but thanks for asking

Loopy is at her desk. I'm at mine. We are about four feet apart through the wall, so we can hear sounds pretty clearly, but words are only semi-intelligible.

She is presumably studying for her prelim, which she has been doing for days and days without a break, and will do for days and weeks and months to come. She blogs about the panic that this process entails, and lately her eyelid has been twitching uncontrollably. I feel sorry for her but there's not a whole lot I can do to help.

After three hours of silence, I hear a soft sound that concerns me. After a minute I decide to "give her a shout" (literally).

Me: "Are you crying?"

Loopy: "No, yawning..." (laughs) "Yeah, right, I'm in here sobbing uncontrollably over my laptop."

Me: "Well, it would be uncharacteristic, but you know, this whole prelim thing..."

Loopy: (laughs again) "Yeah. Right." (Pause. Laugh.) "Well, thanks for asking."

Me: "Hey, that's my job."

Sage advice

"Never interfere with your opponents when they are in the middle of destroying themselves." --Lee Atwater, Reagan strategist

I'm working on creating a summer school for the socialist organization to which I belong (Solidarity). Opponents of the school are trying to make it look bad by posting a flurry of suspicious and accusatory emails to the listserv of the main leadership body.

This was the advice that we received behind the scenes. It made my day.

Manversation

I burst out laughing when I saw this photo.


Three Harvard Deans stroll through the Yard

That's Theda Skocpol in the middle; apparently she was recently named Dean of something.

For those of you "in the know," the photo speaks for itself.

For those of you lucky enough not to be "in the know" (i.e., lucky enough not to be sociology grad students at a certain institution), let me tell you about manversation.*

Manversation: Toward an Epistemological Hermeneutics**

The term "manversation" came into use to describe an activity in which two or more persons*** discourse simultaneously, generally without listening to one another, while peppering their speech with key terms and references that demonstrate their proficiency in the topic at hand.

To meet the definition, the participants must use louder, deeper voices (compared to their normal speaking voices) and continuously emphasize their "points" with authoritative gesticulation.

In some quarters, the explanation for this odd activity is that it is actually not a form of conversation, but rather, a form of...well, this picture speaks for itself, too.


Photo credit: John Macken. Check out his website full of gorgeous, free photos (well, free for private use).

---

* This is the definition as I understand it; corrections are welcome, particularly from those who witnessed the birth of the term.

** I never remember what either of these words mean; if I used them correctly, it was entirely accidental. I think I misspelled both, too. My days as an intellectual are fading into the distant past. I have mixed feelings about this.

*** Yes, women can also manversate. Heck, I've done it myself (though I've been trying to reform myself ever since Bean told me to cut it out, about 13 years ago).

spoiled

i'm so sleepy. i'm supposed to leave soon (to take Mr. AWOL to address some more impressionable juveniles) but i just want to go back to bed.

i wonder if i can sneak home this afternoon and have a nap. living 45 minutes away from town does of course reduce both the pleasure and utility of "sneaking home."

at times like these i often wonder wistfully if any of my friends and acquaintances would mind/think it strange if I turned up at their house and asked to have a nap on their couch.

AWOL

No, for real.

This week my job is to schlepp an AWOL war resister around town. He's an interesting guy, and I feel like this is the first genuinely useful thing I've done in opposition to the war. Protests are important but the only way to actually stop a war is to dry up the supply of soldiers willing to fight it.

I've been taking him to local high schools. I look out at the sleepy, doodling kids and think, "One day you'll look back on this and realize how extraordinary this situation was. I hope it's not when you get drafted yourselves."

BTW, apparently they're thinking of scrapping "don't ask don't tell," along with allowing women into combat, so.... watch out.

Check out his website at http://www.carlwebb.net/. I'm not linking it--just cut & paste into your browser.

Like I said, an interesting guy.

Goblinbox

Mush Mook posts comments here from time to time; she posts quite often on Franklin's blog. I wandered over to her blog today (titled "Goblinbox") and had to bring back this delightful definition for you all:

Goblinbox (GOB 'lin boks) n., slang. Any kind of device (computer, PDA, cell phone, GameBoy, iPod, or television) that relentlessly sucks up all of your time and attention. If you're reading this, you're utilizing a goblinbox right now. You might even have a S.O. who wishes you weren't pasted to the goblinbox who's hollering, "Turn off that blasted goblinbox and come to bed this very instant!"

Why yes, often enough these are her very words (except for "goblinbox," of which we both were—afaik—heretofore ignorant).

On a tangentially related note, I also discovered that like us, Mush Mook lives on a chunk of land in the country, though she three ponds and we have zero. She also seems to have lots of dogs--exact number as yet undetermined, but here is one of her fun dog pix. Unlike us, she seems to be trying to remodel and also grow useful vegetables. We gave up on anything so pragmatic several years back, after the pumpkins killed the lawn.

But now a last few words about goblins:

She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."

--from Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market"
illustration by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

wait, what is that again?

I might not be able to post for a couple days, and I didn't want to leave that long self-involved blabbedy-blab up at the top, so I'll just add something here quick.

Sunday we went to the wedding of our friends Mike & Danielle (see photo on Loopy's blog). They make a great couple—they really seem to bring out the best in each other, to become better people just being around each other. That's pretty unusual and amazing, imo. (I mean, Loopy and I have many virtues as a couple, but I gotta admit that on a day-to-day basis we are more likely to bring out the irritable bitch in each other (as any of our friends can attest)(love you Lovey!)

Anyway, the wedding was lovely, the bar was open, the groom's sister was extremely hot, and in general, everything seemed to go well.

But I just gotta say one thing about one of the readings.

It was called "Tell me again, Love, what is a wedding?"

Ok, so I'll grant some poetic license for that being a dumb question. But here is what the poem says:

A wedding is earth and water
and a species of irreducible light
and the flat belly of a harbor
and a mango about to ripen and fall into gravity's caress
and the waves subsiding
and resuming their concerto in a minor key..."

Excuse, me, Mr. McNorris, sir, but a wedding is more like taffeta and tulle and a species of irritable mother-of-the-bride and the big belly of an uncle about to take the mike and sing another drunken Irish song before falling into gravity's caress, and the DJ resuming the slow songs and the single girls sighing in a minor key.

The thing you're describing there, well, that sounds a lot more like, um, well, I just gotta say, it sounds a lot more like hot sex.

I'm just saying.

OK, see you all in a few days.