In lieu of an actual post (I'm writing, damnit), I present my collection of funny fake names that were attached to spam I've recieved.
First, while I don't want to turn this into a blog about bloggers (for those of you who love big words, that would be a metablog), I do want to throw one more at you. I got an e-mail from an ex-student today. It was nice. Apparently, he doesn't want to kill me, which is always a shock. Anyway, him and his girlfriend have a blog called Egg's Nestwhich has the best entry titles I've ever seen.
Second, on the above blog, there's a link to a great, funny site, Overheard in New York.
Thirdly, sci-fi/cyberpunk author William Gibson (of Neuromancer fame) has written a good article called "God's Little Toys: Confessions of a Cut and Paste Artist," which draws the comparison between William S. Burroughs, hip hop and sampling, intertextuality, and the interconnectivity and hyperlinking of computer work.
Enjoy.
For those of you interested in my Orion post, space and such things, check out Space Bombardment; by Norden, the commenter on this post, which is definitely worth thinking about.
My computer table is set up right over an AC vent...I have to wear slippers in the summer to keep from freezing my tootsies.
As an educator and academic, I am a reader of the Chronicle of Higher Education...it's a professionably viable thing to do, and they often have intriguing articles. Case in point: in the job section of this week's edition, they had an article written (anonymously) by a member of search committees called "Bloggers Need Not Apply."
The basic slant of this article was that whenever they've been able to dig up a blog of a job candidate, it has usually somehow worked against the potential hire. The article (as well as the author's searches) seems based on the assumption that the blog, in order to be anything other than a drawback, has to be an attempt to bring the author's scholarship to the masses. If it is not, the article argues, you should eliminate your blog from the ether.
There are a few really weird assumptions that result from this argument. First, one candidate's blog worked against him because it "revealed that the true passion of said blogger's life was not academe at all, but the minutiae of software systems, server hardware, and other tech exotica." The underlying assumption here is that in order to be an academic, your teaching and field of research have to pervade every mote of your being. To show that you have interests outside your work is to show that you are not a viable professional academic.
This of course means that academics is only for the totally obsessed among us...at least in this article's view of the world. I've got to wonder. My brother is an electrician, and a damn good one at that. Still, he has hobbies other than electricity, and he doesn't think of running wires every minute he's away from the job site. If he wrote a blog about his rabid love for music, would he be considered less of an elecrician? This example, incidentally, is not going to happen; not that he doesn't love music, but he's too much of a technophobe to have a blog.
Anyway, is being an academic really so far different from any other job that you cannot be good and it and have a life and outside interests? Personally, I've known a lot of academics who do nothing outside their research. They are not fun people. They can't hold a normal conversation, they're ill at ease with people, and they can't talk about research without (a) looking at the conversation as an excuse to dominate or argue with their position, (b) steal potential ideas from those with which they converse, or (c) use the talk as a tool to intellectually rank and compare their colleagues. Is this really the type of person that you want as a colleague?
When I was going after my MA, I was pretty much a school/work hermit, and I don't know if I did anything significant other than those two. When I started my PhD, I promised myself I would still have a life, I would converse, make friends. Guess what? I found that having some kind of existance outside of academics, rather than distracting from my work, actually allowed me a type of perspective and awareness that I could not get when thinking about scholarship was all I did. Knowing other parts of the real world allows academics to better relate their work to that real world...strange but true.
In many ways, many academics want to have their field dominate all existance...both within the university and without. I understand this...it's largely tied up with the struggle to stake out ground for your discipline in general and your research in particular. However, outside perspective, I would argue, is also something you might want.
Later in the article, another serious point came out, one that I feel the need to quote at length.
Part One: "it's best for job seekers to leave their personal lives mostly out of the interview process. It would never occur to the committee to ask what a candidate thinks about certain people's choice of fashion or body adornment, which countries we should invade, what should be done to drivers who refuse to get out of the passing lane, what constitutes a real man, or how the recovery process from one's childhood traumas is going. But since the applicant elaborated on many topics like those, we were all ears. And we were a little concerned. It's not our place to make the recommendation, but we agreed a little therapy (of the offline variety) might be in order."
Part Two: "More often that not, however, the blog was a negative, and job seekers need to eliminate as many negatives as possible. We all have quirks. In a traditional interview process, we try our best to stifle them, or keep them below the threshold of annoyance and distraction."
If the people writing the blogs have nutso politics, then yes, maybe they might not want to advertise that fact. But the idea that you should squeltch your personality entirely to do a successful interview? That I have problems with.
Why, as an interviewer, would you not want to get to know any of your interviewees and in fact encourage them to hide this stuff? On what basis then are you hiring? A CV/resume? Some candidates have a great cv and look good on paper but would make awful candidates as they have no character or social skill. The very strength of other candidates is exactly in how they work with others, how they would work with your students, how they would work with your department, and if these things are not matters of character and personality...the very thing the article recommends squeltching...what are they? I've been reading Kitchen Confidential, and Chef Bourdain argues (I'm paraphrasing here) that when hiring, character is the very thing you want to look for, as everything else can be taught but character cannot. I've also hired in my past, and Bourdain hits it on the head.
The artice continues: "Our blogger applicants came off reasonably well at the initial interview, but once we hung up the phone and called up their blogs, we got to know "the real them" -- better than we wanted, enough to conclude we didn't want to know more." Should I mention that I find the whole idea that reading a blog and assuming you now "know" the person is just slightly presumtuous?
This isn't the first time I've seen someone questioning the logic behind doing a blog, and although I don't fancy myself a blog apologist, I have had to answer the question "why do/would you do the blog thing?" Lotsa possible answers. For me, the first reason is that I needed to have an outlet for non-academic writing. Writing scholarship requires an ultimate intensity...I'm glad I do it, and I do enjoy the process and the results, but it isn't always what one would call "fun." The writing style that I apply to the blog is much different in form; it can be fun, breezy, light, artistic, needlessly caustic, or any other mood that fits my whim. It is an artistic outlet more than anything else, and having it lets me be a more confident writer in all areas, including academics.
Of course, there are other reasons...I have lotsa friends all over, and it's nice to be available in some sense to them. I like the idea of having a body of work that I created, that other people enjoy, without having to go through the "submit/reject" cycle.
I also have serious ideas as to what goes here and what does not. This is not an academic blog, so I do not chronicle my research. I think of myself as a professional educator, so I do not go into specifics on individual students. My job search (except in broad, general strokes) is off-limit because the decorum of such a quest demands it.
To take the approach that a blog is inherently a bad thing for jobseekers seems shortsighted and assumes a relatively narrow view both about what a blog is supposed to do and about appropriate potential employee behavior. Of course, if someone was to read this blog specifically and directly tell me "you are a crazy person and will never get hired unless you hide your insanity from the world at large," then I might consider differently...
SAY IT ISN’T SO
from http://www.moviepoopshoot.com/news/jul05/25.html
Pop music duo Daryl Hall and John Oates have postponed upcoming shows because Hall has been diagnosed with Lyme disease. Hall, 55, is recovering at his home in upstate New York and is expected to make a full recovery, publicist Jonathan Wolfson said Wednesday. Lyme disease is caused by the bite of infected deer ticks and can cause arthritis, neurological problems and encephalitis, a potentially fatal brain inflammation. Early signs include a red bulls-eye rash that slowly expands and flulike symptoms. "We are so sorry to disappoint our fans, but we promise to make it up to them," Hall said in a statement. This month's shows have been postponed, but those scheduled for August and September are expected to go on as planned, Wolfson said. Hall and Oates are known for their 1980s hits including "Maneater," "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" and "Kiss on My List." They have been touring in support of their latest album, "Our Kind of Soul." (As reported by E! Online)
No artistic writing, no order, no logic.
So Lori and I were going to see Hall & Oates play at the Zoo on Monday, but it was postponed. I thought about a long post using as many puns as I could from their songs (example: I guess one of them saw Toledo on the schedule and thought "I can't go for that (no can do)") but couldn't bring myself to do it.
Finally forced myself to do some work on the book revision plan, and I think I have a way to make it "saleable." I hope to have it ready to show to my glorious advisor on Monday or so, but we'll see how it pans out.
We've found out that the BG produce supplier to the good area restaurants is open to retail customers, so I've been going there. Fresh produce makes all the difference...it makes cooking easy when you have good stuff.
Been planning out how I'm going to decorate my new office in my head. It's so nice to have a home base to work out of.
My darling wife is home for lunch, so I'm going to sit with her. More posting as ideas come.
I decided that I would allow myself one "pleasure" book (as opposed to "work"), so, in typical Mike DuBose style and fashion, I picked a little ditty by George Dyson called Project Orion, the true story of an early attempt at designing and building an interplanetary rocketship. Yeah, I know, not exactly the standard "summer reading."
As opposed to the chemical rocket-driven 3 man Apollo missions, Orion was supposed to be large. The average size for an Orion ship was in the 2,000 ton range. Yes, that big. It was to hold a number of people, hold them in comfort, and hold enough supplies to last for voyages to Mars and to the moons of Saturn.
What is infinitely weirder about the whole project (at least to our 21st century perspective) is that the ship was to be powered by 200+ nuclear bombs. Yes, not rockets, but a nuclear bomb powered spaceship.
Apparently, the scientists designed (at least theoretically) a shock absorber which would allow them to focus the shock wave of an atomic blast into a very specific trajectory, thus powering the huge Orion ship. There was the little matter of fallout, but the scientists estimated that, compared to the amount of fallout from open air nuclear tests (which were still going on at the time), the fallout concerns would be minimal. As far as the radiation, well, that was underestimated...although plans for the project in its later stages would have the ship flown into space and assembled there, because space is already chock full of radiation, so (the logic goes) what harm could a little more do?
There are at least a few particularly weird things about this project, in my view. First off, most of the scientists still feel the Orion project to be scientifically valid. We could, in other words, probably dust this off and have interplanetary space ships within ten years, if these guys are right. And most of them feel that nuclear bomb power is the only science we currently have that can get us moving on an interplanetary scale.
So, if this is so viable, why did it not work? Why did the US government not go for it? As best as I can figure, it was mostly political. Orion got caught trying to find government funding, and very few people in the government could find an immediate reason to support it over the already NASA-approved Saturn V rockets. Even when many early rocket pioneers came out in favor of Orion as the next logical step for space travel, the government couldn't justify funding a project without immediate objectives, one that would not "pay off" for years.
So, in Orion's struggle to get funding, they tried to justify their program to the Air Force, as a weapons program. This is where the whole Orion thing gets scary. The book lists many possible selling points, and they are all fairly close to "doomsday" devices. As an example, a number of scientists devised a way to explode large amounts of warheads in space and direct, using their shock absorbers and sheilding, the resulting fallout and radiation from the explosions towards a particular global area...thus effectively irradiating entire continents!
Another proposed Air Force use for Orion was as a floating defense platform with the ability to shoot down nuclear missiles. And if this sounds suspiciously like Reagan's SDI, you are right. In fact, large research project elements and documents remain top secret to this day, and the writer speculates that current SDI research can be directly traced back to Orion.
The lesson here is that all plans for space exploration have a fairly nefarious military dimension to them. When Reagan claimed in the 80s that his SDI had no possible negative uses and was defensive only, he was either lying out his gourd or extremely naive...because even the simple act of shooting down missles meant that those missiles could most likely be expoded not too long after takeoff, thus irradiating the area where they were launched...thus serving as a nuclear strike from afar as well as an anti-missile shield.
Unfortunately, any plans for Star Trek-esque space programs could only ever come to be after military uses, because defense is where the funding is...which is a shame, because I could really get in to the whole one piece elasticised jumpsuit uniform that the space exploration thing would inevitably entail.
My first academic department website bio is up here, along with a sporting picture, for those who might be interested.
So, last weekend I went to see a NASCAR race with my father, who's in the neighborhood (they're visiting my sister, not me, because she has kids and I don't...there's probably a post in that too, but maybe later). It was Father's Day, and Dad is a big racing fan.
This was not my first time seeing NASCAR live and in person. I saw a race before perhaps 14 years ago, so I had an idea of what I should expect. The day did, however, still have its weird elements, and I did learn a lot.
Most of what I learned was about the people watching. They were, to be honest, generally a little weird. When the people who were sitting to the right of our group sat down, the female (hot in a redneck housewife kind of way) asked me if she could clean her glasses on my shirt. How do you respond to this kind of question? I couldn't tell if she had no social grace or if she was coming on to me.
In some ways, a NASCAR audience is like a time capsule from ten years ago. The gentleman sitting in front of me was wearing this Big Johnson shirt. I thought those died a long time ago, but apparently not. Yes, misogynist clothing is funny. Incidentally, if you are interested, they have actually published a History of Big Johnsons book, where they call the t-shirt design "America's most popular t-shirt." Now we know why the feminist movement is still necessary
Anyway, this and other examples make it clear to me that NASCAR has a ways to go before they reach true diversity. For instance, they are not very popular with the brothers...I may have seen one black family in our section, and I saw very few others as we were leaving. Interestingly enough, though, my sister's husband did point out a nice, heartwarming example of NASCAR lesbian love on our way out, but I guess that is acceptable to the masses for the tittilation factor alone.
If there has been a big change in NASCAR in the last decade and a half, it is that the audience doesn't seem to be as overtly "redneck" (Big Johnsons aside) as it used to be. I only saw a few mullets, for example. I didn't notice a preponderance of rebel flags (and yes, the race was in Michigan, but that doesn't always mean anything). Not sure how many other overt displays of redneckishness there were either.
What there was, in abundance, was people wearing hats and clothing which represent their favorite driver. More often than not, however, their outfits more clearly represented the sponsor of their favorite driver than the driver itself. Dale Jarrett, for instance, drives the UPS car. Well, many Dale Jarrett fans were wearing UPS hats. Did they support the company as an extension of their driver loyalty? Did they just like the logo and not really care about the company? Or were they loyal UPS customers who started rooting for Mr. Jarrett because he drove their company's car? Or, even weirder, were they UPS employees showing the colors?
Yes, they sound like silly questions on the surface, but NASCAR fans do show a suprising loyalty to products. I would bet that the hardest thing to find at such an event would be someone who likes both Chevys and Fords...man, there were people who had some seemingly irrational hatred towards a brand of car. Would they still like Dale Earnhardt Jr. if he started driving a Ford? I have to wonder. I was left with the mischevious thought that Hyundai needs to enter NASCAR, just to tick off the hard-core fan.
I also have to wonder what's at the root of the severe hatred towards Jeff Gordon. There were some fans who would flick off Mr. Gordon every time he took a lap, screaming out obscenities. There was one woman who had a picture of him taped to her cooler with the caption: "Jeff and I share one thing: We both like men." There were plenty of people booing his every move, who would've been happiest if he would've wrecked. Not liking someone is something I can understand, but why would someone invest the time, energy, and money into attending a race just to boo one driver?
My father thinks it's just because he's good (which seems strange enough; we like our drivers to be good but not too good!?!?). I suspect it's largely because he (1) is from California, not the "Deep South," and (2) because he still looks a little boyish. Yes, Jeff Gordon is an affront to most NASCAR fans because he (in academic-speak) "subverts the dominant NASCAR paradigm of masculinity." Drivers are supposed to talk with an accent and look like they could either rebuild a transmission in their living room or punch you out; instead, Jeff talks normally, looks normal, and can outrace them. Than is why people hate him and think/wish/hope he is gay. He threatens their desired image of machismo. It's a theory, anyway.
So, what about the actual race? Some sports translate very well to television, some work very well in person only. Personally, I think NASCAR is much better on television by far than it is in person. Once the leader started lapping cars, it became very hard to tell who was on the lead lap and who was being lapped. You could spend all your time rooting for someone who, you would later discover, was actually a few laps down and stood no chance. And since the track was so damn big, it was very hard to tell what was going on on the opposite corners.
It was loud, though. The one thing you really cannot get from watching NASCAR on television is a true appreciation of the raw power. Race cars sound like fighter jets screaming around the tracks. You can feel them coming around the corners in your chest. They move much quicker than simple automobiles should. And they are driven by people who look and talk like they could be sitting in the stands. More than anything else, NASCAR is about the image of unbelievable power controlled by seemingly-ordinary people. In this way, it is truly a populist sport.
Having said that, most of the drivers are millionaires. They are all explicitly tied to major corporations. In actuality, NASCAR is really more about these major corporations coopting the populist image of good-ole boys tinkering with cars, but this is an argument which is really more suitable to an academic article than a blog.
Oh, I did learn one more thing, something drastically important, something everyone reading this can apply to their real life on a daily basis: when a sunscreen says either "lasts for eight hours" or "waterproof and sweatproof," they are lying.
I wouldn't normally quote a full article at length, but the one below is from a reputable source and is so disturbing, it warrants a wide distribution. If this disturbs you at all (and it should), please go to MoveOn and sign their petition. And get your friends to do the same.
From The Washington Post
Public Broadcasting Targeted By House
Panel Seeks to End CPB's Funding Within 2 Years
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 10, 2005; Page A01
A House subcommittee voted yesterday to sharply reduce the federal government's financial support for public broadcasting, including eliminating taxpayer funds that help underwrite such popular children's educational programs as "Sesame Street," "Reading Rainbow," "Arthur" and "Postcards From Buster."
In addition, the subcommittee acted to eliminate within two years all federal money for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting -- which passes federal funds to public broadcasters -- starting with a 25 percent reduction in CPB's budget for next year, from $400 million to $300 million.
In all, the cuts would represent the most drastic cutback of public broadcasting since Congress created the nonprofit CPB in 1967. The CPB funds are particularly important for small TV and radio stations and account for about 15 percent of the public broadcasting industry's total revenue.
Expressing alarm, public broadcasters and their supporters in Congress interpreted the move as an escalation of a Republican-led campaign against a perceived liberal bias in their programming. That effort was initiated by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's own chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson.
"Americans overwhelmingly see public broadcasting as an unbiased information source," Rep. David Obey (Wis.), the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee, said in a statement. "Perhaps that's what the GOP finds so offensive about it. Republican leaders are trying to bring every facet of the federal government under their control. . . . Now they are trying to put their ideological stamp on public broadcasting."
But the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services, and education asserted that the panel was simply making choices among various worthy government programs, and that no political message was intended.
The subcommittee's action, which came on a voice vote, doesn't necessarily put Big Bird on the Endangered Species List. House members could restore funding as the appropriations bill moves along or, more likely, when the House and Senate meet to reconcile budget legislation later this year. The Senate has traditionally been a stronger ally of public broadcasting than the House, whose former speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), waged a high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful campaign to "zero out" funding for the CPB a decade ago.
The cuts nevertheless surprised people in public broadcasting. In his budget sent to Congress in February, President Bush had recommended reducing CPB's budget only slightly.
Several denounced the decision by the panel, which has 10 Republicans and seven Democrats, as payback by a Republican-dominated House after years of complaints from conservatives who see liberal bias in programs carried by the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio. Broadcasters noted, for example, that the 25 percent cutback in next year's CPB budget was a rollback of money that Congress had promised in 2004.
PBS, in particular, drew harsh criticism in December from the Bush administration for a "Postcards From Buster" episode in which Buster, an animated rabbit, "visited" two families in Vermont headed by lesbians. And programming on both PBS and NPR has come under fire in recent months from Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the CPB, who has pushed for greater "balance" on the public airwaves.
A spokeswoman for NPR, Andi Sporkin, directly blamed Tomlinson for yesterday's action, saying, "We've never been sure of Mr. Tomlinson's intent but, with this news, we might be seeing his effect."
Tomlinson did not return calls seeking comment. In a statement, he said, "Obviously, we are concerned [by the cuts], and we will be joining with our colleagues in the public broadcasting community to make the case for a higher level of funding as the appropriations measure makes its way through Congress."
John Lawson, the president of the Association of Public Television Stations, a Washington-based group that lobbies for public broadcasters, called the subcommittee's action "at least malicious wounding, if not outright attempted murder, of public broadcasting in America." He added, "This action could deprive tens of millions of American children of commercial-free educational programming."
Rep. Ralph Regula (R-Ohio), the subcommittee's chairman, said the cuts had nothing to do with dissatisfaction over public radio or TV programs. "It's pretty simple," he said in an interview. "The thinking was, there's not enough money for everything. There are 'must-do,' 'need-to-do' and 'nice-to-do' programs that we have to pay for. [Public broadcasting] is somewhere between a 'need-to-do' and a 'nice-to-do.' "
The subcommittee had to decide, he said, on cutting money for public broadcasting or cutting college grants, special education, worker retraining and health care programs. "No one's out to get" public broadcasting, Regula said. "It's not punitive in any way."
In fact, none of the Republican members of the subcommittee publicly denounced public radio or TV funding at yesterday's markup. Public broadcasting drew supportive statements from Obey and Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.).
Regula suggested public stations could "make do" without federal money by getting more funding from private sources, such as contributions from corporations, foundations, and listeners and viewers.
But the loss of $23.4 million in federal funds for children's educational shows -- which PBS calls its "Ready to Learn" programs -- could mean the elimination of these programs, said an official at Alexandria-based PBS who asked not to be named because the network still hopes to regain the funding. PBS's revenue totaled $333 million in fiscal year 2004.
The Ready to Learn group includes "Sesame Street," "Dragontales," "Clifford" and "Arthur," among others.
The House measure also cuts support for a variety of smaller projects, such as a $39.6 million public TV satellite distribution network and a $39.4 million program that helps public stations update their analog TV signals to digital format.
Small public radio stations, particularly those in rural areas and those serving minority audiences, may be the most vulnerable to federal cuts because they currently operate on shoestring budgets.
"This could literally put us out of business," said Paul Stankavich, president and general manager of the Alaska Public Radio Network, an alliance of 26 stations in the state that create and share news programming. "Almost all of us are down to the bone right now. If we lost 5 or 10 percent of our budgets in one fell swoop, we could end up being just a repeater service" for national news, with no funds to produce local content.
Stankavich, who also runs a public radio and TV station in Anchorage, said public radio is "an important source of news in urban areas, but it's life-critical in rural areas," especially in far-flung parts of Alaska unserved by any other broadcast medium.
I had to write a bio for the webpage at my new job, so I thought I would present it here for your amusement. Did I get the proper mix of serious and "Mike?"
BIO
Mike S. DuBose (Ph.D. from Bowling Green State University in American Culture Studies) is a Lecturer in the department who teaches various composition courses. He is the former editor of the now defunct literary journal Stark Raving Sanity, and he has published academic writing in Holidays, Ritual, Festival, Celebration, and Public Display, in the journal Reconstruction, in the Encyclopedia of Capitalism, and forthcoming in the Journal of Popular Culture. Mike's main areas of research interest include 1980s popular culture, critical media studies, and the application of complexity theory to the study of culture; he is combining all three in both a revision of his dissertation into book form for a major American academic press and several research papers in progress. In his spare time, he plays guitar, watches Food Network almost obsessively, participates gleefully in geek culture such as professional wrestling fandom, and stares at his wife in awe. Mike also occasionally writes a non-fiction, non-academic blog called TheMikeDuBose
Customer: Sorry, my kid spilt some milk in this wagon we rented.
Me: It's okay...definitely nothing to cry over.
And the customer GOT IT!
When I was told that I indeed had a fulltime position for the upcoming year, I told myself that I was not going to go on too much of a spending spree just because I had finally reached the level where I can sustain myself without credit (at least, that's where I'll be when I start getting paid). But I did need to get a few creature comforts, so one of the things I did was get the DirecTV full package with a TiVo Digital Video Recorder.
I had DirecTV before (mostly for the football package), so I knew what I was getting into. The TiVo, however, makes all the difference. It has a 70 hour hard drive and will automatically record every episode of my favorite show, if I program it to do so. But as network tv is such a waste, I really don't use it for that. What do I want with fifteen episodes of the latest Fox reality show, _So I married the top singer and was forced to live on an island with a strict Nanny_? I would much rather expand my viewing in hopes of finding new, exciting, and non-moronic television programs.
What I am using it for, however, is to record stuff off of what is now my favorite channel, the Independant Film Channel. Have you heard of this? It's friggin' awesome. All independant films, all day, uncut, uncensored.
So far I have watched a b&w Bruce Campbell film about a bank heist (forgot the name), two of the Blind Swordsman films (from what they call Samuri Saturday...which is as cool as it sounds), and Slasher, a documentary about a used car dealer. On the TiVo, I have The Usual Suspects, some Mamet film, some Phillip Seymour Hoffman film about a gasoline sniffer, and a few others. Tonight, it's gonna record The Evil Dead. I got more coming.
Indy culture, stuff I would never see otherwise (and most likely, never even hear of), and I can watch it WHENEVER I WANT!!!! VICTORY!!!!!! CULTURE SHOULD WORK ***FOR*** YOU, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!!!! DEMAND THIS STUFF!!!!!!!!
(yes, I'm done now)
So when I told my leader at work (a nice 18 year old, about whom I have some good stories) that I was leaving, he told me that he was happy for me, but he could never understand just what I was doing there in the first place when I should have a real, good job. We then talked about the guy who dresses up as one of our zoo mascots (hate to blow it for the kiddies out there, but he's KC the Polar Bear), because he is a computer programmer (nice guy, too). Mr. Polar Bear is in the same boat as me; he too should have suitable employment. I then told my leader that my wonderful wife has an MA in Higher Ed Administration and is working as a bank teller.
Y'ever heard of the phrase "organic intellectual?" Well, my leader suprised me by showing some hints of being one himself. He told me that him and his friend (also 18, a nice guy, works at the zoo, and looks suspiciously like Carlito Carribean Cool) have talked about this, and that they have concluded that you can tell when the economy of our fair country is in trouble because the zoo gets drastically better employees. When the economy is actually doing good, they are stuck with high school brats only. When things start going down the crapper, they get smart people who should be working somewhere else.
When I was in the midst of my great tenure at Little Caesar Pizzas in management, we of course noticed this as well. When Bush Mark I was prez, things were bad because we had lotsa college students and ex-military working for us. It was really great as an assistant manager to know that you had workers who understood you actually had to work at work ("If it wasn't work, they wouldn't call it work...they'd call it super-happy funtime"...Red Foreman) instead of being ignorant high school punks who only were trying to goof off and get in the pants of our countergirls. When the economy improved, though, you could feel the IQ inside a Little Caesars drop like the air pressure. Good economy, moron workers.
I wish I could've taped my conversation with my leader so I could play it for my classes, because it demonstrated a great principle which we talk about in class...that of the "reserve labor force." It is (the Marxist thought goes) in the best interest of those in control of the means of production (the rich, the business owners) to keep employment rates and the level of satisfaction of the general public at a fairly low level. By doing so, people will be happy to get and keep whatever crap job they have, and the worker pool will be large...this works out to the advantage of the rich because they can hire only the good people, and those good workers can't give too much crap to their bosses about their awful working conditions because there are people lined up waiting for those awful jobs.
Again, the zoo bears this out. When I applied for the job, it was at the zoo's job fair. It was scheduled to run from 9 to 1. I got there at 10:30. I didn't get out until 12:30. There were 500 people who showed up that day, all for (mind you) $6/hour employment. In a real economy, this wouldn't be happening. But it makes you realize that the powers that have to hire must start licking their chops when the economy goes in the tank or whenever there's mass layoffs. That's why WalMart loves going into towns where every other industry is dying, because they can get the best workers and hold out the hope of staying at those low-paying, soul-destroying jobs over the heads of those workers...so the former assemblyline foreman better be thankful of his Greeter job and not raise any ruckus.
I swear, the more exposure I have to lower-class life and work, the worse it makes me feel about the world...and the more it makes me feel like a pseudo-Marxist/socialist myself. At the very least, I understand those viewpoints a whole lot better.
So, if I was running a news organization (online, radio, whatever), I would go around and talk to the people who do the hiring at corporations and anyone who works in HR. If they are happy with their employee base, there must be something wrong with the world somewhere.
Lesson? It is good for the populace when the rich suffer. When they are happy, watch out.
Or am I getting swept away into bitterness over my own low wage potential?
One of my Ethnic Studies students, before the final exam, came up with the most clever metaphor for American history I've heard in a while. American history, he said, is like a big game of immigrant whack-a-mole. The powers-that-be wield the hammer. Indians pop up? Whack! Irish? Whack! Blacks? Chinese? Whack, whack!
It was one of the most clever things I've heard a student say in a long time. For a second, I was tempted to give him an "A" just for that comment...but only for a second. If I could remember his name, I would tell ya.
Incidentally, here's a java whack-a-mole game.
There will be much more about this coming up in the near future (especially as I just put in my notice at my part time job), but:
Last Thursday, I formally accepted a position at the University of Toledo as a Lecturer in the Department of English. My teaching duties will be be primarily in the Comp 1/2 cycle, but they promise to also let me teach some Professional Writing and Technical Writing classes...which should diversify my cv a little. It is a full time, permanent position, with the requisite salary (not great, but a whole lot better than my previous adjunct pay) and full benefits. The department itself seems really nice and professional, and I look forward to the experience.
I am very happy to have the position. Now that I will not have to ferry myself between three colleges and prepare for classes in multiple disciplines, I hope to both improve the quality of my teaching and actually do some of the research and writing that's been spinning around my head for the past two years. I am also very happy not to be on the adjunct "where am I gonna work next year" bandwagon.
I am not, however, content. I still wish to be a college professor, and I would like to work in a field which is more compatable with my research interests than Composition....which I have the greatest respect for, but is not really what I thought I would be doing professionally.
I will be reentering the job market in the fall. This time around, I will (as the result of my UT position) be able to focus ONLY on tenure track positions. I hope to spend the summer making myself a more viable candidate, both in terms of my research (I have quit my summer job and am going to read and write extensively) and in presentation.
And I know I've said this in the past, but...more info coming soon.
Mike S. DuBose
Lecturer of Composition
University of Toledo
from my own personal observations:
1) You cannot be a badass and be in love...even if the significant other is also trying to be a badass. Holding hands kills the effect.
2) You especially cannot be a badass and be with children. There's something about telling your kid "okay, honey, you can get your picture taken with the Easter Bunny" that also kills the effect.
3) You cannot be a badass at the zoo or at any family friendly surroundings. You are not tough looking at penguins.
4) If you are at the zoo, no amount of leather or trenchcoat will
help.
5) Please leave camoflauge to the army.
I'm back! Expect to see regular stuff here again. For this episode, I thought I would give some of the more memorable lines I've heard while working at the zoo.
1) me: The camera with flash works well if you want to take indoor photos, but the one without flash is good if you only will be shooting outdoors. customer: What do you mean by "outdoors?"
2) parent to 4 year old child: No, you can't have anything. You're in trouble, remember? child (after staring at parent): I'm not going to visit you when you get old.
3) parent to child grabbing his crotch: Do you have to go to the bathroom? child: My penis hurts.
4) coworker: After I buy my new station wagon, I want to drive it on dirt roads, so I'm going to West Virginia.
5) coworker: Are there any special drivers licenses for a Vespa?
more to come.
