The Car Radio

To the best of my knowledge, no car radio stations provide the type of music I really like to hear: Celtic Punk! Without the passion of the punk, Celtic music degenerates into the insipid and maudlin. I was in a pub in Ireland where a fellow audience member was singing tearfully along with the band, "I'm drunk today, and I'm seldom sober," and much as I can understand that some people may have a sentimental attachment either to their drunkenness or their sobriety, it didn't quite work for me. On the other hand, without the ornamentation and playfulness of Celtic instruments, punk becomes the mindless rage of "Oi!" or "brroorgghh!!!" or whatever the singer feels like grunting. Celtic and punk go together like love and marriage, uniting passion and playfulness. Without the passion of the punk as background music, a graduate student would lack the energy to attack his dissertation, but without the ornamentation of the Celtic, he would be unable to type words like "postcolonial."

Anyway, radio stations do not typically offer me this artistic ideal, so I have tried to come up with alternatives when I'm driving. For a while, I listened to the "Oldies," because they were more enjoyable to modern music. After a couple of years of listening, I noticed a certain pattern: there were never new oldies! Apparently, people had stopped writing them! So, as I had to listen to the same songs over again, I learned the truth of the adage, "familiarity breeds contempt." I dreaded hearing again that the only way to know that he loves you so is in his kiss. In order to distract myself from my inner being crying out, "Please, I can take no more!" I started to analyze the problematic features of the song. I mean, as we know from Kant, it's pretty hard to distinguish between das Ding an sich, the kiss as it is in and of itself, and das Ding an mich, the kiss as it appears to the person. How could this song offer such triumphant certainty and lack of critical analysis! Such superficial empirical claims may have worked in a bygone era, but ours is an era of non-bygoneness! I digress. The point is, the more you have to hear the same songs over again, the more struck you are with just how much they are not Shakespeare, and you become constitutionally incapable of appreciating them for what they are: vapid and meaningless.

After going through a "classic rock" car radio phase, the same problem about no new songs arose. Happily, there was not the same goofiness about kissing--however, there were some moments when the pretentious profundity got on my nerves, as in this Rush song: "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill; I will choose a path that's clear. I will choose freewill." I will choose not to listen to this song and read John Stuart Mill instead. And really, what's up with that Styx ballad "Come Sail away," where the guy thinks he's seen angels, and then he realizes they're aliens?

Right now, I am in my talk radio phase. The perk of talk radio is that it can keep me marginally informed about current events, and it lets me entertain myself by detecting logical fallacies in arguments. The drawback in listening to a talk radio station, whether you be conservative, moderate, or liberal, is that you're inevitably subjected to some rather boring topics. I am a graduate student with no money, so listening to NPR's "money matters" and stock analysis is less exciting than, say, crashing my car. I'm also not a big fan of sports (which they offer on conservative talk radio), so I really don't want to have daily updates on high school football students deliberating, "That school has offered me all this money, and that school over there has offered me all this money, so what do I do?" I wish I could say that I listen to both NPR and conservative talk radio to keep informed of different perspectives, but really, it's that I need a backup radio station for when the other is being boring or playing commercials!

Anyway, I heard a comment made by Bill O'Reilly that caused me to re-assess my relationship to our cats. However, that is the topic for the next post ...

TO BE CONTINUED! What will happen to our heroic protagonist? Does Bill O'Reilly cause our hero to get rid of his cats as potential terrorist agents? Tune in next time!

Exploring Ourselves Through Contact

A friend just called my attention to another blogger's recent parody of a "compare-and-contrast" freshmen comp essay on the movies Curious George and Brokeback Mountain here; I highly recommend it. She also asked me to write a blog entry that includes a similar parody of first-year composition essays I wrote with my wife a few years ago. For your amusement, I am including it below. For their unit papers, all students are supposed to read three essays with three different points of view and essentially put them into dialogue with each other. All of the three authors (E. D. Hirsch in Cultural Literacy, Michel Foucault in History of Sexuality, and Mary Louise Pratt in "Arts of the Contact Zone") were available in the school's textbook reader. An additional freshmen comp practice alluded to in this entry is "workshopping": after students write their papers, they have other students "workshop" them (i.e. read them and make suggestions on how to improve them).

"Exploring Ourselves Through Contact"

Why is it that students don't have cultural literacy today? Why is it that students today don't know how to read, and grow up to be people who don't read? This is a very hard question, and there is no one right answer. But by prioritizing, we can come up with a solution that will make the classroom fun and solve the problem of literacy! By prioritizing, the problem of literacy, spoken of by Hirsch, Pratt, and Foucualt, can be solved!

The solution we are seeking for how to motivate students is simple: sex. Students of all ages like sex, as Foucault says. Sex has a great deal of power that we can utilize in the classroom; as Foucault says, "power comes from below" (169). Too often students are bad or fall asleep in class, because they are bored and teachers don't know how to arouse their interest. Education should be exciting. Pratt says basically the same thing as Foucault: "There were exhilerating moments of wonder and revelation. . . the joys of the contact zone," is how she describes her favorite class (402). I disagree with Pratt, though, in that I think you get the most exhilerating moments with sex. Just think of the improved literacy if sex were taught in the classroom!

I had a teacher in high school who really inspired me. We were not afraid to reveal parts of ourselves in our classroom, even if it was sometimes embarrassing. I think this is what Hirsch is trying to get at with cultural literacy. If everybody knows the same things, you can have unity, spiritually, mentally, and bodily, where everybody can make penetrating insights, both men and women. As Hirsch says, there is a "lack of wide-ranging background information among young men and women now in their twenties and thirties" (275), but if they had shared the contact zone, this wouldn't have happened. In order to communicate, sex must be taught. As Foucault said, "relationships ... are the basis for wide-ranging ... cleavage that run through the ... body as a whole" (169). Both Hirsch and Foucault agree that these things are “wide-ranging,” but I think that Foucault would say to Hirsch that he needs to say that information is power, which is like sex. But I think Hirsch would say that culturally literate people should use Shakespeare because you can communicate a lot with "There is a tide"(275), since four words can say what you'd need 27 for. But I think you can communicate deeply without words at all if you employ the contact zone.

It is never too early to start teaching the contact zone. When Pratt's son Manuel was in the contact zone, he said things were "Grate!!!!!!!!" because "it would let me play with my friends" (400) Think how much playing around we could have if we taught the contact zone earlier! Far more students could be fulfilled and motivated to learn!

Some teachers might not know how to teach the contact zone, which is why we can have night classes for the teachers to get them experienced in the subject, and instructional videos for the class. My teacher made his own instructional video for us, and it was great!

Teaching the contact zone is hard work, but if we have communication between students and teachers, we can do it. Sometimes we might have to keep it secret, since the administration just wouldn't understand, but that's only because they've never felt the "mutual understanding and new wisdom" (402) of the contact zone. Learning can take place outside the classroom too--my teacher told us we could always come to him about our problems, and even after he was suspended from teaching, he let us visit him at the video store he opened, even though we were underage.

I think if Hirsch had read Foucault and Pratt and met my teacher, he would have agreed with me. Really, what we need is to balance Hirsch, Foucault, and Pratt, and teach sex. They're all partly right but none of them can stand alone. Only when people come together in pairs, threesomes, or larger groups can real learning be achieved. This is why I love workshopping in groups. Like with Manuel, I can do so much more when I "play with my friends" (Pratt 400) than when I play with myself.

Talking Mirrors and the Ideological Dangers of Floss

As I was standing in a heroic pose in front of the bathroom mirror, preparing to wage war against the enemies of toothdom, my mirror started talking. "What are you doing?" it asks.

"What are you doing?" I ask. "You are a mirror."

"Ah yes," it says. "But I am a talking mirror. Have you not read Steele's Tatler essays? The Spectator letters? Sarah Fielding's David Simple? The question is not whether a mirror can talk, but whether it does so with words, or only with images. As a mirror, I reveal to you your true character. Think of me as the portrait to your Dorian Gray."

"An Abbot to my Costello," I reflect. "Hmm ... I don't really feel like having an epiphany about my real character right now. What can you give me if I hold up ... this floss dispenser!" Held aloft, the floss dispenser glistens, both like a gauntlet of challenge, and a shield of defense.

"It is cinnamon-flavored floss," the mirror comments.

"Why, so it is," I admit, gazing at the floss as if I have never before observed it critically.

"Vanity," the mirror remarks. I stare at the mirror and say nothing. "Not me, I mean. The floss." I stare quizzically at the floss and say nothing. "You know, the cinnamon." I make grotesque stupid faces into the mirror to show my puzzlement. "Look," the mirror says, exasperated. "Why do you use floss?"

"To save my teeth."

"Yes," the mirror says. "To save your teeth from food stuck between them. So why do you need flavored floss? I'll tell you why: because not! Wait, that's not what I mean to say ... it's hard enough being a talking mirror without having to talk clearly ... okay, the point is that floss does not need to have taste. Floss's purpose is to atone for your eating things that do have taste: this--this cinnamon monstrosity is like your trying to have your floss, and eat it too. Look inside those boxlike compartment things in the bathroom! Do you see it? Cinnamon-flavored floss! Berry-burst flavored floss! You lead a life of quiet desperation, chasing after novelty-floss items and failing to see the beauty that lies beyond this bathroom."

"That is not true," I defend myself. "Just the other day, I saw the beauty of the kitchen."

"Do not get me started on the kitchen!" the mirror shrieks. "Do not get me started on your novelty gel-detergent. 'We need orange blossom scented detergent,' you say in stupidly effeminate voice. 'I don't like the lemon-scented gel-detergent, but we can try some spring breeze fragrance detergent for variety, because I am a pansy,' you say in whiny teenage girlesque voice. Do you not see the degradation? Do you not realize that dishes were made to be clean, not to smell of flowers? That if your detergent gel must smell, it must emit appropriate odors, such as beef gravy or garlic? Monuments to decadence, all! Vapidity! Vanity! Insanity! A celebration of the unnecessary!"

"I need to floss my teeth," I announce. "And I don't need to hear this right now."

The mirror pauses. "If you do not need to hear this right now ... then I am a celebration of the unnecessary! I am self-referentially incoherent!" The mirror shatters into a thousand pieces, and then I awaken in bed. I yawn, and I discover the taste of cinnamon on my tongue: was it dream, or reality?

First Impressions, Second Chances, and the Artistry of Cliches

For some strange reason, my wife was not too keen to see the movie _Second Chance_, after she heard an advertised comment by Michael W. Smith saying something (to the effect) that if the movie failed to move you, it was because your heart was hardened. My wife perceived alternative possibilities, such as that the movie was just plain bad. Smith's message also seemed to contradict the apparent thrust of the film--at the very least, Smith could have said something like, "If the movie fails to move you the first time, I am hoping that God has not abandoned you to your wickedness, and He's giving you a second chance--to buy another ticket."

So, on Friday night, my wife and I went to see _Pride and Prejudice_, which is decidely not the movie _Second Chance_. There was a little bit more estrogen involved (in the film and in the theater) than I am normally comfortable with, but it was a good film. It was also useful in pointing out to my wife that, just as Elizabeth's first impression of Darcy was wrong (Austen originally titled her work "First Impressions"), so too my wife's refusal to see _Second Chance_ might prevent her from appreciating a high-quality movie. Fellow personages of the masculine persuasion, I have learned that the ultimate tool in convincing your wife to do something you want is to cite chick flicks or relationship books as your authority. Unfortunately, this usually involves you watching the movies or reading the relationship books, but winning arguments is not without its price.

Well, on Saturday night we saw _Second Chance_, and I have to say I was really impressed. As often happens with a "Christian" movie, many Christians go around saying, "This movie is awesome!" and the secular media say, "I almost wish I could say this movie was awesome so I don't get called anti-God, but ..." Well, TVguide.com called it "cliched, often awkward and unlikely to inspire anyone who isn't already thoroughly sold." The _Seattle Times_ headlines reads, "Positive Messages Banally Delivered." The _Orlando Sentinel_ remarks that the movie is "painfully slow." Most critics did, at least, generally affirm that the movie offered a good "message" (which is more than, say, Gibson's Passion merited, what with chummy charges of anti-Semitism and sado-masochism).

I can see why the critics make these negative comments about _Second Chance_. The movie isn't plot-driven or have "surprise" twists. You can pretty much guess what's going to happen: the spoiled suburban white pastor, Ethan, is going to learn that he needs to care about poverty, urban missions and his African-American brothers, and not just throw money at them; the African-American pastor, Jake, is going to learn that he needs sometimes to trust his white brethren, even if they have repeatedly screwed him over and made a farce of Martin Luther King's dream. I mean, sure, the writers could have thrown in a plot twist, such as that at the end you discover the African-American pastor is really--a transexual! (Remember The Crying Game?) The movie is not just a call to urban ministry, but to ordain women and gay pastors! Shocking as such an ending might be, that's not really what the movie is trying to do. The movie is about building relationships. The movie does have surprises, but the surprises aren't from the plot. The surprises are from cliches.

Let me explain. Evangelicalism has certain cliches. I had a Lutheran roommate who commented that evangelical prayers typically began, "God, we just wanna thank you ..." and that Lutheran prayers did not. My wife recently read an article that points out evangelicals more frequently use the declarative in their prayers, such as "God, we ask that you heal us ..." rather than using the imperative or subjunctive, "God, would you please heal us." I don't think such habits are "bad," but it does seem valuable to become self-reflective in the rhetoric we choose, so that we are aware of its strengths, limitations, and alternative models. My Lutheran roommate, for instance, pointed out that Lutheran prayers often begin a prayer with an attribute of God that they can connect to the prayer request--for example, "Our Great Physician [i.e. someone who heals], we ask you to grant healing to our dog Bootsy." I think that type of prayer is kind of groovy. (Hey! I wrote, "WE ASK YOU to grant," and I didn't even notice it at first! Did you?)

I think part of the reason that the secular media has called the movie "cliche" and slow-paced is because they don't understand evangelical culture's use of cliches, and how the movie surprises you in its challenge of them. For instance (WARNING: PLOT SPOILER), when the rich suburban church is going to sell the poverty-stricken urban church's property (resulting in its getting bull-dozed), the promoter encourages, "We've got to sell this property! If we do, it will pay for all of our overseas missions work for five years! God wants us to be good stewards." Now, I have used the "good stewards" line myself, whenever I don't want to give money to something, so it floored me to see it used so ... sinfully. It made me aware of just how potential a jerk I am in danger of becoming if I employ such rhetoric uncritically.

The movie also impressed me with a meta-level critique. The rich spoiled white pastor Ethan, by hanging out in the 'hood, comes to realize that personal relationship is a more important attribute of a congregation than big attendance numbers or great worship music. When the suburban church is putting together a television advertisement to boost attendance, Ethan notices it shows a lot of pictures of music and throngs of people, but it gives no sense of relational connection. Ethan comments that they need to show that the church cares about people and developing relationships; rummaging through some old photo shots, he picks a camera shot of him with his arm around Jake at a homeless shelter. (It appears to have been Ethan's only such trip to the homeless shelter.) When Jake sees the advertisement on tv and sees his picture used to advertise the white church, he gets angry and responds, "what the hell does he think he's doing?" That is, on one level, Ethan was right in seeing that the first version of the ad was missing a personal component; what Ethan failed to realize is that, however subtly, he was still treating Jake not as a person, but as a photo-op. Right when he thinks he knows the meaning of the good ol' cliche, "being personal," he still hasn't gotten it! So much of the movie is about critiquing yourself and discovering you are in need of further critique--it is the recognition that you only see a part of the picture, not the whole. (I really did not intend that pun.)

My suspicion is that, if Christian moviemakers want to be taken seriously by secular movie critics (which they might not), they need strongly to consider _Second Chance_ as a model. Postmodernity has taught society a suspicion of naivety and glib answers, making it difficult to tell an "uplifting" story without seeming to reduce the complexity of a situation or of human motive. (This is why one of the movie's strengths is that it leaves you with a lot of questions, not easy answers.) Even this movie, which radically challenges and critiques many aspect of pop evangelical culture, still seems "banal" and "cliche" to secular critics unfamiliar with the culture that the movie is critiquing. (A side note: isn't the accusation of being "cliched" itself a cliched accusation? Almost every work of art since Jesus's crucifixion has had to be derivative or imitative in some manner. Any story that ends happily can be unthinkingly labelled as "cliched"--and so, for that matter, can an unhappy one. But I digress.) It might be virtually impossible to provide any uplifting Christian vision without seeming banal and cliched, but I think this movie gives an idea of how this is possible. This movie causes us to look at cliches in order to be critical of them, teaching us what it truly means to be "out of our comfort zone."

It's the Thought that Counts ...

Valentine's Day is a day for giving something special to the people we love who are in our lives. One of those somethings special is a card. There are, of course, a large number of appropriate occasions for sending people a card--birthdays, weddings, etc. It bothers me that, in the past, a lot of places on the internet would let you send great e-cards for free, but nowadays, they charge money! Because so many of the ecard places are just interested in making money rather than helping people, it's refreshing to find a place that sends out free ecards, so you can pass along a token of your love to people who have meant a lot to you without having to pay for it.

Despite my predisposition to support such services, I must admit that I am not quite sure what to make of the free ecards available here at inspotla--take a look at the sample ecard above. Now, I suppose it's sweet, and kind of humanitarian, that, after you have given someone a sexual disease (a "token of your infection," perhaps?), you inform them of it. But ... with an e-card? With a joke? Now, I recognize that advertisers need catchy phrases to attract the attention of the consumer, but I don't really see a need to "sell the product" here. Granted, let's say you've infected a person, and you're a little nervous about how they will respond: do you really think that throwing a little joke in there will lighten the mood? It'll just leave them feeling crabby.

I can't help reflecting that, if it used to be considered bad form to break up with someone over the telephone rather than face-to-face, there's also something at least marginally bad about revealing this kind of information by an ecard. Now, I can anticipate the argument: "People with STDs can't be expected to be mature enough to tell previous partners personally, so we need to teach them to send ecards!" (It reminds me of the argument, "Kids can't be expected to be mature enough to control their sexuality, so we need to make sure they can be safe and use a condom!") And I guess if I had to choose whether it was more polite to send a tacky card or to cause someone's death, Miss Manners might recommend I side with death prevention.

I want to say I am not here taking issue with people who unanonymously send ecards because it contains important service information, nor am I taking issue with the people who feel a need for ecards like this. What I find fundamentally disturbing is simply the fact that people do feel that there is a need for anonymous STD-warning ecards. It concerns me that after some people have engaged in what should be the most personal/emotional/intellectual/spiritual type of union possible--that they should have become "naked" in the fullest sense of the word (not just physical)--they now feel they must cover themselves in a cloak of anonymity from people with whom they were once "one" (even if it was "only a one-night stand"). I find it alarming that some people who use the service may think that by sending an ecard, have done "enough" or "the right thing."

Don't misunderstand me: I realize it has to be incredibly hard, probably shaming, to confess to someone you may have given them a disease. After all, as my last entry showed, I felt ashamed about asking a waiter to repeat his instructions on how to do fondue, and I can see that's a whole lot less embarrassing than the STD thing. But if people really care about a person they have put at risk of disease, they should contact him/her personally, not send them an anonymous ecard. (If they don't really care about that person, they need to learn there's something terribly wrong. Without cultivating a capacity of true charity and love, humanity means nothing. "Love of God" and a "love of others" is the ultimate goal and summary of the ten commandments, but that's for another time.)

An anonymous ecard is like a hit-and-run--"Sorry I ran you over, here's the address of the nearest hospital, I hope you can find someone to give you a ride." A receiver of such an ecard may well be freaked out and feel completely alone. True, some receivers might want to be left alone by the person who gave them a disease, but some might also need that person to listen to them, sympathize, give them a sense of closure, or answer questions they may have. It's not just about injuring someone physically with a disease, but injuring them on an emotional level, and the ecard might only make the latter type of injury worse. It may fracture human relationships and emphasize the physical health of the body at the expense of the spiritual, intellectual, and emotional health of the soul. Yes, the body counts, but it's the thought that counts, too.

Fonduel

For St. Valentine's Day, my wife and I went to a fondue restaurant. It was our first time going to one, so we weren't sure what to expect. At first, it was easy; our instructor asked, "Have you done fondue before?" and, after a pregnant pause, I answered, "No." From that point, things became more difficult. After we sat down, they brought out some melted cheese in a pot, and they gave us a basket of what they told us were three different kinds of bread, one of which was pumpernickel, two of which were not. The two of which were not pumpernickel were virtually indistinguishable from each other (and the instructor never pointed out which was which)--how could I choose which one to take, when I did not know which I was choosing?
There were no diagrams, no blown-up pictures so that I could make a positive i.d. in a police lineup. Apparently, I was spending too much time yesterday on work, and not enough researching bread.

After the cheese experience came the big challenge. Out came our instructor, with six sauces and beer batter for basting. I sat, poised, knowing that when he came to list the six sauces, there would be no second chances, no, "Can you please repeat that?" Even if I would never see my instructor again, I wanted to make him proud and not remember me as the guy who had failed the honey mustard recognition challenge. When he came to our table, in a dazzling show of expertise, he rattled off a list of six sauces, five of which were not horseradish, and four of which were neither teriyaki nor dill.

Then came the real shocker. I was ready for vegetables. I was ready for meat. But he brought out a plate--with both vegetables and raw meat on it! If I failed to remember how long he said to cook the chicken, the tenderloin, the vegetables, the vegetables with batter, the chicken with batter, all of which were to be held in sizzling oil for different periods of duration, I could die! Fondue was no longer a game: it was a responsibility, where the stakes were death. A "fon-duel," if you will.

At first, I thought the challenge was simply in not eating food that would kill me. But there are other perils. You have "competitors," some of whom will do anything to win, including "accidentally" splashing boiling oil on you while they are dunking their food. There is also the peril that you will never be able to eat at all, because the food, especially the onions, will keep falling off the special fork into the oil. (It reminded me of working fast food when you would clean the frier and discover a sad little French fry that had been cooking for five hours.) There is the peril that the only way to recover lost food will be to stand up, peering and poking around in the oil for five minutes, while other patrons watch you and laugh.

After you have endured this challenge, the blazing marshmallow speed challenge begins. The instructor brings out a pot with chocolate in it, a plate with fruit, and gives each of you a special fork that has a marshmallow attached to it. The instructor explains that he is about to set the interior of the pot on fire! Now, your goal is not to put out the fire: your goal is to quickly stab your marshmallow-laden fork into the fire so that it can be roasted before the fire is gone! If you fail, you do not get to eat the marshmallow! Or maybe you are allowed to, I don't know. I didn't eat the marshmellow, so as not to risk being disqualified. Anyway, you only get about ten seconds to accomplish this feat, and both my wife and I failed, but I did better overall, since she disqualified herself by eating the marshmallow.

With stomachs and egos battered, my wife and I retired from the fray. I am not proud of my defeat, but I vow one day I will again accept the fondue challenge, and on that day I will not fail! I will also accept a coupon!

The Cat That Meowed Wolf

Back in the old days, interaction with the cats was simple. I visited my fiancee, petted her cats, and then left her apartment, so she got to feed them and change their litter. Even after we got married and she made me alternate the kitty litter cleaning, the feeding wasn't so bad, since we had a self-feeder. But these halcyon days could not last. Pippin, our monstrous furry behemoth, kept stuffing himself, and the vet said to put him on a diet, and that our other cat Cricket could stand to shed a pound or two as well.

Deciding to help the ungrateful wretches, we determined that three times a day, we would feed Pippin and Cricket separately. Their 8:30 am feeding would begin with Pippin meowing obnoxiously outside the door and my hoping that my wife would get out of bed, grab the supersoaker, and shoot him for me. Once one of us got up and put their food out, Pippin would wolf down his food in two minutes and start howling to be let out so that he could eat Cricket's food. Meanwhile, Cricket would nibble a little at his food and then decide he wanted to sit on the couch. After thirty minutes had gone by, we would take away his food, and he would immediately jump down and nibble the little bits that have fallen on the floor. Around 5:30 pm, they would start meowing for two and a half hours for their next feeding at 7. Around 9 pm, they would start meowing for two more hours for their next feeding.

I started to ask myself, is this really worth it? It’s not as if Pippin’s going to be "getting any" if he has a sleeker bod, since not only is he an indoors cat, he is neutered. Cricket seems unable to grasp the concept that just because your dinner is unequivocally dead, that does not mean it won’t move after it has sat there for an hour. My wife thought it would be inhumane to try one of those anti-barking collars on them to see if it works in shutting them up. And what happened if Pippin actually did lose the weight, and an emaciated Cricket still somehow clung weakly onto life with his declawed paws ... would we just keep regimenting their food for the rest of our (painful) lives, or would we just let Pippin get fat again? "As a dog returns to its vomit, so also does Pippin return to his vomit, and to the self-feeder if we let him," as the proverb goes.

Further, given the cats' propensity to meow at every moment for food, it posed a considerable challenge for them to communicate a desire for the little things, like that they wanted us to play with them, or that there was no water and they were about to die. After realizing that meowing and pointing their heads at the water dispenser didn't work (since their head was then pointing at the food bowl at the same time), they opted for the more pathetic solution of drinking out of the toilet or hanging out in the bathtub in the hope that the faucet would release a few drips.

Well, we've given up on the diet now, because one of them, and by one of them, I mean most likely Cricket, has been pooping outside the litterbox. It's not entirely his fault; Pippin doesn't cover up after himself, and I'm not really sure how you communicate proper etiquette to a cat. I have wondered if Cricket's dilemma is something like this: "I don't get enough time to eat food ... but for the food that I do eat, I just have to poop it out again in a litterbox that smells because Mobert [that is what Cricket calls Pippin] can't clean up after himself. I want to die. But since I have no opposable thumbs to hold the noose, I shall just have to poop in the corner instead. I shall pretend that this spot is what has become of all my hopes and dreams." We hope that by leaving food out all the time, maybe Cricket will be a little less depressed.

Now that we leave both food bowls out all the time (in separate rooms), Pippin still doesn't understand what's going on, especially at 8:30 am when we are trying to sleep. Outside the door, Pippin will be meowing, not because there is no food out, but because the remaining food is in Cricket's bowl, not his. I wonder if Pavlov ever had these problems.

Victorian Role-Playing game, Monty Python style!

The Musee McCord Museum has a great role-playing game set in the 19th century that you can play here. You wander around doing Victorian-like things, and bad things happen to you if you do un-Victorian like things. For example, if you choose the wrong clothing for a social situation, a kangaroo with lasers in its eyes shoot you, ninja assassins toss you around a bit, or angel babies assault you. It often ends up more fun to choose the wrong answers--for instance, if at the ball you decide to impress a girl with your mad dancing skills, it is quite a hoot as you wave your hands in the air, and she runs away.

Even if you accidentally choose the right answer, it's still very amusing. The game has Terry Gilliam (i.e. Monty Python) style animation, and the voices are the kind of incoherent silly mutterings you'd expect from Python. Unfortunately, they don't include a role-playing game for the 18th century, but they do have another game for the "Roaring Twenties" at the same site. Support the study of history and the spirit of Monty Python at the same time!

Essay Forth Into Liberty

There is something sad and pathetic about a twenty-nine year graduate student playing with margins and font sizes to get his work to fit within five pages. In my efforts to increase my stipend and/or get out of service work forthe English department, I'm applying for a fellowship outside of my department. The fellowship asks for me to write an essay on "liberty," and in doing so, I have become aware of just how potentially confining such an essay topic can become.

For instance, one important aspect of "liberty" is that it ought to include the freedom to write more than five pages. Take John Stuart Mill's work On Liberty, for example. The book is a lot longer than five pages. Heck, even people writing on bondage go longer than that--Luther's Bondage of the Will, again with the length. Or, on the other hand ... what if I wanted to define "liberty" in just one sentence, like Locke does? Would they give me the scholarship? I think not. This essay assignment has become like the mythic character Procrustes, the host who got his guests to fit in his bed by either stretching them out on the rack or cutting off their feet.

Another important aspect of "liberty" is conceiving of it in a manner that is relevant to you in your own unique historical moment. For instance, for me personally at this juncture, the true picture of "liberty" is one involving fellowship providers showering me with money so that I can get my dissertation done and not have to do departmental service for my stipend. You see the problem. In writing on "liberty," I must inevitably write on something that is not the liberty foremost on my mind. I am in bondage to the selection committee and what I think they want me to say. Sure, technically I have the "liberty" to submit a one-sentence essay that simply says, "Give me money or I shall hate you, sincerely, me," in the same sense that I have the "liberty" to hit myself repeatedly in the head with a banjo. Until I passed out from the blows, in which case I would lose this precious freedom. In which case I would not be free. Which proves the case that I am not at liberty now. I'm not allowed to write a nice simple, honest message expressing my boundless greed. You would think that the boundlessness of my greed would show how much I've imbibed the principles of liberty and freedom, but no! I think we're all led pretty inexorably to the conclusion that we must contradict liberty in the very attempt to instantiate it. I bet if Derrida were here, he'd agree with me, but he's not at liberty to be here, because he's dead.

I am not only limited by page length, my desire to represent my own beliefs accurately, my desire to receive money, and Derrida's being dead, but I am also limited by how I want my professors to see me. Since the scholarship asks for letters of recommendation, a couple profs have asked to see my essay so that they can formulate their letter to address the scholarship. Now, an important feature of "liberty" is that people are free to agree with your ideas, or free to think you are a dunderhead. Now, and this is the weird thing so get your mind around it, upon occasions in which two separate people exist, each of them may believe that the other person is being a dunderhead. Stunning, but I have had the lab results analyzed. Now, this would not pose a problem if not for the fact that sometimes a third person exists who wants money and wants neither of the two parties to think he is a dunderhead. Since there is so much ideological disagreement about what constitutes liberty, I wondered if perhaps the trick to getting different parties to agree with me is to define liberty in as abstract and ambiguous terms as possible.

I then started to think, perhaps I am not the only person to get this idea of celebrating the fuzziness of liberty in the abstract. Take amendment 4 of the Constitution, for example: it condemns "unreasonable searches and seizures" and that warrants should only be issued "upon probable cause." I think we can all agree. This is part of the problem. There are probably a large number of totalitarian regime type people who think that they would be being reasonable. And it wouldn't really be fair of me to expect each constitutional amendment to explicate the concrete conditions for what's "unreasonable" or what's "probable" ... and neither would it be fair for the essay readers to expect me to explicate what liberty actually is! Bwah-hah-hah, eureka!

Since I cannot include these particular insights about liberty into the body of the essay itself, I have determined that it is only here, here in the realm of pseudoprofundities, that I can be at true liberty. Or can I? Even here, I must impose self-censorship, being careful that if my secret identity ever becomes known to the world, I have said nothing incriminating through the strict maintenance of methodical vagueness and lack of clarity. Here, here is where I am free--to say nothing.

A Clap Item Veto

Last night, I got to hear the President's State of the Union address. Frankly, and perhaps this does confirm that I have ADD, I grew really bored of having to sit there and hear people, primarily Republicans, clap after every sentence. It takes so long! I wish they just held up a banner or something. Whatever one thinks about any particular sitting President, it is an offense to us, the American people with things to do, when you break out into thunderous applause just because the president opened his mouth, and you make us wait for you to tire yourselves out from all that vigorous thumping! There are better ways of showing you approve of the President, like in your voting record or issuing articulate public statements. Or, if you have to take up my time during the State of the Union address, spice it up with a little variety. Have some screaming Bush groupies rush the stage or something. I would enjoy seeing Republican congressmen mosh for each salient point.

Well, since I didn't have much to do during all the clapping bits, I started speculating on the practical difficulties involved for any congressman listening to a "State of the Union" address offered by an opposing party's president--Republican and Democrat alike. I mean, if you belong to the same party, you can get into a steady routine during the speech: the President says "blah blah blah freedom blah blah," you jump to your feet and start clapping wildly; you could conceivably not pay any attention to the content at all. But if you're of the opposing party, you have to listen closely. Suppose the "blah blah blah" is saying, "we want America to have freedom from the terrorists." It seems that's the sort of statement that if the other party is clapping, it would behoove you to clap, lest you risk a kick to the booty come election time. But suppose the "blah blah blah" is actually saying, "we need to protect the precious freedoms that we are in danger of losing if the other party has its way," then it seems an instance in which clapping would be counterproductive.

There can be a lot of moral quandaries concerning whether to clap or not. Suppose the President is saying something that prima facie is true and good, but in its context, it's actually dissing you: for instance, "hindsight alone is not wisdom, and second-guessing is not a strategy," does carry truth as an aphorism, but the subtext is, "Hey Democrats, you so stoopid!" Or suppose that the president throws a whole bunch of propositions together, only some of which seem clappable. For example, one of Bush's statements that earned claps from both Republicans and Democrats was the following: "One out of every five factory jobs in America is related to global trade, and we want people everywhere to buy American. With open markets and a level playing field, no one can out-produce or out-compete the American worker. " Now, I like America, and I would like people everywhere to buy American, so that's clappable material, even if the nationalism feels a little over the top. But it does seem to me naive to assert that with open markets and the removal of tariffs, no one could out-compete us. We have a higher standard of living than many countries. We have a higher cost of living than many countries. American workers are simply not as economically competitive as those in India and Mexico because Americans need to pay more for food so they do not starve. Even if other countries had the "level playing field" of a standard of living and a cost of living equal to our own (if that is what Bush is saying), how in the world could we ever affirm unequivocally that no one could out-compete us when such a scenario is beyond our frame of reference (what a logician would call "hypothesis contrary to fact")? It's startling to me that this was one of the few statements that could unite both Republicans and Democrats in clapfest 2006!

In his address, President Bush called for the passage of the "line-item veto," so that a president could veto the special interest pork while still passing important legislation. I do like the principle, although I can see potential abuses (e.g. if a piece of legislation offers both spending increases and spending cuts, and a president only approves of the former). But it seems to me it is even more important to have a system in place whereby, when the president lists a bunch of propositions together in a speech, you can have a "clap-item veto" whereby you can strike out the propositions you don't want to clap for, but still get to clap and feel like less of a grouch. I'm really not sure about the logistics of this idea; I do think that giving each congressman a buzzer might be distracting. Or we could try simply limiting the number of claps, and declare that any congressman who gave a standing ovation twice during any two minute portion of the speech would have one of his hands cut off, thereby preventing future infractions. Anyway, here's hoping that somewhere out there we can find a cure for when congressmen have a case of the claps.