Will Is My Friend

If any of you are considering grad school,
this here site is a must read. It's the blog of a history professor at Swarthmore.

Much of what is posted is common knowledge: grad school is usually hell (and worth it only if you're absolutely sure that this is what you want to do; if it's not, you're fucked in many ways) and requires a really insane kind and amount of commitment.

Some particularly good pieces on this website are
"Should I Go to Grad School" and a little bit more hardcore, From ABD to the Job Market. An amuse bouche from the latter:

..[T]here are a very small but irritating coterie of academics who collect vast numbers of papers from Ph.D candidates engaged in their write-up who then artfully (so that it's not an overt instance of plagiarism) rip-off aspects of the doctoral students’ research or arguments, knowing that it's hard to prove when it's from a dissertation that hasn't yet appeared in any kind of published form.

There are other sites by current grad students, singing the same tune (graduate programs and hiring practices need reform etc.), but this blog offers the perspective of someone in a cushy tenure track job, with summers off, and job security for life -- but still knows the horrible rules of the games that are played. (Although at Swarthmore, a liberal-arts and exclusively undergraduate institution, he doesn't speak too much about the intricacies and problems related to advising graduate students at an advanced level etc.)

For a wonderful introduction to, and contextualization of this problem, I recommend a Village Voice piece that helps to explain, among other things, why blogs like this exist in the first place. It is here.

And if this is totally boring and inapplicable to you, you can check out the site I go to at work, risking my job to do so and yours too if you decide to go too.

I just posted, like, ten links, fully aware that this is probably a really irritating post, sending you to far flung corners of the web (a blog about an academic's gripes!)...apologies in advance.

And all that crap...err...jazz

Hmm, all things bloggy seem to have slowed down. Here is some pointless drivel to move things along:

My 2 week trial with Netflix is up today. I got to see Ran, Master and Commander, Love Actually, and Chicago. Also the first season of Buffy (3 discs). Totally kick ass service, definitely gonna keep it. Few notes on the movies...Master and Commander was not better than Last Samurai (Nish, I'm looking in your direction). It was like watching a sequel to a movie that never got made. Love Actually wasn't too bad, if you take it for what it is. Catch me in the right mood (did I mention Amy T was in Sparta this week?) and I'm a sucker for that stuff. What can I say about Chicago? To quote Xander (from Buffy), "On a scale from one to ten...it sucked". Renee Zellweger? Worst. Actress. Ever. Here's a tip; squinting your eyes and pouting your lips is not acting, you horse-faced twit! Joey Adams' untalented, unattractive cousin indeed. I have no beef with Ran, Kurosawa pwns me.

I discovered something yesterday that I thought was awesome, but everyone else seems to already know. I can run my computer audio through my receiver for surround sound! I was doing research for a client and read about it accidentally. Well, I had my receiver and speakers from college just sitting around, so I hooked them up. Music and movies sound so awesome now. If only I could figure out a way to turn down all my other sounds...it practically knocks me out of my chair when someone IM's me.

That's it, have a great weekend everybody.

Daft Punk is playing at my house (my house).

The Pixies are playing in the city in which I live tonight, and I won't be there. How is that possible? The Pixies! I guess it's for the best--I have to stay home anyway to continue my attempt to condense a history of the New York Intellectuals' thirty-year move from revolutionary socialism to neoconservatism to about a page. Yeah, I've been working on finishing this chapter for a while now, hence the lack of posting. But I have to send it in on Friday, because my 'first-year assessment' is on Tuesday. Nothing too formal or stressful, I'm pretty sure it's just gonna be a 'you doin' alright?' sorta meeting. I do hope I can fucking finish this chapter tho. Been working on it since September really.

Still in love with the OC (we don't even consider doing something if it involves leaving the house between 6:30 and 7:30 on Sunday night), but definitely starting to suspect that nothing-ever-happens on that show. Plot movement is soooo slow. And I also have a creeping suspicion that Seth's gonna eventually pick Summer, leaving my favorite Anna to whither and die like so many passed over kumquats on the vine (remember, we're probably on the 10th episode of the season--please no spoilers). Ah, such is life.

If music is your thing, you'll be with me in spirit early next week (Monday here, Tuesday in the states) at the record store (they still exist?) to buy the new rekkid from ac newman (aka carl newman, aka the main guy/resident pop genius of the new pornographers). It looks totally awesome. But I guess you could buy the new wilco too. Or the new pj harvey. Or the new mirah. Or the new magnetic fields. Wow. I wish I had money. Money to buy records. And drugs.

Yohei, I understand you don't like cockroaches. And if one doesn't like cockroaches, you make a pretty good case why you'd really hate them. But what if you don't have such a problem with them in the first place? Like me. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty anti-insect. But roaches don't bite or sting, so they don't really worry me. And if they don't really worry me, the fact that they live really long, can survive anything, and can fly don't really hold much weight. Besides carrying disease (which is a good point) why should I hate them?

Roaches fly to Jupiter

Because Memorial Day weekend is drawing to a close and I didn't do anything of note, I figure that this is a good time to look inward.

I despise nothing on this earth as much as cockroaches. Nothing can bring out such violent hatred, disdain, and respect, as my formidable enemy, the cockroach.

It is impossible for me to hate anything, even a plotting, scheming human being as much as I hate the cockroach. Cockroaches will survive a nuclear fallout. Humans, obviously, will not. This only serves to fan my hatred, and set cockroaches aside as invincible creatures, an Other.

They are resourceful little fuckers. How many nights have I woken up to get a drink of water, when, only to turn on the kitchen light, I see a cockroach scurrying out of the sink and into some crack in the wall before I can do anything about it! (And how sleepiness instantly gives way to a wide-awake anger.) How many times have I, having actually caught one and tried flushing it down the toilet, found it, within seconds, scurrying up the side of the toilet wall, valiantly fighting for survival! Friends, they do not lie on their back shaking their little legs like other insects -- if they see a way out and they pursue it.

I'm not a dirty person. I'm pretty sure that my filthy existence is neutralized by my obsessively sanitary girlfriend. But still. They are everywhere. It is war.

1. They are not stupid. I am terrified of all insects in the same way that Edmund Burke writes how the bark of dogs and wolves is sublimely terrifying. But cockroaches, intelligent little fuckers, amplify terror. Cockroaches can outsmart the your average human. Flies will keep crashing their little head and their even littler brains into walls or light fixtures. Ladybugs that occasionally fly into your home are stupid. Mosquitos and moths are slow. Cockroaches, au contraire, know when you've turned on the light and aim to put it out of its misery. They move faster than you. They are like pigeons. They err on the side of caution. When a light goes on while they're making a Thanksgiving feast out of your dirty dishes, they haul-ass to the nearest exit.

2. Cockroaches, according to many late night research sessions (I am often unable to sleep after finding out that they have invaded my home), can survive on the sugar on a postage stamp or the nutrients (?) on your toothbrush. The point is, you can keep your home immaculately clean, but they can always lick your mother#$%^&**-ing toothbrush! That goes in your mouth! They carry disease.

3. Given their intelligence, cockroaches are self-servingly tempered by a resilient ignorance. A totalitarian dictator can kill a human being as an example, scaring dissidents from uprising. A dead cockroach, however is not deterred from the sight of a dead comrade. They will blindly continue their pursuit of your tootbrush.

4. A cockroach can fly. It has wings. Most of the roaches found in the home are merely peripatetic. But others can fly! Humans can not fly. You cannot compete with an intelligent insect that also has the gift of flight.

5. Roaches will outlive humans. By my lay understanding, a nuclear bomb just burns through humans, instantly turning them to ash. A bright, white heat that is so hot, can, like a photograph, burn your image into stone at the moment of annhilation. There are shadows permanently burned into stones in Hiroshima from this instantaneous white-hot death. A cockroach, however, like the Hulk, will only be strengthened by these radioactive rays. They will be stronger and bigger. We will all be dead, but giant cockroaches will still roam the earth, presumably, looking for toothbrushes, crumbs, or, postage stamps.

A memorable SNL skit for me is the fake-commercial for a trap that tortures, in a medieval way, the cockroaches that are unfortunate enough to enter. But they are, still, invincible:

They are faster and too cautious;
Need too little to survive; and
Will outlive us for eons.

We don't need to get Osama bin Laden. We need to get rid of the roaches. Oh yeah, and OJ Simpson.