January 2008 Archives

So I read Erin O'Connor's remarks on Stanley Fish's attempt to "justify the humanities" by turning the entire discipline into a series of "intriguing intellectual puzzles."

Oh, dear God.  Not directed toward Erin - I think her essay is on the mark.

I have had it with academics who no longer have the temerity to stand up and basically say, "You know what?  We have thousands of years worth of human history and experience and artistic creation available to us--and some of the best examples are presented here, here and here.  Now you're free to ignore/mock/reject any or all of it, but frankly we think you do so at your peril.  Why?  Because people don't exist in a vacuum, and pretending that they do, or that somehow we've moved beyond the need to reflect on our past, on our humanity or on morality is completely ignorant. It doesn't matter what your day job is, you're going to struggle with the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, and guess what--you can find guidance or cautionary tales in the humanities that may make your life easier, or maybe you'll just find a story that gives you pleasure, and that's valuable too.  Bottom line - you're human, and the humanities are relevant to your life."

Yeah, I know.  It's all sincere and insufficiently ironic and if we keep on in this vein someone might bring up something icky and scary like RELIGION or the SOUL or LIFE HAVING MEANING beyond your net worth or the Daily Show's daily snark, and we're way too cool to talk about that stuff anymore, right?

You know, if this debate didn't sadden me so, I might get a kick out of the irony that after spending decades tearing down their own discipline, academics in the humanities are left staring at the wreckage in befuddlement and asking themselves what the hell happened.

Not because they're omg! offensive, but because there never should have been a sequence of events that led up to the sentence being necessary in the first place.

Confused?  Witness this example:

"Really, it makes no sense addressing this theme with drums and dancing girls," said Sergio Niskier, president of the Israelite Federation in Rio de Janeiro state, referring to the slaughter of Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

Why was this sentence necessary?  Well, because a bunch of chuckleheads in Rio thought that a Carnivale float depicting the Holocaust and featuring a pile of corpses was just the Bestest Idea Evar!

You know, just when I think that I have seen all possible examples of the End of Days, someone surprises me.

I hate surprises.

So Friday I chaperoned a First Grade field trip to see the play "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."  I survived, is all I'm saying.

And at least no one ended up with a bruised penis, so hey!  Win-win.

How about this local race?

Run 2 miles from Bell Tower to local Krispy Kreme, eat one dozen donuts, run 2 miles back, and do it all in under an hour!

It's the Krispy Kreme challenge, and the vomiting is EPIC.

Yes, it was dreamed up by an undergrad student - what, you're surprised?  But this year we'll have 2,000 people running, eating, and yes, maybe throwing up all over Hillsborough Street.

I know, I know.  I should just back away from the internet, and I must say that I've done an admirable job of it as far as avoiding all the political nonsense that comes in an election year.  But I still like to surf during my lunch hour, usually blogs that I like and fluffy silly sites in the fandoms I enjoy, and these places are not immune to the stupid - particularly as far as commenters are concerned.  And today, the stupid?  I can't seem to escape it.

Let me give you a few cases in point.

Let's kick things off with an entire flamewar devoted to the fact that an actor in the Broadway version of The Little Mermaid was seen--Brace Yourselves, People, This One's a Doozy--SMOKING!  Outside!  While in makeup!  WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!?!?!

Comment that brought me to the precipice of visiting fiery doom upon my fellow earthlings?  This one:

Well, us non-smokers are tired of getting lung cancer and dying because of smokers who have no problem with polluting our lungs along with theirs. I don't care whether or not it's legal. You're allowed to do it, fine. But don't ever expect to stop being treated as lesser human beings, because that's what murderers are.

Full disclosure - I am not a smoker, and find smoke gross.  But really, wtf?  I know that the internet has made it all about the Oversharing, and the Passing Judgement, and the Gaseous Vitriol, but really, I'd like to think that folks retained a sense of proportion. Especially when said folks live in NYC, which probably has some other air quality issues worth addressing...

Apparently not.  Witness the photographs of the freaking BODY BAG containing Heath Ledger (I am not linking, though if you've hit any news sites today you've probably seen them). And don't give me that tired nonsense about, "Oh, but that's what the public WANTS!  They have a right to know!"

No. Do not want. And please explain how I can't understand the concept of "dead" without a photo of the body. I'm not going to take to the streets yelling about being oppressed because I can't see pictures of a dead body, no matter how famous the person it belonged to was.  I know he's dead, and why, and that's where my "right" to information--if we even really have such a thing, which I doubt--about another human being ends.  It's called decorum.  We used to have some.

We also used to have a sense of compassion for humans. I specify "humans," because of this Amy Winehouse story.  Didn't watch the crack-smoking video, because human trainwrecks in technicolor ick me out. But I came across an article on her today, and read it.  Should have stopped before I got to the comments, is all I'm sayin'.

Why?

Because at the end of an article detailing the problems of a troubled and talented young woman, the most salient thing one respondent had to say was this:

If no one is going to help her at least can the RSPCA get the kitten out of her household? She might be chosing that lifestyle, the cat isn't.

Whoo. I need to step back - that milk of human kindness is about to drown me.  Or the kitten.  Whatever.

So to sum up - crazy people still crazy.  Internet still a live version of the DSM-IV.  I remain disappointed in just about everything, and may have to buy new shoes to fill the gaping hole in my soul.

Have a nice day.

I must be getting old.  I have seen exactly none of the nominated films, and with the exception of "No Country for Old Men," have no plans to Netflix them.

Although, given Hublet's recently revived interest in Bob Dylan and his continuing interest in Cate Blanchett, we may also Netflix "I'm Not There."

And I don't care about the 43-hour Oscar television extravaganza, either.  Let's face it - the only reason I watched in seasons past was to see who showed up wearing something completely ridiculous.  Since I now have Go Fug Yourself to sort through the chiffon-coated chaff for me, there's no longer any reason to watch the red carpet stuff, except maybe to see if Joan Rivers has finally succeeded in transforming herself into a live-action version of Madame.

I'm too young to be so curmudgeonly.  I blame Hollywood. 

How to tell that you've got middle-school aged boys in your vicinity...

This weekend as I was driving along our local highway I noticed that there was one of those portable display signs--you know, the freestanding ones with the arrow and the backlit white space that allow you to put letters on them--at the entrance to one of the neighborhoods near the elementary and middle schools.

The sign was congratulating someone's buddy on their hole-in-one at a local golf course.  It read, "Congratulations, [name of random dude] on your hole-in-one!"  Then it listed the course name and hole #. 

"That's nice," I thought, and continued on my way.

The next morning, as the family made our traditionally extremely late and harried way to church, I happened to glance at the sign.  And then I started laughing, because apparently I am a twelve-year-old boy at heart.  Because the sign now read:

"Congratulations on your butthole!"

Okay, hee.  Totally inappropriate discussion/explanation for The Boy ensued, and we guffawed our way to church.  Or The Boy and I guffawed, and Hublet looked somewhat pained.

I know, I know. Vandalism!  Low-level public vulgarity!  Corruption of young boy on a Sunday morning!

But still, the word butthole just makes me laugh.  It's an involuntary reflex left over from childhood.  Sue me.

 And before you bring it up, no, I didn't tamper with the sign.

Saw VeggieTales movie on Saturday.  Boy thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the carnivorous cheese curls.

But the best part for me was during the credits, when the cast did a riff on the B-52's Rock Lobster, entitled, Rock Monster!

I was gleeful!  And then I just felt really, really old.

So last night as I was preparing to get The Boy off to bed, the following conversation ensued:

"Son, stop dancing around the bathroom and let's go - it's bedtime."

"Blow me, mommy!"

"..."

"Uh, WHAT did you say?!"

"Blow me!  Like this! (Puffs out cheeks and blows air through mouth) I can't fly unless you blow me there!"

"Uh."

"MOMMY! COME ON!"

"Okay.  (Puffs air in Boy's general direction)"

"Here I go! (Boy leaps into bed)"

"Great.  Son, how about we don't say 'blow me' anymore, okay?"

"Why not, mommy?"

(Mommy thinks through and discards several replies involving social shunning and possibly social services)

"Well, because some people think that's an ugly phrase - they don't know what you mean."

"But I ask my friends to blow me when we're on the playground, and they don't think it's ugly."

(Mommy refrains, through sheer force of will, from running from the room screaming - visions of sexual harassment-related school expulsion running through her head.)

"What do you say?"

"Blow me so I can go to California!"

(This is not better.  Not even remotely.  Mommy forces visions of Hollywood Boulevard and its shadier denizens from her head.)

"Perhaps you can just ask them to help make wind?"

(At least the inevitable fart jokes won't get him arrested for soliciting, right? Please just get me out of this conversation.)

"Blow me all the way to California?"

(Now images of illicit Greyhound bus trips are indelibly burned into my head.  I hate my life.)

"How about we just fly under our own power, okay?  You don't need wind to fly."

"Okay, mommy."

"Okay."

(Not enough red wine in America to help me with this one, people.)

After having blogged for coming up on 5 years now - good God, my ego apparently DOESN'T know any bounds - I know that it's difficult to come up with the pithy, or the funny, or the ranty, or all of the above on a daily basis.  But as I always say, "Better a blogger be silent than completely inane, dude!"

Okay, I've never even thought that before today, as you know if you've ever read this blog and its encountered its recurrent inanity, so I'll just be taking my ladder and getting over myself now.

But not before pointing you to this article in the Chronicle Review, the point of which seems to be that the author has appointed herself the Arbiter of Sartorial Vanity, or something.  Which would be fine on a personal blog, but seems a bit odd in the Chronicle, unless someone there has decided that what they really need to do is to become more like Inside Higher Ed.  Hope this isn't registration only - if so, here are a couple of pertinent paragraphs:

"After 30 minutes, 286 calories and a lot of ruminating on men, women, looks, age, vanity and college T-shirts, I reached the apodictic conclusion that my fellow urban fitness fanatic looked ludicrous wearing his Harvard T-shirt. Why is this, I wondered. After all, practically every man and maybe half the women huffing and puffing in the gym wear T-shirts with words printed on them, and many of those indicate a college or university. Outside my gym, any ride on a subway will treat you to a veritable parade of college T-shirts. The problem doesn't rest in the college T-shirt, I finally figured out, but in who does the wearing...."

"Isn't it enough that Harvard, Yale and Princeton graduates rule the world, and rule it rather badly? (Do the names McBundy, Rostow, Bush, or Alito ring a bell?)

"This is O.K. As Jimmy Carter (alumnus of the Naval Academy) famously said, "Life is not fair." But hold on. It is fair. If you did graduate from Harvard, Yale or Princeton, and more than 18 months after your graduation you're still into wearing your college T-shirt, you're as pretentious as ol' Wolf. If you don't know it, that woman sweating it up on the treadmill next to you in the gym certainly does."

So the argument boils down to - if you're a white dude who went Ivy, you can't sport a college t-shirt after graduation, because makes you pretentious.  And also, some white dudes who went Ivy are Republicans!  And they rule the world, so NO SHIRT FOR YOU, PRETENTIOUS MCSNOB!

Well okay then, Random!

Yeah, re-enabled comments, but with moderation for "non-verified" commenters.  Of course, I thought those were the settings I had initially, so whatever.  We'll give it another shot.

I'll have a real entry either later today or tomorrow - frankly my thumbs are sore from trying to make a tiny intractable Italian plumber kick the ass of a giant dog-thing in outer space, so I'm trying to give them a bit of a break.

As I spend all my time on a keyboard, this is shaping up to be a bit of a challenge...

Have temporarily disabled comments site-wide to deal with REALLY ANNOYING spam attack.  If you have something pressing to say, let me know via email and I'll relay it here.

Also, if you made a comment after Friday evening and you don't see it, let me know.  I got all crazy with the Empty Spam folder, (which is where all pending comments are ending up, instead of in the pending comments folder, which is another reason why MT 4 is irritating the snot out of me) and you may have gotten deleted.  Sorry!

Hopefully it'll be business as usual tomorrow.....

Email is bigarm at bigarmwoman dot you know the ending.

Perhaps I'm just a glutton for punishment, but I've been perusing the blog entries and reporting from the MLA over at the Chronicle, and I've been pleasantly surprised to discover a bit of a recurring theme amongst some of the postings:  that perhaps professional anxiety about the worth of teaching literature is linked to the fact that no one is really emphasizing that literature can be pleasurable and personally meaningful to read.

In the blog review of the panel titled, "Why Teach Literature Anyway," we get the usual responses: 

All of them suggested that by teaching literature, scholars were performing an essential educational function: changing the way students see the world.

(I'll gloss over the unspoken addendum of "because students don't see the world properly" that sometimes unfortunately accompanies this attitude, or else this entry will become WAY bloated.) Then a theory professor added:

When she first began teaching, she said, she taught students to apply the close reading they had learned in their literature classes to theoretical texts. "But for more than a decade," she said, "students have come into class not having learned close reading at all."

How odd that it would fall to her to teach the habit of literary reading, she said. "I'm wondering, if they're not getting that training, why study literature anyway?"

But the last portion is the most telling:

After the panel one member of the audience asked why none of the speakers had said anything about pleasure.

"We're all for pleasure," Mr. Bromwich assured him. "We just took it for granted."

Yep, and that right there is a big part of the problem - the academic process in English has been so geared toward the "tools of theory" for so long that they've lost sight of the fact that the texts they're studying haven't been around for centuries or more because they provide a fabulous insight into the subjugation of the Other, but because folks kind of liked reading them and finding personal meaning within them. 

I think what gets lost, the longer someone stays in academe, is the knowledge that the majority of the kids they're teaching are coming from high school envrionments where they've (the kids, not necessarily the teachers - okay, Hublet?) treated reading as "that thing I have to do to pass the test, to write the essay, to get the high score on the SAT and to get into college" and then these students find themselves confronted with professors who lay texts before them like corpses to be dissected by a variety of theoretical scalpels - with the focus on the scalpel.  Somewhere along the way all the fun and relevance (in terms of personal discovery and relevance, not political or theoretical relevance) has been sucked right out of teaching literature.

Maybe it's because I taught intro courses, and never got that sense of removal, that I was reminded daily that most of the kids in these classes would have only a brief brush with "High-Toned College Literature," and that if part of my job was to encourage literacy in general, it was important that I convince them that - guess what?  Reading isn't just about slogging through hundreds of pages about a peg-legged obsessive and his stupid whale nemesis and then writing an essay on what that tells us about Marx in order to get an "A," it was also about discovering what you thought the author was doing and why, and what that might mean. And that making those discoveries could be kind of fun.

And there was a panel on just that at the MLA this year, too - "Pleasure Now!" 

After the recitation, four scholars delivered "provocations" to the audience, calling for do-it-yourself lifestyles and a return to the "pleasure of close reading."

They referred to the contemporary "speed up" in scholarly output and workloads as a prime pleasure-killing force. But they also hinted at another problem closer to home for leftist critics. Namely: Scholars who analyze literature as if they are performing autopsies on the workings of power can get pretty dreary.

Is something wrong when reading literature becomes a performance of displeasure? That seemed to be one of the guiding questions among the scholars at "Pleasure Now!"

Gee, ya think that spending a couple of decades viewing texts as nothing more than windows into the myriad ways that "(insert aggrieved populace) gets screwed, usually by the West, or Capitalism, or Men, or All Three Together in An Unholy Trinity of Evil!", might turn some folks off?

It sure sucked the fun out of reading for me, which is why I read mostly genre fiction or history now.

Well, that and the fact that the "serious" modern fiction being turned out by grads of the MFA programs in this country is just one continuous dreary crap-fest, but that's a rant for another day. 

Well, the house was clean for approximately four and a half minutes on Christmas Eve, so I guess I'll call that one a victory.

We're home, our arms are sore from Wii Sports, and frankly, I'm ready to plunge into the dark drudgery of the winter months, unencumbered by cheer.  I think I've used up my cheer quota for the foreseeable future. I may have even worked up the will to clean out the attic.  I know! 

Also, just so you know, I have no New Year's resolutions.  Thinking that I might be up to cleaning out the attic doesn't count.

Saw Sweeny Todd yesterday, a good movie that has the distinction of being the only time I've ever used the phrase, "Nice arterial spray!" as a compliment.  Not that I have much occasion to go around commenting on arterial sprays, regardless of what Hublet may tell you.

I'll be back to my regular ranting and raving soon - just wanted to let you know that I'm back and alive, and that I hope the same can be said for all of you.