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Saturday, March 20, 2004

Stick a fork in me

I had Gonzaga v. Pitt, Maryland v. Duke in the Final Four.  Clearly, I’m not very good at this kind of thing.

Must . . . finish . . . talk . . . on narrative and cognitive disability.  Stop . . . following . . . NCAA.  Off to Columbia on Monday and Tuesday, and after that things calm down a bit.  I hope.

UPDATE:  It gets worse!  In the St. Louis and Phoenix brackets I don’t have a single dog left, since Stanford will not be playing Maryland and NC State will not be playing Dayton (that was my big upset pick, Dayton over UConn, ha ha ha).  Nor will Kentucky beat Kansas and move on to play Gonzaga.  In 15 years I’ve never been shut out of two brackets after the first weekend.  On the other hand, I do have St. Joe, Wake Forest, Pitt and OK State (not hard, since these are the 1-2-3-4 seeds), and I did have my old school, Illinois, beating Cincinnati and facing Duke.  I also had Texas beating Louisville in the sweet 16, though.

And I’m just about done with my talk for the good people of Columbia U, one of my other old schools.

Posted by Michael on 03/20 at 02:58 PM
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Friday, March 19, 2004

Mel Gibson Honored for Promoting Understanding

NANTES-ON-WABASH, INDIANA (Christian News Network), March 19-- Prominent conservative Catholic and Protestant leaders today announced that they plan to award Mel Gibson a special Citation of Interfaith Healing in response to his controversial film, The Passion of the Christ.

”The Passion is an exceptionally powerful film,” said Hugh Ginnow, chairman of the American Association for the Eradication of Popery, “and it has compelled us to rethink everything about our mission here on Earth.  Basically, we’ve spent almost five hundred years fighting the Whore of Babylon in the form she currently takes in the Vatican.  But Mel Gibson has shown us in two hours what we have failed to understand for half a millennium-- that the Vatican is not our enemy.  Jews are our enemy, and we must ask for our Catholic brothers’ forgiveness in Christ.”

Ginnow’s remarks were echoed by Tom More, president of the Catholic Campaign for the Re-Establishment of Medieval Practices and Punishments.  “Gibson has changed my life,” More said to a gathering of followers and reporters today.  “All my life I’ve been obsessed with sects-- all these damned Lutherans, Calvinists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Wesleyans, Puritans, Quakers, Baptists, Anabaptists, Seventh-Day Adventists, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Mennonites, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, all running around denying the authority of the Holy Father and the sacred mystery of the Eucharist.  Time was, I wanted to take them all and dip their various body parts into vats of boiling oil until they prayed to the Virgin Mother and acknowledged the power of the clergy to forgive sin.  But Hell, now I say let bygones be bygones-- we have bigger fish to fry.  It’s time for us to forget that whole crazy Reformation - Counter-Reformation thing and get back to job one, namely, persecuting the Jews.”

Ginnow and More also announced the formation of Partners in Christ, an interfaith organization dedicated to encouraging conservative Catholics and Protestants to forgive each other for centuries of religious bloodshed in Europe and the Americas.  “I’m sorry for so much,” said Ginnow to More, opening the reconciliation by admitting that “we’ve been beastly in Ireland, just beastly, and I hope you can forgive us.” ”Te absolvo,” replied More, “and I apologize for Cardinal Richelieu,” adding, “I love you, man.”

Curiously, however, tempers flared briefly as Ginnow pointed out that he had apologized for over three centuries of Protestant rule in Ireland since the Battle of the Boyne, whereas More had apologized for only one historical figure-- “and a guy who was despised by many of his own allies, at that,” remarked Ginnow.  But within minutes order and agape were restored as Ginnow offered to take More to see The Passion again-- “and this time,” he noted, “I’ll let you bless the popcorn.”

Posted by Michael on 03/19 at 06:49 AM
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Thursday, March 18, 2004

Further postponements of my delays

Still way too busy to get to the various posts I have lined up for When I Get a Second, so, in the meantime, folks, let me direct you to Larry Gallagher’s website, where you can listen to 38 seconds of Larry’s already-classic tune, “Wimpy White Guys with Guitars,” and then buy the CD so that you can listen to the other two and a half minutes, as well as Larry’s distinctive assortment of songs that somehow manage to be hilarious and moving by turns, and sometimes both in the same breath.  Also check out “World’s Saddest Girlfriend in the World” and “Disappointment Slough.” And those wimpy white guys with guitars!

For those of you who like to read CD reviews before buying CDs, there’s this.  And remember-- just because you’re buying CDs to celebrate the Socialists’ victory in Spain doesn’t mean you’re appeasing al-Qaeda!  Al-Qaeda hates this music!

Posted by Michael on 03/18 at 07:09 AM
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Wednesday, March 17, 2004

Just for the record

Hockey fans only:  I stepped onto the ice last night against the first-place team in the B division and scored on my first shift-- and then on my second, third, and fourth shifts, too. With 40 minutes left to go in a 55-minute game (running time), we were up 5-0 and I had four of ‘em.  Needless to say, that doesn’t happen all the time.  And needless to say, I didn’t score again-- hitting the post a bit later, and then hitting the knob of the goalie’s stick on a slapshot he never saw.  Still, the four-goal game gives me 43 on the year (in 24 games), and most important-- remember, there’s no I in “team,” and no X, J, or Q, either-- we’re 12-1-1 since January 4.

OK, enough fun and games.  Wednesday is Graduate Seminar Day, so back to work.

Posted by Michael on 03/17 at 01:42 AM
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Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Coming later this week

Comments on Spain; more on Naderite denial; and another another new essay, this one on the early career of Stanley Fish, with nary a word about golf.  It’s called “There is Nothing Inside the Text, or, Why No One’s Heard of Wolfgang Iser,” and it’s just appeared in Postmodern Sophistry:  Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise, edited by Gary A. Olson and Lynn Worsham (SUNY Press, 2004).  I’ll have a few words to say about the essay, but more than a few words to say about Terry Eagleton’s essay in the same volume.  In the meantime, my apologies to all my readers for the paucity of real posts over the past week-- it seems that I am the slowest paper grader in all of academe, spending an average of 45 minutes on each 1500-word undergraduate essay.  About 25 hours total.  Advice is welcome, as always.

Posted by Michael on 03/16 at 12:03 PM
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Conference update

I’m glad to see that my ideas for academic meta-conferences are catching on.  But if that’s the case, then I’d better drop the other shoe.

Ever since I served as a director of a humanities center (the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, 1997-2001), what I’ve really wanted to do-- instead of just hosting another conference-- is to direct a short video about conferences.  So far all I have are a couple of ideas I’ve hashed out with Janet and with my associate director at IPRH, Christine Catanzarite.  On day one of the conference, things would go as I’d suggested in my earlier post-- especially those three-minutes-plus questions/ comments that have little or nothing to do with the paper.  But then at the end of the day, we see the conference organizers get together and decide that on day two, all questioners will have to stand up and speak into microphones placed in the aisles of the auditorium.  The mikes, however, will be placed just in front of hidden metal plates under the aisle carpet, so that whenever a question goes on and on and turns into a three-part “comment,” the speaker can simply press a button and deliver sharp electric shocks to the feet of the questioner.

But alas, our conference organizers are foiled.  The next day, we learn that electric shocks to the feet do not, in fact, deter the questioners.  The first one gets up, says, “I wonder if I could comment on your paper’s failure to address neoliberalism--” and quickly jumps and cries out in pain as the speaker secretly “buzzes” him.  “Ow!” Slightly aggravated, the questioner soldiers on.  “As I was saying, the expansion of neoliberalism is the inevitable horizon of your reprivatization of the social, and-- ow!  Jesus!”—proceeding to deliver the rest of the “question” by hopping from one foot to the other-- “seems to me the unspoken assumption behind your move to-- ow!-- conceive of ‘empire’ as simply an aftereffect of intentionality-- ow!  ow!” and so on for another four or five minutes.

Over at Invisible Adjunct, I see that someone named “polychrome” in the comments section (comment # 7) has said,

“I must hang out at the wrong conferences. What I’m used to (this is all very interesting, but why aren’t we discussing me?) is really really bad coffee. There’s just something . . . special . . . about conference coffee.”

Well, polychrome, you read my mind.  The video will also contain a sight gag along the following lines: in the foreground, two conferees are doing shop talk that mixes academic comings and goings with sports commentary in a kind of mishmash-- “I hear Chicago picked up Cordell and Whalen at the deadline for a pair of prospects”; “yeah, I heard that too, but I can’t believe Texas-Austin got hit with recruiting violations for picking up candidates in the university-press helicopter”; “me, I see Kentucky taking an early exit from the playoffs unless they can get themselves a decent Hegelian”; “no way Princeton’s going to stay under the salary cap if they sign Gates,” that sort of thing.  In the background, though, we see a long line of people waiting to serve themselves at the coffee/tea table.  One by one, they hit the spigot on the coffee urn, add their creamer and sugar and whatever, take a sip from the little paper cup, and-- bbbleah!-- spew the foul and tepid coffee in all directions.  But-- and this is the key, of course-- no one gets out of the coffee line.  This scene should go on for 50-60 seconds.

Last but not least.  This one wasn’t really my idea-- partial credit (or whatever) here needs to go to my friend and former bandmate Kevin Carollo, from when he was a Comp Lit graduate student at Illinois.  So I need to know if it works.  Here goes.

On the final day of the conference, the “wrapup” panel is squabbling and the audience is getting unruly.  It seems that no one can agree on whether the term “hybridity” reinscribes the very forms of cultural essentialism it seeks to contest!  (Don’t you hate it when that happens?) Just as tempers are flaring dangerously, however, there is a flash of light, and a Being from Another Planet appears, dressed, Ed Wood-style, in tinfoil.  “People of Earth,” says the creature, “Please!  Please!  Stop all this bickering!  I have been sent from the planet Effexor to serve all humankind!” Conferees sit in stunned silence.  “People of Earth, on my planet, we have solved the problem of hybridity.” General gasping can be heard.  “And as a result, our academic conferences take fifteen minutes, not three exhausting days.” Now there are faint murmurs of interest.  “On Effexor, all our oceans are black, not just one.” [Shouldn’t you explain that this is a somewhat-dated Paul Gilroy joke? --ed. No. --mb.] “Please, people of Earth, let me leave with you copies of my most recent book, as well as brochures for future conferences on Effexor.” The murmuring increases-- the conference is collectively flummoxed.  Finally, one of the panelists slowly rises from her seat, one raised finger in the air.  “Um, creature from Effexor?”

“Yes, Earth person?”

“I have a question that’s really more of a comment. . . .”

Posted by Michael on 03/16 at 11:40 AM
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