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So, the Woody Allen posts haven't exactly materialized as expected ("materialized" is a such a great verb, isn't it?). I have been watching, if slowly. Right now I have the movie Interiors, his first drama (came right after Annie Hall). I still might try to catch myself up on writing little reviews, but who knows. I'm in no rush, apparently.
Woody Allen, however, is no the point of this post. Self promotion is. Specifically, a new e-book by yours truly: The Alphabetical Atheist. And you can download or view it by just clicking this little link. Completely free, but watch out - it's a PDF! One click and you get fifteen brief encounters with real life atheists, a sort of incomplete taxonomy of the godless, if you will. And did I mention it's free?
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This blog is nearly five years old now, I am told by my LJ homepage. It has gone through plenty of changes in style and content, in activity and inactivity. It's kept me up to date on old friends, helped me meet new ones. I met my ex through an LJ community. And in keeping with the times, another change is a-comin'.
I'm feeling relatively better now after the separation from my ex, though it is hard to get any sense of order staying at my parents' house. I tend to thrive on some form of repetition in my life, a sense of security in the order it brings. So I'm going to re-order this blog, give it a focus, and start posting on a regular basis again.
Here's the trick - I'm going to post reviews of the movies I receive from Netflix. And the movies I'm selecting? Nothing less than the oeuvre of writer/director/actor Woody Allen. In chronological order.
( The Details )
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After having lent my copy of Boondocks out to a prof about a year ago, I finally got it back today. This of course will ruin me for homework for the next few days until I have finished re-watching all the episodes. But it is/was an amazing series, one of the few shows that manages to rise above the fumes of mediocore American television and rather than try and say something, takes the time to actually ask something of the audience instead.
Yesterday Becky and I watched a doc on The Weather Underground and today we had a nice chat about the nature of violence and the meaning of terrorism. It was a very intimate documentary, which caught up with several of the Weathermen and Women in present day. But it wasn't quite what I was looking for. It was personal; I wanted the abstract. For me, the central question of the Weather Underground revolves around the nature of violence. Is it a violent act to try and overthrow a very violent structure? Which is the act of violence - a bomb planted in the Capitol building, or the Capitol itself?
There is also a new book out with collected writing of the Weather Underground, Sing a Battle Song, which I would highly recommend. It has communiques and other writings from the group, including a good load of poetry.
On the academic front, I'm going to finish my Tristram Shandy paper tomorrow night - that is to say, I will finish the bulk of the first draft. I plan on a lot of revision and editing for this monster. But tomorrow night will be all about plagiarism in the text as an analogy to the male appropriation of birth. The word "plagiarism" itself actually comes from the meaning of "to kidnap a child," a handy little factoid which will make for a very smooth transition (I hope).
At the Writing Center, a prof has requested help editing a paper. The prof is a non-native speaker and the paper is 25 pages, due Nov 14. I got "volunteered" by the other tutors, which is fine because I would have volunteered anyway. It'll be long but at least it'll be interesting.
It rained today for a bit, which has me worried about overnight freezing and ice by morning. My tires are bald and I need new ones. Otherwise, things are going just fine.
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The thing I hate the most about working at TJ Maxx on the weekends is missing all the sunsets.
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Well, the Tristram Shandy paper is coming along. I'm about 14 or 15 pages in, with about 10 to go. It'll be 7000 words, give or take. Looking broadly at sex (both sexuality and gender) within the book, as well as using a host of textual analogies to make my point (what is my point - I don't know yet). I think I'm arguing that Sterne, the author, is a sort of proto-feminist, or at least is attempting "feminine" writing by critiquing masculine discourse.
On a happier note, I am putting the final final touches on my poetry manuscript and will hopefully send it off tomorrow or the next day. The title keeps changing. First it was "The Peacekeeper Opens Fire." Then it became "Black, White, and Red All Over." Now I've settle into "What a Wall Does," named after one of the poems. I also cut two poems from it, bringing it down to a slim 18 pieces. I am reminded of a story about Oscar Wilde: he meets his friends for lunch, sweaty and disheveled, obviously after some intense work. They ask, "Oscar, what have you been up to this morning?" He replies, "I added a comma to one of my poems. They eat lunch and go their ways, agreeing to meet for dinner. Wilde returns even more haggard, more disheveled. They ask him, "What have you been doing all this time?" He replies, I took the comma back out."
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So I am officially re-entering the world of LJ. Back to reading my friends list, posting and commenting in communities, and whatever else it takes for me to avoid my homework.
This, however, means I am going to do some re-structuring around here. Perhaps a name change, layout re-design, but most importantly some editing to my friends list. So if I drop you, or a community that you like, don't take it personal. There are a lot of great blogs on my friends list - I just don't have the time to keep up with as many as I would like.
Enough apologizing, time to get to editing.
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Just an update to let anyone here know that I've not died. Rather, I've just been swamped with school stuffs.
I post occasionally over at Man in Self-Arrest, my gender-themed blog, but not as often as I should. I'm in the middle of writing a 25 page paper on Tristram Shandy, which is a little nerve-wracking to be sure. My first scholarly article (kind of) is going to be published by the online journal Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, which is very exciting. No new poetry publications, which is sad :( but I have been writing. I have a chapbook manuscript (about 20 poems) that I am preparing to send to the Wick chapbook competition sometime next week, though my chances are not that good (even in the Student competition, I'll still be competing against Grad and PhD students).
I think that's most everything for right now, at least so far as school work stuff is concerned. Maybe I should post the more personal stuff sometime later on.
Peace, Love, and Solidarity
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Hugo Chavez on George W. Bush:
'He's a political cadaver. He exhales the smell of the political dead and he will soon be cosmic dust that will disappear from the stage.'
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This is by far the most comrpehensive site I've seen on the subject. Almost enough to satiate my hunger.
Almost.
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Looks like it is do or die time for Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution. I'm on the edge of my seat.
P.S. - My first real post is up at Man in Self-Arrest. Tell your friends.
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So a new semester is underway. For the first time, I really felt unprepared to go back to class. Had it not been for the Writing Center, I think i would have taken the semester off.
Anyways, my courses are as follows:
- Feminist Theory
- Short Story
- Literature 1945-present
- Linguistics
- Contemporary Ohio Women Poets (5 weeks long, 1 credit course)
It seems like it will be an interesting semester - I know a lot of my classmates, as well as a few of my professors, and will also be helping to re-launch the Women's Studies club Athena on campus. Not only that, to really start this semester out right I have created a new blog called Man in Self-Arrest. The purpose of the new blog is to help me focus on gender issues as I encounter them, and to try and put another interesting male-feminist voice out there (as Ghandi said: be the change you want to see). So I am not dropping my LJ, either. I will try to keep this one up to date as well, and focus and private life and politics, as I see fit. Hope the new years is settling in comfortably for everyone. See you in the funny papers!
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Maybe I'm on a streak, but after having helped de-rail a post about Female Chauvinist Pigs into a condemnation of Third Wave Feminism, I just can't help myself.
I finally began exploring the male feminist blogs from the sidebar of Shrub.com, and am really enjoying Hugo Schwyzer. In a post from about a month ago, he waxed poetic on his undergrad experience of living with other men, and what appears to be a thread between feminist men and women of not forming strong bonds with same-sex pals.
He makes a lot of good points, many I find agreeable, but that's not what I am going to nit-pock about. His post was started by looking at a grass-roots group pushing for gender-neitral dorms for college students. Their primary focus is room-sharing, their secondary focus is bathrooms. Of this, he says:
My first thought, writing as someone nearly two-decades removed from undergraduate life, is that we’ve really come a long way; if the most salient form of oppression that young feminists and their allies can find is the absence of gender-neutral bathroom policy, then we have much for which to be thankful. I read this as a very on-point look at Third Wave feminism - immediately highighting the good and the bad. Yes, we have come along way in the last thirty years. But is bathroom inequality the "most salient form oppression" happening today? Yes and no - it is one concrete manifestation of a much, much larger, more abstract, problem. The abstract problem of patriarchy, sexism, gender roles/inequality, et al, is what binds the concrete issues together. But without specifically naming these abstract problems, the more concrete compaigns seem disconnected and take on the appearance of being the "most salient form of oppression." No, bathroom inequality is not the biggest problem, but neither was porn, or not having the ERA, or not having the vote. Patriarchy was, and is, the problem. I guess this is where Third Wave loses me. It seems to eschew the more abstract, more theoretical side, and focus on specific issues. While the complaint against intellectuals is that they focus on theory and not action, I often feel that Third Wave focuses on action without theory. There are more things I would like to write on Third Wave, but I feel like I've gone on enough for the time being. I'm interested to hear what you all think. Even if you don't regularly comment, on the rare event of my posting, please leave one this time.
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I'm tired of all the negative and depressing news. So today - a success story.
Ryan Red Corn and his website Demockratees.
Via the DailyKos -
He was living in Kansas a few years ago, placed some ads on Daily Kos (when it was much, much cheaper to advertise here), sold some tees, bought more ads, sold even more tees. Urban Outfitters bought some of his stock. And my favorite of his tees -- Petrolcide (which I wear often) -- was worn on the TV show The OC. Eventually, he made enough to move back to his reservation in Pawhuska, Oklahoma and hire three Native kids in an area with hideous unemployment rates. Of all the Daily Kos success stories, this is one of my favorites.
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Why is it that our progress in Iraq sounds so much like Saddam's crimes?
Dec 13, 2006
Our commanders report that the enemy has also suffered. Offensive operations by Iraqi and coalition forces against terrorists and insurgents and death squad leaders have yielded positive results. In the months of October, November, and the first week of December, we have killed or captured nearly 5,900 of the enemy.
- George Bush November 5, 2006Saddam Hussein is found guilty of crimes against humanity for the killing of 148 Shias in Tigris river city of Dujail in 1982. He is sentenced to death by hanging.
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Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality.
File this one under "Methinks thou dost protest too much."
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