I read a short article today entitled “The Endorsement: Self-Delusion” that I found to be a nice bit of writing, albeit a tad flip. Then I clicked on the tantalizingly titled link “Women We Love: Photo Galleries of Highly Attractive Women.” For who can resist?

Turns out this takes you to a page by Esquire magazine purporting to be a list of “Women We Love.” I found it more than a little unsettling.

First off, the image for Charlize Theron is a foot. Clicking on the foot takes you to Ms. Theron’s page, at the top of which are four thumbnails for other pictures: the foot, her hands, a hand on a leg, and her breasts. Poor Charlize has been dissected into a collection of body parts. Down below there’s an article on what makes her so great, but are people (i.e. men) really supposed to read that? Other pages don’t fare much better. Monica Belluci’s at least shows her face, although the second thumbnail looks disturbingly like a photo still from a porn flick.

Obviously I’m not above taking a few moments out of my day to look at beautiful people, but what bugs me is how the vast majority of photos feature the women in highly sexualized positions and in various stages of undress. And the criteria for “women we love” is overwhelming slanted toward the young and white.

I guess what I object to (besides the general objectification) is that the page suggests that “we” (Esquire? men? the human race?) love these women for reasons more than just their bodies. Yet the actual content on the page runs contrary to this very notion.

Maybe it’s also funny considering that my wife’s issue of Bust magazine’s “Men We Love” issue is sitting next to the computer. Let’s just say the text-to-photo ratio is a bit different, and Elija Wood isn’t required to cover his genitalia with only his hands. Little different take on the “opposite” sex, innit?

Current Mood: Embarrassed To Be Male |

Well, I have to say that the various plot lines for this year’s Premier League have gotten a lot less interesting. Plenty can still happen but the results of the last 10 days helped shake things out.

Man Ure is on fire and Ronaldo can’t stop scoring. They’ve got a 5-point lead over Chelski and 6 over the Arse, both of whom look less than convincing. Man Ure’s massive goal difference of +53 is unassailable and therefore is as good as an extra point. You tell me, how does this team that has dropped a total of 18 points over 32 games suddenly contrive to drop 5 in their last 6 games while their rivals remain perfect? Doesn’t seem too likely, does it?

Liverpool’s 1-0 win (Torres!) over Everton puts them 5 points above Everton, who look to be running out of gas. While this is far from foregone conclusion, Liverpool doesn’t need to do much to sew up 4th place and that Champions League spot.

Derby is now officially down and Fulham, based on their dire performances, don’t look capable of rising from the mire. Bolton’s downturn coincided with good results by the others, meaning they’re now closer to Fulham (2 points) than Birmingham City (4 points). Reading and Sunderland have hit form and they’re hard to bet against. But hating Bolton is not nearly as much fun now that Fat Sam’s gone…

And somebody please tell me that this story about Spurs’ interest in Diego Lopez is not based in fact. A goalkeeper might be on the shopping list but if they’ve got £27million laying bout the joint, they’d do well to go after a world-class midfielder or two.

After telling myself that I should stop buying books until I’ve read the ones I have, I bought three yesterday: Sherman Alexie’s Reservation Blues and Flight, as well as a collection of Borges’ fiction. My rationale is that I need to read the Alexie and Borges before my preliminary exams (taking place sometime in the next 18 months) and these were good used copies, so why not?

I’m also pondering the unthinkable: thinning out my library a bit to make more room. I’m always hesitant to do this because few things depreciate in value more than a book, but I’ve got some stuff I just don’t need. A book club version of Lord of the Rings, for example, and some books like The Origin of Satan that I’m never going to read. I’m also considering getting rid of books like my Random House Thesaurus, Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford Companion to English Literature, and Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature. They’re handy enough to have around but they’ve been made almost obsolete by the Internet and take up a lot of shelf space.

I’ve heard that you’re supposed to get rid of anything in your wardrobe that you haven’t worn in a year. I’m wondering if the same might be true for reference and/or non-fiction books that have been gathering dust.

Current Mood: Not Looking Forward to Another Week |

Welcome to the new-look LA Galaxy, Mr. Beckham. How’d that 4-0 ass kicking feel? I do like how the strategy du jour for using Beckham is apparently to knock long balls for the strikers to chase down, considering the midfield and defense are so inept. It could be a long season, Dave…

Erm, yeah. Spurs getting their sorry asses kicked by Newcastle 4-1 wasn’t much better, sad to say. Can you tell which team has nothing to play for and the one that’s pulling away from the relegation zone?

My iPod took a gigantic dump on my head today at the library and needed to be restored to the factory settings. Figuring out what to put back on it isn’t fun, and I lost some Woody Guthrie and Fred McDowell that was only on my iPod, I’m afraid, as I lost the original music on my hard drive awhile back.

On the good news front, rehabbing my leg is going well. I love it when people know their stuff and the staff I’ve been working with at the rehab clinic know it very well. They have me doing a variety of exercises that isolate certain muscle groups in my leg and work them to death. And the guy I worked with on Friday showed me how to stretch my kneecap a little to take away routine discomfort, which worked like magic. Amazing stuff.

Current Mood: A Little Burned Out |

I know, I know, you’re probably sick and tired of the media blitz, and the 24-hour non-stop coverage on television, radio, and the Internet, but I only feel it is my duty to remind the world that Major League Soccer kicks off this weekend.

Fox Soccer Channel gets the first game of the year at 7:30 ET between the Houston Dynamo and the New England Revolution in a rematch of last year’s MLS Cup final.

The fun continues on FSC (and HDNet) at 9:30 ET as the Colorado Rapids host the Los Angeles Galaxy and their new manager Ruud Gullit and the world’s most popular soccer player, the superstar who has taken America by storm, the one, the only—Carlos Ruiz!

Watch ‘em.

Current Mood: Fair |
Currently Listening To - Uncle Tupelo - “March 16-20, 1992″

Right, so one way or another I need to find a way to consume Louise Erdrich’s The Last Report On the Miracles At Little No Horse in the next few weeks in order to write a paper, and since I have enough reading to do to make my eyes burn out and fall on my desk, I thought I’d once again look into an Audible subscription since they have a digital audio version (as opposed to the tapes I could buy on the cheap but would not be as convenient).

Good Lord, the Audible website sucks. Browsing is not a realistic option. For instance, I’d really like some books on 18th and 19th century America, but you can’t browse those. You can enter those terms in the advanced search, but then those terms have to explicitly be in the title or description. So something like Undaunted Courage, Stephen Ambrose’s book on Lewis and Clark, would be filtered out. Nice.

And better yet, some bumbling around revealed that their database sucks even worse than I thought. I found that Joseph M Marshall and Joseph M Marshall III (same guy) have different records. If you click on the second one, you get one book. If you click on the first one, you get four books—including the one with the III in the author’s name. Nice.

And the American history books I have found all appear to have an overt political agenda leaning heavily to the conservative/ libertarian/ patriot side. I can handle rah-rah American history (Stephen Ambrose’s cheerleading is tolerable for example) but I don’t want revisionist history, please. Workers were treated poorly across the board in the 19th century, therefore unions shouldn’t be dismissed as rabble-rousing undesirable elements, especially in a general history. Why even go there? If I want politics with my history I’ll go back to Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, thank you.

So the search goes on as I scan through 730 titles filed under History:America, and becoming more and more convinced that I should bring a boom box in the car with me and buy those tapes of the Erdrich novel after all…

Current Mood: Disgusted |
Currently Listening To - Uncle Tupelo - “No Depression”

Um. Yeah. I just looked at my upcoming schedule for the week. By next Tuesday, I have to:

* Read a 470-page book
* Read a critical article that’s 18 pages
* Read a second critical article that’s 21 pages
* Write a 3-page paper comparing two novels
* Work on finding 20 articles for my review of scholarship on an as-of-yet undefined topic, summarizing 10 of them (due in three weeks)

And in case you’re wondering, that’s for one of three classes. In the other classes, I have a story due in two weeks and in the other I have an in-class presentation due in three weeks. Both of which are in addition to my regular workload, of course.

When I say I like school, I most certainly do not mean that I like this part of school. The above, friends, is a buttload of work.

Current Mood: You’ve Got to Be @#$@% Kidding Me |

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Last night I finished David Treuer’s The Translation of Dr. Apelles and, like many books I’ve encountered in my Native American Novel class, my first reaction was that I needed to read it again to really “get” it. Stories within stories, books within books. Good, complicated stuff.

I was overly ambitious in trying to get through Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine during break. Reality bodychecked that idea from the get-go, but I did read about 50 pages before sacrificing it for finishing some short stories I wanted to get in the mail and, of course, doing taxes, cooking dinner, grocery shopping, and other domestic duties I tried to pick up the slack on during my alleged “down” time.

I’m also currently listening to The Painted Drum and I have to say that I haven’t found either LM or PD to be as instantly engaging as Tracks or The Beet Queen, and I also know why. These latter two start off a little off kilter, pervaded by a sense of otherworldly weirdness whereas Love Medicine and The Painted Drum begin with straightforward realism. It doesn’t matter how beautifully written a book is, I just don’t care for straightforward realism. The world is a confusing, perplexing place and I like my fiction to reflect that.

And the more criticism I read, the more I feel like I’m being bodily pulled toward Native American lit as field of study. The list of books I have on my pending list for the off-season features a handful of Cormac McCarthy novels but is otherwise dominated by Indian lit. Books of criticism, even. I have a tendency to be obsessive about things I get interested in, and I’m resisting the urge to drop about $300 on books the little voice inside my head is telling me I won’t have time to read.

Current Mood: Okay |
Currently Listening To - Bob Dylan - “Pat Garret & Billy the Kid”

Right, so I have used this space to lash out at everybody’s favorites Ars*nal with regularity. In case you missed it, the Arse blew a 1-0 lead against Chelski and ending up losing 2-1 and have fallen to third place. They’re now six points behind Man Ure and a long shot for winning the title. Here’s a quote from their always charming (or should I say whining) boss:

“Today we were unlucky and I thought we played well. We were 1-0 up and were unlucky with their first goal which I thought was really offside.

“Anelka came on for them, and they decided to play long ball, which put us under a lot of pressure and that was the only way they could trouble us. In the end we lost the game.”

I love how Whinger seems to feel that other teams have a duty to lay down and let his side play the wide open, attacking football that everybody loves…yet doesn’t manage to win much when you look at the trophy cabinet. So Chelski may have decided to play a less attractive brand of football but, at the end of the day, they won. Wouldn’t a decent manager change his game plan to counteract the tactics from the opposite bench? (the answer is yes)

And for the record, the Arse’s last five league results: draw-draw-draw-draw-loss while averaging one goal per game. Stirring stuff. Champion’s form, surely. And I love how whinging fans think everyone jumps all over their team. If that’s the case, then how come the draws against Boro and Villa were widely considered “winnable” games when they were within a grand total of about 90 seconds of losing both? And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention their domestic cup exits: 4-0 to Man Ure and 6-2 to Tottenham. Good luck with that whole Champions League thing, you whining turds, otherwise it’s time to dust those empty shelves on the trophy cabinet for another year.

Have I mentioned that I HATE ARS*NAL? You can throw in their fans (on both sides of the pond) and manager to boot.

Current Mood: Bleh |

On the heels of my post about La Concha’s glorious torta cubana comes a Wisconsin State Journal article on…La Concha’s glorious torta cubana.

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Mother Nature is a hoor. Madison got another 8-10 inches of snow yesterday. Previous record for snowfall? 76.1 inches in 1978-79. This year we’ve had 102. Sick of winter? Yes, thanks.

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Where did break go? Ugh. I really don’t want to go back to school next week.

Current Mood: Tired |