However there’s an unmistakable tenor in their air, isn’t there? The number of patients making appointments in my wife’s clinic is way down, probably because people are losing their health insurance when they lose their jobs, or they don’t want to part with $30 for a co-pay. Whatever the reason, it’s not because people are getting magically healthier during the economic downturn, and eventually they will reappear somewhere in the health care chain—perhaps in the OR when their problems become acute. Six months ago, the clinic could hardly keep up with demand and added an additional nurse practitioner. Now crickets are chirping in the halls. Is it any surprise that providers all along this chain are now looking over their shoulders?

Speaking of lucky earlier, I can’t believe how fortunate I was to get funding this past year in my grad program. Those who have followed this space for some time know how much time and stress this issue caused me over the past couple years, and the great relief that came when I finally secured a TA/PA position. Even as bad as things have gotten, there has been no suggestion that currently funded students would lose their funding, so I am still reasonably confident that this won’t be a problem for me.

However, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t massive, massive problems. As the university loses funding, this means bigger (hence fewer) classes, and less need for people to teach them. This also means fewer jobs for new grads in general. This also means the elimination of a formerly taken-for-granted sixth year of funding for PhD candidates, pushing people into the job market faster than they had planned. Whether English PhDs need six years of funding to complete their research is (highly) debatable, the debate about the current climate is, how shall we say, quite tense.

Anybody else notice how the national tension has leeched into daily life? Trickle-down economics indeed…

Current Mood: Not Best Pleased |

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 wrote eons ago about Obama’s utopian rhetoric, and after hearing his acceptance speech tonight (not to mention these final months of campaigning) I have to say that my respect and admiration has steadily grown, and I’m greatly looking forward to seeing what comes next. My one request would be, “Hard left on the tiller, sir,” but I don’t think that’s going to happen. And I know the rhetoric is working when I’m left thinking that maybe that’s for the best.

One other thing as I watched NBC’s coverage. The shots of the crowd in Arizona were pretty striking. Old, white, and wealthy seemed to be the overwhelming population—not surprising. The folks in Grant Park? A bit more representative in terms of age, race, and if I had to guess, class. And for me, the most moving thing of the whole night were the scenes from Howard University, where the African American students and their advisors were too overcome with emotion to find words.

I’ve been thinking all week: was it worth eight years of Bush for this? After tonight, I’m pretty sure it was.

Current Mood: Ecstatic/Relieved/Exhausted | / /

As an undergrad I took a course on American History 1914-1945, and one part of the course I remember very clearly was something said regarding a presidential election during that time period. Of course, I can’t remember the candidates and I can’t remember the issues, but what I do remember is the professor saying that one candidate tried running on a “me too” platform, which basically meant that he was trying to outmaneuver his opponent using similar rhetoric on the issues. And I also remember the professor saying that in politics this almost never works, and that candidates are almost always better served trying to work diametrically opposed positions.

Regardless of your political bent, you have to admit that Obama’s got that whole “candidate of change” thing pretty well sewn up. Therefore you’d think McCain’s tactic would be more along the lines of “we need a strong, steady hand on the tiller.” You know, the opposite of change. For this armchair analyst, that’s a strategic goof from the McCain camp.

Again, trying suppress my own political convictions and give a neutral perspective, it seems like the problem for McCain is that if this election boils down to “change” vs. “no change” (which, substantive issues aside, I think it does), then “no change” is a tough position to take when all is not great with the state of the union. That leaves the other option of “me too” politics, where McCain has to also be the candidate of change, but a different kind of change. From a neutral perspective, that’s a tough sell coming down the home stretch.

From my wildly biased perspective, I don’t see how Obama can’t win. But I guess we’ll wait and see…

Current Mood: @#$#@% Tired of Politics |

I’m unveiling my new piece called “Talk to the Hand”. It’s a collection of pictures of McCain shielding himself from tough questions with his abnormally large, gnarled, liver-spotted hands.

Let me know what you think.

I’m hoping to collect enough of these to make a photomosaic of a middle finger flipping off America.

If you haven’t already seen this, check out this video of John McCain squirming as a reporter asks him if he thinks it’s fair that Viagra is often covered by insurance while female contraception is not.

This is disturbing on a number of levels. One, because it’s a relatively straightforward question that seems to utterly paralyze the man. Two, because it’s not that he doesn’t have an answer, it’s that he doesn’t know the right answer that won’t get him in trouble with his constituents and therefore hems and haws and generally looks foolish. Three, considering the obvious distress this causes him, imagine if he was being confronted with a tricky question that had to do with national or global security.

Look, this should not be that hard. A Republican candidate should be free to speak his mind without having to fear a mass exodus of votes based on this one comment. I mean seriously, if you’re hardcore NRA, pro-life, and pro-war (forget that contradiction for the time being), are you really going to withhold your vote over this particular issue? Yes, the underlying question tests McCain’s resolve regarding pro-life and abstinence-only sex ed program, but c’mon. Two out of three ain’t bad, right?

Backing the status quo must be an untenable position. If it wasn’t, McCain would have made a case for why the current situation exists. I’m sure there’s an answer that the religious right would want to hear as well as one pharmaceutical companies would want to hear. The question is how many other voters such an answer would potentially alienate.

If this relatively innocuous question riles him, can you imagine what the debates are going to be like?

Current Mood: Oh, Politics |

One of my friends started a document entitled “Aspects of John McCain And His Campaign That Would Derail Obama If They Were True About Him” and lists the following:

His Involvement In The S&L Scandal/Bailout of the Late 1980s

All The Lobbyists His Campaign Has Had To Let Go

Remember, the above is a list of things that would derail Obama’s campaign but have not even been major talking points about McCain.

But let me be clear: I think that all candidates should be allowed the occasional mistake, and I don’t believe that it’s fair to criticize a politician for every last thing they have ever said or did, however it is grossly unfair to have excoriated one presidential candidate for, say, admitting to have once smoked marijuana, while giving another presidential candidate a pass for having been busted drunk driving (and strong evidence that he used cocaine) writing it off as “youthful indiscretions.” Either you pass them both off as youthful indiscretions, or you flog the hell out of both of them.

The media also did a hatchet-job on John Kerry for being flip-flopper, yet McCain has switched his position on a number of issues to make him more attractive to mainstream Republican voters. So one is negatively labeled for changing positions, whereas the other is using it as a political tactic?

Again, I’m not even talking about policy here, I’m talking about the media’s treatment of the candidates, and it ain’t a case of the “liberal media” making things cozy for the Democrats either.

Current Mood: Frustrated |

May I humbly suggest that putting big-breasted lyrca body suit-wearing superhot women in video cames might not be the best example of stereotype shattering?

Just a thought.

Current Mood: Ah, Humanity |

Turns out this takes you to a page by Esquire magazine purporting to be a list of “Women We Love.” I found it more than a little unsettling.

First off, the image for Charlize Theron is a foot. Clicking on the foot takes you to Ms. Theron’s page, at the top of which are four thumbnails for other pictures: the foot, her hands, a hand on a leg, and her breasts. Poor Charlize has been dissected into a collection of body parts. Down below there’s an article on what makes her so great, but are people (i.e. men) really supposed to read that? Other pages don’t fare much better. Monica Belluci’s at least shows her face, although the second thumbnail looks disturbingly like a photo still from a porn flick.

Obviously I’m not above taking a few moments out of my day to look at beautiful people, but what bugs me is how the vast majority of photos feature the women in highly sexualized positions and in various stages of undress. And the criteria for “women we love” is overwhelming slanted toward the young and white.

I guess what I object to (besides the general objectification) is that the page suggests that “we” (Esquire? men? the human race?) love these women for reasons more than just their bodies. Yet the actual content on the page runs contrary to this very notion.

Maybe it’s also funny considering that my wife’s issue of Bust magazine’s “Men We Love” issue is sitting next to the computer. Let’s just say the text-to-photo ratio is a bit different, and Elija Wood isn’t required to cover his genitalia with only his hands. Little different take on the “opposite” sex, innit?

Current Mood: Embarrassed To Be Male |

One thing that bothers me is the increasingly common charge that Obama’s campaign is based on empty rhetoric. While I do agree that the man would do well to give more concrete examples of his priorities should he win the office, I object to the idea that automatically equates rhetoric with negativity.

A couple of English professors on NPR the other day made (and remade) the point that the word “rhetoric” is a value-neutral word, yet for the majority of callers it was being used as a pejorative term. Rhetoric, for these callers, necessarily meant empty or false promises. One misguided caller went so far as to evoke Adolph Hitler as being charismatic leader armed only with rhetoric, and look how that turned out yada yada yada. (BTW, I love the crackpots who call in to public radio.) Happily, the professors rightly shunned any comparison out of hand and reiterated the idea that rhetoric itself is not dangerous by definition.

Having done a lot of reading (of both fiction and criticism) on utopia in the past 12 months, one of the reasons Obama got my vote was because of his utopian rhetoric. It’s pretty clear that Obama is getting people excited, and excitement alone creates an opportunity for change. Most utopian criticism agrees that it’s utopian thinking that’s important, since it provides a stimulus for change. Utopia achieved is another (theoretical) question entirely. Or to put it the other way, it’s the old “shoot for the moon and if you miss you’ll still be among the stars” cliche’.

I feel that it is precisely through rhetoric that significant change can occur. Hilary may be able to call in favors and ram through her policies, but I fear that’s only going to deepen the political divide in this country. My hope is that Obama’s rhetoric will frame issues in such a way that change can happen without anyone losing face and bi-partisan legislation may actually be possible again.

Is that overly hopeful? Maybe, but that’s what utopian thinking is all about.

Current Mood: Okay |
Currently Listening To – Son Volt – “Straightaways”

2) The other writer’s rule—don’t name your character something stupid like Ichabod or name the cat Pussums. Look, there might be people named Ichabod and cats named Pussums, but they don’t belong in your story. Seriously.
===================================================

I’m in a lull between classes and I’ve been using this time to read slush for the department’s literary magazine. Here are some writerly tips that I may or may have heard before, but they’re oh-so-true.

* Google “standard manuscript format” and use it. It’s really distracting when you open a new ms and find that it’s spaced at 1.5 instead of double, or is in some odd font, or the author’s full information is a banner at the top of the page. It’s distracting. In fact, don’t do anything you think might make your manuscript stand out. The truth is that it will stand out, but in a bad way. The story needs to stand out, not the format or delivery method.

* Don’t summarize the story in the cover letter, and certainly don’t say how poignant the ending is.

* I read very few stories all the way through. Generally, if I make it through the first few pages I will continue to the end but this is the exception, not the rule. The writing is rarely embarrassingly bad, but way more often the story has a slow start, has run-on sentences, or uses way too many similies and metaphors in an attempt to be “literary.” If I don’t like what I’m seeing in the first couple pages, I’ll scan pages 10 and 15 and if I see the same stuff happening, it goes in the rejection pile. I have forwarded stuff on to the senior editors with notes like “I think this story could lose 1K words,” but that means I thought the story was mostly working. Most stories are mostly broken though.

In my Visual Narratives class we’re ending our section on Oulipo. It’s cool stuff, even though it’s not entirely my bag. The basic idea is to place constraints on your creative work. Georges Perec’s novel The Void was written without the letter ‘e’ for example. (Try writing anything, even a short email without the letter ‘e’ and you’ll appreciate Perec’s achievement.)

We listened to some of these recordings by Chrisitan Bök today in class. He limits himself to only using a single vowel for each piece, meaning that in “Chapter U” all the words have ‘u’ as the only vowel. It’s a bit silly and nonsensical in places, but the extraordinary thing is that it’s quite poetic and funny more often than not. Give some a listen.

And I thought this site, which features some “light graffiti,” is pretty cool, too.

And Chinger forwarded this ignorant story from ABC news on to me. The basic plot: college kids experiment by starting out flat broke and working his way out of poverty, suggesting that poor people just don’t have a good work ethic.

As friend Ching points out, the article (and the student) elide certain facts, like that he’s young, in good health, educated, and white. Yes, he doesn’t tell his employers about his education, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t educated. That doesn’t mean that he’s not drawing from his 20-odd years of schooling and experience that would naturally help him climb the ladder faster. Stupid.

Current Mood: Grouchy |