Completely Unnecessary

…for not posting.

I mean, it does. I know that more than one of you check this blog regularly for new and (ahem) insightful content.

But I can’t control your poor life choices.

So I’ve been tempted this week to blog about the lovely and soul-inspiring weddings of biddies - because obviously that’s awesome.

I think if you can’t be happy for 80+-year-old women getting married you don’t really understand what life is about. There’s fundamental level at which you don’t understand happiness.

[Ed. note - Um, Firefox 3, vaguely appealing though it is, does not seem to have incorporated spellcheck in a timely manner. This is absolutely disastrous for your editor, who can't spell her way out of a very small shoebox.] [Oh thank crap, it kicked back in; I had spelled disastrous wrong. I'm more of a big picture kind of girl.]

Anyway, I’ve been sick and also working/marking/watching Angel, so it’s really a grab bag of reasons why I’ve lacked the wherewithal to fulfill the blogging duties that - I will remind you - come with little to no financial reward.

I had something to say. I think it was this:

I know the Administration only has a short number of months (yay!) left in office, but this doesn’t mean that they should drive down their game.

It will potentially frighten several of you to learn that my father is a Republican. Not of the truly alarming variety - he just believes in lower taxes, etc, etc. (whereas I believe in stealing from the rich, etc., etc.).

Anyway, he sends me an article last week in which George Will (displaying the youngest picture GenXers have ever seen of George Will) is all about drilling in ANWAR and everywhere offshore because the Chinese are already doing it.

Eh, they’re not.

But, if the story gets repeated enough times, it looks like good enough impetus for Bush to advocate drilling off all our coastlines a few days later. The NYT, however, is not so impressed with that, considering it won’t lower gas prices until 2030.

But hey - talking points trotted out in the press ten days before they become ‘policy’ is just typical. Could these guys try anymore? I mean, where are those bold policy suggestions of yore? Isn’t there a country we should think about invading?

Oh, or is it just that we’ve gotten lazy, considering the oil contracts with one that we’ve already invaded?

Personally, I’m happier thinking about old ladies getting married.

Congrats to them and everyone taking the plunge (especially to Elissa and Keith, who I love with all my heart… even though they’re not gay. It’s not, like, a definite criteria for my support of your union).

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I am many things, but - as anyone who has watched me move can attest - graceful is not one of them.

Charming stories of my disastrous exploits can be found here, here (with picture) and here.

My inherent calamity-proneness is why black table tops against black carpeting in dark bars are a terrible, terrible idea. And, the use of marble is also a no-no.

That part that looks yellow? That’s all a bruise (exacerbated by the fact that I slipped on the bathmat the other day and slammed that area straight into the tub. Nice.)

Anyway, so I clearly walked into a table at the bar. Fair enough.

But it was also raining that night. And as I rode home, my bike slipped riding over the tram tracks and my tire went straight in the groove. Off I went, managing - amazingly - not to damage parts I’d already damaged:

I’m happy to say that my right leg bore the brunt of the insanity, including that amazing bruise on the inside/back of my right knee. That, my friends, is a difficult place to bruise.

I think it’s worth a 9.7 from the Russian judge.

Also notice the lumpage on the knee in the bruise picture. Awesome. (The left knee also took a hit, but the left shin stayed out of it, thank god. It does not feel good as it is.)

Anyway, all these pics are four days later and my tire needs some serious truing.

To be fair though, by bike took what should have been an obscene disaster and turned it into only a few bruises and a bit of a banged knee. I still have the utmost confidence in her.

Black marble tabletops, however, are on my shit list.

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I don’t really have anything to blog about. I know this will come as a fatal blow to some, but, realistically, you really shouldn’t be hitching your cart to my tiny intellectual pony. It’s for the best.

My thesis is done, which comes as a shock to the both of us. It’s finished two days before the due date, which is new. The fact that I’m not jotting down notes on the way to turning it in is truly a first.

Though I’d really like never to discuss it again, possibly the most interesting thing I found in my sample set is that, aside from advisers, all the people interviewed in regard to Clinton were women.* It’s not necessarily relevant to what I’m about to say, but it’s interesting and, really, what on this blog has ever proved relevant anyway?

Here’s The Age’s assessment of Obama’s potential running mates:

Many people in the party would like to see the two senators on the same ticket. Other names floated as possible running mates for Senator Obama include former Virginia governor Mark Warner, Virginia senator Jim Webb, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and Senator Joe Biden.

Missing from this list are Janet Napolitano, the Governor of Arizona, and Kathleen Sebelius, Kansas’ bipartisan governor.

Granted Brian Schweitzer, the Montana governor’s whose name has also been floated prominently, is also missing, but… seriously - no one thinks it’s going to be Biden. As much as I love him, Biden offers the prospect of a double-Senator ticket with only the support of a small, blue state in exchange. Smart money’s on the governor of a redish state.

Interesting that Napolitano and Sebelius keep getting left out of the mainstream media’s lists, though they appear everywhere on the lefty blogosphere - and, ostensibly, in the Obama campaign.

Truth be told, I hope not to talk about women, gender, politics and the media for quite some time. If we run into each other at the bar, I know lots about puppies, the Congo and gossip. I have lots and lots of non-political dirt that I’m absolutely bursting to share. Let’s talk about that instead!

* - Notice that awkward, overly long sentence structure? It appears throughout my thesis as well.

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For reasons left unsaid, 2am on a Friday night appears to be a particularly good time to recount yet another family story.

The problem with me is that, while holding onto only a tiny modicum of morality, I was raised with a goodly amount of cultural Catholic guilt. Not the kind of guilt that comes from god, but the kind of guilt that comes from a uniquely Roman Catholics milieu.

To the story - it involves Manuel, the server for years untold at Abril, my family’s Mexican restaurant of choice since I was small. (Abril has since closed and remained, as far as I am able to tell from afar, a blank pariah on the corner of Kedzie and Logan.)

When I say since I was small, I mean biweekly visits since the age of four. The staff knew my gringa tinyness and then not so tinyness. And I always ordered strawberry milkshakes - because Abril made the best milkshakes ever to grace the face of the Earth.

Anyway, in the years of my not-so-tinyness, say about 16, Manuel made up my shake as usual. He placed on the top a maraschino cherry, an extra bonus to the strawberryey-milky wonderness.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been a fan of maraschino cherries.

I turned to my mother and asked, “Do you want this?” I perhaps, in my ignorance and youthful intolerance, made a face.

My mother looked up and indicated that Manuel - the lovely man who had taken me to the pinata when I was four - had seen my distaste for his cherry.

I nearly died.

I have had a similar feeling every time I think of the horrible moment in which I realized he’d seen my lack of appreciation. And disdain.

I’m not kidding. Perhaps a decade hence and the restaurant gone, I routinely think of Manuel’s face in the moment that I utterly ruined the nice thing he tried to do for me.

This caliber of small stuff ups still affect my psyche in a way that completely overstates their probable importance to those afflicted.

Let’s just say I haven’t changed.

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Right now there’s a maelstrom of debate in my head over whether I should come back to the States in July or somehow scam/visa/marry my way into at least one more term at UniMelb.

I quite enjoy my jobs at the moment, and comparing the pay and hours to my last ’serious’ work makes me want to ring them up and giggle maniacally. (Remembering working there makes me not want to ring.)

But, obviously, I need to keep my ear to the ground for other possibilities.

Mostly, I think I missed my calling as a 19th century lady of leisure. I could deal with the corsets and sexism with excesses of snuff and ponies. I am exceptionally good at doing nothing for long periods of time. And reading literature.

Other careers I would accept include:

• searching for a film in which Tom Wilkinson gives a bad performance.
• professional cougar hugger
• crotchety old man that sits at the pub and chats to you while you’re ordering

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They consist of capers, Bacardi Gold (god love you, Shawn), Michael Clayton (maybe, haven’t watched it yet), and George Orwell. They are all I’m doing tonight, and for a good portion of tomorrow.

And sleep.

Everyone always jokes about the grad school lifestyle - we’re always so tired, ha ha ha. It’s funny because it’s not really true. Grad school isn’t that hard. Mostly we drink at the Corkman a lot.

But for the last two weeks, I have lived the dream. Violeta had a question while we were coding today, and I laid down on the floor while we rehashed whether or not ‘boat people’ counted as members of the public (or some such thing). I fell asleep and missed half the question. Then I fell asleep at the desk timing John Howard speaking, stopwatch in hand.

So then I did that for about six more hours and then worked on things that were due yesterday for another four. One drink at the bar pretty much sufficed.

This weekend = no study, no gender, and certainly no goddamn media theory. My students are suffering - they have essays due on Monday - but I am taking the weekend off on their behalf. My bear blanket has never looked so good.

I’m a history loser, so my free time will be spent rereading Homage to Catalonia (which, if you haven’t read, is amazing - George Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War), but I plan on doing nothing productive.

Nothing.

For those of you who read this blog for news - and I seriously question your judgment - here’s a remake of Clinton’s 3am ad at which my spiteful and mean sense of humor (or perhaps fatigue) had me crying with laughter today:

I still really like the ’something’s happening in the world,’ but also wonder who on Earth at MSNBC taped her for so long?

Video via Wonkette

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Looks like Chelsea Clinton is all grown up:

The softballs come gently, lobbed by voters who support her mother and are thrilled to see that the awkward duckling of the Clinton administration has become a glamorous swan.

That’s the opening line of a LA Times profile of Clinton daughter turned surrogate. Let see which ‘women politicians in the media’ boxes we can tick:

Her hair is long and highlighted blond. Her black flared jeans are tight, and her gray blazer nips at her small waist. She has a boyfriend, her own apartment and a terrier named Soren. (After the philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard.)

Hair, clothes, and martial status - check!

Mostly, her voice is low, slightly raspy like her dad’s, and curiously monotone.

Tone of voice - check! Though, also curiously, she’s being criticized for not being shrill. That’s new(ish).

…despite her poise occasionally slips into adolescent cadence, ending a statement with a question mark…

Subtle undermining of her competence - check!

Bonus points for checking the Hillary-Clinton-box of extremely unflattering photo!

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a leading political media scholar, said in response to a different LA Times question: ‘I don’t think adult daughters are held to a different standard.’

Yeah, neither do I. And I bet Jamieson is annoyed that she was quoted in a story that reaffirmed so many of the double binds faced by women in the public sphere.

Via Jezebel

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How great are figs? I’ve been tentatively eating them more and more. At the store the other night, I selected them over dried apples to feed my fiendish need for carbohydrates these days. My father would be proud.

I am about to tell you a charming family story:

My family used to have part of a timeshare in Palm Springs, and we’d go there when work called my father out to LA. When I was four, my father spent a good part of his vacay concerned (my mother might use the term ‘obsessed’) about the apparent constipation of his young (and adorable) progeny.

That’s me.

To the head-shaking bemusement of my mother, my father became convinced that feeding me lots and lots of figs was the only way to solve this pressing problem. (Again, my mother might dispute the severity of the problem, and perhaps also the use of the word ‘problem’ to describe the situation.) My father, however, was not to be dissuaded, and I was handed fig after fig after fig.

I really did not like figs. It was not a fun couple days.

My father’s consternation grew as my system seemed wholly unaffected by the absurd amount of fibre he was pumping into it.

Only when we started cleaning the apartment in preparation for leaving did my continued constipation become clear: they began finding figs everywhere.

I had hidden them in plants, behind the phonebook, between couch cushions - they’d gone pretty much everywhere except my mouth.

My parents were shocked - my father by the subterfuge, my mother by the number of figs I’d been given (and she didn’t know the half of it; in my memory, I chucked a good number of them off the balcony).

My parents spent the next half an hour attempting to get their young (and somewhat less-adorable-seeming) progeny to detail the locations of quietly rotting figs.

It was the most food/father-related head shaking I’ve ever seen out of my mother. (Aside, of course, from the night she went to Springfield and my father fed me so much red cabbage and mayonnaise that I vomited. That, however, is a story for a different day.)

Despite this background, I’ve found in recent years that I quite like my Palm Springs nemeses. And, on occasion, my father - provided he’s not on a mission.

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I’m doing some research at the moment on a beating death of a Sudanese refugee in Melbourne. Though an Australian citizen, the framing by the press largely concerned the ‘refugee problem’ in Australia, etc., etc.

Now firmly behind the 8-ball, I’ve been doing journal research for about the last three hours. Just as I was about to call it a day (or, rather, call it a dinner and then study more at the Standard), I saw an article by S. Brownback.

And wouldn’t you know it, the Senator from Kansas wrote an article for Mediterranean Quarterly in 1999 condemning the situation in Sudan, calling it a ‘genocide’:

If I bring anything to the debate on Sudan, I hope it is the ability to sound the alarm regarding the crimes against humanity and the genocide practiced by the government of Sudan. Please note my lack of polite phrasing–this is deliberate. Our failure to use the word genocide against Rwanda in 1994 helped facilitate the deaths of a reported eight hundred thousand people within a short, three-month period, even as we watched these events unfold on CNN. We should not make this mistake again.

It’s almost as if he isn’t evil just because I disagree with most of what he says. I know rationally this can’t be the case but… maybe I’m just hungry. Yesterday I had laksa with a side of mild food poisoning. Here’s hoping food w/o sickness will put my head back on straight.

* - In fairness, Brownback wrote an op-ed for the NYT explaining his stance on evolution and creation, lamenting the that in our ’sound-bite political culture, it is unrealistic to expect that every complicated issue will be addressed with the nuance or subtlety it deserves.’ I don’t agree with his views, but his justified lament gets the link.

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Re: my previous post. He definitely walks outside to blow his nose.

It is 12:30 at night and I just heard the telltale sounds of my neighbor attempting, once and for all, to burst every single one of his aveoli.

Godspeed, mate.  Also, ew.

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