The R--ts

I somehow bought the clean version of The Roots' Phrenology, which is essentially all just bleeped out. The Seed (2.0) is especially ludicrous. Beware of poorly-labeled Amazon downloads.

Is it weird that I hesitate before typing "ludicrous?" As though "Ludacris" might actually be the proper spelling?

A Thought About Carrots

Eating an adult carrot is somehow much more satisfying than eating an equivalent mass of baby carrots. Perhaps it feels like more of an accomplishment, having vanquished the behemoth root. I ate a carrot, dammit. Much better, more heroic than having gnashed my teeth over a handful of tender, defenseless little orange carrot nubs. Well, defenseless is a loaded term -- I shall not inject morality into this comparison, especially with regard to vegetables that are, in actuality, fully grown*. But the heroism -- this is a surprisingly accurate reflection of how I view my relationship with food: meal conquered, I digest. I congratulate myself often, after meals.

Psychology aside, I think adult carrots exhibit superior taste and texture.

*Baby-cut carrots are whittled from imperfect grown-up carrots to reduce food waste.

Monsters in Bed

Prediction: Zombies will never be sexy.

Vampires, werewolves, even mummies I can sort of see. But zombies -- eyes vacant, unromantic; drooling bits of brain -- will never be sexy. The gauntlet is thrown; a challenge; let all writers of popular prose take heed. Make zombies sexy. Just you try.

I've been watching a lot of Bones lately. The show offers a winning combination of sexual tension and the temperately grotesque: Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz are terrific, and clean bones are not that scary. Given one's tendency to saturate when watching gore-heavy crime dramas, this is a nice thing.

* * *

On topic, you should all take a listen -- carefully -- to Lady Gaga's second album, The Fame Monster. First let me declare that Lady Gaga is brilliant. The Fame was pure, odd, trashpop brilliance. There was something foggily familiar about much of the music, and Gaga was decidedly kooky yet I felt like maybe she was actually holding back to build pop appeal. And, I loved it.

With The Fame Monster, the familiarity is still there (take 'Alejandro;' compare with 'La Isla Bonita' by Madonna), but it's not what's important. The tracks are infectiously, joyously danceable; Gaga's pop sensibility is flawless. The icing on the cake is thematic: the album is filled with blankly-delivered non-subtle references to monsterhood, embracing the current pop obsession with sexed-up humanoids (see Twilight) and simultaneously stepping beyond it into grittier, kookier territory. Gaga's vampires would not sparkle, benign, in the sunlight. They would consume us, darkly, in the dark (primal fear! darkness of soul! darkness of environs. teehee. anyway). She casually croons to us about half-wired broken jaws, heart-eating, brain-eating (flirts with zombie-territory, big points in my book), and her offhand delivery demands that we accept these all as reasonable lyrical sentences. It is great. I particularly enjoy 'Monster,' 'Alejandro,' and 'Speechless' (aside from 'Bad Romance,' of course).

***

Anyway, enough of the grisly/macabre. I have a bad headcold, and will take a nap.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2010, my friends. A few notes from winter break:

- A public health service announcement in Logan airport proclaimed: "If you have hands, wash them." This seemed to me a needless cruelty, a needle in the consciousness of the handless.

- I have read Mrs. Dalloway. I felt while reading that this book was just enormous. Now that I've finished, it's clear that I'll be peeling back, unwrapping, poking at this book for years to come. It's gorgeous; an enormous book.

- After devoting 251 minutes of our lives to the Twilight movies, K and I declared ourselves (a) confused and (b) Team Jacob. What could be more clear? Jacob Black was dependable, gruffly handsome and, most importantly, comparatively good for Bella Swan. Edward was a drama king (always with the biting and the wanting to bite, and then with the revulsion and the random, sudden misgivings). However, to address (a) I committed to sitting down and reading the novels. I suddenly have greater appreciation for Kristen Stewart's deadpan monotone: Bella was written that way (by the way, I love it -- Kristen Stewart's deadpan monotone). I haven't gotten too far yet, but I hear that I will appreciate Edward more via written word. I look forward to a new view.

Other things have occurred to me, but I'm blanking on them now.

Till later,

R.

Returns, Some Triumphant, Others Incurring a Fine

It is winter here in Cambridge. The statement is false, but serves to better illustrate the blogger's state of mind. We are experiencing a frigid mid-October, and it is difficult to reconcile myself with this. I did not fully notice when it was summer; perhaps this explains the shock and resistance to a rather expected and incremental change.

I went for a walk to return a library book (overdue -- evidently one does not grow up, one only grows taller), and remembered that Harvard Yard in autumn is nice. How sad, that I had not crossed the Yard since the late summer: crisp air, red leaves, the notebooks tucked away under elbows, all came as a surprise. I struck an irregular (but deliberate) path across it, pausing briefly at the old stops, examining the old rocks. We are grading our students on rock identifications around University Hall, you see. A responsible TF would refresh her memory, you see; I had a reason to be there. Mostly I just wanted to see them again.

*     *     *

On that topic, teaching is a blast, teaching is a treasure. Teaching is the highlight of my week. Once a week, for three hours, I win. It is a brilliant feeling to TF the same first introductory course that you took in your future field. That said, it will not do to have the sleep-deprived leading the sleep-deprived. This seems to me a disastrous concoction.

Hope all is well,

R

*There are many facets to returning to one's alma mater for graduate school: academic, emotional, geographical. The Yard has taken on the quality I associate with hometowns: a place well-loved; left; regained. But I'll switch focus to the academic-emotional, rather than the geographical-emotional.

Better Than a Candy Heart, but Not as Good as a Necco Wafer

The 2nd floor geochemistry message board is currently playing host to an anonymous, rapidly updated dialogue-by-means-of-pushpin. The exchange has lasted some three weeks. It began, or at least I noticed it, when a smiley face morphed into "Hi!," which was shuffled to a "Hey" overnight. I have the identity of one participant (a labmate); the other is a mystery person in the halls of Hoffman. Having established that I was not involved, the labmate and I recently gathered enough pins to eke out "Who?" on the board. This was replaced, overnight, with a somewhat disappointing "Me." So much for the direct approach.

* * *

My labmate has left for the rest of summer, and the pins have mirrored a slide from assurance to confusion: a smiley face dropped to "?!" Today's reaction to the prolonged radio silence: a heart with an arrow through it. For one thing, that took a lot of pins. I scanned the hallway for pin-poor posters hanging off the wall. Logistics aside, hmm. I wonder who in Hoffman is heartbroken.

Scars: Relating to Sharp Surfaces, or Otherwise

I've developed a nifty double-struck scar across the knuckles of my left hand. Back alley, fist fight vs. Shadow ninjas. One fist. Left.

Actually, I slammed the back of my hand against sheet metal and got sliced twice, by both the upper and lower edges (think: top face meets side; bottom face meets side. Both edges are sharp). It seems I walk with ~10% precision, and this has its consequences. I don't much like getting scars on my hands. Yet, much of my work is manual, and I seem to be collecting them. This parallel pair of shiny fine lines is particularly conspicuous. I suppose that's fitting; subtlety (physical, verbal, emotional; grammatical?) seems beyond my reach.

Thing I like: ambiguous syntax. It's infuriating in the context of academic writing, but delightful when it rears its head in more frivolous settings. (Note to self: the adj form of "levity" is not levitical*. "Lighter" would have sufficed, but "frivolous" is less ... ambiguous.)

Consider this example for the night: top 40 pop song by Sean Kingston titled "Fire Burnin'." Lyrical snippet, sans punctuation:

Somebody call 911 shorty fire burning on the dance floor

Is that: call 911, shorty -- there's a fire burning on the dance floor? Or, call 911 -- there's a shorty-fire burning on the dance floor? I prefer the latter, for the sake of imagery. Ah, but it appears neither is correct:

She's fire burning fire burning on the dance floor
That little shorty's fire burning on the dance floor

It appears that "fire burning" functions as an augmented gerund: fire, as an entity, packaged in, enveloped. It is oddly more illustrative than just plain "burning." One could burn with fever, lust, jealousy; smolder with rage, all without actual flames. If one is fire burning, there can be little doubt. Still I prefer the shorty-fire.


*For some practical advice, and what is arguably one of my favorite parts of the Old Testament, see Leviticus 13 (on leprosy).