why we banned legos

something fascinating from an article in "Rethinking Schools," check it out:

Carl and Oliver,* both 8-year-olds in our after-school program, huddled over piles of Legos. They carefully assembled them to add to a sprawling collection of Lego houses, grocery stores, fish-and-chips stands, fire stations, and coffee shops. They were particularly keen to find and use "cool pieces," the translucent bricks and specialty pieces that complement the standard-issue red, yellow, blue, and green Lego bricks.

"I'm making an airport and landing strip for my guy's house. He has his own airplane," said Oliver.

"That's not fair!" said Carl. "That takes too many cool pieces and leaves not enough for me."

"Well, I can let other people use the landing strip, if they have airplanes," said Oliver. "Then it's fair for me to use more cool pieces, because it's for public use." (read more)

I think it's great, some people disagree. When I first read this I only found one response to it, written by a fairly reactionary and disingenuous conservative columnist. Now it seems this thing is getting to be a huge deal, and there are so many people talking and blogging and writing about it, it would be impossible for me to choose one or two to put up here. Just Google "why we banned Legos" and you'll get a barrage of opinions.

Anyways, I just think it's interesting that, agree or disagree with the decision to ban Legos, this thing has become exactly what the teachers feared it was - a huge allegory about society. As MRhé might say, it's pretty f-ing meta.

riddle me this

why do people keep asking me what I'm going to do when school is over? I have two obligations a week: class on Thursday nights from 6-9 and a meeting with my professor/boss on Tuesday afternoons. That means I have a total of five structured hours per week. Most people have five times that much structure. Anyhow, the point is, I don't "do" anything now, what's going to change once school ends?

and another thing

this also makes me nauseous, from "A Girl's Guide to Where in the World is Matt Lauer." again, it's a mystery why I was reading this in the first place, but anyways... The female visitor to Galway is advised:

You, my friends, are probably not men, meaning beer will not likely be the focal point of your Irish stay. However, you should know what you're getting yourself into, just in case you're not a regular beer drinker.

• The Stouts - Guinness, Beamish, and Murphy's
• Lager - Harp
• Ale - Smithwicks

Well thank the LORD someone clarified this! Being a GIRL, I would have had no f-ing idea what to do when faced with a situation involving beer. Beer is scary, I've been told it puts hair on your chest. but thanks to this lady, if I ever go to Galway at least I'll "know what I'm getting myself into."

By the way, if your readers don't even drink beer, you know, because they're "probably not men," then how is it helpful to distinguish between a stout, a lager, and an ale, you dumb sexist bitch?

don't ask why, but I was reading an article about business manners earlier. tip #4, "Don't use technology as a substitute for interaction," points out that

This can be a bit harder if you're a member of the younger generation of workers, who grew up using e-mail for everything and may not feel completely comfortable engaging in long conversations.

is is just me or is that ridiculously disturbing?

may!

In honor of May Day, I have several things to protest.

1. Pants. A wise man named Alec Baldwin once said to Canteen Boy, "You know what I hate? Underpants."

While I'm not the kind of girl that blogs about her preference in unmentionables, I'll tell you what I do hate: PANTS. and TIGHTS. and SHOES. I am so f-ing sick of wearing pants every day, and even sicker of having my precious few skirt-wearing occasions tainted by having to wear hosiery and shoes. Mother Nature messed up and gave me a taste of warm weather, apparently before she was ready to make a lasting commitment to it. It's f-ing MAY! My legs and feet are yearning to break free from the oppressive bonds of winter! I want to wear skirts and shorts and sandals! True, I've worn flip-flops pretty much every day since the middle of March, but it's not quite as enjoyable when I'm getting cold rainwater scum on my feet instead of a killer Reef Tan.


2. Stalking. There was a show on NPR yesterday about a football team at a big university (I can't remember where, and I can't seem to find it on the website, but this is fairly similar) that got in big trouble for... wait for it... drinking. As we all know, college students, especially athletes, never drink (well maybe they really don't at Division I schools, but the Trinity ones were pretty OK with it). Long story short, each member of the team signs a contract at the beginning of the year saying they will not use alcohol, drugs, etc., and violating the contract will get you thrown off the team.

Enter Facebook. Apparently, faculty and administrators at this school got access to some players' Facebook profiles, where they discovered a variety of clues revealing that the players had been misbehaving, like wall posts referring to parties involving people drinking something you'd never expect to rear its ugly head on a college campus - beer!

Now I'm not saying that these guys didn't break their contracts, and I'm not saying that they should get to flagrantly violate the promise they made. I'm definitely not saying that anyone should condone the amount of drinking that happens on most college campuses, although I do think these coaches and administrators are just lying to themselves if they think these guys aren't drinking. But this isn't even about the alcohol, or the fact that they are athletes, or even the fact they got caught and might get thrown off the team. It's the way they got caught that bothers me, because it reflects just how much access people have, and how much access people give, to private information.

First of all, these guys, and everyone else who uses Facebook etc. or writes a public blog, ought to know that anyone could read it. For some reason nobody actually thinks about it though. Just a few weeks ago I was shocked when I found out that people from school were reading my blog - it was kind of a wake-up call for me. I got paranoid and decided I wouldn't use people's names anymore, but really, that's not enough to keep me out of trouble if someone really wanted to mess with me.

Last night K_____ (see?) told me that she might be getting expelled from school for posting an assignment on LiveJournal. The assignment was to write a letter, just as a writing exercise, not a letter that would actually be mailed off, to a public official (she chose Deval Patrick). After she finished it she wanted a friend to proofread it but for some reason couldn't send it as an email attachment, so she posted it on her LiveJournal for him to read. The letter didn't include her name but did say which college she goes to. At the end of the assignment she wrote a message to her friend, saying "I pulled this out of my ass at 2am." Not very poetic, but anyways...

After she handed it in, she got a phone call from one of her professors, who was in tears, telling her that the school's web-monitoring person had found the letter and that the dean of her college wanted to meet with her and discuss it. She showed up and found herself in a room with every faculty member in the entire department, plus the Dean and some other administrators. She had to apologize to each one of them individually for tarnishing the college's reputation (as they put it), and now she just has to wait and find out whether that was good enough. If she gets expelled she won't get credit for the entire semester, and she'll have a tough time ever completing her degree because her program is only offered at two schools in the area (one of which she could not get into even before she began her 'criminal' career, and the other being her current school).

I don't think they have any right to expel her - what she did may have been wrong, kind of, but nothing that warrants getting expelled. She didn't have any intentions of actually sending it to Deval Patrick (or anyone else for that matter), and even if she did, who cares if she "pulled it out of her ass"? If the issue is the language, I'd argue that students' use of foul language has absolutely nothing to do with the schools they attend or the quality of their work. And we're talking about the content of what she actually said, it's just like the drinking - professors would be lying to themselves if they thought students didn't procrastinate and write papers at the last minute. They know it happens, and so does Deval Patrick.

More to the point, it's insane that they're considering the letter - because of the language or content of that last sentence - any kind of diatribe against her college. She said nothing about the school besides the fact that she attends it. Even if she did, what would happen if every student who complained about their school got expelled? These are very questionable grounds for expulsion, and a really slippery slope, which I hope they realize.



3. Poetry. This isn't actually a protest at all, just an awesome Leonard Cohen poem I found, called "The Only Poem." My LC obsession has cooled down recently, but he's still an f-ing genius. Stuff like this makes me wish I were born Canadian, Jewish, male...and, you know, a genius.

This is the only poem
I can read

I am the only one
can write it
I didn't kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn't turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn't sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
one nights like this
by one like me

april wasn't all that cruel this year

There are probably two or three people in the universe who I haven't [drunkenly] told about my plans to throw a Super Festive Post-Graduation Drunken Softball Extravaganza. If you're one of those people, I should let you know that I live right across the street from the best little league field in all of Lowell. I don't know what makes it 'the best,' probably just that I can see it from my porch, but whatever, it's the best. Anyhow, I was at school all day pretending to work but not really doing anything, so I decided to come home and pretend to work on the porch. That didn't really work out very well because there was an awesome game going on and also, somehow I get wireless internet out here. I've been totally unproductive, surprise, surprise.

But blogging is kind of like work, at least in the sense that it's something I haven't done in forever. I have an excuse though - I was really sick! OK, I was only sick for like 12 hours, but it was horrible timing. I literally haven't gotten sick since the first summer after I graduated from college, so I don't handle it very well. I missed an entire day of this conference that I was supposed to present a paper at, a paper that I've been working on for months with my boss/professor. So that sucked. But I made a full recovery and went to the conference all day on Friday.

Since I am mentally unable to sit in one place and listen for more than 15 minutes, I volunteered to photograph, which gave me justification to do what I do best - wandering around aimlessly for 7 hours talking to people and occasionally taking some pictures. As far as academic conferences go, it was actually a really cool one; people came from all around the world to present about community-university partnerships (in the past I've referred to them as 'stupid f-ing community-university partnerships, but once we finished our paper they seemed a lot less aggravating).

On Friday night we went to see Robert Randolph and the Family Band at the Avalon. Their music itself was along the lines of Medeski Martin and Wood, but they reminded me more of the North Mississippi All-Stars, a very Southern sound, long jams but with a lot of bass and a lot of energy. It was by far one of the best live shows I've seen in a while - possibly the best since the legendary New Deal extravaganza at the more-infamous-than-legendary Palladium. Palladium horror story #374: I briefly dated a guy who left a bouquet of dead sunflowers on the hood of my car. I should have known better - he had a Palladium "Gold Card."

Speaking of the North Mississippi All-Stars, the Beachcomber opens in just a few weeks! The first few Friday nights they have a special deal where the $10 cover gets you a free season pass. For anyone who hasn't been there, it's uh-mazing. It's a Cape Cod institution: a big shack-like thing with sand and sawdust all over the floor, overlooking the most gorgeous beach on the Cape, with incredible live music almost every night and a ridiculous raw bar. Opening night is May 24th - who's coming with me?

My yearning for home-cooked food struck again yesterday, and I spent pretty much the entire day cooking Syrian food. My ancestors did not mess around: the food is almost impossibly labor-intensive and time-consuming to make, and there are almost no shortcuts. There are definitely times when, although you end up with an equally "home-cooked" meal, you will have used the microwave, a store-bought sauce, or even spices from a jar. I'll admit I didn't make my own yogurt or grind my own lamb, but other than that I was faithful to the way I saw this stuff made when I was growing up.

I got home from the store around 2pm and started making tabbouli - by the time 6pm rolled around I hadn't even finished drying the parsley yet. This is as much a function of my procrastinating and puttering around as anything else, but still... I brought some of the food to a potluck at school today and a friend asked for the recipe, so here it is. Keep in mind this is one of my Not Recipes, and if you enjoy the tabbouli you get at the supermarket, or Lebanese tabbouli for that matter, you might be surprised at how this comes out. So feel free to omit ingredients you don't like, add other stuff, or change the amounts according to your tastes:

Rinse a cup of medium bulghur wheat and get most of the water out, then put it in a big bowl. Add 5 or 6 big tablespoons of olive oil, the juice of two lemons, about a teaspoon of salt, and a tablespoon of Syrian pepper (which I will explain below). Mix it up and let it sit and marinate while you deal with the vegetables.

Wash and drain 2 bunches of flat (sometimes called Italian) parsley. Spread out a bath towel and put the leaves on it as you pick them off the stems; let it dry out for a while then pick up the ends of the towel and shake it around to get more of the water off (you don't want to bruise and wilt the parsley by patting it dry - if you do pat it dry to save time, be gentle.)

Put about half the parsley in the big bowl on top of the wheat. Then add in the other vegetables, which are all chopped: three seeded tomatoes (or use beefsteak tomatoes and don't worry about seeding them), half a large peeled cucumber or a whole small one, a bunch of scallions, and bunch of fresh mint. Add the rest of the parsley, mix it all up, cover it tightly, and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. Then taste it and adjust the seasonings, adding more lemon juice, oil, salt, Syrian pepper, or whatever else you want. It gets better the longer it sits in the fridge.

Syrian pepper, or da'a, is what makes Syrian food taste like Syrian food, so don't skimp on it, and whatever you do, do NOT try to use plain black pepper instead! Over the years I've realized that everyone makes this a little differently, even within a single family, which is kind of weird. I prefer this formulation; it's a little heavier on the cinnamon than most, and easier to remember because it goes 3-3-2-2-1-1:

3 parts allspice
3 parts cinnamon
2 parts black pepper
2 parts white pepper
1 part nutmeg
1 part ground cloves

remember me?

I used to write stuff, mostly emails and blog posts but occasionally other things too, like my thesis. Well all of that is over now, thanks to Facebook. Facebook is ruining my life, it's the devil incarnate, it's irresistible. I love you Roo Roo, but you're going to pay for this one.

dear amanda and scott:

I have been holding back for as long as I could, but I can no longer sit back and watch... I started to write this as a comment on Mike's blog, but it got a little lengthier than I originally planned, so I'm putting it here. fyi, people who don't read Scott's blog or Mike's blog, this is a response to this and later, this

a) Scott, let people comment on your blog so we don't have to bother poor Mike like this.

b) Amanda, that shit will kill you. Equal and 'dietary neutrality' do not belong in the same sentence together. Most artificial sweeteners are made from toxic and even carcinogenic compounds. But you knew I was going to say that. I won't bore you with the 'facts,' this is easy enough to read up on.

c) In reality, I see this as more of a political issue. Guess who owns Equal? Mon-fucking-santo. The same people who bring us radically persistent pesticides and GMOs and sue poor small farmers who have the misfortune to live downwind from them. They have revolutionized intellectual property rights in the worst possible way and represent everything that is wrong about agribusiness. Again, it would take too much space to go into all the reasons why Monsanto sucks, so I will leave it at that.

d) Splenda is owned by Johnson & Johnson, who some might consider to be slightly less evil than Monsanto. Either way, they recently bought up a bunch of negative domain names hoping to quiet the growing number of people who question the health effects of Splenda.

As far as what those health effects actually are, everyone knows I'm not much of a chemist so I won't pretend I'm an expert on this one. But I've read that sucralose is a cholorocarbon, which means that not only is it not as 'natural' as the 'made from sugar' tagline would imply, but also that it's, well, a dumb thing to put in your body. I welcome any corrections on all that.

e) Regarding wheat gluten... Obviously we do produce a lot of wheat here, and it's subsidized pretty heavily so we can get our greedy little hands into every developing economy that used to produce its own wheat, but now cannot due to signing up for some awesome "free" market trade agreement. So we are able to sell it for a low enough price that it ends up being cheaper for say, Uganda, to import U.S. wheat than to produce their own, resulting in food insecurity as well as over-dependence on the global commodity prices for wheat as well as whatever crap they decided to monocrop or manufacture instead. This is a whole other can of worms though.

As far as the competitive advantage is concerned, I can't think of a definitive answer, but maybe it has something to do with what the gluten is used for. A lot of times trade restrictions are meant to be prohibitive for political reasons (e.g. the notorious EU 'banana regime'... banana quality standards made it impossible for some African countries to sell their bananas to the EU, in order to protect prices/profits for corporate/evil plantations operating in Latin America and elsewhere).

Aaaaanyways, I think that this might be an issue of the return we get on food grade wheat gluten (as opposed to feed grade). We can make a better profit processing and exporting food grade wheat for certain purposes like bread and Oreos. Meanwhile, because China has industrialized so rapidly they haven't quite caught up with all the pesky social and environmental regulations that we subject our poor agribusinesses to, making their feed grade gluten pretty affordable (although of questionable healthiness). So to make a long story short, if I had to guess I'd say our food grade wheat is cheaper for them to buy, their feed grade wheat is cheaper for us to buy. The capital is flowing to where it gets the highest return, the agribusinesses win again, and there are a bunch of dead pets laying around.

editorial note

due to an, um, incident, I have decided it's probably best to stop using people's names in my posts. I hope this doesn't cause too much mystification, or take away from the fascinating-ness of my narcissistic ramblings.

Also, I think I'm about two days away from this:

Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu

notes from underground

this may or may not come as a surprise to you, but I simply did not do any work this week. I last blogged on Monday, a day that was completely devoted to useless introspection and worrying about not doing any work. The maxim of the day was:

1. Write a crap thesis
2. Edit it

After blogging about it and washing some dishes, I called [GERTRUDE STEIN] and broke down, hysterically returning to "I'm a confused young child and I need my mother" mode. [GERTRUDE STEIN] is a professor with many misguided students of her own, but she was a little taken aback upon discovering that I have no "goal for the future." Oh well. We set up a meeting. I went out drinking in Nashua and saw some good live music.

On Tuesday I slept late, accosted [MARV ALBERT] and told him about my dilemma. He left me with the following:

Motivation does not cause production, production causes motivation.

Seemed like a good idea at the time. Then I had my meeting with [GERTRUDE STEIN], who assigned me a single task to be completed by the next day:

Make a list of things to do.

I made the list, divided the tasks into four categories of difficulty and time-consumption, and got ready to tell [JOSEPH STIGLITZ] that I had decided not to finish on time. He was, to say the least, not pleased. It was very awkward, I think he felt like has done all he can and failed. Of course, I'm the one who sucks, but I think deep down he knows that.

I went home, took a long scalding shower, went out drinking in Cambridge, and saw some good live music.

On Wednesday I slept late, and [GERTRUDE STEIN] stopped by my house to see my list of things to do. I showed it to her and we decided on some deadlines for things I should get done by our next meeting. She gave me some money and a foot-bath-thingy that she bought for my dead grandmother. Then I went up to Salem, dropped my vacuum cleaner off to be fixed, and went to the music store to see about my guitar. It would cost $150 to fix, a big expense considering I paid $25 for the guitar, so it's back to sandpaper and wood glue for me and my axe. The music store dude also tried to help me find a 4-track cassette deck with pitch control to slow down my interviews with, the cheapest used one was $180. I said to the dude,

I just don't have enough money to fix all of my problems in life.

When I got home I smoked a little [PLAIN OLD TOBACCO] and started rereading Notes From Underground. Let me tell you, there could not have been a worse time for me to get [PLAIN OLD TOBACCO] and read a narrative about inertia and alienation. The Underground Man said:

Oh, if I had done nothing simply from laziness! Heavens, how I should have respected myself, then. I should have respected myself because I should at least have been capable of being lazy; there would at least have been one quality, as it were, positive in me, in which I could have believed myself.

So yeah, that was depressing. On Thursday I woke up early and got a phone call from my friend [JUDY BLUME], whose anti-procrastination advice seems to have failed both of us. I went to school and picked up the readings for the conference paper, put them in my bag, and proceeded along with my time-wasting. I did some emailing, checked out some phrenology charts, and considered doing radical brain surgery on myself.

[DOSTOEVSKY HIMSELF] approached me and asked how things were going. I told him exactly how things were going... He said that in the 13 years it took him to write his dissertation, the best advice he ever got was accept his own unique writing process, as different and/or crazy as it might seem to others. He told me he has noticed that I get myself worked up so much before I even begin writing, and that certainly adds to the amount of time it takes me to produce. A lot of people think that's my 'problem' because they can just sit down and write something. He told me:

Getting overwhelmed is the first step of your process, always. But in a way, you MUST work yourself up, so don't beat yourself up over it. Recognize that you do get overwhelmed, that you will get overwhelmed, and accept it as a part of your writing process.

That was some of the most sensible advice I've gotten so far. Everyone tells me to stop 'being hard on myself,' but it seems much more useful to frame it as accepting something I do and working with myself, rather than fixing something I do (or don't do) and trying to change myself. I also tend to believe that I ought to be hard on myself, considering that myself is a person who does very little work. Anyhow, that made me feel better and gave me the energy I needed to get through the rest of the day.

I TA'ed my butt off for the hour or two left before class, sharing some sage-ish advice about the group projects, while simultaneously trying to do the reading that all the actual 'students' had finished days before. Whatever.

To make a long story short, my thesis is no closer to finished than it was two weeks ago. But I got a slew of [hopefully] good advice nuggets in my travels, I have a dozen new articles to read and a new paper to write, and I did a lot of yoga, drinking, and live-music-listening. Now I have to go make some lentil stew, lest I lose my not-writing-my-thesis momentum.

deterioration and reframing of the plan

I hadn't had an e-crisis in days, then this morning I woke up from a thesis nightmare of epic proportions. I've been pretty much bipolar all day, vacillating between ridiculously happy and relieved and ridiculously depressed and hopeless as I seriously consider, for the first time, the fact that I probably won't finish on time to graduate in June, but more importantly, that I can consciously decide not to. April 19th, the day when master's theses are supposed to be submitted to the library, is paralyzing the crap out of me - I have the power to change that, but the repercussions could be very damaging.

If all I had to do was write my thesis, April 19th might not be so scary. I could make myself just sit down and write for the next 22 days and end up with something - it wouldn't be as good as I want it to be, but it would be done and I could get on with my life. Unfortunately, I have a few other obligations hanging over my head: my RA, my TA, a paper I'm supposed to be helping to write and present at a conference, and a looong-overdue project from the fall. While my boss/chair has given me permission to pretty much slack off on everything except the TAing, I can't help but feel guilty that I'm still getting my exorbitant (ha) RA paycheck and not doing much.

Soooo, I had a crazy thought this morning... What if I just decided to be honest with myself and admit that this isn't going to happen? I could concentrate on the other stuff, feel good about actually getting something, anything done, and write my thesis over the summer. I'd have to justify my reasoning to a lot of people, and feel like I'm disappointing my parents and professors (whether or not it's true).

Would it be the end of the world? No, but I hestitate to give myself permission for something like that, because I'm notorious (in my own mind) for giving myself an inch and taking a mile. I know that if I make the decision to extend my deadline, I'll be taking one more step towards the precipice that is never finishing. Summer could easily turn into fall and then winter, etc., and the next thing you know I'll be 40 and still trying to finish my thesis. It's going to be especially dangerous if I get a job.

I just want to do a good job on this thesis though, I care so much about the topic that I couldn't fathom handing in something I'm not at least 75% proud of. I know I have to let go of some things, I know it's never going to be as perfect as I'd like, but I just can't help thinking that a few extra weeks would change everything.

It's probably nuts to think that, and I'll probably end up getting talked out of all this by the end of tomorrow. A part of me wants to get talked out of it, to be encouraged and told, even if it's a lie, that I can and will finish by the 19th. The other part of me wants to be told what I really want to hear, that everything will be fine if I take some extra time and concentrate on other stuff for a while. I guess either way, I just want someone to tell me that everything's going to be OK, and I want it to be true.

I've been running this seemingly lose-lose situation by various people today, basically looking for reassurance, because to be honest, I'm a very confused emotional weakling right now. A girl at school told me "No one will be disappointed in you" if I don't finish on time. It might not sound like much, but I was unbelievably touched by that, and if there hadn't been so many other people around I would have let myself burst into tears.

The only thing that gave me hope was a nugget of wisdom from a friend who has proved to be the most unfailing moral compass I know (and I seek advice, shall we say, pathologically). He has talked me through many an ethical dilemma, from what to eat to how to frame my thesis, and talked me down from many a ledge, whether he believes it or not. I will now stop being wishy-washy. Anyhow, I told him about all of this and as always, he had some good advice. I wrote it down:

Things to do:

1. Write a crap thesis
2. Edit it

So therein lies The Plan 3.0: I am going to sit my lazy ass down and write something (as soon as I'm done with this final procrastiatory blog post). It will not matter how crappy it is, it will only matter that it's a comprehensive skeleton draft of my thesis. Then I will edit it. This will hopefully give me some momentum, which I certainly lack right now. I will let the chips fall where they may with the deadlines and the other stuff, at least until I get that done.

The issue, I guess, is not whether I have a finished thesis by April 19th, but whether I commit myself to finishing at all. In my head I am committed, but without some actual product to back it up, mental committent will not be enough. The actual product doesn't have to be perfect or polished or even a whole chapter, but I realize I have to produce something. I've definitely decided to produce things before, with varying degrees of success, but I think, and sincerely hope, that this Crap Thesis idea might be concrete enough to work.

So I'm off to do, um, that. If I can get out of this funk, everyone will benefit. I'll have a better outlook on life and everyone else will get a break from reading this solipsistic crap I keep writing.

ode to roo roo, transcription goddess

roo roo is, among many other awesome things, a transcribing machine. This girl is a trooper, a saint, and a research assistant all in one. Jack Dougherty was a fool to let her go - if I were him I would have messed with her transcript so she couldn't graduate, that way she'd be stuck at Trinity for a few more years of dedicated service.

Not many people can say they have a friend who'd be willing to give up a perfectly good Friday and Saturday afternoon to do them a favor - especially when the favor involves being glued to a computer transcribing a seemingly endless series of "ums," "likes," and "you knows" interspersed with the occasional money quote about green cleaning. Her transcribing enabled me to feel like I was "working on my thesis," while in reality I was messing around with my vacuum cleaner, blowing up a balance ball, chatting on the phone with my mom, and generally puttering around the house.

Yeah, and then at the end of it all, I sent Amanda home with a transcribing machine and another tape, just in case she feels the urge to spend any more of her free time facilitating my thesis. How can I resist? Her spelling and grammar are impeccable, she knows how to type with all her fingers. Really, it would be futile for me to transcribe the interviews myself when she's clearly so much better at it. This is what Kant was talking about, right?

the plan: update

a paper tacked to my bulletin board says the following:

Week of March 18

• NO CLEANING
• NO POINTLESS EMAILS
• NO UNNECESSARY PHONE CALLS
• NO RESD
• NO SOCIALIZING
• NO COOKING
• NO PROCRASTINATING

this week, not only did I clean my house, but I went so far as to completely disassemble my vacuum cleaner, clean every single one of its five thousand tiny parts, put it back together and vacuum every vacuumable space. Amanda's mother is right, they don't make vacuums like they used to. I also went to RESD several times, socialized excessively, cooked, composted, blogged, emailed, sledded, napped, puttered, and talked on the phone for no apparent reason. There are still two huge piles of mystery papers cluttering my desk, and six of my seven tape-recorded interviews remain untranscribed. I guess "Week of March 25" is going to be the one...

most of the time, it's nice to get home a little tipsy and find delicious homemade foods like beef stew, or even to get home tipsy and make a delicious omelette. you feel all healthy and sustainable and it almost assuages the guilt associated with "Jim Beam on a school night." But then other times, it's nice to get home a little tipsy and ignore the beef stew, ignore the plentiful organic produce, and eat Spaghettios with hot dogs.