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So, it turned out that my paper was due at midnight today, but I finished it and turned it in right before noon. I went with L'il D to a local bar last night where we both drank beer, listened to bad music, and wrote for a couple of hours. I have her to thank for my getting done in time as I would never have written at night without her encouragement.
When my class gets out, I will be officially done for the semester and 8 units away from completing this degree.
I am open to any and all suggestions about how I should properly celebrate.
One more reason to love Seattle.
No, I am not procrastinating; I have written five pages. I am taking a well-deserved break. But, okay, I admit it, I did go to a softball game this morning. That doesn't mean I don't deserve this tiny tiny break. I'm even in the library for crying out loud. Cut a guy some slack.
I've never been much of a procrastinator. However, I definitely will not force myself to write when I am not ready to write, and I suspect there is a fine line between knowing and respecting your process and procrastinating.
Soooo ... I have this paper I'm supposed to be writing. It's a piece of cake and totally uninteresting, so I'm not thrilled about writing it, which means I haven't really felt like working on it. It is due Monday at noon. I have done all the reading for it, put together most of the works cited list, and have a fair idea of what I'm going to write about. But, have I written it? Not an outline or a tentative title or even the header. Not one single miniscule word.
[Note: I find the fact that I have assembled the works cited list for an unwritten paper a pleasing indicator of how ridiculous this exercise is.]
I got a very amusing email from Smelt two days ago about all the things she did that day instead of working on the thing she was supposed to be working on, so I thought I would itemize my own procrastination devices (not in proper order) because, yes, I have to accept the fact that I am procrastinating.
So, in addition to my regular weekly duties, over the past week, when I should have been working on this thing, I have:
1) read and edited three chapters of the Chatty Mongoose's dissertation
2) hung out and chatted with Big D about his fab vacation
3) read and edited a proposal for L'il D
4) did every single bit of work left to do in my other classes, and there was a fair amount although all of it is due after this paper
5) drank fancy martinis and ate Thai food with the Chatty Mongoose
6) read and edited a CV for Smelt
7) hung out and chatted with cteaghin about biodiesel, biodeisel conversion, and his practice space drama
8) helped Nellicious brainstorm and write her new resume
9) read and provided cranky editorial commentary on a panel proposal I'm working on with some old grad school friends, including randomgirl, which we are doing solely because we want to hang out with each other in the cool city where the conference is being held
10) went to dance class, hung out, and went dancing with Boise, Techily, and Nellicious
11) sent a lot of email, several of which were quite long and supportive emails to various friends in need, and scheduled several dates for next week
12) found four jobs to apply for
13) spent a fair amount of time brainstorming ideas for a non-profit and some time trying to persuade L'il D, Smelt, and others to join me in this most likely futile endeavor
14) searched the house for allen wrenches, walked to the bike store and bought allen wrenches, put my bike together, and rode around the hill
15) spent a lot of time lingering with Nellicious
16) walked L'il Bastard
17) conversed with my mother about her blood draw, her bus ride, the fact that L'il Bastard drools when he sleeps, the latest NHL news, the new salami she found at the grocery store, etc.
18) wrote blog entries
19) read and commented on friend's blogs
20) performed numerous reference searches just for the hell of it
21) burned some CDs
22) indulged in a number of savory fantasies
23) wrote a poem
And, the thing is, if you know me, all this stuff is pretty much what I do anyway, but here I am blogging at 7:25 [7:51 at time of actual post completion] on a Saturday night because I am at the computer because I am supposed to be writing because I fucked around all day long instead of writing. And, here I am writing, but am I writing what I am supposed to be writing? No. And, is this really some sort of warm-up to actual writing of the paper as is often the case with my blog? Doubtful.
And this entry is going on far longer than it need -- I'm even considering adding more items to the list of things I've done up there -- for one reason only, and that is because it might well be my last procrastination opportunity. If I stop writing this, I might actually have to start writing that damn paper.
God, I hope someone calls or emails or needs me to watch a movie with them or something.
You probably know Alison Bechdel from her smart and hilarious comic strip Dykes to Watch out For, or perhaps from her blog of the same name.
Well, she wrote a graphic novel that I bought some time ago. When I have a book I really want to read, I sometimes will wait, save it like the last cookie, until I can't resist any longer and then plunge in. I started perusing it during the week and really started reading it Saturday then finished it last night in a binge. So enthralled was I by this book, I failed to put it down to go see a jazz-punk group with an enticing name, which is saying something.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is witty, visually lovely, insightful, and powerful. Bechdel traces her queerness back to her father, linking their lives via confidently tentative lines of history and literature both personal and global. The emotional impact and social commentary brings to mind Howard Cruse's Stuck Rubber Baby. But, Bechdel provides something I've not seen in any other graphic novel, and I've read a fair number. She writes really really well. Her prose is quite elegant and so perfectly suits the exquisite complexity of the plot, you feel pure joy at the utter beauty of it all.
Buy this. Read this. I mean it.
... how totally amazed I am at the speed at which the Chatty Mongoose is completing her dissertation? Ever since she got her tenure-track job a couple months ago, she has been giving me a new chapter (or revised chapter) to read practically every week.
She is cranking this thing out, and it's good. What is most amazing to me is the combined speed and care with which she is able to complete her revisions. And, you know what else, she is doing all this on top of planning her wedding, which is scheduled for August. Cuh-ray-zee!
The nicest part about being her editor, though, is that I get to have dinner and drinks with her once a week, so we are spending more time together than we would normally make room for. I like that the best.
Caring for Nellicious during her recent nearly-abscessed-tooth dilemma, watching her suffer, and seeking any remedy I could made salient the utter cruddiness of extreme pain in the cranial region. Any severe head or tooth pain makes you feel so terribly desperate and incapacitated because you can't focus on anything else. All that pain is right there where the thinking happens.
If you are so fortunate to distract yourself, you can find some powerful pain relief, but pleasurable diversions alone are rarely enough to save you. Better to follow this formula: pharmacist-approved painkiller + personally appreciated mental and physical distraction.
For example, for several years (at the end of grad school and during my time in the corn), I suffered from serious migraines once or twice a month. If I caught them soon enough, I would rush home, take a hot bath with various scented oils, take some Naproxen, lay in bed with the door closed, curtains drawn, wearing the lavender eye pillow and massaging rosemary oil into my temples.
I would try to meditate on the pain, and then, rubbing my head and neck, focus on the other bodily sensations I was experiencing outside of the pain. Although I could spend hours doing this, it usually helped me relax enough to fall asleep until the migraine was gone.
And thinking of all this makes me doubly grateful to have been migraine-free for the last three or four months. Knock on my wooden head.
What is it about art galleries that attracts tall, slender women wearing expensive hairdos and shoes?
There's a piece from 2006 that my fellow Moore fan, Kittitas, sent me recently. I have enjoyed it so much, I decided to post it here. In general, I am not a huge fan of or believer in the virtues of pornography, but then, while I think someone needed to make the arguments she made, I never really got behind Andrea Dworkin either.
And, long long gone are the days when I debate porn with friends, no not even the discussions about whether Suicide Girls really offers alternative representatives of women or whether On Our Backs or other women-produced porn is empowering or objectifying or not as hot as gay male porn. Although, come to think of it, I would be willing to enter into a conversation about why so many women find gay male porn titillating.
Here on this blog, my own personal preferences will go undiscussed, but if you're curious, ask me sometime.
But, anyhow, back to Moore. He's written a fun and sassy essay marking an historical path through the annals of porn (that's two "n"s people, sheesh). There are a lot of his typical references, and it is decidedly British as all his work which is kind of fun.
But, what I like about it is his effort to remove the element of shame from sexuality. In his interviews to promote his recent book, Lost Girls (which I own and like very much), he has been pushing this same agenda.
He says, "Rather than functioning as a release for our quite ordinary sexual imaginings, porn functions as another social tether, as control-leash, lure and lash combined in one, a cattle-prod that looks just like a carrot. Dangling temptingly before us everywhere we look it leads us on. Then, in the guilty aftermath of our indulgences, it converts handily into a rod of shame with which to flog ourselves."
And, frankly, I agree with him. He then goes on to ponder whether there is a possibility for good porn, and if so, what it would look like. I'd say he's given a fairly good example.
You can read more about the book and get links to several articles and interviews here.
Is not this one. No, it is a post about R2D2 mailboxes. Even a long-time lurker who never ever comments commented. Amazing. Well, they are pretty rad, pretty rad [anyone who gets that reference, by the way, will completely astound me].
On my radar lately:
This story about a woman in prison for drug offenses has become a championship boxer from within prison. According to the story, her most recent bout established her champ status and will, officials predict, get her paroled.
What is strange is that when I tried to find the story again to do this post, I found this story. The stories are so similar that I was at first confounded by the fact that this one was posted last November so why was it linked to the BBC homepage two days ago. Well, of course, it wasn't. It's a different story.
So, it appears that Thailand has a good boxing program in its prison system that is an effective tool for rehabilitating women involved with drugs. Trying to find out more about this program, I discovered this site, the home of International Watch on Education in Prison (what a good idea for an organization). Unfortunately, the site seems to not have been updated for some time, but they do have a little bit of info on the Thai boxing program (in pdf), which you can read in html here. Another story suggested that it has only been in the last year or so that
I also found out that there is a field called "correctional recreation" and a database for physical education. But, I couldn't find any more non-newspaper articles on the Thai prison boxing program, at least not in the amount of time I was willing to dedicate to this reference hunt. However, if you'd like to read more about women's boxing or find matches near you, WBAN is a useful site.
I won't reiterate my feelings about Sci Fi except to say once again that I am a Star Wars fan of sorts since it is a cultural relic of my youth. I like Han Solo, Obi Wan, and the robots, so ...
Imagine my glee upon seeing an R2D2 mailbox today. No kidding. This exists, and it is an official USPS mailbox where you can drop your letters (although I doubt they deliver to the Outer Rim).
The R2D2 postbox bore this inscription: http://www.usps.jedimaster.com -- where you can vote on a new Star Wars stamp, register to win a trip to a Star Wars fan event, and view the limited edition Star Wars-themed Express Mail packs (the Ewan McGregor one is my favorite although Yoda looks like a real badass on his).
Unfortunately, there are no pictures on USPS of the mailboxes, but you can see them by going here. If you Google R2D2 mailbox, you'll see lots more posts on this and that I am late to this news, but what the heck, I'm posting for the many Star Wars fans who read this blog, especially number one Star Wars fan, TT.
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