Yes, that's me.

If there's one thing this blog proves, it's that I'm capable of achieving stunningly high levels of snarkiness. I've got years of surly snark built up in those archives, folks. Enter at your own risk.

Why Cyberspace Isn't Empty (But Should Be)

According to the editing screen for this blog, I have a minimum of five posts in draft state, waiting quietly in the background for me to finish them off and release them in their final form into my blog. I can't seem to make myself bring any of them to completion, though. I get 3/4 of the way through, and then think, "Wtf is this? Who *cares*?" and abandon them.

A partial list of my partial thoughts this week:

1. Musings on American Idol, Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson;
2. A plea for packing advice (I might finish this one--how do you pack for 12 mos. in two different countries?);
3. My opinion on various guidebooks for India (and a scathing review of Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?);
4. Confessions of panic attacks and depression (multiple variations on a theme);
5. A plea for cell phone advice (short form, can I live in London for three months without a phone? I don't think so);
6. Summaries of our vacations that bored even me (the summaries, not the vacations);
7. Reviews of the two dozen graphic novels I've read this summer;
8. Even more boring things

This is perhaps a sign that the blog needs to be put out of its misery. The archives are really useful for me in those moments I need to know what I did on my 34th birthday, or when I was last in New York, that sort of thing. And I'm sure I'll want to write something or another down this coming year, but in the meantime, wow, how did my life get so incredibly dull?

Web Sucks

You'd think someone who has written html code since 1992 would have at least one freaking idea as to why a blogger template isn't working. $&*@(!!!

ETA: Okay, I've done what you're supposed to do when something doesn't work: go out and buy a replacement. Well, less "buy" than "use free of charge." I think this officially means that I can no longer consider myself a geek. If you can't code your own template, you are no longer entitled to wear t-shirts with hip and ironic code jokes. Also, you are no longer permitted to read slashdot. Or fark. Or any of the internets.

Okay, I know my blog editing is messing up my own RSS feeds right now, but I can't tell if other people are receiving my four year olds posts every ten seconds. If so, I'm sorry. I'll be out of the country in just a few days, and you all can take a break from my chaos for a few months.

Okay, people, yes, I am the reason your RSS feed is going crazy. Those aren't new posts. Those are old and boring and whiny posts. But I found a backup that seems to have most of the stuff I lost when I deleted my blog in a panic once long ago, so I'm transferring it over. Because it's more important to do that than write the paper that might form the basis of the second chapter of my dissertation. Really. It is.

I decided quite awhile ago that this wouldn't be another one of those cloak-and-dagger-life-in-academia blogs. You know the ones I'm talkng about? The ones with authors who all seem to be sporting flashy noms de guerre and all refer to their family members with catchy pseudonyms or abbreviations? (Note to those blog people--if you're in academia and you identify your subject of study and the fact that you're in a tenure-track position in a major midwestern state school, I can find you in less than 10 minutes whether you want me to or not.) I hate the kind of rhetoric that floats out from behind these masked identities. People seem to think that because they are "anonymous," they are somehow protected from institutional control, and thus their writing is more "real" and "accessible" since it is "uncensored" and "tells it like it really is." My opinion? We could use a little more self-censorship on the web. If you can get fired for saying it in public, make a choice: either say it outloud anyway and really challenge the system, or keep it to yourself. Speaking out when there is nothing at stake isn't particularly useful. More importantly, it isn't particularly interesting (to me).

That's actually two decisions I made: 1) don't write a whiny "the academy sucks and this is why" blog with a fake name and location (I'm at University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign if you couldn't figure that out for yourselves) and 2) never read anonymous blogs again. Decision #1 wasn't particularly drastic--I don't write in any form of journal much anymore, so not going through the effort to write long (yet mysterious) passages on the view from the second floor of the ivory tower isn't exactly a hardship. Decision #2 required some thought, but then I realized, of all the anonymous blogs I read, I only ever enjoy one. I'd much rather read Francis' thoughts on can openers or Josh's take on Rex Morgan than...well...I won't link to the kind of writing that bores me to death. There's critical, and then there's mean, and I'm not in the mood to be mean.

A few months ago, a friend told me that he preferred the time when I had a regular site that I updated every now and then rather than an online journal. More specifically, he liked the page w/my reading list. If he wants to know what I'm reading now, he has to search through paragraphs of absolutely irrelevant data to find it, if it's there at all. That's the problem, really. I seldom write anything about what I'm reading, so even if he takes the time to search, he's not going to find anything.

The problem is, the way I read, it's almost impossible to set a book review out in type. I finish 5-6 books a week, on average. I usually have 8-10 going at once, one to three (or more, in the living room) in every room of the house, and a couple in the car. If I finish a book at lunch, and think, "Oh, I should write a review about this," by the time I get to the computer at night, I've already started a new book and read chunks of one or two others, so I can't possibly remember what I wanted to say at lunch time.

The way I read keeps me from drawing firm conclusions about the material. For instance, right now I'm reading three different Alice Munro books. How can I possibly separate one from the other when I'm reading, especially since they're so thick w/regionalism? It can't be done, not by me. And usually what I think about a book is largely dependent on its relationship to another book I've recently read. I finished _Old School_ by Tobias Wolff last week, and my impression of it was certainly colored by the fact that I'd recently read _The Fountainhead_. If I'd just last week re-read _Old Man and the Sea_, I would have focused more intently on the third part of the book (and perhaps if I'd recently re-read _Old Man and the Sea_, I'd understand the odd structure of the book, the "Master" chapter tacked on the end). A couple of weeks ago, I simultaneously read three books about earthquakes, and without a doubt, two of the three suffered in comparison with the one I started first because it was the most technical, presented in a very linear fashion that allowed me to flip forward and backward to easily cross-check information. So, it's difficult for me to evaluate any one book as a work of writing in and of itself, my judgement is too actively and too often clouded by everything else I'm reading.

I've lately been thinking that I need to do something else besides read. I can't empty my mind of what I've been reading quickly enough to get to sleep on time. I'm late everywhere I go, because I always try to get in a few more sentences. Right now I'm listening to a book on tape in the car during my commute, but reading the same book at lunch to hurry the process along so I can move on to something else. It's starting to feel like obsessive behavior, and that's not good. So maybe I should declare a moratorium on reading for a bit, and see what else I can do to keep myself busy during my lunch hour.

$#*%!

Why exactly am I paying dreamhost.com? So they can fail to maintain their servers properly? Their mail servers are constantly down, and it drives me crazy. I think I'm moving my domain.

Well...here it is, my new home. I'm sorry that I lost my old journal, but maybe it was time to start something new.

Mm...maybe this will kick me out of my "god, I hate writing" stage.