deadline reminder

I'm trying to reach people through as many different ways as possible, so consider this to be a warning...and not your last one.

The Popular Culture Association's 2009 conference is in New Orleans from Wednesday, April 8, through Saturday, April 11. The deadline for submissions is November 30. On their website, they have a complete list of areas, each with its own address or call for papers.

While this conference is used by some academics as simply a vacation spot (and, hint-hint, it is in New Orleans, a great place for a vacation), there are still good panels and papers (including mine). So everyone I know should go.

Plus, it's New Orleans. Jazz clubs. Awesome food. Drinking on the streets. Voodoo stores. How could this not be fun?

Please go. I want to get everyone I know there, so we can act like a street gang and take over the place.

little known facts about me

It's a secret that I've been hiding for ages, and it's finally time to come clean. My soul can't take the deception any longer. Yes, I, themikedubose, have physical deformities. To wit:

• I have a mysterious spot on my left leg where, in a perfect circle, no hair whatsoever will grow. This is puzzling, because I'm quite hirsute otherwise. My parents know of no birth defects, forceps gouging, or massive burns. My theory? Alien abduction.
  
• When it is cold outside, my pinkies are significantly more chilled than the rest of my hand. Maybe this is a sign my hands will still turn into hooves or something.
  
• I get hot entirely too quickly. When I told my doctor this, he thought about it, and then diagnosed me: I have heat intolerance. Oooooh.
  

Okay, so maybe it's not enough to let me join a circus...but have pity anyway. And quit looking at me!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Star Trek and deadlines

One of the best things about Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn, other than the very awesome Kirk scream, is its applicability to real life.


Bear with me here.

The Genesis Device (all such sci-fi devices are unique, destructive, and therefor must be capitalized) is about to go off. The Enterprise's warp core is not working. Someone's giving the countdown of doom. Kirk keeps asking for distance from the explosion and time until detonation. If they can't travel fast enough, they are all dead...and with the warp core down, they will certainly be obliterated in the explosion.

Kirk looks worried. But it is not him with whom I identify. Sulu is at the helm, and in a resigned voice, asks no one in particular: "We're not going to make it, are we?"

Star Trek is infamous for putting the ship in mortal peril. They always seem to escape. Sulu knows this. Yet his voice gives away a hint of awareness that their luck might have finally just run out.

It is now October 22. I am supposed to have the book done by the end of the month. And boy, is this thing fighting me. I am having to go do mortal combat with the damn thing every day. I've cut my football back to almost nothing. I've eliminated most of my television viewing...and for that matter, culture enjoyment of all sorts. But the book is working against me at every turn.

Nine days. I know how Sulu felt.


Of course, they did make it, so maybe I will. But they had Spock, who was willing to sacrifice himself in order to save the crew. The good of the many sometimes outweighs the good of the few.

Where's my Spock? Who will take my classes, the dilithium crystals of my life, and fix them so I can heroically escape death by missed deadline?

Zappa Plays Zappa

A brief time out/work avoidance moment to tell you about our experience at Zappa Plays Zappa last night.

I'm a big Frank Zappa fan. I got into him while he was still alive but (unfortunately) after he had stopped touring. I'm a biggest fan of the One Size Fits All era, but I have several timeframes represented. Even so, I feel inadequate...I've only got about twenty of his seventy or so albums.

When I found out that Zappa's son Dweezil had put together a touring Zappa tribute band, I was intrigued. Dweezil always had the technical skills, but he was much more manic than his father, and I wondered if he would have the discipline to pull this off. However, every time I checked their tour dates, they seemed to be focusing on festival shows, and they seemed to never be around where I live, so it was all a moot point...until last night.

Zappa Plays Zappa came into Ann Arbor last night, and I managed to snag two 4th row seats...the joys of working at home. First, it was nice to be so close, I felt like the luckiest little girl in the world! Second, it was one of those shows where the spousal unit and I were lowering the average age...pretty much the exact opposite of what happened when thmarn and I went to see My Chemical Romance. Third, I love knowing that there's no opening act for me to groan my way through.

The band was utterly amazing...almost three hours of music. We got a lot of the classics: "Peaches," "Zombie Woof," "I Am The Slime," a couple songs off Joe's Garage, a dance contest, a smokin' "Cosmic Debris" that featured solos from everyone including the awesome Ray White, and a version of (get this) "Billy the Mountain"...it must've went on for a half hour, weird and funny as all hell.

Dweezil smokes. Having to sit and learn all of Frank's music was really good for him...he's more fluid than I've ever seen him, both faster and with more emotion. He's starting to look a lot like Frank, and he sure as hell can channel his father's playing. More importantly, he was sporting the "how lucky am I?" grin through most of the evening.

I'll never get to see Frank, but this evening made me a little less sad of that fact.

ps: With a crowd that old and a set list that long, people were constantly getting up to hit a bathroom. If Dweezil was more of a commercial slut, he should've had the whole deal sponsored by FloMax.

another beverage

I call this one the "Writing Depression":

• Fill a pint glass up with ice
  
• fill 1/4 with vodka
  
• 1/4 wild strawberry liquor
  
• splash of triple sec
  
• top off with club soda (preferably Big K brand)
  
• sip while watching football, trying to figure out how to fix your manuscript problems, become self-deluded that you'll actually finish the book in 11 days.
  

so, how's it going?

I have just finished stitching together a draft of the completely new chapter of my book. It has 100% of the structure/organization, 85% of the sources (and I know where to find the others), and 70% of the actual language. I should be able to get it more or less complete by the end of the week, if all goes well.

Then I just have to stitch it together with the rest, stitch in the conclusion and expand it, and reword the entire thing. And I have 17 days to do it. Piece of cake!

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to anyone whom I might've insulted, ignored, or generally treated in a questionable manner during this process. I think I've been handling the stress and workload pretty well, but one thing I learned in the dissertation is that perspective and judgment are the first things to go.

Kind of like in a whiskey drunk.

lazing on a sunday afternoon

Somewhere in Matt Groening's book School is Hell, there's a piece about graduate school, where someone is in the doorway of a graduate student, asking them if they wanna come to a picnic. The student, without looking up from his book, replies with "Sounds great! I'll be there in four or five years.

I spent until 10pm yesterday at my computer busting out job applications. I worked until 9 most nights last week. Today, I'm sitting at the computer again, going over some criticism. It's warm, and in order to battle the heat from the cpu, I've got the window open.

Across the street is one of those mega-apartment complexes for undergrads. If you look through the trees, you can see the "kids" playing volleyball. I assume there's also beer involved.

I remember spending weekend days at a friend's house, drinking beer, playing volleyball in the front yard. Now, I'm thinking of that experience while I watch some other lucky teen punks play volleyball in the sun. In between bouts of bitterness and loathing, I write about really horrible literary criticism.

One would hope this eventually evens out.

blogging activity

Yes, I haven't been around much...been working...but I have not abandoned this. Later this week, I have to type up an entry I handwrote while at the Detroit airport. Then I get to tell you about my new car (pimpmobile). I still have to give the results of my MySpace and Facebook experiment. And there are, of course, more horror stories from work.

However, if you haven't noticed, there is a summary of my Twitter feed on the right. I started Twittering a while back...the short space fits my current workload. If you Twitter, please let me know so I can follow you.

Also, I have a blog chronicling thoughts, ideas, and rants-in-progress about my book and other scholarship. You might've heard me mention it before, but it was previously invite-only. I'm changing that. I'm also moving the academic blog to another site which allows backups (which, inexplicably, Blogger does not). So if you have any interest in seeing what I've been up to in terms of scholarship...or in telling me how I'm wrong...please check out Thought Emporium, my new home for scholarship.

Now, I'm going back to work so I can get this damn book done, move onto a tenure track job, buy a house, start homebrewing beer again, have kids who will take care of me when I get (more) old and decrepit, and spend more time admiring my awesome spousal unit.

seven years gone

I wasn't going to do a post-9/11 post, but someone on a mailing list wrote something that shook me to the core, and I just had to work out some thoughts (albeit a day late). An expansion of my reply:

My experience pales to most people, but I do remember the utter disorientation that everyone at school seemed to exhibit...everyone was walking around like a zombie. I was sitting in my office doing some grading, and one of my colleagues kept wandering the hallways, listening to a portable radio. When I finally asked him what the hell he was doing, I didn't believe his response at first.

I went down to my department's conference room, where there was a tv set up. A number of people had gathered to watch the coverage...by that time, the second tower had already fallen...but no one was really saying anything. I stayed for an hour or so, and then went to my only class of the day. The teacher there had the tv on, and likewise, everyone was just staring, silent. I stayed for about 30 minutes before heading home. I didn't break out my cd player for the walk as I normally would...somehow, I just really needed to hear some quiet.

I got home and watched coverage for a few hours before my mind snapped, and I just couldn't take it anymore. However, nothing else was on. Even Food Network has suspended their coverage, which I understand, but it was a shame...I really needed a diversion at that point.

That night, the spousal unit and an old roomate and I went to BW3s for wing night. We were sitting on the deck, right across the street from a gas station, and it seemed that every 15 minutes, someone from the gas station would come out and raise the prices on the sign. Afterward, we went to Howards (the ultimate BG bar), and we got to see the President-appointee's "I've finally finished reading kid stories and am now ready to pretend to be a leader" speech to the nation, where he begged us, the nation, to show unity by going (wait for it) shopping.

It's a shame those are my two most vivid memories of that day. But it was obvious by them that something in the world (and particularly in the US) had changed for the worse. I was never one of those "capitalism is evil" types, but I became much more cynical about government and authority after trying to juxtapose the gas gouging and the presidential pleas to shop. I still think that 9/11 is the day that W became unglued, and our country and the world has suffered the wrath of a government becoming more egotistical, more evil, and less empathetic ever since.

On the plus side, the actual people of the country drew together in a way that gave me hope. Locally, our Muslim community started to pre-emptively reach out to the area and become more open. The population showed the enormous courage, unity, charity, and grace that those in power so clearly showed they lack.

(Actually, come to think of it, the Katrina aftermath was pretty much the same thing.)

I want to be hopeful here. I want to believe that the people of this country will work not only for their own best interests but for the best interests of us all, even when the government is clearly wrong. However, many good people still actively support a very bad government, one that's making us all look bad and get our souls messy. Please, America, we have a chance to finally do right by each other. Do the right thing.

two completely unrelated thoughts

These have nothing to do with each other:

• My friend Andy, who does political rage better than I, has a good post entitled Dear America: WTF? An Open Letter. If you have heard and even stopped to consider any of the McCain/GOP rhetoric, please read this.
  
• You will notice my Twitter feed to your right. As I get busier, I'm more prone to micro-blog. Please use Twitter...I'm finding it fun, and I wanna follow more friends.

anxiety and the book

A while back, I started on another blog, one designed to help me get back into the swing of writing my book...or, if you prefer, converting my dissertation into a book manuscript. I read a lot of theory, figuring I needed to reflex my brain muscles, become as intellectually nimble as when I was a grad student and being nimble was my only real job. The blog became home to my thinking, my rants, my tangents discovered while diving into theory. I put up somewhere around 25-30 pages of material, and much of it still will find a way into my scholarship somehow.

Then I had a semester of classes for which to prepare. (damn, it might be proper grammar, but that sentence looks funky) Then I had much welcome and enjoyed house guests. I've made a few stabs at getting back into research mode after they left, but there are a few things that have made me rethink my approach.

First, a colleague here at UT who is a creative writer started revising his MFA book..."redlining," he calls it. Then one of my old roommates just published his book (which is both highly entertaining and gorgeously designed), and I'm insanely jealous. These things brought me to some kind of epiphany.

I think what I've realized is that, by submitting myself to a theory overload, I've been trying to put myself through a "DIY" version of doctoral school...and I don't really think I actually need that at this point of my career. I need to remember that the book itself, as the early draft stands now, has more than enough theory in it and behind it. And while I will be revamping the theory section (moving it around, refocusing, all that), it is not going to be a "gearhead" tome.

There's not a lot on the eighties as a decade, and out of what is out there, none of it is really current. My book will not be one of many. It will be an invitation back into the subject, a good reminder of why this decade should be studied, and as such, it has to be approachable. I have to keep it if not informal in tone, then at least accessible. There will be plenty of time to write the heavy theory follow-up article version of the theory chapter...no real need to do it now.

When I was working on the dissertation itself, I had one particular moment of clarity (there were others, but this is the one that's relevant). I was sitting in the library, having just worked my way through a stack of material on Reaganomics and SDI, and I looked at the pile of sociology books on my table. Suddenly, I realized that what I was trying to do was not write my project but become an expert on everything in the world.

This was unnecessary. It was not really helpful. It contributed to and exacerbated a lack of focus (whether real or perceived). On top of all this, I wasn't sure if the need to know everything in the world was either a desire to be the ultimate authority (and thus a signifier of a heavy work ethic) or of a desire to avoid actually finishing the damn project (and thus a signifier of either laziness or fear of the post-grad world).

In my attempt at total theory immersion, I realize I was doing the exact same thing over again.

So I've made a conscious decision. I've decided that, on a general scale, I'm smart enough to do this as-is. I will still do research and reading, but I'm not going to teach myself anything from scratch.

Second, I've decided that I have to have faith in the bones of the project as it currently exists. I might've been trying to start from scratch, to do the dissertation as I'd do it if I were just now becoming ABD. I need to have faith that all I really need to do is refocus and revise what I've done. While much of the language may change, what I have right now is, I need to remember, a worthwhile project that deserves to see the light of day, and sooner is better than later.

I'm moving on to writing. Screw this misplaced desire for total mastery of all knowledge. I'm not that kind of guy, I'm not that kind of academic, I'm not a theoretical gearhead. Time to start acting and writing like the kind of academic I am.

(note to my readers: If you are a theoretical gearhead, please don't be offended by anything I say here. I understand your scholarship. I need to see a lot of your kind of stuff. Deep in my heart, I wish I was you. But I am not. If I have a potential niche as an academic/scholar, it's essentially my ability to apply neat, unusual, skewed perspectives on subjects that manages to provide some kind of neat insight. This is just about playing to my strengths.)

death of nerdy?

Someone I know is playing D&D tonight. And now I'm starting to feel sadness that I'm not playing with them. Suddenly, I am not in with nerd/geek culture anymore. This is the weirdest mood I've been in for ages.

the evaporation of summer

The end of freedom is definitely in the air, and that's something you particularly notice while living in a college town. The traffic on the roads has visibly picked up, you can hear the gentle strains of the mating call of the wild frat boy whenever you step outside, and there's a general sense of anticipation mixed with healthy amounts of fear and drudgery.

Yes, fall semester starts on Monday.

It's always a time of contrasts for me. There are ample opportunities to meet new people, and even though I'm no longer really a part of my doctoral program, I've already started to get to know some of their fascinating new members. Even amongst the established BG veterans, there are increasing levels of contacts and camaraderie...perhaps we're all finally starting to get over losing new friends to jobs and other programs, and we just crave connection. Socially, I feel really good, which is frankly amazing, considering the scores of friends who have left this town, moving onto "elsewhere" and a new chapter in their lives. Most falls, I feel their absence, but the possibility of new connections is, right now, my strongest social sensation.

There is also a new semester of challenges on the horizon. Monday, I walk into my classrooms for the first time. For many of my students, I am the first university teacher they will have, the "welcome to college" sign in their lives, and this is indeed a heady feeling. There is so much to teach them, so many preconceptions to eliminate, so many new intellectual discoveries to facilitate. While I know by experience that not all will make it, I am looking forward to seeing how much most of them will grow.

And I did get a lot accomplished this summer. I've had an unprecedented level of scholarly production...2 reviews, 2 articles, and a start on the book. I've got to travel...the brief sojourn to New York truly being a highlight experience. I've got to see departed friends return for visits. I hosted two wonderfully fun parties, and each yielded unique memories.

There are downsides, though. My health has ground to a bit of a halt. I started off the break by swearing to get out, be active, and I committed to a morning walk and an afternoon bike. Then my knee started to give out. The knee brace helped with that, but then, of course, a heel spur in the other foot that hadn't bothered me in years decided to flare up and just will not heal (perhaps exacerbated by my need to shift my weight to that leg). Now I've been forced back to immobility, and when I do go out, I get to repeatedly answer the admittedly good question of how someone who never runs can possibly get runner's knee while simultaneously trying to decide which method of limping will be the most effective.

And although I did more writing in a summer than ever before, I still didn't come close to finishing my research agenda. My book, although I wanted to have it to the press by the end of summer, has miles of work remaining. Instead of polishing a rewritten manuscript, I have a plan, a bunch of notes, and some stream of consciousness rants that still await incorporation. Now I am facing a heavy writing load and deadline on top of teaching 16 credit hours.

It's a time marked with possibilities and impossibilities, the mixture of the rush of hope with the fear of failure, positives and negatives. After all these years in the academic life, you think I would've gotten used to this feeling by now.

Olympic hero

Dara Torres is my new hero. She swims the 50m freestyle for America. Why is she my hero? First, she's 41. Yes, a forty-one year old Olympian. Also, she's the number one seeded for the finals in her event...at 41.

This is impressive, but it's not all. During her semi, she noticed that the swimmer next to her had a rip in her suit and could not change in time. While the other swimmers were going to their blocks or performing weird pre-race rituals, Dara ran over to ask the judge to hold up the race for the late swimmer. She then told all the other swimmers what was going on, that the race would be a little late. She then raced and kicked ass, posting the fastest semi time.

Normally, I don't get sucked into the "rah rah" bits, but Dara is cool beyond belief.

back to real life

Last week, I had some Bowling Green exiles return for a quick visit, and they stayed with the spousal unit and I. Now they are gone, and there are some big adjustments to be made:

• I have to actually do work again
  
• I feel compelled to restart my daily schedule
  
• I have returned to eating stuff other than cheese, cheese curds, and tubes of meat
  
• my spousal unit is my only audience for jokes, and she's long since learned to ignore me
  
• my house is considerably less cool than it was for my friends' visit
  
• I no longer have to make sure I'm wearing pants or have shut the bathroom door
  

This is what it must be like for soldiers returning from distant lands.

watching the Olympics

I have learned:

• the Croatian female ping pong players wear very mini-skirts and have awesome legs
  
• water polo is next to impossible to follow
  
• amateur wrestling is pretty dull and boring...I understand by professional wrestling was souped-up
  
• there's an Israeli swimmer who's named Nimrod..when I mentioned that Nimrod lost, my spousal unit thought I was being mean
  
• one Chinese swimmer prepares for his events by shaking his left man-boob
  
• I'm both scared to death of and severely turned on by the female fencers
  

killing more time on the interwub

I have now joined Twitter. I have no real idea why, except for maybe wanting to find more ways to kill time when I should be working. Anyone here also on Twitter? Who should I follow?

car talk

Throughout my driving career, I've had a number of pieces of automotive machinery. They've all ended with a certain amount of doom.

• Car one was a 1982 (?) Chevy Impala...well, not really mine but my parents's vehicle. The coolest thing about it was the air conditioner was labeled either A/C or (teehee) MAXCON...which always made me feel like I was working in some underground bunker for the government. This was also the car I killed the fastest, in the silliest way. While driving to a friend's house, I somehow didn't see a pickup truck...carrying a horse trailer. The redneck drivers (I don't stereotype...I met them, and they certainly fit the bill) only said to me "Boy, you almost bought yourself a thoroughbred." Then they hired the city's biggest sleazeball ambulance chaser lawyer and tried to sue me...which would be depressing if it wasn't so funny...how much can you really get from a broke teenager? The net result of this was that the car was 2 feet shorter in the front, and I was looking for new wheels.
  
• Car two was my first beater, a 1973 Plymouth Valiant with a radio that ran off vacuum tubes. It was cool...big, powerful, and fast as all hell. Unfortunately, it didn't take me long to kill this one either. I was driving to another friend's house (a pattern I quickly noticed...which is why I no longer have friends), and I must've went to adjust the radio or something and missed a red light. A brand new Monte Carlo SS was my target this time, and it hit me directly behind the driver's door, pushing the metal between the front and back doors in two feet, causing the roof to dome. It also broke my rib, which sent me to the hospital. While there, I had a 97 year old woman next to me in the emergency room who specialized in whining ("I want to go home. Why won't anyone let me go home?"...for two whole hours) and a doctor who, upon hearing I thought I had a broke rib, pushed down on it with all his might ("Does this hurt?" "AAAAAAHHHHGGG!"), and gave me a prescription for ten whole painkillers...enough to last almost a week! Yeah, a rib will really heal in that amount of time. Compound this with me getting back to work after two weeks and getting fired a week after that, and my memories are not good.
  
• Car three should've bypassed me and went straight to the compactor. It was a '73 Duster. The litany: the roof was rusted out under the vinyl roof; the driver's side door didn't open from the outside; the passenger door didn't open from the inside; the foam in the driver's seat had disintegrated, so I had to stuff an old raincoat down there to keep from giving myself a spring enema. I went on a vacation once, and my Dad went to start my car after a few day's rain. He found two inches of water in the car and had to drill holes in the floorboard to drain it. After that, the car had a permanent mold ecosystem that bleach would not kill. I actually outlasted this one, gave it to my brother after he had an accident, and it threw a rod on him after a week. A fitting end to a car that sucked so bad and was so nasty, it can single-handedly be blamed for three years where I could not get a date...any woman who would get into that piece was not someone I wanted to be with.
  
• Car four was a red 87 Honda Prelude. Hondas will last forever if you take care of them. The previous owner didn't know this, so he beat it to hell and back. The transmission started slipping on me about two weeks after I bought it. It did last for a few years, and the whole time, I felt like I was driving a clown car...to test this, I actually drove seven people to Gainesville for a concert. This car, although it didn't hold rainwater like the Duster, also had an unstoppable mold problem. Finally, the transmission died on me, and we were just able to drive it to the junkyard.
  
• Car five is an 1987 Oldsmobile that I got from my parents...thus, it was the nicest car I'd ever had, as it was the first one that ever had been taken care of. It was also the first car I ever had where the a/c actually worked, too, which was a nice luxury in Florida. The engine died almost immediately (the timing chain broke), but my parents paid for a new one since it was one month from my purchase date. Eventually, though, the car started to wear down. I bumped the front on a pole while exiting a tight parking garage, and then I had a car pull out in front of me on an iced-over parking lot. Eventually, the a/c quit working. The transmission died, and I got it replaced with a junkyard unit. Then, when I was working at the zoo (see the first blog posts), the driver's window also quit working. The driver's back door quit opening about the same time. My last repair was to get the rusted-out brake lines totally replaced, after a fun drive to work where the pedal sunk to the floor.
  

I would like to say that the transition from car to car signaled some great motion in my life, but the only real conclusion I can have is that I've left an awful lot of damage in my driving wake. The only thing that makes me feel better about this is that since all the cars were drastically used by the time I got them, I haven't really made much of a carbon footprint.

Anyway, my parental units called me this week to tell me that they were getting a new car, and would I like their old one? As it's much nicer than the Olds's current state, I heartedly agreed. In a month or so, I will fly down to Florida to pick up a 1997 Buick Riviera. It's pretty swanky...my parents usually buy the demonstrator models, so they have every accessory you can imagine (including five way sun visors and climate control, with separate passenger controls). I will also pass the Olds onto a carless friend, so there are winners all around.

I am thankful to get reliable wheels again...the Olds is valiant, but I'm getting old and wimpy enough to really want air conditioner. Plus, the car is in really good shape, so I hope to get at least eight years out of it before I kill it in some manner. And I'm hoping its the last car I ever own that's fueled by petroleum. The next one should run on either hydrogen, electricity, fryer oil, or live puppies.

Will my Oldsmobile look at me badly? Will it know that I'm giving up on it? Will it sulk? I'd ask it, but typically, it's in the shop...this should be its first clue that it's going bye-bye.

for those of you following the knee saga

After mysteriously starting to hurt and then mysteriously getting better, my knee mysteriously started to hurt again. Luckily, it did this in time for my last annual physical, and I was able to get doctor's advice...which included x-rays and a knee brace. The first night with the knee brace was not a success, but I'll give it a bit longer.

This is what this blog is reduced to: me bitching about my health. What am I, ninety?

themikedubose overload

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but I'm also a contributer on Crunchy Stuff, a product review blog run by some friends of mine. Through complete and utter chance, every new product I've tended to buy over the last few months has been dreadful, and my review posts reflect that in their tone. Not getting enough snarky Mike? Then give a visit.