Just Like Old Times

In a time-honored tradition, I engaged a member of the Flock in a sleep-deprived IM conversation this morning...

Cerus: Get a morning shift?
Reverend: 3-7
Cerus: ahh
Reverend: Watching "Legend of Neil." It's making me dumb.
Cerus: But it's a good way to catch teh dumb
Reverend: oh, Felicia Day as the fairy… I'd hit it.
Cerus: No one would think less of you for it
Well, maybe someone. But they'd be wrong, and stupid.
Reverend: Even if she is the size of a smurf…
Cerus: True, but as porn has taught us, being a smurf or smurf-like doesn't prevent a porn From emerging.
Editor's Note: Google "Smurf Porn." It's in Spanish, even. The Papa Smurf scene is scarring, and Gargomel is just fucking wrong.
Reverend: eh.
Cerus: so, that may extend to other areas (shudder)
Reverend: I don't hink your date should fade or smear on you. Just saying.
Cerus: fair enough.
Man, it's going to be a shitty day.
Reverend: Why?
Cerus: I woke up two hours ago and I have this general feeling of dread I can't shake today
Reverend: Return to bed. Hide. That's my advice. It's the American way.
Cerus: meh, I've been back to bed. Sleep isn't coming. I might be stressing about my thesis or something.
Reverend: You think?
Cerus: More so about the other students asking me every 10 seconds if I have every single detail planned out and ready to go.
Reverend: Tell them you do. That's what I do. I love the look on their faces.
Cerus: Ha.
Reverend: I'm got a bastard.
…why is there a "got" in there?
I have no idea.
I should sleep at some point.
I haven't slept since 9:00 yesterday morning.
Cerus: ahh, well that should be easy for you
Reverend: Going on 21 hours now.
Getting kind of silly.
Cerus: I can hit about 38 hours before my body completely tells me to fuck off, it's getting sleep.
The six hours before that include a lot of auditory and visual hallucinations
Reverend: I used to do that... but I saw the Care Bears go feral once. It's not fun anymore.
Cerus: fair enough
Reverend: I also ate cookie dough ingredients once.
Not the dough - just the ingredients, one at a time.
Cerus: nice
Reverend: The egg was tough to get down. A little gaggy.
Cerus: I imagine. The shells hurt.
Reverned: Right. I had to floss.

The Violence of Our Times

I have been neglecting my internet life. My Google Reader has over 1000 items in it. Most are blogs and webcomics that I used to follow religiously. I haven't been posting, or tweeting, or commenting, or anything on the internet of late; hell, I'm even behind on my pr0n. Serious slacking has been taking place, in all maters not directly related to school.

Today, however, I'm feeling like I have time for other things again. I feel like I have time to write - that I must write. It's good to emerge into the light again. I attribute this rejuvenation to two things. First, I went to see "The Men Who Stare at Goats" which I heartily recommend to anyone who can relax and enjoy the humor of it without getting all worked up over the tax dollars spent in the pursuit of psychic powers. Secondly, I came across a quotation the other day from Merton. That's Thomas, the Trappist monk, not Robert, the sociologist.

"To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of our times."

I do that. Sociology is not a field for worriers, as we are steeped in the evidence of man's failure to live with himself in any numbers. The puzzle of how to adjust our ancient brains - designed to respond to the hazards of living in small groups on the savanna, armed with pointed sticks - to the paved and air conditioned world we have built to house our millions keeps some of us up at night. I'm one of those.

But Merton is right - it is a violence that I do to myself. I'm not likely to solve that puzzle by forcing myself into an intellectual fugue. I am much more likely to write something worthwhile, either on this blog or sociologically, when I am relaxed. Which leads me to our poll for this week - drugs! Please give your honest response (which is completely anonymous and untraceable) to the poll at right. If your favorite drug isn't listed, please feel free to mention it in the comments (which aren't anonymous at all...).

Is This Really a Problem?

Is body part furniture the wave of the future? I can't wait for the release of the scrotum couch...

Yes, We're Actually Writing This Thing...

Cerus, Jason, and I recently started talking about a joint research paper. Amid much joking, we began to seriously discuss the possibility of doing a paper on -

Furries.

Our initial search of journals turned up nothing on them - they seemed to be the last unsurveyed subculture in the world. With our combined academic skills and knowledge of the 'net, we seemed to be the perfect men for the job. I was clawing my way through my midterms so that I could get to work on our questionnaire when Jason sent me this:

"Furries From A to Z (Anthropomorphism to Zoomorphism)"

Of course someone has already studied this. How stupid of me. Now, the obvious thing to do is to read this article carefully and refute it with findings of our own. I haven't really dug into it yet, but on first glance I did find some of their questions to be odd. "Do you consider yourself to be less than 100% human?" "If you could become 0% human, would you?" These questions don't really contribute to a clear picture of who furries are, and generate useless answers like, "I'm about 68% human..." What does that even mean?

Ah, the bloodless cut and thrust of academia...

We'll be focusing our study on a larger population of furries, with an eye toward gathering more demographic information. If you are a furry, don't let the media stereotype you. Make your voice heard by participating in our study! I'll be posting a link to our questionnaire here soon, but feel free to contact me by email in the meantime.

For the Woman Who Has Every Damn Thing

20 mph = 8.9408 m/s

Last weekend, at 2:50 in the morning, I was struck by the need for a sandwich… a veggie one, with avocado. If you are nocturnal like me, you know that means I had just 10 minutes to get to Jimmy John’s. Making it from Malcontent Manor to Jimmy John’s in 10 minutes is possible… well, it used to be possible, before the speed limits around campus were lowered to 20mph.

Most people go more than 20mph in a parking lot. In most cars with automatic transmissions, if you just take your foot off the brake, you’re doing more than 20mph. 20mph is the speed reserved for one or two blocks around the front of an elementary school, and even then there is a light - it’s only for about an hour in the morning, and an hour in the afternoon. 20mph is slower than the standard speed limit for residential zones, where there are old people, and children on bikes and rollerblades, and folks playing catch, and walking family pets – if 25mph is safe enough for that population, why, then, is the speed limit all the way around UW’s campus 20mph, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

Is it because the leaders of tomorrow can’t successfully cross the street?
Did some trustee’s kid got mowed down on his way to Roofie Night on sorority row?
Is the city just trying to keep me from getting to Jimmy John’s in a timely fashion?!

It’s none of those reasons, as I helpfully explained to the officers who stopped me on 15th street. It’s just a revenue generation scheme. Just like doubling the cost of metered parking on campus, and extending the city permit parking areas, this too, is simply another way to squeeze the citizens of Laramie (Laramie-ans? Laramites? whatever) for a few bucks more.

As I told the officers – and yes, that’s plural, because I have been stopped twice on that downhill section of 15th – that speed limit is bullshit. As cops, they have discretion in how and when they enforce the laws, and as a former cop myself, I know this is one law that I would not enforce unless the offense was truly heinous. I wouldn’t stop someone at 2:50 in the morning on that stretch of road unless he was swerving from curb to curb with dead babies wedged in his wheel wells. Any cop that enforces that speed limit is either a ball-less automaton, or just trying to hang some paper to justify his existence.

When I politely explained that to them, one had the temerity to ask me if I’d been drinking. Seriously? Would a drunk person use the word "automaton" correctly in a sentence? Honestly! Not exactly detective material, are you Skippy?

In the end, that officer saw the logic of my argument – or he decided it wasn’t worth tazering me over. At any rate, I didn’t get a ticket, or an avocado sandwich that night, and frankly, I’m still pissed about it.

The moral of this story? Speak your mind. I questioned the genital soundness of a cop and lived to tell about it, and you can too! Also - plan ahead for the munchies…

A Glimpse of the Future

It's that time of the semester again. It's the time when you question why you're studying what you're studying. That leads to questioning why you're in school, then questioning what you want to do when you graduate, which leads to questioning your reason for living. Ah, good times, good times...

I have been through this many times before, of course. I have been enrolled in at least 6 credits for every semester since fall of 2001. I am coming to the close of my third degree now, so I suppose I have the right to be feeling a bit burned out. Usually, at this point in the semester I'm beginning to feel the pressure of a couple annotated bibliographies, perhaps a large presentation or two, and a big paper looming on the horizon. It makes you feel guilty every time you sit down without a book or article in your hands. Everything you do that isn't related to your work becomes a luxury - movies, games, friends, sex... for some real extremists, this comes to encompass food, sleep, and bathing as well. You reach a point where you can't enjoy anything until the semester is put to bed. Once that last assignment is turned in, you can breathe again. I love that feeling.

Now, I'm beginning to see, that feeling is gone forever. It's not long after you begin to think about being a lifer in the academy that you realize that means it is NEVER all done. My methods class has made it abundantly clear to me that there is always another paper, another article, another study. And it's not just your own work - there is the work of others in your field that you must keep up with, think about, and with which your work must ultimately compete. When I'm feeling upbeat and positive, I call it "job security." I'm not calling it that today.

It's not that my life is all that terrible; I am, in fact, quite privileged. It's not that my class load is all that onerous either; I have only two classes, both excellently taught by professors I respect. It's not even the fear of this all coming to an end (which it will, gods willing, in a few more years). It is the realization that so few other options are open to me. I am destined for a career in the academe because I am so unsuited to anything else.

-I am accustomed to speaking my mind- this disqualifies me for a great many vocations, ranging from sales to customer service to politics to religion.
-I do not suffer fools gladly, which makes untenable any position in which I must deal with non-academics - and a good many academics as well.
-I am both cynical and critical, which would make me a terrible manager.
-I talk far too much, which keeps me from fitting into most office settings.
-I often stumble onto a new topic that grabs my attention in a sudden fit of interest bordering on obsession, but the duration of these fits is generally not long enough to make any sort of profit from them. (Tonight's fit was on the viability of an in-depth survey of furries, but that's another post...)

In short, I am easily bored and mouthy about it when I get that way. I need the room to explore, colleagues to discuss my findings with, and students to pontificate at. Unfortunately, the price for that is continual publishing and wrangling over tenure. I knew that already - my mother is an academic - but there is a difference between knowing something intellectually, and suddenly feeling it in your bones. When I look to the future I see my thesis prospectus staring back at me. Just past it stands the thesis itself, and peeking over its shoulder is a dissertation. There are articles and chapters and a book or two as well, all standing in a line that stretches out of sight, waiting their turn under the hammer.

My fingers ache for the typing yet to come.