Pagans
Happy Halloween! So far on campus I have not seen anyone who looks particularly stranger than some of the people just walking around in my neighborhood (although my local transvestites are far more skilled at sartorial feminization than frat-boy types). One of my smartest grad students is currently dressed as Miss Piggy, and while the curly blonde hair really suits her, I found the prosthetic pig nose somewhat distracting when she made her astute comments on the week's readings. (Also a highlight of class today was when someone misspoke and said she needed a clarifiquestion. I'm always a fan of the portmanteau word, but particularly liked this one and may incorporate it into my lexicon.)
Although the man has shut down other major Halloween gatherings, my local Boystown Halloween action should be going strong as of 6 pm. Considering the hyperawareness of self-presentation already going on in Hollywood, I have a suspicion that people tonight are going to look really good.
Fabulousness
I feel kind of bad for having had such a good week this last week when so many people in a 100-mile radius are grappling with so much fire-related horror. (I'm thinking about taking volunteer training with the Red Cross so that the next time something happens -- and in Southern California there's always a next time in terms of natural disasters -- I'll actually be able to do something useful and not just engage in extensive hand-wringing.) But life for me in LaLaLand is just so much better than in Spookytown that it's ridiculous. The 31st marks my 2-month anniversary here, and while in some ways it feels like no time has passed, in other ways I feel at a huge remove from my Spookytown existence (not so much from my friends, who I'm mostly keeping up with by phone and e-mail, but definitely from my paying work there). I think that being completely uninvolved in the entertainment industry but continually adjacent to it is a real quality-of-life enhancer, absurd as that may sound. (Well, and also the spotting of the range of out-there SoCal types, even those unrelated to the biz, like today's beachfront long-haired model-type dude, in a long-sleeve quite tight fatigue t-shirt, ankle-high fringe brown suede boots, tight brown jeans, and a motor-powered skateboard that he somehow controlled from a remote in his right hand that was connected to the underside of his board via a long black tube.)(Why oh why have I not yet learned to always carry my camera with me?) Oh, and of course best of all is being in a department that is filled with top people in my field, all of whom say the nicest things to me, and teaching super-smart students who have great things to say in class. How lovely to go from an utter absence of intellectual stimulation and collective inquiry or respect for me and my work to one of the most vibrant places in the country where people actually care about and like what I do! Of course, all this has started to trigger the panic button of "how will I bear to leave it all?", but I am tamping down the feelings of horror and fear and will deal with all of that later.
Some highlights of the week, which I am going to try to revel in -- all those years of dwelling on the mistakes and lacunae and failings and what's missing and how I should be doing things better, not to mention the self-hatred, are hopefully behind me, and focusing on the positive really seems like a much better way to live.
- Dates with tall, handsome, charming, funny men who seemed to like me (although of course only time will tell)
- Hearing nice things from maybe 10 people (actually, even a few more, now that I think about it) about a talk I gave the week before
- Some absurdly cute clothing from a nearby thrift store and some yard sales -- although I am regretful that I told some colleagues that a new pair of pants are by a fancy Belgian designer named Sofie D'Hoore, since apparently they now have plans to say things like, "Oh, are those d'hoore pants?" when they see me on campus
- Winning 2 free theater tickets via the local paper, complete with free pastries afterward (the quality of the pastries sadly far better than the quality of the play)
- Having a fancy person ask my opinion on some amazingly interesting videotaped data that she has, prefacing it by saying, "you're such a good analyst, I can't wait to hear what you think" (!)
- Being invited to be a plenary speaker at a fancy conference next spring -- last time I spoke there I had filed the diss just 2 weeks previously and so was quite the peon, so it's a real step up
- Going to my hot yoga teacher's boyfriend's art opening, replete with fabulous gay and semi-gay men who told stories about the absurd celebrity behavior at their gym (they all go to the same one, about a mile from my place) and also had lots of stories on the theme "you think they're hetero but they're not." I may end up friends with one of them, he was the most fun (especially his impersonation of his mother's recently-deceased-but-deteriorating-for-many-many-years lap dog).
- Continued sampling of local sushi and Persian restaurants
- My real website, firstnamelastname.com, is getting between 2 and 8 hits a day for the last month now, with many people landing there through web searches involving my name, ergo not accidental hits. Yesterday someone at a fancy British university where I know absolutely no one downloaded all of my available writings. So cool! Sure I write and publish stuff and give talks, but I don't think of people actually knowing who I am or reading the things that I write, so learning that several people a day are actively seeking out my work is a real revelation, and gratifying to boot
- A nice party at a colleague's place where I got to know some people I see in the hallways a lot better (although I completely refused to do vodka shots, so maybe I lost some chances to learn even more about them). Sadly I seem to be showing my age and reverting to my Chi-town late-night lameness, that is, despite the 6 pm disco nap, I had to leave at midnight because I was so very tired. Admittedly, I got really not enough sleep the previous night, but even so...
- I did two headstands in yoga by myself. Two! It is a position that causes me great fear and anxiety, but now I am feeling quite proud and brave
- Many nice long-distance catch-up phone conversations and also some NY Times beachy catchup, although I was severely distracted by the repeatedly dive-bombing pelicans -- today was apparently a very good fishing day
It's all so very nice, I kind of just want to say "whee!" And such a vast improvement over how I felt two years ago this time -- of course, not being clinically depressed always preferable to being clinically depressed. Now I just have to figure out how to manage the burgeoning social life, especially with so many people living all across town and being perpetually busy such that it's hard to see them on a regular basis, and get back to eating healthy, and figure out how to exercise when the air is extra particulatey from fires, and oh, get lots of academic work done. But better to have a full plate than an empty one!
Scary
So, as you may have heard by now, the year-long drought and unusually severe Santa Ana winds currently rampaging across Southern California have created a series of wildfires running from just north of here all the down to the border, and they're only getting worse. Here's what it looked like from a satellite just a few hours ago. From space! That's really freaky. (For those of you unsure of the scale here, those islands vaguely visible in the middle of the photo are the Channel Islands and the large body of water in the lower right corner is the Gulf of California -- here's the approximate equivalent on Google Maps.)
I'm perfectly safe here in the city, although weather.com sent me an alert this morning telling me that fire-related particulates were making the air quality even worse than usual, and that not only should I not exercise outside today at all, in fact I should stay inside as much as possible, and run my (non-existent) air conditioner in order to filter the air. But I'm worried for friends, like Former Neighbor Girl, who is sitting at home with car packed waiting for the Malibu fires to head her way and force her (et famille) to evacuate, or my new friend J-F, who on Thursday told me we'd head sometime soon to his beautiful house in the mountains to the east, a house that as I type may be engulfed in flames (nearby houses already gone), and Joce, who may be headed my way from northern San Diego to crash in my place with two kids and cat and dog, because closer friends are also possibly going to be forced from their homes at any second. I wish there was something I could do, other than read about symbolic capital and the political field (I'm prepping for class tomorrow). Nothing like Mother Nature to remind you just how pathetically small and helpless you really are in the overall scheme of things...
More from our correspondents abroad
Lance and Erma have been using their new blog to post all kinds of interesting, actually, more than interesting, fascinating maybe?, tidbits on their autumnal sojourn in Seoul (see the sidebar for the link) (especially if you want the clearest explanation ever of the Korean alphabet, which perhaps will not be as big a thrill for you as it was for me, but has cleared up years of semi-mystified semi-wondering that I somehow never managed to get off my ass and ever do anything about). But in an amazing show of generosity, they have donated three excellent anthropomorphized food pictures to be added to the still-growing collection here.
First we have some delicious squid-flavored ramen. According to Lance, the be-aproned smilingly perky squid chef (and I wonder how she keeps her hat on while cooking, that seems like a major accomplishment) is wielding her chopsticks in anticipation and telling the consumer how much she enjoys eating this kind of seafood ramen. The cannibalistic gusto! She seems so innocent, but we can only imagine the twisted sociopathy that lurks within.
Next we have a pert running, or perhaps dancing, mushroom with one regular-sized hand (presuming there is a certain proportionality to mushroom hands) and one enormous hand, kind of like a crab, except a mushroom. The restaurant is called "Three Birds with One Stone," which according to Erma is a play on the Korean expression that translates to "one stone, two birds," with essentially the same meaning as in English, although less clear is how this relates to the fact that they are vending spicy mushroom soups. Which probably do not have three birds in them. Or stones, for that matter. I'm wondering if this mushroom's left hand is so highly developed in order to defend itself from forest mushroom collectors -- he's got a kind of smug smile, a little like the gingerbread man's "you can't catch me", except presumably he has been caught because he is sliced and diced and in broth just inside that glass storefront.
Finally, and my favorite, is Mr. Winky Octopus, somehow managing to give an energetic thumbs up with his furthest-right tentacle (tentacles really not like thumbs, and not containing thumbs either). How delighted he is that you are about to enter his cafe and eat his butchered carcass! Way to go!
Meanwhile, in a show of synchronicity, last night I met a super-cool artist/graphic designer who has himself produced images of anthropomorphized food, including evil celery stalks and bread marching two-by-two into Noah's ark. Perhaps with time and subtle elicitations, we can get some insights into the minds and hands that produce these objections of fascination...
Anyway, thanks, Lance and Erma! Anything to add?
My bathroom smells like Russia
and I can't for the life of me figure out why. But there's a certain spot, right around the bathmat/shower entry zone that I walk through and think, "huh, Russia."
Backwards
Today I needed to do the reading for my class, which meets on Wednesday. I kind of forgot the thing where when you assign your students a lot of work, then it means a lot of work for you -- long papers = long grading sessions, lots of reading = oops, better reread it all because what if they ask questions? But reading at home proved problematic -- even though today was a holiday, it was extra extra noisy. Not only was the construction going full blast, but for some reason the couple downstairs decided to play Andrea Bocelli at the fullest possible volume, and while there are some pseudo-operatic singers that I can tune right out, he is not one of them. One of the articles I assigned is from the 1930s and reads as a bit archaic, and after reading the same paragraph four times I just gave up and thought "where can I go that's quiet?" And ended up at the beach. To do work. It was great! I got everything read, evened out the unattractive sports bra/tank top tan a bit, swam in between work units, watched adorable shore birds peck at the sand for whatever food item lives there, and drove home feeling rested, calm(ish), and having actually read everything I needed to read. Couldn't use the intertron to look up the supplementary articles I want to lecture on, but that was the smallest of prices to pay. I wonder just how late in the year working beach visits will be possible? I decided before I moved here that I would milk this place for all it's worth, to look a bit more for the joie in viving (of course, I also decided that maybe I should go anorexic, get highlights, learn to play dumb, and work on becoming a trophy wife), and I think I'm doing pretty ok. Now if only I could figure out how to bring the laptop and work on answering the approximately one million e-mails that I owe people.
Noise pollution
Yesterday I was out from 7:30 to 8 doing worky stuff on campus (and I don't mean half an hour) - taught my grad seminar (so far, so good), went to department party, went to a (not as information-filled as one might hope) talk and subsequent discussion, and then wisely excused myself from the post-talk dinner, since I was already wiped out.
So I decided to work from home today, doing laundry and dishes and whatever between work units, except that I am being foiled by the incredibly loud construction directly beneath my living room window (and echoing back from the tiny alley behind the building as well). Usually it's only mildly noisy, but today appears to be "run the cement truck and endlessly pour cement with a really really really loud motor" day, with two other supplementary motors also running. At least, as I found when I looked out the window to see what the hell was going on, some of the equipment is entertainingly named.
From our correspondents abroad
A lovely addition to my collection of representations of anthropomorphized food -- from Siberia, no less.
I will transliterate and translate. At the top, with the XXI, it says produkty XXI veka, that is, Products of the 21st Century -- so we know we're modern. Just beneath that, arching like a rainbow, it reads Sinior Pomidor, where pomidor is Russki for tomato, as you might have guessed from the not-so-21st-century garbed mustachioed tomato nobleman pictured directly below, a balding Spanish type who is, presumably, Senor Pomidor.
Across his swelled bosom it reads, you can probably almost get this yourselves, ketchup (the ch is just one letter there, the thing that looks like the 4), and arching smilingly below that we learn that this ketchup is shashlychnyi, the adjective form of shashlik, which is a marinated and then skewered kebab grilled meat-like thing. Which is why it's a little weird that Senor Pomidor is eating a drumstick rather than a skewered piece of meat, well, in addition to the chicken being way up the animacy hierarchy and presumably the food chain from the tomato. But with his lacy nobleman's collar, Senor Pomidor is up for eating anything!
