emergencia!

so I just got an email from my errant boss... He's already back in town and wants to meet with me first thing Monday morning! It's all over for me. I'll be underground for the next 72 hours, and then I'll either survive Monday... or... not... it's been nice knowing you all.

micro-management

the other day I was talking to a certain human resources specialist I know, and she said that during job interviews the HR people will often ask "what type of manager do you work best with?" as someone who has never had a real job interview, that really piqued my interest. is there a "correct" answer, or are you really supposed to tell the truth?

roo roo made a good point - the "correct" answer would be to describe the management style of the potential new boss, but since the interviewee has no way of knowing the new boss' style, it's better to tell the truth. if the management is going to be so different from what you work well with, why would you want that job?

anyhow, what I found most interesting were the two categories of management she mentioned: hands-off or hands-on. I've never really had a boss as hands-off as the one I do now, and it's KILLING ME. I always thought I hated to be supervised and took it as my boss somehow doubting me. however, now I'm seeing that 'management' is a two-way street. when no one is around to watch me, when I don't have to check in and report my progress, I just don't do anything.

I got this job just a few weeks ago, and due to that whole cubicle incident I have been doing most of my 'working' outside the office. most days I hang out with Homero in Patty's office, talk about Mexican soap operas, and consider it work because we are speaking Spanish. then yesterday he had to go out in the field and collect samples, so I was left alone in the office. for the first time in weeks, I actually WORKED. it was crazy, I don't even know what came over me. but don't worry, it only lasted for about 20 minutes.

today I came to my actual office and assumed my position in the cubicle. it's actually not that bad - there is AC, unlike in Homero's office, and my desk is high enough that I can cross my legs under it, which is pretty much all I want out of life. but the atmosphere here is very different from anywhere I've ever worked before - it's SILENT. you could hear a pin drop in here. at first I thought maybe a lot of people were out today, but I took a walk around and saw that there are at least 25 people in the office, but no one talks to each other!

in the office where I worked last summer, it was nearly impossible to get anything done because everyone was constantly chatting - and not about work, not even a little. that place was a total zoo, there were always students coming and going, people having meetings in any spot they felt like it, visitors from out of town who had to be introduced to every single person who worked there, etc. in particular, my office roommate was addicted to the conversational arts. his entire job consisted of talking on the phone to people, networking and finding jobs for students, and any time he wasn't on the phone he was chatting with me... or having visitors, such as the Vietnam vet/talk radio personality/masseuse, who went by "David the Painkiller," and stopped by frequently to sing us his latest tragicomic social commentary song. he was the man.

but I digress. I'm trying to get to the whole micromanagement thing, but my ADD is off the charts lately. (ironic?) so I was messing around on myspace and my boss' secretary walked by... I felt a little twinge of "oh crap, I'm supposed to be working." so I did work, for nearly an HOUR. it was awesome. and it made me realize that the very thought of a boss-type being around is enough to make me work. this whole "I have a boss, in the abstract sense, but he doesn't give a shit what I do or where I am, and also he's abroad for a month" really isn't what I need to be productive. I honestly do need someone looking over my shoulder. not necessarily like "telling me do do stuff" or anything like that, oh no. but existing, yes, and being present, yes.

i got sick of that after a while and returned to Homero's office where I can blog and otherwise procrastinate in peace. my conclusions: I enjoy being in an office where I talk to people all day, but I don't get anything done. I can only work, however, under circumstances of complete silence and oppressive micromanagement. so, I have no choice but to admit what has been obvious to everyone else for a long time: I'm not cut out for "work." It's true, a "job," no matter how you slice it, is simply not the best use of my time.

if you'll excuse me, I have to go have some drinks downtown with my RESD peeps. it's been a long day here at the office.

"work"

so here I am, on a beautiful and sunny Friday afternoon, at "work," in my "office," wearing my "shoes." this BLOWS. there's good news though - when I got to work today no one tried to move me to a different location, plus I now have my very own PHONE and MAILBOX. yes, i have truly arrived. then my boss' assistant, who is quite possibly the only nice person in the entire place, showed me how to use the fax machine and the copier. believe it or not I was already familiar with those devices, but it was sweet of her anyways. everyone else in the office kind of looks at me like "who the fuck is that" but no one actually introduces themselves, so their loss, they'll never know who I am and why I'm the awesomest.

anyhow, having my own mailbox really gave me the sense of permanence I needed to feel comfortable at work. comfortable enough, anyways, to sit there for a few minutes, take off my sensible shoes under my desk, fill out my hours for the week, and leave. I'm in my other adopted office now, which belongs to Patty. her office is way nicer, it's painted in soothing tones and Homero is right next to me so I can pester him endlessly with translation issues. today we went over guinea pigs, which in case you were wondering, are NOT delicious.

in lieu of actually working, I have been messing around with pandora a lot today. in addition to being a good way to listen to music from anywhere, it's a really cool idea. it's based on something they call the Music Genome Project, which identifies "traits" of songs or artists you tell it you like. then it finds and plays other music that shares similar characteristics. for example, I'm currently listening to my 'Born Under Punches Station.' I told it I liked the Talking Heads song 'Born Under Punches,' and right now it's playing a song called 'Thieves Like Us' by New Order, according to them "because it features electronica influences, extensive vamping, groove-based composition, a dynamic male vocalist..." so when it picks a song you like (or don't like) you tell it, and it gradually modifies the content of the "station" according to what it thinks you're telling it. get it? i'm pretty obsessed with it as a way to discover new music. this thing always plays songs I otherwise wouldn't ever hear, and it's pretty fascinating to explore all the trait categories they use. apparently I'm a huge fan of 'vamping.' who knew?

as you might have already heard, Kerouac wrote On the Road on one long piece of paper. The scroll has arrived in Lowell (see the link to the right), where Kerouac was born. Come see it, then stop by my porch for a beer.

in other beat generation news, this was the quote of the day when I signed in to google:

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

~Allen Ginsburg, who I previously thought would have been a cool professor to have

orbit mint mojito gum

don't buy it. it's gross. alcohol-flavored gum shouldn't exist. also, mojitos are "mint" by definition, so the flavor name is redundant. orbit, you suck. why do you make your gum pieces so large and cumbersome, so that I have to rip them in half, and constantly have half-pieces of gum floating around the bottom of my purse, with nasty debris stuck to them, that I eat anyways because I refuse to waste gum? why, orbit?

but Patty gave me the gum, and she's the shit. she dropped by my porch today with iced coffee and vanilla kreme donuts. a pleasant surprise, and just what the doctor ordered after my long day of "work."

dispatch from tha fahkin gahdin

it's true, I'm hollering at you from my back yard, can you sense the outdoorsiness? I just set up a little office out here consisting of a chaise lounge, beach towel, water bottle, and my cell phone. You know, in case I need to make any important business calls. So far, things are progressing nicely in my newly appointed zone of productivity. I just hope my little old lady neighbors don't come out to do any gardening, because I look like kind of a weirdo out here. Kind of.

so today was supposed to be my first day of work at a new job. I'd tell you who I'm working for but that would violate my self-imposed rule of Extreme Blog Anonymity. Anyhow, I met with my new boss last week and he gave me a bitchload of things to get started on and told me to show up at the office Monday morning (today) to get settled. I spent an hour this morning trying to read all the stuff I was supposed to be perusing over the weekend, then got myself all stressed out trying to figure out what to wear. i read an article in Cosmo yesterday (I swear I do NOT have a subscription to Cosmo, this was a momentary lapse of reason at the supermarket checkout.) so the article said that flip-flops are always inappropriate for the office. I didn't know that. I panicked. I don't own any summer shoes that aren't flip-flops. So I wore flip-flops anyways, and prepared to be judged.

I called the dude on my way in, because the building houses a nuclear reactor and you need a code to get in. Don't worry, my job has absolutely nothing to do with nuclear research. We'll all live to see another day. So the dude was not there, but rather getting his car fixed, and asked me to "refresh his memory" on why we were even meeting. Sweet. It appears this guy is a little different from some bosses I've had in the past. Some people like to keep a tight leash on their grad students and know where they are at all times, preferably within the bosses' line of sight, in case there's an extremely tedious and/or annoying task that needs doing.

This guy would be at the other extreme - he told me I can pretty much do whatever I want as long as the work gets done. While this is good on sunny days like today when I want to be in my outdoor office, or pretending to work when I'm actually at the beach, it's kind of a bad thing in general for someone like me. I tend to be pretty horrible at accomplishing things even when I'm two feet away from whoever I'm working with. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a lot of procrastinating all week long then doing all of my hours at once in an overnight work extravaganza right before my meetings with him.

Eventually I did go over to the office, met some people, and saw the little grad student containment area. It actually has a window, with a stunning view of the student parking lot. Not as awesome as my outdoor office, but I think I saw a water cooler. Free water is the dopest.

So I decided to call it a day around 1pm, and made the rounds distracting people I know who work on that side of campus. When I got home I toyed with the idea of doing work, but decided it was more important to search for the sunniest spot on the property. A true grad student never quits researching. My findings: the front porch only gets sun in the late afternoon, the side porch only gets sun in the early morning, and the whole climbing-out-the-attic-window-to-sit-on-the-roof thing just seemed like a recipe for disaster.

Speaking of disasters and findings, my thesis isn't happening right now, so if people could just go ahead and stop asking me how it's going, that would be grrrrrreat. I saw a girl from my department today, she was holding that coveted box of watermarked paper, on her way to hand it in to the librarian. I felt a fleeting twinge of motivation to do something with my own thesis, but it was immediately replaced by "who the fuck am I kidding?" I didn't even consider going to get the transcribing machine, it just seemed way more important to work on my tan. And those are my priorities for the next few weeks.

Other than that, things are going well. The no-income thing hasn't been as bad as I thought it would be; my tax return only lasted a few days but two friends just moved away and left me an inordinate amount of free crap. I've been eating a lot of ice cream lately, but I've also been going to the gym. A few of you got introduced to (i.e. forced to feel) my guns on Saturday night, and my rock-hard abs should be ready for peer review in another week or five. Speaking of Saturday night, I'm never starting drinking at 6pm again.

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.