New comic

Hey, check out Chinslip! It is drawn by my nephew Ben.

Overlooked No Longer!

"Although disposable menstrual pads were initially overlooked, the enfranchisement of women in 1920 gave women a sense of authenticity as citizens."

---from a paper currently being graded

Yeeeaaaahhhh!!!

Hurray, Tom voted
He beat up those guys at the polls
They tried to stop him
(YSA)

way to go CBAM!
by leaving the house to vote
you have changed the world
(Tom)

good job YSA!
braving moose and goose to vote
in the great white north
(Tom)

D. votes: Wyoming
She used the postal service
Take that, Dick Cheney!
(YSA)

Bravely she waited
Deterred by no line: Cheesequest
And she met a friend
(YSA)

Would she put on pants?
Would she leave her apartment?
For O.? CBAM: "Yes!"
(YSA)

CC could not vote
But she was for OBAMA
She is very glad
(YSA)

Good job, my sister
You canceled your husband's vote
Still, it's kind of sad.
(YSA)

Vote Obama: Get FREE DY/TOMOG Stuff!

Hey readers, if you vote for OBAMA tomorrow come to Dissertation Year and/or The Tomog and get free DY stuff: A haiku made up just for you! Please vote, testify in the comments section, and if you are anonymous provide any information you'd like included in the haiku! Joint offer with The Tomog!

You can also get yourself included in a story about CC and YSA on vacation if you choose. Your choice--haiku or vacation story! VoooOOOoooTE!*



*Vote to cancel out my brother-in-law's vote--arg!

Get out the vote for OBAMA

People, if you want to, you can call voters and tell them where their polling location is, and that if they need a free ride to the polls, the number they can call to get that. And also that OBAMA needs their vote!

You can do it from the Obama website.

I called three people! (I left three messages on answering machines. But for a shy person, that is better than nothing.)

GoOOOOOO!

GooooOOOooooo OBAMA!!!

Congrats Jess and Dan and Samuel!

Update: Shoot, I told my class this morning who I voted for! Woops. You are not supposed to do that, right? But I am so extremely excited and afraid that I can't help it!!! Who can do any work??? I am just reading the NY Times all day long.

Vote, people, vooooteee!!! This is it!!!

Dear reader(s)

Dear reader(s):

And so, I have reached the end of my dissertation year(s). That seems to me to mean that I have also reached the end of this blog.

However, I am not sure what to do. I would like to keep writing a blog. But not a blog about my dissertation. I am wondering if I could start a new blog on a new topic. But what topic? Academia? (Boring and depressing.) Lesbianism? (Exciting, fun, but I'm not sure how unique my take on this topic will be.) Living in Canada? (Sort of a limited issue.) Staying at least five feet away from others at all times? (Important, but difficult to narrate in an interesting way.) Animals? (I have no critiques of this one.)

What do you think about the future of blogging by me in a post-diss environment?

Alive and well in the far north, where it's snowing

It's snowing! Very alarming: it is also October. Who will dig out my car, apartment, self? (Supposedly I'm to be consoled in the knowledge that "it won't stick.")

Oh, and I survived my illness so far. And I got this e-mail:

Dear YSA,

This is an auto generated message to inform you that the dean of your school has updated your diploma application review status to: Graduating

Registrar System Mailer

I think that this e-mail marks the actual "graduating" of me from grad school. As in, when I opened this email from Registrar System Mailer, I graduated. Though it's unclear.

Not the weepy, bucolic commencement ceremony I'd looked forward to. But still: Thank you, Registrar System Mailer, where ever you are!

And...that's it!

Congratulations! Your ETD has been accepted. If you have any questions regarding graduation or anything related to the Graduate School - please contact !@%Y*^T***&^%%###

Thank you for using *#etd,
Administrator

And it only took me 4 tries to get the formatting right.

Also, I came down at once with a really nasty flu that CC has identified through online research as TB. Yuck. I spent all day in bed.

Stumbling toward the finish line!

I received this in an email!

Thank you for submitting your ETD. When reviewing your work, we learned that the following formatting problems must be corrected before you resubmit your ETD:

Add title page and abstract to ETD
Add preliminary pages to table of contents and renumber
Add c.v. to table of contents (last entry)

To complete the process, you will need to log in...

Wow, all I have to do is (see above)! Diss creature is stumbling toward the finish line--crawling in an ill-advised zig zag toward the finish line--or is it slouching toward the finish line aaaahhh!

New Animal Information

I am really busy right now trying to graduate, and also undergoing a psychological process that appears to be the result of the end of graduate school and entails a) my brain really not working well and me being confused a lot, and b) the receeding of the mean and paranoid part of my personality--but, BUT--I am not too busy to have discovered the world's largest rodent (average weight 100 lbs!) living a mile from my new apartment!

It lives in the little zoo in the park! I was running in the park and I saw some of them. They make lots of different noises, including whistling and snorting.

CC told her family about this and they suggested that non-Western people eat the world's largest rodent. I told my sister and she said she heard on the radio that when Europeans first saw the world's largest rodent in South America, they wrote to the Pope to ask him to identify it. They wrote a description of it, including that it swims. The Pope wrote back and identified that it was a fish.



Image courtsey of Home of the World's Largest Rodent. Person pictured is a trained zoo professional: do not attempt.

Update: Lady Who Measures the Margins and Page Numbers and Stuff

Ok, so as of now, I've sent it twice to the electronic upload webpage thing. The first time I couldn't get it as one document with two kinds of page numbers. So I uploaded two separate documents. The Lady Who Measures the Margins and Page Numbers and Stuff emailed: "Call the Help Desk, (###) ###-####."

Then, on the airplane, I figured out how to get it as one document. So I uploaded it again at 1 am. The online sytem said it received it.

I called The Lady at 4:25 pm eastern (deadline is 4:30 pm eastern) and she said she'll be at work till midnight tonight measuring margins, but she'll email me if I need to adjust anything and resubmit.

So now I am waiting for her to email back. Thanks for all your well wishes, people.

Woah, here we go!

Woah, so basically CC is reading the first 10 pg. of the intro for major grammar fiascoes, I have to read and consider some advice emailed me by SM, maybe tweak an adjective in the acknowledgments, (Should I thank Tom for "being awesome"? Is that a fair characterization of Tom's gifts and talents? I want to mention Tom's classic "The Nazis Sucked Ass!" e-mail, but that's too much for a dissertation.) uh, and then I am going to upload the thing! Maybe within the hour.

A nice thing was that I asked SM to proof read my acknowledgments and then she sent me her's and her partner's. The best part of all this is the acknowledgments.

Oh, future plot development: Once you upload, the powers of the grad school check with a ruler to make sure you followed the format. So likely I'll have to upload once more. The deadline is tomorrow at 4:30 pm!

Spell Check!

I am sitting here spell checking my entire dissertation.

Wow! This reminds me of other occasions spell checking stuff. But none of those papers were 286 pages long. I think it will take about 40 minutes. Most of my job is to press "Ignore All" when spell checker hits a German word.

More flaming hula hoops, dancing trolls, and tightrope-walking minature ponies

As the U.S. economy implodes, potentially portending hard years to come, I am entering the final round in this circus-like process of getting a PhD in history.

This is the part where you "file" your dissertation. You defended it, the committee signed off on it. Then you have to file to meet the deadline to graduate (which for me to get an October, '08 dated degree is Oct. 3). So I did the defense--my committee signed off in April. I've supposedly been "revising per their comments" over the past months. A few weeks ago, I sent it to my committee again, so that they could pretend to re-read it to make sure I made their revisions, which is unusual and due to the break-neck pace in my case of writing and defending, as well as to my committee fighting within itself. But since they signed off in April, they can no longer stop me from filing, not that any actually seem to have read it the second time. In short, as far as the faculty are concerned, I've jumped through all the flaming hula hoops.

When you file, you have to hand the diss over to your university's library and to the online database of dissertations. This makes the diss publicly available. You can't work on it anymore or make any more changes. You have to do this to get a diploma.

This filing stuff ushers in a new set of dancing ponies and hula hoops, supervised by a new cast of authority figures: the very nice people at the Grad School. They are in charge of making sure you filled out many forms, paid large fees, and submitted the dissertation in a format that accords with the university library's standards.

You might think that after many, many rounds of hula-hoop jumping, miniature pony riding, alligator wrangling, etc., this would be a piece of cake.

But no. At the moment, I am consulting with three other grad students in an attempt to figure out how to have one PDF file with two kinds of page numbers (Roman numerals for the first few pages, Arabic for the rest of the text.) But don't worry. I think I figured it out.

The silver lining: I've been so broke from age 25 to 30, while in grad school, that I have zero dollars invested in the stock market.

Teaching again

So I moved to a strange city again and am teaching and missing CC and all of you guys. Like usual. Ugh. But anyway...

I spent all this time working on this PhD that qualifies me to teach the history of sexuality, and during a lot of this time my work was about explaining to funding institutions (and maybe to myself, it turns out) that the history of sexuality isn't actually about sex, it's about power relations, social constructions of identity, imperialism, race, etc. And it is.


(Photo from the Magnus-Hirschfeld_Gesellschaft)

But also, it's about sex. That came as sort of a shock. Like, I am teaching this class (which I've been running around frantically getting ready for) called "State and Sexuality," thinking all the while that I'd talk a lot about The State. But I'm three class sessions in and I don't think I've said the word "penis" so many times in front of so many people since I was 10 years old. And what's worse is that when I say the word "penis" it is in a sentence like: "They thought the vagina was an inverted penis."

And if I'm shocked by what comes out of my mouth, try getting my students to take part in class discussion!

There we all were on the first day of class at what CC tells me is the stodgiest university in Canada, and I show them a giant slide of the picture above.

I am like, "What's going on in this picture? Who are these people?" We talked about what time period they appear to be in, that they are women and men socializing together, that some of the men appear to be close, perhaps lovers...Then a student is like, "They are wearing costumes."

I was like, "OK, how can you tell those are costumes?"

We talked about 'what is a costume?' for a while. Someone pointed out that a few people seem to be in 1700s garb, way out of time period for the 1920s when the photo was taken.

Finally I was like: "Isn't that a guy wearing a dress? I think that's a guy wearing a dress!"

I look out at my class, and all students are silently and very seriously nodding. They'd noticed that, of course. But they were apparently too shy to say it!

Register to Vote Obama!

This website will help you register to vote if you want. It is easy. You just fill out the form online, print it, and mail it to the address from the list they will give you.



Uh, but it will only help you if you want to vote for Obama. If you are voting for the Wack-a-Doodle Crew it will not help you and you will have to find another website, sorry.

Huge DY Congrats!

Big, humungeous congrats to JAH, cohabitant of witchcraft-capable cat and future--holy shit--mother!

And what I meant by that was

I am writing a syllabus for this class that I foolishly claimed to want to teach, it is called "State and Sexuality in Modern Europe." (Try telling that to your parents.)

So it is called that, but when you look at the syllabus you see that what I meant by that was "Male Homosexuality in Germany, With Occasional Foray Into British Feminism, 1860-1933."

Deviants were bumming!

This cartoon like, sums up my whole dissertation. Thanks, Tom!

Comments written on my dissertation

For the last three pages, you've been tearing this other person's dissertation apart, but here you are citing their evidence as proof of your own argument. Perhaps pick one or the other?

Here you write that newspaper readers sympathized with 'Man A' and not with 'Man B' because 'man a' was a respectable middle class bank clerk and 'Man B' was a homeless blackmailer. But have you considered whether newspaper readers also sympathized with 'Man A' because 'Man B' blackmailed him until 'Man A' killed himself, leaving behind a wife and child?


Here you've written that 'Cabaret Dancer A''s case shows that the police were tolerant of naked cabaret, because the police decided not to bring obscenity charges against her and she kept doing her show. Several pages later, in a small paragraph, you note that two years later, police did bring obscenity charges against 'Cabaret Dancer A', and she was tried, convicted, and fined. But you argue that "the fact that she was fined shows that her behavior was not prohibited--if fined, a person can still do the behavior they were fined for. They just have to pay a fine."--Is this the best example for this argument?

Scary moment

A few moments ago, I checked on the NYT front page online. The main picture is of Joe Biden wiping away tears during a speech. I saw it and immediately recognized the iconography we've all become so familiar with--a tearful guy in a suit, the American flag in the background--and my brain went: "Crap--sex scandal! It's all over!"

But no. He was just tearing up about Delaware. Whew!

What do you guys think of Biden as VP pick anyway?

The Shirt Test

I am at the beach with my parents and other family members, and had the following conversation with my dad.

Dad: Hey, YSA. Do you notice anything about this shirt I am wearing?
YSA: (Noticing striped golf shirt, but not seeing anything particularly interesting about it) No...
Dad: Do these stripes make me look fat?
YSA: No--hey, your shirt is on inside out.
Dad: That is right!
YSA: Hey, what is the deal? Was that some kind of test?
Dad: (Taking shirt off and putting it on right side out) Humph.
YSA: What was that, the final test? Like, 'Now that you have passed The Shirt Test, you are officially an adult'?
Dad: (Finishing putting shirt back on) No. That was a test to see if you are alive!
YSA: Dad, your shirt is on backwards now!
Dad: (Trying to fix backward shirt) Mmph.

No furniture in Canada!

I made it to Toronto. We took lots of pictures! But I have no internet and not really a phone, so you will have to use your imagination, reader. We have to get some furniture 'cause CC is bumming about having zero chairs. You really take chairs for granted until they're gone, it's true.

Witch bumming over time

Prove any historical argument!

For relational graph of witches, angry mobs, and witch burnings over time, see The Tomog.

Important data

Important topic and discussion

Sometimes me and CC run out of things to say to each other, but I still want to talk to her, so I try to facilitate a good discussion on a new topic. Like the other night when we were in the grocery store:

Me: CC, there is something that I want to ask you.
CC: What?
Me: Do you think that crabs would do a good job if they were in charge of running a grocery store, instead of people being in charge?
CC: Yes.
Me: How do you think it would be different?
CC: Everything would be really low to the ground.
Me: Yeah, all the food would have to be on the floor.
CC: Mmm.
Me: Wow, and I bet there would be a lot of sand around.
CC: Yeah.
Me: No, I bet the whole floor would be made of sand! And the food would have to be displayed on the sand, so that the crabs could move it around. There would be wet sand everywhere when you walked in. I wonder if they would not be able to display as much merchandise as they do now? Maybe they would use little hand trucks to move the food, but move them with their claws?
CC: YSA? I love to talk to you about this very important topic, but I am very tired right now. Could we talk about this later?
Me: Sure, CC!

But you know what? It has been two days and we have not returned to this topic. What is that about? Do you think she doesn't really think it's important?

Hurray for green building

I spent yesterday working with my dear buddy from high school at her construction firm, New Frameworks, on a hay bale house they are doing near Albany, NY.
I had the most fun, ever, and hurray for green building. Hay bale insulation is 2-3 times more energy efficient than standard insulation! I learned all about plastering and got a lime burn on my finger. And we went swimming in a pond, camped out in a field, and ate at a diner.(Pictures: Us in front of the house, a (plaster-over-hay bales )wall and corner that I worked on and my awesome buddy then fixed, see how smooth it got?)

The Beautiful Dream

I used to think it would be a romantic adventure to immigrate to Canada. But now I do not think that, as the National Bird of Canada hisses away into the moonless night.

But I did not have to go on Canadian reality TV to find an apartment at least, because the landlords of the place I really liked said I could rent it.

We will not disarm

I was really sad to roll out of bed this morning, after the exciting missle tests yesterday, only to find out that some world leaders have called our missle program "dangerous" and "reckless." We will not disarm, because our missles are for defense in the first place, and it would not have made any sense to go to the trouble of testing them in the first place if we were going to disarm. (The U.S. should disarm first, then we will disarm. The U.S. has nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons!)

But if we were going to disarm, we would have a list of demands that are now on The Tomog and that include one hundred million dollars, Food Aid, Dissertation Aid, and Cooking Aid. Please refer to the Tomog.

Do not try to capture us. We have at least two missles. Refer to pictures.

Also, I feel like just because CC also does not support our missle program and our P.O. box, though that is sad, we certainly are not going to disarm because of that. I will just stop telling her about it.

We Successfully Tested Some Missles (Two Kinds of Missels) That Are For Defensive Purposes Only

Dear World, this blog announces, jointly with the Tomog, the successful test launch of two kinds of missles developed jointly by the Tomog and this blog.

These missles are for defensive purposes only. They go very far and can cause enormous destruction, and one kind is really huge, while the other kind makes a lot of fire. Both kinds are very dangerous. We announce that we have developed these missles for defensive purposes, in the course of normal military operations. We have missles and we are psyched about them, but they are for defense only.

Upcoming announcement

Please tune in to the Tomog for an important announcement that will affect world security.

Television apartment budget makeover show

So this epic apartment search weekend last weekend: I saw 12 different apartments and found only one I liked, but that landlord did not call me back. I grew miserable. Maybe I should just hire a flipping broker, I thought.

I called a real estate agent. But she told me that she didn't work as a broker, but that if I wanted a broker, perhaps I'd be interested in appearing on a reality TV show? They were casting, she said, and they acted just like a broker, but for free. She had already told them about me, she said, and they wanted to have me on the show.

The show is "For Rent" and is about people searching for apartments. Show employees act like free brokers for you, setting up as many apartments as you want to view. And you are on TV doing this. Then, when they find you an apartment, a "team of experts" led by a "TV personality and real estate expert" do a budget makeover of your new apartment.

I called the show. They wanted me to drive up for a screen test.

I told a lot of people about this, thinking they would laugh, har har! But as a rule, they all got all excited about how "lucky" I was to be able to be on this show. Even the academic I know who has published on how reality TV insidiously promotes the "fun" of people working for free (the people on the show don't get paid) and of living under video surveillance--even she was like, "Man, you have got to go on the show!"

All except my Mom. She did not think it was a good idea.

Looking for apartment

Last weekend I was searching for an apartment. I saw the following ad:

$675 2nd Floor Bachelor with Skylight/Just minutes to The Beach

This bachelor has high ceilings,a very large skylight,a four piece bathroom with a large bathtub...a full kitchen...laundry facilities on site and parking included in rent....Just minutes to the Beaches and minutes by street car to downtown.For further info please call...

I was like, well, I'm looking for a 1 bedroom (a "bachelor" is a studio). But it's cheap, and near the beach, maybe it's nice. And I was in the neighborhood. So I biked by. The guy took me upstairs to see the apartment, and--

See in the ad where it says "a very large skylight"? What the ad doesn't say is that that's all the apartment has. It has no windows. Just a very large skylight!

Why do people put the most wretched-looking pictures of apartments on craigslist when they are the landlords trying to rent them? And why, as I see more and more crappy places, do these pictures start to look good to me. (See figures--live in Dracula's castle, enjoy relaxing in a claw-foot, antique bathtub next to a pile of laundry, in a stark, dim, empty room!)

Pity Party

I am sorry that I have not posted. I have not really been working on my diss. I just feel so bad about it! I feel bad, baaaad about it.

But the time is ticking away. If I don't file it soon, I'll not be able to take the post doc. Which means having no money. I don't think academias' all that great, and my diss is a diss-aster, and I don't want to teach, etc.. But I need money. I need to buy some pants, by God. And some burritos.

So I have to work on it. And therefore, I have to post. Post till its done! Yay!

JM said working on her diss is like having her own private Iraq. Which is kind of how I have felt lately. Not to blow things out of proportion too much.

Pun to sum up everyone's life

Diss-aster!

That magic number

My bank account balance and my credit card debt are at the moment roughly equal. I'm at that magic number!

And last week I got my "stimulus check" from the U.S. govt. (So-named because we're supposed to do our patriotic duty, spend it at Walmart, and save the U.S. economy. Like when we went to the mall and saved ourselves from terrorism after the 2001 terrorist attacks by buying new pants.)

Despite the magic number, I propose that we all donate a portion of these checks to worthy causes. The govt. ought to spend this "stimulus" money on homeless people, who it serves very poorly in general, so I'm giving $50 of my check to Coalition for the Homeless. And another $50 to Barack Obama's campaign so that we can get out of endless war. The rest I will use to maintain my magic number. Screw consumption on government orders!

Who will you give your "stimulus" money to?

(By the way, did you know that if you're not currently registered for credits at a university, you can't get a student loan? Huh.)

Canoe NJ

Yesterday we canoed on the Wading River in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. As a little kid, I drove through the Pine Barrens with my Mom. We stopped at a diner in what seemed like the middle of the night, and Mom told me that the people in the next booth, who appeared from their dress and hairstyles to be living in the nineteenth century, were Pineys. Since then, I've been fascinated by the Pine Barrens, and I wanted to take CC there.

On the river yesterday, we saw no Pineys but did see lots of moss. CC took my picture with some giant moss. The moss provided us with moral examples of success against adversary. CC was sad about our impending move from our lovely house (I am too), but we canoed past an island of all moss, and I said, "Look at that moss, I bet it was sad when it had to start growing on that island, but now look at it!" I hope that she felt inspired by the moss. I did!

We canoed around some islands in the Wading and up a narrow, nearly impassable branch of the river. This enabled me to demonstrate my canoeing special technique, which I call "move it out of the way." In this technique, when we come to an obstacle in our path I climb out of the canoe and into the river, then wrestle the fallen tree branch or whatever is blocking the river onto the bank. Then return to canoe and proceed with paddling. This technique is not endorsed by the Ontario Recreational Canoeing Association.

When it started to rain a lot, we were undaunted, because we knew that in just an hour a bus from the canoe livery was coming to pick us up. Not like the night we were stuck at the Lake of Stimulus, home of the World's Largest Leech.

Later yesterday, I fell in a cranberry bog. Then we left the Pine Barrens and bought ice cream from an insolent teenager. Today I have a cold, yuck!

House girl

I am not working on my dissertation. I have to do more stuff to it before I file it in a few months. But right now I am like, 'F you, people, I am not working on it.'

So I need a new professional identity. This could be being CC's house girl. While CC works all day, I could clean the house and make cookies and move the plants around the dining room and that kind of stuff. Then, when she is done working, I could say, "Honey, how was your day?"

But CC refuses to do this.

Despite her refusal, yesterday I went to the grocery store in the morning and bought lots of groceries. Many old ladies shop at 11 am. Also house girls! I felt a sense of accomplishment. (Groceries pictured.) Right now I am doing the dishes (pictured).

Rejection letter

@#%#$%^ University
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Department of !@##$%$
!@@## Street, New York, NY

April 23, 2008


Dear Don,

After careful consideration of the many qualified rejection letters received, I regret to inform you that the committee has decided that it cannot accept your rejection letter at this time.

I realize that this will be disappointing news for you, but that you understand that this decision in no way reflects on the quality of your rejection, and that not all rejection letters meet the needs and parameters of the Program in question. On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for giving us an opportunity to learn about your rejection and to consider it.

Yours Sincerely,

Your Small American, BPhD*

*(Begrudging Doctorate in Philosophy)

Renewed defense of muskrat-like dissertation

I feel like if people did not like the muskrat, that is their loss. Too bad, suckers!
The muskrat is indisputably awesome. It is a tenant of awesomeness.

Defense of dissertation

Hey, back off of my dissertation. People. Just back off.

I mean really, all it wants to do is swim around in mud and eat bugs and pancakes. Who could have a problem with that? That's the nice thing about having a dissertation that's existing (unquestionably!) but doesn't claim to do much fancy stuff. What questions could they ask? "Why does it swim in mud? Why does it like pancakes?" It's a muskrat, for crying out loud. The answers are obvious.

Send me good psychic vibes at 4:30 pm!!

shmisshertation

Hey, I have to defend dissertation/muskrat creature on Monday. Do you guys want to barbecue at our house afterwards? Like around 7 pm?

Dissertation plus delicious jam and pancakes

+

= I'm done!*

*By which I mean, I sent them everything but the bibliography, which I have to do next week. Then, after I meet with them in like two weeks, I'll take the whole thing apart again and put it back together per their comments, I guess copy edit it (or pay someone else to do this?), figure out the weird margins thing and the cotton paper, and submit it. And then I'll really be done.

The first-rate education

And now, for some refreshing fun. Kids, can you spot the grammar error in this excerpt of an e-mail sent by an associate dean and director of the honors college at our beloved university?

"As graduation time at X@##$%%* once again approaches, the Honors College would like to take this opportunity to show our appreciation to the faculty members and instructors who have taught Honors College courses this year. Without whom we certainly could not continue to provide our students with the first-rate education that they receive. "

Wow, awesome free present to YOU, reader.

CC told me about pandora radio and guess what, it is totally awesome. It is free, and you tell them your favorite band and then they make a whole radio station of all these songs you have not heard, but which rock out, and are similar to your favorite band.

In other news, the title of the below-post should be: "Fascism: We Were Just Renting!"

Also, if I have to write my diss much more, I am going to have another melt down. And no one wants that to happen to poor darling CC. So someone stop my diss from having to be written. Take a stand, person/someone!

The tenants of a new world

Advisor email: YSA, I corrected this, I think your word processing program is auto correcting "tenets," here you have written "the tenants of sexual conservatism."

Me realizing to self: For 200 pages I wrote all about "the tenants of Nazism."

In conclusion

I actually still am writing a conclusion for my diss, which I was supposed to turn in to my committee oh, four days ago. But it is not going so well.

In conclusion, as I have argued, the Weimar Republic was in some respects a wacky, wacky place and time (see Introduction, pp. 1-23) (for some people*). In concluding my argument, I seek to evoke all that I have argued thus far, for example and including in Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4. Please recall those chapters and their arguments to your mind. Then, mash the arguments together in your mind. I conclude my study thusly: all the chapter arguments mashed together beg this question: what, exactly, are biopolitics, and what do they mean to us, and for our future (if we have one), and, with respect to them, what was the Weimar Republic?

THE
N

D

*Race, class, gender, ability/disablity, and sexuality!!!

Go dissertation, goooo!

Four clean copies of everything but the last chapter, plus the two copies that I printed first and by mistake messed up the page numbers (sorry, forest). It is going out to the committee right now!

It takes some guts to print this much of something you wrote yourself, let me tell you. Like when halfway through printing my 1,200 pages, the printer ran out of toner (that is, I used up all the toner) and the computer lab guy had to change the toner cartridge right under the big sign on the wall that says "you may print up to three copies of any document."

Camel treachery

A few weeks ago, CC and me started seeing posters up all over town for an event at the children's library (theme: Aladdin) upcoming, at which, poster promised, the highlight would be (the following is a direct quotation):

"Desert snakes, bugs, falcons, and a REAL LIVE CAMEL! "

As you can imagine, we became very enthused about this event and planned to attend. In the weeks to come, we would talk frequently about the impending visit of A REAL CAMEL! to our town. We wondered, for example, what the camel was doing right then, whether it was anticipating visiting us, whether it wanted to come to our town, whether it was mistreated in its current location, what it ate, the difference between camels and dromedaries, etc. CC even told her family about this.

We had several conversations about this.

Then we forgot to attend (it was this Saturday and my dissertation is due tomorrow.)

(Scratch that, CC points out: in three hours.)

Anyway, we were very disappointed that we forgot to go see the camel. We spoke at length about this. Did the camel enjoy its visit? The children must have been so excited! How could we forget? Etc.

Then, this afternoon, CC saw the photograph below on the front page of the local paper.

(Phone call)

CC: I have information about the camel.
YSA: What? What?
CC: I saw a picture, and, I think it is not a camel. Rather, it is a human in a camel costume!
YSA: How can that be? They said a REAL LIVE CAMEL!

Dear reader, is this not a case of false advertising, and have those dear children not as a consequence lost all hope?

Dissertation Year endorses Obama

I think that both Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton would make good presidents. But today, this blog makes an historic announcement (rather than an historical one, for once): We here at Dissertation Year officially endorse Barak Obama for president.

Obama seems slightly more left than Hillary. She talks about "strengthening the middle class" on her website; he talks about poverty and affordable housing. For real, people. Let's keep talking about working to end poverty!

Also, the things that people like Geraldine Ferraro have been saying make me really sad and worried for the future of the democratic party. Those kinds of comments about Obama and race are awful. At the same time Ferraro is claiming that he's got it so easy, Hillary is blasting him for things his pastor said (things that actually, I largely agree with.*) Obama was in a tough position, and how he dealt with it--his speech on race in the U.S.--impressed me a lot.

Many people think that Clinton isn't so far behind, and that besides, women are always being asked to step aside so that men can take on the bigger role by virtue of gender norms, and that she shouldn't succumb to that. This is true--she's not so far behind. Women do often get screwed because of gender norms. But in this particular case, I don't think that most people who think she should drop out of the race think that because she's a women. We think that because she's behind in both popular vote and delegate count. And because the longer the primary contest goes on, the uglier it gets, the more polarized Clinton and Obama voters get, and the more likely it becomes that people who back the person who goes on to lose the Democratic nomination for pres. will stay home during the general election. Hence, I call for Clinton to drop out of the race. The point here is to beat the 'publicans. Remember Duck Plus Horse? I would seriously vote for Duck Plus Horse before I voted for another 'publican, because I sincerely believe that working together, a duck and a horse would do a better job than a 'publican.

It's a happy time because we have both a white woman and a black man running for the nomination, and against the most unpopular president in history! Let's not self-implode in a race war, for once, people. No one screws up their chances like the democrats.

*He said, among other things, that violence begets violence. He said that HIV was a government conspiracy to wipe out people of color, and though I don't agree, I do agree that that's not an entirely far-fetched statement, for the reasons he cited: other government medical experiments on black people (the Tuskeegee experiments) and other government lies (bombing of Cambodia, I'd ad the freaking Iraq war). He may have said that about HIV for a strategic reason--to get more people to get tested for HIV; if a conspiracy theory gets more people to get tested, great. (Oh, and by the way, there was a government conspiracy not to do anything about the AIDS epidemic in its first years because it was supposedly "the gay disease.") And if he called the USA the US-KKK or something, so what? There's a lot of racism in the U.S.: see Ferraro's inane comments, the persistent rumor that Obama is a Muslim, etc. With all the racism and violence against people of color, I can see how someone would call the US the KKK. (Here's just one reason among many: the U.S. government did nothing while the KKK set up a terror state in the south that lasted for, what, 60 years?)

Fascism is not an opinion, it's a crime.

Me: Look, think about this thing we read about fascism. What is wrong with this fascism? Would we like to have it, here in this classroom?

Zombie class: (Silent looking at me.)

Me: It is all about the good of the state, that fascism. Everything we do as fascists will be for the good of the state. We'll re-make ourselves into fascist women and men, so that we want The Good of the State and work for it.

Zombie class: (Silent.)

Me: Do we want that?

Me thinking: (Duh, people. Hello??)

Zombie class: (Some stirring.) Armmpuv. Mmmh.

Me: It sounds OK to me! (more silence from zombies.) What is wrong with fascism? Maybe we should have fascism.

One zombie student: It sounds OK. It looks OK on paper.

Me: What could go wrong?

Zombie student: What if the fascist leader wants to have a war?

Me: (Ignoring fact that student has not taken into account the idea that in fascism, we all want the same thing, although I've stated that already 20 times) Yes, what about that? It all depends on what The Good of the State is, right? That's the problem, we don't know what 'The Good of the State' is. What if it's something evil?

Zombies: (silence)

Me: But it could be something good.

Me thinking: (If Barak Obama wanted to have fascism, that could be a good thing. I would want that fascism.)

Me thinking: (But I can't use Barak Obama as an example of good fascism, or they'll know that I'm a BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL ACADEMIC OUT TO BRAINWASH THEM.)

Me: We could have good fascism. What if 'The Good of The State' was to bake cookies and pet puppies? We would all want that!

Zombies: (silence)

Me: Don't you guys like cookies and puppies?

Zombies: (silence.)

Study shows Weimar Republic was most significant historical phenomena, ever

Self motivation

I resolved not to wash my hair until I send this chapter to my adviser. (One time in college, my friend Purvi resolved not to shower until she finished her thesis, and it seemed to work.) I forget the last time I washed my hair, but I think it was like five days ago. The thing is, it looked really hot yesterday. But today it just looks dirty.

What is that about? Like, how hair goes through this phase of looking really hot while it is dirty. Is someone writing a dissertation about that?

Current most overused phrase in dissertation: "due in part to."

History of YOU!

My Sister: So, what are you going to teach at your new job?
Me: Well, I can teach whatever I want.
Sister: That is cool.
Me: Yeah.
Sister: I know. Why don't you teach The History of Me? You could teach all about my life!
Me: That is a great idea.
(Sister's husband yelling in background): I would take that class!

Later

My Dad: What will you do when you get to (location of job)?
Me: I will teach. I can supposedly teach whatever I want.
Dad: You can teach about us. You can teach History of (Our Last Name).
Me: That is a great idea!
Dad: I went to the first ever drive-in movie. I also grew up right next to the first-ever cloverleaf.
Me: Wow. I could blow a whole day of class, just on that!
Dad: You could have two days of class. One on the drive-in movie, and one on the cloverleaf.
Me: You know, (Name of Sister) said that I should teach the history of her. Like, History of (Sister's Name).
Dad: Pffah. That would be too boring.

Bored of the Rings

A long time ago and in the far away land of Brooklyn, Tom gave me a copy of George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones to read. It's one of those brick-sized fantasy novels with knights, dragons, and all that jazz. It was just about the best one I'd ever read, and I'm a big fan of fantasy lit. I became avid about the series, which is now in its fourth book, A Feast for Crows.

Well, it's been almost ten years now, and I'm about half way through A Feast for Crows. And I've got to say, it's awful. Abysmal. I keep reading, because I'm still fond of the world, and Martin is great at writing action that hooks you in. But the book is a bomb. The characters are flat. Nothing happens that we couldn't have predicted. It's pretty much just a recitation of sex and mindless gore--Everything major that happens in the plot happens because someone had sex with someone they weren't supposed to, and the illicit sex caused one of the people involved or a third party to get violent. This is a fine plot device sometimes, but when it's happened about 30 times, it gets boring. No character ever makes a surprising choice; they mainly react to the sex plots, or try to kill the people who cut their hands off or killed their brothers.

Martin has given in to the Robert Jordan temptation and now has such an enormous plot, with something like 20 point of view characters and 10 major settings, that I can't even remember what the pivotal event that set the story off was in the first place. (The other day, it came back to me--it was that King Robert died. Was he murdered? Aren't we supposed to be wondering if he was murdered, or did we figure that out at some point?) A lot of people have rued the fact that the plot got so huge, but let me just point out that the more central problem is that the conflict is lost, and so are the characters we were rooting for initially. I admired him for killing the protagonist in the first book. Tom and Kid Showbusiness both hated that he did that. And now I agree--it was a mistake to kill the guy. Or at least, if he was gonna kill Stark, he ought to have left more of his family alive! Now we're supposed to care about what's going on in Dorne. But we readers joined up for the Starks.

Did I mention that the characters are flat? This includes the women characters--Martin isn't so great at writing about gender, though hey, he could be a lot worse and at least he's got a few women characters. But come on--even a totally evil queen would take some care not to have too many people tortured to death. Evil people can't stay in power if they have everyone tortured to death. That's not how terror politics works. You can't just torture whoever you want; you've got to keep even your nearest allies afraid that they'll be arrested and that no one will stand by them. That means you can't torture according to your whim. You've got to disguise your whim with some kind of ideological legitimacy.

What's really bugging me now is that the book is so violent (this is related to the evil queen). Gratuitously, unrealistically violent. And Martin keeps reciting family genealogies and heraldry for every secondary character, which I think he thinks passes for "depth of world creation," but in fact is just boring, not to mention meaningless.

Beginning, middle, end. That's what Tolkein does so well. (End is the hardest, I think. But all this series really has is a great beginning.)

Hello, are you existing? To what extent are you existing?

Dissertation: (Yawn) hmmm.
YSA: Dissertation, I have to tell you something.
Dissertation: Hmmmm?
YSA: Dissertation, you have to be finished now.
Dissertation: Hmmmm?
YSA: Dissertation, you have to be finished tomorrow. (Fig. 1: Dissertation eating in bathtub)
Dissertation: You are always joking about that. It is funny when you say that sometimes. Why you are bothering me about it now, I don't know. It is a weekend right now.

YSA: OK, yes, I am kidding about tomorrow, you don't have to be finished tomorrow, but you have to be finished really, really soon. I don't even want to tell you how soon, because it'll freak you out. Do you know what I am saying here? We are having an emergency situation here, dissertation. We need to really pull it together!
Dissertation: Well, but that is not possible. I only have my one part, I need my whole other two chapters. And introduction. So I cannot be done that soon.
YSA: Yes, well, there are going to be some changes around here. From now on, we are not going to call those other chapters "other chapters." We are going to call them "half-finished first chapter" and "soon-to-be written conclusion."
Dissertation: It is the weekend!
YSA: Help me! I know that you can do it, you are such a brave (if short) dissertation. Now you have to really step up and be finished! Quick, figure out why the Weimar Republic fell! Today, if possible!
Dissertation: You are panicking.
YSA: Aaaahhh!
Dissertation: You panic all the time.
YSA: Arrrraaahrrrah!
Dissertation: It makes it hard to enjoy the weekend, when you are like this. Look at all these other grad students in the library, none of them are pulling on their hair and turning red. And it is spring break. We are supposed to go to Cancun or something, like those girls were saying in the coffee shop the other day. We never do fun things.
YSA: Are you existing? How much are you existing? Can you make your chapters exist faster? They don't have to be good, we can revise later. They just have to be existing. Can you do that?
Dissertation: I get upset when you are like this. I don't like to move around fast, you know. It gives me indigestion.
YSA: Maybe your chapters can be shorter? Like, 20 pages? How long do chapters have to be?
Dissertation: I just ate a humongous pancake with jam. You know that is my favorite, but now you are making my Sunday all stressful.
YSA: No more pancakes!
Dissertation: You are not the boss of me.

Diss gets job!

The diss that no one would fund got a job!!!

Yay, NY-NJ Democrat Governors!

Oh, please don't resign, Governor Spitzer! We're already lost another dashing young democrat governor with a pronounced chin to a sex scandal. If Larry Craig can hang on in the senate, surely Spitzer can weather this.

Oh, and another thing

Can anyone who is actually reading the NY Times these days enlighten me as to the timing of the stories on McCain and that lobbiest (9 years ago)? What's the news peg for those stories, did something happen recently (other than the Times not wanting him to be president)? Update: The New Republic has a whole story on the drama behind the Times story.

Update again: The NYT's ombudsman editor took the big editors (including Keller, the big boss) to task over the McCain story. But what the public editor leaves out of his piece and what is the crucial point here (if you ask people including Tom and certainly including myself), is the following: Media, stop reporting on the affairs people are having! We do not care! They have a right to have affairs in private! Don't make national politics a contest to see who had an affair!

Assume McCain was paling around with a lobbiest and McCain's lackys were like, 'dude, you have got to stop hanging out with her, the press will think you are having an affair': What, in that situation, do I as a reader of the NYT want to know? Nothing! Noooothing! It wouldn't have been enough to have an email proving the affair, as the public editor suggests. For me, you'd need an email proving McCain broke lobbying regulations with respect to this particular lobbiest, for whatever reason, whether because she's his girlfriend, his sister, whatever. The affair is his own affair, so to speak, and I don't want to know about it.

Keller, the head editor, should resign over this. It was a terrible judgment call to publish the story.

On a related note:

Eight years ago...

Mom: Some people forget that McCain was one of the Keating Five. But I will never forget. He is trying to live it down, but I will not forget.

Yesterday

Me: Mom, McCain was one of the Keating Five! I totally forgot!
Mom: Me too!

Post of cycle of self-criticism

This post is because I find the post below this one so sad that I can't bear to look at my own blog. Does anyone want to try to organize a memorial for Lawrence King at our U.? I do, but I feel under such pressure to write my diss right now that I keep telling myself I don't have time. Then I tell myself what a bad person I am. Repeat cycle endlessly.

8th grader shot because he wore lipstick

Did you guys hear about this 8th grader in California who was shot at his school this week by another student, apparently because he dressed in a way that did not conform to social expectations of his gender? See also the LA Times coverage (from whence photo came. The photographer is Michael Robinson Chavez.)

CC volunteers at a center for queer youth, and they were talking tonight about the shooting of this kid in California, Larry King. Every single kid had a story of being harassed at school. Many had complained to school administrators, who generally blamed the queer kid for bringing the harassment on themselves because they are queer.

It just makes me feel like queer adults have a real obligation to these kids, who are now coming out in high school and even middle school (something no one in my school would have dared do) and who are facing not only the violence and homophobia of their peers, but the homophobia of all the adults who are supposed to protect them. One of the kids in CC's group was finally expelled from his high school for beating up one of his tormentors. But since none of the teachers or councilors to whom he went for help would help him, he said, what was he supposed to do?

Odd that this isn't in the national media, especially since the national media found the Matthew Shepard murder so easy to cover in great depth. Is it because Larry King wasn't a white kid? And because reporters are thinking that if King was really so "flamboyant," he brought it on himself? Among many other things, this murder demonstrates the futility of politics that separate gender performance and sexuality, as some groups sought to do by passing non-discrimination legislation that would have covered sexuality, not gender performance.

Take a second to e-mail the New York Times to ask them why they aren't covering this murder. nytnews@nytimes.com

Little Girl

When CC dropped me off at the airport yesterday, I rushed up to the airline ticket counter to check in (naturally I was running late). I was supposed to fly to a job interview. This didn't happen because my flight and all subsequent flights were snowed out, but when I arrived at the airport of course I didn't know that, and was having all kinds of thoughts about being grown up and going to a job interview, and having to act grown up at the interview, and how I wasn't sure how to do that, etc.

I got chatting with counter agent. She glanced at my passport and expressed surprise. Surprise at my age (I'll turn 30 three days from now). "You're much older than you look," she said. "When you walked up, I thought you were an unaccompanied minor."

No wonder I feel like no one takes me seriously.

(Unrelated note: This picture, chosen to illustrate my nearly-thirty-ness, is also a picture of me
with the actual microform of the Prussian govt. file on Prussia's nearly passed 1932 sterilization law. !!)

So long, Sweetiepants

Well, now I have a new Macbook called Saskatoon, and Sweetiepants is on her way to Apple central, probably to get spruced up for sale as a rebuilt machine. I wish her well!

I miss Sweetiepants. But I like Saskatoon. Do you want to hear the story? (This will probably be of interest only to Tom and perhaps to CBAM, but heck, they're my core audience.)

After a flight on an airplane, Sweetiepants started crashing without warning and intermittently. Then, she wouldn't turn on at all. Apple replaced her motherboard. The problem got better, but didn't go away. Then an Apple "genius" worked on updating her OS for 2 hours while I waited in the store. The problem didn't go away.

Then, on yet another trip to the Apple store, I met a "genius" who told me that Macbooks of Sweetiepant's generation just aren't compatible with the older router protocols, and they crash sometimes, and that's just the way it is. Therefore, he couldn't fix Sweetiepants, and I ought to just head home and not worry about the crashing.

Yes, you may recall this line of thinking from your childhood: Macs crash, that's just the way it is!

Well, Tom told me that just couldn't be true, and I called Apple and indeed, the people on the phone agreed. But just to pause a moment, Tom and I used to work on a Mac in college that was about 1,200 years old, and crashed all the time, then started up again faithfully. You could like see smoke coming out the back of the thing as it chugged along. It was like the little engine that could.

But that is not the kind of laptop I was looking to own.

Anyway, much time on the phone with Apple ensued, and I reached Saskatoon Ron, an Apple customer service troubleshooter guy who works in snowy Saskatchewan. He is a really nice person, but because Apple had only done one hardware repair, he couldn't order a replacement for Sweetiepants. Instead, he set up an overnight express repair in Tennessee, but I'd have to mail Sweetiepants away for a week.

I remained calm for like one day. Then, I spazzed. I couldn't be computer-less for a week. I wrote Ron a very long e-mail. Ron found it in his heart to order a machine replacement, even though he had to override company protocol or something.

A huge thank you to Ron! We have spent probably 3 hours on the phone by now. But last night, I picked up Saskatoon and handed over Sweetiepants to the "geniuses."

They are not really geniuses, by the way.

In short, I'm a huge fan of Saskatoon Ron, but not such a fan of Apple. In any event, make sure you get that expensive extended warranty on your Mac!

Saskatoon Ron is a nice person.

And Sweetiepants was a very nice computer, before the crashing started. She rode every day to the Secret Archive in the rain on the back of my bike, and never crashed once!

So long, Sweetiepants.

Yaaah!

Congrats to Tom and Nelly!

People. The state of my dissertation.

The state of my dissertation is strong, people. Back off!

Just back off, people!

More lewd conduct

Here is the long-awaited Larry Craig Bathroom post.

Larry Craig, U.S. senator, was arrested for "lewd conduct" in a men's room in the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport last summer. I won't re-hash the details, except to add that I know someone who knows one of the cops involved, and apparently had Craig gone to court, the arrest wouldn't have held up. His conduct wasn't at all egregious. (As you can sort of tell from the wikipedia account (linked above). Surely our forefathers died and wrote the constitution for freedom to accidentally bump someone's foot while peeing, if nothing else!)

I went to St. Paul to visit my sister and her family/associates over the holidays. The night before I was supposed to fly back, my mom called to ask me to remember, when I was in the airport the next day, to check out the Larry Craig Bathroom.


Mom: Your dad wants me to ask you to check out the bathroom.
.....
Mom: (A few minutes later.) Actually, your dad didn't say anything about it. I want you to check out the bathroom.

In fact, my parents followed the whole Larry Craig Bathroom saga quite closely and enjoy very much talking about it. At Thanksgiving dinner this year, a whole-table conversation about the incident even broke out. (Reader, who remembers homo-discomfort over Thanksgiving, will appreciate with what courage I loudly opined "I think if people want to have sex in bathrooms they should go for it, who the heck cares anyway?" This was right after my brother-in-law stated that "That bathroom was wild, people were climbing under stalls totally naked!")

Here are some pics that I took of the historic bathroom. As you can see, it's somewhat secluded. Yet conveniently located near the romantic Chili's bar.

Special Announcement from Duck + Horse for America

Today, at this important moment in the primary season, Duck and Horse have a special message for America:

Horse is female.

(Though Duck is neuter.)

Please vote D + H for a strong, environmentally friendly and economically just America!

special announcement

Reader dear, later today Duck + Horse For America will be making a special announcement.

Woe is me

My computer, Sweetie Pants, broke somehow and wouldn't turn on. I took it to the Apple Store that never closes, and they are supposed to be repairing it. But it is taking a long time.

I feel sad and lost without my laptop. Is that super weird? CC is letting me use her's; she is very nice.