A New Low

Ok, I've put up with a lot this summer with this reading list. I've dealt with:

-A bunch of Modernist poets who all seem to claim the same things and work in the same way, but who all seem to disagree with each other. As far as I can tell, the impetus to "make it new" involves writing incomprehensible drek that only a few people can understand, and even then only if you're a walking annotation. Still don't see why they disagree so much. (Though it was refreshing to see William Carlos Williams openly ripping into Pound and Eliot, as opposed to the passive-agressive junk most of the others indulged in.)

-Every minority in America feeling entitled to write fiction about a character trapped between two worlds. Yes, your plight is tragic, all you Hispanics, Jews, African-Americans, Native Americans, Eastern European Immigrants, etc. But for the love of God, have some consciousness of the works around you, and find a new trope to use for your pain.

-Three entries of Toni Morrison. Yes, she's good. But she doesn't deserve three novels on my list. Pick one or two, folks, and go with it.

-Eudora Welty. 'Nuff said.

But today was a new low. Today, I read The Magician of Lublin, by Isaac "Look at Me, I'm Jewish" Singer. Now, I may seem to bash the Hebrews a bit much in this blog, but I don't actively dislike their art. Henry Roth, quite cool. Saul Bellow, I'm growing to like. Bernard Malamund's The Assistant was refreshingly good. But Mr. Singer has no place on this list of mine. His text, The Magician, is not an American text. Yes, he was an American immigrant. But the text is about Poland. About Polish people in the 1800s. There are no Americans in it. No American themes. Very little mention of America at all, except as a far off place. And it was written in Yiddish, and translated to English by other people. I'm willing to put up with novels in Europe, because the ones on the list largely deal with American exiles or tourists. And I can put up with novels written by immigrants, dealing with American themes (Pale Fire, written by Nabokov, is perhaps my new favorite on the list). But there's no justification for The Magician of Freakin Lublin in any way, shape, or form. And it's not even a good novel. So I'm lodging a protest. Let it be noted. And then I'm finishing the book, because one of my committee members has written an article on it, so it'll most likely be on the test.

But on the plus side, it's still better than Nightwood.

This may be one of my lucid periods

Who knew Ezra Pound was such a funny guy?

On America: "We get from every village the most ruthless and the most energetic. The merely discontented stop in England."

"As every living writer either has written, or is writng, on sex, sex, sex, till there is no end of x's..."

After complaining about and critiquing flawed architecture in New York, we get this simple paragraph: "I found it impossible to make a younger member of the architect's firm understand any of this.... But he will die, and Allah the all merciful will send us another generation." (I just love the image of an irate Pound pedantically yelling at some secretary that he doesn't like the building this guy didn't even design.)

On "literary" magazines in the early 1900s:

"It is well known that in the year of grace 1870 Jehovah appeared to Messrs Harper and Co. and to the editors of 'The Century', 'The Atlantic', and certain others, and spake thus: 'The style of 1870 is the final and divine revelation. Keep things always just as they are now'. And they, being earnest, God-fearing men, did abide by the words of the Almighty, and great credit and honour accrued unto them, for had they not divine warrant! And if you do not believe me, open a number of 'Harpers' for 1888 and one for 1908. And I defy you to find any difference, save on the page where the date is."

It's shocking how much I'm liking Pound. While I'll admit I haven't started the Cantos yet, his early poetry is quite stirring, and his essays are really amusing. Who knows, maybe it'll keep through the rest?

Or I may go insane trying to figure the rest of it out. Stay tuned.

(In other news, I took five hours off on Monday to read the new Star Wars novel. It was truly glorious.)

Deja view?

Haven't posted in a while, not much new to say. The reading continues, though I am quickly coming to the realization that I will eventually run out of novels and plays to read, and will have to read some more poetry. This week, Ezra Pound and The Cantos, plus various other poems. Looking through them last night, Nittany Lion and I discovered sections in Chinese, and sections with Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Should be fun.

Today was a bit startling for me. I finished All the King's Men, beat Knights of the Old Republic again (I believe this is the sixth time, now. I have a problem.), and went to the library to get more books. I then proceeded to read Paula Vogel's The Baltimore Waltz, a delightful short play (50 pages, bless it) about fantasy and dying of AIDS.

The odd thing is, apparently I've seen this play before. As soon as I started it, I knew how it would end. I knew the things that were happening as they happened. And I could hear specific lines in my head, as if I'd heard them spoken before. Now, I have no memory of ever seeing this play or reading it, or listening to it on tape for that matter. But I did see quite a bit of pretentious student theatre in college. It's one of the downfalls of living in an arts dorm and hanging out with a bunch of theatre majors. And quite often, we'd go see these plays after having a few drinks, which might explain why I don't remember it. Or, conversely, I may have read parts of it aloud in a class that I can't remember. Or heard people using parts of it as audition pieces. Or for acting finals. I just don't know.

I've mentioned before the problems I have with my memory, and this particular occasion is slightly unsettling for me. It helped a lot with my retention and comprehension of the play this time around, so I'm not complaining, but I would like to know how I know this piece. So if any of my NU friends have any recollection of seeing this play with me, or taking a class with me where we discussed this play, or anything like that, feel free to chime in.

Recent Lessons of Prelim Summer:
-Black people didn't have the best places to live in urban areas in the 1900s.
-A play about lesbians is always amusing.
-Gertrude Stein is incomprehensible. And ugly.
-There's just something amusing about Freud and Jung riding together in the Coney Island Tunnel of Love.
-Starting a movie just to pass the time while you eat lunch is a bad idea, because you'll watch the entire movie rather than go back to work.
-Unlike many of my peers, reading for prelims has not affected my eyesight in the slightest. Because I have super eyes.
-When you're reading a book that you've already written on, and the professor you wrote the paper for is the head of the committee grading you, the fun part is remembering which parts of your paper he liked and which he didn't, so you can shamelessly reuse them later.

Reading Week Two: Electric Boogaloo

Well, I survived the birthday drinking, and am now officially 26 (as opposed to biologically, which doesn't count). Highlight was definitely when the director of the English graduate program bought me a glass of bourbon, which knocked me over the edge after all the other drinks I'd had. (Apparently, claiming you want to stay with beer so you can last longer is really an invitation for people to buy you shots and hard drinks.) Again, if you put it in front of me, I drink it quickly. As usual, memories fade after that last glass, causing me to lament my faulty genes and horrible memory. (Note: It isn't just drink. I have a horrible memory for my own past events. I don't really remember any of my childhood before seventh grade, excepting occasional flashes and moments. And yet I can remember intricate plot points of the novels I read. Does that seem right?)

Friday's festivities made Saturday's hell, as did my reading load. We're doing modernist drama this week in my study group, which means O'Neill, Williams, and Miller. If you ever want to feel great about being alive and the potential this world has to offer, stay as far away from these men as possible. If you want justification for suicide, however, start reading them all, one after another. On a Saturday. While hung over. In oppressive humidity. On little sleep.

Now don't get me wrong. These gentlemen are fine dramatists. I love Williams (still prefer Streetcar to Glass Menagerie), and Miller's fine as well. O'Neill, though, goes above and beyond. I'd read Long Day's Journey before, but just now for the first time read The Iceman Cometh, which for reasons I can't begin to articulate struck me more powerfully than anything else I've read so far. It's profound, shocking, and deeply moving. (Maybe more so since I too am accustomed to hanging around with a bunch of drunks, talking about the past. I believe it's all theatre majors do.) I can see why people say Long Day's Journey is the better play, as it is more concise and has a purity about it, but Iceman just hit me on a gut level, so I had to stop reading after I finished it.

(And yet Nittany Lion argues that Miller is the better playwright. Thoughts from the readership?)

I now have hung on my door the complete prelims list, all 13 pages of it, next to each other. Each time I finish an entry, I cross it off in red. Its ghostly white presence haunts my room, and is the first thing my eye is drawn to every morning when I awaken, and one of the last things I see before I sleep. This may reflect a severe unbalance in my mind, or a need to torment myself. I personally see it as akin to the photos that Rocky puts up before a fight, only to tear them down right before the bout. By removing them, the Italian Stallion sees no longer his enemies, but himself. Of course, he's looking in a mirror, not a wooden door, but I enjoy my metaphor. And I hope the tape doesn't hurt the door or the paint. Either way, I plan to dance and sing along to "Eye of the Tiger" just before the test.

Until next time, here's a list of things I've learned this week:

Family is pain.
Friends are just those that help sustain your own lies.
Women are liars and whores, or mentally unbalanced.
Destructive forces win out.
I become too invested in plays with idiots. (I have had repeated fantasies about traveling back in time to the Salem Witch Trials and just shooting the judges with a Glock. Thank you, Mr. Miller.)
If you have dreams, they will be crushed and you will be crushed with/by them.
The South is a funny place.
Except when it destroys you.
Southern Catholics are particularly conflicted.
Holden Caulfield is more annoying now than when you're a teenager yourself.
Saul Bellow is longwinded and full of himself.

Pigs on the Move

Prelims (n., pl.):

1. A series of essay tests taken, over the span of two days, covering 150 works of literature and criticism.
2. A rite of initiation that allows the graduate student to finally begin working on his or her disseration.
3. The locus of pain, rage, anger, and hatred for all things academic in a graduate student's life. The stealer of souls, killer of free time, and death of innocence.

There. For my non-Madison friends, that's what I'm doing this summer. The test is at the end of August (21-22, or 22-23, sometime in there). I have 150 plays, novels, books of poetry, and critical articles to read before then. All of us grad students have to do that, so if you feel sorry for me, feel sorry for my friends as well. And if you don't, well screw you. I'd like to see you do it. Except those of my elders who already have done it. You are the shining stars that give us hope.

By my calculations, if I want to finish the entire list, I have to read 1.67 entries per day. Today was Rabbit, Run (1 entry) and the Mamet (Glengarry Glen Ross and American Buffalo, two plays, one entry). Luckily, I've seen both of these plays before (the movie of GGR and Bourbon and Teach's AB), so the topics are familiar. But these are all very depressing works about the crushing nature of modern life, so my day has been kinda bleak. Later tonight, I plan to read some Capote and contemplate causes of murder in In Cold Blood. I have yet to start reading any actual poetry, as I am terrified of it. Seriously terrified.

Apart from prelims reading, it's been a fun few weeks, so a quick update. Back in StL, had fun with the folks, had a truly phenomenal steak dinner, tried to go to a Cardinals' game, failed, and toured the A-B Brewery instead, leading to pre-noon drinking of free beer. Good times. And who knew Busch made a stout?

Saw Wicked on Tuesday for my birthday. Red-Headed Stepchild and I drove to Chicago to see it, with fairly decent seats. Sadly, the elderly ladies next to me felt the need to discuss everything as it happened, including the priceless revelation that the one with the green skin was, in fact, the Wicked Witch of the West. They didn't realize this until after she had been onstage for about ten minutes, despite the cover of the program clearly showing her and the fact that everyone knows this already, as it is the entire concept of the play that she is different because she is green. But God bless them, it's elderly people like that who go to the theatre simply to buy seats closer to the center of the audience than my own, preventing me from fully appreciating the sets in ways they never could. But a wiser man than myself once said that there's a special Hell for child molesters and people who talk at the theatre. I can only pray he's correct.

On the drive back, due to an offhand comment of Red's, I am now contemplating a one-man play entitled Pigs on the Move. So far, it involves pigs attempting to better themselves, and a farmer's constant upbraiding of his no-account son for letting the pigs get further in life than him (the son). Look for pre-production come the fall.

And finally, I'll be a TA for Captain Americanist's lecture this fall, which is awesome.

Look for updates containing words of wisdom from my reading throughout the summer, as I can't imagine much else will be going on here. So far I've learned this:

-People in the '20s drank more, made more money, and generally got laid a lot more than I do.
-Jews are not entertaining (Sorry McJew, but read Awake and Sing! and you'll see my point).
-When white people write about sex, it's smut (Updike). When Native Americans do it, it's amusing cultural difference (Erdrich).
-The working world stinks, but if you curse a lot and hate women, it'll at least amuse others.
-19 page one acts are the greatest gift you can give a prelim student.
-Vietnam was, in fact, not a fun place to be.
-Education is the reducto absurdum of all human experience. And no battle is ever won. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. (Now that's an enheartening lesson to start the summer with.)

In which I defy augury

Longer post later this week. Just taking the moment to point out that, as of midnight, I am now 26. Back at Northwestern, we never planned to live past 25, seeing the obscene amounts we drank and the horrible Midwestern fried foods we ate (we seriously feared scurvy at one point). So this birthday is a milestone, in that I am the first of our drunken cadre to defy Death (at least this particular Death, as Quantum already surpassed his private death date, and my hat off to him).

Seeing Wicked in Chicago with Red-Headed Stepchild, then massive bar-hopping on Friday. Good times ahead, despite the reading load.

And if you're in Madison and reading this, and I haven't already invited you, you're invited to drinks this Friday night. Talk to me for details.

The getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be...smelly.

There are times I loathe the internet. This is one of them (ironic, since I'm using it to complain).

In my research, I much prefer to actually read a text than find it online and read a computer screen. It's just me. I like the tactile presence and the ability to underline and jot notes in the margins. But, as I grade papers, I realize most of my students strongly disagree. They find online, read, quote, use, whatever, all without leaving their dorms. And I hate it. Because apparently this means that they don't have to cite page numbers when they quote, because there are no page numbers online. This is the type of thinking that leads to bad papers, irate teachers, and consequently, lower grades. And by irate I mean fuming, throwing things across the room, stopping grading so I can blog about it.

Rant over. Please continue on to read my previous post, which is much longer and far more interesting.

Baby Don't You Wanna Go...

I've recently reread The Count of Monte Cristo, and I've come to the conclusion that our lives are not so dissimilar. We both underwent extremely harsh educations in stone prisons. And we both plan to use our knowledge to revenge ourselves upon the world (except he punished the guilty, while I plan to punish future students). In other words, it's been finals week here, and I had to write a long, ill-prepared paper and take a laughably easy final (maybe not easy, but laughable in the amount of work I put into it). So now summer is here, and escaping the Ivory Tower is, in its way, not unlike Edmond Dantes' escape from the Chateau d'If.

This is my long way of saying I haven't posted because I've been busy. So this post will be mostly highlights of the past few weeks, including tales of the sublimity of sleep, editing at the mechanics, and many instances of the truly bizarre.

First, the wonderful. I passed my Spanish for Reading Knowledge Test with an Advanced Proficiency. (For those of you not in the know, we at Madison need two foreign languages for the PhD. This test officially counts as my second, and I got a higher proficiency than I needed.) Of course, this is odd as I believe my translation included the fact that Hemingway led an elite band of guerillas into the heart of Paris during WWII. But who am I to question the wisdom of our teacher? Or of Papa H, for that matter? Further proof that he could so take Henry James.

That same morning, I saw two homeless men get kicked out of McDonald's for rolling joints on the counter. The management took offense to this, and apparently it wasn't the first time, as the manager told them he'd warned them about that before. Still, it was testament to the egalitarianism of the homeless, as the one had no weed, while the other was willing to share his excess. Truly, the meek shall inherit the Earth.

That evening commenced our grad student conference, which continued all weekend. It went well, though it occupied the majority of my time. Our keynote was fun, and I actually managed to pay for her expenses, something I was fearful of (I am treasurer of our little group, for my out of town folk).

That Friday, following the conference reception (wine and keg, small bits of food), we took the keg off to our friend Sarah's place (you may think this isn't a nickname, but oh, you'd be wrong. And it's even a nickname with layers). I, sadly, was staying somewhat sober, as I had my car with me. That night was perhaps the most surreal party I've been to in a long time. I had dropped folk off, went to get dinner, and returned. Upon arriving, I found my cohorts shooting at each other with a toy bow and arrow (yet with metal-tipped arrows). Sarah, when told I had gotten my own dinner as opposed to ordering pizza with them, seemed to believe I had ordered my own pizza, and asked for money to pay the guy when he got there. Repeated explanations did not help, but led to the following:

Me: I didn't order pizza.
Sarah: So how much money do you owe?
Me: None. I got McDonald's.
Sarah: Did you pay for it already?
Me: They generally don't let you leave without paying there.

We eventually got that settled, but the hilarity continued. Now this next section involves several folk I can't come up with good nicknames for, as I don't really know some of them that well (or well enough to know personal quirks and habits to mock). I'll just list several things, as any attempt to impose linerarity will be antithetical to the tone of the evening. In the course of the night, these things happened:

-The Norwegian shot Winter with the arrow, who shot her back in the neck, at point blank range (child's toy, no harm done, though the Norwegian would not shut up about it, as she was drunk, along with everyone else).
-The Norwegian, Winter, and UnionMan all played leapfrog, until the Norwegian's necklace broke and scattered in the grass, except for a few pieces, one of which UnionMan ate in front of her mockingly.
-The Norwegian and Winter tried to drunkdial me while I was standing right next to them, but they didn't know the last four digits of my number, so they called four random people before getting the sequence right.
-I broke the bow and arrow, as the string slipped off and it fell to the concrete, which was apparently too much stress (but it survived all the drunks pulling on it just fine). I then gave it back to the child, while Fangirl tried to explain how some carpenter's glue would fix it right up. My suggestion of duct tape was summarily ignored.
-Winter kicked UnionMan in the face. Because he asked her to.
-I got monster hiccups (again, while sober), which continued for almost half an hour and which I used to punctuate important points in the conversation.
-I believe we terrified some poor guy from Dartmouth, friend to Fangirl and her partner, who was visiting.
-I heard numerous repetitions about just how "carnivalesque" the party was, all of them from the Dissertator.

I can't remember much else, just the general surreal atmosphere of the night. If anyone recollects other choice moments, feel free to comment.

After the conference, things settled down. I wrote a 17 page paper in about three days, and edited it the morning it was due while I was at the mechanic getting my car fixed. Then I slept a lot. This weekend, having finished the only hard thing I had to do and thus nearly ending my semester, I decided to read Monte Cristo, a 1500 page epic, thus proving I am truly a nerd. Between that and replaying KOTOR 2, I've managed to waste the better part of a week. But I did study for my history final for a whole hour and a half (I had to read about the Carter and Reagan years for one of the essay questions). And I managed to sleep in till 11:30 today, only leaving the apartment to get dinner.

Now, I have to grade 12 portfolios tomorrow, as I am going to Chicago on Friday. I'm going in to see the Freshman 15 show (my old a cappella group), and to hang with Bluesman on Friday, brunch with Memi on Saturday, and then drive to the old homestead on Saturday to spend Mother's Day with the folks and recuperate for a week in St. Louis. I'm going in early, taking the Norwegian to O'Hare, thus freeing up the day for some fun Chicago stuff (Liquor Barn, Herm's, etc.). If I come back with a bottle of Napoleon Brandy shaped like Napoleon, all the better.

Next post, I explain to my out of town friends exactly what the term "prelims" means, and how exactly I'll spend my summer vacation. Start praying now.

Sequels are Rules

This post will require some filler from my NU friends, with whom we were wacky.

The title is taken from a saying of Quantum's, that "Games are Rules." Sadly, I was not at the drunken revels that produced this tidbit of wisdom, nor do I quite know what it means, but the implication seems to be that games, in a strictly ontological sense, are only a composition of the rules that create them. I'm sure others could expound on this theory at length, but I merely bring it up as a tie in to my actual point.

In undergrad we came up with a loose set of rules governing movie sequel titles. Every Movie 2 must be, in some form, "The Revenge." The revenge of what was always unspecified, for that extra ominous bit. The third, taking it's cue from the Darkman saga, had to be "Movie 3: Die Movie, Die." Then, because we figured sequels had really hit their peak with the Leprechaun series, the fourth movie in a non-trilogy series must be "Movie 4: Movie in the Hood," whilst the fifth would inevitably be "Movie 5: Movie in Space." We felt that the transition from hood to space only made sense, as once one was in space, the odds of returning to Earth (and to the hood, no less) were astronomically (pardon the pun) slimmer.

Now, this isn't horribly inventive, but it did afford us no manner of glee. And, more important to this post, it spawned one of our truly marvellous running gags. I believe it was Irish McJew who had to watch Cyrano de Bergerac for a film class (or a French class, or a French film class), and this prompted him and Quantum to come up with the sequels, according to our schema. Which gave us the following:

Cyrano Deux: La Vengeance: In which Cyrano is awakened from cryogenic sleep in the late 20th century only to be horrified at the burgeoning European Union and it's trademark currency, the euro. Thus prompting the catchphrase: "La Euro? Sacrebleu! La vengeance, c'est ma noit" (I am unclear on the spelling, as I never took French. Roughly, it translates to "The vengeance, it is now!" Feel free to correct me if you want, McJew). I believe in this film, Cyrano would battle the euro, and, somehow, cyborgs (though the cyborgs may have been in a later film).

Cyrano Troix: Mort Cyrano, Mort. Don't remember the plot of this one, or if we even expected the franchise to go this far. I believe it involved some kind of long-lost enemy of Cyrano's, maybe a returning character presumed dead in the first film.

Cyrano (French for Four): Cyrano dans La Ghetto (Cyrano in the Hood, again feel free to correct my spelling): I forget what Cyrano did in the hood, but I believe the movie would also feature Snoop Dogg, who had just made cinematic history with his recent release Bones (which, sadly, we never did see).

And then there was Cyrano Five: Cyrano in Space, whose French I don't even pretend to remember. This may have been the one where Cyrano fought the cyborgs. I do remember that, after seeing Jason X: Jason in Space (where Jason got an upgrade), we felt that Cyrano in space had awesome potential for slaughter and French taunting.

Anyway, if you're one of my old NU folk and you remember this gag, feel free to add in any other information I'm missing. Might be worth a laugh, and I have very little else to post, since the semester is winding down and we're all busy. Or maybe I'll have a hilarious post tomorrow about how much the mechanics are going to charge me to fix my car, which has taken to stopping at random times. Just pray I make it to the dealership tomorrow.

Question of the day: Who was Sloopy, and why did he need to hang on?

Where Was Moses When the Lights Went Out?

The title of this post directly relates to the homily at our Easter Vigil mass on Saturday. Bear with me.

For the past few years, I've been going to Easter Vigil mass as opposed to the Sunday morning one. Last year, several of the Madisonian Catholics all went together, and since then it's become an expected thing, to the point where we made plans to go to mass together then go out for drinks afterward. This promised to be particularly interesting this year, as I had given up alcohol for the Lenten season, and Housefan (she of speakmemory, linked to the right, and one obsessed with Hugh Laurie) had been talking this up to the point where I felt like I'd be letting her down if I didn't get hammered. That's the context going in. But first, the mass.

Our coterie consisted of myself, Housefan and her husband the Wedding Singer (still not sold on that nickname, but I've used it before), CryptoJew and Tennessee Stretch (suck it, TS), and the Lady in Black, and of course we were all dressed up in our Easter finery. The mass itself ran the usual 2:45, with a few highlights:

1. The awesome cantor man who sings the opening chant (which lasts about five minutes). I never see this man except at Easter vigil, and despite the claims of my comrades, I believe they keep him locked in a closet for the rest of the year.

2. The usual Gloria, but in a higher key (fun for tenors, not fun for the bishop), which lessened the fact that it is an inferior Gloria, in that it has no understanding of proper phrasing.

3. The baptism of the new catechumins, which featured what can best be described as calliope music, during which I nearly made the Lady in Black burst out laughing just by exchanging a sardonic glance at their choice of instrument (with later reflection upon the sheer potential for trilling in the operatic style, reenactment available upon request).

4. The woman who gave her small children each a lit candle, which led to my fascinated guesses as to when they would set themselves or her on fire.

5. The bishop's wonderful homily, which deserves a bit of discussion. Our bishop enjoys the formula homily, where each homily deals with three points, all somewhat connected. It wasn't a bad homily per se, but I knew we were in trouble when he found it somewhat unusual that the first reading was Genesis 1, where God creates the heavens and earth. (For you non-Catholics, this is not at all unusual as it is the first reading every Easter vigil.) Now, our bishop went into an extended metaphor of the importance of the creation of light as precursor to all, thus mirrored by the internal light of the soul, yada yada yada. He sustained the metaphor, and it worked, but he began with this gem: "And how could God see this creation he had made, and see it was good? He could see it because he first made the light." Never mind the fact that God is, by nature, omniscient and omnipotent, and could see very well without any lights. Unless you imagine God wandering around blind in darkness for the timeless period before creation, and then suddenly realizing "Holy Me, I can't freakin' see! I should make a light, because I have that power! I truly am awesome, in the biblical sense of the word." That realization colored the rest of the homily for me, which was only made worse by his extended football metaphor in the third point. But oh well, as I said to my cohorts, at least he stayed away from the hating of the gays and the abortions this year.

After the mass' conclusion, the six of us retired to the Old Fasioned, a local purveyor of food and spirits, to celebrate the risen Lord. Holding true to my completely meritless theory that sticking with vodka will lessen my troubles the next morning, I decided to start our revels with a Ketel & tonic, which would prove to be my drink of choice for the evening. During the course of that night, we drank various amounts (with myself and the Wedding Singer greatly outpacing the others), we ate enough fried food to kill a non-Wisconsinite, and we told ribald tales of debauchery and insanity (as apparently I had never told the married couple my Harry Potter tale, that old chestnut was dragged out somewhat reluctantly, as I realize it's perhaps my most oft-repeated tale). During our time there, I believe I had three mixed vodka drinks and one straight glass of Grey Goose L'Orange, just for a change of pace. I fully intended to stop there, but then Nittany Lion called and said he was coming out, so I decided to keep drinking in celebration. I believe I had another K&T before he got there, then two more while he was there.

Naturally my memory is spotty toward the end of the evening (I have a horrible memory while sober, and being drunk only accentuates what I firmly believe to be a genetic defect). I remember leaving, but not paying, though I'm told I did (can't wait to see that bill on my credit card). I remember being driven home, but not the shouting in the streets that apparently I took part in. I remember getting home and eating the ears off my chocolate bunny (thinking it would lessen my drunkenness if I had food in my stomach). Apparently I watched an episode of Firefly (Borders Rewards Card, thank you), had the good sense to hang up my dress clothes, and passed out, contact lenses still in.

I awoke the next morn, luckily early enough to still make the brunch time I had set with CryptoJew, TS, and LiB, back at the Old Fashioned (where they serve a mean breakfast as well as their impressive bar). I woke to discover I was still of a less than sober state, took out my contacts (catching one in the holder and ripping it in half in the process, as I would discover later), and took about a 45 minute shower to gather my wits. Sadly, my wits had other ideas. So I went to brunch, which was lovely, came home, rewatched the episode of Firefly I had apparently watched the night before, ate more of my bunny, and took a very long nap. I capped the day grading papers and eating for Easter dinner beans from a can, as I had nothing else that would sit well in my hungover state. Oh, and I got a phone call from my brother, who informed me that my mother, at the family party, was well on her way to achieving the state I had achieved the night before, along with her myriad brothers and sisters. I love my family.

Thus concludes my Easter tale. I only hope the actuality of events lived up to the hype. And to Housefan, two addendums to your post:

1. It's not that I'll drink anything in front of me, but that if you put a drink in my hand, I'll drink it quickly because it's there, regardless of whether it is mixed weakly or pure alcohol. It's my tragic flaw. Though I will also drink almost anything put in front of me, thanks to the training I received with Quantum et al. Partial list of things we drank at NU: margarita from a jug (just add you, chugging contests), Jeremiah Weed Bourbon Liqueur, Jeremiah Weed mixed with Tabasco Sauce, Captain Jack Cuervo, the fruit punch made of the nine or ten bottles of Pucker Quantum had leftover (mixed in an unwashed cooler and ladled out with an empty cup), the crazy stuff Bourbon Samurai got at a gun show from a man with an unmarked jug, and the mead Uber260 made in his basement, fermented in tupperware containers (which we drank to the toast "Blindness and Death," and which luckily caused neither).

2. It wasn't a pint glass full of whiskey, but a pint glass full of five different kinds of whiskey (and a dash of cherry coke to delude ourselves into calling it a mixed drink).

Happy Holiday, all. Christ is Risen, Alleluia, Alleluia. Unless you're Jewish. (Yes, I mean you Irish McJew.)

One Always Looks Neat

A blast from the Northwestern past, as referenced in a recent Wisconsin conversation:

www.hatsofmeat.com

I think the site speaks for itself.

I'm Confused

A new ad hanging in the corner store:

Camel Menthols
Pleasure to Burn

The slogan in particular is what perplexes me, as the phrase "It was a pleasure to burn" is the opening to Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451, which is about a dystopic society where reading is outlawed. In particular, the opening refers to the mindless animal joy found in destruction, specifically the destruction of books and implements of the higher mind. It marks the descent into the bestial, and the savage glee therein.

I am at odds, then, to explain why a cigarette company would choose this phrase as its slogan.

Are they trying to imply that smoking Camel Menthols brings about animal joy? The joy of destruction, of destruction of self, of lungs, of lifespan? Should one be taking glee in this act? Are they implying that cigarettes lead to mindlessness? That only the unthinking and unaware smoke? The firemen of Bradbury's novel are villains, condemned by the novel's end. Are cigarette smokers to see themselves allied with them?

Or does the symbolic destruction of a cigarette through consumption provide the real pleasure? What psychological assuagance is gained through this act of burning something you have purchased? Is it the pleasure of consumerism, of spending money on such a fleeting thing that provides a moment of narcotic release, gone before the money spent is even deposited in the bank? Is it the cycle of consumption and destruction that provides the implied bliss?

Or is there another meaning I'm missing? Does the line not refer to 451 at all, but rather implies an excess of pleasure? As in the phrase "money to burn," does "pleasure to burn" imply you have too much pleasure, an excess of pleasure that allows you to spend it freely on Camel Menthols? Does one gain more pleasure by recognizing this overflow of existing pleasure, thus gaining pleasure while losing it?

Please, chime in with thoughts, as I am very confused. And note I am not making an overt political statement in favor of or opposed to smoking. I leave that type of polemic to Brownsox. I just seek enlightenment.

My Computer Is Not a Network

Today marks one of the greatest triumphs of the human spirit over the evils of the technological age, as personified by my victory over the computer that has bested me for over two years now. In brief, my tale.

Over winter break my MA year (2003-2004), I received a new computer from my folks, as a belated graduation present. Returning it to my Madison domicile, I quickly discovered one of those little quirks that have tormented me as one of the computer illiterate. For some reason, the infernal machine reacted poorly with my SBC DSL connection, prompting the following problems:

1. Once a day, the entire computer would briefly lock up, breaking my internet connection. This would pass, for the most part, in a minute or so, with no adverse consequences. Every so often it would disrupt my AIM program, which is why many of you would see me logged on in the morning, and no longer there during the day. But that was a minor consequence, and as I wasn't home anyway most of the time, it didn't bother me.

2. Every so often, it would lock up so completely that I couldn't reconnect to the internet, no matter what I tried. Other programs would work, but nothing involving being online. For these, I had to reboot.

3. More often than #2, this corruption would somehow disconnect my sound card. I have no idea how, or why, but I could no longer play sounds. This also called for reboot.

4. If I were in the middle of a program (a video game, most often), the entire computer would be trying to do too much, and the entire thing would restart. This was very rare.

I lived with this problem from January 2004 to the present time. I tried various fixes myself, looked online for answers, spoke to people from SBC and from Microsoft, and no one could tell me what the heck was wrong. I am stoical, and like most men, unwilling to take trouble to admit my ignorance and ask others for extensive help. So I dealt with it by ignoring it. I learned little tricks, like leaving Windows Media Player playing music with the sound turned down, which would prevent the sound card from screwing up. Then, this week, I finally decided to look closer at the little computer icon in my lower right-hand corner of the tray. I had looked at this often, trying to figure out if it was creating problems, but various attempts had never yielded results. This time, however, would prove to be different.

For the first time, I noticed a button marked "Advanced Properties," and decided to play around with this a bit more. This information claimed that my computer was part of a network, and had various operations ongoing as related to that network. Well, I live alone, so apparently my computer was networked to the printer, or to itself, or to the SBC company. As the original software installation had created this icon, I assumed it was necessary. Just for kicks, this time, I decided to turn it all off and shut down each of those operations. I would be a network no longer.

Well, I rebooted the computer, was initially aghast as I could not seem to connect to the internet at all now. I frantically tried to find out how to re-engage the network, failing miserably. But as I was doing this, my connection somehow magically reformed itself. I imagine it was something akin to the re-routing scene from Terminator 2, where my PC found a way around the problem I had created for it. And through this growth, it was set free, a modern electronic existential tale.

For you see, dear reader, my computer no longer has this daily problem. It never disconnects anymore. It never gets extra slow anymore. And it starts up infinitely quicker now. Originally, I could turn on the computer, go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, put my contacts in, and then it would finally be ready to work. Now, it's done almost instantaneously, finally starting faster than my old system did, and proving that a superior processor isn't just a joke IBM tells us.

I feel as if a great weight has been lifted, as if an unseen rock on my back has been removed, and I am for the first time standing tall within the Electronic Age. I still don't know exactly what the problem was, or what I specifically did to fix it, and I don't care. A wiser man may choose to explore further and learn something, increasing his own knowledge. Me, well I've discovered that if I just start shutting things down in new and exciting ways, eventually the computer will either die or fix itself. I have faith in my system. It validates my belief that the computer is an active force constantly grappling with me for dominance. And it's just crazy enough to be true.

That's all for now. If you're in New York, go see Bourbon Samurai's play. I have no idea what it's about, but I believe it was the inspiration for this concept, which I adore. Click on his blog for ticket information. And good luck with the performance, New Yorkers.

A Window into His Madness

Sorry I haven't updated in a week or so. Various things have been happening, but none is a tale unto itself. So here's the highlights of my past week:

1. Gained a small modicum of national acclaim as one of the profs here sent out my Paradise Lost parody e-mail to various Milton scholars throughout the country.

2. Went to a conference in DeKalb, Illinois, with Captain Americanist, The Lecteur, and two Medievalists for whom I don't have names yet. We hit that town like a thunderbolt, gave our papers, and were gone before the echo faded. Upon the return trip, conceived the idea for our version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which would be the X-Men in the 19th century. Open to suggestions for possible powers.

3. Birthday party for the Red-Headed Stepchild. Theme: golf pros and tennis hos. Red's kinda crazy when it comes to parties, hence a new theme each year. Saw perhaps the worst rendition of "Sweet Caroline" ever performed by man. Perpetrators: one guy who was clearly drunk, and two girls who were either equally blitzed, dumb as posts, or both ("both" seems the appropriate choice).

4. Lost an hour to the cruel hands of time. Lousy Ben Franklin. Penny saved my ass.

And since I had no actual story to tell, a brief glimpse into an aspect of my personality that I found amusing:

You know how they say you should never go shopping while hungry? Well, this has never bothered me, as I don't usually tend to buy a lot of food when I shop (and when I do, I usually get a lot of frozen stuff that will keep forever, rather than snacks or perishables). But recently I discovered a truism for my own life, in that I should never go shopping when I'm thirsty. One night a while back, I had a craving for a Jones' Green Apple Soda. These sodas are very rare, and I only know of them because the liquor store down the street carries them (they are non-alcoholic, not sure why they're there). But I had a huge hankering for one, and I didn't want to go to a liquor store just to get a bottle of soda. So I decided to go to the grocery store, and get a few of them, and perhaps some other potables as well.

The nearby Cub Foods is my store of choice, due to the fact that I used to frequent its counterparts in Chicago, particularly when in search of Old Towne, perhaps the greatest beverage ever to grace the taste buds of the gods. Sadly, it no longer exists, but I still hold true to my store. So I went to Cubs, which tragically did not carry any Jones soda, even in its liquor store. So now I was very thirsty, with no Green Apple soda to slake my thirst, and a credit card just burning a hole in my wallet. The outcome? Items purchased: two large jugs of Gatorade, a bottle of orange juice, a bottle of milk, a 12-pack of Diet Coke with Lime, a 12-pack of Root Beer (cans), a bottle of Root Beer (for that glass taste), two giant jugs of Hi-C Orange Drink, and two 12-packs of Pink Lemonade. It looked like I was throwing a huge party and had been put on mixer detail, or at least that's what I assume the cashier thought. Sadly, I had just wanted a bottle of Green Apple soda. I now had enough liquid to cross the Sahara on foot.

What this says about me as an individual is anyone's guess. Feel free to speculate. Of course, writing this has made me thirsty, so it's time for a soda (Diet Pepsi from the corner store, in case you care). Oh, and I never did get the Green Apple Soda, to this day. I always forget to buy one when I'm getting liquor.

To close, two questions that help determine what kind of person you really are. Reflect, and answer.

1. "Thunder Road" or "Born to Run"?
2. When you sing along with "Roxanne" (and don't pretend you don't), are you a "Roxanne" person or a "Put on the Red Light" person?

Chapter MIX: In Which I Validate My Parents' Expenditures

So I'm a part of a barbershop quartet. The group is composed of myself (tenor), Dissertation Man (lead), Captain Americanist (baritone), and our bass-in-need-of-a-nickname (the aforementioned Tennessee Stretch, who objects and yet will not provide an alternative. Maybe Pseudobass). At the moment we are working on one song, "Sweet Adeline," in order to be able to perform it at department follies this year. Will we get there? Uncertain at this point, as it depends on how much work the others are willing to put in. But we still have quite a ways to go.

Now, our situation is complicated by the fact that most of the others can't read music and have no real experience singing beyond Karaoke Revolution. Our bass can't always hit the low notes, and our lead claims he forgets the melody the more he practices. As I have been singing since grade school (thanks to my ham of a grandfather and my early love of movie-musicals), naturally it falls to me to musically direct our little endeavor. This in spite of the fact that I cannot actually play the keyboard I own (I can plink out notes and recognize them, but not play anything beyond a simple scale), and that I have a freakishly high voice that doesn't always allow me to sing the same notes as those I am trying to teach. We're like the Bad News Bears of the barbershop world, in other words.

Now this has several benefits, which I shall enumerate at length:

1. I get to sing again. I did choir four years in high school, a plethora of musicals in both high school and college, and I was in an a cappella group for two years in college. Getting to sing again now, after so much time, is something I've really missed. So that makes it awesome in and of itself.

2. I actually use the knowledge my parents paid a large sum of money to obtain. I took three years of voice lessons in high school and four in college, knowing full well that I wanted to be an English major and would never practically use these skills beyond my undergrad dalliances. The fact that I actually get to teach these things back to my compatriots makes me feel like I wasn't just wasting my time and my parents' money. So mom and dad, this one's for you!

3. I get to annoy my upstairs neighbor. I hold one-on-one rehearsals at my place, as I have the keyboard. I imagine hearing "Sweet Adeline" over and over can be irritating to outsiders. However, given that my neighbor is either a spousal abuser or a horrible pet owner (judging by the several times I've heard very loud yelling, all one-sided, from his apartment), I don't feel too bad about this. If he can't take an hour of disturbance on a Saturday afternoon, he can move out. I've been here longer, I have that right.

I imagine there are other benefits I haven't thought of yet, and I will add them if they occur to me. And I'll keep posting on our progress, including our hope to eventually move on to "Baby On Board," written by Homer J. Simpson and arranged by my friend Sergio.

As for now, having survived the hellish week, I plan to go spend money. Gift certificate + 25% educator discount = Borders fun. Time to go feed the addiction.

The Magic's in the Music and the Music's in Me

This weekend we had our prospective grad students up for a visit. We wined them, dined them, tried to cull out the weak. Highlights include watching TheoryPirate hold court at a tableful of prospectives while doing his best to sell the school (heck, made me want to reapply), finding out that composition teachers have the same problems the world over, and being the pre-eminent 20th century Americanist at the welcome reception (all my colleagues in the field were absent, excepting Tennessee Stretch, but he studies poetry, which doesn't really count). Made me feel like a big man as people kept bringing new prospectives up to me so they could talk to an Americanist. Lowlights include my inability to drink all the free alcohol floating around, and the fact that one prospective is dating one of my former students (which leads to awkwardness, as we didn't really get along that well). But fun was had, and it gave me an excuse to further put off my work.

And now, my long-promised monograph on the theory behind Karaoke Revolution. To those non-Madisonian readers, this may be somewhat less amusing, so I apologize.

**************************
A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Performance: Reading the Screen in Karaoke Revolution

The Xbox system has recently revolutionized the drunken activities of Madison Graduate Students. Where once they would go to a bar and sit there, blithely drinking until it was time to stumble home, I have noticed an increasing trend to consume more alcohol more quickly, with the promise of immediate relocation to the karaoke machine. The locality of drinking and night's conclusion has been shifted, out of the bar and into the living room, in what may very well constitute the domesticity of drunkeness. Of course, the conceptulization of alcoholism invading the domestic sphere and the concurrent withdrawl of immediate and prolonged capital from the bars of Madison is a rich and fruitful topic itself, worthy of future research. Yet that is not my intent in this brief writing. Rather, I wish to examine the practices of performance itself, revealing both the development of a specific kind of critical understanding and perhaps indicating a new potentiality for the karaoke machine. By examining the practices of the past, we may hope to find a degree of intertextuality between the academy and the karaoke machine, with the promise of a new, more engaged relationship between singer and observers. In brief, I contend that we must break the television in order to save it.

Prolonged and repeated observation and participation in the recent phenomenon of Karaoke Revolution marks it as a rapidly rising form of entertainment within the department. From its drunken roots at the New Year's opening, the game has meteorically risen in status and entertainment, meriting comments on numerous blogs, transnational discussions of song preferences, and even critical attention from highly respected professionals (I cannot provide their names here, but Madisonians may recognize a certain faculty member known only by his three initials who was recently heard invoking the karaoke machine itself to his colleagues). Clearly, the attention gained by this apparatus marks it as a great gain to our late-night entertainment.

Yet the game itself is marked not only by its participatory nature, but by its undercurrent of containment, perhaps too obviously hidden in its status as a game. Unlike the larger cultural concept of karaoke, which holds no rewards other than singing in front of a bar full of people, Karaoke Revolution revolves around the key duality of performance for audience and performance as goal. While singing for friends, you are also singing for points, singing for the reward of the game itself recognizing your ability to control pitch, tone, and rhythm. "Proper" performance leads to gold and platnum records, miniature statues, and the unlocking of new characters and even new songs. Of course, by its status as game, we as participants seek victory, striving to better our performances and become more what the game recognizes as proper singers.

I would contend, however, that this degree of competition takes on new meaning due to the fact that we are performing music, rather than simply obliterating aliens, racing cars, playing golf, or the myriad of other video game concepts at hand. By seeking to match our songs to the songs of their original recorders, we become engrossed in the song itself, conferring upon it a status of perfection that we seek to emulate. Observe the singer in action: he stands, facing the tv, intently reading the lyrics, closely watching the pitch register as it fluctuates and indicates his adherence to the ur-melody of the song itself. His worth as singer is only measured by his recognition of the superior, inflexible worth of the song itself.

Like the literature we study and the writing we teach, karaoke has an inherent duality. On the one hand, it is indeed a contained piece of writing, complete in itself, with clear intent and worth due to its status as finished product. However, it is also about performivity, where worth is not merely inherent but rather created through the interaction of text and audience. A song may have its own meaning, but it takes on a new, different, and often more profound meaning through the response of its audience. (See, for example, repeated performances of the various works of Britney Spears, songs of dubious inherent worth that take on far greater cultural capital through their audience recognition.) In the act of karaoke, more often than not the performance itself allows for nuances of meaning unseen in the text of the song itself.

But we do not see this in our performances; or, if the audience sees it, the performer does not. We have become fixated upon the composer's performance, as if all the answers and all the meanings are apparent in the stylings of Huey Lewis, A-Ha, and their fellows. We feel that if we keep returning to the songs, practicing harder, we may come to a greater ability as a singer. In the literary field, there once existed a group of people who followed a similar philosophy. Dubbed the "New Critics," they were the scholars of the postwar period, arising on the tail end of the Modernist revolution, forced into their apolitical, text-based criticism by a government obsessed with containment of insurgency and rebellion, even in the academy. For the large part, these men are now considered passe, outdated, seeking to perpetuate a flawed, hegemonic, static reading practice. They have been rightly debunked by modern theorists, and while their contribution to the academy was and is substantial, we have since moved on to newer, more fruitful and open-ended methods of reading.

I would contend that we as performers are the "New Critics" of the karaoke discipline, for the reasons I have already mentioned. Much of this practice, of course, has been forced upon us by an unfamiliarity with the music and a desire to master these texts. But recent endeavors and repeated practice indicate that we have reached a plateau, that we have learned the texts, and that we are reaching the limits of understanding contained within a purely textual rendering. In order to move to the next level of entertainment and understanding, we must look no longer to the text, but to what is beyond the text, the audience. We must break the grip of the lyrics, the pitch meter, the scores themselves. We must realize that BTO and Bette Midler do not contain all the answers, that fun may be had through the rejection of dominance. By doing so, we would be participating in a grand musical tradition, hearkening back to the scat singing of Louis Armstrong and his contemporaries, which found new modes of expression through the breaking of lyrics as much as the lyrics themselves. This is the path we must walk, lest we stagnate as scholars of the karaoke field.

How might this be accomplished? We must, as I have said, break the tv. Ignore it's hold. We know the lyrics, we know the pitches, and if we do not entirely, we should not feel beholden to them. I offer the possibility of singing to the audience itself, of facing away from the screen and ignoring any attempt to score a decent score. We must seek connection with our listeners and duet singers, monitoring their reactions and altering our own performances to encourage new types of response. Recent experiments with Avril Lavigne's "Complicated" have revealed a potential depth worthy of further exploration along these lines, and such trailblazing scholarship of performivity must be continued and encouraged in order to further our understanding of the medium and lead us to greater depths of enjoyment. I call upon all future performers, therefore, to look through the tv rather than at it, to look into the eyes of the audience rather than casting a detached ear to their laughter. The future is ours to seize, and we must learn from the lessons of our academic past in order to elevate our drunken future.

Those Clever Bastards

I never understood people who bought things simply because they were on sale, or if they had a coupon. (Pardon the unclear pronoun there. By "they" I mean the people, not the things. Though that does raise the question of whether you own the coupon or the coupon owns you. But I digress.) Mostly I've noticed this to be women. Not that I'm trying to be sexist; I imagine men do it too, but we don't often talk about our shopping trips. For my mother, it was always groceries. She'd come home with food we had never heard of and would never consider trying, except that she had a coupon. For many of the women of my college or grad school years, it is more clothing than food. I consider myself to be a practical man. If I need something, I buy it. As I am cheap, I will look for a sale if possible. But I rarely if ever buy anything specifically because it is on sale. If I don't need it, I don't buy it. To me, this was a mark of honor, a way to resist the lure of capitalist exploitation of my already diminished wallet, not to mention more money for booze.

No more.

As of last week, I signed up for a Borders Rewards card. This costs no money, and there are no strings attached. You use it every time you buy something at Borders, and eventually you earn enough points to get gift certificates (I think). As I shop at Borders more often than any other store, and as I already have a Borders Visa card which serves a similar purpose, this seemed like a grand idea. I would double my points and get free stuff, with no cost to myself. Fool, fool that I was.

For you see, dear readers, there is a catch. There is only one catch, and that is Catch-22. And by Catch-22, I mean not Catch-22, but the Coupon Catch. Every time you buy something, they give you a coupon. 25% off one purchase. 30% off one purchase. Everything 10% off for one day. Sounds great, right? Yeah. Great like heroin. Because these coupons expire in a period of three days, and they don't take effect for a week after you get them. So basically, a week after you buy something, you've got this coupon that's only good for the weekend, but it's a good deal. So you feel an urge to go back to Borders. And since most of the books you buy aren't that expensive individually, you can't really justify using a 30% off coupon. Why save $2 when you could save $5, or even $10? Why not buy the book for regular price, then buy something else, say a DVD, that's more expensive, using the coupon there? And why not do this every time you visit the store? Let the savings pile up! It's your duty as a consumer!

Consequently, I now own copies of Ghostbusters I & II and Citizen Kane, and I've got my eye on Maverick, Shaun of the Dead, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Not to mention Batman Begins, should the price drop a bit more. Do I need any of these movies? No. Did I particularly want a copy of Ghostbusters before I saw the box set going for $15? No. I have many friends who each own the movie, and from whom I could borrow it at any time. But intoxicated with my coupon prowess, I felt I had to buy these DVDs. I'd be robbing myself if I didn't.

So to anyone I've ever mocked for buying unnecessary things because of sales or coupons...well, I don't apologize. It was funny, and I stand by it. But I'm now fair game as well. But before you mock, remember that I'm a man with a problem, no different than a crack addict or Britney Spears fanatic. Have pity on a consumer. Or send money.

They Made One for Me...

...One for Steven Spielberg, and then they shot the guy who made them!

The above quote is from a brilliant Simpsons parody of Alec Baldwin in Glengary Glen Ross. Other brilliant lines include: "You see this watch? It's so encrusted with jewels that the hands can't move!" and "Life is hard, right? Wrong! Life is easy, you suck!" The reference has bearing on what follows, so keep it in mind.

I just discovered that, in the comments on one of my earliest ramblings, someone has anonymously posted a link to a self-help website. Apparently my blog has such a critical mass of readership that I am now worthy of spam advertisement. Inspired by this nameless wretch, I offer my own self-help program. Step 1: Write me a check. Step 2: I cash the check and spend it. Step 3: You feel better about yourself for helping the poor and less fortunate.

The brilliance is in the simplicity. And the free money.

Addendum

This is an addition to the last post, so please read it first if you have not already.

Upon further consideration, I have succeeded in dandifying my partygoing experience through a somewhat obvious yet compelling literary allusion. Fitzgerald writes of Daisy Buchanan that her voice conveyed "a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour." Well, that's me at a party without a drink. I imagine that there are spectacular, Cecil B. Demille-esque proceedings in the next room over, and I'm always too early or too late for them. Whether this makes me a Carraway or a Gatsby is yet to be determined, and while this insight offers little new exegesis of The Great Gatsby, it allows me to remain not just a drunkard, but a gentleman drunkard (as most common boors don't go around referencing canonical works of literature to describe their detox).

Parties are Lame When I'm Sober

So, as I do every few years to assuage the qualms of my liver and its uppity concern for my continued existence, I have given up alcohol for Lent. The first true test of will came last night, as I attended a friend's birthday party at her house, a Wudan-like locale that lends itself perfectly to getting plastered. And I have discovered that the act of partying is fundamentally different for a sober person than it is a drunk person. The conversations are much more subdued, generally on topics that you would never consider discussing at a party (lest we reveal just what nerds we really are), and you can sustain them for longer periods of time. In fact, I found that I was one of those people who sits in the same spot, talking with the same people, without roving, wandering, or mingling (hearkening back to my sober days in high school at cast parties). All in all, if one were to seek an adjective to describe my party experience, it would be "lame."

Now don't get me wrong, I had fun, I enjoyed talking with my friends (and some acquaintances that I hadn't seen in a long time), and the party itself seemed to be enjoyed by all. I'm not saying the party itself was lame. It seemed to be a great success. Just that, to the eyes of a sober drunkard, there was a quality of lameness about my being there that was somewhat unsettling. I don't know if it was an internal lameness that I have been suppressing through my love of beer and whiskey, or just a confluence of events that sparked these feelings and behaviors within me.

Whatever the case, I have about 35 more days to continue this trend, including Spring Break and St. Patrick's Day. I hope to find some resolution to these issues I am discovering, and then promptly forget them when I get snookered on Easter (to celebrate the risen Lord). Keep a sober man in your thoughts throughout these coming weeks, for I am embarking upon a great journey...

And now, in light of my unquenchable hatred for my fellow man, a new segment of my Notes.

Things I Hate:
1. Drivers who don't believe in the passing lane.
2. Drivers who slow down to make me miss yellow lights.
3. Lutherans.*
4. People who don't turn their cell phones off for Mass.
5. People who don't turn their cell phones off after they have rung during Mass.
6. People who don't turn their cell phones off after they have rung three times during Mass, including during the silent distribution of ashes.
7. People who insist on riding the elevator from the fourth floor to the first.
8. People who insist on riding the elevator from the first floor to the fourth.
9. People who put off obligations to partake in philanthropic acts.
10. Undergraduates.
11. Bands who think that because they have a long, fun refrain, they can repeat it nine times with only two verses and no bridge. Yes Lifehouse, I'm looking at you.

Look for periodic updates to this list, as I am full of rage.

*I don't hate all Lutherans per se, just the ones that were blocking traffic because they can't properly turn in to a parking lot to attend Mass, thus preventing me from making it to my Mass on time. Splitters.