Dante's Virgil

True Wealth

2010-05-25T11:55:00.004-04:00

I've been bitched at to start blogging again, and I truly have gotten out of the habit of it, partly because of the end of semester stuff I had to do and partly because I fell in love with an online war game, lol. But as I was cruising YahooNews, I found this article, and I felt compelled to write, mainly because it seems so timely with what I'm reading right now, Simple Prosperity by David Wann, the co-author of Affluenza (a great read). The article looks at how rich people across the world measure what wealth really means.

Some of the findings are:

Respect
Asians and Latin Americans were more likely (49% and 47%) to say that wealth "allows me to get respect from friends and family." Only 28% of Europeans and 38% of Americans said respect was a byproduct of wealth.
Charity
About three-quarters of respondents in the U.S. and Latin America said wealth enabled them to give to charity. That compares with 57% in Europe and 66% in Asia.
Happiness
About two thirds of Europeans and Americans said wealth made them happy. But it had a greater happiness affect in emerging markets, with 76% of Asians and Latin Americans saying wealth made them happy.
Role Models
Less than half of Americans and Europeans say the wealthy "set an important example to others to be successful." That compares with 71% of Latin Americans and 61% of Asians.
Spending
Wealthy Europeans are far more likely to spend their dough on travel and interior decorating. Latin Americans seem to put the highest spending priority on education, while the U.S. surges above the rest in philanthropy (which the report counts as spending).
We can read several things into the differences. Most obviously, the U.S. has a more formalized and tax-favorable system of philanthropy than the rest of the world. (It is too sweeping to say Americans are the most "generous.")
What is more, the global financial crisis may have tarnished the image of the wealthy -- even among the wealthy. And finally, the longer a country has wealth, the less it craves the attention and respect wealth brings.

I think there are some interesting things to think about in terms of why people think wealth should give respect, what wealth "buys", etc. Especially since in this article, wealth itself is associated with lots of money and financial assets. Many people would probably list more money as something that would make them happier, but when you ask them what they would use the money for, you'd probably find that what people really want is security, happiness, opportunities and more education.

Houses are a good example, as they are considered most Americans' primary asset. I don't think I'd want a super expensive home, even if I could afford one. The house I'm in now, the first one I've ever owned, I got for a fantastic price. It's in a small and close-knit neighborhood, my utility bills are wa-a-ay lower than the crappy apartment I used to live in, the basement was completely redone by the friend who owned it first. That friend worked very hard to make sure the house was well insulated and kept up. The basement used to be a wet, smelly, dank and dark mess. Now it has a full bedroom, bathroom, and living space -- completely dry, bright, and wonderful. We worked hard as friends to put together a deal that benefited us both, and we largely kept lawyers and real estate agents out of it. I'm proud we were able to do that as friends. The house has character and a connection with people I love, who moved away. It's on 2 1/2 city lots, so I have a yard, a garden, and lots of trees. I can look out my kitchen window and see the tops of my neighbors houses and also the West Virginia mountains. Every window has a "view". The house is only about 1450 square feet -- 725 on both floors -- and yet because of the way it is laid out and the work my friend put into it, there are still enough bedrooms for everyone plus a guest, living and relaxing space, a space for family meals, a pantry, a bathroom for a preening almost teenage boy. It's seven blocks from the center of town, and the bus stops a few feet away. It is considered a financial asset. But it means so much more than that to me.

I consider my home a different kind of wealth, because it's where we're so happy to be at the end of the day. It's the place where said preening nearly teenaged son cooked his first meal entirely from scratch and served everyone, and was sooo proud. It is the place where we sit at the kitchen table and talk about math, pull our hair out, and talk about it some more. It's the place where we turn out the lights so said teenage-ish boy can ask about girls without being looked at. It is a breezy ceiling-fan, cat stretching in sunlight, good book on the deck kind of place.

Selling it for the $120,000 I bought it for would not buy those things.

Giving to charity is another example. I am happy that the wealthy see that as something they enjoy doing, and money makes a big difference. But so does giving time and energy and getting to know the real problems in your own neighborhood. I think watching Dante decide he was going to give the charity money he'd saved up to the group that spays and neuters animals to control the population was just as valuable as a $500,000 donation; because he was thinking about community problems, what he was interested in and that some money should be prioritized for those things. The people I've worked with in a volunteer sort of way, we've all benefited by being together and "spending" time. We all get reinforced by knowing that there are others who do care, and that spending your time makes a difference, and that small differences are just as important as big, earth shattering differences. We got to know the people who need the services we were working to provide in a way that an impersonal check does not allow. We found out that many of those people were just like us, and that the margin between safety and tragedy is often pretty slim. That sort of thing is priceless.

And would I love to slap down money and go somewhere expensive? Sure, I guess -- never tried it before! :D And I'm sure that sailing around the Greek isles in your private yacht is great. But, next year we're going to India to see BatMite!, which I'm so excited about. We'll get to eat things and see things and connect with another culture, and we're going as a group of friends to see a dear, dear friend. I cannot think of a richer experience. That winter I plan on being in Nicaragua, looking at volcanoes, trying to speak Spanish and visiting coffee plantations. I will be going for probably less than $2000, maybe even less than $1500 with pennies I've put back from the way-below-average teacher's pay I get. I'm sure it will be every bit as fulfilling and enriching.

I'm not suggesting we all hate on the rich, or that the rich should be ashamed, although I think there are cases to be made for that sort of thing in some circumstances. What I am suggesting is that it's beyond time that we as a culture reconsider what it means to be "wealthy" and what we think we want our money to really buy for us. There are ways of enriching one's life that has nothing to do with one's bank account, 401k or property holdings, and everything to do with how vital the life one has really is. How do you count your wealth?

-- DV

Burning Strawmen

2010-03-31T11:15:00.003-04:00

*Edited to add, I have no idea why the font screws up. Tried to fix it, can't. Sorry.*

So, it's been a while. There's lots to update, including the fact that in a couple of months I hope to work on an exciting new website (to me). But for now, here's a little something I got some fun out of. My sister works in a very conservative environment. Honestly, she works in a tea party environment most of the time (someone gave her Sarah Palin's biography as a birthday present). So she sends me a good number of the email forwards she gets from her coworkers along with little notes like, "God, this makes me so aggravated!!!" My sister is not a "liberal." She is a classic independent, in my opinion, meaning that she makes her mind up on each and every issue based on her own ethics, and not because a party mouthpiece tells her to vote a certain way. We have good conversations about politics.

So when she sent me this forward totally strawmanning conservative and liberal positions, I couldn't help myself, being the teacher of rhetoric that I am. I'm sure most of you know what a strawman argument is, but for those of you who don't, this is how I explain it (keep in mind I'm a "layman's terms" teacher). Strawmen fallacies mean that someone has created a highly simplistic version of the argument that leaves out most of the context, so that they can then whale on that simplistic (and untrue) argument with a bat and beat the stuffing out of it. Instead of addressing the actual person/argument, they've built one out of straw and stuck it up in the garden, hoping it would scare people away or so they could set fire to it and think "Hah! I showed you, look at how it burns! Your argument is totally in flames!" I know that's a whole lot of metaphor, but hopefully that makes sense. For your entertainment, I present what she got and then my response to it. Feel free to add your own contribution!

If a conservative doesn't like guns, he doesn't buy one.
If a liberal doesn't like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a conservative is a vegetarian, he doesn't eat meat..
If a liberal is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.
If a conservative is homosexual, he quietly leads his life.
If a liberal is homosexual, he demands legislated respect.
If a conservative is down-and-out, he thinks about how to better his situation.
A liberal wonders who is going to take care of him.
If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host, he switches channels.
Liberals demand that those they don't like be shut down.
If a conservative is a non-believer, he doesn't go to church.
A liberal non-believer wants any mention of God and religion silenced.
(Unless it's a foreign religion, of course!)
If a conservative decides he needs health care, he goes about shopping for it, or may choose a job that provides it.
A liberal demands that the rest of us pay for his.
If a conservative reads this, he'll forward it so his friends can have a good laugh.
A liberal will delete it because he's "offended".
Well, I forwarded it to you.

Here's my response:

1. If a conservative doesn't like guns, he's too ashamed to not renew his NRA (National Rifle Association) membership, because otherwise he'll be told he's unAmerican. Besides, the militia needs every hand they can get, since Obama is coming after all our guns. Any day now. Seriously. It's right around the corner.

2. If a conservative is a vegetarian, he can never reveal it, because then he might be labeled as one of those "tree hugging hippies" by other True Conservatives (TM). Also, see number one and attach it to hunting, because everyone knows the bigger the antlers mounted on a conservative's living room wall, the bigger the peenie in his pants.

3. If a conservative is homosexual, he has three choices. He can join the Log Cabin Republicans (oh, snap, we don't like to talk about that branch of the Republican party, do we??), he can sneak off for some quickie sex in the men's bathroom, where he somehow has managed to learn all the "code" for "gimme some now," or he can hit on underage interns and page boys. He has stellar role models for all three options. Bonus points if he can take the fourth underutilized option and claim that Satan tested him and he failed, but he totally has cured Teh Ghayy now with the love of Jesus.

4. If a conservative is down and out, he will somehow find a way to blame it on Bill Clinton.

5. If a conservative doesn't like a talk show host ... wait a minute? You mean there are other talk show hosts besides Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity? LOL, that's just crazy talk, mister.

6. If a conservative is a non-believer, he better not dare show it, as he'll again be labeled unAmerican. After all, the founding fathers all believed in Christianity, even though their own personal papers show they were mainly deists with a variety of beliefs. If a conservative thinks there is something wrong with church tax breaks for groups that molest kids and steal their congregation's money, praying in school even though a Muslim call to prayer would probably give him an instant aneurism, or any of the other ways that church and state are really not separate, even though that's what the founding fathers really wanted, he might be considered an atheist! And everyone knows that atheists are communists, so we can't have that.

7. If a conservative needs health care, he gets prayed over by his preacher, has a laying on of hands and is healed through the spirit of the Lord. Duh!

8. If a conservative reads this, he'll stop and think about making stawmen arguments about "liberals", since it doesn't feel very good when it's done to you. Oh, who are we kidding? He'll probably just delete it and turn the volume on Rush Limbaugh back up.

I realize this will piss off my conservative friends, but I don't care. More of you need to explain to them the concept of the "strawman" fallacy and why it isn't good to use it.

-- DV

In Other News, I'm Still a High Schooler

2010-02-18T11:58:00.002-05:00

And I still hate Facebook, but this is related to it. There are lots of people, especially from high school who either try to friend you or pop up as friend choices on your screen. Most of the time it just amuses me -- we didn't hang out in high school because we had nothing in common. Why would we hang out now? It's not like you've tried to contact me in the past nearly 15 years, so why are we pretending to care now? So, most of the time I just ignore them.

But this week, I decided to have an internet fight.

I got a friend request from a former friend in high school who married my then best friend -- and proceeded to abuse and break her down over the next several years. I found out about it through the grapevine, as by then I was booted out of the church and my then "best" friend made no attempt to keep in touch or deal with me. I was JW Kryptonite then (now on the border of being upgraded to radioactive status); but when you say, "This doesn't change a thing," personally I assume you mean it. Goes to show me.

Anyway, former said bff and I reconnect via Facebook -- I contacted her first, because I feel the need to point that out, being petty and whatnot. She filled me in on some of the gory details. Then a couple of weeks later, her ex sends me a friend request. I went 16 - 17 years old all over again. Who knew? I thought those days were behind me.

Back in high school I had quite the mouth, as you might imagine. Actually, imagine a chihuahua and you'll have the whole picture. No, that's not quite right. Chihuahuas can be hushed by tapping on their heads or a good stamp of the feet. I was more like a Jack Russell terrier. Once I was obsessed with a problem or a perceived injustice or whatever, I barked my head off and wouldn't let it go. I once saw a dog owner absolutely flatten a Jack Russell terrier with its shock collar (not a big fan of that practice); it got right back up and snarled that much harder. That was pretty much me. JR terriers are absolutely one of the most annoying breeds on the face of the planet. I recognize that I am, too. I point this out, because it's not like it was a secret in high school. It was one of the most recognizable features of my personality -- don't fuck with Virgil's friends or sister or whatever, and she won't develop an obsession with biting your ankles off or barking at you until you jump out of a second story window. It wasn't a mystery.

I'm a lot more mellow than I used to be. I take the time to investigate before I decide there has been some injustice committed or some perceived slight. El Hijo will tell you that sometimes I rage around the house before I get to that stage, and he's right. Now that I look back on it, it's just what my father used to do -- stomp around bitching about it for a while before sitting down and saying, "OK, now let me figure this thing out." And when I do figure it out, I take more time in plotting my revenge .. er, .. I mean, I think the situation through before I do anything. This is much better than Before Adulthood.

In the era of Dante's Virgil B.A., things like this would happen. I would walk down the hall as a junior, in between classes, and then -- lo and behold! -- some Kentucky numbnut had taken one of my girlfriends by the throat and shoved her up against a locker. I remember that incident because it was probably the time I was most violent in my life, and it was weird. I remember some parts of it very clearly, and then there was this black space where I have no idea what the hell happened, and then it's clear again. I think they call that Rage. I distinctly remember thinking that when (not if) I struck him, I was going to have to go for his temple, because if I didn't incapacitate him before he knew what was happening, his black belt stuff would whip my ass. I also decided to use my World History book, it having the sharpest corners. I remember throwing my stuff down apart from that, breaking into a run, and yelling, "You motherfucker, I'm going to fucking kill you, you piece of fucking shit." That might be a paraphrase, but I'm pretty sure that's what I said, because I had a "battle whoop" before I went into these things. I remember connecting the corner of my book with the side of his head.

I don't remember anything that happened in between except for the sound of someone's voice floating overhead: "Virgil's killing Bill!" This is pre-Quinton Tarrantino, and yes his name was really Bill. I don't remember hitting him apart from the crack to the side of the head. There's all this black space with whoever it was yelling that. The next thing I know, two of my other friends have me by the arms off to the side saying, "Virgil, it's OK, no problem, just take a breath," and all this other weird stuff, I'm cursing up a storm, and Bill was nowhere to be seen. I'm not really sure what happened, but I never caught him doing that sort of thing at school, at least, ever again.

The second incident I remember happened when I was a senior. My sister was dating a piece of shit, and I saw him shove her up against a locker. What is it with high school boys and lockers? So, of course, I came flying and screeching some variation of "You piece of shit, if I catch you, I'm going to beat the holy hell out of you!?!" and throwing books at him. I connected with one in the back, but he had a lead on me before I could get him, and I chucked the rest of them from above at him as he ran down the stairs. Later, I called him and told him that if he ever came within 50 feet of my sister again, I'd take out a restraining order on him. And I told him if he ever touched her again, I'd kill him. I don't know why I picked 50 feet instead of 60 or 45 feet. It just seemed like a good number. And I meant it about killing him. He laughed, and I told him to "Try me," basically. I could've probably frozen Clint Eastwood's blood with it. I remember at the time I hated this boy's guts for touching my sister like that. It probably came out like, "Go ahead, punk. Make my day."

The next day, my sister came running up to me in tears, screaming, "Darren won't talk to me anymore, he won't even come near me. What did you do?! I hate you! I HATE you!" My work there was done.

Then there was the time I ran my best friend's rapist out of town. I could go on and on.

The point is, I did not respond well to people who threatened or hurt the people I cared about. Not at all. This is not a mystery, and it's one of the things about me that has generally remained constant through the years. The delivery mechanism might have changed. I've got a son I'd like to stay with, not spend time in jail for murder. But the things that trigger the terrier are still the same.

So, this numbnut asks permission to friend me. And I partially regress to my 16/17 y.o. self. Here is what I sent back:

You've got to be shitting me. Seriously? I'm assuming you remember me from high school. I'm assuming you remember what I value in life and what I don't. If you don't remember, I can refresh your memory and keep it simple for you.

I don't like woman beaters and abusers. I never have, I never will. I especially don't like it when they curry favor with those around the woman they chose to abuse, in an attempt to steal or cut off support from her, or to make themselves look like anything less than what they are -- cowardly, craven, abusive, pathetic, social wastes of space.

Don't even bother trying to deny the things you've done. It's common knowledge and easy to find out from multiple sources. Hell, I found out about it without even talking to her. You're really lucky that she didn't tell the male members of her family the full details of what you did. I'm not sure why she didn't, except that she did you a favor.

I have no idea why you thought friending me was a smart idea, given the context and given that you knew me pretty well in high school. How did you think I was going to react? Did you really think I'd just be all, "Sure! Wow, I'm really glad to talk to you again after all these years, even though you made my high school best friend's life fucking miserable for a few of them?" You're lucky we're not still 17 years old and therefore not able to be legally charged as adults. You'd need every inch of that black belt. You're lucky I'm an adult and value other things in life much more than the temporary pleasure it would give me to try and beat your ass. From what I hear, I'd have to stand in line anyway. Which I would gladly do, by the way. I'd queue up in a heartbeat.

So fuck you. I'm not interested in being your Facebook friend.

I think that's better than "You motherfucker, I'm going to fucking kill you, you piece of fucking shit."

If he's smart, he'll just let it go. If he's not, and I'm betting "not," he'll try to defend himself or get something else in. At that point, I might ask him to call Bill.

"Your message has been sent" never felt so good.

-- DV

FaceBook Update -- I Still Don't Like It

2010-02-04T11:15:00.003-05:00

Big surprise, I know. Recently I bit the bullet and got more active on Facebook. I've been on FB for a while, but kind of in a secret, hidey, spying kind of way. OK, I'll admit that Farmville was a huge part of the draw for me to come back. But also because some of my former students kept needling me about it, and I realized that if I ever wanted a chance of staying in touch with them, I probably ought to be more active on Facebook.

I have really mixed feelings about Facebook.

Part of it has to do with the fact that to really participate in it, you kind of have to give up your psuedonysm on the internet. And I don't like that. For one thing, there are all kinds of articles about universities and employers snooping on people's Facebook pages. In fact, I use those articles as part of my Spring Rhetoric courses. My students' dorm resident assistants try to friend them on FB because they are encouraged by their superiors to snoop on the students' pages to see if there are pics of them doing things they're not supposed to do in the dorms. I've had several students kicked out of dorms because of pictures on FB. On the one hand, yeah, they were in the wrong. But on the other hand, they obviously weren't causing a disturbance if the only way they were caught was a pic on FB. Additionally, students in those pics who aren't doing anything wrong also end up getting charged just because they were there, which is completely unfair.

I think my bigger problem is family and FB. Despite my rabble rousing personality, I don't really like drama. I like raising a fuss when some right is being violated or justice and equality are being trampled on, blah blabbity blah. But otherwise, I don't really care very much for confrontation. Most of my family, in-laws included, are fairly conservative and religious people. I like being an open atheist. I like bitching about my family from time to time. I'd like to post things about my crappy hometown without expecting to get whined at over it whenever I end up coming home. Frankly, I'd like to think I'm not in the spotlight all the time.

FB also seems to be the place to find all your old high school friends again. First you have to get over the pictures people have posted of themselves. Some people look really fantastic. And some people ... don't. Finding them all seems exciting until you've friended them and then realize that they really haven't changed since high school, and why was it you were friends, again? The friend who was a bossy-pants in high school is still a bossy pants, but this time on Farmville, leaving bossy signs all over her farm about how you should run your farm. LOL. Or, people who aren't really friends at all are busy friending each other to ... what? Have more friends?

Then there is the posting. I'll admit that most of my own posts are Farmville accomplishments, but that's because whenever something good happens to you, if you post it your Farmville friends can potentially get a bonus off of it, too. Most posts, though, seem pretty inane, mine included. Few people post interesting things on FB, and rarely with wit -- I honestly think Twitter has FB beat on that score. You only have so many characters to use, including spacing, so you have to be thoughtful about what you tweet. It seems like micro-micro blogging instead of just ... niceties.

I dunno. Maybe I just need more FB friends. Me and my co-worker-buddy use Ning anyway. :p

-- DV

Oh, and Meg, you are the exception to the rule. Your posts are always interesting. :D

Why, Hello There!

2010-02-02T10:50:00.002-05:00

So, it's been a while. How have you been? Me? Oh, I've been ... well, nuts. Thanks for asking.

We closed on the house, were supposed to move, and then a giant snowstorm hit. So then we rescheduled for the day after the university started back, and the movers came -- and a giant snowstorm hit. We've spent the past 2 1/2 weeks trying to put the house in order. It's most definitely very livable, but we're still not done. I'm planning on trying to finish putting things in order this weekend -- during the middle of the next giant snowstorm. Honestly, though, that's how West Virginia winters are supposed to be. The past few years we've had it pretty mild and have suffered droughts in the warmer periods as a result.

I love my little house. It's probably not everybody's cup of tea and there is probably a great deal of pride of place going on that helps me gloss over its faults, but I am absolutely in love with it, and everybody else who lives there seems to be as well, including the cats. I like what I see when I look out my windows. I love my fully remodeled basement, which makes what looks like a tiny house on the outside doubled in space on the inside. I like the fact that I have an extra city lot attached to mine, which doubles my yard. I love my little deck off the kitchen. I like my showers. I'm in love with my house. Probably a good thing, given its 30 year mortgage.

I have also fallen in love with Freecycle. I've given away excess furniture, books, games, cat stuff, even the boxes we moved with on Freecycle. I cannot say enough about how fantastic that site is. We're planning on using it for the local Boys & Girls Club to get some of the things they need. If you need stuff or want to offload stuff, all it costs you is wading through a few emails and arranging pick up.

After we got moved in, we got sick. All of us. Yay! No rest for the wicked. (Or is it the weary? I think we'd qualify as both.) So I sit here with an industrial box of tissues and Tylenol Cold & Sinus on either side of me. Oh, and in related medical news, the dentist says my wisdom teeth need to come out. So, Spring Break is going to involve Novocain and a visit to I. Yankum, Dentist. Maybe while I'm groggy I'll imagine I'm on a beach somewhere.

Other random notes include the fact that more than one couple I know who've been married for what seems like forever are busy falling apart and divorcing with the new year. Maybe there is something about the concept of resolution that gives people motivation to do it? I guess problems like that brew for years with no resolution, but when couples who seem rock solid begin to crumble, it shakes you a bit. If they couldn't do it, what on earth does it take? El Hijo and I are in a really good place in our marriage. It seems really scary to think that fifteen years later, it'll all blow up. Isn't it supposed to get stronger over time?

Also randomly, I miss having real friends. I don't like drama and I don't like people who keep things from me and hope I won't notice, and I've had my share of both this past week. I think I need to make more of an effort to expand my circle and/or bring back those people who I care about deeply but live apart from or whatever.

Upcoming blog posts include the fact that I published a story, commentary on Facebook, issues with the Humanities, and other minutia that seem to only be interesting to me.

-- DV

Snow Fail

2010-01-08T12:22:00.001-05:00

Ugh. So, we closed yesterday. Yay. And then our move got cancelled this morning because of all the snow. Boo. Thanks, Canada.

So, we're in limbo until the movers can get through the snow to get to us. Could be tomorrow. Could be Tuesday. Gack.

So, we just sit and wait out the snow in our castle of boxes. :(

Chaos

2010-01-06T18:00:00.002-05:00

That's the word of the day.

Chaos. K-OS.

Oh, and it can stop snowing and melt off annny minute now.

We close on the house tomorrow, I run around with straw in my hair for a while, and then we move day after tomorrow.

Kay - ahs.

2010-01-03T19:46:00.002-05:00

Boxing Count: 30 (two boxes of nonbooks. E-friggin'-gads.)

Bags given away: 3 1/2 + 3 coats

Bags of trash: 3 normal bags + 1 super-mondo-ginormous black trash bag

Empty boxes waiting on me: an entire pallet's worth at a local grocery store, courtesy of the kind day manager

Freecycled: 3 pieces of furniture, three small boxes of CDs, one board game and one video game

Tomorrow the packing begins in earnest.

-- DV

Quickly Checking In

2010-01-03T09:24:00.003-05:00

Hello, Internet world.

I'm closing on the house in four days and I'm moving in five days. So, it's a mad house here, I tell you -- a MAD HOUSE!!!

I have interesting commentary about, among other things, a ridiculously exotic looking (to white people who live in Appalachia) Xmas present from India, and a host of other things, but I just don't have the time to write them. Expect updates after next weekend!

Meg, I saw your comment, and if I'd gotten my shit together earlier, I'd have loved to run over to you as a transition away from Carmel. But I didn't get it together early enough. It wasn't as bad as two years ago, though. And I'm incredibly appreciative of your offer to let me hide for a minute. :)

-- DV

To add to boxing count, I came home and there were three more boxes packed by D/B -- who was checking in on my cats for me and I guess got bored?? Woot.

Union Break!

2009-12-26T09:14:00.003-05:00

Bags given away: 3 1/2 (plus three coats)

Bags of trash: 2

Boxes: 21 (5 of which actually belong to me :p)

Stores aware of my endless need for boxes: 3

Getting ready to put stuff on Freecycle (three pieces of furniture plus a set of glasses), so we'll see how that goes. Tomorrow, unless we have a weather incident, we're going to Indianapolis for a few days and then down to Louisville for a few days. Then we'll be back just after the new year ... to pack more boxes!

Sadly, I'm actually not looking forward to packing home more loot, as I think the majority of our Xmas presents are actually in those two cities. Sigh.

-- DV

2009-12-24T16:24:00.002-05:00

Bags given away: 3 1/2, plus three coats given to teenager who lives down the block

Bags of trash: 2

Boxes: 15

Sneezes: Endless

Hope: Waning

Not done by a long shot. Ten of those boxes were books that belong to Navy Buddy, who is being released from the Navy at the end of January and cannot pick them up until then. The movers want us to label boxes according to what room they go in, so I'm putting his initial on his boxes of things so that I know not to unpack them. I'll probably have at least five more boxes of his books before we're done -- and all that is after I thinned out what he brought to me, which sometimes included three copies of the same damn book. Two of the boxes were Dante's books out of his bedroom, one box came out of our own library and one box was full of magazines that I cannot bear to part with (fashion! sigh!). The other box has electronics and video games in it.

Then I quit for a while. So what's been cleared out? A corner of the entertainment center, the space underneath a side table, one large bookcase, a small hutch, the stacks of books on Dante's bed (has a shelf for them) and Dante's tiny closet. At this rate we'll never get moved out, at least not until NEXT Christmas! My moving date is January 8. I'm really considering not going to visit people next week as we'd planned in favor of just packing and packing and packing and packing .....

The bags of trash were mostly broken odds and ends out of the recesses of and secret trash hidey-holes in Dante's bedroom. It's a tiny bedroom, but I still got two trash bags' worth of tiny, broken bits of junk. Where on earth does he FIND such things?! We sure don't buy him anything like that. For those interested in finding boxes, if you go to your local grocery store in the morning when the delivery trucks have gotten there, they'll usually let you cart away all the boxes you want. Even if they have already broken the boxes down, you can still tape them back together.

Oh, and JP, I saw that you called. I'm not avoiding you. I'm just traumatized.

-- DV

Boxing Count...

2009-12-16T20:11:00.000-05:00

... the kind where you put stuff into them to be moved or given away rather than what happens when you hit the canvas in a ring.

In the grand moving experience, we're just now starting to bag, box and pack things up. I think I'm going to keep a running tab of all the crap we have that we move or give away.

Today, we took 3 1/2 bags of clothes, winter coats and shoes (including a pair of roller skates) to Goodwill. I didn't have time to freecycle, but I'll be doing that at the beginning of next week. I'm planning on asking the freecycle community for boxes just after Xmas!

-- DV

Bag count: 3 1/2 given away

A Prize for Bad Writing

2009-12-14T20:08:00.002-05:00

... I won one! :D

But it wasn't my bad writing, it was that of one of my students. At the department party, we could enter a line from student writing we thought was particularly bad and win a prize. The prize turned out to be a bunch of homemade fudge, so thanks bad student writer!

Here was the line:

"When I write, I just can't help but to spill a little bit of myself onto the page."

EW. Do you need a tissue when you write your essay? Hand sanitizer, please.

-- DV

It's the Most Hectic-al Time of the Year

2009-12-11T19:44:00.002-05:00

Today was the last official day of class, and all student work was turned in today. I'll likely also be receiving online work up until midnight. On top of that, we're trying to close on the house, and that has been anxiety provoking -- for the sellers more so than for us.

We're buying from friends -- yes, I know, everyone just go ahead and let out a collective gasp right now and get it over with. And we haven't quibbled on the price or on the other negotiations about the house. But she (there's a she and a he as sellers) is a nervous wreck because she's also trying to close on a house where they're moving to. Why they took all that on at once instead of renting for a few months or even a full year in their new area is beyond me, but that's not my decision and my life. She's really pushed us to hurry, hurry, hurry, sign this, do that, and El Hijo and I have had to pump the brakes a little bit just so we can make sure we're not doing something stupid. The he seller is much calmer. The she seller tried my patience quite a bit today, to the point where I was actually dodging her phone calls and she's a good friend of mine. She just emailed me constantly and called the office two or three times in about a 20 - 30 minute time span, wanting us to hurry up right now irrespective of the fact that it's the last day of classes and we have a crap ton of stuff to do and rush over to her place so we could do something to the contract that we didn't need to do. I called my loan officer and a family member who worked in the legal field, found out we didn't have to do what she wanted at all, and pumped the brakes a little more and she got kind of pissy with me. I know she's anxious, but I don't need help being anxious as I do that just fine on my own, so I'd rather keep the stress to a minimum, especially at this time of year.

The banking/loan process has actually gone surprisingly smoothly. I'm not sure what sort of hassle I expected, but whatever it was it didn't meet my expectations for how much trouble this was going to be. We both ended up with really good credit, which was also a surprise to me, and so we're basically in the in-between phase right now where we've signed the contract and completed the house inspection but the appraisal and legal paperwork isn't finished yet. So, we wait. Which is driving the she seller crazy, but I'm actually OK with waiting. We'll probably close the first week of January and that's also probably when we'll move. I can't believe we're actually about to own our first (only?) house. What's really good (and sort of sad if you think about it) is that even with a mortgage that includes a home insurance hazard policy and property taxes held in escrow, we're still paying less per month than the rent we're paying here for less (and worse) space. And their utility bills are literally about a third of what ours are, because this apartment is exceptionally drafty and poorly insulated -- all of the window seals are compromised. So we're actually saving lots of money by moving. I find that hard to wrap my head around.

I'll have a yard I can garden the heck out of. The house includes the little lot it sits on and a city lot and a half right beside of it, so we have some decent space. Prepare to see more blogs about permaculture and intensive gardening.

I've also discovered Freecycle. It's like a Craig's List, but instead of selling stuff, it's got to be free. You sign up for whatever area you want, and you can list things that you want to get rid of or things you need. I'm going to try to get my moving boxes that way, and I have several things I'd like to get rid of as well. Things seem to move fast on Freecycle! We'll see how it works. The best part is, people come and get it from you (you can set it outside or meet downtown, too, they don't have to go in your house or even meet you face to face), so you don't have to lug it away.

Oh, and I noticed that Christmas was freaking right around the corner.

Dante is going to Florida for Xmas this year; I'm not sure we're going anywhere, especially if there is a chance we might come in for a meeting during the week after Xmas. I still have one extended shopping session left, and then I need to wrap and mail stuff out.

At some point, I'll have to figure out when I'm prepping for my courses for the Spring. Lots of little odds and ends left to do.

Hearing the refrain "It's the mooost wonderful tiiiiime of the year ..." seems like sarcasm to me right now.

-- DV

Moving Notes

2009-12-07T14:24:00.002-05:00

In taking stock of all the things that need moved in a few weeks, I've cleared out papers and gone through coats, shoes and furniture that can be given away. Having to pack it all out is a great motivator to go through and get rid of things. And I have made an obvious observation: we have a LOT of books.

Apart from the bathroom, into which we haul our magazines and books, every room in our house is going to require boxes to pack out books. The kitchen has enough cookbooks in it to necessitate its own box or two. Dante's bed comes with a built in bookcase and shelf -- both of which are filled with books. He has books in another hutch in his room. We have two bookcases worth in our own bedroom. And the library goes without saying. The living room has an antique bookcase full of books, plus a bookcase/lampstand thingy from Pier 1 that holds books on each side.

We have everything from graphic novels and art books to books about Revolutionary America and literary theory. There are Spanish and Italian language books, workbooks and other types of books in the language. Nature books, books on science, books on religion, religious books, trashy novels, biographies, modern fiction, ancient fiction, books on social problems, economics textbooks, photo albums.

Ye gods but we have books.

I've realized with horror and awe that books are going to be the things we endlessly pack. Cleaning out the rest of the rooms isn't going to be nearly as bad as packing and unpacking and sorting all those damned books.

-- DV

Make Them Reminisce

2009-12-05T13:20:00.001-05:00

So earlier I mentioned that my mother had a subscription to Reminisce magazine. It's the perfect fit for her, as pretty much all she enjoys talking about is the past. The magazine deals with memories and events from the 1920s - 1950s and has many sections almost solely devoted to people writing in and talking about the past. I'm sure this is actually a beneficial service to humanity, since that generation is talking amongst itself about how they all walked uphill in the snow both ways to the one room school house rather than barraging their children and grandchildren with those stories.

Not that the magazine isn't interesting -- it really is. There are sections about how people dealt with and experienced World War 2 or the Great Depression. The photos are incredible -- there was one that sticks out in my mind of a teenage girl in a pink dress made from flour sacks; you wouldn't know by looking. There are recipes for the food of that era. The advertisements and propaganda are fascinating. There is an upcoming section on remedies of the past that people are glad stayed in the past (like having to drink cod liver oil, for example).

It's also a reminder to us younger folks (like me, thank you very much) that there were a great deal of skills that used to exist in the past that are no longer with us, for good or for bad. My generation usually has to search online for ways of making ice cream by hand, for example. I can't sew for shit (except for buttons, I can put those back on) -- I considered it a useless skill given the changes in manufacturing. I can't can tomatoes or pickle cucumbers. I could figure out how -- but ...

... it's also a reminder that the lives we've evolved into don't really allow us to practice those sorts of skills anymore, again, for good or for bad. We have to carve out space and time to devote to canning, which is a long and involved process. And hot. At least what I remember of my mother doing it. And based on what I know now, I'm not sure I want to be responsible for poisoning other people with my canned goods that might really be canned "bads." I don't have time to make clothes for Dante from scratch. I like gardening, but I grew up on a farm in the mountains, and I know just how much work goes into raising a big garden, one that does more than provide the occasional salad. It's neat that milkmen used to put the bottled milk at your door in the morning like newspaper delivery -- but I'm glad I can run to the store and get milk whenever I need it. The original "ice box" is a beautiful and effective cabinet (basically). But I would hate to have to plan on meeting the ice man to get it restocked so the food didn't spoil.

The magazine seems to dwell almost exclusively on a certain way of remembering. Its tag line is "The magazine that brings back the good times." So that should tell you right there it's about glossing the past and remembering what you liked while conveniently overlooking the bad parts about the past. There aren't any stories about mothers who had to be given their "pin money" for the week as an allowance; no stories about how difficult it was for Mom to go into business by herself in the first place. No comments about how the lack of technology and the cultural mindset actually necessitated having someone at home to make sure the mending and cooking and cleaning happened. All mothers in this magazine happily baked pies and cookies and whatevers for their little darlings who wore clothes made from cloth from the general store that Mom also had made from scratch. A nice idea. But certainly a very purposefully exclusive way of remembering the past.

I also made an interesting observation in the five issues I thumbed through over Thanksgiving break, which covered around a year's worth of contributions. There are very few black people in Reminisce magazine. Much less Asians or Hispanics. I think it probably ought to be renamed White People Remember Life Without Minorities. The current issue has an article called "Neighborly Fun: The Jewish family next door kept things interesting." So clearly, the magazine is not for reminiscing about being Jewish in the 1920s - 1950s, but rather having experienced being around Jews during that time.

Those histories would likely look quite different. Black readers would likely tell stories of mom going away to do the cooking and baking and washing and sewing at white folks' homes, then coming back to their own kids and having to do it all over again. They would tell stories of fathers who got paid less for the same work, if they could find work at all. They would talk about Jim Crow laws. Most immigrants and non "white" residents (as it was defined at the time) in urban areas would tell stories of overcrowding in poor housing, being charged exorbitant rent for a dirty space, being pushed into meat packing or sewing industries where labor standards were nonexistent, or being pushed into certain neighborhoods and ghettoes -- that would apply to Jewish families and Irish families and Polish families and black families and people other than "WASPs", depending on the year; war remembrances would include the German-American rallies in the US hailing (heiling?) support for Hitler. And so on.

And so I always come away with mixed feelings when I look at those magazines or people's representations of their own history. El Hijo's father was on a tear this Thanksgiving about his grandmother's bread & butter pickles and the way life was back then. He was going on about how the (black) woman who came and cleaned for his mother was from a family of fantastic cooks. He went on and on about what great cooks they were, and how that's what they did around town and how famous they were for it. While that's true, neither El Hijo nor I had the heart to raise the issue of whether they had any choice in the matter. Was there any other kind of work available to them in Harlan County, Kentucky? Would the court house have hired them on in the late 1930s? Could they have gone and worked for the lawyers in the area? Could they have gone to school and gotten a degree and opened up a practice in town as a black doctor? Did he know any black woman who did work around town other than clean or cook -- for white people? It's hard sometimes to hear someone go on about what a "great" time that was without thinking, "Yeah -- for you!"

As a nation, we have "white bias" constantly in our remembering of things. I'm all for remembering bottled milk and looking at photos and hearing stories. Sometimes it just seems that the stories we want to hear and print are those that conveniently overlook the nasty parts of the past that we'd rather just as soon forget. It certainly is worth remembering, though, that one of the reasons we moved past those activities is because life got a lot more expensive. A college student used to be able to work summers and weekends and completely pay for school. Now that same student would have to work 50 hours a week all year long to pay for school. The cost of everything from milk and eggs to cars and homes has outpaced wages consistently since the early 1970s. It is very difficult for the average family to live on one person's salary, even for the cost conscious. It's difficult to fund retirement and pay for college (which more people have to have now in order to get jobs that used to be considered educated enough at the high school level) on one salary that also has to care for a mortgage, food, utilities, etc. And as our lives changed, so did our advertising, so that now we think some things are necessary that really aren't or that we did just fine without earlier.

It's worth stopping and thinking from time to time about the lifestyles we've decided to embrace. Do we need new technological gadgets every year? Why don't we have machines that last ten to fifteen years instead of ones that seem to break down every one to three years? Do we really need that much house? That much car? How many cars? Should we really be buying that prepacked prepared frozen dinner crap? When was the last time we all had dinner together? When was the last time we read the paper and just listened to the radio? How often and for how long is the TV on? How many more of our friends are IRL or simply on AOL?

Flashbacks are worth the modern day reality check -- even if sometimes our memories are selective.

-- DV

On War and Sacrifice

2009-12-02T11:14:00.002-05:00

Maybe I've been supremely affected by reading my mother's Reminisce magazines over Thanksgiving Break, which I have a post about coming up shortly, but one of the featured sections got me to thinking, especially after hearing the President's speech last night about sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

The magazine usually features some sort of war-time memory section, and in it people, well, reminisce about what life was like during World War 2 (and sometimes Korea, but mostly WW2). It's actually pretty interesting reading about how people dealt with shortages of food, the alternate ways parents made food to deal with ingredients that were now being shipped to the front, rationing and how stamps were used to pay for things, how they came together as a community and helped returning soldiers, etc. In short, it was about dealing with sacrifice.

And so El Hijo and I were watching the speech last night and we came to the conclusion that what's really wrong here is that as a people, we're not being asked to sacrifice anything for this war. I'm not a fan of taxing in general nor of shortages. Nor of war, actually. But because we've evolved as a society so that we can have our butter, pantyhose, gas for the car and feed and equip soldiers too, war has gotten mighty impersonal. Unless you have a friend or family member enlisted and serving, there really aren't any reminders to you that we are at war until you turn on the news or read the papers.

If we are going to go to war, then we should feel it as a nation. We ought to be reminded that the reason you can't buy as much meat as you could before is due to the fact that it's being shipped to bases for American troops. We should realize that the reason we're forced to carpool to work is because of gas rationing. When we saw the line item for a war tax in our pay stubs, we'd know that was money we were sacrificing for the war effort.

And I'm quite sure that we wouldn't like it.

If we had done without much butter and meat for eight years, how angry would we be that 30,000 new troops were being deployed to Afghanistan? How angry would we have been as a people years ago when our government opened up a second war in Iraq which then drug on and on for years? Just how long would either of those wars actually continued if all of us had been sacrificing this whole time to pay for the war and feed and clothe the soldiers? I doubt it would've lasted for eight years. When we found out Haliburton was fleecing our government in Iraq, we would've probably been livid -- because we would've felt personally mugged if we had been paying a war tax that a crooked company profiteered off of. And that's what it would've been considered -- war profiteering. We don't hear about that term now, but war profiteering fired people up in the 1940s because while the average person sacrificed to accommodate a war effort, a few people took advantage of the situation to create their own wealth or resist an increase in corporate taxes. If we had been giving a percentage of our paycheck for four years to wage war and then we learned Haliburton executives pocketed lots of it, the public would've demanded swift action -- and they would've gotten it.

Instead, because we're divorced from the realities of war and we bear no personal cost, we can afford to shake our heads as if to say, "Well, that's how the world works." If we were forced to pay for it, we would demand war that was waged for the "right" reasons and as effectively and swiftly as possible. People by nature are pain-avoiders. Most species are. We seek to avoid pain. So, if war were painful to our wallets, our refrigerators and our way of life more generally, we would only wage war we really thought we should support. WW2 is a great example, because even in the face of Hitler, there were people who strongly resisted getting involved with the world's war. There were strong debates. When the nation was asked to give up things or buy war bonds to support the effort, there was more discussion, more propaganda, a clearer sense of cause and effect (not just vague references to being a "patriot"). See if conservative minded people would be willing to give up driving around their SUVs for the war they love to back. Put your money where your mouth is.

To be sure we're paying for it in other ways. Our nation's military budget is outrageous, and the money that goes into building bombs could just as easily go into providing scholarships for university students or for health care for that matter. We could pay for basic health care easily and not feel the pinch in the number of bombs we made as a nation. So the money is being appropriated, that's for sure. But we're also paying for it in apathy. We're apathetic as a people about this war because we're not personally caught up in it.

And apathy is an expensive product that democracies cannot afford to indulge in.

-- DV

FanGrrl Updates the Boxing Scene

2009-11-28T19:42:00.002-05:00

With a brief note up front to say that we found a different house in the same neighborhood that's much better than the casita delapidado, and we're working on closing; we probably will move shortly after the turn of the new year, so I'm probably going to be scattershot with my blog posts. On the other hand, I can also see the possibility of ranting endlessly about moving, etc. So who knows?

In the world of boxing, Tommy Karpency had another fight -- the day before Thanksgiving, because we certainly couldn't allow Dante's Virgil to both visit family she hasn't seen in forever and watch her favorite sport and boxer all at the same time. We must deny her one or the other. Argh. Further, I had to pass up the chance to jeer and boo at the absolute worst opponent's name in the history of boxing.

His name was Mike McFail.

Seriously.

McFail. Why do things have to work out so that I can't go yell "MCFAIL!!!!!" at Tommy's fight? Just not fair. And yes, he's a real person. Here is his boxing record. He's 120th in the United States -- which means they put Tommy up against another "jobber" (no offense to McFail).

Here's the story:

Karpency crushes McFail
WBA Fedecentro light heavy titleholder Tommy Karpency (19-1-1, 12 KOs) knocked out normally durable veteran Mike McFail in the third round Wednesday night. A vicious Karpency left hook to the body dropped McFail to the canvas, and referee Mike Napple halted the contest after McFail was unable to survive the count. Highlighting the undercard, local welterweight prospect Matt Bershire (9-1-1, 4 KOs) looked impressive in stopping trialhorse Eric Burke in the fifth of their scheduled six rounder. In addition, local middleweight Paul Pindroh (1-0) won a four round unanimous decision over Francisco Portillo in a battle of debut boxers. All scores were 38-37. Simons’ Promotions next scheduled card will take place January 29th and the main event will feature Tommy Karpency defending his WBA Fedecentro title against light heavy Dallas Vargas (22-4).

Please note the last bolded part. Tommy needs to be up against better talent, because it's too easy for him at this point to keep knocking weak opponents on the canvas. I've seen too many fights that look on paper like they would be great opponents, but in reality one boxer has only ever been "spoon fed" weak or over the hill boxers, and never really took on serious competition. Tommy needs to be in with people who are hungrier, like Chuck "The Professor" Mussachio (his last fight). Dallas Vargas is just that person.

Vargas is a huge step up for Tommy, because he's #11 in the US right now; Tommy is #12. This looks like it could be one of those fights that shows whether either of them are really prepared to be so close to the top ten in the US. Vargas has five years more of professional experience and nearly ten years in age on Tommy. Out of Vargas' six most recent fights, though, he's lost two. Tommy hasn't. Of course, it all depends on just who it is you're fighting. Vargas lost to the #1 ranked French super middle weight fighter Jean Paul Mendy (also #31 in the world) and to Jesse Brinkley, the #5 US super middle weight fighter (and #14 in the world). So, it's not like he's losing to chumps. Super middleweights, though, only get up to 168 pounds. So, Vargas is returning to his original weight class to fight Tommy (light heavyweights are 168 to 175 pounds). Usually, if you're going to go to a different weight class, it's better to cut down to the class below you and pound them with the fact that you only have to cut down a few pounds, but they have to bulk up to stay at that weight. But that obviously didn't work so well for Vargas, because he's actually been a light heavyweight more or less the whole time -- he cut down for those fights. I can sort of see why he chose to try boxing in a different weight class, because the light heavyweight division is kind of stagnant. The really good ones rarely fight each other, or if they do, it's the same pairing you've already seen a bunch of times. There's not the kind of churn that you get in the lighter weight divisions.

Vargas scares the shit out of me. It's gonna be great!

The tickets are probably going to cost more. Hmph. JP, make your arrangements NAO. January 29 you have some place to be!

-- DV

Things are getting serious. I may have to ramp up my fangrrl participation levels.

Una Casita Para Mi?

2009-11-16T17:28:00.002-05:00

So, for the first time ever, we're contemplating buying a house. We could have bought something all along, but we've been reluctant to spend what we have (because then it's gone) in a place we're not sure we'll stay in in order to take on a mortgage that might be the same as our rent or higher. It didn't make sense for a few years. But El Hijo has probably a year and a half on the dissertation, and then we're probably looking at a transition year or a year apart :( for the job market -- if we're that lucky on a first plunge into the job market for profs in his field. On top of that, a little house just a block away is for sale. So, we're looking into it.

And by "little" I really mean TINY. Hence, why I'm calling it a Casita instead of a Casa! I would post pictures, but they all come with an address attached. I'm taking my own pictures tomorrow, so we'll see. We'd be giving up space; we would be losing a whole room, plus a utility room. It's got two bedrooms allegedly about the same size as the ones we have now; it has a "dining room" that is tiny, a galley kitchen and a living room; it has a "full bath", and I'm interested to see how they've managed to cram a toilet and a bathtub and a sink in that house in addition to the other rooms. It was built in the 1930s; it has a huge yard, which is great. We'll just have to see. D/B is going with me tomorrow to look at the house; she owns property and has maintained them all her life. If anyone can spot a lemon, it's her.

The benefits would be the mortgage payment is significantly less than our rent is now. We lose a lot of energy (and pay for it) in this apartment because the window seal is broken in most of the rooms; so the living room and Dante's bedroom are always colder than they should be in the winter time. We have central air, but we live over a brick garage, so the bricks act like an oven in the summer time (and oddly don't do the same in winter time, just when we'd need it most!) -- you can run the air, but it hardly matters. By 4:00, it's sweltering in the summer time. You have to go up stairs on either side of the house to get into it, a real pain in the winter time. We'd have a place to call our own that people couldn't jack up the rent on or throw us (and our cats) out of. There would be a cheaper place to stay if the job market proves problematic after El Hijo is done with his PhD. We get to take advantage of the new first time home buyer's tax credit, which would give us cash in hand up to $8000 at tax time (although we wouldn't get that much off of this place).

The cons to buying this little house would be giving up space, first and foremost. While I'm one to stuff myself into a tiny but clean box in order to call it my own, that's me. Dante needs to have enough stomping off in a huff so he can "show us" space. El Hijo needs to feel like he has a place to escape and be all intellectual. I have to have a space to read books and drink tea and pretend I'm a lady detective in Botswana. All these things are critical. Second, there is no air conditioning in the house. It looks like it sits in the shade, and it's not like we've actually gotten the benefit out of our air conditioning in this place (we mostly use fans); but that's a consideration. I think the washer and dryer are in the kitchen. The optimist in me goes "Yay, more 'counter space'!" but the pessimist in me goes "Where the hell do you iron clothes?"

The other problem is that somebody already has an option to buy contract on it -- once her property sells. But, if we came in with an offer the seller liked, the first buyer would have 48 hours to get her financing together or the deal is rejected and ours would be accepted. So, we could even make an offer, be accepted, and we still wouldn't get it. I don't like that. Seems stressful. The good news is we seem to be credit worthy and the loan seems like it's not going to be hard to get (so far). I'm working on getting a preapproval letter from the bank I like (going to try to go with the credit union, if they can give us the best deal), we're looking at the house tomorrow.

And then, if we like (or can tolerate) what we see, we might just make an offer! That's scary and exciting all at once. I'm trying not to get attached to the concept -- although I will admit to having a moment of daydreaming about planting sweet pea all up the lattice work on the sides ...

Anyway, it seems like the choice might be to downsize ourselves and live snugly or to keep renting and just wait out the next few years. It all depends on how snug "snug" really is. I'll know more tomorrow.

If we do decide to proceed, I'm going to call it Casita "Virgil" (insert real last name here). :D

-- DV

Oh, and if you have horror stories, warnings and advice about houses and the purchasing of them, please do tell!

Congratulations!

2009-11-15T14:27:00.001-05:00

To Kitush & Huffers, who were supposed to get married today.

I got a beautiful invitation, but the time was "out of joint", as Hamlet would've said, and I could not fly across the pond to attend.

I hope everything went well, I hope it was beautiful, and I'm still selecting my wedding present, which is a hodgepodge of things from my country that I hope the both of you will enjoy. :)

Let me know where to send it.

Congrats again! I expect an emailed pic!!

<3 DV

The Revolutionary Experience of Emily Dickenson

2009-11-13T15:42:00.003-05:00

Great name for a band, isn't it? I'm going to put together a band that only covers 80s songs and does it with instruments like the dulcimer. We'll be The Revolutionary Experience of Emily Dickenson, as an ode to both Prince and Jimi Hendrix and the English Department.

An Emily Dickenson poem I like:

Have you got a brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink
And shadows tremble so?

And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there;
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there.

Then look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying over the hills,
And the bridges often go.

And later, in August it may be,
When the meadows parching lie,
Beware lest this little brook of life
Some burning noon go dry!

For all those with a little brook in their hearts.

-- DV

Baby Steps Into Activism

2009-11-04T12:41:00.002-05:00

This Friday we're reading The Real Rosa Parks (plus two other articles) in class. I like this small article, because it's about the little things that go into making big changes. The article explains the danger of idolizing (essentially) key figures in historical movements, because it gives us the impression that they are somehow in possession of above average ability.

This conventional portrayal suggests that social activists come out of nowhere, to suddenly take dramatic stands. It implies that we act with the greatest impact when we act alone, at least initially. And that change occurs instantly, as opposed to building on a series of often-invisible actions. The myth of Parks as lone activist reinforces a notion that anyone who takes a committed public stand, or at least an effective one, has to be a larger-than-life figure--someone with more time, energy, courage, vision, or knowledge than any normal person could ever possess. This belief pervades our society, in part because the media tends not to represent historical change as the work of ordinary human beings, which it almost always is.

What is more important is realizing all the little things that led up to the big action.

Think again about the different ways one can frame Rosa Parks's historic action. In the prevailing myth, Parks decides to act almost on a whim, in isolation. She's a virgin to politics, a holy innocent. The lesson seems to be that if any of us suddenly got the urge to do something equally heroic, that would be great. Of course most of us don't, so we wait our entire lives to find the ideal moment.

Parks's real story conveys a far more empowering moral. She begins with seemingly modest steps. She goes to a meeting, and then another, helping build the community that in turn supported her path. Hesitant at first, she gains confidence as she speaks out. She keeps on despite a profoundly uncertain context, as she and others act as best they can to challenge deeply entrenched injustices, with little certainty of results. Had she and others given up after her tenth or eleventh year of commitment, we might never have heard of Montgomery.

Parks also reminds us that even in a seemingly losing cause, one person may unknowingly inspire another, and that person yet a third, who may then go on to change the world, or at least a small corner of it. Rosa Parks's husband Raymond convinced her to attend her first NAACP meeting, the initial step on a path that brought her to that fateful day on the bus in Montgomery. But who got Raymond Parks involved? And why did that person take the trouble to do so? What experiences shaped their outlook, forged their convictions? The links in any chain of influence are too numerous, too complex to trace. But being aware that such chains exist, that we can choose to join them, and that lasting change doesn't occur in their absence, is one of the primary ways to sustain hope, especially when our actions seem too insignificant to amount to anything.

Sometimes all the little things you do may not lead to something greater, at least in your lifetime, maybe. But it is the striving that is the important thing. The striving is what inspires people to do something besides watch events unfold around them. Striving gives people a model to follow. It leaves people without an excuse as to what they could be doing. Striving tells people who would take advantage of others that they won't be able to do so without opposition; that if nothing else, someone will point a finger at the problem and direct attention to it.

It is my opinion that being a good citizen means being an engaged citizen. To me, that means being educated and it means being active. It means understanding my part in the issues of my community. It means I don't get the luxury of pretending not to care about the news or yawning about politics, because that makes more work on someone else. It especially means connections and community building to me. I believe in small steps that make small differences. I believe in being conscious.

It is easy for me to get caught up in the minutia of my job and my life and ignore those things that I could do. It's easy to think that my job is enough, since it is in academia and I mentor students who are living on the cusp of changing the life cycle of generations. And maybe it is enough; but it doesn't feel like enough to me.

So I'm going to devote some regular space to reminding myself of the small acts of power that are within my control, things that can make an actual difference. Who knows? Maybe somebody else will be inspired by it, too. :)

-- DV

Report Cards Are In!

2009-10-27T08:33:00.001-04:00

How does your state fair when it comes to women's health?

National Women's Law Center Report Cards

Check out your state or just look at the key findings, if you want an overview. Interestingly, no state got a Satisfactory. The rankings start at a Satisfactory minus - and only three states achieved that! Most states rank as Unsatisfactory with the next biggest category being a flat out Fail. These health measures look at access to early screenings, dental health, pregnancy services, life expectancy, obesity and abortion providers, among many other things. Something else to think about in the ongoing health care debate.

-- DV

Credit Card Catastrophe

2009-10-23T17:31:00.003-04:00

From the comments section in the most recent post:

"Additionally, many cards will soon be charging 5% minimum payment instead of 2%, which is more than doubling what you would be paying per month -- some people just aren't going to be able to afford this, especially with the economic conditions going on now."

This is one of the smarter regulations put in by the government. It is not the credit card companies that want people to pay more, they realize when individuals only pay the minimum 2% balance on their cards now they are not touching the principal portion of their debt and will never be able to pay off their balance. So, they have a consumer right where they want them a lifelong slave to the credit card company. By increasing the minimum payment balance to 5 percent it is ensuring that individuals who should've never put themselves in financial crisis to begin with by using credit instead of actually spending money they had, will actually begin to put a dent in the financial mess they created for themselves.

Anon, your first statement is simply wrong. The government did not put this regulation in place, and for good reason. The credit card companies put that new rule in place, although some like Bank of America have recently come out to say they will not raise the minimum payment percentage. Yes, it forces people to pay more on their principle and in theory that would get them out of debt faster. And I would agree with you that much of the debt Americans have gotten themselves into shouldn't have been racked up in the first place. But you have your facts wrong, and I'm afraid you're not thinking about the actual financial implications of this decision.

The government actually ruled that credit card companies could NOT impose rate hikes on customers (who weren't in default), and that law kicks in February 2010. To make sure they could get more money out of people, the credit card companies decided to hike the minimum pay back percentage to 5% during the grace period before the new rule takes effect, because the new law says nothing about raising the minimum payments, only stipulating that cc companies give 45 days notice to customers before changes are made. The only way out of the situation is to call the cc company and "opt out" -- but that means you must close the card down and make no new charges, which ultimately hurts your FICO credit score, because it is partly a measure of how much credit you have access to. You reduce that amount when you close a card down, which is why it is better to pay it off and leave it open rather than close it. A damaged FICO score means you will have a harder time qualifying for a good credit deal on everything from insurance for your car to the percentage you have to pay on a bank loan.

Mandatorily raising the minimum repayment amount is not the bright idea you think it is. The average American household has about $8300 in credit card debt. At a 2.5% minimum payment, they are paying on average a little over $200/month as a minimum balance. They can always pay more, but they have to pay at least that much. With this increase, it means that the average household must now pay $415/month minimum, without choice. If they cannot pay this 100% increase in minimum payments, then they will be hit by penalties and automatically fall out of the protection of the federal rule that does not allow cc companies to jack interest rates to 32%. Once they have defaulted once on a payment, that 32% kicks in.

Now how hard will it be to get out of debt, with your minimum payment at $415, and the interest rate at 32%? Do the math for a typical American household on 32% interest for $8300, and you'll discover that raising the minimum payment to 5% won't help these people get out of debt -- once the twin problems of 32% and 5% minimum are in play. With the number of people having difficulty paying their debts, with all the unemployed folks out there, could there be a worse time to raise the minimum payment? This is a catastrophe waiting to happen. And this is just on the personal level -- think of the small businesses that use their credit cards as a line of credit for growth and development. Who, in fact, have been explicitly encouraged to think of their cards as a business line of credit by credit card commercials! Doubling their minimum payments hurts small business owners at a time when small businesses are being forced into bankruptcy right and left. It's a piss poor idea.

People who can get out of credit card debt and can pay more than the minimum payments often do. Once you are forced to pay that much more, you'll have to start digging the money out of some place else. Maybe it'll come out of the "right" spots. Maybe you'll eat out less or stop going to the spa. And those folks who live above their budgets are one thing, sure. But there are lots of Americans who are living within their means, and this move is going to drive some of them to default on their credit cards, which is going to drive up the interest rates on their other financial products like car insurance, mortgage loans, car financing, student loan payback percentages, etc. The market is all interconnected. We'll see the ripples from this shortly after it becomes permanent for a lot of people.

Personal note, my Bank of America card raised my APR by several unacceptable percentage points several months ago. I didn't have a lot on the card, I hadn't missed payments or made late payments. So I called to find out why I was being punished, and they couldn't give me a good answer. They said that they were having to raise rates on everybody in order to collect form the few people they couldn't get money from. I promptly closed the account, and told them they had permanently lost any future money from me, once the balance was paid off. If that's how they want to treat good customers, I don't want to do business with them. I wouldn't touch a Chase card with somebody else's wallet. That's why I'm sticking to my credit union credit card -- which has done absolutely none of the things that the giant banks (who took your tax dollars in the form of bailout money) are doing to people during one of the worst economic disasters in our history.

Screw them. Go to a credit union.

-- DV

Another One Bites the Dust

2009-10-19T17:34:00.004-04:00

No, not blog stalkers -- although this guy probably had the same major.

By committing insider trading (JP definition: Verb. Def. 1: buying/selling stock based on inside knowledge you have that has not been made public yet. Def. 2: very, highly illegal. Def. 3: layman's terms -- getting first crack at it because of an unfair advantage; known examples: Martha Stewart), the CEO of Galleon Group Raj Rajaratnam and several others are being charged in court although they haven't pleaded to the charges yet. article link

These sorts of unethical and illegal things helped propel Rajaratnam to the status of billionaire, with his net worth at 1.3 billion. Happy Raj:

Now, lawyers will be getting a good chunk of that wealth to defend him against the charges that he greedily jumped ahead of ordinary investors trying to do the right thing with the information they have available to them to make wealth for themselves. Sad Raj:

If the gap between CEO pay and regular workers weren't so damned large, perhaps there would not be the incentive to cheat. After all, even the shoddy argument that the CEOs "produce" something that is so much more intrinsically important than those who work for them is completely blown away by the state of the economy that their clever decisions helped to create. CEO pay and bonuses need to be reviewed, in my opinion. The financial industry itself is full of ethical problems it doesn't want to examine. I remember one of my finance profs answering my question about the quality of information really available by looking at things like p/e ratio, etc. His response, "We assume everybody's honest." I lol'd. This was just before the Enron collapse.

There are always things a single investor can do to try to make a difference on the high seas of finance -- an ocean absolutely riddled with pirates. Credit card companies are a good place to start. Currently, some credit card companies are jacking up the annual percentage rates on some customers as high as 30-32% -- for people who have never had a late payment! Additionally, many cards will soon be charging 5% minimum payment instead of 2%, which is more than doubling what you would be paying per month -- some people just aren't going to be able to afford this, especially with the economic conditions going on now. So, why not move your money to a credit union? They offer credit cards, they're easy to get hold of, and they're staffed by people who live in the community. Oh, and they are not the same people who took a government bailout -- your money, remember -- and are set to turn around and pay out bonuses to their employees, all the while telling you they can't possibly give you a break on that 30% APR or that 5% minimum payment.

As for the stock market, there are places like Ethical Investing

that monitor both stocks from companies with ethical behavior and stocks without such companies. You can simply google "ethical investing" and be on your way. Of course, there is the usual caveat to make sure you're really picking an ethical stock, etc. Just because it says it is, doesn't mean it is. And finally, there's always the "make noise" category, for whatever it's worth. For every Raj Rajaratnam there are probably ten more who haven't been caught yet. Or maybe Raj was looked into because some of his donation money went to a Tamil Tiger front posing as a charity. Who knows why they were clued into him. But politicians need to know how angry people still are at the financial inequality in the market right now. It isn't fair that we have no money for health care (regardless of what you think of the plan) but we do have money to bail out businesses that turn around and put the squeeze on already squeezed citizens. They need to know how unfair it is that the average citizen tries to buy stocks on decisions made on the market based on good faith, while people like Rajaratnam and his crew take advantage of what they know to grow even wealthier than they already are. It doesn't always work, but at least it shakes the foundation a little.

-- DV

What We're All Singing Around the House Today ...

2009-10-17T12:06:00.002-04:00

Why you so obsessed with me...boy I wanna know ...
....
It's clear that you're upset with me.
Finally found a girl that you couldn't impress
Last man on the earth still couldn't get this

You're delusional, you're delusional
Boy you're losin' your mind
It's confusin' you, you're confused and yo
Why you wastin' your time?

-- DV

Pix 2!

2009-10-15T11:27:00.002-04:00

So, the most recent Fight Night saw two stars hit this town.

Michael Clark is currently #12 in the US in the lightweight division, former #1 boxer in his division and appeared on The Contender, a reality show about boxing. And he was sweaty. Very sweaty. I have no idea why he came to this town, but I was happy to see him box in person.

Tommy's fight was something of a nail biter. Chuck "The Professor" Mussachio gave him a real challenge, and he clearly wanted Tommy's Fedecentro belt. The fight went the full distance, which if I'm not terribly mistaken is only the second time in Tommy's 19 fights he's ever gone to the cards. He outboxed Mussachio that night, taking punches, but giving them back in combos. He won unanimously on the cards -- but to Judge Jim Frio who scored the bout 100 - 94, are you kidding me?! I know he's this town's (and my) golden boy, but come on! Tommy lost a few rounds on points in there, most obviously in rounds 2 & 3. Judging by favoritism does NOT help boxing, thank you very much. Besides, if he had truly dominated that much, the The Prof would've been laying on the canvas. This fangrrl would know.

Pretty! And sweaty.
His comment: "I'm really sweaty, do you mind that?"
Me: "lol"

So, I got my fangrrl pic, in the "locker" room, no less. It helps to schmooze the people around him and drop some boxing talk. That's really what got us in the back door. In a disturbing but predictable sign of things to come, Tommy t-shirts were for sale this time. The boy's moving up. He's not ready for the cats who dominate the top five -- but he'll get there.

And yes, I got the t-shirt. And I got it signed. What are you looking at?

-- DV

Pics!

2009-10-13T11:15:00.004-04:00

Due to an interesting combination of Mac/PC incompatibility and internet malfunctions, I'm behind on pics. Wa-a-ay behind. I'll do the Derbys first. I attended my third KY Derby this past May (giving up an opportunity to see Tommy Karpency fight -- why, oh why, does everything I enjoy have to happen all at once?). Yeah, I know, only about five months behind.

We dressed for disaster that never materialized (at least for us). The thing over the shirt is supposed to be the dress I was going to wear. Instead, because of the gloom and fear of cold, I ended up going with leather pants, galoshes and a white shirt under the dress. I looked like Paddington the Pimp, but I stayed dry and had a good time. The people in the tent behind us took turns falling over by mid-afternoon. D/B also whalloped a trollup later. It was funny watching her say: "Get out of my face one .... Get out of my face two ..."

Sister won over $400 on the long shot horse, Mine That Bird. She cried when the ticket lady cashed her bet. LOL. My horse, Papa Clem, got shut out just as he was making his move. Mine that Bird went on to run in the WV Derby, my first time attending.

Same outfit, take two. This is Mine That Bird's trainer, just standing around and waiting to take pics -- a much different atmosphere than the high security KY Derby. MTB actually placed third in that race. In other exciting races, D/B chased down Gene Simmons from Kiss, took a pic of his mug and then ran away. Why Gene Simmons was there in the first place is equally funny. But it was like its own race, watching her white feathered hat chase his black mullet: "D/B is three lengths back, making her move around the outside, now they're neck in neck, it's going to be a photo finish ... a-a-and ... she ran away??"

Good times.

I also learned I don't really like casinos. I don't like the concept of putting hard earned $$ down on the chance you might lose all of it. I passed a man with 198 credits in a $1 pull slot machine. Somebody put 200 perfectly good dollars in damned slot machine?! There's no IRA that needs funded? No nonprofit that could use the cash? I'm not passing judgment. It just doesn't seem like fun to me, and the people doing it didn't seem like they were having fun either. They seemed tense and anxious and they liked to bang on the machines. Seems kind of stressful.

-- DV

Then Again, Who Cares?

2009-10-10T10:49:00.002-04:00

Of course there are always those people who come along and snap me out of feeling too sorry for the human condition. And I'm getting closer and closer to sending the actual email or having the face to face conversation that I usually scurry home and blog about in an angry manner. Like so:

Dear Sweet Little M From Jersey: No one believes you when you claim to have gone to the building I work in and no one knew where the writing center was. Not even your own classmates believed you. You probably should've waited until after class to ask me about it, instead of confronting me loudly about how I must not know what I was talking about in front of everyone right before class started. I had to explain that if you had gone to the secretaries demanding a "peer review", they probably would've told you that they didn't know what you were talking about. If, on the other hand, you had used the two words "writing center" together in a sentence, then they would've pointed you in the direction of the basement. At this point you got a little pissy. You mentioned Sell-Out Sal who sits behind you and who totally went with you and, like, had the same problem. I mentioned Sal had emailed me that night and I had emailed her back the following morning -- three days ago. Didn't Sal tell you? Oh, wait, she didn't, did she? You could've always emailed me instead of waiting until the absolute minute the thing is due to bring it up. Maybe you should stop partying with her and letting her run your life. That's always an option.

Dear Sell-Out Sal: I'm getting to the point where I really don't like you as a person. I've watched you run New Jersey M's life from a decent B- student to a D student. I get that you're here to party. You don't believe me when I say it's probably not a good idea to pay a $28,000 cover charge instead of going to college. But you'll get yours grade-wise soon enough. What got me was the look on M's face when you whipped out that green sheet from the writing center, where you had gone to make up the day you both got kicked out of class for being screw-ups. You didn't tell her when you had it figured out by lunchtime the next day, did you? Oh, and so sorry that I screwed up your travel plans, as you announced at the beginning of class (again, in front of everyone, why?) that you couldn't stay because you were, like, catching a ride home, and you had to go. And then you tried to hand me a few loose pieces of paper instead of your portfolio. I took great delight in telling you that if that portfolio wasn't in my office by 5:00 today that you were getting a D on the midterm. It was on the syllabus. I sent out three reminder emails. We went over it in class for the past week. At this point, your forgetfulness is not my fault.

Dear Phil-a-Party-Pino: I get that college is, like, wa-ay better than high school and the dating pool just expanded. I'm also happy you turned in your portfolio, such as it is. You've got bigger problems, m'dear. You got your first alcohol incident within 24 hours of stepping foot on campus. You followed that up later in the week with a pot violation that landed you in required AA classes. You've since hit your third violation in the dorm for putting a pack of booze under your sweatshirt (dumbass, at least be smart and put it in your backpack), and you're being tossed out of that dorm. Of course, since they're just moving you to a different dorm, you'll learn nothing from this. Especially considering you got caught in a different dorm on an alcohol violation, but they let you skate on it. And then later two cops picked you up smoking a joint on a public park bench. LOL. You're lucky they let that one go, too. They really shouldn't have. You seem like the kind of person who has to hit absolute bottom with no get-out-of-jail-free cards in order to realize the situation you made for yourself. I just wish NJ M and Sell-Out Sal would quit partying with you.

Midterms are always such wonderful and reflective times. Sigh.

-- DV

2009-10-05T21:12:00.002-04:00

Sometimes it feels like the weight of human suffering comes and sits on my shoulders. I know immediately how ridiculous that sounds. I live in the First World, full stop. I don't have to worry about clean water, electricity or food. I don't live in a place leveled by earthquakes and I haven't witnessed my friends and neighbors decimated by war. My son is healthy and goes to free public school (whether he likes it or not -- one can't have it all). Nevertheless, sometimes it sits on my shoulders.

Empathy in my opinion is a good quality. If you can understand how someone comes to be in the position they are in, it makes it easier to figure out what to do about it (if anything). Doesn't mean you condone the position -- just understand it better. When I look at my son, I can feel his frustration and fear about middle school. I might've come down hard on him, but I tried to also offer support where I thought he needed it. I think most parents who love their children feel deeply for them. For me, my heart sinks when his does, and I'm sure this is true for other parents.

I just wish I didn't feel this way about most people.

Maybe it's because I love writing about the human condition that makes me notice people more closely. But I just ... notice things; and those things pile up on top of me sometimes. We ran into a friend of El Hijo's in a store a few weeks back; the friend was with an older woman mentor/friend. It's the first time I'd seen either of them, and before I knew who they were, I made some comment about them being a couple. El Hijo laughed and explained otherwise. But a couple of weeks later he came home and told me the friend had just dropped the bomb that he had actually been seeing the older woman for a long time, and things had just gotten really complicated. It just seemed so obvious they were were in love at the time. That doesn't weigh on me, probably because I don't really know them.

Right now the Jr.-Me coworker is having some pretty substantial life stress. His wife is on the verge of emergency surgery -- they're in limbo waiting on a decision. I've covered five of his classes so far for emergency trips to the doctor. I know them well enough to feel how scared she is and how angry and frustrated and powerless he feels. But it's not just the negative emotions that work on me. She brought him some hot thermos of something last week, a few days after I'd covered a whole day's worth of his classes. He had been frustrated and slightly sick that morning, and he was still getting over having just driven eight hours one way to take her literally to the best doctor in the country. When she showed up in our office with that thermos, he was so touched and comforted -- it made me feel obscene to watch. For a moment, the whole world stopped for them. He loved her so much; she seemed so grateful to have him. I knew in an instant he would never cheat on her. I felt like an intruder, so I turned away. I have to cover his classes tomorrow, because she has another last minute appointment. Their worry and dread and comfort in each other has made me heartsick.

It's the same with some of my students. I remember their stories, their fears, the things that happen to them. It's because I remember, I think, that makes them so loyal to me. I remember their losses, I see the effects of neglectful mothers and drunks for fathers. I see the full hope and dreams an entire family has placed on the shoulders of one child whose body just crumples when she gets a really poor grade or realizes she has to tell her family that being a doctor is not really a choice because of the chemistry, which she just can't do, and that's all her family has ever thought college was about. Sometimes a C is more than just a grade. Sometimes I see the family just waiting to swoop in and ask for money from a boy who got to college in spite of their domestic abuse and drug addiction, but I know he sees them too. I've had them dissolve into tears because their best friend was killed, their brother was shot in Iraq and they have to drive to North Carolina to bring the body home, or they were raped in a home where they should've been safe.

I seem to specialize in motherless boys, and I have amassed nearly enough of them to start a baseball team. I can already start a basketball team's worth. They come by to introduce me to girlfriends for approval, or bring their creative projects for praise (I always find something to praise) or to ask me about money problems or drinking problems or anger problems. They tell me about their grand plans for themselves -- the houses they want to build, the books they are going to write, the work they are going to do. They tell me the secrets about themselves -- about the music they really like but won't share with their friends or their fear of becoming their fathers. Sometimes they come because they want to be teased, even though they pretend to be angry about it. I think mainly they drop in because they want to feel like they matter to somebody; and they do matter to me.

But sometimes the collective weight of all those motherless boys and the fear, the hope, the unknown, the small celebrations and the disappointments just gather right on top of my shoulders. And then I feel. And I feel and I feel and I feel, and I know I can do no more than I already have -- the kind word, the joke, the safe place to sit, the one who listens, the one who knows where things are, the small birthday present, the quiet question. But I still feel, until it has nowhere else to go, and it pours over.

And right now, I'm full-to-sloshing.

-- DV

Life is Complicated -- and Quieter!

2009-10-02T22:13:00.003-04:00

Life has been nuts.

You'd think with a second "me" in the office, it would be easier. But then there is the mentoring and helping of Jr. Me, not to mention the complete and utter clusterfuck that one of our departments has created for us. I've had so much trouble out of them from the beginning -- and some of the mess they made is still not cleaned up despite numerous emails/begging/menacing tone/etc. It's so bad I made a Shit List. And they're on #33. Seriously. I want to blog about it, but so far I can't get past typing "BLARGHH!"

In happier news, I'm up for an Outstanding Teacher Award this year. The downside is that they basically put me up against Super Prof in my department. Seriously, this is like Hong Kong Phooey going up against The Green Lantern. So my chances of winning it are teeny-tiny. But, it still looks great just to be nominated, and there is a chance, however small, that I still might win. Part of what gets weighted in the decision is unsolicited student recommendations, and my first-generation students can absolutely kill in that department. But I'm not holding my breath. Besides, the nominations carry over to the next year, if I'm not mistaken, so then Super Prof won't be eligible after having just won it for another five years.

In other news, we had Dante's first parent/teacher conference since he started middle school. Not Good. While Dante has mostly B's with a high C or low A here and there, he's not going to maintain that much longer because of his work habits. We were a little suspicious that he rarely brought in homework, and we had good reason to be. He was slopping through his math homework and turning it in, getting 50s on it (out of 100). He was missing just enough work to seriously impact his grade -- and his teachers had given him several opportunities to make this work up. But what was worse to us was that he simply wasn't doing much of anything in class. The teacher would say to get started, he'd dawdle around, she'd tell him to get busy, and he would be "defiant" and still not do the work. I think he is basically not paying any attention, so that when they tell him to get started, he has no idea on what and doesn't want to get into trouble by asking. Then there is his organizational issue. I would say most 12 year old boys aren't very organized. But I've seen the inside of Dante's locker, and let me tell you, it should be labeled a crime scene. That's why work doesn't get turned in -- it wanders off to die at the bottom of his locker. Nothing goes in folders. He has to dig and search for everything.

What's really ironic is that in a lot of other ways, Dante has adjusted to middle school just fine. He's dealing with a locker, he meets his close friends for lunch, he seems to be handling the new start time well. He even joined the Technical Student Association and the Robotics Club. This is when I became suspicious that my child had been taken over by the Body Snatchers and replaced with Pod Dante. He's gone to math tutoring workshop during lunchtime. He's signed up for Teen Talk group sessions with the counselor. He even went to see the counselor personally twice, because he thought it was a good idea they had a job just to talk to kids. He promptly reported a drinking problem and parental neglect. He picked these off the information sheet she passed out when she did his class visit. He explained that his drinking problem involved having to go to the water fountain too many times and getting into trouble, and parental neglect as the fact that El Hijo and I don't always like playing Nerf guns and Star Wars video games. I'm still waiting on the call from Social Services.

So after the conference, I was pretty hot. El Hijo and I went home and made a plan before we picked him up from the Boys & Girls Club. We welcomed him home into a whole new world of concentration. We were pretty harsh, because he was fucking up pretty good. We grounded him from going outside for a week. We took away all electronics, including watching TV and playing on the computer. He comes home, he gets to work on his homework or studying for a test; he has to get his planner signed by every teacher in his core schedule, whether he has homework or not, and we sign it at the end of the day; we went after school and he completely cleaned up his locker; I've driven him promptly back to school to retrieve "forgotten" homework; if he doesn't get the planner signed by all teachers, his grounding extends a day for each day he gets; each week we email all his teachers to check on his behavior -- if they tell us things aren't improving, he gets grounded until we ask them again. For a flitty bird like Dante, this was hell. If it would be possible to look up "flibbertygibbit" in the dictionary, an interactive video showing him being him would be available next to the definition. Maybe this punishment isn't as bad as the time I garbage bagged up everything he owned and he earned it back through good behavior piece by piece. But nearly so. Probably ranks as #2 in the list of punishments he's had in his life. But the reaction he's had has been a bit surprising.

Day One: Much weeping, gnashing of teeth, wearing sackcloth, and lamenting for lost technology. To quote the Bible, which was totally speaking about poor school performance here: "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath. And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." (Matthew 25:2). Hath he done his homework, technology shall have been given, and he would've had in abundance. I think Dante would definitely say he had been thrust into outer darkness, given the electronic glare he prefers to live in.

Day Two: Whimpering over loss of technology; eventually gets out Legos and builds an impressive starship that includes a sickbay, repair-bots and mounted smaller gunships. A considerable peace falls over the house. It's amazing how loud technology can really be.

Day Three: Some words mentioned about loss of technology. More gunships built. Sat down and read two chapters of Newbery Award winning fiction book. Played Clue with parents and Quiddler. Self-initiated cleaning of entire room, and did it mostly right. Cleaned out all garbage, sorted papers, dug out dirty clothes from the hinterlands of his tiny bedroom. Put together Halloween costume made entirely from pieces of previous years' costumes. He's going as a Funk Skeleton (his term). What that means is he's wearing a trench coat looking thing, has a full skeleton head with chest piece (which is tucked into trench coat) and a giant afro wig. He tried it on -- it looks hilarious. He looks like a funk extra from the Thriller video. I'll take pictures when he's got it exactly where he wants it.

I may bust all the technology in the house accidentally-on-purpose. He's been more creative in the past few days and gotten more done than he ever has in his life!

-- DV

Because Some Lessons Are Never Learned

2009-09-19T10:55:00.003-04:00

Some of you might remember the student who threatened to put his prof in a wheelchair. If you don't, here is where you can get caught up on the story. If you go to the link, you'll see there are many deleted posts -- deleted because the idiot student realized he was just creating more google hits for himself and deleted because he also threatened me for not removing my blog post. (They're not gone, however -- I save them in my email account, since all comments are emailed to me from blogger.) So imagine my amusement when I received this in my inbox and on that post a couple of days ago:

wow i do believe in freedom of speech but what do you gain in keeping this blog up. The professor was fired due to his un-natural relationship with some of his students. And some of the Professor did find it odd that he would ask his students to "hang out." Which i believe is crossing the line.this could have really effected students if the school believe that grades were not true due to teacher student relationship.Who protects the students that work hard and pay alot of money for their education. We all know that grades do get affected if the teacher did or didn't like you. And some people feel forced to do things they didn't want to do just to have a good grade. And if you don't then your grades are threaten. The News always make things seem like they are not. Its clear to me that the kid learned his lesson and if he was in fault don't you think he would be in jail right now. I disagree with his actions and how he handle things. But i could put money on it that everyone has lost their cool and said some harsh things. Due to my religious beliefs when someone ask for forgiveness or help we do so because we should love eachother. Be there for eachother. I bet that if this was what you did you would wish it away and try to get it removed. He did say he threaten a teacher and i see that it was big of him because he could lie till his face were blue but he didn't. And whos to say that if he did give you the report you want, you would hold your word to it. Look i hope you look into your heart to do the right thing. Let god do his job and judge him. In the end he will have to live with this and he would tell his children about this part of his life. Lets do good for others and help others. Thank you for your time Ms. Contemplator. I hope you do the right thing.

El -oh- El.

Boy just doesn't know quit, does he? Before you can say "sock puppet" three times fast, I decided that this comment needed brought to the front of the blog as its own story. Why? Because he clearly wants to keep talking about it, because it amuses me, and because it's my blog I can do whatever I want with.

My first comment: please stay in school. You allegedly learn things there.

My second comment: I know what happened to the professor. He was not fired. For you to continue saying he was fired is slander and/or libel on your part. That means you could be sued by this professor for the comments that you're making. The fact that you were already convicted in this incident will probably not bode well in the legal outcome of your civil trial. I'd think long and hard before I continued to put myself into further legal issues. But that's me, and I tend to think long and hard, which doesn't appear to be a skill you've developed yet. The "kid" didn't do jail time because he didn't act on his threat. Terroristic threatening in most cases is a misdemeanor -- which he was convicted of. Had he acted on the threat, he would've gone to jail. The fact that the legal system, which reviewed the emails he sent (and he alleges there were more, by his own admission), has already made this judgment indicates that there was nothing wrong with the professor's behavior. Most profs do not grade on whether they like you or not. There are too many mechanisms set up by the university to quality control how grades are distributed for people to be giving them based on whether or not a student is personally friendly to them. You know very little of how universities work.

My third comment: I'm glad your religious beliefs tell you to help people when they need help. I'm sure your religious beliefs probably also condemn people who threaten the lives and well-being of others. Happily, I do not need an invisible Sky-Daddy to confirm for me whether or not it's wrong to threaten the lives and well-being of others. Similarly, I don't need an invisible punishment figure to tell me whether or not to "help" people, as I have a developed enough ethical system to be able to work that out for myself without checking a centuries old piece of parchment written by goatherders. Apostalo Tsirogiannis is not asking for "help" -- he is asking for a cover up. And that is another thing entirely.

The fact that he (you) threatened me on this blog as well as lied and got caught in his (your) lies several times tells anyone with a working brain that he is not asking for "help." He is not "repentant", to use religious terminology that might help you understand. He is asking to mask behavior that he clearly still has not conquered.

Further, he's not learned the biggest lesson of all: You aren't special. You don't get to decide how everyone else should act and respond. You cannot tell other people what they can and cannot write about. You cannot threaten people, whether they are giving you the grade you earned or whether they are commenting on your behavior, and make them do what you want them to. You have to take responsibility for yourself, because that is the only person you control -- you.

So what do I get out of keeping the blog up? I assume you mean that post, as this blog does many things besides comment on idiot students. It amuses me. It's a small recorded instance in the vast reach of the internet that you're supposed to do the right thing and not threaten people over a grade. But more importantly, it's mine. If you believed in "freedom of speech", it might irritate you that it's up, but you'd just have to shrug it off and go on about your life. You wouldn't be trying to control speech.

So, to sum up again: I'm not taking it down. It stays. Period.

And in case you haven't noticed, every time you bring it up, I make another blog post about it. Because it's incredibly amusing to me.

-- Dante's Virgil

And Now For Something More Pleasant ...

2009-09-08T08:44:00.002-04:00

Like the swine flu.

The head of Student Health at my uni recently announced that he expected up to half of our uni students to get the swine flu. That would be approximately 14,000 students. Now, what exactly, are they doing about this? From what I can tell, next to nothing.

Other schools have a "sick dorm" where students live and have meals delivered until they're considered well enough to come back to campus. When this uni had its first two confirmed cases, they wouldn't release any details except under pressure. I don't think it's right to ask for names, per se, but if the student lives in a dorm, then that floor needs to be notified. They finally did just that and then said that one other person with a confirmed case was a commuter.

It probably doesn't matter anyway. The vaccine won't be ready until October, if then. There really isn't much you can do besides wash your hands. But given the uni's typical response to disaster, whether it's scandal or administrative wrongdoing, my money is on the fact that they'll botch any potential response to outbreak as well.

However, since the head of Student Health didn't mention faculty, I believe that must mean I'm immune ....

-- Dante's "swine flu" Virgil

Things That Make You Go ARRGGGHHH!

2009-08-31T11:04:00.002-04:00

When your child tells you:

You know Mom, I'm never really sure if Nana loves me or not. Because all she ever does is give me money or buy me stuff, and then she turns around and says mean stuff to me. Like she paid for it or something.

Or, when he says of the two-ish months he spends with his dad each summer:

I don't like being around Dad anymore. He's always trying to control me. Like I always have to wear ankle socks or the shorts he wants me to. But when I come around, he never does anything with me. It's like he doesn't care I've been gone. It's like the same as any other day. He just yells at me. And he always has to be right. But he's wrong a lot and he never listens, he just makes out like he was still right the whole time.

I have never heard such a simple and concise explanation of his father's personality before in my life. And what he says of my mother is totally true. It's something El Hijo and I have discussed for years. She buys him off constantly. Currently she's offering $200 if he'll cut his braids, which she says makes him look like a "savage." Latent racism for the loss!

Zounds. I had always kind of hoped the bubble could continue. I knew when Dante was little and I tried to make peace with everybody for his sake that there was a high chance of malfunction when Dante grew into his personality. It's one thing when they're four years old and cute. It's another thing when they're twelve years old and have ideas of their own. The same stuff that started developing between my mother and us girls is starting to show up in her relationship to him -- and at about the same age. Gah.

Other very telling signs include the week-long conference we've had with Dante about what happened in Florida and Kentucky. I have to say, he's really disappointed in his family right now. And I know that some of that is puberty angst, but some of that is also ignorant relatives. I'd put the total at about 85% relative ignorance. He's made some incredibly insightful comments that just blew me away. I would've never thought he'd have picked up on those below the surface strains families keep buried. But he has. And he's not happy about it. Because Dante is a very visual child, he has represented this new problem in his school work. One of the first assignments they did was a personal "crest", where they got to represent what is important in their lives. Dante always has a family section, and it's usually huge because he has such a big branchy family. This time, however, there were five family members. Him, with his usual spiky stick figure head, me with longer hair than I always have, and El Hijo. Labeled "Dad". And Fanny and Jane, our cats. That's it. No Nana, no Daddy, no representation of Florida in some way. Just us.

In a way, it's always been just us. I worked hard to make it not seem that way, but I think kids have a way of understanding who is really on their side and who is not. After a particularly emotional discussion with Dante about his relatives, the conversation where he said the above quotes, he declared that he was done with Kentucky and he didn't want to go anywhere for the summer. He wanted to stay here, even if that meant he was in a summer program like the Boys & Girls Club. I opened my mouth to remind him of the problems and family obligations, but before I could get anything out, El Hijo said, "Well, I'm for Dante. I'm in Dante's corner. And whatever Dante wants, I'll support that. He's the most important person in this situation, and by God, if he wants to stay here, I'm not going to send him away." Dante burst into tears. He came over for a hug, and he pulled both me & El Hijo together and put his head on El Hijo's chest.

I've always thought that family is what you make of it. It's who is in your "corner," whether you're related by blood or not. And that's who showed up on the crest -- Mom, cats, and good ol' step-dad without the step attached. Because dads are made, not born. Thanks, El Hijo, on behalf of Dante and me.

-- DV

Home Sweet Home

2009-08-27T13:02:00.000-04:00

This is probably a post that should've come earlier, but I've been thinking about the experiences and what I want to say about them for a few weeks. For the first time in his life, Dante went to Florida for practically the whole summer. He's always gone to Kentucky, because his dad and my mom live in the same town (just a few blocks apart, actually). But this year he was desperate to go to Florida. He had arranged it all by Christmas, and the rest of his life past that point was one big countdown to get on the airplane. He flew nonstop to West Palm Beach where his grandma picked him up. It was the first time he'd ever flown by himself, and the parting was pretty traumatic for both of us. But then he landed and he was happy about the whole thing.

Things did not go as planned. Well, they did at first. Dante has only really ever known places that are predominately white. He's used to being the minority. The place he stayed was a black working class neighborhood. Whites are the minority there. This pleased him. Not because he wants blacks to dominate whites, but rather because of the role model factor. He told me, "Mom, black people do all the important work here. I like that." Because he's never seen it before. It's easy to write off experiences like that when you're white -- but the way whites are used to looking at the world is perceived as the norm. For white people, it's normal that everybody who owns a store is white, or that nurses are white or people who deliver the mail are white. We don't give it a second thought. We don't notice it, because it is normal for us, and people don't notice the norm. For blacks, that is most certainly not always the case. So he was happy to see black postal workers, black store owners, black nurses, etc.

Soon after he got there, he started having trouble with his living situation. Dante is an only child, and while he is great at sharing, maybe even to a fault, that's not the same thing as living with other kids. There were between 10 - 14 people in his Florida house at any given time. The two grandparents were there as well as two of their daughters and the daughters' kids. One has three kids, the other has four -- ages five and under. Then there were a couple of boy cousins his age who came over to hang out because they knew he was there. It was crowded to say the least. And so he had to learn to cope with a big family -- people going through your stuff, never enough hot water, somebody always wanting to use the bathroom, fussing at each other. And most of those lessons were good lessons. But some of them, especially as it related to a breakdown in discipline, were not so good lessons. As in, "just hit him back."

The level of violence was something Dante wasn't familiar with. At all. The grown ups didn't hit the kids -- the kids hit each other. And Dante was incredibly uncomfortable with all that, as he should've been. And, because he was uncomfortable with it, his aunt S tore into him one night at the kitchen table, calling him soft. According to her, he was soft primarily because he'd been raised by a white mother. She took a few shots at me, although he was vague on those details, probably assuming he didn't want his mother in jail for murder. He told me about the incident over the phone. He seemed surprised when I wasn't upset about what she'd said about me. The aunt who lit into him is the one with four babies five years old and under. She's 26. We talked about how frustrated she must be, how she must feel like you have to be hard to get by in life. We talked about his other cousins, older ones, that she considered "hard" (and therefore good) and what was going on with them right now. One was out running with gangs, a few others were in jail. Most didn't do much with their lives -- they were too "hard" to give in and negotiate with people. We talked about the class differences, the change in a big family from a small family, and how it wasn't a black - white thing but more of an income level/cultural thing.

We talked about stuff I've only ever talked about in grad classes, just with less big words and more realistic examples. That's the problem with being a bi-racial black/white boy who splits his time between two broke "intellectuals" and a family that makes what little money they have in factories and cane fields -- you can understand what the problem is, but that doesn't shield you from experiencing it. To whites, he's black. For some of them, if he talks too loud, gestures too wildly, or speaks anything other than proper English, he's acting black. If he raises his voice at another kid, he's threatening to escalate into violence. Of course he wants to play football and basketball, and I bet he'd be good at them, too, after all, he's black. To some blacks, he's too white if he hugs his cousins, speaks anything besides ebonics, and doesn't pull back into a fist when something doesn't go his way. What do you mean you want to do some art shit? Art is for faggots. Journalism? What the fuck is that? Now, Jamal, he's starting on the football team next year. That boy's going places. For either set of idiots, the answer is obviously more education and exposure to people who aren't exactly like you.

And I think what's really frustrating, is that while I try my best to educate him, he is the one who educates them by being around them. And as a mom, I just think that's so damned unfair. I'm the adult, put it on my back. Don't put it on the boy's back. It's not his load to carry -- but he's the one who ends up carrying it. Back in Kentucky, more than one set of racist white parents had their hearts melted by his big grin and by how good of a friend he was to their troubled son. He is the center of bi-racial boy culture where we are now. He and his friend Andre recently titled themselves "delicate chocolates" -- hilarious, and certainly better than "oreos", which was the joking slang that went around my high school. But it also highlights how fragile they think their position is, not to over psychoanalyze it, of course. They know they walk in two worlds.

Even back in Kentucky around his father, bi-racial step sister, and his half Palestinian cousins, I think the pressure from White Nana was just a little too great. She goes the other end of the spectrum, because she wants to claim she doesn't "see color". In my experience, those people are just colorblind. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, just because you think you can't see it. Color and the way people treat it exists. If you can't see it, it's not because you're making a "big deal" out of it and perpetuating it. It's because you're not looking. So, she tends to denigrate the black aspects of Dante out of ignorance and refusal to examine whether she sees color or not, especially when it comes to hair. White Nana can't stand his hair out of braids. The afro puts her off. But she also won't take him to the Kingdom Hall with his braids, so that's an added bonus in our opinion.

Needless to say, all he talked about for the last two weeks of his summer away was "When can I come hoooooooome???" He couldn't wait to come back to the two broke intellectuals. Hell, he couldn't wait to get back to his stepdad. That should tell you something. It's the first time we ever drove him home and he didn't cry. I asked him if he thought he wanted to go to Florida next summer. "Nope. And you know, I don't think I'm that interested in Kentucky, either." Whoa.

In the end, despite the bad experiences, I think there was some net good that came from this summer. On the practical side of things, I don't think I will have to experience my heart sinking when he asks to go live somewhere besides with me. Puberty might change all that, though. But he certainly appreciates what he has now in a way I don't think he ever could before. We're not wealthy people. El Hijo is in grad school, and I make less than $40k as a college prof. We're not poor, we just watch where our money goes. I think he understands that now. He appreciates the "luxury" of a hot shower with nobody banging on the door; he appreciates the privacy of one's own bedroom and things. He understands there is no limit to the value of not being judged for being yourself. He has figured out that adult problems start from childhood behaviors, and that posturing with violence only leads to something worse. In short, he appreciates where he is in life.

He told me this while he was in Florida, and it's practically word for word, because it touched me so deeply and lodged itself in my brain. "You know, Mom, I thought about what Auntie S said, and I think she's wrong. Or it doesn't matter if she's right, I mean. I mean, if I'm soft, so what? I don't want to be hard if it means I'm getting into fights all the time or yelling at my Mom or pushing little kids around. I don't want to have a bad life. And you know, I thought about it, and I think I have a good life right now. I mean, there's stuff I want that I don't have. But I like the life I have right now. I like being in your house and I like (stepdad) and I like my friends and I like my school. And I like the kind of person I am. Because, I mean, I think I'm a good person. I think a parent would be glad to have me as their kid. Because I'm good to people and I can do flips and stuff that other kids can't do. I think I'm a good friend. I like me and I like my life. I think S don't know what she's talking about."

Right on, kiddo. And yes, we then spent the next ten minutes bashing Auntie S with her four kids by two different dads, all under five years old before she turned 26, living on her baby daddy's child support money, mooching off of Grandma, running off at her mouth self. Because I think she deserved it.

And he's right -- any parent would be glad to have him as their kid. I certainly am.

-- Dante's Virgil

Combination for a Heart Attack

2009-08-24T14:46:00.002-04:00

So, university started back today for me. Despite my ongoing aggravating struggle with my schedule, the students themselves are great. I didn't think I'd like the new group as much as the old group, but I do. Maybe I'm preconditioned to like them and want to "rescue" them. But today went well, in spite of the fact that a certain administrative someone has completely and thoroughly fucked up the entire scheduling process in ways so complex I'm not sure where to begin. I had a good first day as a teacher. I had a shit-cat of a day as an administrator.

After my last class, I came home and took Dante to his new middle school for a tour and to get his schedule. That's right. Middle school. Schedule. I knew this was coming, but I still don't think I'm prepared for it. He switches classes for everything; none of the people he knows are in any of his classes; the sixth grade takes up the entire second floor; and the most heart attack inducing thing is that he has a combination locker. I'm not sure why that was the thing that gave me what I consider to be my first mild heart attack. But when we were sitting through the principal/parents meeting just before Dante came home, I was doing just fine up to that point. Then he said, "Each student has his own combination locker." And I stopped listening and experienced a thing I can only describe as a heart attack-lite.

He has a combination locker. He's in the beginning throes of puberty. He said, "Mom, I'm pretty much just interested in hanging out with my friends now." His feet are now bigger than mine, and he wears the same size shirt as I do. He is Growing Up. Holy Shit. I'm not ready. I'm just not. I haven't gotten the Kid Is Growing Up memo yet. I haven't purchased the right supplies to deal with growing up. What am I gonna do?!

I was really concerned that he would be afraid of middle school. I'm still worried that he's going to have a crappy first week and come home in tears. He is so excited he can't stand it. He whipped out that combination and his locker down in about three tries. We went to all his rooms, and he was yelling about everything. "They have a DISHWASHER in there!! What do you suppose we're gonna do with it???" He has a science teacher for homeroom and then he moves immediately to his science class. He has math and language arts, and his two added value classes (I like to think of them as supersizing your fries kind of things) appear to be art and world religion. That ought to please Nana. He'll get to try woodworking this year. He can't wait. I, on the other hand, need at least six more weeks.

We go to get supplies tomorrow. I've put it off until the very last second. It's not that I don't like who he is now or that I wish he was still a baby, because I don't. I like the jokes he makes, I like the person he is becoming, I like being able to relate more fully to him now. But I Am Not Ready. Not yet.

Excuse me while I go take a couple of aspirin to thin down my blood. He starts Wednesday.

-- Dante's Virgil

Boxing Geek Reasserts Herself

2009-08-20T06:54:00.002-04:00

So tomorrow, my boxing crush Tommy Karpency fights in the cute little ballroom of the locally owned hotel in which I have come to so enjoy seeing matches. The ballroom has a giant gorgeous chandelier that hangs over the ring, the decor is fantastic, and it's a very ritzy looking event all for about $25. There really isn't a bad seat in the house because the room is fairly small, so you can sit in the back, make a boob of yourself, and it's not a problem for others. Vital requirements for my and D/B's participation as spectators in the world of boxing.

Tommy is going up against Chuck Mussachio, who troubles me because he has the pleasing nickname "The Professor." I'll so be wanting to yelp and cheer when they announce "Chuck 'The Professsssooooorrrrr Mass-AH-keeoooo." That kind of thing gets to me. The Prof is currently ranked #30 in the US and he has had a few less fights than Tommy. But disturbingly (for fangrrrls) his record currently stands at 13-0-2 (two ties) with 5 wins coming by way of knock out. Gack! That means one of two things: he's either had bad competition or he's got a heck of a punching strategy. In other words, he's either "untested" or he's good.

Tommy right now is 17-1-1 with 11 wins by way of knock out. A better record, and he's ranked #15 in the US, but The Prof could still be some serious competition. I think that's good, though, because I'd like to see Tommy crack the top ten, which he'll need to start doing in order to have any kind of shot at being the top contender for the #1 spot, and he's going to need better competition to do so. It's so disappointing to watch Friday Night Fights on ESPN and see somebody put their new boy with a big punch against a "jobber" who's job is basically to lose. It's not a rigged fight, but it might as well be. Even if Tommy wins everything from here on out, he'll still take probably two years or so to be in position to challenge for the #1 spot, as the top five currently all have way more experience than he does, and moving like that just takes time. But he's young and he has the time to give. Three out of the top five are geriatrics in boxing (40 years old). I'm sorry, but boxing should have a shelf life, if only for your own sake.

Tommy has been training with one of the geriatrics, Roy Jones Jr., currently #3 in the US. We'll see how it goes for him. I had to miss his last fight because it conflicted with the KY Derby. Why do the few fun things I do have to cross up with each other?! Anyway, tomorrow I'm totally going to get a geeky fangrrl picture with Tommy after his fight. Because I think he's going to turn into something special in boxing, and I want a "I knew him when" picture -- he'll be fairly untouchable later.

-- DV

Smurf Me A Jehovah's Witness Tweet!

2009-08-17T20:00:00.004-04:00

Well, looks like the Jay-Dubs have made a technological stride forward by joining Twitter. Now they can tweet Jehovah's word to unsuspecting Twitter users -- and count "time in the field" to boot! Honestly, looking at some of the tweets, they are soooo representative of the religio-babble that JW's are famous for and so personally familiar to me. But now, in the bright light of over a decade of being free from their brainwashing, it just seems ridiculous and hilarious. Take J_Witness for example. Here is a choice tweet in response to BibleAlsoSays:

@BibleAlsoSays Stop being a tool of Satan. You need to seek the kingdom, this is not about us, it is about doing Jehovahs will.

LOL. "Tool" of Satan. The only "tool" right now is this JW being a douchebag to someone else. Also, "seeking the kingdom" is such a wonderfully nebulous phrase. To JWs it means joining their religion, of course, since people seeking God's kingdom elsewhere are simply doing it wrong. There really aren't too terribly many of them on Twitter. If you want a good sampling, check out jwforum. They report the "news" about JWs. The Good News, actually, if I might make a pun. They don't report the bad news. That's light that comes from a curious black bulb, not the "light that keeps getting brighter" (and appears to have blinded) the members of the Society.

If you scan their followers, you'll find quite a number of porn twitterers as part of their "followers." This is comedic on so many levels, for one because other JWs presumably searching for JWs on Twitter will find JWForum, hit the followers link looking for Twitter buddies and be "tempted" by all that porn. It's funny on another level because so many JW followers do, in fact, sneak porn on a regular basis. So I suppose it's appropriate in some way. It's rather hilarious to find JehovahsPromise listed right next to MeHottyNaughty. Some JW Twitterers just post bible verses. That's it. Some just tweet their lives, like most of us do.

But for serious shits and giggles, (Brunnhilde, where are you dear??) you have GOT to check out JehovahSmurf.

People who used to be JWs or around them in some way are already laughing by now. I'll fill the rest of you lucky people in on why. Jehovah's Witnesses' relationship to Smurfs is the kind of thing you won't find written anywhere in official doctrine, but is rather one of those urban legends that have spread so that every JW, former and present, in the USA at least knows about Smurfs. To sum it up, Jehovah hates Smurfs. Not only does Jehovah hate Smurfs, but Smurfs are actually demonic. You see, at some congregation, let us call it Congregation Ground Zero, someone passed along the idea that Smurfs were actually representative of dead babies. This story was expanded to include aborted babies, smothered babies, however you like -- they're blue and they're little, so they must be dead babies. Then you have that Gargamel, who is a wizard -- already a strike against the Smurfs. But the biggest clue is Gargamel's cat, Azriel. Now, you may not have known this, so brace yourselves, people. But Azriel is a form of Azrael -- and Azrael is the Hebrew word for .... Angel of DEATH!!! Both Gargamel and Azriel want to eat Smurfs when they're caught, which has bizarre implications that even this symbolism junkie can't really decode properly. But suffice it to say, clearly the Smurfs are demonic.

But it gets better. On top of this grade-A Smurf analysis floats the urban myth that every JW knows like it's doctrine: the day the stuffed Smurf came to life in the Kingdom Hall and proved its demon possession beyond the shadow of any doubt! This happened to a friend of a friend (and every JW knows a friend who knew a friend this happened to, so it must be true). The story goes like this. One night, a little kid brought its stuffed Smurf to the Kingdom Hall (probably to help it get to sleep during those boring meetings). At some point during the meeting, presumably because the word "Jehovah" was said too many times, the Smurf suddenly comes to life. JWs believe that demons cannot stand the actual name of Jehovah, although it is unclear to doubters whether they don't like every incarnation and language of His Name, or just the JW English version "Jehovah." But upon hearing the name once to many times, the Smurf pops off the chair and says, depending on the story, "I'm sick of this shit." Or, "Fuck this shit." Or just, "Fuck. Shit. Goddamn. Shit. Fuck." It then heads towards the door, cursing the whole way, where presumably some elder or ministerial servant lets it out into the parking lot. Upon reaching the parking lot, still cursing (imagine it tottering away, the "Fuck. Shit. Goddamn." growing fainter and fainter) it bursts into flames. The End.

So that's why Smurfs were frowned on in the congregation. Or perhaps the entire story is one big excuse for JWs to find a chance to curse in public. I don't know. The story is immortalized in the ex-JW biography I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales of a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams. She lived in Rhode Island, I grew up in Kentucky. We heard the same story.

There were other Smurf stories not so well known, like Smurf print bedspreads that magically came to life, jumped off the sheets and started running around the room. Or, I don't know, you could check your kid for a Ritalin need or something.

But that should tell you why JehovahSmurf is just so very, very, very smurfing funny.

-- DV

I Suppose It Had To Happen Eventually

2009-08-05T10:36:00.002-04:00

Graduate Sues College for Tuition Reimbursement

Long story short, Trina Thompson is suing Monroe College for her $70,000 in tuition because she is unemployed and cannot find a job. She alleges the school did not do enough to help her find employment after she graduated, her student loans are coming due soon, and she is going to have difficulty paying them. She now believes that her degree isn't worth the money she spent. I suppose this is the logical conclusion of the university-as-business mentality that many students and their parents have developed over the past few decades. But there are so many things wrong with this lawsuit I'm not even sure where to begin.

How about beginning with logic? Trina must not be the sharpest tool in the shed if she hasn't realized by now that there is a recession/depression happening all around her, and that tens of thousands of jobs are routinely being cut out of the economy each month. She must also be a dingbat if she doesn't understand that universities don't magically make jobs just happen for grads -- they can advise, recommend, help you prep your cover letter and resume, and your professors can act as your references. But they can't make a job just appear for you. The only jobs they control are the ones within the university itself.

She also displays a rather naive understanding of how jobs actually work for university grads. You're supposed to start looking in your final semester, so you have something lined up as you graduate, not wait until after you graduate to start looking, because the good jobs will be gone to those who started earlier. To be fair, perhaps she did this, but she didn't mention it (or the articles didn't cover that part). The article states she got her diploma in April of this year -- and promptly filed a lawsuit July 24. That's just three months after graduation. Most advice about finding a job is that it can take 6-9 months to find one. So she isn't even within the range of time where most people would start to worry about a job yet, and her response was not to go to the unemployment office, not to look for temp work, not to head down to McDonald's for some kind of money no matter where it came from -- but to sue the school for all of her tuition money back. Not even pro-rated reimbursement for the number of months she is without a job, which might have made tad more sense.

Trina does put the spotlight on just how much it costs to get a college education and how onerous paying back that debt can be. Jeffrey Williams, a scholar who does substantial work on tuition and student debt, synthesizes an incredible amount of statistical information that should be required reading for parents with a child in college and the child himself. There are very few situations where a student can graduate without being in debt. Their parents can completely foot the bill (rare); they can go to school on full scholarship and not lose any of their money (rare); they can go to one of the few schools that offers free tuition and makes sure you graduate without owing a penny (like Berea). If you can't fit into any of those situations, then you're probably going to graduate with $19,200 of debt on average. Almost a fourth of borrowers have over $30,000 in debt when they graduate. These figures are more than double of a decade ago (and those figures from the mid-90s were triple what they had been a decade before that).

It is no longer true that you can "work your way" through college. Recent studies suggest that in the 1960s,one could work 15 hours/week during the school year and 40 hours/week through the summer, and essentially pay all their college expenses. An Ivy league or private college student would have to work 20 hours/week throughout the school year. Now, that same student would have to work 52 hours a week all year long -- 132 hours/week for an Ivy league/private school -- in order to pay all college expenses. Jeffrey Williams has also likened student loan debt to indentured servitude, especially since it will take an average of 15 years to pay off a standard Stafford federal loan. You should read his article linked above -- the similarities really are quite striking. But Williams goes on to explain that debt does more than financially cripple people -- it is a teacher in its own right.

Debt, he says, teaches students first and foremost that that higher education is a consumer service. Trina certainly seems to have bought into this worldview. She feels she didn't get her "money's worth," and she defines that in terms of salary. She doesn't consider higher education as having taught her any useful skills beyond the ones she believed she needed to get a good job. This same mentality is what causes students to think they pay tuition for A's and their professors are customer service personnel.

Williams says debt also teaches career choices, and I see the truth of this especially in my first generation college students. They are too scared to try out becoming a history teacher or an astronomer, because they and their families are afraid it just won't pay. So they go into business and nursing instead. One of the reasons they give is being able to pay off their student loans. As a teacher, I owe more in student loan debt than I make every year before taxes. It will take me 21 years at my current rates to pay off my debt. Thank goodness I consider getting an education to be more than a financial investment, because that's one stock pick that certainly wouldn't have given a high return. I know that people like to think college degrees yield more money over a lifetime, and in the long run they do. But none of those figures of how much more a college grad allegedly earns over a high school grad account for student loan debt. If the stats took the debt off the top of the salary, the numbers would start dropping down.

The truth of the matter is, paying for higher education can feel like highway robbery. Plenty of people besides and including Jeffrey Williams have demonstrated that higher education could offer free tuition, remove the onerous debt students leave college with, and still make profit. The middle man (loan companies, including Sallie Mae) is the obstacle to the problem. Trina's situation is no different than most other college students who have graduated with a mountain of debt into an economy not very interested in receiving them.

But Trina can't lay the blame on her college for not handing a job over to her. They don't control jobs. They can, however, control student debt. Trina likely won't -- and shouldn't -- win her case against Monroe. But universities and the agitators inside them need to be pushing for a change in the way higher education is paid for. It's beyond time.

-- DV

Convert Now

2009-08-03T23:09:00.001-04:00

My mother now has an email account and internet access and my sister is on Facebook.

Armageddon is coming.

-- DV

Why I'm Awesome

2009-07-29T08:00:00.000-04:00

So, Meg hit me up with the 7 Things That Make You Awe-Summm! meme. Naturally. So, after giving it some thought, here are my responses in all their arrogant glory. Sadly, however, she's already tagged all the bloggers I "regularly read." So, I'll leave it open to whoever hits here who wants to do it. Batmite!, you could do this up right. JP, I probably wouldn't bother if I were you. Even your own brother likes me better than you.

Here are the 7 things that make me AWESOME.

1. I have the neatest kid in the world. I know everybody says that, but it's true, at least for me. I couldn't have picked a more perfect fit, even though sometimes I think we're worlds different. My kid has a serious humanist conscience, isn't afraid to stand up to authority (documented since first grade), makes awesome three dimensional art, and is a good friend. He's pretty funny, too. And I've worked hard to make sure he trusts me to tell me the serious stuff -- which works so far, even though sometimes I think it's too much information!

2. I am a writer. It's part of the core of who I am, and I'm pretty good, if I do say so myself. I have a good sense of "perspective," I have an ear/eye for detail, and I do my best when I'm paying attention to human motivation. One of these days, you'll get to see for yourself. ;)

3. I have a thing for The Truth. I don't like seeing people lied to, even if it's something stupid like deadlines that aren't really deadlines. I'm not saying I've never told a lie, which would obviously be a lie. I'm just saying I don't like seeing people manipulated through lies. I think that's one reason I'm still in education. I want to help people figure out how to use the tools to figure out things for themselves.

4. I have backbone. Maybe it's genetic predisposition, but I have a sense of Righteous Indignation that latches on like a pitbull and won't let go. Granted, sometimes that doesn't work out so hot. But if you're getting screwed over by Teh Mann, come and see me about it. Chances are I can get worked up enough over it to help you out. I'm not very physically impressive (well, ex-boyfriends would disagree, but I mean in an intimidation kind of way -- although they might disagree with that, too). But I learned when I was ten years old that most battles are battles of words, and most people bluff, so, why not open your big mouth and see what happens? Having backbone actually got me a university award, a job and a few less problems in life. One of the best concepts I ever learned was just to open your mouth and ask "Why is it that way?" followed by, "Who says?" and then, "Can I talk to that person?"

5. I can stir me some shit. Sort of goes along with "backbone," but sometimes there are situations that require more finesse than a full frontal assault. Like most things, for example. This is the upshot of not being physically intimidating. Looking like a naive little girl can have its perks when you're ready to stir some shit. I only stir shit for a good cause, though. And sometimes for personal amusement.

6. I think I'm a pretty good teacher. I'm sure you'd find some disagreement there. But my evaluations say otherwise. There are a handful of students I talk to and a couple that I'm pretty close to. I realize that for some people that's boundary crossing, but I'll have lunch with these kids any time. They're like stepkids or foster kids to me. I think it's precisely because I care about them that I am a good teacher. I think my approach is something like a layman's terms meets den mother. Students come into my office and plop down just to tell me how much they hate their roommate. Students bring me presents (yes, after grades are over). Students email me just to tell me how life is going. They pop in just to see what I'm doing. They try to Facebook me, even though I've tried to hide myself thoroughly. I think they like me -- they really like me! And I think part of it is that I'm fascinated with them. I like seeing them make connections. I like watching them "get it". I'm voyueristic that way. And I guess they like being watched. We've now taken a turn for the creepy.

7. I'm the person you want to take along if you want to go out. And do whatever. Because I'm basically down for whatever, and I enjoy so many things you can't really go wrong by going out with me. Unless you've done something to piss me off, you've always had a good time. I clean up nice. I look good in a dress or in leather pants. You can drink beer with me and I won't embarrass you when the waiter brings out the good wine. I'm a good conversationalist. We can talk about everything from the next Revolution to Reality TV. We can go yell at boxers or we can go to an opera. We can go to the Derby in dresses and hats, or we can go to a muddy field concert and get drunk and mock the band to the point they have to acknowledge it (happened twice, first time with Nickleback and second time with Black Eyed Peas). We can do whatever. Because I'm down like that. :)

Et tu?

Call For Posts!

2009-07-28T12:43:00.003-04:00

Most academic fields have a "call for papers" throughout the year from various conferences and academic journals on certain topics. While this blog hardly represents anything near the realm of the intellectual and any conference I might hold would probably be in Smokin' Jack's bar, I'm still going to issue a call for posts.

What I want are deconversion stories -- especially those from former Jehovah's Witnesses, but I'll take any and all deconversion stories. I want to know the things people said or tried to do to you to keep you in or if you went peacefully into the light. I may tell my Sister's deconversion story, if she gives me permission. And I might either tell mine again, repost the old one, or give my perspective on being fourteen years "out."

So have at it. No deadlines.

-- DV

How To Not Work While At Work!

2009-07-27T12:27:00.005-04:00

My office desk is covered over with material for the upcoming semester (and my current muffin teaching project). My desk at home is covered over as well, but with other material. Anyone observing my workspaces would assume I must have a paper fetish.

But as the new school year draws near, I'm trying to get a jump on curriculum planning. This year I have a Teacher Buddy. I'm trying to think of a good name for him, because I'm sure he'll surface on the blog regularly. So, advice on that score would be welcome. But because I have a cohort, and I'm the "senior" lead, I'm trying to be responsible by giving him the material he'll need to make his own decisions. Ergo, I have to get done first. I've just reworked the How Not To Fail Out of College sections we have to teach to account for the gutting the administrators did to the program. That was so aggravating it may need its own post, but for the moment, I've wrestled it to the ground. I'm currently working on the First Year Writing prep, because we have 100% new assignments -- well, sort of. They're just changed enough so that the whole syllabus needs to be redone, but not so foreign that I can't use previous techniques. But it feels like I'm doing all new course preparation for everything, which makes me agitated and more prone to surf the internet and waste time blogging.

As I swam through the wave of papers on my desk, I came across the "field notes" paper we were given for the training we had this past May. Instead of important notes about the presentations, my field notes are covered with my own conversations and notes to those around me, a process JP and I have used previously to survive graduate classes. It looks like you're taking diligent notes, when in fact, you're busy making observations like the following:

books = teh awesome!

making fun of Canadians

Category marking number of times "eh" is said (answer: 5)

Who is girl @ end of table???

White Person's Business Voice (four tick marks)

Is that some sort of bacterial infection?!

drawing of cat

stab out my own [picture of eye] (two tick marks)

NONCOMPLIANT (I don't remember why I wrote this, but I assume it was in reference to myself)

There was smarmy-ness during our presentation!!!

Yes, very important observations, I know. But they are a critical way to survive meetings and training sessions. So is blogging, tweeting and general internet surfing when you really just don't want to finish your fall curriculum... So please -- comment and entertain me. I'm bored off my ass right now!

-- DV

You Know Where You Can Find Me

2009-07-23T15:38:00.002-04:00

My buddy Mad Dog asked me if there was a "birthday" song that was my favorite. I initially said no, but that's not true. There is a song I always think of as a birthday song, even though he never really intended for it to be one. There's even an awesome techno mix of this "birthday" song along with a cool Simpsons graphic. :D

So yeah, you know where you can find me for my 32nd birthday. It's been a party since last night anyway. It's scheduled to go through this weekend!

-- Dante's Virgil

Happy Birthday, Mad Dog!

2009-07-22T08:00:00.000-04:00

Hope you have a treat for your birthday!

-- Dante's Virgil

Recipes for Fast Rising Muffins

2009-07-18T10:51:00.002-04:00

So, I mentioned earlier that one of my summer projects was teaching writing to a group of high school kids coming in for six weeks. We've just finished week three, and Sweet Jesus, I'm not sure if I ever want to do it again. These kids come from local high schools and are allegedly the cream of their crop. They're all (potential) first generation college students, and the goal is to try to make them think college is a good choice for them, to sort of give them a taste of it without scaring the beJesus out of them. They dorm here during the week, take English, math, bio and a foreign language, and then go home over the weekend. I thought I was getting high school seniors or maybe juniors. I thought, OK, that's close enough to the demographic I work with to be acceptable. So I signed on.

What I got instead were four eighth graders; they call them "fast rising ninth graders" which makes them sound like some sort of baked good to me, but four fucking eighth graders. The high school seniors all went to another English class they're getting actual credit for. Rounding out the roster were three freshman, two juniors and and five sophomores. Oh, and one homeschooled kid whose grade level they didn't know and one senior who is in special ed. Speaking of special ed, it turned out I had three students who spent time regularly there. I have no training in learning disabilities per se, and they're lucky I worked in a nonprofit that dealt with them. Working with these kids has been something of an eye-opener for me. There is still a big cognitive and emotional gap between a 16-17 year old and an 18-19 year old. Other things I've noticed...

They all have "behaviors." That's what they call them and that's what the staff calls them. They don't "behavior" in my class, they do it everywhere else, though. But I get to hear about it. Or watch them skulk in, and all I say is "Behaviors?" And they'll nod. It's actually kind of funny. Sitting through conferences with them is bizarre. It's the only time I've ever thought, "Wow, is this person the most vulnerable human being I've ever seen!" And I simultaneously wanted to slap them as hard as I can. They haven't made the intellectual leap to "Why" instead of "What" yet. So they spend their journals talking about how they didn't like the person who wrote the article -- but they still won't even tell me why. When I introduce the concept of "Why", it's like I've mentioned men have landed on the moon. I have two who are stuck on themselves academically. They've both said out loud that they never have to study for anything in high school, so they're pretty sure college is going to be a breeze. I stopped class and sat down I was laughing so hard. I'm pretty sure that's against the law, but I couldn't help it. After I wiped my tears away, I tried to explain that in college, everybody else is more or less just like you academically. You might be Queen Principal's List in high school -- but when you come to college, you find out so was everybody else, and the Dean's List is a lot harder to crack. The "average" college student is probably a little brighter than the "average" citizen -- but in a room full of themselves, you're just average.

They also think they're the next Stephen King or Stephanie Myers, and I've begun to use an analogy for that to help them cope with the fact that the scribblings they have might just need more work. El Hijo came up with it actually. It's a sports metaphor. When you're young, anybody can play ball -- they make allowances for everyone, and the same is true for young writers. But when you get into high school, the talent gets cropped, and the same is also true of writers. If you want to write at the "high school level," you have to have been fairly good at it when you were younger. But if you want to go to college and play sports, well, you have to be even better -- and the same is true for writing, especially creative writing. Selling a book? Well, that's like being in the NBA. I told them they needed to think of best selling authors as the Shaquille O'Neal's of their field. Writing isn't the same as publishing which isn't the same as being popular and selling. Playing isn't the same as making the team, which isn't at all the same as being drafted for the NBA. I think they got it. I told them if they wanted to publish like that, they would have to have the same dedication to writing as basketball players did to making the college team in the hopes they would be drafted. It's sort of sobering to think about, but it's true, really. But I digress.

The students and their "behaviors" really aren't the worst part. The idiot TA is the worst part. He has "behaviors" all his own. I knew they got a tutor for each class, but I didn't realize the tutor was required to sit in on my classes. I call him a TA to make him feel better, but I had no obligation to use him in class. When I first met him, he showed up to the office in a full suit, was incredibly loud and fairly obnoxious. He cut me off regularly, dismissed most of what I had to say, and made everything about him, him, him. At the end of the session, I finally just turned to him and said "Look, you're going to have to lose the suit. I know you think it's about authority, but it's not. It's about trust. It's the summer, most of them are 14 years old, just lose the suit, OK?" And he did. He didn't lose the attitude, though.

Some of that attitude is understandable. He's twenty-two, he came from a really poor area on scholarship and got to study abroad for grad school (he's finishing his Masters this summer). He got to see a little bit of the world on top of that on the university's dime, and he feels proud of himself. The problem is, he came into the classroom which was made up of kids who came from exactly where he did, and talked down to them. He made them feel like they could never be like him because their grammar sucked. He wasn't trained to teach people how to write, so all he could do was sit there and criticize. In a way, it's not his fault. He's not a teacher. Some people just have the teacher-gene. They understand how to explain things to people. Some people are just better off doing that thing than explaining it to others. Like Chemistry profs at a university -- most suck at teaching, but they're awesome at actually doing and studying Chem. This tutor-person made one of them cry. They hate him. They roll their eyes when he turns around. Well, all but one, the cute little 14-15 year old in the front row. She flirts with him and he's stupid enough to flirt back. It's very mild, and I really don't think he even understands what's going on, and I certainly don't think he would ever, ever do anything wrong. But he doesn't understand what he's setting himself up for. The first day of class he tried talking over me, and I put him down swift and hard. We're not co-teachers. I'm in charge. I don't mind sharing authority, but you don't have the right to come in and take it. He didn't do it any more after that.

If I had another six to eight weeks with him instead of three, I could probably shape him into something. He has taken more attention and thought toward his "development" than any of my Behavior Muffins have. But it doesn't matter anyway -- they're firing him come Monday.

All in all, it's sort of been an OK experience. Most of them have shitty self-esteem, and seeing how they can actually do the work is empowering. Seeing how high school isn't the be-all, end-all of your experience is empowering, too. Almost all of them have expressed a keen desire to get out of Small Town, West Virginia, and they all seem to recognize that college is key to that.

How could a recipe turn out any better than that?

-- DV

People Will Even Prank Drying Paint

2009-07-17T11:50:00.003-04:00

Lately I've taken to watching C-Span's Washington Journal show in the morning while I'm getting ready and having my coffee. Sometimes it's like watching paint dry, to be sure. It's not the most exciting thing ever, obviously, but there is absolutely nothing on in the way of actual news on the Big Three stations. They're usually discussing Michael Jackson's kids or the latest in baby strollers. The hosts over at Washington Journal have eleventy-thousand newspapers on the desk with highlighted articles -- literally where they have taken a highlighter pen to the article so you are sure to catch the most relevant points -- and they let people call in and have their say about the items. They only really respond to callers if they have a guest on the show. Otherwise, they just let the callers speak their piece and then they move on, which is kind of weird to watch. It's like you get to participate, but not really. There are three separate phone lines for Democrats, Republicans and Independents, who all call in and say pretty much what you would expect them to.

Occasionally, though, as in at least once a day when I watch it, WJ gets prank callers. Which is hilarious. Here are two suits sitting at a desk with important papers only to have someone call in and say, "Yes, I'd like to ask a question about the bailout for these businesses you were discussing, and -- AAAAHHHHHHH! *click*". That happened this morning. One creepy dude called in and asked the lady guest, "I have a question about this topic ... what size are your feet?" LOL. I know it's immature. But it's also kind of disruptive in a way that I find oddly human and very funny. Some people call in and want to rave about things not on topic, for example the corruption among West Africans living in New York. There are apparently known trouble makers, as I've seen the host respond to a caller who said, "Am I on the air??" with a "Not anymore!!" And hung up on him. He must have recognized what was coming. YouTube has some of these crank calls.

More pranks:

In the cases where people want to ramble about stuff not on topic, I think they just want to feel like there is a space, any space, that will acknowledge their concerns. But with the prank calls, well, it's just damn funny to be sitting in your work clothes, drinking coffee, thinking about the political issue, only to have someone freak out for a second. Or maybe that's just me.

-- DV

Holding Down Fort Virgil

2009-07-15T06:20:00.000-04:00

I've spent the last five days all by my little lonesome, while El Hijo went to Kentucky to help his family with his father's eye surgery (successful, so far). I have mentioned before that I don't do so well on my own. I have a tendency to wander around out of boredom and being the stick-poker that I am, find new things to poke with a stick and get all riled up. I've managed to keep it mostly virtual, though, engaging in a couple of Internet Fights. Those are always fun. I've obviously blogged more regularly than I normally do. But I'm certainly doing better than the last time around. Minus the part where I poisoned myself with bad meat and spent the next day paying for it.

I've had to teach this summer session (which I am blogging about soon), so that helped me maintain some level of presentability. If you read the old post, you'll discover that I spent most of the last summer that this happened lying around like an alcoholic middle-aged man, sleeping in my clothes and going to work in said clothes the next day. I've done somewhat better this time around. I've at least eaten things that weren't horribly out of date (minus the incident with the bad meat), but they weren't particularly healthy, either. It was mainly an alternation of steak and frozen stuff. I did manage to shower and keep clean clothes on this time. I've been semi-productive. I managed to send out a few more "paper bullets of the brain" (students, where does this reference come from??); I taught without cursing; I attended a "heritage" festival and managed to drink Yuengling at my favorite bar and later that night kill a bottle of Dom with D/B while discussing the unsatisfactory nature of the possibility of a revolution any time soon; I had a delightful lunch meeting with a former student of mine (I hang out with some of them, but I can count them on one hand); the cats have not killed me (Fanny usually tries when she realizes El Hijo is gone for a significant amount of time -- I have no idea why).

My PTSD is still kicking really hard, though, and that's just so disappointing. I even went to therapy for it over a year ago because the physical symptoms were getting too rough to deal with -- it's never mental (except in the wee hours of the morning), it's like muscle memory. My therapist said it's psych trauma memory and that certain situations can trigger it like muscle memory, in a way, and that made a lot of sense to me. It's been fourteen years since my father died and the trauma that went along with that over the next couple of years. But I still cannot sleep in a bedroom by myself -- if I'm the only adult in the house, I have to sleep on the couch. I still wake up at every little sound, even cats scratching in the litter box at the other end of the house. That's because when I found out my father died, I was laying on my bed with my headphones on and my eyes closed. It's going to sound stupid, but there is no other way of explaining it: I was lying perpendicular to my closet and it just felt like the closet was ... breathing. Like it was alive and something was going to pop out and get me. Something really evil. I couldn't keep my eyes shut, because it felt like a monster was just waiting for me to get settled in so it could rip into me. I've never been a person to be afraid of the dark or of things in closets. So it was incredibly weird and unsettling to say the least. Just then, my sister (then 15) burst into my room, and I will never forget the look on her face as long as I live. She was talking and I couldn't hear her because my headphones were really loud (I was 17). But her face said the world had just ended, or a bomb had dropped, or something horrific had happened -- or as it turned out, my dad had shot himself and my mother had just found him. What I thought was a breathing closet was most likely my mother's screams, which my sister says she still hears sometimes at night when she goes off to sleep, and my sister's feet pounding up the stairs to my room, her screaming too.

I'm glad I didn't hear it and I'm grateful I wasn't the one who found Dad. Because I can remember him just as I saw him last, in his checkered blue work shirt, smelling like Spearmint gum with a cup of coffee before I went to work that early Spring morning at about 6:30 a.m. He smiled and kissed me and told me he was proud of me for working on my Spring Break. And that's how I want to remember him. It's also why I'm a fucking work-a-holic and no one can tell me they're proud of me and it mean anything near what it meant coming from him. Ah, well. It also meant my sleep went to hell and never came back. I used to wake up in the morning and there would be nothing on the bed but me -- no pillow, no sheets, nothing. Before I slept like a log. No more. I also cannot have my Ipod turned up too loud. I can't be in a position where I feel like I can't hear "what's coming", and that's why sometimes I end up on the couch at night, hoping to prevent "what's coming" from getting there. Therapy helped *a lot* because it helped me figure out what the triggers are. But it didn't stop the sleeping habits I have; it just reduced their prevalence. Oh, and it got rid of the ripping gut pain I used to have every single fucking day that would bend me in half or put me on the floor. That's a huge bonus.

I had a particularly rough night last night, as I couldn't go to sleep until about 2:00 a.m. and I was right back up again at 5:00 a.m. like a lightening bolt because I could've sworn I heard somebody coming through the back door. There was no one, of course, there never is. But it was impossible to go back to sleep after that.

I'll be really grateful when El Hijo comes home in another day or so. In the back of my mind, I'm a tiny bit fearful of what my life would be like if Dante were grown and gone and something happened to El Hijo. Hell, I'd probably move into my work office and just put a sleeping bag in there. Sigh.

Yours neurotically,

-- DV

Man Declares Acne Made Him Murder His Ex

2009-07-14T08:00:00.000-04:00

Appropriately, his name is John Mullarkey.

Appropriately, because his legal defense for killing his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend was "my acne medicine made me do it."

That's right, his whole defense rested on blaming Accutane. Mullarkey supposedly experienced mood swings from this acne medicine that caused him to stab his former girlfriend sixteen times in a totally non-premeditated kind of way, the same girlfriend he had been abusing before they broke up and stalking afterward. Some would say that Mullarkey did not seem to exhibit mood swings. In fact, he seemed to exhibit one steady mood: bad. Mullarkey was a major Stalk-a-holic, sending the victim numerous text messages one of which read like this:

In the most disturbing message, Mullarkey wrote "I stabbed my self at Demi’s I love you." The outgoing message is shown in a police photo on the blood stained screen of Mullarkey’s cell phone.

According to him, he went over to her house to "reconcile" with her. Perhaps he thought bringing a hunting knife along would help the conversation go smoother. Some of her wounds were deeper than the length of the blade. During the trial, his lawyer asked for a mistrial to be declared, because the makers of Accutane pulled it off the shelves. Aha! Said the lawyer. Unfortunately for him, it was pulled because of a pricing dispute, so his request was denied.

It took the jury less than two hours to come back and call shenanigans on Mullarkey.

Maybe he'd be more appropriately named John Bullshit.

The only thing that bugs me about this case is that the people really responsible for John Mullarkey's state of mind go unpunished and unaccounted for. Accutane didn't make him do it. But you can lay good money on the bet that something in his childhood sure as hell did. And you can also bet he was walking around exhibiting all the signs of major problems to people who are supposed to be family, who very clearly did nothing about it. Those people are walking around free to screw up somebody else's life, while Mullarkey is going to jail (as he should). I think they ought to bear some of the blame, too.

-- DV

WV Legislators Take Another Stab at Banning Gay Marriage

2009-07-13T10:55:00.002-04:00

Next week, legislators in this state begin hearings into whether or not they should open up the issue of gay marriage for a state wide vote in order to change the state constitution. Republicans tried to ram this through in March, and some Democrats bravely (given the social conditions in this state) told them to shove off.

This seems to be a matter of making a statement more than anything else. Other states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, etc.) have already voted to recognize gay marriage, and this seems to be about standing up and making a Fundamentalist Christian Stand. Which pisses me right the hell off. If fundamentalists feel that legislation is somehow persecuting them, we'd hear it screamed about to the high non-existant heavens. But when they want to persecute someone else, well, then it's a tool they demand the right to use. Separation. Of. Church. And. State. From the article:

Family Policy Council of West Virginia President Jeremiah Dys and a representative of the Alliance Defense Fund -- a conservative organization that says it seeks to "aggressively defend religious liberty" -- will speak in favor of the amendment, Dys said.

"We're thankful that the Legislature is setting aside time to carefully study this issue," he said. "To my knowledge, this is the first time the West Virginia Legislature has ever officially discussed the Marriage Protection Amendment."

The whole point of separation between church and state is that you get religious liberty. It doesn't mean you're "at liberty" to go around forcing your version of your beliefs on everyone else! Your relgious rights are NOT being trampled on, because it doesn't mean you are going to be forced to be gay or to get "gay married". You can keep right on hating gay people, whether they get married or not. So your right to be stupid is not interefered with in any way. But if we are defending "religious liberty", shouldn't we also be defending those faiths who do NOT consider homosexuality a sin and gay marriage to be an equal right? What about their religious liberty? Doesn't it need defending too?

What also cracks me up is the name of the thing: the Marriage Protection Amendment. LOL. I have been married for four years, and gays getting married has done nothing to undermine my own marriage. The link between gay marriage being allowed and hetero marriage being somehow destroyed has never been explained to anyone. Heteros don't need marriage protection from gays who want to get married. They need marriage protection from stupid heteros who get married too soon or for the wrong reasons. Now that would truly be a service to hetero marriage. Everybody could use couples counseling and financial counseling before they get married. That's what causes marriages to break up: money and miscommunication. Please to be pouring all your wasted dollars into those efforts, thank you.

It may not matter in the end anyway. Massachusetts has sued the federal government over the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying it violates the Constitutional "full faith and credit" clause ...

Full faith and credit ought to be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings, of every other state; and the legislature shall, by general laws, prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings, shall be proved, and the effect which judgments, obtained in one state, shall have in another.

... and therefore forces Mass. to have to break it's own laws to discriminate against people it otherwise wouldn't. Or something like that. WV might vote and pass the issue only to find themselves smacked down by the Supreme Court as being in violation of the Constitution. If it happens, let us hope they fall square on their asses.

-- DV

Reality to Mark Sanford: Please STFU Now

2009-07-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

Instead of "Don't cry for me Argentina," Sanford's new tag line should be "Someone, Anyone, please put a gag on my mouth." Seriously, already, Sanford. Everyone would like you to shut the fuck up. Many would like to see you also resign. You're lucky that your own state legislature chose to simply censure you instead of boot you out. I'm sure some are regretting that decision, especially when reflecting on recent information about how the whole economic summit in Argentina turned out to be your personal agenda to get a piece of ass. Asking to see pieces of real estate instead of taking the historic tour you were offered is telling. So is your request to keep your nights free. What I find most hilarious is that you were already planning a trip to Argentina for "bird hunting" anyway. LOLOL. That your state decided you did not misappropriate those funds when the whole trip was so very clearly designed for a different purpose is jaw-dropping, frankly, and not in the interests of the South Carolinians who bankrolled your booty call.

But I think we'd all be satisfied if you just shut your pie hole. You are embarrassing your wife and family, yourself and your state. Whenever he talks about his Argentinian mistress, he calls her his "soul mate". Of their whole affair, he says:

Sanford insisted his relationship with Maria Belen Chapur, whom he met at an open air dance spot in Uruguay eight years ago, was more than just sex. "This was a whole lot more than a simple affair, this was a love story," Sanford said. "A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day."

Maybe if you're Romeo and Juliet, you get to blab in purple prose about your forbidden love affair and make out like you're star-crossed lovers instead of consenting adults who purposely decided not to give two shits about someone else's spouse and kids. But you are an adult, not a Shakespearian tragedy. Kindly do the right thing. At least STFU about it in public.

On top of that, he seems to admit to previous sort-of kind-of affairs:

There were a handful of instances wherein I crossed the lines I shouldn't have crossed as a married man, but never crossed the ultimate line," he said.

Not sure what that ultimate line is, I assume he means fucking, but who knows? And for that matter, who cares? While it's always a fascinating little sub-study in itself to know what (allegedly) uber-religious people think is a "line" to cross, that gets the people of South Carolina nowhere. If Sanford cannot stop talking about his mistress, perhaps he should do the decent thing and divorce his wife and go be with this woman. It has to hurt like hell to hear your husband say of some other woman:

he said he would die "knowing that I had met my soul mate."

So poop or get off the potty, Mark. Go be with your other woman, or have the respect for your wife to shut up about her.

Article link with live Sanford action: Sanford makes ass of self.

-- DV

Village Idiots Violate Personal Rights

2009-07-11T08:59:00.003-04:00

Good job, authorities of Crivitz, Wisconsin, for revealing yourselves to be village despots.

Long story short, an Iraq war veteran flew the flag upside down on his own property on the Fourth of July in protest only to have the local village authoritarian idiots march onto his property and take it down. The ACLU is considering action.

Is it illegal to fly the flag upside down as a sign of distress? Hell, no. Is it a violation of his first amendment rights to deny him that ability? Hell, yes. Some people per the linked article see that as disrespect of the flag.

To which I have to ask, what is more important: a symbol of State power or individual liberty to speak one's mind?

The four police officers and Marinette County District Attorney Allen Brey should be ashamed of themselves. Here is what the local Sheriff had to say about his gross violation of this veteran's right to protest -- a right he earned, I would have to think, by his service to their country.

Marinette County Sheriff Jim Kanikula said it was not illegal to fly the flag upside down but people were upset and it was the Fourth of July.

"It is illegal to cause a disruption," he said.

"Disruptions" of course being defined however people in authority choose to define things that displease them. If looking at an upside down flag causes severe disruption, then people need to find something else to do with themselves. Get a hobby or something. Who was disrupted by this man's flag? How were they disrupted? He certainly didn't prevent their parade from taking place. Both Brey and Kanikula can expect to receive an email from me expressing my extreme disappointment in their illegal use and abuse of "authority." You get your authority from the people. The people ought to take it back. But since they haven't just yet, you ought at least to respect where your power comes from.

Or maybe not. Maybe enough blatant displays of this sort of authoritarian numbnuttery would be just what it takes to get more people thinking about just why it is they cede their power over to despots like these.

From the article:

Neighbor Steven Klein watched in disbelief.

"I said, 'What are you doing?' Klein said. "They said, 'It is none of your business.'"

Maybe they need to realize that if they keep telling the Steve Kleins of the world it's none of their business, they'll soon find themselves out of the business of telling other people what to do.

-- DV

Bad Decision? You Betcha!

2009-07-10T10:44:00.002-04:00

It figures that when I have lots of comments to make I have no time to make them.

Ah, good, ol' Sarah Palin. Everybody knows by now she quit her job as Governor of Alaska with 18 months-ish left to go. The excuses have varied even more than the rumors, and they are simply ludicrous:

she wants more time with her family -- because no other governor with children has ever had to really tackle that aspect of the job. And isn't that something you would've considered before you ran for the office?;

she was called by a higher power -- one that obviously trumps the Alaskan people she committed to serve;

she didn't want to be a "lame duck" governor -- something that only happens when you can't run for re-election, which was not the case here. Unless by "lame duck" she meant "useless", in which case, that would probably be true;

the ethics investigation was a "distraction" and "unfair" and "expensive" to the Alaskan people -- never mind that the bulk of the expense has been incurred because she refused to cooperate by even writing a simple letter to clear things up. When you make people dig, you incur costs;

the ethics investigation was costing her too much money and she had to get into the corporate world again -- because starting a "Palin Legal Defense Fund" is a hassle, but joining Twitter puts the "fun" in "fund."

she quit to take a book deal -- because no one in history has every done two things at the same time, like, their job and writing a book that is probably going to be ghost written for you anyway;

she quit to make appearances as a GOP fundraiser -- speculation, but the GOP would be stupid not to use her in this capacity;

she quit to be on FOX News as the female Newt Gingrich -- total commercial appeal, I buy this one;

she was under FBI investigation -- not true, but obviously plausible enough for people to latch onto the idea;

something bigger was coming down the pike in terms of scandal -- ties in with rumors about FBI, but really would anyone be surprised at this point?;

she is having a midlife crisis -- fair enough. I guess some male governors respond to midlife crises by having affairs with Argentinian women they can't shut up about;

she's a maverick -- LOL.

I'm not sure any of this really matters nationally. Her base still loves her, and people who didn't like her in the first place now have new reasons to keep disliking her.

Her resignation is more than just a means of fodder for talking about Palin nationally, though. It should be more about the people of Alaska. It's bad enough for the people of South Carolina that their governor ran away to bonk his mistress on another continent without telling anybody. For what it's worth, I'd consider that a job walk off and fire him like any other hard working American would be fired. But Palin's walking out for over a year. She was contracted to work for four years as a public servant, but she chose to break that contract with the public because she thinks she can better serve them "from the outside" where she cannot force or control legislation in any way. Makes perfect sense to me. She thrust the Lt. Gov. into a role he's not ready for in anticipation that if he wants to keep this job, he'll have to both campaign for it very shortly while still learning on the job.

For a woman who characteristically makes bad judgments, this really isn't surprising. What it shows more than anything else is a misunderstanding of how leadership works. If you're going to be the boss of somebody, part of that involves taking care of that person, too. That means when you hire somebody to do a job, you don't just show him the factory and say, "Well, today's my last day, there she is! Have at it." There's this little thing called "transition" that people need. I was an Assistant Director once. If my boss had walked out, I could've run the place. I knew how it worked. But it would've been on chewing gum and shoe strings. I would have had to learn and interpret her methods in a closer way than just working beside someone allows. I would've probably had to take focus away from certain things to put them toward her main duties. The whole point of having more than one person run things is so you can both do different tasks. Palin seems to be under the impression that it's no problem to just turn the office over to your next in command, that things will be smooth, that he must know exactly what's going on. He won't, and he can't. On top of that, he has to take on a new Lt. Gov. (about which there is already some controversy -- a man who has already resigned, but wait, not really), and that person also has to learn the job from scratch. When you have to learn on the job, people don't get served. The real losers here are Alaskans -- even though they got rid of Alaskan Loser #1.

You can't be a "maverick" if you interpret "maverick" to be "person who does what they want when they want regardless of the collateral damage" and be a "leader" at the same time. But this word redefinition problem she has is persistent. She told one reporter "I quit, but I'm not a quitter." Yes, you are. Quitters are people who quit things, and since you quit your job, you are a quitter. You are a Quitty Poo-Poo-Pants, whether you like it or not.

She really does twitters, by the way. And in her native dialect, doncha know? If you want to follow her for the lols, her twitter address is: AKGovSarahPalin. Um ... is she going to have to change her handle now?

-- DV

Persiankiwi Missing

2009-07-01T10:39:00.000-04:00

There have been no new tweets from Persiankiwi since June 24. :(

Given the renewed efforts at crackdown, I fear for his life. Especially considering one of his final tweets:

we must go - dont know when we can get internet - they take 1 of us, they will
torture and get names - now we must move fast -

I hope he is safe. I am also sad, because I realized that by naming him, I increased his danger. Now, I'm not exactly a news outlet. And international news picked him up and carried the story with his twitter profile, so it's not really my fault per se. In fact, he had a tweet about that:

foreign news reported us on twitter - we have too much ppl looking at us -

Ironically, given the crackdown and the relative silence from the protesters, I'm afraid that without more international attention, this brave movement is doomed. But it has to be done without calling attention to individuals.

On a more removed intellectual note, the Iranian uprising is a good example of some anarchists' philosophy on voting, which I'm thinking about doing a post on. The summer is a good time for that. Incidentally (not like I don't have enough to do), I'm working with another anarchist to hopefully start putting out pamphlets, good ol' Thomas Paine style. :D

So my What Did You Do This Summer essay would read: I wrote flash and edited an uprising.

Story of my life, really.

-- DV

The Madoff Question

2009-06-29T17:21:00.005-04:00

Bernie Madoff received sentencing today: 150 years in prison for eleven counts of fraud (although hundreds of claims have been filed) and having been said to have stolen $65 billion in investments.

It's not that I don't feel sympathy for the people who were ripped off. We have investments of our own that are supposed to provide for our retirement and to help us get a home when we're ready. If somebody ripped us off, I'd be pissed, too. But there is something a little ... uneven in the punishment.

To start with, there is the possibility that the "loses" were miscalculated. At least per the defense attorney, who might be expected to say such things. But given that it is true Madoff grossly overstated the bottom line, how is it fair that some of the victims are demanding compensation at levels clearly based on fraud? They want the imaginary money -- not the actual money. And some very clearly believe they're entitled to it. Some rejected getting their principle back or some return of their cash in favor of holding out in hopes of a bigger chunk of Madoff's own personal ill gotten gains. As though even that conspicuous display of wealth would be enough to go around somehow.

How can a man serve 150 years? He can't. Those sentences are only given out in my opinion because they sound pejorative. They make us feel like a really harsh punishment has been handed down. Why not just ask for "life in prison"? I know that Madoff is sentenced per count of fraud, etc., so maybe there is just something about the technicalities of the legal system I don't understand in my faulting of it. But aside from the impossibility of serving this time and the unevenness of the sentencing, again in my opinion, there is something else that bothers me about Madoff's crime.

And I think it's the victims. Granted, Madoff was an equal opportunity burglar. If you check out this link, you can click on "email and letters" and it will show you actual copies of the letters and emails sent in by people victimized by Madoff. Incidentally, if you go about a third of the way down on the first batch, someone has sent a scam letter from the Congo asking for help cashing a check in return for 10% -- lololol. But, many of the notes include old folks whose entire pensions were tied up with Madoff, who are sick and have little hope of financial recovery, as well as many charitable institutions whose money was stolen. Allegedly he even robbed Spielberg. But when I read things like this from the victims, well, maybe you can see my irritation:

Madoff has shown “no remorse,” said victim Carla Hirschhorn, of Manalapan, New Jersey, at the hearing. She told Chin her life is a “living hell,” her mother is dependent on Social Security and her daughter works two jobs to pay tuition. link

The letters in the Wall Street Journal link frequently mention Madoff sticking them with "a home I cannot sell, my son's college fund gone and not a penny of savings."

If this is something to be outraged about, then where is the outrage for the working class people as well? They live it every day, not just when Wall Street investments get trashed. They might as well be saying: "I'm pissed because you made me into everybody else!?!" If having to work two jobs to pay for college is "outrageous" and makes this man a "monster", then why is it no less monstrous for other people's kids to have to work their way through college? If it is "pure evil" to cause someone to live on Social Security as their only means of support, where is the moral outrage for those elderly people who are forced to live on it now having lost no investments because they had nothing to invest?

If Madoff is a monster because he caused these social conditions, then who will be the voice asking for justice for those people who live these social conditions every day? It would seem that many people understand that it should be a problem to have to work two jobs for college tuition -- but it only applies if they're the ones suffering from lack of a trust fund.

I just can't get as worked up over some of the Madoff victims when there are Americans who work just as hard and have to use food banks to supplement their diets. If what Madoff did was "monstrous" -- what do we call the condition those Americans are in?

-- DV

God Wants Sanford to Remain Governor

2009-06-27T15:45:00.003-04:00

At least that's the latest implications from Mark Sanford's unfolding mistress-saga.

His wife recently sat for an interview where she revealed serious ongoing frustration with Sanford and his apparent lack of desire to end his affair.

In her first extended comments on the affair, Sanford recalled how her husband repeatedly sought permission to visit his lover in the months after she discovered his infidelity.

"I said absolutely not. It's one thing to forgive adultery; it's another thing to condone it," she told The Associated Press during a 20-minute interview at the coastal home where she sought refuge with their four sons.

Please, please, may I have my morality cake and eat it too? On top of a dicey sense of personal ethics, Sanford also has a healthy ego as well. He responded to comments about stepping down as the governor. You know, because they tried to impeach a President over a hummer. His response?

About an hour after Jenny Sanford talked of her pain and feelings of betrayal, her husband brushed aside any suggestion he might immediately resign, citing the Bible and the story of King David — who continued to lead after sleeping with another man's wife, Bathsheba, having the husband slain, then marrying the widow.

"What I find interesting is the story of David, and the way in which he fell mightily — fell in very, very significant ways, but then picked up the pieces and built from there," Sanford told members of his cabinet in a session called so he could apologize to them in person and tell them the business of government must continue.

God only dislikes it when Democrats get laid on the side. He understands that Republicans have serious work that must continue on. Incidentally, I'm amazed to discover that being governor is apparently a lot like being a King of the Hebrew peoples. Fascinating.

This isn't going away anytime soon, though. And it shouldn't. Because even though I think people's sexual choices have no place in determining political fitness, it might just have some affect if they set up their entire sexual affairs at taxpayers' expense.

Meanwhile, questions grew about a trip to Argentina he took last summer. While Sanford has agreed to reimburse the state for part of a more-than $8,000 tab that enabled him to see the mistress, state officials indicated they never intended a South American economic development trip to hold meetings in Argentina. That was only done at the governor's behest, said Kara Borie, a spokeswoman for the state Commerce Department.

So, uh, yeah. I think we need to hold an economic summit in Jamaica this coming October because, well, er, I have a thing for good looking men with dreds, and ah, that's probably the best place to scope them out. Besides, they need financial, er, assistance, too. Send me a jet right away.

So, things are not looking too good for our Republican buddy. But not to worry, his buddies at Faux News are helping him out:

Notice the party they say he's a representative of....that's right. That's a D you see there. It's not like this is the first time this "news" channel has deliberately lied to make it look better for Republicans. I guess God condones liars, too.

-- DV

Don't Cry For Me, Argentina

2009-06-24T18:47:00.003-04:00

And that would be South Carolina Republican Governor Mark Sanford.

He disappeared for a week, didn't tell his wife where he was going, and totally didn't do Father's Day with his kids. Then his camp was telling people he went hiking on the Appalachian trail by himself. Now it turns out he was in Argentina banging his mistress -- or as he put it, "crying for five days."

Here's a copy of the transcript of his press conference.

There are a couple of things I find interesting about it. First, it seems that God had a plan for Sanford. God both got Sanford in this mess in the first place, and now is holding him accountable for it. Per his statement, here is why he started talking to his Argentinian mistress in the first place:

The -- and -- and there's a certain irony to this. This person at the time was separated, and we ended up in this incredibly serious conversation about why she ought to get back with her husband for the sake of her two boys; that not only was it part of God's law, but ultimately those two boys would be better off for it.

And we had this incredibly earnest conversation and at the end of it, I said, "Could I get your e-mail?"

BWAHAHAHAHA. There most certainly is an irony to that story. And that's how it all began. I guess that's how you give Republicans a boner? Start talking about what God's plan is for your failing marriage? But before he tells us how the affair started, he explains why he's there to confess:

But I am -- I am here because if you were to look at God's laws, there are in every instance designed to protect people from themselves. I think that that is the bottom line with God's law -- that it's not a moral, rigid list of dos and don'ts just for the heck of dos and don'ts. It is indeed to protect us from ourselves. And the biggest self of self is, indeed, self. That sin is in fact grounded in this notion of what is it that I want, as opposed to somebody else.

So he's confessing because he needs protection from himself. Because as we all know, the biggest self of self is, indeed, self. That rivals Clinton's "It depends on what the meaning of the word is, is."

He's resigning as the head of the Republican Governors Association. No word yet about whether he'll step down as Governor.

You know, the Repubs wanted to impeach Clinton for a hummer. At least he did his dirty business on the job site.

More proof that the only threat to heterosexual marriage is not gays -- it's Republicans who can't keep it in their pants.

-- DV

Happy Father's Day to the Other Dads

2009-06-21T08:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Father's Day to all Dads, of course. But sometimes I think there should be a special day for Stepdads.

El Hijo is a stepdad, and Dante couldn't ask for better. He's there for homework, for hurt feelings and as a role model. Dante loves private time with El Hijo. He claims they get along "way better" than when Dante and I are by ourselves. This is probably true, but only because Dante and I are very much alike, ergo we know just how to push each other's buttons. Being a stepparent can be really frustrating, too, because there are really intricate rules for dealing with your spouse's kid. El Hijo may get really frustrated sometimes with Dante -- but heaven help him if he doesn't respond the right way! It's just a natural instinct that I think most "natural" parents have with the stepparent. We don't hit, but it just feels different and bad to think of El Hijo giving Dante a spanking. Not that he ever would. And for the record, I don't like Dante's "natural" dad to spank either. Especially in the beginning, it's easy to interpret any possible criticism of the child as being WRONG and the stepparent's problem. It ain't easy for steps.

But the "natural" parent isn't the only problem for a poor stepparent. While it's also not always easy being a stepkid either, they can sometimes make life hell on a stepparent. Every step has probably heard "You're not my real Dad/Mom" or some version of "You're not the boss of me" or "My Daddy does X better" or "My Daddy gives me X,Y, Z" or some version of "You suck." This is also a landmine, because if the stepparent responds in the "wrong" way, they risk the double fault of bringing on the wrath of the "natural" parent.

It ain't easy being a stepdaddy. And so I dedicate the following video to anyone who is a "Stepdaddy" by Hitman Sammy Sam.

And for the sarcasm-impaired, yes, he is poking fun at the stereotypical relationship between stepparents and their stepkids. ("You ain't my dad!" "Shuddup!")

Happy Father's Day, El Hijo! :D

-- DV

Local Anarchy

2009-06-19T12:12:00.003-04:00

Holy shit, I found the Pittsburgh Anarchists! Woot: organize pitt.

I was looking for info on the upcoming G20 summit that Obama recently announced would be held in Pittsburgh. I should've figured I'd bump into the local anarchists while I was poking around. It seems like an event of this significance is like a magnet to a protester. People will be watching all over the world -- so it's the biggest venue you could hope to get for your cause.

Surely there must be something to protest come this September 24-25?

-- DV

Added: Apparently there is an Anarchist picnic August 1. LOL. Wonder what my chances are of getting to it?

Khamenei Won't Return My Calls

2009-06-17T16:31:00.005-04:00

I've been reading Persiankiwi's tweets and feeling both incredibly proud of people and woefully helpless as a person.

The number of people who are protesting peacefully in Iran, shouting things like "my brother, my martyr, I will claim your vote for you" is moving beyond my ability to describe it. The population of Iran is nearly 50% under the age of 25 years old. The moment seems so fragile -- so full of possibility for either change or violence. To be without communication, to watch your internet connections shut down, your cell phones, etc., to hear gunfire late into the night, screaming, etc. must be so terrifying. We are lucky here. We have our democracy, such as it is, without having to chance being beaten for it.

But I also feel so powerless, because even though I live in one of the most powerful nations on Earth, there is very little I can do to help the people in Iran, and I want to so badly. I changed the time stamps on my Twitter to help confuse the authorities. I send them my verbal support. I try to raise awareness about what is going on with others. But I'm sort of limited to that.

In one fit of annoyance, though, I did try do something different. The Ayatollah Khamenei (head religious oppressor in Iran) has his own website. Internet hackers have been disabling his site throughout the last few days, but I toodled on over there at about 11:00 last night to see what was going on. Surprisingly, he had a "contact me" button. I was delighted, as I thought I could at least send him a sharply worded email expressing my severe disappointment in his behavior.

Yeah, I know, that'll show him.

Sadly, though, he had disabled his own contact link. He must've known I was coming.

I still wish there was something more I could do other than send hate mail to a religious leader. Good luck, Iranians.

-- DV

Twitter to the Rescue!

2009-06-16T22:34:00.002-04:00

OK, so most people have heard now about the crap going on in Iran, what with the so-called "landslide" victory of Ah-nutty-nejad in the elections. Everyone from students to families with children all from differing social classes turned out to protest the sham elections. If you have a landslide victory, you rarely have mass protest afterward, you don't have to call out the military, you don't have to disable text messaging so people can't communicate with each other, etc. etc. Now, the Ayatollah has called for a review of the election in the polling places that are in dispute. But nobody seriously believes that by itself will produce any changes. I'm sure it would've come back that Ah-nutty-nejad still won, just by a smaller margin.

While the Iranian government shut down as much access to communication as it could, including websites, blogs, etc., there was one little engine that could that it simply couldn't: TWITTER. That's right, Twitter. Twitter's output is too small to block effectively, so the best the government can do is keep searching for internet connections and shutting them down as they find them. Twitter's owners are also putting off Twitter maintenance so that Iranians have access to one of the few methods of communication remaining open to them.

One brave Iranian twitterer is busy tweeting away in the heart of things. Here is the address, I hope you can access it without a Twitter account. persiankiwi. This person has over 24,000 followers right now, and that's just those with a Twitter account. The messages are amazing, because they are in real time. Messages like "unconfirmed - military has refused orders to shoot protesters" and "news from tuesday::: our march was big success!! militia are now frightened of us - they know world is watching" are a thrilling and horrifying insight into conditions in a place across the world from us. I am always impressed by the bravery of some people. And sure, it may not seem brave to send out tweets. But people have been tracked down via their internet connections, and to be the witness to the rest of the world is a very brave thing to me.

In this bold new fight for freedom, people have made use of whatever has been at their disposal to get the story out. People's bravery in the face of death always amazes me. I am awed by it. My heart goes out to the Iranian people, and I hope their lives are made easier after this struggle. And hats off to you, Persiankiwi. If you have a Twitter account, changing your time zone to GMT+3.30 hrs to help confuse the people doing the tracking.

On top of that, Twitter can never be mocked again!

-- DV

So It Begins Again...

2009-06-16T18:16:00.003-04:00

I just finished the final editing for six of my short-shorts and flash fiction pieces. I've found the appropriate genre journals/magazines for submission. So, I guess, here we go again...

I would love to be published. I don't know any writer who wouldn't. But this time, there isn't the sense of anxiety that came with sending them off four years ago. They're better pieces now, leaner and stronger. I know I did well. And that's (mostly) all that matters. It still matters that they are shared and have a place in the genre. But it's not a matter of my self esteem if they don't make it there just yet.

If they get accepted, I'll publish them here, too. Most of them are about the size of a blog post, after all! But I don't want to do it before it gets published, because the internet is a big sucking hole, and I don't want to watch them get swept into it. Because I'm paranoid. :p I have the rest of the year plotted out in terms of journals/'zines and deadlines as well as which story is going where after the first and second rejection. See, I'm not delusional about this process! In December, I'm going to mark the new submissions dates down and redo my bombardment strategy. Part of getting published, besides having a good piece, is constant harassment of places that might take your work. If you don't suck, you can throw enough stuff at enough places, and eventually something will stick. Once the first thing sticks, it becomes easier to make other things stick. Some submission forms include questions like "What were your last three publications?" Some claim it doesn't matter to the submission process, that this info is just for the bio specs, but it does matter on some unconscious editorial level. It gets easier after the first time, because you're a more trustable element.

I pulled out the next five pieces to work with. Two of them, I think, are going to be microfiction, meaning under 350 (or maybe it's 300) words. That' s exciting, because I don't do a lot of microfic. And there are actually well known literary mags that want stuff under 500 words. That's even more amazing. It really just reminds you of how connected the human experience is. I have a predisposition for these short pieces, and so, apparently, does a substantial number of other people. I also found the longest thing I've ever written (2510 words), although it may not be the longest after I'm done with it. I'll be working on these five stories for the next two weeks. After that, I have two new ideas I want to make stories of: one is about the KY Derby, and one is about a tweenager. Writing from scratch is a completely different process than editing is, so that may take the rest of the summer.

Besides the goal of sending stuff off again regularly, I want to get into the habit of writing regularly as well. I have several projects, both scholarly and creative, and writing is one of those things about me that just "is." If that makes any sense. I need to stop ignoring it and start making room for it, blogging notwithstanding.

Wish me luck!

-- Dante's Virgil

Miss That Boy

2009-06-11T13:10:00.003-04:00

Love That Boy

By Walter Dean Myers

Love that boy,
like a rabbit loves to run
I said I love that boy
like a rabbit loves to run
Love to call him in the morning
love to call him
“Hey there, son!”

He walk like his Grandpa,
Grins like his Uncle Ben.
I said he walk like his Grandpa,
And grins like his Uncle Ben.
Grins when he’s happy,
When he sad, he grins again.

His mama like to hold him,
Like to feed him cherry pie.
I said his mama like to hold him.
Like to feed him that cherry pie.
She can have him now,
I’ll get him by and by

He got long roads to walk down
Before the setting sun.
I said he got a long, long road to walk down
Before the setting sun.
He’ll be a long stride walker,
And a good man before he done.

This is the poem I'm printing, framing and giving to both Dante and his dad for Father's Day and for Dante's birthday. It's beautiful. Walter Dean Myers is a wonderful poet, author of kids and young adult novels, novels about war -- he's just prolific. And he did a chunk of it while he was working a construction job during the day, writing at night. So that's a comfort and encouragement to those writers who can't just starve and write.

I said goodbye to Dante yesterday morning as he got on a plane for his grandparents house in Florida. It's the first time he's traveled as an unaccompanied minor. He was very upset. But he's down there now and having a fantastic time.

I miss him. Because I love him like a rabbit loves to run.

-- DV

*I won't be around for a while -- I have company coming in. See you soon.

For Your Reading Pleasure:

2009-06-07T23:52:00.002-04:00

Remember this guy?

He's the one who threatened to put his professor "in a wheelchair" if the prof didn't change his B-. Good character, that one.

Well, in a hilarious continuation of special snowflake-itis, turns out Mr. Tsirogiannis has been contacting people who've been blogging or otherwise commenting about his felony-type behavior, asking them to please stop talking about him, as it seems to be pinching his pride. If you'd like to see what he wrote to me, then please click on the link above for his latest comment. I almost commented back, but then my better nature told me, hey, why not make a new post out of it so everyone can enjoy it? I'm big hearted like that. And to prove it, I'll just quote his comment here, so the lazy won't have to even click over!

Hello, this is Apostalo Tsirogiannis and to answer Mr. Lawvol and your question I have asked one blogger to remove this article from their website and they agreed. I also have gotten newspapers to remove it also because I did prove to them that this story did not correlate with the police report. No, I am not going to threaten you Mr. Contemplator. Yes, I know I threaten a Professor who was a predator and has been fired from Penn State. I am just a guy who wants to move and has learned his lesson and asking for you Mr. Contemplator to remove this article from this blogger. I paid Price, I got a misdeamnor and I am on ARD and all I am asking is to move on in life. It really hard to explain my side of the story on comment blog but, I would be willing to. I am a good guy and I have learned my lesson and am trying to move in my life. If you can help me I would appreciate it. Thanks.

Here's my comment. No, I don't care to help you. Know why? I don't like helping people who want to paralyze someone over their own laziness. Until you prove that the news sources have removed this information, then it is still in the public domain and my post will remain up. Nothing I've seen so far on the internet has proven that these reports have been anything other than accurate. Writing to someone and threatening to PARALYZE them because you got a fucking B- is WRONG. Just in case you didn't know.

See, there's this little thing called a "grade appeal." It's where the university recognizes that sometimes mistakes in grading happen, and they give you a good opportunity to prove yourself wronged. They send these appeals to blind readers -- no, no profs with seeing eye dogs, but people who don't know you from Adam; they judge your work without any names on it, and without any references to "Oh, this is that whack-job who threatened his professor with bodily injury over a B-." So you see, you get a fair shake.

Just because you feel embarrassed by the incident is not a valid reason to not cite information already listed in multiple news sources and found on your local LexisNexis link -- a link I'm sure you're familiar with through university research. I'm sure your time at the university will also inform you that asking people not to discuss something in the public domain is also without any merit whatsoever. And if you'd like to file for slander, well, I'll save you the leg work and tell you what the burden of proof is: your employer or future fiance has to present paperwork telling you explicitly, "Mr. Tsirogiannis, you are not receiving this job/this marriage because I read about you on Dante's Virgil's blog. It is entirely due to this blog that we are denying you employment/spouse." Because other than that, you're up a shit creek without a paddle, babe.

Let's make it simpler.

The post stays. It stays until you present me with a court order to tear it down. And you know why it stays? Because you are not any more special than anyone else on the planet.

You made a choice, and you'll deal with the consequences. You claim to have learned a lesson, but going around emailing/commenting to bloggers and whining about their right to blog about things clearly proves you still think you're entitled to special treatment. News flash: You're NOT. You are very lucky you got a misdemeanor. Terroristic threatening, which is what you did, can also be considered a felony -- a thing I'd be pushing for hardcore if you pulled that shit with me.

You should probably try to freewrite about this incident. Your prompt could be: Reflect on why threatening people is a douchebag move to make. Write for 15 minutes without stopping. Maybe that'll slow you down the next time you think you need to threaten to cripple one of your teachers because you chose not to study harder or figure out how to file the appropriate paperwork.

Frankly, if you were in my class, you'd have met a bigger pair of balls than the one you seem to have encountered already.

And it's Ms. Contemplator, thank you very much.

I'll be expecting that writing assignment by the end of the week. Off with you.

-- DV

Wherein I Reveal "Mystique"

2009-05-30T19:00:00.002-04:00

I might have mentioned the neighbor girl who comes in to see me every now and then. She's named after an off brand of soda and she's got some serious home problems. She lives with her grandma; her mom hasn't contacted her in a couple of years, her dad's a deadbeat -- at one point they both had a "do not contact" order on them regarding her. She hasn't had parents in her life since she was three. I think her grandma doesn't feed her right. I know they fight. I' m sometimes conflicted as to whether to report it. Currently, their electricity is out for the next two weeks because the grandma didn't pay the bill and it was cut off. My personal nightmare with her is that one day she'll show up at my door in tears telling me she's run away from her grandma's house, and can she stay with me. I'm not sure what I'd do.

She seems to love me dearly. I don't know why, but I do know that I'm something of a stand-in mom for her. She comes over and plops down on my couch to tell me about school or the drama with her friends or how she's head over heels for Twilight. She likes Cleopatra eyeliner and bright blue eyeshadow. She's 14 years old. She tells me about her boyfriend and her drama with him. She came to me about the talk on periods and tampons. She hugs me several times in a row whenever she's here. She asks what I cook for dinner, why I load the dishwasher the way I do, what I buy at the grocery store. There's a sense of female responsibility that she seems to be looking for clues on. Sometimes she'll end the conversation by turning over her shoulder and saying "My grandma hit me in the arm yesterday." Other times she'll say, "Maybe I should have been your daughter." And she'll laugh, like she's trying to take the seriousness out of it.

I respond by trying to play the tropes she's looking for, because I really think she's just looking to play a role sometimes. Yes, I think she'd like to move in and have a "mother-daughter" relationship, whatever she thinks that means. But mostly, I think she just wants to pretend. She wants to rehearse the script. She'll grab my grocery bags out of my arms and take them up for me. She wants to put things away on the shelves, maybe so she just feels like she knows where it is. Sometimes she goes through my bathroom drawers -- not because she wants to steal anything, but to solve the mystery of what I'm about, what grown women keep in their makeup bags. So when she tells me she thinks she should've been my daughter, I say, "You know, I always wanted a daughter. I'd want her to be just like you." She comes in the door and I'll ask her, "So, how was school? How are you doing in math?" Or something like that. Once early in the morning when I was getting ready to go somewhere and I had my front door open, I heard her voice floating up as she was walking down the little alley to the bus stop: "Byyyyyeee Jooooooy...". I called back, "Have a good day at school, honey...". Because I don't believe she really ever hears that in her life. I don't think anyone ever told her to have a good day at school.

So, it probably shouldn't have surprised me when she came over on Thursday talking about her Spring formal dance this weekend -- tonight, actually, in about fifteen minutes. We were talking about her boyfriend, and what a flake he was for breaking up with her only to get back together just before the dance, so he could go with a date. Then she said, "I wish I had a flat iron, I want my hair to be straight for the dance."

Everything is code with her. She says "Oh, you like that kind of ice cream? Neat." That means, "Can I have some?" She's weird about food. But she also has evolved this way of feeling out whether you'll do something for her or not before she asks directly, probably so as not to get her feelings hurt. So, the proper answer to her "wish" was of course to say, "Well, I've got a flat iron. Do you need to borrow it?" And she told me that she would love to, buuuut, she doesn't really know what she's doing and she doesn't do a very good job. and of course the proper response is, "Well, I could do it, if you wanted me to." She jumped up with a big grin, OH YES, that would be great! And so we planned to meet on about 5:00 on Saturday to give her enough time with everything.

And then I realized that I'd basically formally contracted to do her hair and makeup. JP, please stop laughing now.

I wonder why she picked me, honestly. I rarely wear makeup. I don't have elaborate hair. Most of the time, it's pulled back. I do not look like the obvious choice to get this immense job done, the results of which buoy a young girl's fantasies about dances and looks and boys. I realized, frankly, that I had squarely put my foot right on top of a landmine.

Here's the even more hilarious part: I actually can do hair and makeup. I can do it quite well. I can do the edgy, runway type stuff and I can do the "natural" look (which involves even more product than the edgy stuff). I'm obsessed with fashion. I have a Vogue collection. (And W, and Allure...) I am one of those people who Keep Up With Things. I just happen to also live in jeans and a white t-shirt. For added guffaws, I even sold glamour for a while. I was a Mary Kay sales rep (yes, keep laughing), and I broke even in my business the first year (rare, normally it's three years to break even, turn the corner and turn a profit), was team leader and my unit's "Rookie of the Year." Yes, like the baseball card. I could make myself look like one of the women in the pages of the booklet that hawked our product. Trouble is, that's a lot of fucking work, and I just didn't want to. It makes me feel fake. These are not things that my girl could've known.

I'd like to think she saw my Vogue collection, including the Italian, French and now Spanish ones. Or maybe the Allure magazine sitting out in the open talking about "sculpting" with your normal shade of foundation and one two tones darker. I'd like to think she went through my bathroom drawers and found the massive stash of crap I have. But I don't think any of that is what happened. I think she thinks that there is some feminine mystique that older women have, that they know all the secrets, and that they will share it with you when the time comes.

I think she got lucky I read a lot -- which extends itself to fashion -- and that I didn't turn her into Tammy Faye.

She showed up at about 4:20 instead of 5:00. Her hair was still wet. My bet was still on "mystique" and trading secrets, so I planned to feed into that. I pulled out everything I owned. Every piece of makeup, every pomade, all the heavy equipment. When her eyes lit up, I knew I'd guessed right. I put everything down on the kitchen table, turned on every light and lamp in the kitchen. I had Miles Davis playing from before she came in, and I'd lit a really smelly candle -- you've got to have atmosphere for getting ready for something important, but she would've probably preferred Fergie, or something. I let her paw through the makeup, which for reference's sake covered the whole freaking kitchen table, who knew??, while I actually sorted through the things I thought were important. We did make up first, and I always presented things as a choice. I might think she looks good one way, but ultimately it's about what she thinks is good on her, and I was prepared to execute whatever Twilighty-vampire look she decided she wanted.

To my surprise, though, she took my suggestions. Of course, it helps to be skilled in rhetoric. So, when you tell a 14 year old their eyes would look "awesome" with this color, you plop down a bag of cotton balls and eye make up remover and ask if they'll let you put some on just to see what it looks like, she'll probably say SURE. As I went along, I told her everything I was doing. Makeup is artisanal. It always looks better when it's done with the hands or with really high quality brushes, like painting a picture. I put three colors on her eyes -- antique gold on her lids, framed with a nice shade of jade in the crease of her eye and then a thing called Moonstone on her brow bone, which is sort of a creamy white color. I explained how the jade in the crease will sit on top of her eyes when they're open, like a picture frame, and how you wanted some kind of deeper neutral on your lids, and it almost doesn't matter what, because anything makes your eye color seem more intense, and you wanted a really light color on your brow bone because it's the "highlight." Then I blended everything with a brush so it looked smooth. Her reaction in the mirror was one that I'll probably not forget as long as I live. She was, quite simply, delighted. I told her we could do anything else with any color I had (which is basically every shade of everything), as long as we followed that pattern. But she didn't want to touch it.

While she put on mascara, I asked her if she wanted to do bronzer or if she wanted to do foundation. I figured she wanted the pale look -- she was really pushing hard for that a few months ago; you know, vampires and everything. She picked bronzer, probably because of how it looked. Oh, and because she was jealous of the rich girls in school who'd been going to the tanning bed for the past six weeks in preparation for the formal. So I told her how to use bronzer, and I showed her how to tap it off the brush, to sweep it over her forehead, cheeks and nose, and her chin, how you wanted to put some down your neck, too, so it looked real. She loved it.

I did her hair while she was drinking a pop. I blabbed about everything I was doing there, too, putting some serum in it for shine, because when it was flat ironed it could look dull. I rubbed that in. I put in something to keep down frizz; I let her play with the bottles while I put it in. I blowdried her hair, told her she couldn't just hit it with a flat iron unless it was dry, that would extra-fry it. I did exactly what she told me to do with her hair. Normally it's really curly, and she doesn't like it. She's also dyed it black (vampires). So it was a glossy straight "do" now, thanks to a few products and a flat iron. I sprayed it with some styling wax, sprayed my left hand fingers with the wax to put it on the ends of her hair. She seemed fascinated with the hands-on stuff, but that's really where the trick is. I explained to her how it was different from hairspray. It smells great, so I was sure she'd like that. There's something about going off smelling great from a salon that keeps you perked up all the while you can smell it.

Last, we decided what to do about lipstick. She loves gloss, which she should for her age. I had glosses, of course. But I also offered to "make" a gloss out of a lipstick I had, if she wanted to. She was fascinated by that, so that's what we did. She picked out a lipstick in "shell", which is the only thing I have close to a girly-pink color. So I took the lipstick, rubbed it all over the side of my hand (highly fascinating) and put a few dabs of a clear lip gloss on top. Then I took a small brush and sort of mixed the whole thing together on my hand. I brushed the solution onto her lips once, and asked her to check it in the mirror to make sure she liked it first. Then I layered it on.

She grinned the whole time. We checked the mirror front, back, sideways to make sure she liked everything. She seemed really happy. We like salons because of the human touch, because of the art of dressing up. She looked like the young teenager I've always seen her as, rather than the new-goth she likes to dress up as. I told her I thought she was beautiful. I took her picture:

Her grandma just swooped by to let her hop out of the van and show me her dress. It was a beautiful, long navy halter dress with silver shoes. Both her and her grandma were smiling. I'm glad I did it. I don't have a daughter, and I'll probably never get the chance to do that again. When Dante has his formal, it will be a matter of getting his braids done and getting the Man Uniform that the tux represents.

I hope she has a good time. I hope for that one moment at the kitchen table, at least, everything was perfect.

-- DV

Justice is Blind -- and Right the First Time

2009-05-28T21:57:00.001-04:00

I was asked recently to look over a few grade reviews. Overall, I'm impressed both at the care taken with the process and with the gall some students seem to have.

After I agreed to be a blind reviewer, I got the packets in my office box. I get the entire portfolio, and one of the office secretaries has whited out most all instructor's comments and grades. I'm literally getting it like it's just submitted. Sometimes I get information like what the instructor gave for class participation grades -- that's not something I could know by looking at a portfolio. But if I wanted to know what the first teacher had given it, I'd have to guess. There is no way of telling. In the cases I looked at, I was also the second blind reviewer. I got no notes on what the first reviewer thought. The dude in charge basically averages our scores together to see if that average differs significantly from the instructor who gave the original grade. The process is very solid, at least based on my experiences with it. If only 3% of appeals are approved, we must be pretty in sync grading-wise.

Or it could be because people who submit grade appeals are largely stupid.

Of the three reviews I did today, two of them were abysmal attempts at writing and the third was a pretentious attempt to get an A when the student was lucky to get that B. One student was simply ... incoherent. There really isn't another way to explain it. He wrote about Cartman and South Park as being the formative experience in his life. At least I think it was. It was hard to figure out what he was saying. His final project was a bunch of movie reviews. Our final project for that class involves creating multiple genres based on research. He wrote a bunch of very simplistic and poorly spelled movie reviews. I found myself wanting to write WTF in the margins quite often. Which I probably could've done, it's a blind review. Another student went off on a tear about Bush, and it wasn't even a particularly factual tear. S/he wrote an entire paper about the wrong interpretation of a cartoon. The final argument paper was about why we should lower the drinking age to 16 years old because it's hard for bartenders to make more than $120 a week. If that wasn't his or her intention, that was certainly the point I got out of it.

Good lord. As I said in a previous post, there were more grade appeals than normal this semester, probably because of the recession. There will probably be more in the next few weeks. But those three certainly will NOT be part of the 3% triumphing over the system.

-- Dante's Virgil

Where'd They Go?!

2009-05-28T10:37:00.001-04:00

I just realized the Appalachian Greens are gone. Their blog is in my sidebar, but you can't get to it anymore. What happened, people?!

Not like I have time for more blogs, or anything, but .... I just might have to do something about that.

-- DV

THE Movie

2009-05-26T21:36:00.003-04:00

The hot movie of the moment is not the new Star Trek movie or Will Farrell's new movie or the follow up to Night at the Museum. No, according to Dante, the hot showing this season is THE movie. You know: the one they show you in the fifth grade or so. THE movie. THE movie has a great buildup before its showing, because it's talked about for weeks before it's actually shown. "Do you know what we're seeing in health class next week? THE movie!!"

Possibly the only thing more interesting than THE movie itself is its viewers. According to an inside source, the movie-goers are either giggling hysterically or they're sitting there trying not to look interested, as though they, you know, already know all this stuff, already. Most viewers' nerves are pretty frayed by the time they're ready to watch, because no one is really sure what's on the video -- and what that means is they're not really sure how much it will actually show. So everyone is a mess of nervous titters. It probably didn't help that there was more or less an animated penis achieving erection. That shattered whatever composure all moviegoers had.

Per Dante, it wasn't a very good rendition.

Needless to say, Dante had a keen interest in this movie. He knows all about the mechanics of sex, and he's known from a very young age (I think he was 4 1/2 or 5 when we first covered the mechanics, and he's asked more involved questions ever since). He asks me lots of things and he seems very comfortable doing so, probably because I've worked really hard at appearing to be comfortable telling him anything. This movie covers the mechanics in passing, but it covers one thing that most kids don't really start asking about until the age they are in Dante's class -- puberty. They all have a keen interest in puberty. Dante has an embarrassing habit of walking around saying, "Mom, my balls hurt, is that puberty?" at the most interesting of times.

As a "goody bag" for attending THE movie, Dante brought home a sample deodorant, which he is in love with, and a booklet about puberty changes, which is on his nightstand. His growing pains are really kicking in. He's eating everything in sight. He's about four inches away from being as tall as his dad. He turns 12 this summer. Gad. He's brewing some hormones, as he enjoys hanging around the neighborhood girls but isn't really sure why. To be fair, they like being around him and seem equally confused. He's developing a bit of an attitude. My new name is God Mom. As in, Gawd, Moooom!

He's starring in his own version of THE movie right now; we're turning a corner. He's going to Florida for the summer to stay with his grandparents. I wonder who will come back in August? I wonder if I'll still know him.

-- DV

News -- Flash!

2009-05-18T10:36:00.005-04:00

Today is the first day of my summer writing project. I'm sort of scared.

When I had just graduated college, I began working on a set of short stories with Appalachian themes. It took me about two years to "finish" them. There are twenty in total. These stories were something I'd wanted to do for a very long time. Every fiction I've read about Appalachia is always so nostalgic, so backwards looking; nobody wants to move past 1943, when everybody hoed a garden and quilted stuff. I was always more interested in what happened to those people's grandkids -- you know, the drug problems, the lack of jobs, the rift we feel between the culture we're in now and the culture of our grandparents, how we raise our kids, what values we think are important, religion, our frustration with people who want to romanticize where we live or keep seeing us as the culture of canning tomatoes and telling "Jack tales." etc. I don't think anyone is really interested in those issues besides us children, but really, they're our stories.

So, I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. I went to the flea market and sat there scribbling at people. I hiked up on mountains and took pictures and later just stared at them for a long time, asking myself "But what does it mean?!" I wrote a few things that made me cry. My best friend back home read two of my stories and she cried. "This is us," she said. And that meant more to me than getting a story published -- which has yet to happen. And it won't happen for a while, because publishing is a matter of A) skill B) connections and C) luck. Mostly C. I don't really want to be a "famous" writer. I just want published -- I want to share it. But that won't happen until the stories are a lot sharper. Talking about your skill (or lack thereof) as a writer is an uncomfortable thing, at least for me. My experience with writer's workshops and being around people who take themselves Very Seriously about writing makes me feel like it's one big pissing contest of who does it better. It's really hard to judge yourself, when the obvious measure would be to answer the question Have you published yet? But even publishing is really just a matter of luck and persistence topped with connections. Sometimes it's not a very good measure of talent at all. I'm comfortable enough admitting that I do have some raw talent -- but I'm also not a "master" of writing, and I'm not so egotistical that I can't admit that. I don't spend eight hours a day on it -- not even two or three. If I want to be good and not just "sometimes clever," that has to change. You have to approach writing like you do a job. You get your supplies together, you sit down, you start writing. Every single day, or damned close to it. Even if it's an exercise for practice. You just have to keep doing it.

I don't think blogging counts, but maybe it does.

I said earlier the stories were "finished" -- because nothing is ever really finished. I wrote as far as I could, I tried a limited run of sending what I thought were my best stories out to creative journals and magazines (which included an interesting return letter from an editor), and then I put them aside. I just couldn't look at them anymore, because I couldn't see the forest for the trees. So, four years later, I'm back to them again. And I'm terrified. I'm not sure why.

I've been writing ever since I can remember. The earliest thing I wrote I don't even remember doing. My grandma kept it and showed it to me years later -- it was a story about some creepy veterinarian who was busy bugging all the local animals so he could keep tabs on his neighbors and blackmail them. A brave and clever little girl found him out. I was under ten. Don't ask me how I knew about bugging and blackmail when I was under ten and we didn't have cable TV. I don't remember. I do remember that I wanted to be an international spy when I was about five years old and carried that dream all the way to third grade, where I traded it in for being President of the United States instead. I loved mysteries and short stories. When I was 12 going on 13, I spent the whole summer in front of my mother's heavy, gun-metal gray typewriter banging out stories where a clever and brave girl in her early twenties solved mysteries ranging from murder to kidnapping to embezzlement. They come with pictures provided by a 12-year-old illustrator as well, with her new set of colored pencils. All the faces have very large eyes. When I was actually in my early twenties that little collection, all bound in a pink binder, embarrassed the hell out of me. Now I think it's hilarious and I'm glad I didn't throw them away. Lots of little stories and books happened in between then and now. For my creative writing project in the tenth grade, we had to do kids books, and I made one in the shape of a bone about a puppy who runs away from home because he thinks he's all grown up, only to run into a wolf. Doing his puppy tricks is the only thing that allows him to escape and return to his suburban home a more appreciative puppy. It's a study in domestication and middle class values. LOL. Now, of course, kids books in various shapes are pretty popular. There wasn't anything like them in the stores when I was a kid. I wrote a Canterbury tale about WalMart when I was a senior in high school that won a prize.

But as an adult, I suddenly developed some weird notions about writing in my twenties that have been hard for me to get past. The stakes somehow were raised and things seemed more serious. Mistakes meant something more than they used to. As a 12-year-old, I could just rip the typing paper out of the typewriter and wad it up, call it "stupid," and throw it in the trash. As an adult, wadding the paper up somehow meant I was stupid, not the idea. Or that I had stupid ideas. Or that it had to be perfect the first time, or clearly I wasn't meant to be a writer. And then thinking of myself as a "writer" makes me really squeamish. When do you get to call yourself that? When you're published? When you're doing it as a full time job? When you forwent the rent so you could buy more notebooks? I've been writing stories since I learned how to write, but that doesn't seem "legitimate" anymore. Writing was For Real now. When I was a kid, it wasn't about publishing. It was about translating this awesome moving picture I had in my head onto paper. My head was full of little short films. I wanted to write them down on paper to keep them forever. As an adult, it seemed like I had to write them down just right so that other people would buy them. And if it didn't happen by the time you were 30, it was obviously never going to happen at all. After all, didn't Keats publish at 18 years old?! And speaking of publishing, my adult writing was wa-a-y too short for conventional short stories. An editor in a return rejection letter & email to me basically told me I was cramming too much in too small a space, that I needed more "development" and that the stories needed to be longer. I didn't want to do that, because to me, the stories were like little snapshots. Like photography. Here's the picture. You read into it what you want to. I didn't know how to make them longer without watering them down. So I did the best I could, took them as far as I could go, and then I put them down.

Once I put the stories aside, I took a deep breath -- four years' worth, actually. I'm on a sort of middle ground now, a grown-up place to be about writing. I still have those short films in my head, and they still need to come out on paper. But I also want to share them with people. I don't care if they buy them or not. But I do want to share them. And I figured out that I was sending the stories to the wrong publishing genre. I do flash fiction -- I didn't even know there was a name for it when I was busy doing it, and that's what tells me it's what I need to be doing. When I look for the "conventions" of successful story writing, I start getting nervous. When I do what I enjoy, I don't have problems. Flash fiction is a story under 1000 words. 1000-2500 are considered "short shorts," and I have some of those, too, although they rarely go past 1500; 2500 words are considered a minimum standard length short story. I don't want to say 2500 words (this blog post is a little over 1800 words). I like my own stories at 1000 words or less -- that's about two and a half pages, more or less.

And I realized why I always very much liked that old saying "A picture is worth 1000 words."

For me, writing is about making a picture. The beauty is in what is not said, in what your mind can do with the image you were just given. That's what I like, and that's what I'm going to do.

So, I pulled out six stories from my little collection for this summer. The first one is called "Darlene's Basement," and it's about a cable access religious service, the kind of born-again basement preacher you see all the time. The story reads in the rhythm of a born-again sermon. I like it. A lot. Four years later, it needs a lot of work, work I didn't see at the time. It's at about 755 words so far. It'll get reworked, and it might hit 1000 or a little above.

And I'm excited about it; but I'm also a little nervous, because I don't want to load the process with false expectations and demands. I'm blogging right now, because I just made a bunch of edits and I'm sort of scared of looking at them. Little girls grow up and become adults who have jobs; adults who want to "be" writers have to start approaching writing as a job. But a big part of me wants to get back in touch with that little girl who spent that summer eating cucumbers while banging away on that typewriter and illustrating the stories out on the porch with her new colored pencils.

-- Dante's Virgil

Insulated From Science--But Conducting Ourselves Well!

2009-05-13T20:17:00.004-04:00

For reasons best known only to Dante, I am dubbed as the science and math "master" of the household. Those who know me, we'll just wait until you stop laughing before continuing. Ready? No? How about now? OK. El Hijo is the history go-to guy -- and he really deserves that title. But as far as I can tell, the only talents I have in the math and science department are two things: 1) I can explain in kid terms what's going on (after I've already cussed and snorted around about how it actually works myself) and 2) I am the Mistress of We Shall Never Give Up, Dammit. The last one applies mainly to math. Dante loves science, and it is never hard to get him to work on it. Math he hates with a bloody raging passion, much like most other schoolwork. So, part of my task as Math Mistress is to make sure I stay on him to get it done. Sometimes I want to give up, because it's a real pain in the ass to make somebody do something day in and day out that they just don't want to do. But a few things I read recently made me glad I did.

Malcolm Gladwell's new book Outliers is a fantastic work of statistics and science applied to everyday life, in the same scope as something like Freakonomics. Gladwell looks at success and what makes a person truly successful, and the results are part common sense and part, well, astonishing. He finds, for example, that intelligence is only so useful; it's more of a threshold rather than a cumulative advantage. So, you only need so much intelligence to be a successful person, and that measure is about the IQ it takes to get into college. More IQ after that is practically negligible when it comes to successful invention. What kicks in after the intelligence threshold is creativity and emotional/people skills, along with the kind of environment and parenting you had as a kid. Then it gets even more interesting, because he proves very conclusively that successful people in school are successful because of their birth date -- you need to get the book to see the data charts, etc -- but in a nutshell, the cut off dates for school entry favor students whose birthday is soonest after the cut off date, because they mature far more quickly than those "summer babies" ever do. Then what kicks in next is cultural conditioning to practice. He proves that children from cultures where emphasis is on staying with a task much longer do far better in areas like math, which requires you to really work through sometimes very abstract concepts and not give up. It's an incredible read.

It also means that being Queen of the Mixed Fractions is critical for Dante's success. It means I'm doing a good job when I make him sit down for that extra practice and drill every goddamn day of the week except Saturday, because I'm teaching him among other things to stick with the process. Now, Dante does not have exceptional grades, in spite of how much extra parent involvement he has -- and he has a lot. I'm not bragging so much as I am complaining, I guess! LOL. But he's surrounded by books and reading material on everything from luchadors to dinosaurs, we practice spelling with him every night, math drill, extra practice for tests, reading and vocabulary comprehension -- hell, we're basically still part time homeschooling. And he honestly doesn't have the grades to show for it, partly because he likes to rush things, partly because he's mildly dyslexic, which when combined with rushing through things produces fascinating words made out of numbers and letters that don't seem to exist in the English alphabet. But it makes me wonder what life would be like for him without all that parental involvement -- I suppose it would be like the time he nearly failed the third grade because his dad decided to not have that much involvement. But it also makes me wonder how many other parents with kids in public schools are doing the same thing as we are.

Maybe it's just because public school forums are not really the way Dante learns best. Maybe it's easy for other kids, I don't know. But I know it's hard for me as a parent just trying to keep up with what he's doing in school. Trying to remember the rules for multiplying mixed fractions when you haven't done that since the fifth grade yourself, lo these many twenty-one-ish years ago, it's like I'm teaching myself stuff all over again. That was especially true for science tonight, and the whole reason I got around to writing this post. Tonight he had to bring in examples of conductors and insulators. OK, I know what that is, but trying to explain it to an eleven year old is always kind of hard. And then where the hell am I supposed to get copper wiring? Rip it out of the phone? So to the internet we go for a list of these things. We spent a big chunk of time talking about what those examples were and why they worked, putting little samples in ziplock baggies. Even though the teacher just wanted samples, we made a list, because there are things like "dry air" and "the human body" that obviously present baggie problems. We talked about why radios and TVs shouldn't be near people taking a bath because of the conductivity issues with water and wet bodies. We talked about the time one of his older cousins got shocked because he was playing the electric guitar on a concrete floor while it was wet. But it's not like I could just pull all this stuff out of my head. I forgot concrete was considered conductive. I had to look it up. So I make looking it up one of the things we do together. And in spite of just how very much I have to look up, he still considers me the Ruler of All Things Science-y.

And I really wondered just how many parents were doing that tonight. Not because I want to feel special or "better" than anybody, but because it's a lot of hard work to teach a kid something, and I know there are plenty of times that I just want to quit because I'm tired or frustrated. But it scares me to death to think of life without an education, because I've worked with people who had little to no education, and it's just such a dead end. Not only because of your job opportunities and your income, but more importantly because of the quality of your life. Your ability to enjoy culture and to pay attention to what people are trying to sell you or who want to govern you, all that is dependent on education. So to me, it's not about grades, even though I wish they were higher. It's about the process. Because people with a good educational process have a far greater chance at a good life -- something that goes beyond an "A" in spelling.

-- DV

P.S. To all the homeschooling parents out there -- or the "part timers" like me who put in the hours after public school is over -- hang in there. It's worth it.

Breaking Economic News: Recession Hits Grades!

2009-05-07T10:22:00.003-04:00

Finally done with all my grading -- now time to move on to all the wonderful administrivia that comes with the end of the year. Ah, the seminars to assist with, the teaching portfolio to update, the academic articles to hammer out, the lesson planning to prepare for! Smells like my vacation time swirling down the toilet. Before I launch into this summer's work, though, I have noticed a new trend during this last week of school; not sure what to make of it.

Students are bitching about grades more than usual. Not my students, although I have had two bitching so far (I expect 2-3 more, they're just too lazy to come figure out what they've gotten yet). Every student of El Hijo has bitched about their grades. Yesterday, the main day for returning portfolios, students were cursing in the hallways, marching down to the main office, and in what looks to me like unprecedented numbers -- filing grade appeals. Some left the main office crying with their parents. WTF is going on? We've not really been grading any differently than the last semester. We don't have a new crop of students with different academic backgrounds who would be more inclined to bitch.

I think it's the recession/depression.

No, honestly. I think that the situation with the economy is probably causing students to tense up about losing scholarships, to worry about having to repeat classes (and spend another semester or more here), and it's most definitely probably causing their parents to take a greater interest in their grades. I would say money is the deciding factor here. Grades can cause you to lose scholarships, but I bet for the first time (for many students), they're paying attention to the implications lower grades will have on their transcripts as well. Job markets are tight in most fields -- suddenly it makes a difference if you're a "C" engineer or a "B" engineer. It always made a difference, of course, but getting students to realize it made a difference was another story. So, this is a new academic development, at least at my university.

Too bad student work ethic isn't really catching up to the problem. El Hijo and I had a protracted argument at lunch about what the core of the issue for grade appeals is. I maintain that it's about student selfishness and misconceptions, especially when it comes to a class like writing or rhetoric. Students already think that essay judgment is subjective, and in a way it is -- if you miss a math problem, you obviously got the wrong answer. If you are illogical with words, it takes a few more steps to point out why. I'm not saying that writing is more complex than math (because Meg will Internet Kill me); but rather, it is just as complex as math. And just like you have some profs who will give you partial credit for at least working the math problem but screwing up the answer, you have some profs who will give you partial credit for doing most of the work that arguments take, but screwing up your logic. Just as there are chem profs who will fail the whole problem, even if all you did was screw up the last step, because it's WRONG, dammit, there are English profs who will fail your whole paper, even though all you did was screw up one part, because it's WRONG, dammit. So there is subjectivity, but students I think tend to process it differently. They see that kind of subjectivity more as the whim of the prof doing the grading.

That's part of what goes into student selfishness when it comes to grades. Set aside for the moment how some of them view grades as a transaction -- I pay money, you give A. Unless you've been really aggrieved (like the prof said "Sleep with me", you said no, s/he failed you), grade appeals are inherently based on the fact that you think you know better than the prof -- someone who spent years and years in the field -- about how to judge your own work; work that you didn't know how to do before you took the class. Grade appeals say that you're the expert, not the actual expert. Most students who do a grade appeal have a massively overinflated sense of the value of their work. A stands for superior, after all, and B is "above average." C's are average. C means "average college student work". College students themselves might be "above average" in terms of academic potential compared to everyone else in the country, but put against a roomful of themselves, they are not all going to be above average, obviously. This reality is matched by the statistics of grade appeal success -- only 3% of grade appeals are actually ever approved. You could say that there is probably some institutional bias going on; but universities take great measures to ensure that the review process is blind and impartial. I'm sure some profs go into it thinking they're going to side with the prof. But based on the people who are appealing, I have to say they just have no idea -- or refuse to believe -- that their work is just that sub-par.

So the answer to your grade woes, people, is not to put pressure on the prof; it's to get in and work harder. Maybe if you didn't have 13 absences (in a two day a week class, no less), you might have pulled better than a fail. When you've missed seven out of fifteen weeks of class, there's probably a reason you didn't have a quality piece of work. Just like some people are looking for part time jobs, you might need to make studying your part time job -- one you don't go in to do for only a few hours, say midnight to 3 a.m., before your deadline. Just a thought.

-- DV

Book Meme

2009-05-06T22:55:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've done a Meme, and this one over at Meg's looked interesting.

1. To mark your page you: use a bookmark, bend the page corner, leave the book open face down?
I do all of the above. Mostly, though, I bend the corners down. I usually have several books going, and I can't remember exactly where I leave off; it's easier to just turn the corners down. But if it's somebody else's book, I don't do that.

2. Do you lend your books?
Yep. All the time.

3. You find an interesting passage: you write in your book or NO WRITING IN BOOKS!
Yep. I write all over them sometimes (as long as they belong to me). There are whole graduate classes devoted to studying people's marginalia, actually. I usually just write on what I consider "academic" books, though. There have only been a few fiction books I've actually underlined passages in -- and that was because they were favorite passages and I wanted to remember where they were.

4. Dust jackets - leave it on or take it off.
Most of the time I take it off. They get in the way.

5. Hard cover, paperback, skip it and get the audio book?
Mostly paperback. Hardbacks cost too much money. If I want the book to hold up longer, though, I'll spend the cash to get a hardback.

6. Do you shelve your books by subject, author, or size and color of the book spines?
Mostly by subject. We have shelves that are early American lit, philosophy, history, good literature, pulp (although we tend to give that away and not hang onto it), I have two shelves full of Vogue magazines, some Brit lit, science type stuff. Yeah. Mostly by subject.

7. Buy it or borrow it from the library later?
Mainly buy it. I'm trying to get better at doing the library thing, mainly because the university can get me pretty much whatever I want. Our public library is a sad little thing.

8. Do you put your name on your books - scribble your name in the cover, fancy bookplate, or stamp?
Yes, I write my name in the cover and usually the year I got the book, too. I don't know why. I usually only do that to "work" related books, though.

9. Most of the books you own are rare and out of print books or recent publications?
We have a really old complete set of Cooper novels that was given to us by a prof who wanted the shelf space. That particular set is probably out of print. But we can't afford rare and out of print books in principle, who are you kidding?!

10. Page edges - deckled or straight?
Deckling books sounds like an illegal activity. Or a sexual orientation, given its position next to "straight". I guess I like queer books?

11. How many books do you read at one time?
It depends. I try to do only one at a time, but that rarely happens. Right now I have five sitting on my night stand in various stages of completion.

12. Be honest, ever tear a page from a book?
Yes. Because I wanted to keep it with me always. :)

If you choose to do the meme, let me know.

-- DV

I Always Feel Like...Somebody's Watching Me

2009-05-04T18:39:00.000-04:00

Meg has asked me a number of times to join Facebook, and I remain strangely silent on the matter.

In fact, numerous people have asked me to join Facebook, including powerful administrators who insist I make a Facebook page for my at risk students to join. Because they like to be on the forefront of technological trends, or at least appear to be. I remain super hesitant.

For one thing, I don't like my internet life and my IRL to intersect. If I were on Facebook, I couldn't be Dante's Virgil. I'd have to be First Name, Last Name. I'm pretty sure with Facebook, I can't be wonderfully psuedonymous, which is what I want to be. I like saying what I want to say when I want to say it. Under the guise of my Internet ID, I can do that. I just have to not give too many details. It feels like Facebook would somehow set me up to "get caught" or something. It creeps me out.

Then there is the issue of what to do with students who look you up on Facebook. I have to maintain some sort of professionalism (what little there is left) with them. Some profs I know won't "friend" them, but will let them add on in some other way (I have no idea how this works, so just consider it secondhand information, or something). Students ask me about Facebook all the time. I just don't feel like I could be "real" if I felt they were always watching. I guess. I don't go have a beer at places I know they'll be. This feels like the same thing to me. I don't know what's sadder, that I'm "hiding" from students, or that I consider the internet to be like a bar.

Facebook also has noteriety as one of the fastest rising ways for the university to check up on you. Go google it and see how many stories you turn up about the university using Facebook to expel college students for various reasons. Some of my students are in trouble for posting pictures of themselves drinking beer in their dorm rooms -- one just got kicked out of the dorms for it. Their floor leaders are busy snooping their MySpace and Facebook pages and writing them up. I would feel terrible if they were linked to my page and then somehow somebody else (like an administrator, who definitely would be looking at this "at risk" group page) followed them over to their page and busted them for something. It really gnaws at my sense of personal rights, I guess. I'm loathe to do even the group page.

So, I won't be on Facebook any time soon. My co-worker, on the other hand, the new guy, is totally into a Facebook page for them. So, I might have him set it up so that I can also run the page. But my own personal one? Nah. Not happening.

-- DV

OK, because consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, I've actually changed my mind. I'm on there as Dante's Virgil. I can't promise how active I'll be, though. Gah. I am NOT mixing my internet life with my personal name. Not yet, anyway.

I Can Soon Add "Baker" To My Resume

2009-05-04T11:02:00.001-04:00

OK, without properly thinking it through (yeah, I know, when does that ever happen??), I've ended up with a teaching assignment this summer that is probably going to warp my brain to the point where it breaks. Because I teach an at risk group of college students as a mentor-teacher, and because I did such a good job this year, one of the people in the Upward Bound program asked if I'd be willing to teach English to the Upward Bound kids this summer. UB is a program that takes high school kids and tries to prepare them for college in a few key subjects, English being one of them. They come from local high schools, stay in the dorms while they're here, eat on campus, have "classes" and take field trips. It's supposed to get them excited about college, basically, so they'll have more motivation to go. There is a girl in one of my sections now who is in college because of the UB program; she says it makes college seem like a natural next step, and you stop thinking of it as an "option", but rather start thinking "How can I make sure I get there." The kids also tend to be from that same at risk group I teach in the Fall anyway. It seemed like a natural fit.

I actually need a little summer work to help us get through the lack of a paycheck until Fall. We have an emergency fund designed for this problem, but I don't like bleeding it down so much. So, I said yes. I figured since this was college prep, I'd have high school seniors. I love teaching college freshmen, and while I wasn't exactly too keen on getting high school seniors, as they tend to have a bad case of I'm-not-in-school-anymore-itis, I figured they were close enough to my preferred demographic it wouldn't really matter. Turns out, no.

I'm not getting the high school seniors. They're taking other courses for credit. I'm getting the underclassmen. Sophomores and Juniors. And something they call "fast rising ninth graders," which makes them sound like a batch of yeast muffins. Oh, God, no. That was not the plan. I don't want to teach yeast muffins. I wanted to teach kids who were relatively close to college age. I don't want people still freaking out on hormones! I got the sheet of paper a few days ago with the list of my people on it -- one has the number "8" under her listed grade. EIGHT?! Does that mean she's considered a fast rising muffin, or does that mean I've been duped into taking an eighth grader??

I have no training in dealing with high school kids. I mean, granted, most of my freshmen are 18 years old, and a few of them have been 17 when they come in for fall semester. But it's different. They're not eighth graders. What the hell am I going to do? Hell, I won't even be able to say "hell" anymore? What jokes will I tell them? How on earth will we bond, if I can't cuss?!

Imagine, if you will, all the pains of trying to get 18 year olds to discuss gender roles in our society, or race issues or, *gasp*, equal rights for gays. Now, imagine these readings presented to fast rising muffins, who've likely never thought of this before in their entire lives. GAH. I knew I was going to have to cut down what I was doing for them, make it a little easier. But I do readings and we discuss them. It's a critical part of the process. I'm probably going to have to rethink my whole approach to that now.

What I think I'm really bitching about is that when I said yes, I thought it would be less work. I'm quickly realizing it's going to be more. Much more. What the hell have I gotten myself into? This can only end poorly.

-- DV

After some online discussion of this matter (what better way to get advice??), I have decided to replace every curse word I would normally say with "smurf." I'm going to introduce myself by declaring, "Since I'm not allowed to curse in front of you, I've decided to replace every curse word with 'smurf.' So let's check the smurfing attendance roll, OK?"

You Must've Been a Beautiful Baby...

2009-04-30T09:12:00.000-04:00

Guess who is the proud owner of a 1895-1915 antique baby grand piano? Moi.

Cost to me? Zero (so far). Good will I burned through to move this small behemoth into my house? Probably so far to the tune of six people.

Here's the back story. A professor in our department was moving into a smaller, closer home and was giving things away left and right. One of the things that came over the listserv was a baby grand piano. Wait, what? Seriously? For free? Turns out they didn't have the room to accomodate it at their new place. Do I have the space to accomodate it? Not properly. But ask El Hijo how much that slowed me down. Answer: not a pinch. I emailed about it, and he told me one other person was interested in it, but if they backed out he'd let me know. I figured it was over. But he contacted me a few days later to ask if I still wanted it. Hell, yes! His other option was to take it to the dump.

That horrified me. I saw that on par with saving someone's life, actually. It felt like a human rights violation, or something. I know that's the "moral equivalency" logical fallacy, but I don't care. It was a travesty. Some people stop for abused animals. I stop for neglected pianos.

Now, moving it was an adventure. I brought D/B's truck, plus her conscripted labor, plus poor El Hijo. I thought the four of us would be enough. Ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha. Not even close. With us plus the guy who was giving it away, we managed to disassemble the legs, pedals, and top "hood" (the part that lifts up and allows you to blast the hell out of unsuspecting neighbors with your tremendous piano sound) and then scoot/shove/drag the thing (which I swear to god felt like about 800 pounds) across blankets, through the man's house, across his patio, scoot across the grass, still on blankets, and then one giant shove into her truck.

I had no clue how we were going to get it up the eight wide wooden steps into my apartment. I had visions of ending up three stooge style on the ground on top of a bunch of newly created piano firewood, drinking the many beers I'd brought as payment for my conscripted labor.

But once we got to my apartment, all the neighbors were out dawdling around, because it was such a nice, sunny day. It's part of human nature when someone comes up and points at you specfically and asks YOU for help to say yes. It's actually a proven fact that when someone yells "Somebody help!" most people won't respond, because they all think there is a better person than them for the job; but when you point your finger and say, "YOU help", people fall in line. And that's basically what I did, with the promise of beers. So, with more men pressed into service, we brought the piano up my steps and into my "library", such as it is, in about 15 minutes. For some context, it took us about an hour to scoot it across the original owner's floor and into the truck. I had to zoom away to take Dante to his flag football game, and when I returned, there it was, sitting upright, everything in place, looking WAY too big for the room, but by god, it was mine. I've felt it up too many times to count in the past few days. I even laid under it, just staring at the bottom of the sound board.

This is how I fall into things sometimes. Silly little dreams of mine come true in the most bizarre ways. I've wanted a baby grand for, well, forever. I know how much they cost. I pretty much knew I was stuck with a Casio keyboard. Who knew some professor would be maniacal enough to give away a third generation baby grand piano? I know I certainly would've bought a house that fit the piano, instead of the other way around, but I'm sure some people would consider that crazy, as well ...

"Free," of course, is never really free. The piano is pretty well out of tune, because there is something internal that keeps making it fall out of tune. The old owner seemed to think it was because of the soundboard, but one of my conscripted laborers, who has a fascination with pianos, said it was probably the pinblock, because the soundboard looked great. It's hard to say until I get a professional in there (which may turn out to be the conscripted laborer, who seems to have developed an unholy fascination with the piano that just moved in across from his house). Humidity can cause the soundboard (and the pinblock and the bridge) to swell and then to constrict, so it might *look* fine, but that's not to say it *is* fine. Who knows. The piano is not really playable right now, though, because it's incredibly out of tune. So that's the first step. A full restoration will probably run about $3000, but that includes finishing, staining, installing a dehumidifier, all that fancy-pants crap. Making it playable will cost a lot less.

But it's a baby grand piano. How can you possibly say no?

I've loved pianos since I was a little girl. Even though I've played music since I was four, the piano was the first instrument I ever had formal lessons on. My grandmother gave us the piano that had belonged to her mother-in-law who gave lessons to neighborhood kids (making it a 4th generation piano) for me to play and practice on -- of course, my mother has it now and plans on keeping it. It was the only instrument I can truly say I played for my own personal enjoyment, and not for the sake of someone else or for performance. People who know me well know how much I hate performances, which makes it ironic that I was in a band for ten years. I only played the piano for my pleasure. It was like reading a really good book.

I played everything I could get my hands on -- ragtime, classical stuff, sheet music from the '70s my mother kept laying around. I bought my own sheet music -- the only thing I've ever bought for myself music wise except for my guitar. I can play the theme music to The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in glorious detail. I worked furiously on things that Bach wrote. Grieg mystifies me, but I'm intent on playing it one day. I've never had a vision of being a concert pianist or even playing for visitors for entertainment. It's the only "selfish" instrument I've ever had. It reminds me of why I loved music, even though I hated performance. Playing the piano is what I did when it rained all day in the summer way out in the mountains where I grew up. It was one of the few pieces of "culture" my parents let me have growing up as a JW, even if Mom did make me learn a few "Kingdom Melodies" -- JW hymns, for lack of better explanation -- to play (for the record, I think they suck).

And so, as pianos go, my dream was to one day own a baby grand, and bang out the theme to The Good, The Bad & The Ugly in glorious, ringing sound; or to play Phil Collins' Groovy Kind of Love with much pathos and melancholy. Or to trot out Mozart's Turkish March like little soldiers clicking over the keys. That would all have to happen after I'd afforded an apartment of our own, of course, and probably Dante's college education. In the meantime, I figured I'd be stuck with a Casio.

But every now and then, you're in the right place at the right time, and you get ... this:

And yes, that's my grey cat Jane laying on top of it already. Click on the picture to see a close up of how utterly adorable she is as well as the original honest-to-god ivory keys of this awesome piano. I can't put the hood up yet, because, erm, I haven't exactly found those screws yet... but once I do, I'll totally post another picture with the hood up!

-- DV

On the Nightstand

2009-04-28T17:57:00.004-04:00

For unexplainable reasons, I feel the need to keep track in some public way of what books I'm reading. Sometimes during the year I don't really have a chance to read much on my own at all. I'm just too busy keeping up with college essays. I barely have time to read magazines. Other times, I'll catch a break and I'll want to read something. I find myself moving away from literature and philosophy, that sort of thing, and more towards social science, biography and the random piece of pulp. I think I'm still recovering from graduate school (and have feverish moments where I contemplate going back for a PhD), and I don't really want to read more scholarly articles or academic books, unless they're not so cut and dried. Here are three I've just finished recently and am passing on recommendations for.

The first one is called I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams. Sister loaned me this book, and it's absolutely hilarious. It's the kind of book that makes me think I ought to write something about life after JWs, just to have the complete set going on for people to get into. I think it would be rather amusing to talk about figuring out how Xmas works, running into people years after you've been kicked out, etc. I might try my hand at it, who knows? Kyria Abrahams has a way of showing you just how incredibly bad her life was while at the same time interlacing it with such humor and sarcasm it's easy to forget that she basically dropped out of high school, got married at 17 to a man who didn't really care about her, cut herself, was an alcoholic, got kicked out at around 19 or 20 and engaged in all kinds of risky behavior that could have gotten her killed. You really just don't notice it, because the whole story is laced with JW lore and religious urban legends. It's a great book. Normally I don't like ex-JW stories; I find them too sobby. Yes it sucked, please move on and do something with your life. For the ex-JWs who read this blog, I don't mean that to be harsh or unkind. I just don't find it to be a very productive way to cope, I suppose. But you all would love this book.

Turn Coat byJim Butcher is book 12 in the Dresden Files series, about a guy who lives in Chicago who is a wizard. A former student of mine loaned me this book. They're like crack. Some critic describes this series as "Phillip Marlowe meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and really, that's absolutely perfect. But where Buffy really hit people in their teens and early twenties, Dresden seems geared more towards people in their late twenties and their thirties. I don't know that I've ever thought much about the age demographic certain books are aimed at, but that seems to me to be the case about the Dresden files. He's grown up, and he has grown up issues. Again, crack.

Outliers is Malcolm Gladwell's third book, and I guess it falls under the category of "social science." It's a lot like Freakonomics, if you've ever read that book, which if you haven't, you really should, because it's very good. Gladwell looks at what we think of as "geniuses" and determines whether that is really so, and his conclusion is that there are certain things that make people successful that we would never think of looking for but that can be proven without a doubt statistically. It's fascinating. He proves, for example, that in terms of successful intelligence, it isn't so much that you need a high IQ -- just a high enough IQ; high enough, basically, to get into college. Intelligence has a threshold, and once you've crossed it, it doesn't matter so much if someone has significantly more points than you do. What makes up the difference after that is the ability to be creative and the ability to get along with other people. It's really fascinating. He argues very, very convincingly that what would close the achievement gap is not more money nor more equipment -- but less summer vacation. He proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the reason most Canadian hockey players turn out to be great is not because they have more talent ... but because they were born between January 1st and March. If you want to know why, you'll need to read the book. It's really worth it.

What's still on the nightstand? Michael Berube's What's Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politicas and 'Bias' in Higher Education; Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader (a collection of his writings with a forward by Howard Zinn); Mama PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life (a collection of essays); and Salman Rushdie's The Jaguar Smile about his time in Nicaragua -- a small but good book so far.

What about you?

-- DV

So Many Updates, So Little Blogging Time

2009-04-27T08:59:00.002-04:00

So, there is so much I want to post about, and I have no time to do it! Look for the following in the coming weeks.

The Derby is coming up this weekend, so I'll be out of town starting Thursday (back on Sunday). I have a new, fabulous hat (pics, I promise), but it's supposed to rain all day there. So, I'll be in a fabulous hat and a poncho, I suppose.

I have lots of San Francisco pics to post; I have news about my students I want to brag about.

I want to explain why I'm not on Facebook.

I want to freak out about teaching ... high school kids ... this summer for six weeks. What the hell was I thinking? No, not seniors. Freshmen. Sophomores. Juniors. Oh my.

Ah, and lest I forget to mention it, over the weekend I got an antique baby grand piano circa 1915, although it could be as old as 1895. For free. It's heavy as hell, and it doesn't really fit in my house, and it needs some restoration. But by God, it's there now.

As for now, I have some last minute Derby galoshes to pick up, last day of class with my experiemental students (so sad!), and a metric ton of portfolios to grade when I get back. So, updates probably will be sparse.

Just know I'm having a fabulous time! :D

-- Dante's Virgil

Moving On

2009-04-21T08:43:00.002-04:00

I've been a bit busy for updates, as I've been sitting on a committee to discover the new "me." Because of the kind of work I did this past semester, the Provost approved another "me" position; we've been searching for the right person and interviews were concluded yesterday. Unless something goes horribly awry, I think I have a new co-worker -- and I'm excited to start working with him. The experience of sitting on a hiring committee has been invaluable to me, because it gives you the insider's perspective of what a hiring committee is really looking for, what little things in your portfolio they evaluate; in short, you get The Low Down.

Hiring somebody was a little harder than I thought it would be. We went through all the applications separately and made our top tier list. Then we had to agree on who would make the final cut. That wasn't easy at all. I lost my top two prospects, but I also successfully kept a couple of very not good teachers out of the interview process. It's a war of attrition. But in the end, I'm satisfied with how the top three turned out. The interviews themselves were ... interesting. One candidate was absolutely wonderful, and one bombed completely; the other was a bit dicier, and it was more of a judgment call, but I think we made the right decision.

Apparently last year, when I was hired, there was some backlash from the people who interviewed but didn't get it -- complaining about seniority and that sort of thing all over the place. Either it wasn't too bad or I was oblivious, because I didn't hear anything about it. We had to talk about strategies to handle such a possibility again. Naive little me had never reckoned that would be an issue, so that has my feathers a little ruffled, considering the announcement will probably be made at the end of this week if all goes well.

Boy I have some good stories to tell about it, too, but I don't want to risk publishing them here! Gah. But the good news is, I think I have somebody I can work with and who would do a really good job. And I like him. He has all the requirements this job needs -- except he doesn't appear to be a hellraiser. But I can teach him that. It's what I do for a living anyway.

-- DV

Twitterific

2009-04-13T20:41:00.002-04:00

I'm now a Twitter-er.

You can find me via my normal internet handle: Dante's Virgil.

I already have two followers, and they're students. Gack.

This could've been a poor choice....

-- DV

A Twitter to Contemplate

2009-04-09T20:33:00.002-04:00

So, if I were on Twitter, this is what I would say.

What is DV doing?

DV is: harassing strippers in T-minus-20 minutes....

Let's hope they're better than the last botched encounter I had with strippers.

-- DV

Mommy Is So Proud!

2009-04-09T08:02:00.001-04:00

So, yeah, homework around our house is a hostile event. It's terrorist threat level red. We do on average 1 1/2 hours of extra drill plus whatever homework happens to be required at the moment every night except for Saturday. We practice spelling, because Dante seems to be slightly dyslexic. We drill in math. We read comprehension sheets. I have fully resigned myself that this will be what I must do for six days out of every week for middle school and for high school as well until Dante graduates. I'm prepared for it mentally. Sometimes it feels like something of a siege mentality; but Dante plain old doesn't like school. It's not school's fault. He'd just rather be rolling in the grass. Many times it's easy to lose sight of the forest for the trees, to forget that there is more to being a good parent than helping your kid understand fraction simplification.

Dante reminded me that everything will be just fine last night.

He was looking through the Scholastic book order sheets he brought home. He stopped on one title called "America's Dumbest Criminals." He put the paper down, looked at me, and said in a very offended tone:

"You know what? Isn't it bad enough that they have to, you know, go to JAIL for doing something bad? Do they have to be embarrassed by making a book about it for everybody to read? That's just wrong."

He then gave a very disgusted snort and tossed the paper across the room. Human dignity recognized as an essential human right. Check. Demonstration of righteous indignation. Check.

I don't know if that's good parenting, a genetic predisposition toward flag waving and brick throwing, or just his personality.

But I'm so goddamn proud right now I can't stand myself.

-- DV

Twitterpated

2009-04-08T12:00:00.000-04:00

So...a couple of my keener students want me to start "Twittering." If I hadn't known already what Twitter was, I would've been highly confused and/or offended at the suggestion. At this point, I'm on the fence. Input on this matter will be greatly appreciated.

I went to check Twitter out, and turns out it's essentially microblogging.

This is how it works, according to Twitter:

With Twitter, you can stay hyper–connected to your friends and
always know what they’re doing. Or, you can stop following them any time. You can even set quiet times on Twitter so you’re not interrupted. Twitter puts you in control and becomes a modern antidote to information overload.

Twitter answers the basic question: What are you doing? I'm not sure that's a very important question to answer on a daily basis. I'm not sure I want to be hyper connected to anyone, nor do I think I want them knowing what I'm doing constantly. I do not believe this is the "modern antidote" to information overload. On the contrary, I believe it is the latest addition to info overload--why would anyone care what I was doing in the next five minutes? How can this possibly be information worth knowing?

On the other hand...
........ I love blogging.

My updates may not reflect it, but I think about blogging all the time. But as you may have noticed, I'm not exactly good at short blogs. Anything journal-oriented usually turns into a long diatribe. Twitter is about pithy-ness. I'm not sure I can do pithy. But I like the concept of the microblog.

I love blogging because I love writing. I love teaching writing, I love figuring out the formula for a particular genre, I love reading other people's writing. I love watching writing develop. I'm probably one of the few people who loves student conferences. And I love my own writing. I like scholarly writing (when it's about stuff I'm interested in); I especially love my own creative writing. I am so looking forward to getting into May and getting back to my creative pieces and sending them out again. And as it turns out, there's two particular fiction genres that I love the most out of all writing.

It's called flash fiction and short short fiction.

Flash fiction or "short shorts" are extremely short stories. Flash is usually 1000 words or less. Short shorts (which sound like a clothing item from 1995) are between 1000 and 2500 words. What is recognized as a "short story" usually starts at 2500 words and goes up from there. I am most comfortable with short shorts and flash (a combination that sounds like doing something lewd in public in 1995). I wrote short shorts and flash before I knew they were credible genres. It's what I do best, and it's what I love to read. The point is to engage the imagination and to create impact--sort of like the way a pebble ripples a still pond. A good flash story makes the reader do the work--the reader creates scenes and imaginings that aren't textually there. Here's a good example from Papa Hemingway, and currently the shortest flash story I know of:

For Sale: Baby shoes; never worn

Very Twitter worthy. All the imaginings of how this happened or why are up to the reader. It's heavy with possible meaning. It's probably the JW in me, but we were also raised to see heavy meaning in the "flash fiction" of a Bible verse. Gad, you just can't ever get away from it.

So maybe I will, and maybe I won't Twitter. I don't know yet.

Maybe I'll consider it "flash blogging."

-- DV

WV Shockingly Does the Right Thing

2009-04-06T14:51:00.004-04:00

OK, I had a righteous rant all prepared for my WV state legislature, but the threat of it in my previous posts clearly made the state officials do the right thing. My rant was going to be about how WV had a bill making its way through the legislature to encode discrimination for marriage into the state constitution, a la California's Prop 8. Here's a link to the story about the bill: bill goes down in blaze of glory

The Senate approved a bill earlier on March 14 that protected gays in WV from discrimination in job hiring/firing--massive progress for this state; the House (I believe) still has to vote on it, but I don't see how it wouldn't pass. Now the House has stopped the discrimination for marriage bill cold. We're also probably not done quite yet. The Family Policy Council (har) has tried to "name and shame" some of the people who prominently spoke out against the bill--a bullying tactic that should be seen for what it is: intimidation by Christian fanatics. This bill was eventually to go before the voters, if it were approved by the House, but it was stalled in committee; this pissed off Republicans, who moved to take it out of committee to a full House vote, where they got thumped 67-30. Democratic legislators have questioned the motives behind the amendment, which I think is an important starting point.

This is progress of a sort. We do have a law that requires marriage certificates in WV to say "marriage is designed to be a loving and lifelong union between a woman and a man." Snort. But I don't see any evangelicals persecuting people who choose to divorce. This bill was brought forward by evangelicals, and that in itself pisses me off. They are the loudest group bitching about having other beliefs "forced" on them; but they're the first group to try to have discrimination that favors them coded into the law. The Family Policy Council of WV reportedly called the revision committee chairwoman and the head of the House Judiciary Committee with abusive phone calls (how very Christ-like of them). That we continue to allow them to intimidate others in our society is beyond my ability to comprehend.

The Republican minority leader, Tim Armstead believes, "This is an urgent issue. It's an issue that needs to be addressed." WHY? Why must we rush to approve discrimination for marriage? Because that's exactly what you're doing when you support a ban on gay marriage--coding discrimination into your state laws. People have yet to demonstrate a logical reason to keep gay people from enjoying the same legal protections and tax breaks that hetero people enjoy. The concept that this will somehow damage hetero marriage defies logic--stupid and selfish hetero people damage hetero marriages. Gays have nothing to do with it. The rhetoric about "imposing" gay marriage also makes me laugh. Because it implies that now, by law, you MUST go and get Gay Married right away. So hurry up, readers, and go get your gay spouse. After all, it's now The Law.

We need to continue to question the motives behind these moves. Because what is at stake is maintaining cultural dominance. It is absurd to believe that gays getting married somehow cheapens, or worse, destroys your own marriage. What you are asking for when you ask for discrimination is to be the dominant one instead of equals. You are asking for special privileges over other groups of people, and you believe that you are entitled to these privileges because of your religious choice. Rights for all people is supposedly something this nation in particular strives hard for (even though that idea was given the lie from the very start). Here's to hoping the WV legislature continues to do the right thing.

-- DV, heading out to get "gay married" because It's The Law.

Grading LOL

2009-03-31T10:30:00.003-04:00

So, I'm busy grading essays and sitting on a hiring committee, so posting has once again ground to a halt. But I had to take a moment to share one of the most hilariously true lines I've ever read in student writing at the moment. He is working on a paper that incorporates scholarly sources, newspaper sources, web sources, etc. And for students who aren't used to being discriminating about their material, this part is really hard. Especially if they're used to just hitting up Google to figure out what's going on. This student is most definitely one of those students. In his introduction as part of his frustration at both his subject matter and the research process he writes about how difficult it is to figure out the causes behind the problem he's researching. Then, he writes:

"There are a million points that can be brought up about the subject that would just raise more questions. The internet produces no answers and confuses us all."

Truthiness.

-- DV

All is Not Peachy in Georgia

2009-03-27T15:06:00.000-04:00

Cheesy title, I know. From Oklahoma we move to Georgia (don't worry, WV, I'm coming back around to you), where legislators there have decided that the best way to shore up their state budget is to do what they always want to do and go pick on the university: GA legislators have too much time on their hands.

The grand gist of their scheme is to go through the listed research categories of professors at the school and see what they can get rid of that doesn't fit their own agenda, herein labeled "unnecessary." Unsurprisingly, the thing that doesn't fit happens to do with being gay. Here are some excerpts.

Facing a $2.2-billion budget shortfall, the lawmakers say they are working with conservative Christian organizations to pressure the state’s Board of Regents to fire instructors like a University of Georgia professor who teaches a graduate course on queer theory.

“Our job is to educate our people in sciences, business, math,” state Rep. Calvin Hill was quoted as saying by the news service. Professors aren’t going to meet those needs “by teaching a class in queer theory,” he added. The lawmakers took aim at some of the faculty members after reading about them in an annual guide to faculty experts issued by one of the universities for publicity purposes.

University officials responded by explaining that the instructors were not teaching “how-to” courses, but on the sociological issues surrounding topics such as oral sex and male prostitution.

The article then goes on to say that teaching a course in criminology does not prepare a person to be a criminal, and you can almost read the for Christsakes! after it. Because after all, why bother studying the culture around you and how it works? Maybe if you don't study about it, you'll think it's perfectly OK for politicians to come in and dictate what sort of learning needs to happen, and they can get away with it. How much money is being wasted by some moron in the state capital perusing the annual guide to faculty members and circling the ones that say "gay"? Have they nothing better to do? I noticed philosophy and ethics didn't make Hill's list of important subjects. Maybe that explains how all the business majors got the nation in this fucking mess in the first place? And as for championing the sciences, Mr. Republican Hill probably supports his party's stance on things like stem cell research and evolution. If you really support science, get out of it's way. The last member of the intellectual Trinity on Calvin Hill's list is math, and herein is the most beautiful part.

Hill recently launched this little tidbit on his website:
Did you realize that every month, 200 to 300 young girls are sexually exploited in the state of

Georgia? Yes, you heard correctly, 200-300 girls a month right here in
Georgia. With almost 100 of them engaged in street prostitution, another 100
exploited through escort services and more than that appearing in Craigslist or
servicing their johns in major hotels. This exploitation of our young girls has
really turned into an epidemic. This is why I recently co-chaired a committee
on the commercial sexual exploitation of children and we presented our findings
and legislative initiatives this morning at a Capitol press conference.

Why, Representative Hill, where do you suppose those numbers came from? The math department? NO. From people studying PROSTITUTION. Which obviously doesn't mean they're out picking up prostitutes, but rather they are studying the issue for its cultural implications to give you facts and figures you can use to make society better.

Funny how research in something other than math, the sciences and business can sometimes do that, isn't it? Got any better way to make your salary?

-- DV

Clearly We Do Not Have Enough To Do

2009-03-25T10:46:00.006-04:00

It's not like there's an economic crisis or two wars going on or anything. State legislatures must be really trying to earn their paychecks this year--or maybe they're trying to distract themselves and their constituents from the misery of the rest of the world by coming up with new ways to fuck us over socially while reality does so fiscally and physically. I have several posts forthcoming on this, but let me start with good, old Oklahoma.

Because this is the 200th anniversary of Darwin's death, many universities are celebrating "Darwinfest." My university, like others, plans to hold a series of lectures by leading thinkers in the field to show how Darwin's ideas have been dealt with in the past two hundred years. The University of Oklahoma was lucky enough to get Richard Dawkins to come and speak--for FREE--at their university. This did not sit well with the Oklahoma state legislature, who drafted up a response to it. Here is the link to both proposals in the legislation: OK has freakout about Richard Dawkins. And here are some snippets from those proposals:

A Resolution expressing disapproval of the actions of the University of
Oklahoma to indoctrinate students in the theory of evolution; opposing the
invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak on campus; and directing
distribution
WHEREAS, not only has the Department of Zoology at the University of
Oklahoma been engaged in one-sided indoctrination of an unproven and unpopular theory but has made an effort to brand all thinking in dissent of this theory as anti-intellectual and backward rather than nurturing such free thinking and allowing a free discussion of all ideas which is the primary purpose of a university
WHEREAS, the invitation for Richard Dawkins to speak on the campus of the
University of Oklahoma on Friday, March 6, 2009, will only serve to further the indoctrination engaged in by the Department of Zoology at the University of Oklahoma by presenting a biased philosophy on the theory of evolution to the exclusion of all other divergent considerations rather than teaching a scientific concept.
NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE 1ST SESSION OF THE 52ND OKLAHOMA LEGISLATURE: THAT the Oklahoma House of Representatives hereby expresses its disapproval of the current indoctrination of the Darwinian theory of evolution at the University of Oklahoma and further requests that an open, dignified, and fair discussion of this idea and all other ideas be engaged in on campus which is the approach that a public institution should be engaged in and which represents the desire and interest of the citizens of Oklahoma.

So many problems, so little time. What happened in addition to the legislative act is that OK Representative Rebecca Hamilton then demanded that U of O submit to her and the OK legislature copies of everything showing how much Dawkins was paid and all receipts showing compensation he may have gotten from this event, including where the money came from, costs to the University for hosting him, including things like "security" and "faculty time", as well as all correspondence between Dawkins and the University--emails, letters, etc. Here is the "smoking gun" PDF about it: Hamilton wastes OK taxpayer's salary money.

The resolution is disturbing for a number of reasons, most notably it's stupidity and hypocrisy, and the request is equally disturbing for its intimidation tactics. Here's a thought: free exchange of ideas is NOT best determined by people sitting in governmental power. The OK legislature is an exercise in why that is very true. By trying to pass a resolution, which is really just a way of saying "We really don't like what you did, Nyah!", the State is trying to frighten the university into selecting speakers that won't conflict with the ethics of the legislators; it's at least an attempt at intimidation by irritation and mindless paperwork. By requesting things like emails and correspondence as well as the names of people (private citizens included) who may have donated to help bring Dawkins, one of the most famous scientists in the world) to Oklahoma, Rep. Hamilton is trying to scare the university into only choosing those speakers which fit the legislator's agenda. Free and open exchange of ideas indeed! Asking for email is usually only done when you assume that you are going to find something damning in the correspondence. I suppose Hamilton thinks that she is going to see an exchange saying "Please, Richard, come and indoctrinate our gullible students with your atheistic biology." RD replies, "Certainly, I'd be glad to." Asking for proof of where the money came from insinuates that the money has been spent improperly and it intimidates private citizens from donating to intellectual causes that may happen to cross the government.

I'm not sure where the OK state legislature got their degrees, but if they set foot anywhere near a biology classroom in the past century they would have discovered that evolution is far from an "unproven and unpopular theory." It's not some newfangled political and social conspiracy foisted upon the sciences. There are NO other valid theories to replace evolution, the debate has long since shifted to how the details work. I assume they're thinking about Intelligent Design, although you'll note the chickens chose not to call it out by name. The free exchange of ideas includes those which the legislature may not personally want to hear about--it cuts both ways. The primary goal of a university is NOT to let everyone have a say, no matter how ridiculous. It's to teach a person knowledge--we are all still waiting for someone to prove ID. This concept of "indoctrinating" students assumes they are so infantile as to not be able to tell the difference.

Honestly, Oklahoma, don't you have better things to waste taxpayer money on? I think Oklahomans should demand proof of how much time and money was spent investigating this silliness by the legislature. In triplicate. Seriously, if the "desire and interest of the citizens of Oklahoma" is to remain in the Stone Age, they have their state legislature to thank for it.

Go, Dawkins.

-- DV

link to Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education

The Real Test Behind the New Piss Test

2009-03-13T11:49:00.002-04:00

Yay, let's pick on the poor! A WV delegate has introduced a bill that is causing quite a bit of controversy in this state. It reveals, in my opinion, the fundamental divide in how people tend to look at those who receive public money. Heres' the link to the article cited below:

Forbes article

The bill calls for random drug tests to be undertaken by the Division of Human Services. If a person fails, they'll be given a second test in 30 to 60 days. If they fail again, they'll lose their public assistance.

It's intended for anyone receiving benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, unemployment compensation or "welfare," which could refer to the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program, the Women, Infants and Children program, or both.

Regardless, that's a substantial slice of the state's population, with roughly 288,000 West Virginians receiving food stamps alone, according to the latest federal figures. With estimates cited by Blair that drug tests cost from $50 to $150 a pop, the bill could be pricey, depending how many random tests are administered each month.

Blair is following up one of the typical beliefs about people who take public assistance--that they're all lazy and drug addicted. His bill represents the idea that if we could just "catch them in the act", we'd move all those lazy people off the dole and force them into employment. There are a number of problems with this line of thinking, but I don't have to tell Blair that. His own party isn't too happy about it and has publicly said so.

There's also the fact that the stiffest criticism of the idea so far has come from one of Blair's fellow Republicans: Randolph County Sen. Clark Barnes.

Barnes once collected unemployment compensation and food stamps after losing a job in the 1970s, and said, "I can't imagine having to suffer the insult of taking a drug test in addition to that."

He says Blair's proposal is contrary to the party's stance on Constitutional rights and civil liberties.

"As Republicans, we always complain about regulation, regulation, regulation," Barnes said. "But some of our leading Republicans, when it's politically profitable, want to create more regulations and more government."

Blair, who got the idea for the bill after hearing that five children were recently born in an Eastern Panhandle hospital with drug addictions, disagrees. He's confident his bill won't meet the same fate as a similar Michigan law, which was struck down by a court in 2003.

"We're not trying to hurt people, we're trying to help them get off drugs and get back to work," Blair said. "There are people who go out and sell their blood for money, do all kinds of things for money. Who out there wouldn't be happy to pee in a cup for a $300-a-week check?"

Who, indeed? One of the arguments for this bill is that regular employees are often drug tested randomly as well, as a condition of employment. Why shouldn't this apply to people getting benefits from the state? On the face of it, that softens the punch somewhat. But you first have to overlook the problems with drug testing at work in order to apply it to this new set of people. Some employers have a legitimate reason to drug test; some jobs require you to maintain a certain level of awareness, or lives could be endangered. Some employers drug test just to be shits about it. Even pretending for a minute that people smoke pot, for example, before they go into work (which doesn't tend to be the case for regular pot users), coming to work fully buzzed and running Microsoft Excel hurts no one. Someone who smokes pot once every six weeks or so, the amount of time THC usually stays in your pee, and then goes on to answer the switchboards is probably not a danger to his job or the rest of the people working there or calling in. Most people are recreational users of pot. You don't normally bust a heroin addict with a piss cup test. They usually self-defeat their employment in other ways before they even make it to the piss cup test. Most drug testing is a major infringement of personal privacy, with no proven economic and employment benefits, and that is because they are usually only looking for pot. Turning up other harder drugs is very rare. They would do better to test people for being alcoholics--that has a far greater impact on the job than pot does. but I digress.

But part of the outrage of this bill besides the invasion of privacy, the sketchiness of the advantages and the costs is the inherent unfairness that lies at the heart of it. When we think about who gets public money, we tend to falsely think of only one group of people. I think Delegate Susman cut to the chase in a recent interview on the bill:

article link

Susman called the Blair proposal “not only an outrage” but impractical to boot.

“Why not demand the same thing for white-collar criminals — corporate executives who have profited from recent congressional largess, movie stars who make obscene amounts of money for marginal work, those who enjoy a large tax refund each year or members of the Legislature?” she asked.

Wouldn't we stand to gain more by making sure the biggest consumers of public money were also not coke heads and thus undeserving of the public dole? How about we start with AIG execs (or their equivalent in West Virginia), and see how happy they are to take the piss cup test. We should certainly apply that here in West Virginia to the construction companies that benefit from state money--every single one of their workers should pass the piss cup test or have the funds revoked. Then we'll move on to retirees and public school teachers (including the new President of WVU, who I'm sure, would agree that there is nothing undignified about being asked to take a piss test) and see how they feel about it. I'm sure they'd all be grateful, too.

Blair has, of course, provided no projected numbers for his proposal that would demonstrate success. He has also not explained how once we find drug addicted people and kick them off welfare how this would help people get off drugs and get back to work. Logically, doesn't that mean they need to use their medical card to go to rehab and that they need to use gov't programs to get their education and job skills up to par? If this is truly about helping people kick the habit and get back to work, and not just about picking on the poor because they're an easy target and it's politically palatable with some voters, the bill does not provide any explanation of what is to happen to help people do that after they are caught. Blair is merely working off the suspicion that there will be a substantial enough amount of people who will be caught in the act to justify the cost of the testing. Or, he doesn't care and just wants the political points.

Let's say for a minute that he is right to be suspicious. I am, after all, not suggesting that there are NO people who are on welfare who take drugs, just that the number of people he's after is a small pool. Let's say that there are people taking drugs who are on unemployment. I hate to break it to Delegate Blair, but there are plenty of people who take drugs and maintain employment just fine. Drugs are not a barrier to employment, unless you're looking for crack fiends. Testing for drugs will turn up marijuana, at best, and then for only a few people, maybe, and then you won't be catching the serial abusers, who have long since learned how to manipulate the "pee in the cup" test. And how much will he have spent at this point to catch them? And how much more is he planning on spending to rehab them and retrain them?

What Blair needs to understand is that the barrier to employment in West Virginia is not drugs. It's illiteracy. We have one of the most uneducated workforces in the country. We also have very few jobs here for people to go into--the town I live in is booming, but that's not true for the rest of the state; we're a university town and a satellite town of Pittsburgh. We're an anomaly. I'm not sure where he thinks the rest of the people who live here are going to go to work once they're caught. Blair would do better to focus on providing educational rehabilitation and to make WV attractive to businesses who want to come to our many small towns and offer jobs.

Start working on making West Virginia less available to people who want to rape its natural resources at the expense of the people who live here. Quit picking on the poor. This "test" is nothing more than a test about people's preconceived notions.

-- DV

Publish or Perish!

2009-03-11T11:18:00.006-04:00

In the world of academia, there is a slogan any faculty members with a research component to their jobs fear and dread: Publish or Perish. To us, it means that in order to stay in academia, make tenure, have a decent life, not be relegated to community college, you have to publish stuff--studies, articles books--or you're doomed. But right now I'm thinking of the other thing Publish or Perish means to me--and that is the reams of fundamentalist literature I used to peddle myself as a former JW and that I get now from other even smaller fringe movements.

I'm not sure why I'm always the target of fringe fundamentalist pamphlets, but I am. Batmite and JP can attest to the number of Optical Illusion Jesus posters I got while in grad school, complete with testimony of how the Lord gave Besty $5,537.03. Which I found interestingly specific. I will occasionally get the flyer for an upcoming seminar; I actually meant to go to the one where all the end times stuff was going to be revealed by a guy who looked like he was my neighbor in a trailer a few doors down. I got my wires crossed and missed that one.

A few days ago, I got another one from Marvelous Light Ministries in Smalltown, PA. It's a booklet called Breaking One Means Breaking Ten, and it has a fantastic picture of somebody's brown Doc Martin cracking some stone tablets labeled "GOD'S LAW." It's supposed to be the typical story about how a calm, level headed religious person bests a foolish doubter. But it was sort of hard for me to get past the first paragraph. I think I'll keep a collection of these for when I need a good giggle:

In the neighborhood where I once lived, there was an infidel whose chief delight it was to invite ministers to his home and then confuse them with his infidel arguments. He boasted that he always silenced them and sent them away defeated. He had tainted nearly all the young men of the community with his infidelity, and was dreaded by the church people.

LOL. The infidel then invites this minister to dinner and proceeds to call the ten commandments childish and poorly written, the minister demonstrates their "logic," and the infidel is bested.

Without realizing what he had done, the infidel had stood, moved his chair nervously, and had seated himself again where the light from the window, falling on his face, revealed evidence of deep conviction.

Gotta love that foreshadowing. The group also offers other pamphlets to strengthen your faith in the logic of God's words. They include the following titles:

"Are You Breaking 'The Law'?" Who thought they had the right to change God's Law? Have you been tricked into breaking it? The future of your life depends on the answer! (Oh no! Have I been tricked?!)

"The Coming One World Government" (hard to tell if they think that's a good thing or a bad thing)

"Our Liberties Threatened" There is a movement rapidly gaining ground in the United States, which is absolutely antagonistic to the laws and principles which are the foundation stones of the Constitution of the United States. Read this booklet and discover what that movement is, and what you can do about it! (Seems to have nothing to do with Jesus, but probably has everything to do with Teh Gheys.)

And my personal favorite:

"Rome's Challenge -- Why Do Protestants Keep Sunday?" Rome's challenge to Protestants -- your belief in Sunday sacredness is groundless, self-contradictory, and SUICIDAL! (AAAHHHHH!!!)

The books have comments like "Incredible!" or "A Powerful Book!" Kind of like when the NY Times reviews books--only these remarks are not attributed to anyone. It would be the same as if I put them in the banner of my blog. "Best Blog on the Web." Um, per who, exactly? The other titles are only about fifty cents a pop. The Rome one is .75, so there must be 50% more good stuff in it. But...I can't order them without giving my name. I don't want to be super inundated by fundies.

But then, maybe it's my "chief delight" to call them up and confuse them all with my "infidel arguments."

-- DV

Barbie Goes to Washington

2009-03-09T20:52:00.000-04:00

Our dear state delegate Jeff Eldridge has introduced a bill to ban Barbie from being sold in WV on the grounds that she causes little girls to develop self esteem problems.

Sigh.

This is hardly a new argument. In fact, one of the best places to read about it is a book called The Barbie Chronicles (back when she turned 40 instead of this year's 50). It has various personal essays on whether Barbie did or did not cause a change to the self esteem of little girls. Bottom line? Too inconclusive to legislate against. Some people do seem disturbed by Barbie. Some people are disturbed at her proportions, which are truly out of whack. I can't find the original source, but I've seen displays that suggest if she were a "real" person, she'd be 7 ft 2 inches and have a neck twice the size of a normal human; her measurements would be: 39-23-33. If a real woman were to have Barbie's proportions (in ratio to human measurements) she would likely have to walk on all fours in order to move. Some women who wrote essays in that book were disturbed by her lack of actual body parts, like, say, nipples. They found her creepy. Some women were disturbed by her grotesque feet, permanently carved into high heel shape (four inch heels, of course).

I will tell you my own Barbie story.

I discovered Barbie when I was about eight or nine years old in the mid to late 80s. I got my first Barbies because they were my cousin's castoffs. I thought they were friggin awesome. For me, they were stand ins for "real life", a way of working out fantasies of adulthood. I was the primary audience for the Barbie slogan I remember: We girls can do anything, right Barbie? To me, Barbie was the first feminist I remember. She was liberated--only later did she conform to having a family, and then she did whatever she wanted to, and the kids were accepted into her jobsite and vacation plans (at least when we were playing with them). She had a variety of jobs, and even if you only had one Barbie, you could get her business suits, doctor's clothes and accessories, pretty much whatever you wanted. Sister and I collected Barbies, and eventually we had a Barbie village on the top floor of our playhouse our dad built for us. It was the size of a very small apartment.

It was Barbie Universe.

I made Barbie condominiums to go with the few Barbie houses we had inherited from this same cousin. And you know what? They all had jobs. Because we had lots of Barbies, and they could do anything--all at once. When we Played Barbie, which was a very serious event that took most of the weekend, they all went to work. The Barbie kids went to school where there was a teacher for them. There was a Barbie DJ who ran the radio station (she sat on top of the radio we had out there). I put out a Barbie magazine that fit in all their little Barbie plastic stiff hands. All Barbies got a copy, and it was illustrated. Barbies provided beauty services, and all Barbies could expect to get a haircut at least once. I made a movie theater out of a shoebox, turned on its side with slits cut in either end; I stapled panels of paper together and drew pictures on each panel, and then wrote a script and fed the paper in one end of the shoebox and pulled it out the other while reading the script. Sister absolutely loved it, but it took me all day to make a "movie." We were also racially integrated in Barbie Universe. We realized early on that our town was too "white." So, we purposely went out and bought black Barbies and a Barbie we thought was more or less Latina (although I think she was supposed to be Hawaian Barbie or "Midge" or something). We had Barbie politicians. Barbie "business women". One Barbie was a landlord. Some Barbies were stay at home moms.

Kens, however, weren't very well represented in Barbie Universe. They dated the other Barbies, but the Barbies regularly tossed them out of the condominiums or fired them because they were lazy. If I recall correctly, Ken dominated the servant industry, usually chauferring Tycoon Barbie (one was really rich and did something with "stock" although we weren't really sure what that even meant) around in the pink Corvette. We had one Stay at Home Dad Ken--I believe he was the husband of Tycoon Barbie, so she could go get some real work done. Sometimes Barbies fought over a Ken (banging said dolls together until one's head popped off--that meant Victory), but they soon realized that Ken wasn't worth it, and then both Barbies kicked him out of both apartments, and he was left to fend for himself. He was usually very apologetic, but he had to move on and find a different Barbie, because the last two weren't interested anymore. Our Kens were also racially diverse, and all Barbies and Kens dated based on personality (which they all had clearly defined personalities) rather than race. A year ago I found a legal document we had written up (it fits into plastic Barbie hands, too) and put in a "safe place". It was a divorce paper, signed "Barbie." Fuck you, Ken.

Barbie was everything at once, like a Hindu god with multiple faces. She did everything, because we believed we could do anything. Not because Barbie told us we could, but because our Daddy did (who was nothing like Ken, but feared we might end up with the version of Ken we tossed around the playhouse). So we played with Barbie based on our own previously established self esteem. Barbie play was a manifestation of our own self worth, not the maker of it.

I didn't have a problem with Barbie not having nipples. Why? Because she was a fucking toy. Toys aren't supposed to be exactly like real life. If anything, Ken's genitals were the more confusing thing. Have you ever seen a Ken doll undressed? It makes Barbie's lack of holes highly forgiveable.

So, leave Barbie the hell alone. If you want to go after something, go after those Bratz dolls. They're the stripper whores of the Barbie Universe.

-- DV