vita brevis est, under consideration is longus ...

One thing that surprised me about being a graduate student is how long it takes to hear back about anything, be it an article you submit, be it a fellowship application, be it once you're on the job market, etc. You might recall a blog entry that I wrote eons ago about a fellowship application due on February 15th. It's not like there's a point in my history that I can point to as the crushing defeat in which I discovered I did not get the scholarship, because I still haven't heard anything. In fact, there is still the glimmer of hope ... out there, there is $20,000 that no one has contacted me about to say it is not mine ...

Well, back in August, a journal had a contest for best graduate student paper submission, which would include an award, money, and publication. Now, to make it clear, I did not win. In fact, I kind of forgot about it around month four. Occasionally I would think, "My advisor is telling me I need to have an article in circulation, but it's still in that contest." To be honest, this thought of its limbo status was kind of comforting, because it meant I could excuse myself for not working on it anymore.

Well, five months after I sent my newborn article out into a hostile world (I named my firstborn "Harry"), I got an email saying I did not win the article contest, but would I like to have the article considered for regular publication? So of course I responded yes, and another four and a half months passed. Again, I forgot about the article, until I got the editor's reply: "We are willing to accept your essay for publication if you revise it according to the suggestions found in the two reports. though the readers do not perfectly concur, they both offer helpful guidance for revision." Yes!!!!!! It has only taken ten months to be told that I might someday be accepted!!!!!!

Still, there are some problems. It is, of course, difficult to know how to revise an article on which the two readers "do not perfectly concur"; it would have been cool if the editors judged this as confirmation of my ability deftly to navigate between two opposing extremes, but no such luck. Another problem is that the reader comments often say things like, "the author Leopold could say more about X," which is all true, and which an earlier draft did in fact say something about, until I had to delete it to stay within their word limit: in order to make room for the new, i.e. previously old, things, I'll have to severely amputate poor baby Harry. Another daunting feature of the revision process is that my reader comments are dang smart. This poses a problem insofar as I must actually understand their criticisms/objections, but sometimes they are so nuanced I'm not sure that I can.

I also have to admit that this conditional acceptance is rather scary. First, there is the concern that, despite being conditionally "accepted," if I fail to "fix" my article enough, it will get turned down, and then I will feel rather silly, and by silly, I mean sad and pathetic. Second (and this is perhaps a strange response) there is the fear that it will actually be in print: there it will be, portable, able to be hung up on a wall and have a big bullseye drawn on it. What if people discover some unconscionable error, such as that I listed an incorrect place of publication in my bibliography? It seems so much easier when it was in article limbo and I could just presume a reader would catch any mistakes before publication. I should remark that despite the general tone of this entry, I am very happy, and I am more than willing to hack off Harry's various limbs if it means a published article and hopefully (next year) a job.

An un-EZ feat: or, bunny slippers

My wife vacuumed today, thereby discovering the various tracks of mud I had tried so diligently to hide. One pencil doesn't cover much, but if you throw in a paperclip here, an index card there, and maybe a couple of stacks of books, it's impossible to see the stain so long as you are careful never to pick the stuff up. Well, apparently if you track in mud, cover it up with things, then have your wife take those things away, not only is the mud stain still there, it is "ground in." Because my wife is not keen on mud stains being permanently ground into the carpet, she has asked me to abstain from wearing my sneakers inside the house. I must "abstain from the stain," if you will. (Silly puns ease the sense of pain.)

This is very hard for me. For one thing, my feet get cold without sneakers. For another thing, I have weak ankles, and I have a recurring fear that I will re-injure my left ankle in some sort of bizarre tripping accident that would have been prevented if I were wearing sneakers. ("Doctor, what's the cause of death?" "Socks, Nurse Hammin. Socks, and the failure to wear sneakers.") They also provide good foot support if you are prone to do weird things like pace around the house while you are reading, which is something I like to do. Well, my wife said, "Why don't you go buy some slippers? There are even some slippers that are designed for you to walk a lot." Now, I am not a slipper kind of guy. Slippers just makes me think of pink bunny rabbits. I suppose if they were pink and/or white killer rabbits (see above), that would be different. Otherwise, they are goofy and/or emasculating. I wanted raw unadulterated power slippers, if I were to have any at all.

So, I want to Wal-Mart and into the men's shoes section. Immediately I found "EZ Feet slippers Active at home: designed to keep you one step ahead" slippers. Now, the big poster does not say "Men's slippers," but given that it's in the men's section, that should be a no-brainer, right? Well, then why is there a picture of a smiling woman on the advertisement? Are they suggesting that, by wearing these slippers in the privacy of your own home, this smiling woman will somehow discover you wear slippers and want to date you? Or does it really mean that these are women's slippers placed in the men's shoes section?

I tried to look for other clues. The slippers themselves did not have any of the common social cues for femininity, such as pinkness or fluffy animals, just a whitish gray. The advertisement background was orange, which, while not a manly color like blue or deathlike black, seemed indeterminate to me. So I went wandering around in the women's section and found, "EZ-Slippers Men's Relax at Home," replete with manly blue background. But relax at home? How could they pretend that it was manly blue if all the guy was going to be doing was relaxing and/or drooling sleepily in front of the tv?

So then I walked back over to the orange advertisement. And then I walked back over to the blue advertisement. Just because the pansy blue one was for men didn't mean the active burly orange one was for women. I don't even know why buying the "wrong" one worried me so--I mean, suppose I bought the orange one, and it was actually intended for women. It wasn't like I was going to be wearing it in public and have young hooligans say to me on the street, "Go up, woman-slippers!" and then I'd have to pray to God to send some bears to maul them for me. Nevertheless, I was much a-feared of getting wrong slippers.

Well, finally I figured out the clincher argument: none of the orange advertisement slippers were even in my size. They must only be for women! So it meant my only choice was to get weakling lazy slippers or burly woman's not-fitting me slippers, which is no choice at all. I finally just opted for a second pair of sneakers, which I will only wear inside the house (presuming I don't forget).

Still somewhat disgruntled about the slipper-buying experience, I decided to go to the EZ feet website and compare the available men's slippers and women's slippers. Apparently, even though EZ feet does offer both "active at home" and "relax at home" models for women, they only have "relax at home" models for men! Now, if I were a woman, I would probably get really indignant about this and say, "Why is it that they assume only women are going to be 'active at home' and 'do all the housework' and 'not have a career!'" all of which would probably be accurate criticisms. But I am not a woman. I am a graduate student man who wants to pace in active slippers in my own home without being associated with pink non-man-eating bunnies! Help, help, I'm being oppressed!

Over the Hedge, and Through the Woods ...

One could simply boycott Da Vinci Code by sitting on one's couch at home and muttering things to oneself about the degradation of our culture on opening night. As an alternative, some Christians have arranged something--I don't know what to call it, a "girlcott?"--where you go out and see a different movie on the night Da Vinci Code opened, a sort of battle cry, "I have money, and I'm not afraid to spend it on something that's not evil!" It would have been nice if something like Gibson's Passion was coming out the same day, but hey, you take what you can get, and the girlcott we participated in was a viewing of Over the Hedge. It wasn't a bad choice--while I can't get excited about a squirrel who can burp his ABCs, I can't really claim that his burping undermines the core tenets of Christendom. And there was a lot of good stuff in there about the importance of family and keeping alive old traditions, like eating bark, especially if you are a turtle. Eating bark poses a daring challenge to the consumerist/suburban lifestyle that involves drinking a lot of soda and sitting on a couch. So, you can register your dislike of Da Vinci Code and affirm the traditional bark-eating family at the same time.

When I was in Wal-Mart the other day, I couldn't help feeling rather bemused by the advertisement flyer, "Walmart summer starts here!" which includes pictures of not only food, but also many of the characters from Over the Hedge. As I mentioned, the movie itself attacks American consumerism, especially via a turtle whose name I cannot remember, so I will call him, "Family Values Turtle." Now, in the movie, out of all of the animals, FVT hated the consumerist way of life that the racoon, whom I shall call "Assault on the Family Racoon," advocated. So what do we see in the Walmart flyer? We see FVT helping AFR standing on a wickedly huge outside barbeque set in order to scout for more yummies. In another panel, we see Family Values Turtle looking at the Coleman oversized armchair, smiling, and giving a thumbs up (do turtles even have thumbs?). On another page, we have Skunk girl advertising a digital camera (I would have thought she would have been advertising air freshners, but ah well). Ironically, we have characters in a movie about the evils of consumerism advocating consumerism. Now, I do remember an episode of The Simpsons where Lisa Simpson bewails modern commercialism and how horrible it is to put television characters on t-shirts (which, of course, The Simpsons marketing does); howeve, I find The Simpsons form of self-conscious hypocrisy somewhat amusing--the "I've been a bad widdle boy" type as opposed to the "I am a blissfully self-unaware" Over the Hedge type.

One of the things that most struck me about the film while watching it was that it was consistently mediocre. I don't mean that negatively: I mean that it followed a conventional story arc (the wicked racoon learns consumerism is bad and is "converted" at the end), it had mildly amusing characters, etc. It flows smoothly and evenly with no knee-slapping moments with "ha ha" or of head-slapping moments with "Please God let this end!" It is mildly entertaining and inoffensive.

Since I've recently seen Hoodwinked, I couldn't help but compare the two movies: Hoodwinked is a movie about a frog police inspector who interviews Little Red Riding Hood, Granny, et al. to discover what villain has been stealing the secret recipe of the best cooks in the forest. The movies does not flow smoothly, and I suspect the choppiness is part of why reviews weren't that positive. (Rotten Tomatos gave Hoodwinked only 47% approval, but gave 76% approval of Over the Hedge. Some of the critical dislike of Hoodwinked may be due to the animation, which they claim was inferior. I'm not competent to comment on the animation, but I do want to say something about "the story," which I think is the more important part anyway.) Yet Hoodwinked had some positively brilliant moments: it had a yodelling mountain goat that played the banjo. It had a woodsman actor who sold schnitzel on a stick. Set up as a police interrogation of four different characters, Hoodwinked has tight, incredibly intricate plotting (as each perspective fills in gaps left in the other narrative). As Over the Hedge was about the danger of monolithic consumerism, Hoodwinked is about big business crowding out small business (someone is stealin recipes in order to create a huge baked goods empire). Without a doubt, Hoodwinked is the more memorable: Over the Hedge gives you the dangers of Doritos, Hoodwinked gives you schnitzel on a stick. Over the Hedge gives you a squirrel whose annoyance meter rivals Jar Jar Binks, and Hoodwinked gives you a squirrel who is incredibly endearing. Which type of movie is actually "better": a movie that is evenly mediocre, or a movie that seems to oscillate between the brilliant and clunky?

To complicate this choice further: what if I'm wrongly judging Hoodwinked as occasionally "clunky?" This assessment stems especially from the very beginning of the movie, when I had trouble getting into the movie because it was hard to tell what the heck was going on: the movie begins with Little Red Riding Hood being attacked by the Big Bad Wolf, her Granny mysteriously falling out of a closet, and a crazy lumberjack crashing through the window screaming, all without any context or introduction. In retrospect, it strikes me that the movie may have been intended to alienate and/or confuse the viewer at the beginning--to convey a sense of chaos and confusion, and then to show the frog policeman establish order and coherence from conflicting narratives. That is, what had seemed the "weakest link" in Hoodwinked was in fact due to its failure to conform to standard movie conventions. However, what if it wasn't a "failure to conform" to conventions at all, but a conscious refusal to conform? The "postmodern novel" isn't exactly trying to be modern and failing miserably. French New Wave filming was purposefully choppy and deviated from earlier conventions of filmmaking. If we entertain for just a moment the idea that the "Hollywood style" is not the objective God-given standard for film quality, why is being "choppy" and "uneasy" assumed to be a bad thing? The apostle Peter noted that the apostle Paul was not amongst the easiest of reads.

Further, I wonder to what extent the easy hollywood style of movie-making is tied to the values of consumerism. Consumerism and convenience often go hand in hand; consumers don't typically want things that make their lives harder or seek out things that are hard to understand, unless they are geeky computer wizards. So here's my idea: even if the content of Over the Hedge is in opposition to consumerism, its very form is very amenable to consumerism. From the very beginning of the movie, it's easy to tell what's going on (unlike Hoodwinked). Even if the movie pokes fun at the suburban and consumerist life-style, it lacks actual bite (it takes more after Horace than Juvenal). There is one clear suburban villain woman, but she is such a caricature that about the only moral I got from her is that you should not treasure property value so much that you hire exterminators to kill turtles. It's easy to go to the movie and shop at Wal-Mart the next day and buy useless junk food, which is what I did. Heck, during the credits, the animals are even watching television!

I don't mean to sound as if I disliked the movie or sound like an old crotchety academic in a rest home complaining, "This movie hopelessly capitulates to culture! I don't like consumerism! where's my bedpan?" Every artistic product has to be concerned with its reception (just as a dissertation-writer has to be concerned with whether or not his thesis is accepted), and Over the Hedge is not an enemy. I just want to say, hey, maybe you should give Hoodwinked another think.

P.S.-thanks to my wife for discussing the movie with me; after discussing it, we both wanted to blog about it, but discovered our thoughts overlapped so much she just left the topic to me.

The Evils of Ear-Piercing

As I remarked in my last blog entry, rather odd "artistic differences" arose when I was in a rock band. Doubtlessly many of these arose because we were a group of 12 year olds from conservative Christian backgrounds. One of the biggest issues was male ear-piercing. I should note that, for at least a year, the discussion about ear-piercing was theoretical at best, given that none of our parents would allow ear-piercing anyway. Nevertheless, some of us railed against parental tyranny, while some of us--well, okay, basically just me--contended that ear-piercing was a sin. In my defense, it's not as if any of the pro-ear-piercing arguments were compelling. For instance, argument #1: 1.God is omnipotent. 2.I'll pray to God not to let me get an earring if it is bad. 3.If He doesn't stop me, that must mean it was okay. Or, argument #2: 1.Leopold, you like band X. 2.Band member of band X has an earring. 3.Therefore, you should like men wearing earrings. Admittedly, I made some logical fallacies myself, but I had to spend so much time pointing out everyone else's arguments that, mysteriously, there was never time to consider my own.

Well, finally the time came when parental resistance crumbled, and God's omnipotence seemed a little on the weak side, so a couple of band members got earrings. It seemed unfair to me that, given I believed earrings were reprehensible etc., and given that the earringed band members would not be wearing bags over their heads, audience members would see the earrings. Implicitly, the band posters and videos would be advocating a kind of life I could not condone. What could I do to make my stand more visible? Getting a tattoo that said, "Earrings are bad," would seem to miss the point. So finally, I figured out what we as a band could do: one of our songs could be against ear-piercing.

Now, the other band members raised silly objections to this, such as that I would be turning them into hypocrites, that they didn't actually believe earrings were sinful, etc. But I was being marginalized! I was having my voice silenced! If they really felt like "hypocrites" singing it, I could just have a special solo or something, and they could go backstage, get a drink of water, and go do something earring-related.

Despite my best efforts, the song was vetoed. I am confident that, had we performed the song, people certainly would have taken notice. It would have been a bold, counter-cultural voice about counter-cultural ears. For instance, many people at the time who opposed male ear-piercing made only relativistic arguments: that is, they would say, "we are living in a culture in which only drug-dealers or women wear earrings." This did not solve the problem, because (as we see today) what happens when you live in a culture in which people other than women and drug-dealers wear earrings? You now have no foundation for raising objections. I wanted to write a ballad that would be based upon the eternal, unchanging principles of Scripture, especially as revealed in the Old Testament. I entitled my song, "Lend me your ear (and not the way Van Gogh did.)" As the very title suggests, much as Van Gogh the artist wrongly maimed his ear by mailing it (I wonder if he sent it by "ear-mail"), so too did many musical artists wrongly maim their ears. I was advocating a different kind of aesthetic. Given that it is easy to quibble with portions of my argument now, I would like to include the lyrics as well as a little elaboration on why the argument, although stupid, is not as stupid as it appears.

Verse 1: "First, you must take into account what the Bible must say,/At one point it says do not defile the temple of the Lord in any way./How does the Lord consider a hole in the ear you think?/Indeed, this is not a question which can be solved quick as a wink." One of the admirable features of this verse is that it does admit the complexity of the earring issue. As the lyrics indicate, it is only the person who has carefully considered the issue who is capable of seeing just how wrong ear-piercing is.

"Since the Bible speaks of our bodies as the temple of the Lord,/The only way to understand this is to look at other parts of his word./Another Scripture says, "Do not cut off limbs or wear tattoos."/Could earrings be akin to that? Would this Scripture be meant to speak to you?" Here, we see the principle of using Scripture to interpret Scripture. We see a condemnation of the habit of just taking one little proof-text to establish a position. As the song advocates, we must have at least two proof-texts to establish a position (much as in Mosaic Law, someone could not be condemned without two witnesses). Further, it is not limited to mere explicit references to earrings: it is intending to establish a larger framework, a world and life view, that sees earrings in relation to the rest of God's creation, like tattoos.

"Before tattoos, it says not to cut off body limbs./Tattoos and cutting limbs have to do with pain, and not hurting yourself on a whim./Earrings cause some pain, and cut a hole in your ear./But is it sinning against the Lord? That's the biggest fear." At this point, in order to understand why tattoos are condemned, the lyric asks us to look at the immediate context, at the preceding part of the verse connecting tattoos and the cutting off of limbs. (See Leviticus 19:28) The importance of context for determination of meaning is a central tenet of Biblical hermeneutics.

"What do you think it means when the Bible speaks on pain?/What sort of things is it telling you from which to refrain?/What's the difference between a shot from the doctor and masochism?/The answer to this question you must think of, and decide with wisdom./A shot may cause pain, but in reality seeks to heal you from your hurt,/While a masochist feels pain because he enjoys it, and with its company he likes to flirt./But why does the Scripture say not to wear a tattoo?/What other things could that reference mean? Don't worry, we'll get to that, too." We see here an attempt to distinguish actions on the basis of motivation--sin is not simply external action but the internal attitude of the heart.

"A tattoo, although it is for decoration, causes much pain,/Like cutting body limbs, it hurts, so in that way it is profane./It appears that, in the Bible, fashion's less important than health,/The shot is a form of health, because in the long run makes healing felt." We should not inflict pain for aesthetic purposes. I should note that I still am a supporter of the "no pain for aesthetic purposes" position, although I have a rather broad definition of pain that includes such actions as wearing a tie and standing up straight. Further, this lyric is a reminder that, as God views our actions from the perspective of eternity, so we should not be concerned with short-term pain but long-term glory. The glory of the earring is but a passing glory, while shots are forever. Until we die. Or until we have to get them again in seven years.

"So if the Bible chooses health, over fashion,/Could earrings hurt your body too much in the sight of God and in reality wrong is your passion?/Fashion can be glamorous, it can even be said somewhat to be art,/But at the same time, the Bible says, 'The Lord looks at the heart.'/ Not at the ear, Y'hear!/But still, we can not say it is wrong, it is your decision,/But through it all, we hope and pray, that your decision will have God's wisdom." Since God looks at our hearts rather than our ears, it is quite clear that there is no need to wear an earring, and it is probably sinful. Still, note the gentleness of the song--it does not say ear-piercing is "wrong," just that it hopes God gives people wisdom not to get one.

I realize that the song as a whole might be labelled as "preachy." But hey, Alexander Pope's poem Essay on Man is "preachy" in its own way, what with systematizing a philosophy of humanity's role in the world and the relation between partial evil and universal good. The difference is that mine is rather singable, once someone writes the music for it.

Rock Band Dilemmas

It's interesting to ponder the different moral dilemmas that arise depending upon the present group you're hanging out with. In academia, for example, which of these two options would be more morally reprehensible: to make your graduate students go to an 8:00 a.m. meeting and give them no coffee, or to make your graduate students go to an 8:00 a.m. meeting and give them Starbuck's from the student union? The latter choice is, of course, the most evil, because it would mean you are supporting big business and cultural hegemony. I don't actually mean to satirize this view; heck, even conservatives within the "cruncy conservative" movement concur that "Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract," i.e. big business often contributes to cultural impoverishment. My point is that there often are real issues at stake that can seem relatively silly when looked at from the outside or presented in an asinine way, as I have just done.

However, it has reminded me of the old dilemmas back from when I was in my first, and only, rock band, at the ages of 10-12. We began as an "air band," meaning that we thought our stage presence would be so overpowering that it wouldn't matter that we weren't playing instruments: just put on someone else's album, and away we went! At a sleepover party, I still remember fondly our "practice session," where we began shaking our heads to show we were "jamming," and our jumping crazily around the dining room in such a way that we would not accidentally bang our shins on the couch. We mouthed complex metaphysical conceits about love being like bad medicine that, paradoxically, was harmful, but also just what you needed. I was on keyboards, and I punched the keys, sometimes pretending to play the C-major scale, the only piece of music I really knew at the time.

Needless to say, we never got a gig, but a couple of years later, one of our band members got the epiphany that maybe we could actually write and play our own music. This seemed like a neat idea. I still remember over the summer, after a fellow band member and I got out of Vacation Bible School, we went over to his house and co-wrote a charming little ditty called "Chief." Based on the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the opening lines were, "The chief end of man is to glorify God/So let's praise Him under Jesse's RAAAHHHHD!!!!" (Or "Jesse's rod," depending upon whether you want the word itself, or how we pronounced it.) Yeah, we sung about the Westminster Larger Catechism, but we did it with a heavy metal ethos. Sure, secular groups had words like "rad," but we had the word "rod," which was way cooler when screamed correctly.

However, we had various "creative disagreements," as all visionary rock bands do. Even though our band was called "Knights of the Light," we planned on eschewing the petty sacred/secular dualisms of our contemporary Christian culture: we would have both Christian and secular songs. Nevertheless, how should we maintain this delicate balance between the godly and the profane? Well, quite obviously, if there were going to be ten songs on the album, we needed to figure out what the ratio of godly to godless songs were going to be. Two of us wanted a 6 to 4 ratio in favor of God (this was my position), two of us wanted a 5 to 5 song ratio in favor of a watered-down Christian witness, and one of us was on the fence. I cannot remember the number of times both parties tried to woo the fence-sitter tie-breaker. Since I was in the first party, I frequently appealed to "What Would Jesus Do?" Granted, Jesus never joined a rock and roll band, but He sure did talk about God a lot, which surely put Him into my camp. I spent hours agonizing over whether fence-walker would weaken, and if consequently the future of our band's Christian testimony be placed forever in jeopardy. For some reason, we could never find a compromise of just letting the creative juices flowing.

But perhaps the greatest dilemma of all was over ... male ear-piercing! I shall save the details of this moral quandry for my next blog entry.

Under New Management

Once I like a product, it tends to disappear. I don't just mean in the sense that when I take something off of a shelf, it is gone. I get that. That's just physics or something. What I mean is that, after I have purchased the product, and stalk the place for several weeks, beard unkempt and eyes bloodshot and body smelly, no replica materializes. Quaker Toasted Oatmeal Honey Nut flavor? Gone from the shelves! Black Cherry Fresca is gone. Even entire stores vacate the premises if they get wind that I like them. Gone is "My Thai," a Thai restaurant that gave free refills on these incredible Thai teas (I hope all of my free refills didn't put them out of business). And now another restaurant I loved, also Thai, is also kind of gone. "Gone" in the sense that nothing remains but a a pale shadow of a remnant of a faded image of former glory from a bygone age. It is under new management.

In the olden days, there was a sign that said "lunch $4, dinner $5," all you can eat. Now, the sign says, "Lunch $4.99, dinner $5.99." Okay, so they've increased costs by 20-25%. But perhaps the interior will explode in a dazzling array of beauty or something. The old Thai place was filled with beautiful greenery and huge plants--there was so much decoration that seating room was cut in half. There were wall decorations everywhere. There was a rotund Buddha figure who seemed to be foreshadowing the girth of my own belly after dinner. There were plates of different sizes and shapes, forks and items vaguely resembling forks, a soda machine that would usually have two flavors unavailable, and the food table was so crowded that plates of food rested upon other plates. It was a kind of food anarchy, an untamed culinary wilderness. The food, much like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, was unlabelled, so you never knew what you were going to get. The friendly, elderly woman who ran the place was always there and always cooking something up, and it felt really personal.

Now, under new management, the food is nicely labelled: even if the food does not taste like "Pad Thai," you know that's what it's supposed to be, because that's what the label says. There is less diversity of food, but it is all neatly compartmentalized. The greenery is gone, presumably to make room for more customers. The food's not really "bad" ... admittedly not as good as it used to be, but it didn't make me recoil or go "Ugh" or anything ... but the atmosphere is gone. While my wife insists that some of the changes are improvements--for instance, she thinks it's actually better when food is labelled and when the soda flavors are available--there's a part of me that wants to insist that all of the anarchic touches were endearing, or perhaps necessary for the full aesthetic experience. There was something delightfully uncategorizable about the original restaurant. On the one hand, it was dirt cheap, appealing to the pragmatic capitalist cheapo side of me that shops at Wal-Mart. On the other hand, it had ornamentation, with the personality of a "Ma and Pa" type shop that seemed utterly opposed to the Walmartization/Starbuckean ethos of American culture. It appealed to my wallet and to my aesthetic. I suppose all of this panegyric is a little extreme--it is just a restaurant, after all--but it was incredible to find a place that just wasn't concerned with making a lot of money or having huge trains of customers (one thing that always surprised me was just how few customers there were).

I want to drown my sorrows in some black cherry fresca, but there isn't any.

To the Prurient, All Things Are Prurient

I'm rather fond of eighteenth century period popular music. I'm also rather fond of inflicting such music upon my class. There is an enjoyable kind of overweening power and despotic decadence in compelling your students to sing an obscure eighteenth century song like "The Vicar of Bray" ("Sing! Sing about the Stuart and Hanoverian lines right now! Pretend that without Queen Anne, you are doomed!!!!!"). It's a great way to learn the historical context of the literature, it's fun to sing, and it's helpful to see literature as participating in a wider conversation that includes a variety of genres and voices (e.g. philosophy, art, sermons, caricatures, etc.).

Now, to the best of my knowledge, there's not a lot of "popular" 18th century music available on CD, except for the bawdy songs. (Many of the famous 17th century plays actually included popular songs in their performance, but are they available on CD? No! Although I'd be happy if anyone can prove me wrong.) In the 18th century, one of the most famous collections of printed songs was Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy. I'm not really sure how many of the songs are about sex, but apparently, approximately 100% of those on CD are. The two CDs I've been able to find with D'Urfey's music are "My Thing is my own: Bawdy Songs of Thomas D'Urfey," and "Thomas D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy: Lewd Songs and Low Ballads from the 18th Century." (I have to admit feeling a little strange, after I put them on my Amazon wishlist, and my parents got me one of them.) It's not as if I'm actively soliciting dirty songs: I just want some 18th century tunes that have some lyrics (so John Playford's instrumentals are out) and have a little life in them, not a petit morte. Even if the songs are bawdy, so is much of the literature I'll probably be teaching one day, such as Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders. A lot of the songs have interesting things to say about male-female relations that would be useful in teaching a work like Richardson's Pamela, which is about a man who attempts to seduce his maid.

Now back when I was a Latin teacher, there was a special "Love Reading Day" (or some catchy name like that) in which we teachers were encouraged to share with our students something we had read that we really enjoyed. I decided, since I was going to enter a Ph.D program in the eighteenth century, and I was teaching Latin, I would read "Slawkenbergius's Tale" from Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Slawkenbergius's Tale, written in both Latin and English, is a fun whimsical story about a man who goes to "The Promontory of Noses" to get a large nose. I thought it would be a great story to share with my students at this nice, conservative Christian school where I was teaching. Well, I learned less than a year later that "nose" was really code for "less visible male anatomy," and suddenly, all the women's wanting to touch the guy's nose and their discussions whether his nose was real no longer seemed quite as innocently whimsical and Wonderlandesque. I share this story only to emphasize that it is very important, as a future teacher, to be able to recognize the ribald so you can be aware when you are poisoning young minds.

Anyway, recognition of this need has led to the odd experience, while listening to these CDs, of training myself to look for double-meanings. This can be more challenging than you might expect. For instance, I was listening to the CD, "Lewd Songs and Low Ballads." Sometimes I think a double-entendre is going on, but I can't for the life of me understand what the phrase actually means. For example, a soldier, a sailor, a tinker, and a tailor all go to propose marriage to "Buxome Joan," who chooses the Sailor because "he let fly at her, a Shot 'twixt Wind and Water, which won this fair Maid's heart." While I inferred that sex was somehow involved, its relation to wind and water was unclear until my wife explained it to me.

The next song on the CD is in the Scottish dialect, about two lovers, Jenny and Jockey. Well, when you don't know half the words because they're Scottish, and all the songs you've been listening to so far are about men seducing women, etc., you presume the Scottish words must have exceptionally naughty meanings. (After all, apparently the Wallace and Gromit movie had a lot of innuendo only detectable to a British audience.) So, I started trying to figure out what's going to be bad this time: "Then Jenny made a Curtsshy low, until the Stairs did touch her Dock;" "Dock? That's sailor talk, must mean something dirty," I think to myself. "Then Jockey tuke Jenny by the Nease"; "Tell him to stop groping you, Jenny!" I think to myself.

At some point in the song, I realize that Jenny and Jockey have entered a church. "Well, that seems a rather strange thing to do in a dirty song," I think to myself. I eventually came to realize that they were getting married, and when Jockey "tuke Jenny by the Nease," he was proposing marriage! Now, bad as it might feel to share a dirty story with a Latin I class, interpreting a marriage proposal as a gropefest can leave you feeling rather unclean.
And I'm still not sure what was going on in the song. But I do feel that there should have been some sort of advisory label, "Warning: Some of the songs contained on this lewd album include lyrics about chaste people getting married," to avoid this kind of thing.

How to console someone whose daughter marries a rake

In the eighteenth century, daughters sometimes have an embarrassing habit of marrying someone of whom their family disapproves. They may even go so far as to marry a rake. By "rake," I do not mean that they tried to marry a field implement. Admittedly, the emperor Caligula may have married his horse Incitatus, and a woman may have married a beloved dolphin in 2005, but eighteenth century daughters tended to stick to their own species and to things living. A "rake" is the term for an immoral, dissipated man.

So anyway, how do you console someone whose daughter marries a rake? Well, I was reading Samuel Richardson's Familiar Letters. Samuel Richardson was also the writer of Pamela and Clarissa, not that that probably carries a lot of cultural significance to you, but there you are. Anyway, Familiar Letters has a rather long title that gives you an idea what it is supposed to be: Letters Written TO and FOR PARTICULAR FRIENDS, On the most IMPORTANT OCCASIONS, Directing not only the Requisite STYLE and FORMS to be Observed in WRITING Familiar Letters; but How to Think and Act Justly and Prudently, in the COMMON CONCERNS of HUMAN LIFE. As you might guess from the caps, there is some serious instruction going on. The letters are going to teach you both how to deal with certain situations and how to write or counsel people going through those situations.

So what do you do if your favorite daughter married a rake? Well, the first thing you should do is chastise him if he has ever prayed for his daughter's health. The dad's brother writes to him, "I would not afflict you [over the marriage], my dear brother, instead of pouring balm on the wounds of your mind. But you will remember [here is the part where I'm going to do just what I said I wouldn't do], that it is scarce two years ago, when you were no less anxiously disturbed on occasion of the violent fever which then endangered [your daughter's] life. What vows did you not put up for her recovery!...And how do you know, that then she was only restored at your incessant and importunate prayers; but that otherwise, God Almighty, knowing what was best for you both, would have taken her away from this heavy evil? This should teach us resignation to the divine will ..." So, now that the daughter's marrying, the uncle reminds his brother that it's really partially his own fault for praying that she wouldn't die when she had a fever two years earlier. Lest we should think that this uncle was an unconscionable jerk, Familiar Letters includes the father's response, "very affecting [are] your just reproofs of my misplac'd fondness for a creature so unworthy. Resignation to the divine will, a noble, a needful lesson!"

Lest we miss the point, the next "familiar letter" is "to a father, on the loss of his son." Even though the son who died was young, he was pretty godly, so far as wee tykes go. The father's friend writes, "I will not, to alleviate your grief, remind you of a topic, which is, however, [what I am about to do anyway, even though I told you I wouldn't,] no less important, than too frequently the case, that he might not always have been so hopeful; but might, as he grew up, many ways have administered bitterness to you. But I think it surpasses all other comforts, even those you hoped for from him, that he is taken away at an age, in which God's mercy renders his eternal happiness unquestionably certain ..." So, if someone's child dies, you tell him/her that the kid would probably have turned out really bad anyway and administered some heavy-duty bitterness, so thank God for killing him early before he could be sent to hell!

I'm oversimplifying things, of course. And I don't doubt that this may have been very comforting to some Christian parents whose children have died. There may also be a place for comforting people by hypothesizing what "could" have happened, that God has a purpose, that you don't have to be concerned about their future salvation. But call me cynical, call me Calvinist, I don't see how it is comforting to envision a deity whose only manner of bringing some potential reprobates into heaven is by killing them off when they are young. If forced to choose, I'd prefer thinking, "My kid was such an Enoch-in-training that God wanted him for His heavenly courts right now," rather than thinking, "My kid was about to begin his reprobate-in-training status, so God struck him dead now. Yay God!" There is much about Arminianism or Molinism that is attractive--it's easier (albeit in my mind, incorrect) to explain the problem of evil by saying that it results from God's granting humanity the "free will" to choose evil. But I find the theodicy that results in these "familiar letters" to be rather disturbing: we justify God in His decree/allowance of a child's death by hinting that the child's exercise of free will would eventually have led to naughty actions of hellfire proportions. God conducted a sort of divine "preemptive strike," if you will. (While Calvinists believe that God conducts a "preemptive strike," it is God putting to death the "old man" ... not the "new kid!" God wouldn't need to send a fever and kill a daughter to prevent her from running off with a rake; He could just change the heart.)

It is interesting to compare Calvinism with the type of Arminian theodicy I am describing here, which I shall call "Insane eighteenth century Arminianism," to distinguish it from modern Arminianism, which tends not to encourage you to rebuke people who have prayed for God to heal their children's illnesses. Calvinists are often represented as being rather suspicious of the human heart--we have copyrighted the phrase "total depravity," after all. And since Calvinism denies that you can "lose" your salvation, it follows that someone who dies in rebellion against God never had a "real" (or at least effectual) salvific experience, even if earlier in his/her life the person seemed to have a sincere conversion, praised God, etc. However, the Arminian theodicy I am describing here might lend itself toward a greater suspicion of an individual's heart, since it construes death as a possible sign that the person's heart was about to go south (perhaps through internal corruption or external temptations), even where there is no evidence of a potential lapse. While Calvinists might be suspicious of a past religious experience on the basis of future reprobate living (the person was never saved), Familiar Letters suggests we suspect future reprobate living on the basis that the person has died, despite a promising life (the child might not have stayed "saved"). While Familar Letters never insists that this hypothesized future depravity is the cause of death, the text does insist we need to keep it in mind as a strong possibility.