Spouses ist verboten

On Friday night, my wife and I went to an awards dinner for a graduate student teaching award I received. When I first got the invitation, I thought it was only inviting me, not my wife. However, when I was conversing with some friends on the day of the event, they told me that recipients in previous years could bring a "guest"--some people have even brought dissertation advisors. Well, I pulled out my invitation, used my Derrida close reading skills to decide that the text was indeterminate, and called the respective authorities to find out an hour before the event whether I could bring my wife; after all, according to the invitation, it was a "reception," not a "dinner," which suggested a greater degree of informality. The staff member said it was fine, so off we went.

Once we got there, however, we discovered that all the tables had name place cards, and though there was a card for mr. retain personal anonymity person, there wasn't one for ms. retain husband's personal anonymity person. Since I thought it would be impolite to make my wife stand the whole time and was not confident in my own abilities to hold a plate and a glass in the same hand for an hour, I told the happy smiley greety woman of our plight. "Who told you that you could bring your wife?" the happy smiley greety woman said, her smile suddenly betraying some rather menacing big pointy teeth. "Um, a person who works at your office and I thought was trustworthy?" I said, apparently delinquent in the level of scrutiny requisite for confirming a dinner engagement. "I talked to the person today," I added. I decided it might not be beneficial to mention that the conversation took place just an hour ago, but instead to imply that it took place in a distant, sacred primordial past.

"You're not supposed to. We allowed one exception because he is an international student," she said testily. (Thanks a lot, U.S. citizenship! first you get me in trouble in Canada, and now this!) "Well ... I suppose you can sit at that table over there," she finally conceded, pointing in the distance to what appeared to be a desolate land cut off from the fecund Eden-like abundance that overflowed the other tables.

It is rather curious to be at an awards ceremony at which you are seated at the "rejects" table. Do the "outstanding graduate student" and the "stupid graduate student" designations cancel each other out, so you are just plain a normal graduate student? Are you sort of like the character Ignorance in Pilgrim's Progress, who is thrown into hell at the very gates of heaven? What's it all mean? Anyway, there are some decided disadvantages in sitting at the "Misfits" table. For one thing, there is no one else in your department (unless, in this case, you were lucky enough to be in Economics). Also, when they announce, "We will begin with table 10 and go down," you will eventually realize that, since you are the "Rejects" table, you do not have a table number, which presumably means you aren't supposed to eat. (However, since we were already naughty enough to break the rules by bringing a spouse, we decided to break the rules and eat as well.)

There are, however, benefits of sitting at the "Misfits" table. For one thing, it creates a kind of solidarity: yes, we might be from other departments, but we have all gratuitously misbehaved. It was sort of like Breakfast Club for grad school. And the very fact that we were a motley assortment prevented the conversation from becoming too specialized: I mean, sure, the economics guy couldn't help talking about economics, but he referred to the economic number-crunching in Gulliver's Travels in order to assuage my eighteenth-century literature sensibilities. We got to hear more about how other departments functioned--for instance, when the surprized music department student inquired, "It takes you six years to get your degree?" we were able to explain that this was not because we were stupid, and we learned that the music department functions rather differently (if I rightly understand, rather than writing a thesis, they perform a piece of music). And the best part of all was that I could be at an awards reception with the woman I loved rather than merely with colleagues or strangers. (As it turns out, my wife and I were the only people from the English department to stay for the reception, so I really would have just been dining with strangers.)

Anyway, it did make me reflect a little bit on the dinner set-up. I learned that, in years past, they did allow you to bring a guest; this year, they wanted to have the food of better quality, and a consequence is that they could invite only the recipients, not a guest. (Of course, their invitation letter does not tell you that you cannot bring a guest.) Much as I appreciate having better food, I don't think it's worth having to eat it alone. I realize many people aren't married, and having a big meal might be one of the most essential parts of the evening. (Before I was married, one of the features I most enjoyed about departmental talks is that the reception enabled me to indulge in a free dinner, made up of several sizable cookies, cheese, and crackers. Having a free dinner that included more than just the standard cookie fare might have been preferable to being able to invite a guest.) Nevertheless, I think it is more meaningful to be able to share the experience/honor with someone you care about. When I've had papers to correct or had class preparations to make, I have had to give up spending time with my wife (meaning that she has had to sacrifice that time, as well); it seems counterintuitive that an "award" for these sacrifices will likewise necessitate that I give up spending time with my wife, at a fancy dinner to which she is not invited, and on a Friday night, no less.

To the pure all things are pure; or, Roman Holiday

Watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 has taught me that movies from the 1950s do not always appeal to the most noble of instincts in moviegoers. I still recall a Batgirl movie that included a lot of unnecessary dancing and jiggling that made little tangible contribution to the curtailment of crime in Gotham City. Yet I still tend to presume that the “classic” 1950s movies inculcate family values and/or have appealed to something more enduring than one of the seven deadly sins (which have actually been around quite a long time). And I do have to say that, after I watched Roman Holiday, this presumption remained uncontested: the movie seems like fairly innocent fun. I mean, sure, the main character sleeps at the house of an unmarried man, but she was drugged at the time, and nothing untoward happened.

However, I have to say that I find the original theatrical trailers (available on the DVD) somewhat puzzling. Now, I wouldn’t have been surprised by a trailer that said something like, “Audrey Hepburn is really pretty, come see her get dressed up for a fancy ball.” I find more surprising the actual words of the trailer (imagine a very excited male announcer, crank it up a notch, and you’ve got the voiceover): “Yes, there’s a nightgown scene, and what a nightgown!” Even if the commentator restrained himself from making the compulsory “Hubba hubba” noises, I still don’t think the trailer adequately portrays that this is a movie about a love that transcends time when it announces elatedly that the starlet is going to be wearing a nightie. Despite a number of funny scenes from which to choose, the trailer selects the most potentially scandalous moments of the movie: for instance, it shows Helpburn’s skirt falling off while she’s in a man’s room (she appears drunk at the time), which is immediately followed by the scene in which she is covered in towels from a bath in the man's apartment, and a maid is rebuking her for apparently indecent behavior (no doubt expressing her moral indignation in Italian so we do not know the full extent of Hepburn’s naughtiness). You have to go see the movie in order to learn, in the words of the perky trailer announcer, “how’d this cute little surprise package [Audrey] wind up in Greg’s apartment?”

I don’t mean to suggest that there was no appeal to romance and/or courtly behavior. After all, if you see the movie, you can “share the glory of a romance as radiant as the Roman moonlight,” whatever that means, and you can watch confidently with the knowledge that the whole movie was “lived, loved, and filmed in Rome.” And if you watch, you’ll see that “all the things happened to them that you always hoped for on the happiest day of your life!” The movie is, after all, “The happiest picture you’ve seen in years!” what with two of the characters falling in love and having to live the rest of their lives forever apart (the film ends with Gregory Peck walking out of a press conference alone). I don’t know about you, but the happiest movies I see are those in which the people in love are forever separated. Anyway, there were certainly a number of viewers (and by a number, I mean women) who probably really were in the theater to see “the gayest spree any girl ever had.” But it does seem to me that the trailer-makers were banking on the idea that the men would be going because they would see “what a nightgown!” and the “cute little surprise package” that enjoys acting drunk, dropping her clothes, and taking showers in bachelor’s apartments.

I realize that I am taking these scenes out of context. My point is that the trailers take such scenes out of context. Further, the trailers may actually establish the expectations of the original viewers—the trailers essentially create the context in which many moviegoers watched the movie. “Hey! When do I get to see the hubba hubba nightgown?” we can imagine a hormonally-charged adolescent in the theater thinking to himself. “I wanna see some more objectification of women as cute little surprise packages,” thinks the self-conscious degenerate in the audience.

I do recognize that I am not watching these original trailers with the same sensibilities with which the original audience would have viewed them. For example, perhaps if you wanted to compliment a woman in the 1950s, you would tell her she was a “cute little surprise package,” and just watch the girlish glee ensue. And maybe there was some 1950s fashion I don’t know about, such that the showcasing of girls in their nighties constitutes tasteful art akin to nude modeling. (And as my wife pointed out, the nightgown is only “revealing” in a grandmotherly sort of way. So, there may be an implicit joke, “Ha ha, you want to be lustful? Take THAT, lecher boy!”) And some people may simply go because they enjoy the incongruity/irony of a princess acting regal the moment right before her clothes accidentally fall off. Nevertheless, it seems to me that the trailers perpetuated ways of looking at women and describing them (or at least Audrey Hepburn) that were not admirable. At the very least, it seems that the trailer-makers intentionally invoke scandalous associations. (I realize one could argue that they only invoke these associations in order to subvert them: “See, she is not drunk at all! See, nothing morally suspect happens, you silly double-entendre people!”) It is interesting that, much as we might celebrate the “classics,” we wouldn’t want to see the classics in their original “hubba hubba” context but instead in a context that is divorced from the conditions of historical reception. Things may appear pure to us only because we have taken them out of an original context that could make them seem prurient.

I want a giant regal lion bunny!

I am sad. With new scientific advances and nobel-prize-like achievements, we have been able to combine chocolate and peanut butter to make the glory that is Reece's Pieces. Yet with all of our expertise, our mapping of the genome, and our good old American know-how about designing animal babies, we have still failed miserably at having a giant bunny that looks like a lion. These two pictures to my left show the hollowness of all American victories: on the far left, we have a regal lionhead bunny, who is, like most of his ilk, small. On our less far left, we have a bunny that has eaten his wheaties but has lost something far more precious, namely, that which he never had, a lion's mane, and all the cuteness that would accompany this accoutrement. I do not care if it is "impracticable" or "contrary to the laws of physics," or if we have "two bunnies whose heart is elsewhere" or "too much male anatomy." I want these bunnies to mate! I want them to make me a super big lionhead bunny!

It's not as if I am asking for a bunny and a lion to mate; I know that they're different species. And it's not as if I'm asking for a giant werewolf baby. Although maybe I should. Nowadays, you don't see many babies that have hairy faces or that are bigger than you. And you don't see many giants that are werewolves. And the problem with giant babies is that they don't stay babies; Rabelais wrote a beautiful story about a cute baby giant named Gargantua whose first precious words were "Drink! Drink!" But then he got old and spoke in complete sentences, and the magic was gone. I want them to make me a giant werewolf baby that will always be a baby and that will always gurgle in sentence fragments. Nevertheless, I am willing to accept that the baby might only be a werewolf during the full moon, so long as it meets the "eternality of babyhood" condition.

But given that I have reconciled myself to the impossibility of a giant werewolf baby, I don't think that a giant lionhead bunny is too much to ask. In the past, I would have thought that a giant bunny would have been but an idle dream and a flight of fancy, or perhaps the feature character in a movie starring Wallace and Gromit. While the two pictures above may sadden us by reminding us of thwarted ambitions and unfulfilled dreams, they must also press us on to engineer a world where such such wonderful rabbits coexist. By "coexist," I mean inhabit the same spatio-temporal location. It is time for the age of the genetically engineered bunny to commence.

Meditations on Toilet Paper

It is so nice to have my wife back! Since she has been gone, it has seemed like my life has been full of smelling stinky kitty litter that I haven't cleaned or discovering most of the blankets on the floor after several days of not making the bed. One of the beautiful things about being married is that your mate compensates for your many weaknesses ... for instance, I cannot inhabit the same room as styrofoam without shuddering. Several rooms of the house would be entirely off limits if my wife were not so gracious as to respond to my scrunched up face of pain by removing the styrofoam. Anyway, thinking about all of the things my wife helps me out with reminded me of an old essay I wrote and a friend of mine asked me to post ages ago ... it is comforting to know that, when the toilet paper becomes just too disturbing to bear, I have a wife who can purchase it for me. But without further ado, here it is in all of its repetitive glory:

When you and your roommate share certain things (e.g. dish soap), each of you tends to gravitate toward replacing certain items. Paper towels hold a special place in my heart, for instance. My roommate often supplies the toilet paper. I ask no questions, and he has been "on a roll," as it were.

Well, since he has moved out, it has become my personal responsibility to supply toilet paper for myself. A few days ago I went shopping for toilet paper, and was disturbed to see row upon row of several companies who featured baby models in various degree of ecstatic rapture as they clutch toilet paper rolls. It just seemed ... I don't know ... morally wrong somehow. The following reflections are my attempt to articulate what Kurtz, in Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS, could only call, "The horror! The horror!" Though the narrator does not specify what the "image" or "vision" that Kurtz saw is, I can only presume that it was a baby clutching toilet paper, for the reasons that follow.

My disturbance is in no way due to wondering if any babies were harmed in the making of the toilet paper products: perhaps there was no child labor law supervision, and the babies were forced to slave away unendurable hours at posing and practicing their gurgling, I do not know. I prefer to grant White Cloud, Charmin, and the others the benefit of the doubt in this regard, though we must never forget that they are a part of the oppressive hegemonic system, and we do not know what has happened to the baby models who were not so gleeful and gurgly upon command.

No, I do not know what sick practices they conducted on these baby models in order to get them to seem so happy clutching toilet papers: I can only speak on the undeniable effects of such poses on their audience. First, the pictures are unnatural aberrations. We can see how aberrant they are by comparing them to all of our experiences with babies in the past. For instance, let us say that there are two rooms: one in which there is a man with a cellular phone, one in which there is a lion with a cellular phone. If the lion were to pick up the phone and dial CALL-ATT, would we not insist that something unnatural had transpired? If such an action were accompanied by supernatural revelation, perhaps we would say it was like Baalam's ass ... OR LIKE THE COUNTERFEIT MIRACLE OF THE BEAST OF REVELATION! The point is that it would be highly unnatural. So too would it be highly unnatural for a BABY to use toilet paper. Babies are renowned for NOT using toilet paper! The picture is ultimately an undermining of the creational order; if it is evidence of God's wrath for man to love man (Romans 1), so too is a baby's love for toilet paper indicative of unnaturalness. Note that rather than these toilet paper companies representing such a relation as unnatural, they _celebrate_ it! "Be like the baby," they seem to say. "Clutch the FORBIDDEN FRUIT," as it were, the UNCLEAN paper product of a TREE--like the serpent deceiving mankind in its INFANCY. The picture clearly fails to present any message like, "Use toilet paper to make yourself clean so that you can be pleasing to the Lord." Instead, it revels in dirtiness; you would have to pry the dirty toilet paper from the sinner baby's grasping wicked hands, and it would probably cry afterwards, lover of depravity that it is.

I can already hear the apologists of wickedness or those devoid of wisdom and/or spiritual perception saying, "That's not the message at all! They're just trying to say, 'Try our brand, it's so soft, it can make babies happy.'" Typical. Just typical. I suppose Jesus said, "Take up your baby-soft toilet paper and follow me?" Rather than this toilet paper reminding us of the way of the cross, the advertisers inspire us not with a picture of our heavenly reward, but a secularized "easy life" here on earth. Clearly, when we use super soft toilet paper, like Esau, we are in effect renouncing a heavenly birthright for a mess (quite literally) of earthly pottage. Lest you think the Esau analogy does not hold up, realize the situation is even _worse_ than Esau's sin, because sin/uncleanness is most connected not with what goes into a man, but what comes out of him ...

Last, not only does the picture undermine creational norms for babies and support a "health and wealth" gospel devoid of Christian suffering, it also serves to alienate/emasculate men. (I shall not mention that there are some disturbed men out there who read too much Foucault and are scatologically fixated who would enjoy watching babies hugging toilet paper for immoral reasons.) But the very toilet paper undermines the concept of masculinity for _all_ men. Not only does our culture bombard the modern male with messages, "Cry at movies, girls think it's sexy"; he is now supposed to associate his sexiness with a baby clutching toilet paper. Would any woman really, ultimately, find the sight of a man hugging toilet paper sexy? No, but it is just more of the way our society tries to snip off what makes a man a man, trying turn him into a geeky crying wimp pansy, and when girls turn him down for dates, tell him just to go cry some more, and maybe then he'll get a woman. Does the male bachelor searching for toilet paper see any pictures that inspire him to manly feats? We see "Brawny" paper towels, but where have all the brawny TOILET paper rolls gone, long time passing? When will we ever learn ... where is the toilet paper that seems to say, "Try me, assert masculinity, you will cry out your barbarous yawp!" It seems these toilet paper companies envision males making a pleasant, subdued trip to the restroom. Guys know better: the trip to the bathroom is a battle, a scene of struggle and mastery, of groans of pain and cries of triumph. The male, after subduing his vanquished foe, victoriously surveys his handiwork before flushing. All this, and more, of the toilet experience that is masculine is lost with these cutesy toilet paper pictures. The shopping bachelor is reduced to a poor shell of a man who tries to figure out how to position his 12-roll bag of Charmin so no one can see the giggling baby in his shopping cart. Even when he has torn off the wrapper hiding his guilty shame, he still feels that every time he uses the toilet paper, he loses a little piece of who he is as a man--quite literally. Other males know what I am talking about. Regardless of who are my supporters and who are my detractors, I hope they can agree that the issue is of fundamental import, even if I am full of crap.

When the Wife's Away ...

My wife left for a conference on Thursday, and I miss her. Even the attempt to perform macho activites does not compensate. Even though I have two fellow males in the house, it appears that neither Cricket nor Pippin is the least interested in cards unless they can lie on top of them. Thursday night, I got together to play a game called Arkham Horror--a cooperative game in which everybody wins by destroying the ancient evil, or everybody loses. Well, everybody lost.

When I went to the grocery store to pick up some bachelor food, I decided to treat myself. I was not going to get just any macaroni and cheese, but velvetta! I was not going to get the cheap 10 cent ramen, but I was going to go all out and get the 15 cent kind! Yet even at the grocery store, I was struck with disappointment as I walked by the discount bread section and thought, "We could have some discounted gourmet bread ... but she won't be there, and I do not eat bread in guy meals, unless it is attached to meat."


Last night, I was going to watch Bubba Ho-Tep, which arrived from Blockbuster online and would presumably appeal to my masculine sensibilities, but this dream was ripped asunder by the discovery that the DVD is hopelessly scratched! When I tried to console myself by eating my manly ramen, after I threw in some chunks of bacon that my wife would probably have told me to throw away but which I couldn't get rid of because there was nothing green living on it, I got diarrhea. This did not happen to me before. Has being married made my digestive system soft? Would my DVD player had played Bubba Ho-Tep if there were not cooties around telling it that it should not play such hormonally charged movies?

Dear Canada

Well, Canada, it's been a long half month. Longer than half a month, in fact, making this the longest half a month ever. But I need to tell you how your television makes me feel.

When I was in my hotel room, I wanted to have a cultural experience, oh Canada, by never leaving my room. I hit the remote control button to expose me to Canadian tv. Why is it that you kept speaking to me in French? Why is it that of the first three stations that spoke to me in English, two of them had on Ophra Winfrey? Were you trying to make me feel at home, or just cheating me out of a cultural experience? Do not judge me by Ophra Winfrey and Dr. Phil. They mean nothing to me. Show me some quality Canadian programming. I did not know, until I saw your television advertisement slogan, that "All Canada is watching Lost." Thank you for exposing me to quality United States programming that I had never seen before. Thank you for telling me which television shows were actually Canadian, since I apparently can't even recognize any U. S. television programs that don't appear on the WB. Thank you for showing me that law lelevision show that was not Law and Order. Thank you for showing me that authentic Canadian programming television show that had the letter Z in the title that featured commentators who watched sketch comedy and then discussed it--honestly, it was really cool, it reminded me of an English class discussion.

Even though I have left you now, I shall always carry with me the experiences you have given: my first experience of watching the show Lost, the feeling of being unwanted because I did not have a birth certificate with me, the feeling of trying to figure out why honey mustard tasted like gravy, and the quandry of how to write my 50th post in such a way that it mentioned Canada.

French Fries Without Gravy

When I was in Montreal, most available food items would be listed in French, not English, so you do take your life into your hands any time you try to be adventurous. When I saw two different food court restaurants depict french fries with what appeared to be a delicious glazed honey mustard sauce, I figured it must be some special Canadian delicacy. I could imagine friends and family saying, "You went to Canada, did you taste their world-renowned honey-mustard French fries?" So I ordered it. Well, apparently it was not a delicious honey-mustard like substance at all, but ... well, I think it was gravy. And cheese curds. This seemed strange to me. But even now, I'm surprised to report it isn't "bad." After all, there's no reason why french fries without gravy is any more normative than, say, chicken mcnuggets without barbeque sauce. When I visited Rome years ago, it floored me that most pizza-like food items had either dough with sauce or dough with cheese, but precious few seemed to combine them in substantial quantities--if it was primarily a dough item with sauce, they might throw a few stray bits of cheese, at best. So someone from Italy could come over here and say, "What's with all this pizza that has sauce on it? What are these stupid Americans thinking?"

One of the hazards of ordering items in Canada is that you risk looking stupid. Scorning the American chains I saw there (like Subway), I ate at a place called "Harvey's." When I asked the person at the register what the difference was between a "combo" meal and a "trio" meal, the person explained that one was in English, the other was in French. One of the cool features of "Harvey's" is that it's actually like a Subway's--you can watch as your burger is being made, and the person will ask you if you want relish, onions, lettuce, tomato, mustard, or ketchup added to your burger. He will ask you this in French, but happily the lettuce etc. is more recognizable as being lettuce than the honey mustard sauce is at being gravy.

Another hazard of ordering items in Canada is that you risk ordering something you don't want. I'm a big smoothie fan, and happily, the French word for "smoothie" is something like "smoothey." But then the French word for "smoothie flavor" is evidently not spelled "strawberry" or "banannaberry blast" or anything like that, so you have to hope you get something good. I realize I could just buy soda, but I figure, if I'm going to have to pay for drinks, and by pay, I mean get departmental reimbursement, I'm going to have some nice fruity drinks. I also like water ices (kind of like slushes), and when I visited Italy over a decade ago, I learned that granitas were basically like water ices. Well, here in Canada, I saw a coffee shop advertising "granite." Since the picture was of a green thing that looked fruity and not stone-like at all, I figured it must be the same thing as a lime-flavored granita, just that they spelled it wrong. It turns out that "granite" ACTUALLY is "green tea." So, if any of my readers ever want to do a French-Italian-English pun on this thing ("I thought I was ordering a stone!" "I thought I was ordering a water ice!") go right ahead.

Border Control

We United States types act like the world revolves around us. "Put more barbed wire around that border fence, Darrell," we say to our fence-manufacturing friend Darrell Jimbob Bob. It is no surprise that there are a lot of Mexicans trying to cross the borders, but our own egotism has blinded us to why they are here.

They are trying to get to Canada.

I came to this realization after my wife dropped me off at the airport for the eighteenth century conference I was presenting at. Everything seemed fine: I was there an hour and a half ahead of time, I had my toothpaste, etc. But when I was checking in, the computer told me I needed to have either a passport or my birth certificate ... neither of which was with me. Why did I need one of them? All I was doing was going to Canada, otherwise known as part of North America, to which I belong! It wasn't as if it was the Middle East or something. So, I had to call my wife, leave several answering machine messages, wait a while, realize she probably wouldn't check the messages once she got back, and call her again and asked her to bring my birth certificate.

The whole time I kept fuming, "What self-importance! Why do I need my birth certificate? Do you think someone wants to come to your country just in order to blow it up and/or begin a new life there? I wanna go to the conference!" But then it made me start thinking that many of us do the same thing when it comes to illegal immigrants from Mexico. Many U.S. denizens assume illegal immigrants are coming over to blow us up or to take our jobs, when quite possibly it is just that they want to take Canadian jobs, and we are in the way. (Perhaps they might blow us up so that we are no longer in the way, but I don't think so.) The Canadian government wouldn't make me almost miss my flight for no good reason--there must be some Canadian national superiority that compels people to risk deportation and travelling without birth certificates in order to get there.

Admittedly, most illegal immigrants say that they are trying to get to the United States, not Canada. Yet what better way is there to put Canada off its guard? The naive Canadian official thinks, "Okay, sure, the illegals got into the U.S., but that's where they want to be ... we don't need to worry ... no, we don't need to--ahh, it's too late, AARRRGGGHHHH!!!!" and then, something very macabre and illegal-immigranty happens to this official, all because he did not recognize the early warning signs, such as illegal immigrants saying they wanted to live in the U.S. Luckily, the embassy that made me almost miss my plane didn't fall for such ploys as this one, and threatened to refuse me safe passage to that utopian paradise that is Canada.

Happily, my wife came in time, I had my birth certificate, and I boarded my plane, but it was with a sour taste in my mouth. Canada, that great land of freedom and opportunity, did not want me to stay. It didn't matter how hard my desire to present awesome conference papers or how fervent my desire not to blow the country up, there would be no place for me there. Or for the English language, either.

50th or 51st post anniversary!

Welcome to the 50th or 51st post! A little while ago, it came to my attention via hindsight that one of my posts was particularly stupid (only one, mind you), so I removed it. How should I think of that post? Has it ceased to be, because it is no longer on my blog? Can it never be erased, since it was once up there in the public view? Is this the 50th post, or the 51st?

Anyway, as I have been looking back at my past posts, it has struck me that, even if the posts are reflective of my personality, they might give the wrong impression. For instance, upon reading my posts, I have noticed a number of entries about teeth: be it a dream about my teeth becoming Jansenists, be it a dream about eating my teeth, be it about visits to the dentist, be it eighteenth century advertisements about teeth, it would seem as if teeth have some special significance to me, when it's simply the fact that a preponderance of teeth-related incidents have recently happened to me. Or people might think that I am obsessed with sexually transmitted diseases, be it antediluvian syphilis angels, Boswell's gonorrhea, or STD ecards. It makes me wonder if someone asked Jonathan Swift, "I just read _Gulliver's Travels_, and I was wondering, how high on your hierarchy of value would you place bowel movements?" he might give a surprising answer, such as, "What are you talking about?" You know, maybe Jonathan Swift wasn't fixated on scatology at all: maybe it's just that, every day he went out on the streets of Ireland for poetic inspiration, somebody threw a bucket of shit on him. After all, in Swift's Landscape, Carole Fabricant writes that "Swift actually lived in a landscape in which excrement was prominent--not to mention highly visible and necessarily obtrusive" (24), so maybe he was a victim of feces, not its proponent. Similarly, it's not as if I was looking for STD ecards; the STD ecards found me. In the sense of not being mailed to me, but showing up on a google search that did not include the letters "STD ecards." Well, actually, I did do a google search with the words "STD ecards," but that was only _after_ I had first read about them, and then I needed to find the website again. Not in order to send anyone an ecard, of course, just to write my blog entry.

Other false inferences people might make from the past 50 blogs is that I am obsessed with cats. I do not think this is the case; rather, I think the cats are obsessed with me. Even just now, as I paused to think of the next sentence, my eyes looking off in the distance--well, okay, the floor--the Pippin cat was watching me. Why? I don't know. You'd think he'd take up a hobby, maybe do a little reading, start his own blog or something, but he's staring at me. So, it's not that I think about him too much, but that he won't leave me alone!

On the basis of these past posts, people might also think that Canada holds a special place in my heart: it is the only thing that I have begun a half-month celebration for, after all! But the very fact that it is a half-month celebration should, in fact, communicate my lack of interest in Canada. It is half a month because I cannot think of anything more to say about it. You'd never see me doing a half-month celebration of the eighteenth century because, as it should be clear, the eighteenth-century is longer than a half-month! We are in fact living in its legacy even now! Much as James Joyce could not escape Ireland, so this blog cannot escape the eighteenth century. (Although it can escape Canada. And so should you, if you don't speak French.)

As I look back on these 50 posts, something that makes me particularly happy is that I feel I have reclaimed the word "pseudoprofundities." My very first post was about how I had coined the word many years ago, googled it, and then discovered that others had taken my word! Even a couple of months ago, I did a google search of "pseudoprofundities," and this blog never showed up! Never! A "Leopoldtulip" google search could not find a hit on this website! Yet just last night, I performed the same google search, and guess what? A google search on "pseudoprofundities" lists this site second, and a google search on "pseudo-profundities" (drumroll please) lists this site second AND this site FIRST! I am winning the war against "the man" and taking back my word! It is not unlike the game Civilization 3, where, after you have built a temple, several turns later, your cultural influence expands, and you get more land! In this case, I am taking over google, one word at a time. Right now, mine is the ONLY website you discover if you google such bellwethers of nomenclature as "educodomophile," "pinguisphobia," and "belbelgbot." Perhaps after this entry, these words will show up on google TWICE! These words are my legacy ... to the world, and to myself.

I do want to soften my burgeoning egotism by admitting that pride cometh before a fall. Just because mine is the only website now listing these words does not mean that some other enterprising person will come along, use those words, and usurp google dominion over them. There is still much work to be done. For just one example, if you google the phrase, "food for thought, sh-t for brains" or "food for thought, shit for brains" without the quotation marks, my blog entry doesn't come up, even though I dedicated an entire entry to this very theme. Nevertheless, as I survey the vast expanse of words and phraseologies which are mine, I am reminded that I am not simply looking back on the past 50 posts, but looking ahead to my eventual cultural dominance.

Canada half month celebration!

I have just been back from a conference in Canada. It was my very first time presenting a paper at a conference. In honor of this event, we shall be observing "National Half Month Canada Celebration Day!" Uh, I mean, "National Half Month Canada Celebration Half Month!" All entries over the next two weeks will, one way or another, relate to Canada! It may be a mere passing reference to Canada, like, "You wouldn't see that sort of thing, not even in Canada!" or, "That's just the sort of thing you'd expect to see in Canada, only in this case, it wasn't."

Well, I was in Canada, and I saw just the sort of clothing store I'd expect not to see in America. The store was called, "America." Now, technically speaking, Canada is PART of America--just not part of the United States. This is why, when I was trying to explain to the hotel that I couldn't speak French because I was "American," I began to stammer once I realized the potential offense in such a remark. So what does it mean that Canadians call a clothing store "America?" Is it "America" in the sense of including Canada, or "America" in the sense of being the United States? Should I be offended on Canada's behalf? Should I be offended on America's behalf? What makes the clothing distinctively American, anyway? Was it made in America? American clothes usually aren't even made in America! Was it made in the "American style?" I thought we just imitated the French, and much of Canada is French, so does that mean that they are imitating the imitators of themselves?