuit and mask? I don't think so.
Casino Royale: decent bond film. they actually kept the ending until, well, the end. interesting concept. perhaps something new sweeping Hollywood. doubt it. great baddies (crying blood? love it.) and good bond girl. even some depth. and perhaps most analog and awesome opening chase/stunt scene ever. nice.

Also: Spooks--British TV show--not sure if it's available outside of the UK but it's awesome. It's like Alias. Only good. I know. I just blew your mind.

Why I'm Failing as A Capitalist Consumer

As most readers already know well, any pretensions I might have toward radical political positions are completely undermined by my enthusiastic enjoyment of capitalist consumption. To be fair, for me it's less a matter of consumption for its own sake, or of the quantity of consumption. Instead, my joy comes from playing the capitalist game as well as I possibly can. Indeed, for me, the 'deal' is almost as important as the object itself.

The high point for me probably came right before the metaphorical internet 'bubble' did its metaphorical 'bursting'. This was a time when even companies that sold actual tangible products had decided that the 'new economy' dictated giving everything away. This made it possible - for a while - to purchase new technology items and then sell them 6 months later on eBay for more than one had paid for them.

So it saddens and frustrates me to find that our new lifestyle just doesn't lend itself to much consumption. I have found the deals, I just don't have any reason to carry through with the purchases. And by 'reasons' I mean to say that even within the terms of constructed capitalist desire and fetishisation, I still can't find a way to 'justify' a purchase. Here are a few items on my list:


What I want: Nokia N95 Mobile Phone

Why I want it: 5 megapixal camera, micro SD, gps sat-nav, wifi, voip, and the list goes on, i.e. it is the cool phone right now, and will be for about a month (here comes the iPhone)

The deal: it's going for £200 or more with expensive contracts, but there's this thing where you ring Vodafone directly and order a pay-as-you-go SIM at the same time, and then....well, trust me, it's quite a deal!

Why I don't 'need' it: I use my mobile for about 40 minutes and 30 texts a month. I have no one to call, really, and those that I would call aren't on their mobiles. In the states I used 750 minutes a month regularly, but not so now.


What I want: BMW 120d M Sport 3 Dr

Why I want it: RWD BMW goodness, in better-looking 3-dr shape, oodles and oodles of torque, and unbelievably good mileage (around 60mpg combined) and emissions (band C), and £170 gets you free maintenance for 5 years

The deal: around £3k under list through broadspeed

Why I don't 'need' it: well, we've had a car for about 6 weeks now, and it hasn't changed a lot. It looks like we're averaging about 30 miles driven per week, and that's usually taking the car to parking places that don't score high on the Rebecca scale


What I want: Panasonic PHD10 42" Plasma

Why I want it: Panasonic commercial plasma panels are simply the best, in my well-studied opinion, and this is the brand new 10th generation panel in HD

The deal: AV-sales have outdone themselves on a package that includes delivery, along with Panasonic's new 3 year in home warranty

Why I don't 'need' it: We don't watch anything in HD, and the picture difference in SD will be no better than what we already have

why buying books is good

obviously one need not even argue the above statement. buying books = good. end of argument. QED. But I've gone back and forth on this over the past few years as a global nomad--went on an amazon/bookfinder embargo for a couple of years there, using the library (horrors!) instead of the bookstore. occasionally, when the library didn't have the book and I needed it sometime between now and 5 minutes from now, I've bought the book. But the collection hasn't grown too much over the past few years, and now that we're settled there's been a bit of a loosening of the book purchasing belt, but not too much.

It used to be, when I had no income in grad school and yet I was in grad school and surrounded by used book shoppes, remainder sales from the university press, and obsessive friends who knew the market and their collections by heart, that I bought quite a lot of books. too many, some might say. most might say. did I need the boxed, beautiful Topkapi multi-volume set? probably not. but how pretty! I claimed I could stop at any time, and well, I did. a lot of books I'd buy because they looked interesting, smart, intelligent, and potentially useful. or because they were Important. in 1994. now, not so much.

I learned today, however, what a boon bookbuying is. I was looking for folks who have written on Ambedkar, the advocate for the untouchables and leader of the anti-colonial movement in India who converted to Buddhism towards the end of his life. I haven't ever been fully interested in him before, but I'm looking into the Buddhist symbolism of early Indian nation-building, and finding a lot there. Ambedkar is central. Fishing on google books (favourite pasttime), I found a reference to a book there. partial preview. intriguing. does the library have it? no. wait! do I? huzzah. thank my graduate school self for purchasing the 'it' book of 1996 and keeping it until now. So I'm good to go. probably should start buying books again, right?

must check with budget manager.

Art and politics

It seems that if one wishes to post on things about colleagues across the world such as this (or here), related to topics such as this, one might consider doing this. the world is a horrid place.

update BBC finally picked up the story

Four Weddings and a Funeral, 1994

they were showing the above film on tv this weekend, and so of course I got sucked in. and like many of us I imagine watching films of yester-decade, I was surprised at this film and the contrast between what I remember (hilarious hilarious hilarious, sparks of love, touching, hilarious) the film was less of all of that. perhaps it was my inability to force from my mind the philandering of Hugh Grant in later years. perhaps it was the fact that the English stereotype he plays to a T seems, now, in my current context, rather dull and a teensy bit offensive. I realise in my distance and in my space as an expat that this film is indeed for a US audience. only a US audience could buy Grant and 'the american' Andie MacDowell were in love. Yikes is she wooden.

I remember the film as being tightly woven, clever, and well-written—it was some of those things, and the comedy was still there, but it's so unbelievably dated (read: I'm old) and the story isn't really even a story. we have no back-story about the group of wedding-friends, no idea what they do for a living--it's just wedding wedding wedding funeral wedding. Not that they have time for much more, but still.

I had missed the comedy of the serial weddings in my earlier youthful viewing. This film is like a rehash of all films with weddings, except that they start and end with them instead of just ending with them. The Princess Bride wedding (inept priest), the 'forgot the rings' moment, the 'forever hold your peace' not held moment--these are classics. In putting them all together, the filmmakers make a statement about the centrality of the wedding for our tradition of storytelling (esp. comedies) and therefore kind of take it over the top. we see the formerly married couples with a baby at the following wedding, and then two at the next one, heightening that cycle of feasting--sex--babies at the end of every comedic adventure.

I still cried during the funeral. who wouldn't? the tokenism of the gay characters and the painful groping for normalisation of their position within the group is sooooo early 90s, no? And yet in contrast to this-- it is actually spoken in the film--actually noted aloud--that funerals, unlike weddings, are among the few official ceremonies that gay people may take part in (as the central participants) in our culture.

And finally, for those who know the series, did this life totally steal its grab bag of characters from this film? hm. discuss....

a film we actually enjoyed (and other strange things)

saw Walk the Line last night, finally, after waiting until we had a worthy sound/tv set up, which, well, we do now. Again with the flashback framing, which was not super annoying but at this point my bar is pretty high for the use of the flashback. you better have an incredibly good reason to use it, and most of the time you don't. that aside, the film was a nice change. I'm not a biopic fan--perhaps it was an overdose of VH1 behind the music in the mid-90s. But this one manages to do the spiral into drugs rehab narrative a bit differently--not that there's not a spiral into drugs/withdrawal narrative going on here, and not that the parallel love narrative doesn't in the end produce/enable the redemption/rehab. It's that the story is told differently: she doesn't 'save' him by giving herself to him (although she does) it's that he saves himself with her help, she sees that, and they work as a pair. a nice representation of relationships, I thought.

Plus, there's a queerness represented through the early history of the woman-as-rockstar identity that Reese Witherspoon's brilliant acting makes completely clear. Particularly in the context of the blues/gospel heritage that these early musicians were so reliant on, the Christian thread running throughout the film is nicely handled. June Carter's very public living of her life, divorcing at a time when that was considered utterly taboo, and living her relationships partly on-stage--we see all of that in the film, plus her space within the group of guys (Elvis, Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash etc.) that shows how strange and out-of-sync her life is with the world's expectations at the time. Or even now: how many people would think it's okay for mothers to spend weeks and weeks away from your children while on tour? Completely 'not acceptable'--Witherspoon gives us June Carter's strength as someone who does do this and yet still remains a 'good mother' to her children.

I guess for me the film was about June Carter. If you haven't seen it definitely worth watching.

Constant quasi-aesthetic, predictable, bleeding-heart liberal nonsense

In the interest of upping our post count, we're thinking of turning el segundo americano into a movie review site - by which we naturally mean a site for reviews that are actually ranting critiques.

Hard for me to say all the ways I hated Constant Gardener, but we can start with the fact that the opening 5 minutes show you the climax of the film that will come halfway through. What is up with this trend of telling you what's going to happen first, and then tracing out the logical story toward its happening? Worse still, 15 minutes into the movie you know EXACTLY what is going to happen and why. It's told like a mystery/thriller, but there's absolutely nothing mysterious here. It's painfully obvious from the very beginning what's going on. In the end, I suppose liberals are supposed to feel good about the fact that there was great acting and good cinematography, and the message was put out (but without causing any real conflict) that it's a bad thing to, as Bono puts it, 'flush the continent of Africa down the toilet'.

But the movie isn't willing to say that; instead it tells us that 'each and every life is precious', although the narrative itself doesn't believe that since we're clearly meant to greive for the white woman (and to nominate Ralph Fiennes for an Oscar because of how well he grieves - though mainly he keeps his English stiff upper lip and looks pretty).

And finally, as Rebecca points out, who the hell writes hand-written letters today?

Untitled

I was going to title this post 'April is Not the Cruelest Month'. But then, I thought to myself, 'where does that line come from'? Yes, it's Eliot's The Waste Land. I think I knew that and then forgot it, but I don't think I'd ever read the poem. And it occurred to me that perhaps I should, since maybe Eliot didn't really mean that April was cruel in the first place. After all, the opening lines read:

April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

This all set me off on a long detour of reading the poem and trying very hard, but utterly failing, to understand it. Eventually I just tried to grasp the first section, and maybe I got some of it, but I'm still not certain whether he meant to say that April was cruel or not.

And this meant that I couldn't really use that title for my post, and besides, I'd now wasted all the time I was going to spend describing what went on in April (and trying rather lamely to justify or explain my blogging absence) – I'd spent that time reading Eliot and realising once again that I'm just not cut out for poetry exegesis.

those apple folks are genius

Two words: Save PDF to Web Receipts Folder.

Obviously. This is what I do all the time in order to record my on-line purchases and keep track of them without actually having to keep track of them--I print the receipt as a pdf and store it in my 'receipts pending' folder on my desktop. wha? you don't have said folder? you don't normally use words like 'pending' in your own personal space? well sure. but now the glorious people at Apple have added the above selection to the drop-down menu in all print dialog boxes. It's so exciting. I can't tell you. go try it now. super fun. go buy stuff so that you can try it. very cool.

and you know what? it doesn't matter that it just automatically saves it under whatever random name the webpage has. that's what spotlight is for. huzzah.

bokashi bokashi des ne

in an attempt to reduce the amount of waste we are generating, we have invested in a lovely compost-like system that breaks down all of your food waste (including meat etc.) and is designed for folks with no garden at all. we have a garden, but we are lazy. so our plan is to try this thing out--you put food in, sprinkle on this magic powdery stuff which has an exotic Japanese name (bokashi bran) and contains EM-powered nutrient stuff (technical biological term here), which instead of speeding decomposition of the food in fact ferments the waste. which means not as smelly. we just put our veggie discards, cooked foods, raw foods, and the lot in, toss in a handful of "Bokashi Bran!" (which must always be accompanied by one saying in heroic tones: Bokashi Bran!) and then repeat until the bin is full. let it sit for a couple of weeks, and then we have 3 options: dig it into our soil (yeah right--as if we have the energy to do that. hello, that takes effort!), pitch it into the garden waste at the tip (not sure they'll let us do that), or toss it into a biodegradable bag and put it out with the rubbish (less environmentally correct, but it will break down quicker than just tossing those egg shells out normally, right?)

Pretty cool. We'll report on our progress.

April is here!

April in Showroom
Originally uploaded by doppio macchiato.

After much stress, research, worry, and oikos-time, we have finally purchased a vehicle in which to explore surrounding area and about which to spend some of our day-to-day worry allotment. And we are very excited.

April--because she is the colour of spring (silk green, aka Martha Stewart green), quiet and yet strong, and oh yeah, we bought her in April the month. A Mini One, 2002 vintage. For the first time ever, having purchased several new cars in our time and several cars much more expensive than this one, the dealer took the time and care to (1) have the car ready for us when we arrived (2) have it fully detailed and (3) put it on the showroom floor, replacing the brand new (as in last week) Mini Cooper D normally occupying this spot. Very well done and much appreciated. Contrast with the new Golf R32 we purchased which they barely washed and then had a door-ding in it when they pulled it around. Nice.

Pics of April in showroom and at home on flickr...now it's on to the inevitable upgrades, right?

the un-blog

still tastes great, but less filling!

Paris for a week: fab, spoke French, saw tower, walked a lot, ate food, shopped markets, took no work.
work oddly waited for us while we were away (damn you work!) and thus: grant applications, revising articles, books, reading undergraduate dissertations and the like. work not so bad, all in all.
weather: lovely lovely lovely. could not be more perfect. highs 16-18, sunny, nice sea breeze. reason enough to stay here for sure.
capital improvements/expenditures: the car. nightmare. problems include: how to find a car when one does not own one? how to insure a car when you have never driven before in your life and didn't exist before 2 years ago? Oh wait, except I think we did exist before two years ago, and I think there was that almost 20 years of driving experience and numerous years of claim-free driving and spotless record and blah and blah--doesn't count! For it was in the great US of A. Were it in Europe or Australia, no problem. But the US? you kiddin me? do they even drive normal (manual) cars out there? Insurance estimates on car: £1200-2500/year. Cost of purchasing car: £2500. Hm. no need to do any math to see the insanity.

obvious solution: increase shoe budget. clearly.

Hometown Baghdad

Worth spending a few minutes watching some of the episodes--obviously the three main subjects are of a certain class and are all men--I'd love to hear more women's voices, and some insight into the lives of poorer segments of the population--nonetheless the series of short films gives you a small sense of life in Baghdad.

Pan's Labyrinth

The Oscar hype and curiosity about a politically-engaged fantasy film drew me in to the excitement surrounding Pan's Labyrinth. We watched it on DVD this weekend, and I have to say, er, not so good. Not that it's not beautiful. Not that it's not wonderfully shot. It's entertaining, sure. There is nothing new here to learn. This is my problem. Not that films should be didactic--they shouldn't set out to teach--just that there should be some synthesis that they perform that opens up a tiny new bit of insight for the viewer.

I know next to nothing about the Spanish Civil War except that it happened and a bunch of French and American intellectuals attempted to led their overly pampered hands to the fight against Franco. I don't know much more about it now, either.

I have learned: fascism = bad. rebels in woods = good. torture = bad, but pornographically voyeuristically (supposedly) fun to watch (ick). people, particularly evil ones, are often sexist. children are our future. watching blood and guts slowly implode = cool (ick). violence is beautiful (ick).

It seems that filmmakers have realised that the audience is desensitised to violence. Instead of finding another way to articulate the horror of violence, power, and war, they simply make the violence more and more hyper-real. It's not realism. Realism is the fist fight where after the first punch the two people are groveling in pain on the floor, and half the punches don't land properly, and the two individuals aren't built like Mr. Universe. What we have in Pan's Labyrinth is hyper-realism: a fantasy world of pops and fizzles and hands cut open and amputations and sewing up one's face. Perhaps the message is that Franco's Spain is a fantasy world just as the world the child constructs in the film is also a fantasy world. Or that both are equally real.

If that's the message, which is fine, and I would be excited about, except that it's done incredibly poorly. Why are there no links between the underground fantasy world and the Franco world? I'm talking narrative links, metaphorical links, intertwined 'tasks'? The two spaces don't overlap narratively--it's the old two 'intertwined' narratives that don't ever quite speak to one another. (This seems to be a pattern in contemporary filmmaking. See David Denby's brilliant piece on this in the New Yorker.) So we have a (children's) fantasy film interspersed with a film about Fascism's badness, and neither really works.

I decry the lack of art in this film: I have seen this all before. In the other Labyrinth film, for example. (an unfair comparison, obviously, as any David Bowie film will of course beat any other non-David Bowie film. duh.) In the violence of the clips from 300. This isn't helping us to see how condoning torture is hurting our society. It isn't helping us to see how living in certain authoritarian regimes utterly changes the power dynamic and thus forces good people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do. It's not a study in politics or psychology or war. It's a pornographic exploration of violence and evil. We don't need that. I'd love to see this film again, except this time make the evil guy human and complicated. Show us why everyone follows him. Why does the mother marry him? Explore some of the class issues barely whispered in the film. Link the fantasy elements more clearly and directly (yet subtly) with the 'real' elements. Make the collapsing of the two explicit and do it for a reason. Don't show us the violence through special effects--make us feel it through the crackling of it in the dialogue.

And please don't smuggle in some half-baked God the Father glowy stuff at the end. Please.

Next: Real violence...Dogville!

speed

I mentored a senior thesis when I was at Redlands--a time when I mentored a whole range of things completely unrelated to my research, and so this thesis was on the Futurists. I learned a lot about these speed-loving Modernists: pro-war, excitement, strength, and masculinity.

Upon my groggy return from the US this past week, I taught Gandhi's Hind Swaraj. He argues among other things, that railways are bad. Humanity should not be able to move that quickly between places. It destroys what binds us together. It destroys community and a link to one's past.

Obviously as an Australian-born naturalised US citizen of Scottish-Austrian descent now indefinitely residing in Wales (sut mae!), and with family and friends currently living in Ulaan Bataar, Brisbane, Beirut, Delhi, Portland ME and OR, New Jersey, Denver, LA, Taipei and etc., the whole transcontinental flight revolution was pretty cool. Facilitating these far-flung travels, worldliness and global network of family and friends is a good thing.

But having spent less than 10 hours in the air in order to travel from LAX to LHR, I have to say: it's too quick. How slow should it be? Not the 3-6 month era of slow cruises across the Atlantic or Pacific, sure. But a good 3 weeks. I think that's entirely fair and reasonable. This is how much time it should take for the universe to be, well, in tune with the body's movement in some small way. Now that I'm old and all, it's taking me a long time to recover from these little jaunts. But mostly I find it Wrong that I wander around reading Welsh roadsigns thinking: 16 hours ago I was driving to LAX on the 105 listening to Mexicana music. Wrong.

(shhh...) Wagner was.....A Cross Dresser!

The above-linked Guardian article is truly disappointing. It has to work really hard to build up the salacious lather it's striving for, over the 'discovery' of some letters in which Wagner went into baroque detail describing women's clothing. And for the big climax the article 'reveals' that Wagner ordered some custom-made dresses, about which he had very specific requests and concerns. He himself said these were for his wife, but she never noted their receipt in her diary....so....maybe they were for him!

A few comments on this nonsense:

1. As to the detailed and flowery language: um, it's Wagner we're talking about. What the the hell would you expect?
2. As to the fact that he might have worn dresses, or liked 'girly' things. I see no reason for historians not to write about this, but how is it news? (I know, the weather is news, so I guess anything can be.)
   
3. Finally, there's the fact that the article consistently turns 'cross-dresser' into some sort of 'secret' identity. One Wagner might have tried to hide, but that we, today, can reveal. It's not an account of Wagner wearing women's clothing (because we aren't even certain that he did that); instead, it's a CSI-style investigation of his possible identity. Maybe he WAS a cross-dresser? Or perhaps he was a martian?! If they were giving this salacious account of his potentially being gay, then the homophobia of it all would jump right off the page. But if it's 'merely' 'gender deviation' then it's OK to make the whole thing out to be perverse and deviant. But the idea of gender-deviation as perverse or wrong is of a piece with homophobia: both are products of heteronormativity. In both cases we have this rigid effort to uphold gender binaries, and this is, in a way, made easier by the so-called acceptance of homosexuality not as a practice or a way of being in the world, but as a 'sexual orientation'.

But, to revert to a liberal language that I'm trying hard to avoid above (and that I'd never use in formal writing): who gives a shit if Wagner liked wearing dresses? Why is that so damned threatening, and therefore morbidly interesting, and therefore newsworthy? Why do we work so hard to separate masculinity from femininity?

It's too bad that Rebecca herself isn't nearly as girly as the heteronormative order would like her to be, because, nonetheless, I'm heading upstairs to raid her warddrobe and get myself dressed up!!!

Take 3

All of you who exlaimed, in response to my choice of book cover, 'but there's no TV in it' may well have missed promising careers in sales. That's precisely what the sales people at the publisher said. Thus, the search continues.




'Anonymous' reader was kind enough to send in a number of images with TVs in them. Sorting through that list, I've come up with a few possible candidates. And since this has been a joint project all along, I thought I'd solicit advice one last/more time.

What do you think any of these?

I shouldn't....but....a couple of questions re: Israel

Given the way things blew up over at Ffb during the debate over Carter's new book, it is with some trepidation that I pose questions about the state of Israel. But I'm not trying to provoke. I'm genuinely a bit confused and would love to hear responses from ye brilliant readers.

Richard Cohen, in an article about the dilution of the charge of anti-Semitism, writes the following:

[...concerning] the current, ahistorical context for Israel. For many, [Israel] is no longer the orphaned waif of the Holocaust [#1] but the bastard child of Western colonialism [#2].

My questions:

1. Semantics: does 'orphaned waif' just mean orphaned orphan? Come to think of it, doesn't 'bastard child' really just mean bastard?
2. Logic: aren't #1 and #2 completely compatible? Can't the state of Israel be both a product of the holocaust (a response to its horrors) and Western colonialism (a creation of its errors and crimes)?
3. History: why would thinking of Israel primarily through the lens of #2 be ahistorical compared to thinking about it through lens #1 – doesn't he have it exactly backwards? Doesn't the history of colonialism give a broader and deeper context for understanding the plight of European Jews and the creation of the Israeli state? Isn't the simplistic idea that Jews were 'given' the state of Israel as some sort of 'compensation' for the Holocaust a more ahistorical way of looking at the situation? Isn't this the view that extracts from history and context, the view that considers the situation as crime and recompense in a timeless, ahistorical sense?
   

Music and Politics. But mostly music

Thanks to my mom, who was (rightly) concerned about my well-being while Rebecca traipses across the world, I'm currently watching the Dixie Chicks performance on Austin city limits. I thought Taking the Long Way really was one of the best albums that I listened to this year, so I was pleased to hear the Chicks raked in all the Grammy's. But I hadn't paid close attention to the details or to the current status of the political conflict that continues to swirl around the Chicks.

But after already impressing me by playing a spot-on version of Patty Griffin's "Truth No. 2", the Chicks really blew me away by playing a song that I'd never heard before. I thought it was called "I'm still here," but googling got me nothing on that. Turns out the song is called "The Neighbor" and was recorded for the documentary movie (about the controversy), titled Shut up and Sing.

At any rate, the google search revealed a few other juicy tidbits (I got them here):

• After the Grammy's their album has jumped up to No. 8
• "Not Ready to Make Nice" is the no. 4 single
• No other group has ever won the Grammy award for Best Country Album more than once
• The Dixie Chicks have won it for every single album they have ever made (4)

I did some other reading as well and it's clear that the country music industry remains committed to their boycott of the Chicks. They've had to cancel a number of shows, and country radio stations refuse to play their music or sponsor the concerts. But it doesn't matter much when it comese to the music, which is clearly better now than it ever was when they were trying to fit into the Nashville country genre. For anyone who doubts this, please get your hands on this Austin City Limits concert (or go see them live), so you can hear their cover of Dylan's "Mississippi".

LHR-SEA: a photo essay

speaking of book covers

in searching for a penguin book, I ran across this flickr site, which is very very cool.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joekral/sets/72157594264351021/

check it out.

not quite right

For Christmas, I received a loverly camera from Sam, which takes fab photos, walks the dog, does the dishes, and makes dinner. Really. Okay not any of those things except for the first one.

When one buys a camera one is then, naturally, forced (forced!) to purchase necessary accessories for said camera. I mean, you *need* the perfectly formed and sized case to keep all your memory cards in, right? and the remote control--ya gotta have a remote control for your camera, right? and the tripod, and the self-correcting zoom lens that adjusts for the natural wobble (those babies cost upwards of $2000, but I mean, these are needs, right?) and a flame thrower. because you gotta have flame throwers.

Okay, so I didn't succumb to the initial buy-fest that often follows the first purchase of new gadgetry. But I do need some sort of case. I have, of course, a philosophy on camera cases.

1. it should not look like a camera case. the reasons for this are obvious: a) camera cases are ugly, and 2: camera cases say to potential thief: hey, dude! camera inside, probably a nice one too, since the dude that owns it bought a nice case for it! As I am not a professional photographer I don't need all the pockets and unsightly things that hang off the edges of said camera cases, and thus, no.
   interesting corollary: camera cases tend to look like camera cases. seems obvious, but doing a froogle for camera case does not, in fact, find you a case that looks nothing like a camera case. strange.
   
   
2. it should protect the camera
   
   
3. it should be quickly and easily removed so that it's not a 20-minute process to get the damn camera out.
   
   
4. it should be small enough so that it can slip into another bag or backpack that one is carrying.

As you can imagine, this thing doesn't exist. obviously. none of the cool things exist. aside from the iphone, peets coffee, and google.

I was using a lovely, small velour purse to carry my former camera around--it held an extra battery and snugly fit the camera on top of that. Brilliant.But I now have a digital SLR with lens etc. and it won't fit into said purse. What to do? I realised that I should just search for 'bag' and see what I found. after fiddling with various search parameters (pretty camera bag; small camera bag; bag -camera +cool +stealth) I found the solution. The Roadwired wrap. I have yet to receive it, but it looks perfect, with the one exception that I'm unsure how easy the ingress-egress will be. I will report when I receive.

This got me thinking about my rigid and difficult requirements for things: must have a computer case that protects the computer, fits it like a glove, is easy to use, fits inside other bags, and looks professional (and not in a messenger bag professional way). it must be light and ergonomic such that I don't hurt my back or shoulder carrying it around. it shouldn't look like a computer bag. oh, and it must last for 10+ years and be flexible to the next computer I buy. sure. for £200+ I can set you up with something lovely. Sigh.

Oh, and for those wondering: yellow. of course.

the sacred text

my lecture on decolonisation caused another small ripple in the time-space continuum of the debate over citations, texts, and what's considered completely legitimate to do in the context of citing existing research, words, and writing.

Via FFB's post, I read Chalmers Johnson's piece on Empire v. democracy, Iraq, terror, occupation and the colonial relationship between Iraq and the US. The piece was good, and the quote from Arendt was brilliant:

In her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt offered the following summary of British imperialism and its fate:

"On the whole it was a failure because of the dichotomy between the nation-state's legal principles and the methods needed to oppress other people permanently. This failure was neither necessary nor due to ignorance or incompetence. British imperialists knew very well that 'administrative massacres' could keep India in bondage, but they also knew that public opinion at home would not stand for such measures. Imperialism could have been a success if the nation-state had been willing to pay the price, to commit suicide and transform itself into a tyranny. It is one of the glories of Europe, and especially of Great Britain, that she preferred to liquidate the empire."

I was excited. This was well-stated. I would use it in my declonisation lecture to demonstrate the debates that went on in the metropole and the ethics of colonialism for democracies. But, Johnson had only given the book reference--to a book that's 500+ pages long and published often in three separate volumes. Google book it, you say? of course. I did. Unfortunately it's only in snippet view, but I managed to came up with this:

Arendt, Hannah. 1966 [1951]. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
p. 216: ...'"administrative massacres" could keep India within the British Empire, but he knew also how utopian it would be to try to get the support of the hated "English Departments"

all other phrases that seemed like good bets turned up nothing. Seems Johnson quoted Arendt via some sort of bizarre paraphrase. Maybe his notes got mixed up. But that's not cool. It's like putting words into someone else's mouth. What if Arendt meant what she said within a particular context of a specific person she discusses on p. 216, and not more broadly as Chalmers Johnson had implied? Hm.

I google further. Google classic this time. I find about 20 references to Johnson's piece in the blogosphere and then the link to victory.

It's not in Origins of Totalitarianism. Here's the correct citation:
Arendt, Hannah. 1958. 'Totalitarian Imperialism: Reflections on the Hungarian Revolution'. The Journal of Politics vol. 20, no. 1 (February), pp. 5-43. JSTOR link, for those with access.

The quote is on p. 35.

At least Johnson didn't make it up. At least they are, indeed, Arendt's words. I was going to blog about the sacredness of the word--the fact that prose often is chosen as carefully as poetry and one shouldn't just paraphrase and then put those words back in the text as if they are actually there, in that order. Just because it 'sounds about right' for Arendt doesn't mean it's okay to do this.

But now it's just a post about sloppiness. Citing properly is important if people are to follow up on your research--not just to check its vailidity but to read more. To engage in the web of knowledge that supported you to get to this point. That's why links in blog posts are so important and such a crucial part of blogging. It seems, however, that sloppiness is okay now. or perhaps engaging with your source's sources isn't something people do anymore. maybe no one else wanted to see the larger context for Arendt's quote. Wow. now that's sad.

Because maybe it's important to know that Arendt is praising the British in light of the Soviet actions in Hungary in 1956. Her work is, from the little I've read, very historically grounded, and thus this context seems important. But perhaps not. Maybe I'm just being nit-picky. I firmly believe, however, that knowing how knowledge is produced is as important as the knowledge itself.

Cover Time, take 2

Terribly sorry for the pathetic lack of blogging in February. I've been working on that book, which I mentioned a while back, and it's been hard to keep my head above water. I've drafted the penultimate chapter, and then I put together a paper on it, which I gave in London last week and will give here next week. It turned out this chapter had to be about Buffy and thus the massive Buffy literature meant a lot of work for me. Worse still, I made the fateful decision to finally go multimedia, so I've spent dozens of hours deep in the bowels of Keynote, doing everything in my power not to turn into the evil Powerpoint drones that I have cursed so over the years.

Anyway, those are all excuses. This post is about what I hope will be success in sorting out my book cover. Another round of thanks for all the great ideas and feedback from readers last time round. Turns out it's much harder to do a 'concept cover', as my editor called it (perhaps somewhat disdainfully), than we had all thought/presumed. So I wasn't able to use most of the fantastic ideas, since the 'system' is really just to send them a cover and let them go with it.

But I think I've found a cover. What do you think?

surrealism

So we went to the Tate Modern last Friday, which was fun. We were in London because Sam gave a paper at Goldsmith's college and I used the opportunity to network a bit with colleagues on Thursday afternoon. Friday was ours, and hence the Tate Modern. I'd been there (for v. important exclusive workshop in the 7th-floor East Room overlooking Wren's sub-par (according to Sam, and well hard to disagree) cathedral and the rest), but I had not actually visited the museum before. Despite my training in art history I am not a museum lover. I've decided (today) that upon re-reading Timothy Mitchell's excellent article on Colonialism and the Exhibitionary Order (in Nick Dirks' Colonialism and Culture) that it's about the unending spectacle. One must be actively seeing/viewing/voyeuring in a Museum. this makes my eyes water and my back hurt. I get the sniffles from the AC. I last an hour, hit the gift shoppe (to purchase some souvenirs in order to commodify and thus make material my viewing experience) and go out into the equally exhibition-like world. sigh. Read Mitchell's piece. it's awesome.

we spent some time in the surrealism wing, which is where I hit my limit, naturally. who wouldn't, really? Some great stuff in that there museum--my fave was the Joseph Beuys installation in this cavernous room (see pic). Chock full of the surreal (Beuys is not surreal, but related via symbolism and myth to surrealist concerns), we wandered around London.

I then had a dream on Sunday night--a dream that I did not characterise as an 'anxiety dream' regarding teaching. And yet it was. So I had a 'decolonisation' lecture to give on Monday, for which I had not prepared at all. It was at 1 pm, so I figure I have the whole morning, no worries, only 50 minutes, I could talk about toothpaste for 50 minutes without any prep, so I figure it's all good. In my dream I realise, having not prepared at all, that it's suddenly 1 pm. Okay, no big deal, I'll just show up and wing it. I go to the lecture theatre to realise that some 'colleagues' are visiting the lecture, namely: James Gandolfini (playing my head of department) and some former colleagues from former institutions that should, really, remain former.

Now it's an anxiety dream. But I play it cool, asking the class to define colonialism (which is, in fact, what I had thought of doing and did indeed do, and thus it became a sort of deja-dream thing in the actual lecture. no Gandolfini, thankfully.) Then suddenly, without my controlling it, a film starts playing in the lecture theatre. I pretend I know what's going on. It's a trailer about race or identity or something (saw Babel in London, btw--worth seeing), and I think: sure, I can fit this into decolonisation...I'll go with it. A second trailer comes on and I think: hm. not so much. I stop the film, turn back to lecture to discover that James and colleagues have left the building. They didn't like the film, or what? Sigh. anxiety now focuses on my failure to hold their attention and the clear lack of teaching ability I have exhibited, in other words: guilt.

I heart surrealism.

minor blog annoyances

sorry about the visual upheaval on the blog this morning. the blogger folks won't let us switch to the new blogger, but Sam has switched his account, and so this is annoyingly confusing. We thought our template might be the problem, but it wasn't. So here we are in green. enjoy.

I am mostly recovered from the second wave of loss of stuff we experienced in january--it comes and goes like a ghost: where's that picture of Sam making scones in the St. Paul place? or, oh, right. our super-cool chinese warrior lawn ornament. that's gone. and thankfully I have absolutely crap memory so the entirety of our Christmas ornaments going missing is just a kind of grey blur. Ah well. we probably lost a lot of stuff we didn't really like or want anyway. and it will fade into mere memory loss, like something misplaced that you might, someday, perhaps in the next move, run across.

Gandhi has this story in his Hind Swaraj about a robber, and what one should do when someone steals from you. It's a metaphor for colonialism, so not really applicable here, except in that Gandhi's view of the personal as political is, well, somewhat more thorough-going than other political theorists. But he does describe the escalation: you get angry at the robber and gather a group to attack him; his friends gather around him and ratchet up the robberies, expanding to your friends who rallied around you. 'Thus the result of wanting to take revenge upon the robber is that you have disturbed your own peace: you are in perpetual fear of being robbed and assaulted; your courage has given place to cowardice.' (p. 83--and this resonates, of course, with the culture of fear that the Bush administration and now virally, everyone, seems to be perpetuating.) certainly--in my small context--we didn't 'press charges' or even know if the robber was found. we did file an insurance claim. we didn't do what Gandhi advises: '...you argue that he is, after all, a fellow man; you do not know what prompted him to steal. You, therefore, decide that, when you can, you will destroy the man's motive for stealing. ... Instead of being angry with him, you take pity on him'. (p. 84)

I did have a moment of thinking: I truly hope that stealing my stuff helped whoever did it to get what they wanted or needed at the time. I hope they enjoyed my speakers, or used the money they got in selling them to help their parent or child or friend get a needed operation. And I hope that the person that got the speakers at a huge discount is a true music lover. In Gandhi's story, he advises that you should leave windows and doors unlocked. set out your things so that they are easy for the thief to take the next time he comes. this will confuse him. perhaps he will ask around about you, and your generosity of spirit will spread to him somehow. utopic? sure. Gandhi even says so on the same page. but I suppose it's about the energy we put out there and the actions that follow. for him, it's that 'only fair means can produce fair results...the force of love and pity is infinitely greater than the force of arms'.

I'm still locking my doors, I have to say. but I do argue that he or she is, after all, a fellow human being. what is the cause of the theft? how can I, in Gandhi's violent words, destroy it?

The BIG Debates, Part Dos

Over at FFb, they've picked one of those topics for debate that you aren't supposed to ever pick because the debate will be so heated and potentially so divisive, –US foreign policy over Israel/Palestine. Tmcd is getting piled on again, and I won't enter the debate becuase he and I have previously held enormously-long email debates on this topic. Each of us did little to convince the other.

Thus, let's make it a BIG debate week, shall we? I'll pull out another one of those taboo topics that everyone has a deep-rooted position on, one that could be scandalously controversial. Is it Abortion? Nope.

It is:

Angel vs. Spike

Who was/is the best boyfriend for Buffy and why? And yes, if you wish to argue (insanely) for Riley, that's fair game too....But remember, play nice: no ad hominem arguments and no personal attacks!




Future posts: 'Changing the Narrative' and 'Foregiveness'.

2004 Again?

TenaciousMcD and Frances (in the comments) are making some distressing points – distressing because they are all true – about Hillary's recent hat-tossing.

I don't understand why the following is not obvious to everyone.

The Republicans have a playbook for how to defeat Democrats in the general presidential election. Their plan is already known to everyone; it is use that playbook. And it involves attaching the following labels (sometimes literally, sometimes through metaphor) to the Democratic candidate:

• Liberal
• Elite
• Weak
• Effeminate
• Ambivalent
• Indecisive
• Northeastern

In the case of the particular issue of the Iraq war, you can add somethign like 'he/she supported the war to begin with and doesn't have a better plan now than our candidate'.

So, if you're the Democrats, why not forget anything you know about who is out there running, and ask yourself who you don't want to nominate. Let's see, wouldn't that include:

• Anyone from the northeast
• Anyone who easily appears weak or effeminate
• Anyone who has a public record of national voting that can be used against them for the 'flip-flopping' charge
• Anyone who was hawkish on the war early on

For me this leads to simple conclusions.
In 2004 it meant: do not nominate Kerry.
In 2008 it means: do not nominate Clinton.

Kerry was a Massachusetts Senator who spoke French. It was almost too easy for the Republicans to work their magic on Kerry.

Hilary is a New York Senator; oh, and she's a woman. Oh, and she supported the war. I don't see any way on earth she has the best chance of winning. This doesn't mean she can't win, but she would do so despite being a terrible choice. After all, Kerry was a terrible choice and he almost won.

For me it's not about deep-rooted sexism in the American populace, but about the construction of democratic and repulican discourses. The US can easily elect a woman president, and I think they will, just as soon as the Republicans nominate her. A Republican female candidate will be a strong, decisive, plain-talking leader. Why? Because she is a Republican, and therefore by definition is all those things.

So let me add my voice to that of Tmcd and Frances: please don't nominate Hillary.

The next question is obvious, and I'd like to hear more from the FFb folks: who should the Democrats nominate? I think Edwards breaks up the Rebublican game plan fairly well. And, contrary to early FFb posts, to me Obama seems fiercely intelligent and very charismatic. Given the circumstances, that may be about the most we can ask from a presidential candidate these days. Of course, there are a long list of negatives for both of these guys, but I'm trying to end on a positive note.

Shilpa Shetty

It's celebrity Big Brother time in the UK, and for those not following closely the massive international political event this particular series has become, check out the extended, front-page coverage in the Times of India. Seems Gordon Brown's visit to India has been refocused from business discussions to defending Britain's attitudes towards 'Others' writ large.

ITV | Independent

I watched the contestants enter the house, and I was excited that Shilpa Shetty, famous Bollywood actress, was in the BB house, as I imagined it would be intriguing to see the interactions between several UK celebrities who are celebrities because of their celebrity and a real-live millions-of-fans movie actress who was largely unknown to the others in the house. Not that there aren't others that have received fame and accolades because of their talent (musicians, actors, film directors) or beauty (beauty contestant winner) or writing (newspaper columnist). But the conflict on BB is between a former BB winner (and her family--famous because of Big Brother) in the house and Shilpa.

No one can pronounce her name. How hard is it? Is it harder than Imogen, the name of a Welsh woman in the earlier, regular Big Brother this past summer? Shill-pa. Two syllables, not difficult, all sounds used in the English language. Try pronouncing Worchester 'correctly' when you've grown up in America. So far some of the other members of the house have 'commented' on the food she eats, asked her if she lives in a shack back in India (um, not unless by 'shack' you mean 'full-floor luxury high-rise apartment in Mumbai', one of the most expensive cities on earth), refused to eat food cooked by her because 'you never know' where her hands have been (and Brits/westerners are so fastidious about washing our hands after we use the toilet).

So now I have to watch BB to see where this is going. Racism, certainly. Xenophobia, yes. Ignorance about the world, sure. Class-tension: absolutely. That's, I think, the crux of this. The group bullying her the most were characterised as 'chavs' by one tabloid I read yesterday on the train. This is about Shilpa, a wealthy Mumbaikar, not acting like the assumed lower-class category she is placed in in Britain by dint of her skin tone. And so those in the house who represent that lower class are threatened by this. Everyone is equal, sure. But everyone should be in their proper places as well. Shilpa isn't.

The racism/xenophobia angles are the ones getting the attention right now, and probably rightly so. But this is a bigger problem even than that large problem. It certainly reveals the harrassment that British-Asians must go through on a daily basis in Britain, and that revelation is, one hopes, a good thing for the country to see. But I do hope (in vain most likely) that this moves beyond labelling one family 'racist' and moving on. It's systemic, it's about more than just race (immigration, legacy of colonialism, asymmetries of economic globalisation, gender (oh yes), celebrity, class, wealth, and on and on).

I'm also interested in the overlapping and intersecting between the so-called diaspora South Asian community and the in-south-asia community. This is not the first incident or moment when the truth of the overlap between these seemingly different groups has been made obvious. But it is interesting. Shilpa isn't British Asian. She's Indian. Or is she? What's the difference? Is she, like many South Asians around the world and in South Asia, a transnational being? I think so--and I think she represents the norm more and more, particularly for those of a certain economic class in India. (less so in Pakistan and Bangladesh, but still evident there too)

So the story will unfold. And it's not trivial. It's big, it's politics, and it's very much reality.

Why I love my commute

Turns out much of south Wales is shut down, and they recorded 76mph winds about 200 yards from our house. Luckily, we sit down in a bit of a hollow and are very much protected from the wind. But even better is the commute: so far there are no reports of anyone being blown over on foot.