Jul 31, 2008

Key Words

I was looking at the report that lists search terms that people use to find my blog. I find some really strange and some rather funny given the post that the person would have landed on. Here are some highlights and the links to the respective searches...

And the one that makes me a little nervous...

Jul 30, 2008

"I Cannot Live Without Books"

Recently I received an email that asked something along the lines of "could you please tell me what books we are going to actually talk about in X class." When I read this, I instantly had a reaction that I won't repeat here, but I was shocked that someone would a) imply that I would require books that weren't going to be read/talk about and b) that even if someone thought this, he/she would be ballsy enough to ask. This morning when I was replying to the email, I started thinking about how I use books. I decided that today's post would be about how I interact with those books.

I have books in nearly every room in my house (the bathroom and the laundry room are the only exceptions that I can think of at the moment). I have not read all these books but they are all a part of my everyday life. This is probably largely the result of the fact that I didn't speak until I was quite old (a story for another post) and my parents read to me constantly. I have quotation from Thomas Jefferson on my Facebook page that says "I cannot live without books" and for me it's very true. The email bothered me because it came from someone who I assume doesn't have that perspective.*

For me books fall in several different categories...

Cookbooks: I love cookbooks, but I don't really use recipes. In fact I read cook books for ingredient combos, learn them and then don't generally get them out again. I don't know that I've ever actually made a recipe from a cookbook exactly as stated. For me, I think cookbooks are cathartic because they are both literary and not. I can read to learn, but not feel like it's work.

Classics: my relationship with the canon is complex. I rarely teach canonical works in my classes, but I also feel really bad about selling back a copy that I have. When I was working on my undergrad, I took a class on Shakespeare, and we were required to buy the Riverside Shakespeare. This was the first semester where I ever questioned the practice of selling back books. Have I used the Riverside Shakespeare since that class? No. Have I moved it moved it more than four times in two states? You bet. William Shakespeare doesn't lose money if I sell it, but I feel intensely guilty about selling classics.

Books about Driving: I only decided to add this category because of the number of people who end up on my blog after googling "road trip" and/or "reading" "novel" "adolescent." Books about roads make up a separate part of my books shelf. Sometimes these books are legitimate roadtrips like John Green's An Abundance of Katherines or Joan Bauer's Rules of the Road, and others include a car as a plot device Notes from a Midnight Driver, but all of these books feature the car as a character. These books go in their own section (or pile) because I use them frequently.

Books that I Can't Live Without: I really like my bookshelf to be alphabetized by author and separated by subject (essentially, I like to live in a library), but until we moved in this house, I would pull certain texts aside. They were my "if my house is on fire, I can't leave without these" books. This is not logical. They could be easily replaced. Some have notes, but most of those even could be replaced. This category is not really genre bound. There are childhood books (Make Way for Ducklings, The Secret Garden) and there are theory books (Roberta Trites' Waking Sleeping Beauty). These books are not necessarily books that I use everyday, but are rather books that represent major moments in my literary life. A picture book that I was obsessed with as a child, a critical text that made me realize people studied children's literature, etc.

Books I Teach: I RARELY teach something that I really loved as a child. Most of my syllabus is better described as books that I read as an adult, so these books don't ever overlap with the previous category. I can tell if a book is a "teaching" copy by the way it looks. Teaching copies are full of post-it notes and have lots of things written inside the front and back covers. I used to write out notes for classes and have discovered that putting my quiz or my bullet points for teaching inside the book is more effective for me.

Books I Buys Because They Are Cheap: This category I'm slightly ashamed of. I have lots of books that are not great, but Scholastic was selling them for $1 at one of their warehouse sales and there are very few things that I won't spend a dollar on. Most of these books I haven't read, but they stay on my bookshelf in hopes that someday, someone will ask be for a book about X subject, and I will proudly pull a title off the shelf.

Pleasure Reading: I don't know that this is a good title for the category because it doesn't really reflect the value I place on these books. I try and always have a "pleasure" book in addition to required reading and reading for the classes I teach. Many of these books become essential to my dissertation and to my teaching, but they start as pleasure reading. Someone told me to read Scott Westerfeld's books, so I bought them for this category. These are the books that I read to formulate my ideas for myself not because I "have to" read them.

This is really why I can't answer that student's question because ALL of my books have a purpose and a value for me--even those that I don't read and/or talk about. I still think that the writer of the email that made me think about this was more direct and assertive** than I would have been, but I applaud her for making me spend an afternoon with my books. And, in case you are wondering, we are going to talk about all of the books on my booklists this fall. :)



*before you tell me it's likely an economic thing, I want to clarify that I have been the poor college student majoring in English and I get the cost of books, but I would make other sacrifices to buy the books. Eating out=optional; Books=required. (at least for me)

**Maybe I should recommend course in politeness theory

Jul 29, 2008

Crazy Camera Lady Gets Her Picture

The mystery truck came back, and this time my camera was waiting. Greg says that it was more likely an old paddywagon than a bank truck. Does that make it less weird?



Jul 26, 2008

LOST Road Trip

‘Lost’ creators know how series will end

Stephanie will be here any minute, but I was quickly scanning my reader and the following caught my eye.
They compared the process to a road trip, which can often include alternate routes and unexpected stops.
More to come on this later, but I love that Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof are theorizing the show in terms of road trips. I hadn't thought about the anti-road trip plot, but I'll see where that take me. :)

Jul 25, 2008

Freewriting Prompt #37 or Crazy Camera Lady

There is a very old and beat up white armored truck that has been parked outside my house all morning. Why do you think it might be there? Go...

UPDATE: The people in the truck (and probably some of my neighbors) officially think that I'm nuts. M wanted a pic of the truck, but then I got distracted talking on the phone and it disappeared. I went to have lunch with Greg and realized that I was behind it on my way home. It stopped to pick up a guy that was still at the house across the street. I jumped out of my car and yelled "can you hang on, I just have to get my camera and my friend said I need a picture of your truck on my blog." The guy that they were picking up got in really fast and they drove away before I got back with my camera, but I tried. I think I scared them. Now you'll have to use your imagination. The camera, however, is waiting by the front door should they choose to come back.

Jul 24, 2008

A Milestone



This afternoon, I officially finished my coursework for my PhD. I am officially exhausted, but very, very excited. A good friend told me before I started my PhD that grad school is more about endurance than intelligence. She's right. 14 classes after I started this endeavor, I'm very tired (emotionally, physically, and intellectually). I know that finishing coursework does not by any means equal done with a PhD, but it's a huge relief.

Tonight I am celebrating with a few friends, but I was so excited to finish that shortly after submitting my final project, I sent a mass email announcing the submission of my final project. For those who think that may have been cheesy, the end of coursework means that I now get to work exclusively on my research for the first time in...well ever!

Now the countdown to ABD begins...

For M...

M really likes thunderstorms, and I recently joked that we would celebrate the end of coursework by sitting on the front porch sipping margaritas during a thunderstorm. It looks like we will.




Jul 23, 2008

The 11th Hour...

In exactly 11 hours I will be officially finished with course work FOREVER!!!

The wiki is nearly done. I should keep working, but instead I am going to bed. There will be no all-nighters on the last night of coursework. I refuse.

Jul 22, 2008

Things I've learned on the trail...

So far the biking to work thing is going really well. I've cheated a couple of days (Monday for example, we had a terrible storm and they were warning of hail, so I drove), but mostly I've biked everyday. In the process, I've discovered a few things...
  • I drink much less coffee in the morning. Biking two miles wakes me up without the caffeine, but really the thought of drinking hot coffee and biking in the middle of summer just makes me steer clear.
  • I really hate driving now. I'm not sure what exactly I dislike, but if it's too hot to bike somewhere, I'm much more likely to stay home. This is an unexpected eco-friendly benefit.
  • I shower a lot more. This means more water, more shampoo bottles, etc, but in July there really isn't another option. Hopefully this fall, I won't get as stinky.
  • I'm "friends" with people on the trail that I don't know their names. They just happen to be on the trail the same time as me everyday. While waiting to cross a busy street this morning, I ran into the older gentlemen who says hi to me every day. Today he said hi plus "have you lost weight?"
  • People do notice courteous bikers. I always make a point to say hi if someone says hi to me, and I ALWAYS warn people when passing. I frequently see a little boy (about 4-5) on a bike with training wheels. When he sees another bike, he stops and gets off the trail. Last week, he said to his mom "it's okay she's the bike that says hi" and kept riding. This made my day.
  • The shade on the trail is nice, but it also creates a bug breeding ground. Talking while riding can result in the unfortunate ingestion of bugs.
  • Related the above item, Suave has a new body spray that is scented with Grapefruit and Lemongrass, both substances that naturally repel bugs. Plus it doesn't leave with eau de boyscout camp. I don't think this is its intended use, but it works.

Jul 20, 2008

Self-Censorship

I've been thinking a lot lately about the ways in which I silence myself. I don't like confrontation, and so I although I do have strong opinions, I frequently keep them to myself (stop laughing Rakicy) when I perceive the situation/person to be unwilling to even listen to differing opinions. I take it personally when you shut me down, so as a defense mechanism I refuse to allow you the opportunity. Unfortunately, in doing so I shut myself down.

There are people and situations in my life that seem so self absorbed in their own ideologies that they simply say "no" or "you're wrong; I'm right" when confronted with people who don't think like they do. I, on the other hand, really value dialogue. I grew up in an environment where nearly everything was part of a dialogue. Discussion did not equal fight, and conversation was important.

I joked this weekend that my filter was broken, but really I discovered this morning that maintaining that filter (the you're not willing to listen, so I'll have this conversation with myself filter) is exhausting. Sitting in a room where I have self-imposed silence on myself is more exhausting that nearly anything else in my life. One of the things I really like about my group of friends is their openness to actually listening to other ideas. I'm not exhausted when they leave. We don't all think the same, but we don't shut down people for thinking differently.

In the last couple of weeks, I've run into multiple situations (professional and personal) where "different" is used as an insult in disguise. This really bothers me. Of course most of the time, I don't tell the person using it in this way that it bothers me because they aren't interested in a dialogue about the situation. So unfortnately, I realize that as I type this I am telling the people who already value dialogue, but communicating my frustrations makes me feel better--that's why I blog.

Jul 19, 2008

Don't drink and drive, then post on Facebook

I knew police were using Facebook and other social networking sites as evidence because when my sister was hit by a car earlier this year, they reconstructed the scene using information posted on Facebook. You would think after all of the stories about employers and school officials using posted information to punish user, people would quit posting information that could be used against them. If you have been recently arrested for drunk driving, it probably is not a good idea to take pictures of yourself drunk in a "jail bird" costume while awaiting trial. But then again the person that CBS interviewed regarding her current job search might explain why we need to tell people "Don't drink and drive, then post on Facebook"
Her profound comment:
I hope that employers aren't looking at it too in-depthly...I really don't think employers should be basing their opinion on me on Facebook.

Employers may or may not look at her "in-depthly" (is that even a word?) but judges and juries may.

Jul 18, 2008

Time For Some Campaignin'

Think how much better tv would be if we got rid of all campaign ads that weren't produced by JibJab :)

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Jul 17, 2008

"Big Brother" Counts Calories?

I participate in a couple of message boards that have been discussing New York's recent push to require calorie content on menus of chain restaurants and have been shocked to see how many people are passionately objecting to the law. At least one of the boards is comprised of people who are there because they have an interest in healthy cooking, there is resistance to the law. To be fair, there's not a ton of resistance, but there is still resistance. On more general message boards, however, people are quite outraged.

Since weight loss and nutrition are both very personal issues for me, I've been thinking about this a lot. More than one study has shown that the United States has an obesity problem and more than one study has shown that knowledge is a key component to weight loss. Food Diaries have also recently been shown to be a key to weight loss as well. I have to admit that this is an area I struggle with because my mental diary often turns out to be faulty, but part of my resistance to an actual diary is that the nutritional info and the food are not simultaneously together. While that is no excuse for my own slip-ups, I find the objections to this law very interesting:
  • The Big Brother objection: a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a similar use of Orwell's term in a letter to the editor about car insurance. Personally, I think that people are throwing around this term a little too much and not really thinking about what they are saying. In the case of nutritional info, the objection here seems to be that requiring restaurants to publish the info infringes on the consumers right to choose for him/herself. I don't see the issue here. Would the fact that a Cheese Danish at Starbucks has 430 calories and 23 grams of fat make me feel guilty about eating it? Yes, in fact, it would probably cause me to choose something else, but would secret govt agents swoop in a physically prevent me from consuming the item? No. True Big Brother is not generally a fan of providing individuals with information.
  • The Cost objection: These people claim that New York's law is going to cost restaurants so much money in reprinting menus that the restaurants will be forced to pass the cost on to consumers everywhere. This nice thing about this objection is that with the current economy and inflation, these people automatically can claim they were right. Prices will go up, but given the fact that our local Chili's has already changed it's menu twice this year, I don't think that the cost will be tied to nutrition info. While Chili's may keep many of the same items on their menu, their physical menu does not stick around for years. I do hate to think of the trees that will be killed in the name of telling people that very little at Olive Garden can be considered "healthy," but I'm pretty sure that Olive Garden was going to kill those trees anyway. So if we are revamping menus on a regular basis and were given a head's up about the law (which they were) this really shouldn't be an issue.
  • The People Don't Need to Be Saved from Themselves Objection: This camp's position is pretty self explanatory. I guess these people have a point; we would hope that every American is blessed with common sense and the ability to make the best choices, but does anybody actually trust that that is reality. I would love to say that people who eat unhealthy foods are choosing to do so and are aware of the consequences, but I know that in my own experience it's just not true. I have more than one family member who will order a fried chicken salad with creamy dressing and cheese when he/she wants something "light" or "healthy." Even as a person who considers myself label conscious, I'm much more likely to eat something "bad" if I don't have the info on it (the whole fat grams I don't know about don't count issue). Let's also not forget that at one point a non-smoking section in a restaurant was scandalous and smoking during pregnancy was not considered dangerous. My biggest objection to this argument is that it implies that giving people information is a bad thing. Giving people bad information is a bad thing, but I'm not sure how that applies here.
  • The "public humiliation" objection: I can see that the information may be problematic for some people with eating disorders. I can also see myself making a choice to not eat something because everyone in the room will know how "healthy" the item is, but mostly I can see myself not ordering something because I don't want to "spend" that many calories on that particular object. I can't see a public stoning of the person who sees the calories and then decides they still want the item, but at least they will making an informed choice. Judgemental people are going to be judgement with or without evidence.
  • The "we're killing small business owners" objection: This is the objection of someone who likes to object without reading first. Every major news article that I can find clearly states
    The rule applies only to restaurants that have standardized recipes and that have made nutrition information publicly available on the Internet, printed brochures or other methods as of March 2007.
    Incidentally the way the current law reads, the NYT claims that it will only apply to about 10% of NY restaurants. While in theory, they could pass a law that makes this apply to all restaurants, let's save the "evils of captialism" argument for things actually do penalize small bussiness owners.
In general, I don't see how this law is worth of all the objections. I don't live in NY and I am pretty informed about nutrition, so the law doesn't really have a huge impact on my life, but if it caused me to think twice before ordering a menu item which subsequently led me to lose weight, I would not be upset. I find it odd that we require companies who sell food in grocery stores to provide this information without objection, but the thought of requiring the same of restaurants, sends people screaming "Big Brother."

If you want to read the full NYT article click here: New York Gets Ready to Count Calories - New York Times

Lost and Found: The Moth and Confidence Man

I'm way behind on posting these, so here's my attempt at getting back on track...

The Moth:
  • This is Charlie's withdrawal episode. I mentioned in earlier posts that there seems to be a real disconnect between what we say about honesty and how much information the characters choose to share with one another. Both Locke and Jack openly lie to others about Charlie's situation. This makes me think about the other crimes that characters choose to disclose to their fellow castaways. Michael admits to not having been very involved in his son's life, and it quickly becomes common knowledge that Sayid has a background in torture, yet Jack's alcoholism, Jin's "enforcer" job, Charlie's drug abuse, and Kate's laundry list largely remain hidden. At this point on this island it would make sense for everyone to cautious of revealing past "sins," but it seems odd to me the lengths that some are willing to go to protect the "sins" of others.
  • Kate annoys me. I'd forgotten how long the sexual tension with the Kate, Jack, Sawyer triangle has to go on. It's not so much that I mind the triangle plot line, but the whole part where Kate abandons the transponder in order to run back to Jack's side is what I find rather problematic. I think that I'm bothered by Kate's behavior because at this point, she's the only one who is fawning all over the other. She is constantly abandoning her plans or activities to be with Jack, and this invokes some really problematic stereotypes for me, especially since we are only 8 days into the crash at this point.
  • I love Charlie. I really like that Charlie gets to both screw up and be helpful in this episode, but I really like that the producers chose to let him find his own way out of the cave instead of simply being the labor for someone else's plan.
Confidence Man
  • I hate this episode. The torture really bothers me. Up until this point in the series the violence has been primarily contained to the aftermath of the plane crash (which was well constructed violence as M pointed out) or the mystery of island (the "monster" has claimed one victim), but this episode introduces the intentional and calculated human to human violence. Yes, Sawyer can be a jack@$$, but the whole torture in the jungle was really difficult to watch.
  • I hate that they choose Sayid to instigate the violence here. Invoking his famous homophone namesake, Edward Said's ideas about western conceptions of the "East" seem to be the driving force here. While I recognize that Sayid's character later deconstructs some of these problematic images, we don't get that in this episode. We get a Sayid who is "othered" in more ways than I can count and given that the episode originally aired a little over a year after we invaded Iraq, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the "bad Iraqi" who we will later reveal to be not so bad plot.
  • Sawyer has feelings! In addition to the fact that we genuinely feel sorry for Sawyer after the who torture debacle, we see Sawyer's emotional baggage here as well. I appreciate that Sawyer doesn't pretend to be as innocent as many of his companions, but I also appreciate that we get to see an emotion other than sarcasm (is that an emotion?) or resentment.
  • Breathing is not cool; Boone is right! Inhalers make you a loser. Shannon still annoys me. I feel like she the cheap adolescent chick lit, who has invaded my science fiction novel.

Jul 16, 2008

Red Carpet (Children's Lit edition)

If you don't already read John Greene's blog (or his books), you should check out both. Among other things, he posted this great YouTube video of the "fashion police" at this year's Caldecott/Newbery awards banquet. The video is a little long, but funny.

Evernote v. OneNote Pt 2

Apparently the most popular post on my blog is the one about my thoughts on Evernote and OneNote. Judging by the search terms that get them here, I'm guessing that they are not finding what they are looking for, so after about a month of playing with both, here's my update.

Evernote:
The Pros:
  • The Clipping function is much easier to use. It allows for quite a bit of user control over what is clipped and saves the context in which it was clipped.
  • For non-text clips, it offers easy fairly easy conversions to jpeg. I'm sure that there is an easier way, but at the moment I copy the image out of Evernote, paste it into paint and click save. There is an option to save images in Evernote, but right now, it doesn't offer .jpeg
  • Content can be clipped to downloaded program or online site. Once synced, content can be accessed from either place.
  • Notes can toggle between a "drawing" entry and a "text" entry. The drawing tool provides great entertainment with the appearance of "working."
  • Notes can be emailed via website without setting up an Outlook account.
  • The import wizard will allow it to import OneNote notes (some editability is lost, however).
  • It's free!
  • You can upload files from your phone.
  • You can email files/content to a specified address and they are added to your notebook of choice.
The Cons:
  • Emailing notes at the moment has to be done one at a time.
  • Because it's free, there is a limited amount of storage, unless you upgrade to a pay account.
  • The only way to "share" an entire notebook efficiently is to make the notebook public. No Google sharing options here.
  • It doesn't not export easily. Like emailing notes, saving has to be done one note at a time.
OneNote:

The Pros:
  • Since it's made by Microsoft, notes can be exported as Word Documents (very nice for those who might be using it for research logs that have to be turned in)
  • Multiple clips can be put in the same "note" with text in between (Evernote puts each clip in a separate note)
  • Storage is unlimited because notes are stored on the computer's hard drive.
  • Notes appear in interface that looks like a "notebook." For people that need the visual appearance of an actual notebook with dividers this is nice.
The Cons:
  • It's made by Microsoft (I don't really have to explain that, do I)
  • You have to buy OneNote for each computer you plan to use it one. Our desktop is new and came with it, but I'm not going to shell out $90 to put it on the laptop.
  • Sharing notes is nearly impossible. The directions are convuluted and basically tell you to set up a network among the computers wanting to share in which everyone only saves notes to one location that can be accessed by everyone. (I don't think this is exactly what I would call document sharing).
  • There is no online access.
  • It does not import from One Note (are we really suprised)
In the end, I went with Evernote. Mostly because I don't like the lack of access that I have with One Note. I work from multiple computers and although I would like be able to install a program on each, I don't want to have to pay to do that, and I like the web option even better. I would rather pay $5 a month to upgrade storage if needed and have to portability. I still use One Note occasionally, mostly if I am on the desktop and accidentally copy something to it, but luckily it's easily imported and indexed in my Evernote account.


Jul 14, 2008

More Painting Pics

We finally got the bedroom semi-finished. There's nothing on the walls and please pretend like the comforter and dust ruffle don't look like they've been shoved in the guest room for nearly 3 days. We had to go get a new battery for the Camry, so we didn't get started on putting things back together until late tonight.

Cyclical Thinking

Green Daily published an article about current research regarding Vitamin D this morning. This seems to be a relatively hot topic lately. Oprah talks about it. The morning news shows talk about. Google News lists more than 2,400 articles published on the subject so far this year. Every time I read or hear one of these reports, I'm struck by how cyclical our "panaceas" are.

In the early 20th century, researchers were pushing vitamins in much the same way. This is not say that vitamins are bad or we should or should not take them, but since I have stacks of old advertisements on the subject from an earlier project, I thought I would post some of the interesting ways vitamins were used/talked about when we had this conversation in the early to mid 20th century.

Mid 1920's: Companies like Squibbs published article advertisements touting cod liver oil as "bottled sunshine." Since marketing vitamins to mothers was the current marketing trend of the time, regardless of the content of the article children often appeared pictured. In the 1929 article pictured below, Squibbs announces that it now as a mint flavored cod liver oil that "will appeal to older children."



1930: Sun Wheat develops a vitamin cookie and takes out a full page ad in the Chicago Tribune to promote it. While still aimed at mother's, the companies creation of a "cookie" reveals the shift in advertising toward children. The article blames poor health of the children on mother's who fail at "coaxing" children to eat healthy foods and suggests that children will no longer be denied good health because the children naturally love them.



In May 1940: A New York Times article titled "Nazis Guard Soldier's Diets" reported on the Third Reich's attention to diet and employment of vitamins and careful meal planning for soldiers, pointing to the army's long marches as evidence of the success of the program. Vitamins were described as a modern type of "warfare."

Feb 1942: NYT reports on a meeting the Women's Federation at the Hotel Astor. During the meeting, the invited speaker claimed that the Japan's understanding of vitamins lead to it's imperialism. He told the crowd,
women are asleep in thier kitchens just as we were asleep at Pearly Harbor...The war lords of Japan can smile sardonically at our carelessness [in overcooking vegetables], for they know what this food chemical can do.
In addition to nutrition being responsible for Japan's recent successes, lack of proper nutrition is claimed to drive prostitution and venereal disease. A reprsentative of the State Department told the women that "a bomb can be no more devistating than the slow undermining of a child's health and nervous system by malnutrition, poor home conditions, and inadequate care."

May 1942: The New York Times published an article called "Foods that Build Courage." The article tells of the British governments requirement that breads be fortified a year earlier and the recent interest by the US government in a similar program. In addition to the very oddly placed cartoon of Uncle Sam in a food lab (adjacent to a menu that suggests lamb kidneys and bacon for dinner), the article suggests that it is the "housewives" job to do with the government has not been able to accomplish in order to make sure that their families "have sufficient stamina for whatever the new year may bring." Since the diet being suggested is encouraging B1, with the exception of it's promotion of small amounts of newly enriched flour, it sounds more like the South Beach Diet.



Around the same time, the Chicago Tribune published an article about the correct way to toast bread (I'm not kidding). Apparently there was a widespread fear that all of these new "vitamin" foods were chemically unstable. This is not really surprising since a train derailment in 1910 had revealed that cereal companies where "adulterating" their products with items such as crushed peanut shells and numerous other products were using fraudulent claims in marketing.

In 1944: The Florida Citrus Commission dubbed grapefruits "the commando fruit" and used images of soldiers and young children. The company noted that "Uncle Same has set aside the entire supply of canned grapefruit sections and most of the canned orange juice, blended juice and concentrates" and implied that consuming the civilian juices every day would keep people healthy and strong when and if "danger" struck at home.



My favorite part of this ad, has to be the line at the bottom that declares:
under skies alive with screaming dive bombers--over seas infested with treacherous wolf packs--millions of cans of Florida Grapefruit juice have followed our boys to the ends of the earth--to supply them with precious vitamin C.
I'm picturing bottle of juice with little uniforms, but I don't think that was the effect they were going for.

Jul 13, 2008

Things I miss about Springfield (Chinese Food Edition)

When we lived in Springfield, MO I developed a love/hate relationship with Chinese food. It seems to continue to this day, but when I think about Chinese food, I think of Springfield. Here's why I think of Springfield (and some of my frustrations with cooking it):
  • It was impossible to be in Springfield and not be near a Chinese restaurant, but unfortunately I couldn't eat most of it because of my carrot allergy.
  • I've yet to learn the Chinese word for carrot, so communication about my allergy usually ends up with me getting extra carrots instead of none.
  • We moved to Illinois and while there are Asian restaurants, the fact that you might actually have to drive a couple of miles to get to one seems unacceptable now.
  • The restaurants here don't serve chicken nuggets in gravy ("cashew chicken") or chicken nuggets drenched in high fructose corn syrup (sweet and sour chicken) and then have a drive-thru dedicated to each dish. While I never ate at this particular establishment (which incidentally also sold buffalo wings), I miss seeing it.
  • Chinese take out is extremely fast, but making it at home is very labor intensive and not so fast.
  • I've yet to find rice directions that are accurate. Long cooking rice never takes an hour and quick cooking rice never cooks in five minutes. This results in either watery or scorched rice 90+% of the time.

Jul 12, 2008

The Associated Press: Study: As gas prices go up, auto deaths decline

The Associated Press: Study: As gas prices go up, auto deaths decline

Last week, I was theorizing on the changes that I've seen in ya road trip novels. One theory that I posited was that the rising cost of gas is making the car less accessible to teens, therefore while the car was once the metaphor for economic growth, it is now being replaced by other things. M suggested this might be a shift toward digital mobility rather than physical mobility, and I think she may be right. Recently there was a study that said that the rising gas prices are helping to cut traffic deaths
with the most dramatic drop likely to be among teen drivers.
I find this interesting for a number of reasons. In terms of actual teen drivers, central Illinois has had a really rough couple of years with teen deaths. Illinois has enacted a graduated driver's license program which hardly makes 16 the target year anymore.

Such a program is really interesting to me because of the ways that it mirrors the trend toward an extended adolescence. Most of my undergraduate students still identify themselves as adolescents on some level and the graduated licensing law seems to reflect such a perception of delayed adulthood.

What I find most intriguing about the study, however, is the fact that teen deaths are the most marked decrease. In ya lit cars are often used as punishment for non-adult behavior. You get pregnant, you instantly lose you car. You have sex, you (or your partner) are in a horrible car wreck. You fail to get/keep a summer job the car is taken away. Then of course we have the car removed for drug/alcohol/other anti-social behavior books a well. Cars do two things in ya lit: they enable adult behaviors (sex, jobs, mobility) and they serve as reminders for the ways in which adolescents must concede to growing up and to abiding by the rules of grown ups.

If actual teen deaths from automobile accidents are dropping, I would assume that authors will begin to find a new metaphor for the need to grow up (economically) and the consequences for unsanctioned behavior. Will this be cell phones or computers? I'm curious how this change will resonate in ya lit.

Yet another blog...

The blogosphere has invaded our house once again. Greg has started a blog: Run More Faster. He initially said that he didn't want a blog because he would have to do a lot of writing, but apparently he gave in. Go visit him and see what he has to say about his current running adventures.

Jul 10, 2008

"Gang Hangers" on Bikes

If been accused of being lots of things, but up until this afternoon I'd never been confused for a gang member. That's right, in case you missed it gang members are now 5'3 blonde females who wear grey yoga capris and pink Relay for Life t-shirts along with their blue helmets and backpacks while biking to the grocery store.

The Context: It's been a long day. It was a very long morning and then this afternoon my car battery decided to die and due to scheduling conflicts won't get fixed until tomorrow afternoon. So it's me and the bike. Tonight I needed to go to the grocery store, and Greg was up at the Lake. With the Camry out of commission, my only choice was to bike. I contemplated ordering pizza because I didn't really feel like making the 4 mile trek in the heat, but I went anyway. We shop at Schnucks which is about 2 miles northwest of our house and requires crossing at least two fairly busy intersections. While neither our house or Schnucks are in a bad area of town, the locals like to talk about the Ghetto and the gang activity that they associate with any area of town that is ethnically diverse.

The story: I was almost to Schnucks and approaching the little bit of the trip that requires me to get off the bike trail and navigate a congested area which people like to use as a "short cut." Thinking I would be a responsible biker, as I approached the first congested area, I used a hand signal to indicate that I was slowing down and possibly stopping. When it was my turn, I then indicated that I was turning right and shortly after that signaled a left turn. I noticed that there was a white Buick that was keeping more than a safe distance from me and when they eventually passed as I was locking my bike I waved to thank them for not trying to run me over.

The Accusation: As I walked into the store, the woman who had been driving the car said to me "don't think that I'm not going to tell the manager that he's letting gang hangers (sic) shop in his store." I said "excuse me?" thinking that I had missed something and mentally picturing what exactly a "gang hanger" would look like. She said "I saw you "tossing" those signals just like they talk about on tv." I explained that bicycles don't have brake lights or turn signals, so we use hand signals. She laughed and said, "I bet you use bring your own grocery sacks so that you can shoplift too."

I guess I'm guilty as charged. I am an ecologically minded gang hanger, whatever that means.

Jul 9, 2008

Baby Borrowers

I'd heard about the show Baby Borrowers and up until now found the idea a disturbing concept for a reality television show. It's clearly a way for NBC to further cash in on the teen pregnancy/celebrity baby boom lately. This bothers me not because it's exploiting teen pregnancies, but because I'm not sure that I'm okay with giving actual babies to teens who may or may not have the skills and desire to care for them properly even if they are shadowed by professional nannies. Babies are not toys, and the show has the very real potential to use them in this way.

Anyway, I find myself watching it tonight, I found some of the producers' choices interesting:

  • While most of the couples chose to have the male go out to work, the show did not require this. Couples made the choice for themselves, and I was glad to see that the show incorporated such a open gender roles in the show. I was also glad to see that the show seemed to show very involved fathers. In fact, I would say that for the most part the guys were more emotionally invested than the girls.
  • In the one episode I watched one of the teens mom's from each couple came by for 3 hours to help out. Nearly every mom ran in and picked up the borrowed baby and then gave the "see I told you, you did not really want a baby." Was this really necessary? Clearly the way that the show is edited, most of the teens are not enjoying the experience and most have already vocalized their change of heart. To bring an adult into to deliver this "moral" seems forced to me and co-opts the teens' voices.
  • Early in the episode I was really disturbed by the fact that I felt that they were dividing the females as "good" and "bad" mothers. At the end of the episode, there were still females that were labeled as the mothers that were "checked out" "immature" and "selfish." This labeling was slightly negated by the fact that at least one of the "real" mothers talked about her own faults as a mother and how things aren't always perfect. The overall tone of the show still seems to be more critical of the women than the men. Several of the couples might be described as dysfunctional, but there seems to be more critique of the females' attitudes than the males' attitudes. While I realize that bad mothers can be described in lots of different ways, I find it interesting that the bad mothers in this shows are clearly defined as the adolescent mothers. Those who are described as "natural" mothers are those who can emotionally and financially navigate the family (one "bad" mother for example wastes money at the grocery store, while another insists that her husband forgo a paycheck in order to stay home and care for the children while she sits on the couch).

Jul 8, 2008

Why?: I hate the term Truth

Yesterday we were talking about how theory really answer the question "Why?". This morning I was having a conversation with some colleagues about how I'm not really comfortable with Truth because of the ways that it is often used to "other" that we don't identify with. We use Truth to mask Ideology. This led me to my rant about the misuse of the word mythology*, but also got me thinking this afternoon about the ways in which Truth is constructed or deconstructed in various texts and the subtle differences that are used to classify ideas and texts.

After admitting that I spent the better part of three days with Peter Dickinson after only reading one of his novels, I mentioned last month that I was going to read some more of his novels. The first one that came in the mail was Bone From a Dry Sea. The text does some interesting things in terms of time. Geographically readers never leave the same small piece of what is now Africa, yet they move several million years in time. Li (a derivative of Lilith) and Vinny (short for Lavinia) are parallel characters in many ways, but their worlds are constructed in very different ways. In essence both girls construct a world based on their understandings of the world around them and their experience, even though those experiences are often shared in some way. Not surprisingly, Li whose culture has only developed a very basic system of "words" bases her reality on physical objects and Vinny constructs here view of evolution based on a book that she read about sea-apes.

What I found most interesting about this book is the way in which Dickinson, doesn't label Li view as "primitive," a move that would be quite tempting. He admits in a parenthetical insertion early on that simply naming the character and allowing them to think in "words" is not fair to such a culture, but for the sake of telling a coherent story he must impose his experiences on them in this way. I really like that move because of the ways he recognizes his own ideologies in a concept that I would venture most people would label as truth. Had Dickinson not done this, the folklorist in me would have thrown a temper tantrum and probably put the book down. As person in a highly literate culture (not to mention a person who lives in the highly literate quadrant of that highly literate culture) we cannot really conceptualize what it is like to be illiterate, let alone have a spoken language of only a handful of words/sounds.

More than Dickinson's attention to this fact, I'm curious how one would classify this text. Science fiction often answers the why/how question, but this book contains very little actual science. It takes a theory which Dickinson names in the text and credits in the afterword and explores what that might look like. Amazon currently classifies it as both science fiction and fantasy--a move I see as more marketing based than actual critical analysis. Still, I find it interesting that in conversation some people are so quick to draw the line between science and mythology when they are so intertwined in many places. Li conceptions of why her tribe behaves in specific ways are attributed to a mythos that is later reinterpreted through science.

This is why I have an issue with Truth. I need categories that allow for fuzziness and messiness because I'm not sure I'm ready to believe anyone who claims to have "defined" either. I mentioned in class today that conversations which ask people to define "Truth" make me nervous. I was nervous when I first started reading Dickinson's book. It could have quickly "othered" a Truth by labeling it false which happens a lot in academic discussions. I'm glad it didn't, but I'm still curious "why" we feel the need to constantly define things in this way.

*Mythology doesn't does not mean false. Stop using it in this way. The term actually means a narrative that explains a phenomena (such as the origin of something) which contain supernatural elements and is believed to be true by the culture which tells it. By true I mean, the supernatural is not questioned. The Biblical creation story in Genesis is a myth for example.

Jul 7, 2008

Analyzing a Pantagraph Letter: Criminals have a Terminal Illness?

This may become a regular feature on my blog. I try to not read letters to the editor, but somehow they keep coming to my attention. So another Pantagraph letter deconstructed...

This one caught my attention because of the title: Bus ride with ex-inmates triggers thoughts on guns. This instantly caused me to ask myself "are ex-con labeled when riding the bus or do they have an innate ability to make guns pop into the minds of those who enter there general area?" The author of this letter, apparently has a sixth sense about where people come from (or only ex-cons ride the bus from Danville to Bloomington).

My real interest in this letter is not the conceal and carry message that the author is trying to get across. I really have no interest in deconstructing THAT debate, but rather the rhetorical strategy used to support concealed firearms. The letter starts:
Ironic, Lou Gehrig died of Lou Gehrig disease. What are the odds?
Let's ponder this for a minute. Lou Gehrig was not a criminal and he actually died of ALS, a degenerative disease that affects the nerve cells of the brain and spinal cord.

Why then would someone use this analogy? Does Denny intend to imply that Lou Gehrig caused his own death, like he assumes "innocent" people in Illinois are doing because they have failed to "demand" a concealed weapons law? If so, that's offensive. Maybe he's trying to use the analogy to say that criminals will "cripple" society and thinks that Lou Gehrig somehow makes sense in this analogy. Maybe I am too sensitive to people using metaphors of illness to talk about other people's choices. I'm pretty sure ALS wasn't even called Lou Gehrig's disease when Lou Gehrig died from it.

The wierdest part of this letter...the comment section is full of things like "great letter." Did I miss the point or the logic here, and if so would someone please explain it to me.

My Recipes Are Moving

I feel like my blog is getting a little crowded, so I'm moving all of my recipes (and eventually my Food Calendar) to a new home: Cooking Without Carrots. The recipes that I've already posted here will remain for the time being, but to see the new ones, you'll have to go to the new blog.

Wikipedia makes me feel smart

I don't like not knowing/understanding things. This has led to a slightly obsessive habit of "googling" random words which usually lands me on Wikipedia.

An Example...
When I walked in Williams Hall this morning there was a sign that read: Welcome to the International Conference on Vertex Operator Algebras and Related Areas:
A Conference to Mark the Occasion of Geoffrey Mason's 60th Birthday. For the next two hours I tried to imagine what vertex operator algebras were.

On my way out of the building I stopped to copy the title onto a piece of scrap paper because I was pretty sure that in order to find out what it meant I would need those terms exactly, and I was also pretty sure I wouldn't remember them exactly.*

My first search landed me on ISU's math department's homepage which provided a program that told me nothing other than the fact that it is studied by people in Croatia, Japan, and China among other countries.

Wikipedia, however, tells me that vertex operator algebra is
an algebraic structure that plays an important role in conformal field theory and related areas of physics. They have proven useful in purely mathematical contexts such as monstrous moonshine and the geometric Langlands correspondence.
Okay, so I don't know that I would go so far as to say that I understand it, but I do know that Geoffry Mason is an important guy in the area and that the only Geoffry Mason that wikipedia lists is a dead bobsledder.

Therefore, I now know something that wikipedia does not know and have some idea what vertex operator algebra is. If only I could imagine how this knowledge endeavor might help me in life, it would have been a truly useful experience.


*While writing this down, a group of mathematicians came down the hall and looked at me while I was writing and saying outloud, "I know what algebra is." They didn't laugh; they just looked confused. I'm not sure if they were confused because they couldn't imagine why a person would copy down the title of the conference on the back of a grocery receipt or confused because they couldn't imagine someone who didn't know what they were talking about.

Jul 6, 2008

I love PAINT!!!

I'm addicted now. I need to paint every room in my house, but this may be a problem in terms of graduation. Either way, the living room paint job is done (minus some touch up work around the ceiling). Here are the pictures, keep in mind that the color reproduction is a little off.

Looking toward the front of the house...


My reading corner...

Home Improvement Tip of the Day

If you are painting your walls a color other than white, buy a can of "ceiling white" when you buy your wall color.

Jul 5, 2008

Painting

We've been talking about painting since we moved in this house over a year ago, and today we finally did something about it. The people who lived here before us apparently liked the sterile, unlived in look. I'm not a fan. Here are before and after pics. Keep in mind that we still need a second coat in some spots and the furniture, but you can get the idea.

Before...


In Process...


After is still to come...

Fireworks

One of the nice things about the fact that Illinois has no hills is that we can see the town fireworks display from our street even though it is 2 miles away. So we invited some friends over for a BBQ and sat in our street to watch. Here are some pics...

Jul 3, 2008

Two-Way Street: Or Three Theories on Recent Road Trip Novels


Right now I'm reading Lauren Barnholdt's Two Way Street. Although my dissertation is not exclusively about roadtrips, everything I do looks at how adolescence is economically defined. This is not to say that I think it should be economically defined, but rather that ya lit again and again seems to define it in those terms. The car tends to be the metaphor that most often represents this economic definition of adolescence and the movement from child to adult. Because of that, I read a lot of road trip novels. Lately I've noticed some things that I'm not quite sure what to do with.

The classic YA roadtrip novel is Joan Bauer's Rules of the Road. It's not necessarily a classic because of age, but is one of the first that was a) popular and b) was about a teen driving across the country. Bauer's novel doesn't specify the year that the story takes places, but it reads as a look back at an adolescence of an earlier generation. Bauer concentrates on the characters and their development and doesn't spend much time describing the ephemeral conditions of adolescence in Jenna's life. Her novel is about the growth from adolescence, and not surprisingly moves along a north/south trajectory.

In the last 4-5 years, however, there seem to be lots of YA novels that do the exact opposite. Barnholdt's novel reads more like two people in a small space who talk about pop culture (okay, I get that that is probably would a adolescent road trip would look like) who just happen to be moving across the country (north, for those who are interested in my map theory). Jordan's SUV is really just a means of keeping the pair in a small space for a prolonged period of time in which they concentrate mostly on how many pieces of popular culture they can consume simultaneously. This novel will be out of date within a couple of years. For example, Courtney and Jordan spent most of their relationship debating whether Laguna Beach or OC is better. I know teens like it, or at least those pretending to be teens on Amazon's reviews say things like:
this book has the modern twist of what it is really like to be a teen now a days. i like how it goes from the past to the actual trip.
Bernholdt's not alone in this ephemeral move. Andy Behren's All the Way is full of pop culture references and has been made into a MTV movie (with quite possibly the most offensive movie poster I've seen in a very long time) to be released this October. The upside of this production is that it proves my point that in adolescent literature cars are often metaphors for sex because we can't talk about sex and adolescents without getting into censorship issues. The weird side is that the road trip is becoming less and less of a "classic" tradition and more and more of a pop culture plot.

The comment that the trip doesn't become the focus is particularly interesting to me. In some ways that Amazon reader made me think about something that I hadn't realized before--it's becoming less and less about the car. I have three theories about this
  1. My theory based on no evidence at the moment: Cars are becoming less and less accessible due to rising gas prices. Pop culture is now more of a solid aspect than the car. YouTube keeps everything accessible, gas prices don't keep cars accessible.
  2. My more supported theory: the road trip at one time showed literal movement, but now the car itself has become such an accepted metaphor that authors can spend the novel on the pop culture that their readers would be familiar with. Bauer couldn't do this because she was already setting up something new.
  3. My cynical theory: more recent road trip novels are written by authors who don't really care about what their novels do in the long term and only care about how many books they will sell this summer. The OC will sell books.
That doesn't mean, however, that the vehicle is disappearing. In fact the vehicle seems to becoming present in a variety of novels. Even Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy associates the official sanctioning of hoverboards with the movement into the adult realm. I'm not sure what to do with all of this. I think that there is something going on here, and I'm not sure what it is.

Jul 2, 2008

I love this pic





Good Advice!

Shoes

From class this morning....

I wore my tennis shoes this morning because I was biking to class. I hate real shoes. I can't think with real shoes. When I can't think, I can't write. Now I'm supposed to be writing about "favorites." All I can think about is shoes and how much I hate them. Maybe tomorrow I'll bring flip-flops in my bag.

Jul 1, 2008

Censorship is Not Your Friend

Shortly after writing my post admitting that I read Pantagraph comments despite the fact that I know they will anger me, I went to the Pantagraph site. The headline was: Patron complains that DVD at Bloomington library is pornographic Good News; all 8 comments so far say something along the lines of "is you don't like it don't check it out." I was worried, but people can really think for themselves sometimes. Yay!

BTW...If you are curious the film in question is Short Bus. I haven't seen it, but I may have to go check it out from the Bloomington Public Library now :)

MBTI and Sadomasochism

I know that the title of this post sounds intriguing, but it's really just a reflection on life the last couple of weeks.

I've been thinking about personality a lot lately. When I was an undergrad, I took the Myers-Briggs Type Instrument (take a free version here). I am an INFJ. An instructor at the time told me that INFJs make up only 1% of the total population. When I first learned this, I was convinced that I'd misread some questions despite the fact that the description of an INFJ sounds exactly like me. In my mind being an INFJ made me inferior to 99% of the population and I spent several years convinced that I could change my personality (I am now okay with this). The result=I became more of an INFJ everytime I took the test. Here's what one site says about INFJs:
People with the INFJ personality type are intense and perfectionistic. They have deep insights into many aspects of life, and usually have very high standards for their own understanding and accomplishments, as well as those of others. They are service-oriented and empathetic to other individuals. The INFJ strives for the ideal in every aspect of their life. An INFJ's feeling of success is centered around their own level of understanding and accomplishment, their usefulness or service to others, and the condition of their personal relationships.
Those who know me well know that I am frequently unsure of myself and have an intense perfectionist impulse/fear of failure. Today someone who has done quite a bit of research on MBTI was talking about how when we dislike something (in this case kinds of teaching/teachers) it's really because we see ourselves in that person. According to her (she knew my personality type already) what I really wanted was to be a ESTP:
ESTPs are outgoing, straight-shooting types. Enthusiastic and excitable, ESTPs are "doers" who live in the world of action. Blunt, straight-forward risk-takers, they are willing to plunge right into things and get their hands dirty. They live in the here-and-now, and place little importance on introspection or theory. The look at the facts of a situation, quickly decide what should be done, execute the action, and move on to the next thing.
I understand the premise that, especially in teaching, we sometimes unknowingly recreate our own experiences as students for a new generation, but I don't think that we actually want to be the opposite. I don't want to be that person I just described above, just like I don't want to be the people I dislike. In fact when I googled that this afternoon, I read it and it made me nervous. I don't think that that person is a bad person, I just don't want to be that person and I don't like being told that that is what I want. I may want other people to be more like me sometimes, but I work hard to like myself and I don't think it's healthy to tell people what they really want is to change everything about themselves.

It was also suggested in this class that we need to own our other--that thing/person that we have identified that we don't like. According to this interpretation, when we dislike something/one we are seeing part of ourselves. I'm not sure that I buy this.
I've worked with people that I don't get along with--they interfere with my learning style, they make me feel more insecure, they take my voice away when I finally do speak up--and I don't think that being able to identify what I dislike in a teacher/friend/colleague is a sadomasochistic process (to borrow B's wording) of torturing myself.

I have at least one habit that I would be more likely to classify in that way (reading Pantagraph comments and knowing that they will upset me because I want people to care about others), but disliking a teacher or student is a different situation. Students don't have the option to avoid teachers for most of their lives. I need a job, so I can't simply avoid those who I dislike. I'm not engaging with them because I fear them, I'm engaging with them because I have to make a living and part of keeping a job means working with/under some people who I dislike.

This is what I need: people who talk about personality theory to recognize the complexities of personality types other than their own.