This site gets severely neglected in crunch times, and it’s crunch time. I was freaking out earlier about how I was going to get everything done by the end of the semester (Dec. 12 or so) but after mapping it all out I think I’ll be good to go. I realized today that a slow, steady approach is not what’s called for. I have about three major projects that I need to care of, and it makes way more sense to dedicate about a week to each while abandoning nearly everything else. This plan should keep me sane.

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I love my Packers, I really do, and to see them mercilessly whip up on the Bears was a joy to behold. They looked like world-beaters, even though I’m convinced that the NFC North has three average teams that aren’t going to the Super Bowl.

The Badgers have been so god-awful this season that I can hardly stand to watch. The only consolation this weekend was that you can always count on the Golden Vomit to botch things up worse than Wisconsin. Their complete capitulation inspired much laughter in my house.

Speaking of the corridors of Hergenrader echoing with laughter, how great was Aston Villa’s Arse smacking on Saturday? A fairer score probably would have been 4-0 as Villa played their hosts off the park. Seriously, to put in such a limp performance at home…why are there still headlines saying “Ars*nal Title Chances Dented”? I suspected that their win against Man Ure last weekend did more damage to the champions’ hopes of retaining the title than it did about Ars*nal’s credentials for staying in the race, and this result suggests I was right.

For the yutzes who haven’t yet come to grips with how these European leagues work—it doesn’t matter how pretty you play or the big teams you beat, it all comes down to the season-long table. If you’re like the Arse and you’re nine points off the pace with a third of the season gone, not only do you need to basically be flawless from here on out, you need to have the three teams ahead of you all drop more points than you do. For a side that’s already lost four (two at home), that doesn’t seem too likely, does it?

The major misconception is that unlike baseball, basketball, or American football, there is no “peaking at the right time” in regards to the regular season. Mediocre teams like the NY Giants managed to get hot in December and that paved the way to the Super Bowl. Not so in the league for footie. That holds true for the cup competitions, but it’s quite often that teams are mortally wounded by November and December and there is no coming back. The only recent exception is Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle blowing a ten-point lead in the ‘95-’96 season, but I can’t see Benitez’s Liverpool or Scolari’s Chelski wobbling that badly. Nor can I see this Ars*nal crop making up the ground.

Still awfully tight, tight, tight though.

Current Mood: Sure |

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Ironic as it may be, being in a graduate writing program and actually writing seem to be antithetical. Looking at my submission stats for 2008 I discovered that they’re way, way down: 26 subs for the year, down from a career-high 51 in 2007 and 39 in 2006. Worse, it’s really the same batch of stories going round and round without a lot of fresh stuff mixed in to liven things up.

The problem is one of balance. The struggle is to find time to prepare for the classes I’m taking as well as for the class I’m teaching. Add to this the admin position I hold and the time I’m dedicating to preparing for my preliminary exams next year and the brain is getting close to maxed out. Then subtract time for eating, sleeping, and commuting (8 hours—the equivalent of a full workday lost) and there’s not a lot left over for the time consuming process of proper manuscript preparation and submission.

The situation is also worsened by the fact that I’ve spent the last couple summers working on a novel rather than cranking out new short stories. I do have a set of stories that need some final revisions before they go but it’s a real challenge to carve out the time necessary to get them up to snuff, and I see no good reason (and plenty of bad ones) to send out sub-par work just to pump up my number of subs and feel good about sending stuff out.

Impatience is probably the word for what I’m experiencing. The Ph.D. program I’m in is intentionally front-loaded, meaning they pile on the work in the first couple years so you can have the remaining years to work on your writing. I’ve also been advised to rearrange my workload to reflect these priorities, in this order: my writing, my classes, my teaching. Maybe it’s because I’m a perfectionist, or maybe it’s because my writing doesn’t have the immediacy of the other two, but I can’t allow myself to do that.

And this has been my least-favorite semester thus far. The required “teaching composition” course I’m taking is a lot of work, preparing for classes for the first time is a lot of work, keeping track of administrative details for my part-time job is a lot of work, and I’m on the road more than ever. I’m done with required coursework next semester and should have my prelims behind me by next Thanksgiving, so things should relax a little by then. School-wise anyway…

I’m almost done with Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman on audio and I’ve been enjoying it. I found out relatively early that this collection of short stories demands your complete attention and isn’t the best choice for audio, but as long as I can focus on it (read: not at 6:00 AM while driving to school) then everything is okay. If I’m prone to daydreaming or needing to split my attention, I lose what’s going on almost immediately.

I guess what I find most interesting is how I really enjoy some stories (the title story, “Chance Traveller,” “A Folklore for My Generation,” “Tony Takitani,” and others) and how some really fall flat (”Aeroplane” and “The Ice Man”) as they feel too straightforward, almost allegorical. Still, there are far more hits than misses here and I plan on moving to Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore next.

Current Mood: Okay |

I received word from the UWM English Department that Professor James Liddy passed away this morning at Columbia Hospital, aged 74.

Not being a poet and not being Irish, I hadn’t heard of Liddy before beginning my classes as a grad student at UWM, but it wasn’t long until I figured out that James Liddy was a very large figure in poetry circles indeed. He has published many books of poetry, and has had critical works and tributes written about and for him. I also know his presence was a big reason why some of my fellow grad students came to UWM.

On a more personal note, James was my advisor when I started classes. He took me out to lunch and told me numerous stories about UWM that would have made university administrators blush. I took two of his classes, and he served on my Masters committee. He pointed me to authors I otherwise would have never known, and was very complimentary of my fiction (less so of my attempts at poetry - ) and for that I am very grateful.

It’s too bad the word maverick has been thrown around so much lately because the word describes James very well. He was genuine in everything he did, and the department will be something less without him.

Current Mood: Suddenly Very Pensive and Sad |

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I finished Harry Matthew’s The Journalist yesterday and quite enjoyed it although, like many books in my restrictions and obstructions class, it wouldn’t appeal to a broad audience. The central idea is that the narrator has suffered a breakdown of some sort and has decided to write a journal to track the events of his life. He is having an affair with his brother-in-law’s wife, his son is acting strangely, and he’s stuck in a dull job. Early on, he stops taking his lorarzepan, and as the medication wears off, his paranoia increases and he begins obsessively detailing the minutia of his life in his journal and develops an impossibly complex categorization to track his thoughts, feelings, dreams, and “objective” statements. As I said in class, I liked the book’s strong database aesthetic.

I also picked up a number of books from Half-Price books last weekend, all of which will be on my Ph.D. preliminary exams: The Tin Drum, Dorderlands/La Frontera, The Death of Artemio Cruz, Song of Solomon, and House of Spirits. I also checked out from the library Magic(al) Realism: A New Critical Idiom by Maggie Bowers (which looks concise), and Magic Realism: Theory, History, and Community by Zaomra et al. (which looks comprehensive). These two critical books should help me flesh out my “major” area, which is mostly going to be classics of “magical realism” and contemporary fantasy/slipstream.

I also received my mid-term evaluations for the composition course I’m teaching and the results were very positive. There were a few blase’ responses, but the only sharp comments were directed at the assignments (which I have no control over) and the format of the course (small group discussion, large group discussion, and paper writing…is that really a fair criticism of a course entitled “Introduction to College Writing”?).

Otherwise, my semester works like this: busy Monday, crushed on Tuesday, recover Wednesday, suffer Thursday, work like hell Friday, recover Saturday/Sunday. All things being equal, I prefer a steady schedule that keeps me busy rather than this peak-valley-peak-valley routine, which absolutely exhausts me.

The ankle is feeling almost back to normal after rolling it Saturday—a four-day turnaround, about par for the course. I will probably give indoor a go on Monday, so wish me luck…

Current Mood: Sure |
Currently Listening To - The Hold Steady - “Almost Killed Me”

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So, Spurs ditched the magic Juande in favor of ‘Arry Redknapp. I think axing Ramos was the right move because he clearly did not command the respect of the players, winning a grand total of four league games while in charge. In one game, ‘Arry accumulated more points than Ramos did in eight. And as most sensible people realized, Spurs are now three points (one more win) from pulling out of the drop zone—provided other teams keep losing. I think three out of Bolton, Fulham, Stoke, and West Brom will get relegated. It’s early days, but I can see Newcastle and Spurs muscling out enough points over the long haul to get to the comfort zone before spring. (Speaking of which, can you believe Hull? You’d have to think 40 points would keep you safe, and they’re already half-way there in just 9 games with 29 more to play.)

I’m pretty excited about Liverpool beating Chelski today, and hope to high heaven that they’ll still be contenders come January. A certain Ars* lead the table for long periods last fall before falling apart in the New Year, so early results do not guarantee late returns. Still, it’s better to win than lose…

Back to ‘Arry Redknapp for a second, it’s an appointment that seems solid but doesn’t get the heart racing. He generally has had a galvanizing effect for the teams he’s managed, but he’s also been dodgy in the transfer market. Spurs savior? Not hardly. At least he should keep them up. Emphasis on should.

In good news, last weekend Man City United spanked the opposition 8-2 on a lovely, sunny afternoon. Yesterday however, we lost 1-0 on a cold, windy day on an abomination of a field that had a serious slant to it and a huge patch of mud in the center of the park. The conditions were almost unplayable and I figured it would either be 0-0 or someone would score on a fluke or mistake, and unfortunately that’s what happened. Our keeper slipped throwing the ball into play and it landed at the feet of one of their strikers, who popped it into the empty net and then celebrated like he’d actually done something incredible. We went on to miss about three chances that were nearly as easy, only to see our strikers get in each others way (twice) and blaze over the bar from a ridiculous position.

Worst of all, I rolled my ankle getting shoved over in a mud patch and will be hobbled for a week or so. (sigh) Titanium breakaway ankles…

You can say what you want about MLS’ two-conference system and the playoffs (I often say they’re dumb) but it does set the stage for some pretty good late-season drama. Colorado vs. Real Salt Lake was a perfect example. Because Amy trumped me on the remote, we ended up watching some real estate shows and, during the commercials, I’d seen that the Rapids went up 1-0. I figured that while we were watching Trading Spaces, two things would happen: either Colorado would score another goal and ice the game, or they wouldn’t. Turns out they wouldn’t, which led to frenetic last ten minutes that I did get to watch, including RSL’s dramatic and late, late equalizer that saw them go through to the playoffs for their very first time. Good stuff.

On the writing front, I was boosted by the news that a friend of mine who has a boatload of sales to highly respected literary mags says he sends out his stories to about twenty markets at the same time. In the same conversation, he said he was amazed that I had the publications I did from sending out my stories one at a time, due to the restriction most f/sf markets have on not accepting simultaneous subs.

This is certainly good news and helps me get my head around how to succeed in the lit mag world. I typically get very cordial, personal rejections from the f/sf mags I submit to and rarely, if ever, get so much as a hand-written “thanks” on the form rejections I get from lit mags. Rather than taking this personally, I’m guessing I just need to cast nets a little farther and a little wider.

Who has time for reading books in grad school? My reading list is way down this semester for a variety of reasons, mostly because my time is devoured by teaching and my admin position, and my reading time is dedicated to articles, not books. In a word, this sucks. I have a long list of stuff I want to read but it will have to wait.

Current Mood: Bleh |
Currently Listening To - The Hold Steady - “Almost Killed Me”

As part of UWM’s creative writing program, we do monthly (or close enough!) readings featuring our grad students and faculty. If you’re in the Milwaukee area tomorrow night (Thursday, Oct 23) then drop by and check it out!

WHAT: October’s Student/Faculty Reading

WHEN: Thursday, October 23 @ 6 pm

WHERE: Brocach Irish Pub, 1850 N. Water St.

WHY: Hear fiction and poetry read by your esteemed colleagues!

WHO:
* Maurice Kilwein-Guevara
* Karen Aschenbrenner
* Emilie Lindemann
* ..and special guest reader Joe Rein

THIS EVENT IS FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC!!!

Before going forward with anything positive, I do want to say that I am generally displeased with the performance of my 80 GB iPod classic. I had some initial negative things to say, and there are more. I found out that you can indeed use Media Monkey to manage your iPod and that helped sort the cover art problems considerably, except now there are more problems. The correct cover art comes up in Media Monkey but the wrong cover art appears in the iPod. Annoying, but not show-stopping. What’s worse is that some songs (much of Paul Simon’s Graceland and the Goats Tricks of the Shade) play for about 30 seconds before skipping to the next track. Googling reveals this problem is not unique to me, and solutions are few and far between. And these are just the skipping tracks I’ve discovered. They play fine on the computer but deleting them off the iPod and uploading again does no good. Not what I paid $250 for, that’s for sure.

Having said that, I do appreciate the extra space. Audio books don’t keep me awake behind the wheel like music does, and I’ve been delving deep into the archives recently and I have happily discovered that a lot of stuff really holds up over time. Sugar’s Copper Blue for example. I bought this album at the end of high school and it brings back memories of my first year at college, and it’s really quite good. And though it should come as no surprise, Jane’s Addiction’s first three albums sound just as strange and gripping today as they did back in the late 80’s and early 90’s. They still merit multiple relistens.

I’ve made some headway in figuring some things out regarding future schooling. It looks like I will be finishing my coursework next semester and taking my preliminary exams next fall. The major area looks like it’s finally going to be something along the lines of “Unstable Realities: Global Literature Since WWII” and will basically be magical realism, slipstream, and some postmodern novels that sort of fit in with this. The minor areas will be “Native American Literature” and, for the new minor, “Visual Narratives, Hypertext, and Textuality” along with a strong dose of the rhetoric of technology. If it’s not exactly this, it’ll be damn close.

Otherwise, the ceaseless pounding of work continues apace and, for the first time in my graduate career, I’m actually a little behind in one class. ‘Tis no big deal and will be set straight in the next few days, but I ought to have reworked one of my pieces for my obstructions/restrictions fiction workshop by now.

On the brighter side, it’s my turn to write a summary piece on the composition theory articles we’re reading and one of them deals with bringing a punk rock ethos to teaching composition, and it liberally quotes from Sex Pistols songs and quite a bit from the Clash. My response will focus on Joe Strummer and his journey from being the front man of 101ers (not just Strummer’s first band, but also the UWM course number for freshman composition) to angry punk, to experimental musician, to globally conscious artist—all tied back to comp theory. Should be fun.

Current Mood: Are You Friggin’ Kidding Me? |

We saw Beck at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on Thursday night and a good time was had by all. He opened with “Loser” and, surprisingly, played almost a dozen other songs before finally playing “Soul of a Man” off Modern Guilt. In fact, he only played five songs off his most recent album during the show, and was heavy on Guero and Odelay!. I was more than fine with that.

The whole set list and a good (if slightly hyperbolic) review appears here.

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In case you were wondering, this semester isn’t the worst imaginable but neither is it the best. I am not a morning person and my schedule demands that I become one. I do okay in the morning but it’s the mid-afternoon crash that gets me, even when I get a full eight hours of sleep. That and between balancing the various and disparate responsibilities of teaching my classes, taking classes, and doing the program admin job, it will be a minor miracle if this semester doesn’t eventually grind me into a fine powder, mix me with some water, spread the resulting paste on a cracker, and devour me whole.

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And it’s been an awful few weeks for teams I support. The Packers blew yet another winnable game against Atlanta yesterday, as did the Badgers against Ohio State. I have become a big Aaron Rodgers fan and pin very little of the blame on him for the losses, but his durability might be an issue. The Badgers are a far more depressing proposition as I don’t see where this team goes from here, and there’s very little to get enthused about.

On the footie front, Tottenham has become such an abject failure that the streak of losses don’t even phase me anymore. Can they get relegated? They surely can. They shipped out two proven Premier League strikers with virtually no backup, and the midfield is decidedly lightweight. Conventional wisdom would suggest that once they find their footing they’ll be okay as the side has lots of talent, whereas teams like Fulham and Bolton look like they might struggle again this year because there’s not much to work with. Yet there are no guarantees and if things don’t turn around soon, there’s real danger.

And sadly, Mad City United lost its first game 2-1 to the perennial league champions last weekend, and I wasn’t able to make the game. It’s looking like I might not make this weekend’s match either but I hope at least we can return to winning ways.

Current Mood: Beat |

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Every once in awhile you read a book that somehow warps your perspective. On everything. I’m about half done with Ben Marcus’s The Age of Wire and String, which we’re reading for my restrictions & obstructions writing workshop, and I adore it.

I don’t know what it is—it’s certainly not a novel, but calling the individual “chapters” pieces of flash fiction doesn’t seem right either. All these chapters (rarely more than a page or two) do cohere under their section titles, but in a very strange way. Marcus is doing some semantic world-building here, creating a new world through warping language. I have a feeling I will be coming back to this book about a thousand more times in my life.

Enough about me. Here’s one entitled “Snoring, Accidental Sleep” as an example:

Snoring, language disturbance caused by accidental sleeping, in which a person speaks in compressed syllables and bulleted syntax, often stacking several words over one another in a distemporal deliverance of a sentence. The snoring person can be stuffed with cool air to slow the delivery of its language, but perspiration froths at key points on the hips and back when artificial air is introduced, and thus the sleep becomes sketchy and riddled with noise. It is often best to cull the sleeper forth from static communication by responding to its snores with apneic barks—sounds produced without air. The effect of the barks is to isolate each aspect of the snore sound by slowing down the delivery—riding the sleeper until the snore breaks into separate words. Decoders should sit on the bed and jostle the sleeper’s stomach. This further dispatches the clusters that often form when the sleeper speaks all at once (snores). The decoder is then better able to decipher the word blocks. When analyzed, the messages are often simple. Pull me out, they say, the water has risen to the base of my neck.

Put about 40 of those together under headings like God, House, and The Society and you have this book. I should also point out that each section also has a list of terms to better help you (?) understand the text. Terms like:

* shirt of noise Garment, fabric, or residue that absorbs and holds sound, storing messages for journeys. Its loudness cannot be soothed. It can destroy the member which inhabits it.

* Nitzel’s Gamble The act or technique of filling the lungs with water. The chance was first taken by the Nitzel in Green River.

*Jennifer The inability to see. Partial blindness in regards to hands. To jennifer is to feign blindness. The diseases resulting from these acts are called jennies.

I am quite positive that this book isn’t for everyone. But if you read these and found them strange, dense, and fascinating, then consider buying the book. I turn pages in a state of wonder, and that’s no mean feat.

Current Mood: Happy |

We’re having student conferences this week (15-20 minutes per student, 20 students) in lieu of classes, so I arranged the appointments on Mon-Tues-Fri so I’ve had Wed and Thurs at home and man, has it been lovely. The difference between driving three days a week versus four is pretty significant and I’ve gotten a lot done with that extra time. It’s amazing how getting just a little more sleep and getting a little more time away from driving reaps generous rewards in terms of alertness and productivity.

In case you hadn’t noticed the trend, check out my “Current Mood” history for the last couple weeks:

9/22 - Current Mood: Zzzzzzzz |
9/17 - Current Mood: Pretty Goo…zzzzzzzzzzzz |
9/14 - Current Mood: To Continue a Theme, Tired |
9/13 - Current Mood: Victorious but Beat |
9/12 - Current Mood: Pleased |
9/12 - Current Mood: Okay, But Tired |

I’m really enjoying the teaching and I think the students are learning, which is a good thing. The course on composition teaching theory is pretty frustrating at times since practically everything we read is counter intuitive (and is not how any of us were ever taught). The general theory is that the instructor must constantly push against being an “authority” (on anything, really) and always push the students to explore, struggle, and discover on their own. Again, generally speaking, any sort of directive or qualitative remark (i.e. “You should change this confusing sentence”) closes down ways of thinking, limits possibilities, and reconfirms hierarchies of student/teacher and novice/expert.

Of course, running against this is the fact that most of us instructors are twice as old as the average freshman and have learned a thing or two ourselves about reading and writing given that we are all, you know, Ph.D. students in English. While in theory I appreciate the idea of making these students to struggle to figure out how they can write better, I also think it’s silly to pretend that 1) an institutional student/teacher hierarchy doesn’t already exist (and will exist as long as teachers submit grades) and 2) that sometimes a student will be helped more by just being told something straight-up rather than always redirecting them into avenues of flailing and frustration.

I also feel that a lot of this theory we’re reading is to keep us honest, so we don’t stand before the class and expound Writing’s Necessary Truths from on high. But often it sets you to feel as though nothing you’re doing is “right,” even though I also understand that this frustration and struggling to come to terms with how to teach college composition is also part of the comp program’s master plan: make the student question, reassess, find his or her own way of making meaning. Only in this instance, I am the student.

Just because I recognize this doesn’t mean I have to like it though, or even buy into it.

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I’ve been putting in some serious work trying to develop a book list for my preliminary exam, which looks like I will be taking next fall or spring. Originally I intended to do Modern Fiction as my major area and Native American Literature and Slipstream/New Wave Fabulism/New Weird as my minors. A few things have changed.

First, I wanted to focus more on world literature so I included a mess of Latin American writers along with a few Asian and African works that all loosely fall under the umbrella of “magic realism.” That meant booting some of the American and Europeans. In addition, as I’ve been reading Brian McHale’s excellent Postmodernist Fiction I’ve learned that a lot of the books I like comfortably fall under the even broader category of postmodernist writing. Then a faculty member suggested that the “slipstream” minor might seem to similar to the major area, and that I should consider a minor that takes advantage of my computer/web skills and my interest in visual aspects of storytelling.

The “new” minor looks to be something along the lines of Visual Narratives, Hypertext, and Textuality. This means looking at non-traditional books like House of Leaves and A Humument, e-texts like Patchwork Girl and Afternoon, A Story, and probably some graphic novels. Overall, this possibility excites me.

Anyway, that’s a long post to make up for weeks of relative inactivity.

Oh, my O-30 team Mad City United leaped to the top of the league with a 3-0 win last Thursday, putting us at 3-0-0 on the season with a +13 goal difference. Alas, I wasn’t there since it was a weeknight game, but I’m looking forward to this Saturday’s match after a week’s layoff.

Current Mood: Good (and not that tired) |