My picks: Wins for Liverpool and Villa and a draw for Chelski and the Ars*. Not confident picks mind you, but picks nonetheless. Last week’s “Last Man Standing” pool ended in a push, as I picked Stoke (1-0 winners) and Larry picked Spurs (9-1 winners). No bonus points for a blow-out thankfully, and this weekend we both took Man Citeh over a suddenly resurgent Hull. Since neither of us can win or lose, we chucked this one and re-picked. I took Fulham at home over Bolton. C’mon Dempsey! Grab another brace, son!

Equally exciting is the top o’ the table clash betwixt Barcelona and Real Madrid over in sunny Spain. Madrid is somehow topping the table despite not playing all that well (a close look reveals they’ve played mostly crap teams thus far) while Barcelona is head and shoulders the best team in the world when they’re on their game, yet they have also been falling into cruise control and drawing games they should win.

I kept on eye on both of these teams in the Champions League this midweek and if their form extends to the weekend, I would bet my house and the lives of everyone in it on Barcelona beating Madrid like a rented mule. Barca absolutely shredded Inter whereas Madrid stuttered and herked and jerked against the world powerhouse that is FC Zurich. Los merengues can be frighteningly good when they’re firing on all cylinders with Kaká and that Ronaldo kid looking particularly dangerous, yet too often their play doesn’t result in clear-cut chances. Barcelona on the other hand always end up threading the ball through the fourth dimension, finding players in the box without a soul around them, and they duly stuff it in the net. Seriously, it borders on black magic.

Prediction: Barcelona 3-0 winners.

I’m enjoying the brief calm before the storm of work that starts raining down at midnight tonight when my research writing students submit their final portfolios, followed by my creative writing students’ portfolios on Monday night. I’m reading about 44 draft portfolios, all of which are around 20 pages each, and giving feedback before the final drafts are due Wednesday, December 9th.

‘Tis a lot of work, but hopefully well worth it in the end. The only thing that drives you nuts is when you put in the considerable effort to provide thoughtfully commentary, and that commentary is then ignored and you see a final copy that’s identical to the draft copy in the final portfolio folder. Such is life.

One of my students is writing his research paper on Bob Marley and Rastafarianism. Natty Dread and Rastaman Vibration have been on heavy rotation for the last couple weeks. Happily, Baby Grey digs it!

Current Mood: Is That A Baby Stirring? |

I’ve gotten 50% of the required paperwork filed for my preliminary exams, a number that should jump to 75% by Monday. The last form (four of four) is once I have everything completely nailed down, including my final reading list and the date of the actual exam. It’ll be April sometime, and after having several of my good friends going through the process this semester, I’m cautiously optimistic. By most accounts, it’s not too bad as long as you’re pretty thoroughly prepared, which I should be. In the next couple months I expect to be hammering the “academic” blog pretty hard as I take notes on the critical sources I need to read. No classes next semester, just independent reading to get prepped for the exam.

I’m love with a couple new podcasts, one ongoing the other completed:
* Football Weekly by the Guardian is absolutely hilarious, much better than the antiseptic lot over at the Soccern*t podcasts. Updated Mondays and Thursdays.

* Modes of Reading by Warwick University is an excellent lecture series available via iTunes. It’s a series of eight lectures, each about 40-50 minutes, on literature, criticism, and theory. I haven’t taken any literary theory courses per se but I’ve got a decent handle on what distinguishes different theories via exposure in my classes, having read various bits of Foucault, Derrida, Marx, etc. but it’s another thing entirely to put it all together succinctly and not in service to an outside text or extraneous topic. Since this is a recorded lecture, the audio fades in and out as the professor walks the room or turns his back, which can be maddening, but he’s an engaging speaker and it’s exactly the kind of high-level overview of these topics I currently need.

Speaking of which, I’ve also got a billion primary texts I want to read by Barthes, Bakhtin, Foucault, and others but those will have to be on hold until after prelims. I must admit that I found such theory pretty off-putting initially, probably because no one offered any contextual paths into theory, and also because a lot of academics (and burgeoning academics) like to use theory as a club—if you’re not in on the conversation, you are most definitely out of it.

Once these theories start to come together though, it’s pretty clear why English as a discipline has become so theory-based rather than “can’t we just talk about books we like.” The problem for anti-theory, “just literature” folks is that you can’t talk about how you experienced reading a book and what made it good without theory popping up. As soon as you are pressed to answer why you liked a certain book, you’ll have to give some abstract reason—the way it was written, the way it made you feel, the way it teaches you about the world—and by doing so you’re immediately thrust into realm of theory, like it or not.

Lots going on in the world of footie, too much to report at this moment.

Current Mood: Baby Break Just Ended |

Anyway, I am a little annoyed with Spurs and their cracking start. I have been doing my best to keep my expectations firmly in check and not get my hopes up, yet they play Liverpool off the park in their home opener and drill Hull in the first away game. Lovely lovely, just don’t break my heart again boys…

I also may need to revise my opinion of the Big Four. While I think Ars*nal’s performance against Everton was helped a great deal by the home side, going up to Parkhead and winning 2-0 (albeit on flukey goals) is nothing to sniff at. I still think this side’s major problem is that it needs to bulk up the midfield, but they could be quite a bit handier than I suspected. Injuries could (and probably will) decimate the squad over the long haul as they’re still too thin for me. The same goes for Liverpool—the first team is quite good but I think they’re too thin.

Man Ure fans don’t need to panic—yet—as they usually start slowly, but they’re lacking any ‘pop’ thus far this season. As many a pundit has said, Ronaldo made everyone around him better and without him, Man Ure don’t have the same creative spark. But this all more or less plays into Chelski’s hands, as I think they are the most well-equipped to rotate a large squad of quality players over the course of multiple competitions. I’ll stick with my prediction that they’ll win the league (for now!) but I’m coming around to the idea that it might be Chelski, Ars*nal, Man Ure, and…who knows? I can easily see Liverpool falling off the pace early, despite their big win.

Of course, things are still way too up in the air to make sense of what we’ve seen, but it’s damn interesting, innit?

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I had an iSimple installed in the Vibe yesterday. This device is installed behind the dash and overrides the FM receiver, allowing you to plug in other devices for audio. It works on the same premise as the an iPod FM transmitter, only this one’s fueled by the car’s battery rather than the iPod’s battery, and is thus far more powerful. No more driving off the highway trying to reposition the iPod to get a clearer signal, no more searching stations trying to find enough static for the iPod to come through clearly. The iPod adapter both charges and plays simultaneously too, meaning I’m not killing my iPod battery on the commute to school.

As you might guess, I’m quite excited about it.

Current Mood: Fine |

Magazines, anthologies, and bookstores come and go all the time, but these are the biggies. From a purely selfish writer’s perspective, those first two are hard blows since they’re the gold standard in speculative fiction circles; from a reader’s perspective, the news flat out sucks.

School starts again tomorrow and I’m spending my Sunday finalizing what I’ll be doing in my English 101 class this week. The first couple sessions are pretty standard but I’ll be trying some new stuff this semester to use D2L, our online course management software, to try and generate online discussions. More on that as the situation develops.

Also, good news: while reading Todorov’s The Fantastic: A Structural Approach, I realized that I’m slowly but surely coming to grips with the critical questions swirling around the various definitions of postmodernism, magical realism, and the fantastic, and I’m also occasionally able to link these various takes within the larger literary theories of archetypal criticism, structuralism, and post-structuralism.

The bad news? Very, very few people will ever know what the hell I’m talking about and fewer still will ever care.

As 2008 turned into 2009, the Premier League suddenly got a whole lot less interesting. Chelski are diabolical, Rafa Benitez has shown his true colors by fielding conservative teams that can only muster draws, and Man Ure has taken over top spot. Even with their injury crisis, it’s very, very hard to see Man Ure slipping up and having either Liverpool or Chelski making up ground. The race for fourth should still be interesting, and the bottom half of the table is crazy.

I suspect that early season relegation favorites West Brom and Stoke will indeed go down but more due to their limited squad size rather than their teams’ respective abilities. That leaves, oh, about ten or eleven teams (!) threatened with the drop. At this stage it’s almost impossible to say who that odd team out will be, since so many squads are capable of Jekyll and Hyde performances. If I had to bet, I’d say Sunderland—especially if Kenwyn Jones moves to Spurs, or anywhere else for that matter.

I’ve had the (mis)fortune of watching Spurs a few times this season, most recently yesterday’s FA Cup match against Man Ure. They’re actually not that dire of a team but, above all, they seem flighty. What they need, above and beyond all else, is a rock to anchor the midfield. If they had that, I think 80% of their problems would be solved. Palacios was a good buy since he’s the kind of burly player Spurs need, and Defoe is handy too. The defense is shockingly poor, and Modric can’t do what he does best without an enforcer right behind him ready to break some legs. I think they’ll stay up, but only just.

My co-ed indoor team lost again on Friday but there are signs of improvement. In my first two games we lost 11-2 and 11-5, and then I missed the next three due to a last-minute injury I picked up and then vacation. Last week I heard we lost 6-4 (1) and then this past Friday, we lost 8-4 (although it should have been 8-5 as we had a goal cheaply disallowed).

When all is said and done, I feel our team’s biggest problem is the lack of one-touch passing. This is actually a two-fold problem of people not moving to get open, and people not hitting quick passes for the brief instant they are open. Whether this is lack of vision or lack of ability, I can’t say. We had more composure than any previous game, but we conceded most of our goals after bad turnovers. Sometimes it was because no one was open, and sometimes it was because the player on the ball dawdled and got closed down. Bad turnovers make you run more, get more tired, and therefore play worse; conversely, accurate one-touch passing makes the ball do the work and your running is limited to short bursts to get open.

While I honestly think this is crux of the problem, pointing it out doesn’t solve anything. It’s like saying the solution to scoring is to shoot hard, low, and in the corners. It’s not something you learn overnight. And despite the obligatory chippy play and tough guys getting in each others’ faces (some of my teammates take losing personally), I’m still having fun and getting exercise. Which is kinda the point, for me at least.

And in the personal victory column, I am also completely done with getting my digital music collection in order. Just about every CD we own has been ripped at 192kb quality and the best of it has been transferred to my iPod via Media Monkey, as I have officially abandoned iTunes.

I’m still generally dissatisfied with my 80 GB iPod classic though. Albums from Mississippi Fred McDowell and Robert Johnson that play fine on my computer still skip on the iPod, which is highly annoying since I downloaded both of them from legit online sources and have no CD to re-rip them from. An MP3 repair utility fixed some of the Fred but none of the Rob. This is some of my favorite reading/writing music and is therefore doubly lamentable.

Current Mood: Okay |

Having said that, empirical evidence suggests raising a small human to maturity does require a grand accumulation of certain items, and to that end we’re making room. To the shock and chagrin of a few of our (Luddite) friends, I’ve finally convinced Amy that we can live without our CD collection. She’s always hated the eyesore of the CD rack and, as I’ve pointed out time and time again, we almost never go to it anyway. I listen to music way more often than Amy and my favorites have long been ripped to MP3 and stored on my computer and iPod, and I connected our home stereo system to the computer. I’m also planning on getting a car stereo with an iPod jack to replace the six-CD changer in the Vibe, making CDs irrelevant. To me at least. A few of our friends think this is ridiculous because, what if we lose them? (they’re doubly backed up), or what if there’s a fire? (CDs don’t melt?), or they’re going to be worth money some day (not in the condition they’re in). Audiophiles may shudder, but a 192kb MP3 sounds as good as a CD to me, and if we can sell our collection of 400-500 for a couple hundred bucks, I don’t see the downside. The only problem has been that I ripped a ton of our CDs at 96kbs, and then you can tell a difference in quality, so it’s been a job to go through the never-ripped CDs and the CDs of too-low quality, but that’s a minor issue.

I’m also (shock! horror!) strongly considering offloading my comic book collection. I’ve looked around at various sites and have discovered that, even though everything in my collection is 15 years old or older, they’re worth almost nothing—pennies, is what one dealer told me. I’m reluctant to part with them on sentimental grounds but, in reality, they’ve been sitting in dusty boxes for the better part of a decade. They might—and I do stress might—spike in value in another 10 years, especially if casual collectors like me start getting rid of our inventories. Still, it’s pretty likely that I’ll find an out-of-the-way place in the attic to keep them, more because I had blast going through them again rather than any belief that I’m sitting on a potential goldmine.

For the curious, here’s an Excel spreadsheet of what I’ve got: comicbooks.xls

Current Mood: Fine |
Currently Listening To – Every CD We Own

I received some MP3 downloads from Amazon and decided to blow them on Bob Dylan’s newest, Tell Tell Signs: The Bootleg Series Vol. 8. The early signs point to this being an album I’m glad I didn’t shell out any cold hard cash for. The one “tell tale sign” I can identify is that the music company is happy to slap together a bunch of songs and outtakes, put Dylan’s name on it, call it one of the bootleg series, and watch the money roll in.

It’s not that it’s bad per se, it’s just not something I can imagine coming back to. It’s much like The Vanilla Tapes CD that accompanied the re-release of London Calling. Interesting, yes. Worthy of repeated listens? No.

The first five volumes of the bootleg series were all great but volume 6, which was live in 1964 at the Philharmonic Hall, didn’t give me any new insights into Dylan as performer. I don’t know how they can call volume 7, which was the soundtrack to No Direction Home, one of the bootleg series with a straight face. It’s another greatest hits collection with a few rare tracks thrown in to make sure those of us with his entire collection have reason to shell out for it.

There are plenty of folks on Amazon who seem awfully satisfied with this release but I’m on the side of the two-star reviews, who say pretty the same as the above. Maybe I’m biased, but this feels more like “let’s make some more money by packaging up some old mediocre stuff” rather than “let’s give the Dylan fans yet another side of their favorite artist.” But maybe I’m just jaded…

Current Mood: Feh |
Currently Listening To – Bob Dylan – “Tell Tale Signs – The Bootleg Series Vol. 8″

Having said that, I do appreciate the extra space. Audio books don’t keep me awake behind the wheel like music does, and I’ve been delving deep into the archives recently and I have happily discovered that a lot of stuff really holds up over time. Sugar’s Copper Blue for example. I bought this album at the end of high school and it brings back memories of my first year at college, and it’s really quite good. And though it should come as no surprise, Jane’s Addiction’s first three albums sound just as strange and gripping today as they did back in the late 80′s and early 90′s. They still merit multiple relistens.

I’ve made some headway in figuring some things out regarding future schooling. It looks like I will be finishing my coursework next semester and taking my preliminary exams next fall. The major area looks like it’s finally going to be something along the lines of “Unstable Realities: Global Literature Since WWII” and will basically be magical realism, slipstream, and some postmodern novels that sort of fit in with this. The minor areas will be “Native American Literature” and, for the new minor, “Visual Narratives, Hypertext, and Textuality” along with a strong dose of the rhetoric of technology. If it’s not exactly this, it’ll be damn close.

Otherwise, the ceaseless pounding of work continues apace and, for the first time in my graduate career, I’m actually a little behind in one class. ‘Tis no big deal and will be set straight in the next few days, but I ought to have reworked one of my pieces for my obstructions/restrictions fiction workshop by now.

On the brighter side, it’s my turn to write a summary piece on the composition theory articles we’re reading and one of them deals with bringing a punk rock ethos to teaching composition, and it liberally quotes from Sex Pistols songs and quite a bit from the Clash. My response will focus on Joe Strummer and his journey from being the front man of 101ers (not just Strummer’s first band, but also the UWM course number for freshman composition) to angry punk, to experimental musician, to globally conscious artist—all tied back to comp theory. Should be fun.

Current Mood: Are You Friggin’ Kidding Me? |

The whole set list and a good (if slightly hyperbolic) review appears here.

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In case you were wondering, this semester isn’t the worst imaginable but neither is it the best. I am not a morning person and my schedule demands that I become one. I do okay in the morning but it’s the mid-afternoon crash that gets me, even when I get a full eight hours of sleep. That and between balancing the various and disparate responsibilities of teaching my classes, taking classes, and doing the program admin job, it will be a minor miracle if this semester doesn’t eventually grind me into a fine powder, mix me with some water, spread the resulting paste on a cracker, and devour me whole.

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And it’s been an awful few weeks for teams I support. The Packers blew yet another winnable game against Atlanta yesterday, as did the Badgers against Ohio State. I have become a big Aaron Rodgers fan and pin very little of the blame on him for the losses, but his durability might be an issue. The Badgers are a far more depressing proposition as I don’t see where this team goes from here, and there’s very little to get enthused about.

On the footie front, Tottenham has become such an abject failure that the streak of losses don’t even phase me anymore. Can they get relegated? They surely can. They shipped out two proven Premier League strikers with virtually no backup, and the midfield is decidedly lightweight. Conventional wisdom would suggest that once they find their footing they’ll be okay as the side has lots of talent, whereas teams like Fulham and Bolton look like they might struggle again this year because there’s not much to work with. Yet there are no guarantees and if things don’t turn around soon, there’s real danger.

And sadly, Mad City United lost its first game 2-1 to the perennial league champions last weekend, and I wasn’t able to make the game. It’s looking like I might not make this weekend’s match either but I hope at least we can return to winning ways.

Current Mood: Beat |

I just finished Jonathan Culler’s Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction and really got a lot out of it. A professor recommended this book to our class and since I’m theory-weak, I figured I would check it out. Culler not only explains what theory is and isn’t, he also succinctly explains how and why theory came about and gives examples of appropriate application. Interestingly, Culler only goes over the different schools of theory in a brief index (structuralism vs. post-structuralism vs. deconstruction, etc.) as if to illustrate they are both important yet not the focus of literary studies in and of themselves. There is no One Theory to rule them all, One Theory to find them, One Theory to bring them all and in the darkness bind them, regardless of how some scholars make it seem.

I hadn’t heard of the “Very Brief Introduction” series until we read the one on Dada and Surrealism for class last semester, but I really like them. They’re like the For Dummies series or Complete Idiot’s Guides, except of course the “Very Brief Introductions” treat the reader as an intelligent specimen trying to come to grips with a specific academic topic rather than, say, gardening. They’re loaded with suggestions for further reading and extremely helpful for those of us who are constantly being made to felt as if we don’t know everything about Subject X then we know nothing at all.

The complete list makes for compelling reading in itself and more than a few titles have caught my eye: the ones on postmodernism and the Spanish Civil War are both topics I know a little about but would like to know more, and want recommendations for further reading. Check this series out.

I had two 20 GB iPods that died on me. One gave me the sad iPod and sounded like a spice grinder when you fired it up, the other formatted itself one day and then refused to mount in iTunes. I did my due diligence and tried all sorts of diagnostics and restores but came up with nothing. I had two expensive paperweights on my hand.

Happily, I got about $26 for the pair of them via BuyMyTronics.com, a company that buys dead electronic equipment. Filling out the form was very simple, I shipped them off, and received my PayPal payment today. It was quick, easy, and painless, and after shipping I came away with a $21 profit from a couple of devices that were going to be thrown out. Now let’s see, don’t I have a dead cell phone around here somewhere…

I’ve been listening to a lot of The Hold Steady since hanging out with my brothers in Minnesota. I thought they were okay at first, but they’ve really grown on me. It’s refreshing to hear a band sing about the Midwest for once.

Current Mood: Fine |

Strange that in four games we have had the same two score lines of 1-0 and 2-0. Four shut outs is unusual. No draws in four games is unusual. There hasn’t been a single shock yet either, as the four favorites from these games have all won, though not all have done so convincingly.

Lady Luck obviously knows about pedigrees because the Swiss and the Austrians were pretty unlucky in their losses, but the old cliche’ that teams make their own luck also holds true. And if there was any question as to whether Tommy Smyth is an idiot (and there isn’t) it was settled today in the opening minutes of the Austria vs. Croatia game. A penalty in the opening five minutes is always a tough call and it wasn’t clear cut. Cue the replay where Smyth is saying, “That’s not a foul at all” as the running replay clearly shows Aufhauser clattering into Olic. Clearly, it wasn’t a dive. Clearly, the player makes heavy contact. Olic wasn’t bearing down on goal, but that doesn’t matter—fouls in the box, no matter if they’re clumsy or stupid or ill-timed, are penalties. With plenty of time to retract his statement after getting a better look, what does Smyth do? Of course, he restates that it wasn’t a foul. Which it was.

Back to warming up nicely. Portugal and Germany won fairly convincingly against second-tier competition, not needing to expend too much energy and looking utterly competent in the pressure situation. The Czechs and Croatia got vital wins which give them some breathing room and buys them time to improve. Rarely does the team that screams out of the blocks end up winning the trophy: in the cliche’ dictionary, look up “peaking too soon.” Germany is also a team known for gelling as tournaments progress and, despite some shaky keeping by Mad Jens in the early stages, they looked good.

And then there’s the small matter of France vs. Romania and the Netherlands vs. Italy tomorrow. Can’t. Watch. Enough. Soccer.

Or maybe I can. US vs. Argentina tonight and I hope to God we get a better outing. Remember when the US lost to Brazil 4-2 not so long ago? I would love to see a 4-2 loss to Argentina that suggested the team had some spark. Unfortunately, recent history suggests it’s going to be a 1-0 or 2-0 loss that shows that the US is incapable of playing dour soccer successfully. And if you’re listening Bob, please give Freddy Adu more than 45 minutes and partner him with another sparkplug, anyone but Eddie Johnson. Freddy was the only one with a creative bone in his body against Spain. Reward that, please.

Current Mood: Footie Mad |