May 2006 Archives

He went out and drank a quart of peppermint schnapps.... He ripped all my clothes off, he started to beat me with the cat furniture.... And I left him. And that's when he jumped out the kitchen window.

I just heard those lines of dialogue in a movie--and not just any movie, but a documentary about a Mormon temple worker. One of the reasons I so love nonfiction is that you just can't make shit that weird up.... OK, you can, but credibility is strained. A Mormon temple worker once drank a quart of peppermint schnapps, ripped his wife's clothes off, beat her with the cat furniture (my favorite detail by far), then tried and failed to commit suicide by jumping out the kitchen window!? (The ellipses in the dialogue, I should mention, represent not anything I have deleted but editing cuts in the film itself.) To paraphrase Aristotle, the only reason something that weird can be believed is because it really happened.

The even weirder thing is, the Mormon temple worker was once a rock star, Arthur "Killer" Kane, a founding member of the New York Dolls. In 1989, as he lay recuperating in the hospital after his failed suicide attempted, Kane called a 1-800 number and requested a copy of the Book of Mormon. Two sister missionaries later showed up at his door and taught him the discussions.

Academic conferences can bring out snarkiness, competition, cruelty in even the nicest people: they've got these intellectual territories to defend, ideas in which they have a great deal invested, and when someone threatens that territory by challenging those ideas, watch out! I've been in and observed my fair share of very heated exchanges--about like when Warren, Jonathan and Andrew argue over who was the best James Bond. (I love Andrew's resentful claim that "Timothy Dalton should win an Oscar and hit Sean Connery on the head with it"--not that I love Timothy Dalton OR Sean Connery--actually I hate the whole Bond franchise--I just can't help laughing at the line.) You'll sometimes see outright hostility flare up in the Q&A sessions after panels. It doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough.

One of the many great things about the Slayage conference was how little of that occurred: people were generally courteous and generous. I'm not saying no snarkiness occurred--it did--but the few times it happened just underscored how rare it was the rest of the time. We decided it was because we are so often attacked for having this bizarre scholarly interest in this element of pop culture most academics feel is beneath their notice, so when we got together, the main thing we felt was gratitude at being among friends. Still, it was very cool to go to a panel and hear such good-natured exchanges. By no means did everyone agree with everything they heard, but I've rarely seen criticisms presented and accepted so graciously: "Have you thought about this?" "Why no, I haven't! Thanks so much for suggesting that." OK, you hear stuff like that at conferences all the time, except that the graciousness of such statements is often a mere veneer, but when you heard it at Slayage, it seemed sincere.

I'm home. The flight home was uneventful, which is exactly how I like my flights. My house and all my stuff are fine, which is exactly how I like my house and all my stuff. The conference was fabulous (more on that later), which is how I prefer my conferences, and I'm already trying to think up something to present on next time.

One nice thing is that when I got home, several of my plants were in full bloom. I have an azalea so heavy with deep pink blossoms you almost can't see any greenery. My rhododendron and looks fabulous, as does a bunch of chives--I guess most people don't typically think of chives as decorative plants but they've got these cool fuzzy purple blossoms that I quite like. Purple is one of my favorite color for flowers: last year I planted lupine and purple columbine, both of which are healthy, established and blooming right now. The first plant I see when I walk out the back door is this vine thing (I can't for the life of me remember the name of it) climbing a trellis by my garage--it's covered with deep purple star-shaped flowers. And I finally know what color my irises are! Last year a friend gave me some cuttings from her garden but she couldn't remember what color they were. I was hoping they'd be dark purple, but they're a deep gold, almost brown--it's very dramatic and pretty, and contrasts with all the purple very nicely.

The only disappointment in the whole matter of my garden--and it's not a cause for weeping and wailing, I know, but it is kind of a drag--is that I'm leaving again in a few days, to go on a nice long vacation that will involve visits with both friends and family, and when I get back two weeks later, all these really cool plants will be done blooming for this year, and I won't get to appreciate them again until 2007. I guess next year I shouldn't plan two trips back to back, and shouldn't make one of them so long.

P.S. Now that I'm home and can manage my spam comments, I've turned the comments back on, in case anyone was dying to say something about Riley or anything else I've mentioned recently.

In "The Nerd Voice" from The Partly Cloudy Patriot, Sarah Vowell says something like (I'm paraphrasing because I don't have my copy here with me and so can't quote it verbatim, as I prefer to do) that being a nerd--which means caring too much about a particular topic--is the best way to make friends that she knows of.

I have spent the last few days at the Slayage Conference held in Barnesville, Georgia (there's a whole long story as to why it's being held at such an out of the way location, the short version being that a college here offered to host it), indulging in nerdiness, and I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I am currently operating on less than five hours of sleep because I stayed up way past my bedtime last night to drink cheap beer and discuss, among other things, whether or not the cruelty of "Hell's Bells," the episode in which Xander jilts Anya at the altar, was necessary or not--I argued that it was really awful in that he not only broke her heart but humiliated her, and someone else argued that it was that extra element that made her reenroll as a vengeance demon, which made all these other plot twists in seasons six and seven possible yada yada yada. The thing is, this was an extracurricular discussion: this was after a full day of organized panel discussions of the Whedonverse. This was a conversation where people took of their shoes and sat on beds and talked informally about text and subtext and so on and so forth in BtVS and Angel and Firefly/Serenity--as well as other things. There was a discussion on Harry Potter, but I'm not really into that and so could add little to it, and as for the Jane Austen hints I dropped, everyone else was content to let them lie on the floor among the bottlecaps and carpet lint.

So.

I am one of the few Buffy the Vampire Slayer fans who really digs Riley, Buffy's cornfed Iowa boyfriend who is also a member of this covert military operation, the "Initiative." Most people find him too wholesome and bland, but I think he's physically hot, dryly funny, decent to women, and very appealing.

I would love to hear from any other Riley fans out there, if any more read my blog. Unfortunately I got up this morning to find I'd received over almost 500 junk comments in six hours, so I'm turning off all comments until I get back. At that point, I'll try to figure out some better way of filtering out the crap comments from the legitimate ones.

***

When I was home for Christmas, I ended up going on this dreadful drive out in the desert with my parents, my brother and his family. It was a Sunday afternoon and we had driven less than a mile when my brother up in this HORRIBLE cd of little kids singing the Articles of Faith (13 statements of belief for the Mormon church) set to music. It was cloying and gross, and I was revolted to be confronted with so overt a method of socializing little kids into swallowing all that codswollop. I took a deep breath; I listened for a few moments, and then I said, "If you want to listen to this, that's fine. But I can't listen to it. If this is what's going to be playing in the cd player, please take me home before we go any further, because I cannot and will not listen to this."

And Brother said, "Well, uh... OK." And he took the cd out and put in a cd of silly lyrics set to classical music.

My six-year-old nephew asked, "Why are listening to this? I wanted to listen to the cd I got today at church."

"Holly asked us to change it," Brother said. "We're going to listen to this."

Here's a link Spike sent me (one of these days he'll have to stop giving me all this stuff for my blog and use it on his own) to an article in the Guardian UK about the problems of translating jokes in English into German and vice versa. Stewart Lee, the author, notes that "a commonly held contemporary British view is that the Germans have no sense of humour," then asks (and eventually answers, in fairly interesting ways) "But can this be possible? Can there genuinely be a nation incapable of laughter, or is it just that the German language of laughter differs so greatly from our own, that it appears non-existent?"

My favorite observation (and this is the kind of thing I would have liked to have been able to cite during grad school) is this, about attempts to depict a British stand-up comedian in Germany, where stand-up comedy is "alien":

this instinct to formalise a genre of comedy we accept as inherently informal is not indivisible from the limitations the German language imposes on conventional British comedy structures. The flexibility of the English language allows us to imagine that we are an inherently witty nation, when in fact we just have a vocabulary and a grammar that allow for endlessly amusing confusions of meanings.(Emphasis added, of course.)

Lee notes that humor in English relies on

In case you didn't know, a standard way to publish a book of poetry is to submit your manuscript to a contest. One of the most prestigious prizes is Yale Younger Poets (which I am now too old to enter), but no matter what the level of prestige, the system is pretty much the same: you send 50-70 pages of poetry, a check for $25.00 (or thereabouts), and a self-addressed stamped envelope. You then wait six months to a year, at which point you usually get your SASE back with a xeroxed sheet of paper telling you who won. Occasionally in the list of finalists, you'll notice your name, and wonder why they never bothered to tell you that you were a finalist.

A lot of people consider it a racket; there is even an "American poetry watchdog" website that "exposes the fraudulent ‘contest,'" and there is also a Council of Literary Magazines and Presses that has set up rigorous contest-judging guidelines so that there aren't fraudulent contests to expose. Anyway, the whole thing is costly, demoralizing and time-consuming, but it's also how the system works, so I sent my book to half a dozen contests earlier this year.

Here's an email message I got yesterday:

In an email message to me a couple of days ago, Spike noted that comments on various threads had revealed certain categorical errors. He said he'd try to find time to respond to the comments himself, and I said, "Look, you write such interesting, insightful stuff; I don't want it buried deep at the end of a thread, especially since I have the feeling these issues might come up again. If you're going to write an analysis of this, why not write something I can post as an entry? I'm really busy right now and could really use a guest blogger, if you wouldn't mind...." And it turns out, he didn't mind at all, and very graciously agreed to write a post for me.

So here it is: my very first guest post, courtesy of Spike.

In the comments to From the Perspective of a Man and Carnival of Feminists XV, two criticisms of Holly's statements made the error of confusing physical properties with culture. Timothy was concerned that while the thread of the comments under "From the Perspective of a Man" emphasized the importance of not damning a whole category of people when insulting a particular individual, this concern ran against the grain of what he felt was Holly's critique of "straight white men." Holly's response has already made the point that criticizing the dominant perspective is not the same as criticizing a group of people. What interested me was the way Timothy collapses a cultural or ideological category (the dominant perspective of the straight white male) with a biological category (men).

In the discussion of the Carnival, a similar, but slightly more complicated error led Jay to question Holly’s use of a Chinese character in the design of her web page: he was concerned about the appropriation of Asian culture by non-Asians. It seems to me that Jay’s concern also rests on a conflation of a cultural or ideological category with, here, a geographical one. This mistake is a bit less obvious than Timothy’s so I should explain why I think Jay makes it. Jay suggested that it was ironic that Holly included a link to Jenn’s piece Unbound Feet in the Carnival, when Jenn had also posted a little rant (Jay’s term) about Western appropriation of Asian culture, since it would appear from the top right of Holly’s page that she’s a white woman but she includes a Chinese character. (Holly and Jay have already had an exchange about this over the issues of etiquette and the reason Holly has the character on her blog so I won’t belabour these points.)

Now it may be a bit unfair for me to discuss Jenn's writing here – it's not her blog, I don't even know if she's reading this – so I will stress this qualification: I am not attributing any intent to Jenn, I'm only commenting as a reader. I have read both of the posts that matter here. The first thing to be noted about the "rant" is that it is a rant. It is not a thoughtfully crafted argument about the point she wants to make – unlike the elegant piece she wrote on "unbound feet," which is a careful and powerful argument. Now ranting is quite important and I would encourage more of it. But I suspect that the tone of the rant is part of the reason Jay felt he had license to question Holly's use of the Chinese character: the rant reads like a defence of the integrity of Asian culture against Western power. It would be possible – but I believe it would be very ungenerous – to suggest that this goes against the argument made in "unbound feet," which is a powerful claim for feminist resistance to female identities imposed by Asian American men on Asian American women.

I recently came across a blog editorial entitled, "Supreme Court Officially Sends Taxpayers into Early Menopause."

Just kidding! The actual title was Supreme Court Officially Emasculates Taxpayers.

That's right: Taxpayers are officially gendered male, and the supreme court has officially castrated them.

Now, I am not happy with what the Supreme Court did in this particular case, but I wouldn't call it "emasculation." The Supreme Court has decided that "State taxpayers have no standing ... to challenge state tax or spending decisions simply by virtue of their status as taxpayers." But I don't think that really qualifies as "cutting off the testicles" of taxpayers. I suppose you could argue that "emasculate" in this case simply means to "deprive of strength of vigor," but still, that definition only works if the person being weakened is male; you wouldn't say, "My grandmother was severely emasculated by her struggle with breast cancer."

So--anyone want to suggest again that I'm "overreaching" when I say that the world happens from the perspective of a man?

Thanks to everyone who nominated posts, and special thanks to Natalie, who organizes and oversees the carnival.

Feminism, Friendship and Fun

Carnival is supposed to be a time of pleasure and fun, so this carnival begins with a post from Mind the Gap!, pointing out that Fun Is a feminist issue:

Fun is also a feminist issue because it builds friendship. And friendship is a feminist issue. Friendship among women and their male allies is radical because women are not really supposed to be friends with one another, and they're certainly not supposed to be friends with men on equal terms. In refusing to compete and sell each other out for the attention of men, we work to break down patriarchal norms.

The post was generated as part of Blog for Radical Fun Day, the idea of Brownfemipower. On Woman of Color, she writes about her fondness for the movie Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (which contains both feminist and uh, not-so-feminist elements) and lists all the blogs who participated. Definitely check this out!

In the spirit of feminist friendship, Pomegranate Queen creates a blog Forum for Women and Trans Writers of Color to share written work for purposes of critical feedback and support, called Securing our Writing.

Here's to feminist fun and friendship--I hope you enjoy this carnival, and find some new friends here.

Last Thursday I met a friend for coffee at Barnes and Noble. (Yes, yes, it's so corporate of us, but I also make a point of frequenting the one independent coffee shop in town too, and my friend prefers B&N.) I was waiting for my grande decaf mocha in a mug (not a paper cup), when I noticed that Student C, a talented but uh, challenging student of mine, was sitting by the window, watching me. It was a shock to see him: this particular student absorbed so much of my energy during the year, but when I encountered him off campus, I realized that I hadn't had a single stray thought about him since I'd turned in my grades--god, it felt good to realize that.

"Hey, Dr. Holly," he said. "How you doing?"

"I'm OK," I said. "You?"

"Good," he said. "I'm writing!" And he gestured at the notebook before him on the table.

Then my beverage was ready so I chatted with my friend for an hour or two, and then I browsed books for a while, and then I went back to the café to get some water, and Student C was still there, writing, and he asked me a question about a course I'm teaching next semester, so I sat down to answer it. And we started talking about writing.

He asked if I'd written any poetry recently. "Nuh-uh," I said. "No inspiration." I paused. "You get any good assignments in your other classes? Any good ideas you want to pass on?"

"You should write from the perspective of a man," he said. He raised his eyebrows. He'd been in a couple of classes where we discussed gender; his ideas on the topic, although not the most misogynist I'd encountered, were still not what I'd call enlightened. And I'd been told that when I wasn't around, he often referred to women as "bitches," even women he liked.

"Nah, that doesn't really interest me," I said.

As I've mentioned, the semester ended Friday, May 5. To celebrate I wore a really great outfit (maybe some of my lurking colleagues will attest to the fact that my shirt, which I bought a few days prior, was indeed very cool, and my skirt, which I made last fall, was indeed very pretty) and went out for margaritas (it being Cinco de Mayo and all) with friends/colleagues. I even got a ride so I could get rip-roaring drunk, but I was stymied in that endeavor by A) the lack of tequila in the margaritas and B) the surplus of icky green margarita mix in said beverage (just makes ‘em harder to suck down) and C) a pissy attitude that kept me from ever really having fun.

In the "Thank God Someone Else Reads These Crappy Patriarchy-Loving Rags" category is this piece from Rebecca Traister at Salon. Ms. Traister neatly shreds an article from the Washington Post, which blames the impotence problems of young college men on... get this... horny college girls! That's right! In the "Jesus Fucking Christ" department, Laura Sessions Stepp has written an article called "Cupid's Broken Arrow" announcing that

for a sizable number of young men, the fact that they can get sex whenever they want may have created a situation where, in fact, they're unable to have sex. According to surveys, young women are now as likely as young men to have sex and by countless reports are also as likely to initiate sex, taking away from males the age-old, erotic power of the chase.

After explaining that impotence should be refered to as Erectile Dysfunction (ED for short), Ms. Stepp analyzes a few images of limpness and powerlessness, concluding that

Such images disturb because sexual performance is still, in the minds of many males, the sign of authority and dominance, perhaps the last such symbol in a society slogging its way toward gender equality. (Emphasis added--and gee, I wonder where guys get that?)

Those in the first years of testing their manhood may particularly see it that way.

When the tools work, there's nothing like it, says Devin Jones, a sophomore at Maryland, who read several how-to books about sex before going all the way with his first girlfriend. "When she got an orgasm, I felt like the man," he says in an interview, pounding his fists on his chest. Will Skelton, who graduated from George Washington University last year, says good sex "is all about self-worth. If you know you're a helluva lover, you're more confident with women and men."

And it goes on and on about various ways women put too much pressure on guys, and so ruin their erections...though it also takes some time to consider things men can do to themselves, like drink too much alcohol or coffee, smoke too much tobacco or marijuana, or take too many anti-depressants.

Luckily, before I read that crap myself, I got this excellent analysis from Ms. Traister:

Perhaps (and I realize this is pie-in-the-sky thinking here) the leveling of the sexual marketplace Stepp writes about, in which women and men enjoy and pursue sex with comparable vigor, could be good for both sexes. First, it could deflate some of the frequently unearned but long-held stereotypes about guys who'll have sex with anything that moves, who consider each conquest a notch on their bedpost, who are more turned on by the pursuit than by the physical pleasure of union. Perhaps, if sex with women is something that they didn't have to finagle and tease and chase their way into, if it was just a fun activity that two people who liked each other chose to engage in and that often felt really great, everyone would have a better time.

Bzzzzz! Apparently that answer was incorrect. According to Stepp, we're not looking at the maturation and increasing sophistication of the socio-sexual dynamic here. We're looking at the loss of manhood in its purest form. Guys who can't get woodies for any old girl on the block are a poignant representation of the crumbling power of the erect phallus, which is, after all, as Stepp writes, "in the minds of many males, the sign of authority and dominance, perhaps the last such symbol in a society slogging its way toward gender equality." Wow. Stepp isn't doing the men she's writing about any favors in treating their condition not as a treatable health problem related to stress or their recreational habits, but as an actual loss of their masculinity, the ultimate cost of gender equality.

This is another meme that half the bloggers in the blogosphere have already done. As I generally do with memes, I added some extra entries, just because I can.

I am a blogger.
I have a room of my own.
I want some generous benefactrix to grant me an annuity of the current equivalent of whatever 500 pounds was worth in 1928.
I wish I had been blessed with better teeth.
I hate the selfish, lazy, evil fuckwits who dump their grass cuttings and yard waste at the entrance to this wooded park not far from my house. Good grief, the city picks that stuff up for free if you just put it in a trash can and set it by the curb--is that really so hard to do?
For that matter, I hate anyone who engages in illegal dumping. The world is not your toilet.
I love chocolate, the desert, acupuncture, 80s new wave and clean sheets, among other things.
I miss certain things about being 24. Others I don't miss at all.

Big fat disclaimer: I sent a link to this story to a colleague; she told me that the guy featured in the article, Daniel Everett, administered her comprehensive exams and is not British as he claims but "American, a member of the Summer Institute of Linguists (an evangelical group who brings Bible translation to remote places; they have done amazing linguistic research), and the former chairperson of the linguistics dept. at U.Pitt - who had to flee the country for embezzling funds from Pitt!" Also, "His story about the murder plot has been suspect for a long time." Which gave me pause about posting this, but it's still pretty interesting, and you can make up your own mind what you think about it all.

Read this amazing article from Spiegel International about a small group of Brazilian natives whose language--Piraha-- "departs from what were long thought to be essential features of all languages."

The language is incredibly spare. The Pirahã use only three pronouns. They hardly use any words associated with time and past tense verb conjugations don't exist. Apparently colors aren't very important to the Pirahãs, either -- they don't describe any of them in their language. But of all the curiosities, the one that bugs linguists the most is that Pirahã is likely the only language in the world that doesn't use subordinate clauses. Instead of saying, "When I have finished eating, I would like to speak with you," the Pirahãs say, "I finish eating, I speak with you."

Equally perplexing: In their everyday lives, the Pirahãs appear to have no need for numbers. During the time he spent with them, Everett never once heard words like "all," "every," and "more" from the Pirahãs. There is one word, "hói," which does come close to the numeral 1. But it can also mean "small" or describe a relatively small amount -- like two small fish as opposed to one big fish, for example. And they don't even appear to count without language, on their fingers for example, in order to determine how many pieces of meat they have to grill for the villagers, how many days of meat they have left from the anteaters they've hunted or how much they demand from Brazilian traders for their six baskets of Brazil nuts.

Not only do these people have no numbers, because they have never had to intellectualize counting or any form of math, they can't be taught to count to ten. It's not that they're stupid--the article makes the point that "Their thinking isn't any slower than the average college freshman," some of whom also have trouble with basic math and subordinate clauses. They just have no way of accommodating ideas for which they have no set of linguistic structures.

My final official duty of the semester (aside from attending graduation this Saturday) happened Friday morning: I had to conduct the defense of a thesis I directed. It was 200+ pages of a novel, and it was pretty damn good. A prose thesis only has to be about 60 pages, so I was proud of this student I worked with, proud that she was so ambitious, proud that what she wrote was so strong.

But it wasn't finished--it wasn't even half finished. And as any writer knows, a work often changes shape and form and direction as you write it--it rarely turns out as you originally imagine, if indeed you have a particularly clear notion of what you hope to accomplish. Sometimes for short pieces I can be all about discovery, surprise, just seeing where the writing takes me, but I think that for longer works, some projected goal is useful, even if you find yourself doing something completely different.

In honor of the end of the semester, via Dr. Crazy, Dr. Medusa and Profgrrrrl, the last word of my dissertation:

place.

The dissertation is about place--about Taiwan and Arizona most specifically.

But I decided I didn't like the last line and cut it when I revised the diss for publication (yeah, still working on that), and now the last word is growth.

Borrowed from The Adventures of Dr. Diana, who invites readers to repost this entry.

A lot has been said about how to prevent rape. Women should learn self-defense. Women should lock themselves in their houses after dark. Women shouldn't have long hair and women shouldn't wear short skirts. Women shouldn't leave drinks unattended. Fuck, they shouldn't dare to get drunk at all. Instead of that bullshit, how about:

If a woman is drunk, don't rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don't rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don't rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don't rape her.
If a woman is jogging in a park at 5 am, don't rape her.
If a woman looks like your ex-girlfriend you're still hung up on, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in her bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is asleep in your bed, don't rape her.
If a woman is doing her laundry, don't rape her.
If a woman is in a coma, don't rape her.
If a woman changes her mind in the middle of or about a particular activity, don't rape her.
If a woman has repeatedly refused a certain activity, don't rape her.
If a woman is not yet a woman, but a child, don't rape her.
If your girlfriend or wife is not in the mood, don't rape her.
If your step-daughter is watching TV, don't rape her.
If you break into a house and find a woman there, don't rape her.
If your friend thinks it's okay to rape someone, tell him it's not, and that he's not your friend.
If your "friend" tells you he raped someone, report him to the police.
If your frat-brother or another guy at the party tells you there's an unconscious woman upstairs and it's your turn, don't rape her, call the police and tell the guy he's a rapist.
Tell your sons, god-sons, nephews, grandsons, sons of friends it's not okay to rape someone.
Don't tell your women friends how to be safe and avoid rape.
Don't imply that she could have avoided it if she'd only done/not done x.
Don't imply that it's in any way her fault.
Don't let silence imply agreement when someone tells you he "got some" with the drunk girl.
Don't perpetuate a culture that tells you that you have no control over or responsibility for your actions. You can, too, help yourself.

If you agree, re-post it. It's that important.

Note: This goes for any gendered rape, male on female or female on male or female on female or FTM on MTF or non gendered to dual gendered and so on and so forth....

Your Quirk Factor: 79%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

You Have Low Self Esteem 0% of the Time

Which can be translated to mean, you have high self-esteem and a healthy sense of self worth. You believe in yourself, and you know how to be the real you. You love yourself, imperfections and all.

Here's another assessment of myself these tests help provide, but there's no cool graphic for it:

You disdain online tests that purport to tell you who you are--they are generally silly, transparent and written by people who can't plan adequately for complexity--but sometimes you take them anyway, just so you can feel superior.

Woke up this morning well before 5 a.m., not particularly rested, all freaked out about mortality again.... I haven't written much about, because I lately haven't much inhabited, the spells of profound despair I'm sometimes subject to.... Sometimes I just worry. I bolt awake in the middle of the night, heart heavy and fast, tears already in my eyes, because the ice caps are melting and all the polar bears are going to die. Read a couple of days ago that all these new species, including the hippopotamus, have been added to the list of endangered species, and it pretty much bummed me out. "Entropy," I thought. "This is fuckin' entropy: everything reduced to the lowest common denominator, as boring and uniform as human beings can make it before they die out too."

And I also think about the fact that I'm 42 and probably about half way through my life. I sorta believe in reincarnation, and I wonder what I'll come back as.... I'm not announcing suicidal tendencies or anything--no need to worry about me--but there are times when I think, "Yeah, it wouldn't be so very bad to start all over again...."

And then I read something like this or this from Chris Clarke, which tears my heart in ways I can't fathom or describe. I realize that those of us who love the desert romanticize it terribly, and it's not because we don't know there are other places that are really beautiful. It's because, hell, I don't know.... In some ways the best thing I ever heard anyone say about the desert was T. E. Lawrence's response (at least, Peter O'Toole said it, in the movie version of T. E. Lawrence's life) when asked why he likes its so: "It's clean."

It's clean. You get dirty there, but the desert itself is somehow clean.

I spent most of my Christmas break in east Tucson at the home my parents recently purchased two doors down from my brother and his family, and one of the things I did while I was there was go for walks and look at the Catalinas, the strange mountain range to the North. The Catalinas are amazing: they're so weirdly bumpy and irregular, and they are perfectly situated to capture shadows created by the sun as it travels across the sky: the Catalinas change more than any other mountain range I've ever seen.

Like I said, there's something about all this I can't fathom or describe. The air seems clean (not that it really is these days) and clear and I just have this sense of... the sublime? Intimations of mortality? I'm just so aware of how the landscape I grew up in shaped my sense of... life as something bright and harsh. Of the world as something that doesn't much give a shit whether we manage to live in it or not, but is incredibly beautiful--and somehow knows that--whether we notice it or not. I've never not felt this sort of awe and despair and gratitude and certainty inspired by this deep visceral language-less knowledge the desert communicated to me the first time I look around and said, "Huh. So this is home."

I doubt this is making sense. Plenty of things I feel I can describe adequately. My love for my home and the reasons why the desert moves me--that I can't describe.

What the hell--because who doesn't love a good meme?

Accent: Standard American.

Booze: Yes, please. As I detail in this post, I prefer beer (especially dark beers) to wine, vodka to gin, tequila to whiskey. I'm especially fond of margaritas.

Chore I Hate: Dusting. I LOATHE dusting.

Dog or Cat: Cat.

Essential Electronics: I could be happy with just stereo and a typewriter, to be honest. But I have a computer and a television and cell phone and all that stuff, and I like them well enough.

Favorite Cologne(s): My very favorite is Chanel No. 5. I also really like Hot Couture by the Fragrance Shop, especially because it's just essential oils, so it doesn't have to be used up in six months or so. When I was dating Jim a decade or so ago, he invented a perfume for me: it was heavy on the vanilla, and I liked it a lot. I was big into aroma therapy for a while and still sometimes mix up my own scents.

Despite the fact that I spend much of the school year fantasizing about the reading I'll do when I'm not forced to focus on the books I'm teaching that term, I sometimes get to the end of a semester and realize that there might not be a book in the world I can bear to read. I'll haul some tempting volume off my shelf, skim the blurbs on the back cover, open the book to page one...and that's as far as I get before the nauseated revulsion sets in.

Yep, once again, I've got it: reader's block. I simply can't bear to look at a page of print. It happens to me sometimes, particularly after a semester when I've assigned too many books, nearly fallen behind in my reading, had to struggle to make it through the many, many pages I've assigned my students.

The good news is that it will wear off before too long. And when it does, I've got plenty to keep me busy. In fact, here is my summer reading list, broken down by why I have to/want to read the works on it.