The World is Stone

Every once in a great while, I feel the full effect of the down side of what Dean Dad rightly (IMHO) dignifies. It really is hard, and sometimes it is harder than others. Case in point:

• Today, I realized that the kids had opened up my car the night before to look for something (turned on the interior lights to find said item), and did not shut the door tightly, resulting in a dead battery as I turned the ignition as I headed out the next morning, only to realize that I wasn't going anywhere quickly...
• When I got to my office-not-really-only-for-the-summer-former-dorm-room, I still had no ethernet connection and the wireless was misbehaving, so I had to pack up and move my office to the library.
• My IRB (my first one solo, mind you) came back from my advisor looking like it had been through the metaphorical shredder, which I appreciate, but I know it frustrates her and makes her wonder why on earth she puts up with me, because she has it coming at her from all sides, too. I'm usually just another thorn in her side, another brick in her wall...if only I could be the perfect advisee...
• I need to spend some serious time teasing out theories and figuring out what bloody lens I'm using on  what is arguably a research project that could propel my career, but that requires time, silence, and some lucidity. I can never seem to find a space where I get all three at once. On a beau tout avoir... Really, I can barely manage to eek out 2 of the 3. Understandable, perhaps. But nothing can be done about it, expectations cannot be lowered at this level, I get it...believe in it. Still easier said than done.
• Summers are supposed to be calm and serene, so that a research project doesn't seem so daunting. Of course, the summer that I throw my hat over the wall would be the summer that I get dislocated, thrown into a major course hybridization project, and a host of other good problems, good any other summer but this summer.
• Of course, the feeling of undeserved honor leads to previously expressed feelings of imposterism.
• Ma cherie amour doesn't ask me to do at lot for her during work hours, but she has the uncanny knack of asking when I'm up to the gills in meetings and just can't, which then frustrates her and makes her wonder why on earth she puts up with me (are we sensing a theme here yet?)
• Of course, this IRB really needs some time, love and tenderness this week as to not cause the advisor any more grief, storm und strang, but...I have a friend coming in as a consultant on the aforementioned hybridization project, and she'll get my undivided attention for the next 2 days...
• I have a 16-page prospectus and several hundreds of pages to read in association with the aforementioned undeserved honor...and about 1.5 weeks to do it.
• I don't know who is more excited to see me get around to finishing, ma cherie amour, the kids, my advisor, or me!

So, I was doing my old-school mini pity-party cum pick-me-up virtual self-abjection via music....Le monde est stone was seeming particularly fitting today. Today was a light day, the Celine Dion version was sufficient. I like the Garou version better, but it's a little heavier...gotta be a cry-worthy bad day to put this one on. Today, I was resonating with the third stanza:

J'ai plus envie d'me battre
J'ai plus envie d'courir
Comme tous ces automates
Qui bâtissent des empires
Que le vent peut détruire
Comme des châteaux de cartes

For you poor French-deprived souls, there really is no way to translate this and do it justice. Yes, it can be translated...that doesn't mean one understands it or catches the lyric ennui. I always hope, though, so I was rooting around, and I had no idea so many people had taken on this song! And Cyndi Lauper? really?

This is my least favorite version of the song (big surprise), but actually, this song kinda works for her. Doesn't hurt that Tim Rice worked on this. Still lose 90% of the awesomeness of the text in translation, but it's still a good song.

Oh, BTW, I have divorced my FB page from Blogger, because I really think I should leave this for people who seek it out, not foist it upon the innocent! Because it is about to gear up again as a very therapeutic corner of reflexion for me......

I'll try to be more prolific....

Now THIS Rosetta Stone, I would buy!!

I'm fascinated and slightly unnerved all at once...It may be as close as I ever get to getting "chipped" (and you all know I'd do that in a heartbeat)...


Basically, I can purchase a basic data tag for around $225 from Objecs, where I can then embed up to 1,000 words of prose about myself in the third person for when I am gone.  Then, when the tag is installed on my tombstone, any RFID-enabled phone (think future iPhones) can scan the tag and read the embedded information. Right now, I could have a memorial story and a photo, but who knows what the future could hold (movies? books?). The tag's internal microchip will use the RFID phone's own magnetic field to power up just long enough to let the phone read the data, so in theory, the company claims that the tags should last at least 3,200 years. 

Honey, add this to the post-mortem checklist!

Online News Readers don't want to pay for news online

Newspapers think the new business model is to "digitize" the old analog business model. Good luck with that...

Diacritical Marks for your iPhone / iPod Touch

Who knew holding down the keys could bring you so many options?

Nothing is Original Anymore!

1232: .ii. demoiselles mout mignotes, qui estoient en pures cotes et trecies a une trece, fesoit Deduiz par grant noblece em mi la querole baler; mes de ce ne fet a parler come eus baloient cointement: l'une venoit tot belement contre l'autre, et quant eus estoient pres a pres, si s'entregetoient les bouches qu'i vos fust avis qu'euss 'entrebessoientou vis. Bien se savoient debrisier. (see the manuscript page!)


2002: 

Go see "An Open Letter to Joshua Kim"

AKA "The generalist/specialist smackdown". OK, not really....

How the NMAP Made RTB Reflexively Cry

NMAP: "I'm kind of tired of people claiming that academics and researchers are trying to 'tell practitioners what to do' - when nearly all of us these days who are researchers WERE and still ARE also practitioners. Why is the assumption that we don't listen to practitioners? That we have no real world experience ourselves? That practitioner knowledge should automatically trump theory?"


RTB: IMHO, the problem is that researchers DON'T tell practitioners what to do. Researchers in general do a lousy job of making their research findings praxiologically transparent. We talk at them, not to them. But we can't blame researchers for that...academe does not reward it. Consequently, the job often falls to some intermediary (for CALL@UTK, that would be me). But then the intermediaries get "uppity", want to try their hand at changing the world, only to find out that the only one changed is themselves. You teach, but are no longer a "teacher". You practice, but are no longer a "practitioner". You are a researcher...a new member of a particular flavor of cognoscenti. It is a position I will never be comfortable in...but I could never go back. It is a position in which there is no room for apathy because intense ambivalence fills every available bit of space. I lack the words to reflect on this at a 'meta' level, but images flash in my head...the poor/fortunate man freed from Plato's Cave is one. But for those of you who are closet fans of Cyrano de Bergerac, perhaps you will understand when I tell you that the image that resonates with me like a massive earthquake is the Comte de Guiche as he reflects on his life after becoming a Duc. I can totally see me playing this out in a decade. For those of you qui ne parle pas très bien le français, perhaps taking his reflective lines from the English edition and inserting myself into them somehow will help you understand. All I ask in return is that you send me a little something to give voice to my tension. A little theory-as-therapy, palliative philosophy. Even a citation will do...I know my way around a library:



(walking from Claxton to the Library)

RTB (AS THE FUTURE NMAP) (speaking of a teacher): Ay, there is one who has no prize of Fortune!--Yet is not to be pitied!

THE TA (with a bitter smile): But Dr. Berchot...

RTB : Pity him not! He has lived out his career, free in his thoughts, as in his actions free!

THE TA (in the same tone): Dr. Berchot!

RTB  (haughtily): True! I have all, and he has naught;. . .Yet I am proud to shake his hand!

(Waving to a colleague): Bye!

COLLEAGUE: I'll go over with you.

(RTB waves goodbye to the TA, and goes with the colleague toward the ramp.)

RTB (pausing, while the colleague goes up the ramp):
Ay, true,--I envy him.
Look you, when life is full of scholarly success
--Though the past holds no action foul--one feels
A thousand self-disgusts, of which the sum
Is not remorse, but a dim, vague unrest;
And, as one mounts the ramp of scholarly renown,
The NMAP's leather wheeled briefcase trails within its wheels
A sound of dead illusions, vain regrets,
A rustle--scarce a whisper--like as when,
Mounting the ramp to the sidewalk, your  leather wheeled briefcase
Sweeps in its path the dying autumn leaves.