March 23, 2007

Build it and they will come



My mom's friend Sylvia who lives in Canada took this picture outside of Banff. They had to build the elk and deer their own crossing because after the highway was built there were lots of collisions (this was where their original path was before the humans invaded). Sylvia says it didn't take the animals long to learn that this was their "road."

I have often wished our government would spend the money to build these crossings. I heart Canada.

March 11, 2007

21-year-old Lily Allen, speaking to the AV Club, on the effect of how women musicians are portrayed in the media:

AVC: You've talked a lot about way women in rock tend to get patronized as "the female version of this male artist," instead of being written up for themselves. And you took on NME over a comment about how you can rock "even in stilettos." Why do you think there's so much of a problem finding positive ways to talk about female musicians?

LA: I don't know. I'm really saddened by the whole situation. It makes me really, really angry. I think that there's a view of… I think that as long as women are parading around on television, taking their clothes off to sell records, then guys will be able to take the piss out of us. That's what it comes down to. I have a little brother, Alfie, and he has a very poor view of women, and I think the only explanation… He's got three incredibly strong women surrounding him in his home life, yet he's so affected by the stuff he sees in the media and the way women are portrayed. And I think until TV programmers are more responsible about putting these slutty women on TV dancing around, that's the view that kids are going to have. Ultimately, that's my only explanation.

March 1, 2007

A couple of public service announcements:

I finally stopped in at Dominican Joe's, the new coffee shop in that corner strip mall at Riverside and S. Congress, and I highly recommend it! Reluctant Texan and I dropped in while walking back from the Barack Obama rally, and I was pleased to find that it was not a cheesy knock-off corporate coffee chain of some sort, but rather an independent venture that collaborates with a local non-profit to buy the coffee directly from the growers. Plus it has a calm atmosphere and plenty of tables, breakfast tacos if you get there early enough, and toasted bagels and cream cheese. From their website:

Dominican Joe's primary coffee is purchased from Makarios, an Austin-based non-profit organization doing educational development work in the Dominican Republic. Skipping the large corporate middle-man, Makarios works directly with farmers in the region and pays them higher wages and supports their communities in an effort to develop self-sustaining skills for the future.

One thing they fail to mention is that Makarios is a faith-based organization, so there may be some word-o-Jesus-spreadin' going on in the DR. Not sure how I feel about this.

The second promotional item is a cool-sounding SXSW day show taking place on Thursday March 15 at Lovejoy's. It's co-sponsored by Three Imaginary Girls.

February 18, 2007

Today I sadly report the theft of my bicycle. Sometime between 2:30 and 11:00pm on Friday, someone came up to our house, opened the front gate (the entire front yard is fenced), walked up to the porch, and took my bike. Just like that. No, it wasn't locked up, and for almost two years it didn't need to be. The other thing is that with our schedules, there is almost always someone home, and we don't have regular schedules. I am home all but two days a week! The one evening I go out to have some beers after a meeting this happens (Puritanical analysis: I'm being punished for not working hard enough!). Luckily M.'s bike was at work.

I totally blame irritating developer-dude who, for the past several months, has brought scads of construction crews onto the property at all hours of the day most days of the week. I figure this has multiplied the number of people who know our little house even exists, because you can't really see it from the street if you're just driving by. We talked all winter about how we needed to move my bike to the storage garage - of course! And last Fall I just got a full tune-up and a new front fork put on it, with a new headlight too. Needless to say I have been very depressed about this - as I do tend to form unhealthy attachments to inanimate objects. I bought this bike in 1996 from a little shop in Moscow, Idaho. The longer I have something, the harder it is for me to let go of it - it becomes a source of pride a la "I've had this ______ for 17 years!"

The other part that's depressing is the feeling victimized - that someone had the audacity to walk up to our front door and take something that was mine. So now, just in time for SXSW and springtime riding opportunities, I have no bike. Saturday M. took me to Flip Happy Crepes to cheer me up, and then we went to Lowe's and bought a "No Trespassing" sign. I haven't hung it up yet, but I'm looking forward to making our house look like drug dealers live there.

February 11, 2007

Progress! Last week I met with my dissertation chair to go over my latest research results, and I am very close to being done with this portion of the dissertation saga. I need to make one more good two to three week push on the statistical modeling, and then I can return to the writing portion. I have a skeletal manuscript at this point (what I used for my proposal defense), and basically need to add two more chapters: results and discussion. Then beef up the current literature review and methodology chapters, and it's done! Ha ha! Not as easy as it sounds, but definitely doable in a 5-6 month time frame. Probably sooner if I applied myself, but isn't that just the way it always is with everything. I like to apply myself just enough so I get it done but don't lose my mind in the process; plus it's nice to just sit around or do errands in the middle of the week and bask in the last few months of freedom and the simple gift of having so many hours in the week that are mine. I think the only casualty after this is all done will be my social skills - writing a dissertation means I spend an awful lot of time alone (no offense to Okazaki Fragment, Stella Bean, Pepe, and Frankie).

February 6, 2007

The movie about The Gits is coming to the SXSW film festival in a few weeks. This movie has been in the works for a long time, and premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival in 2005. I got an email a year ago about 7 Year Bitch and the remaining members of The Gits wanting to play a show in Austin when the movie was released here, but haven't heard anything since. Seems highly unlikely, a 7 Year Bitch reunion? I think I could die pretty happy after that.

January 30, 2007

It's starting. The thinly and not-so-thinly veiled misogynistic commentary about Hillary Clinton. The culprit I am pointing out at this time is not surprising, yet disappointing - Jon Stewart. Watching The Daily Show is basically like taking a bath in super-charged masculinity every night, but still I watch it. I suppose it's still a breath of fresh air in the current climate, but it rarely fails to alienate me. Last night it was so apparent, the way they covered Clinton vs. the way they covered Obama. Dredging up stereotypes about how women like to "talk" and men don't want to have to listen to women "talk." How Clinton's campaign isn't going to appeal to men because it will somehow remind them of their nagging wives?? Good god.

And another thing, what's the deal with media outlets referring to her as "Mrs." Clinton instead of Senator Clinton? Gets on my nerves.

January 29, 2007

I'm going to Anchorage and Missoula in June for two weeks. Now I have something to look forward to and a self-imposed deadline for getting most of my dissertation stuff done before I leave. Yay!

My neck is killing me today - did I sleep on it funny? I don't really know, but I'm sort of dreading what Pilates is going to do to it today.

January 23, 2007

I really liked this article in the American Prospect called The Mommy Mantra: What female politicians lose when they brand themselves as mothers. Using recent public appearances by Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton as examples, the author explains that the Mommy Mantra is "the idea that what qualifies women for politics isn't their intelligence, their experience, their policy proposals, or even their character, but rather their inherent identities as feminine caretakers."

An excerpt:

"When Clinton and Pelosi claim political capital due to their experience as mothers and homemakers, they are selling their ambitious selves -- and, indeed, all women -- far short. Women don't deserve to be in politics because we're more compassionate or nurturing than men. We deserve to be there because we are human beings, and especially because we are human beings who, regardless of our choices about if and how to become mothers, continue to live under a social and political system that denies us many of the same options men have enjoyed for generations."

January 12, 2007

A new comic from Marshall, starring the one and only Pepe*, making its internet debut here at I'm Just Shy:



* Based on a true story

January 4, 2007

Well, hello there 2007. When I was growing up, I never thought much past the year 2000, so I figure the rest is a bonus. I had a couple of weeks off over the holidays, allowing me to finally tackle that pile of bank statements and various other administrative tasks, organize my office, make Silver Zephyr's mom's butternut ball cookies, cat-sit Reluctant Texan's four cats, finally watch the first few episodes of the first season of Six Feet Under, type up one section of my mom's English translation of her father's family history (which was hand-written in Spanish ten years ago) and generally contemplate life.

New Year's Eve day I spent entirely on the phone catching up with old friends. It's comforting to talk to people who've known you a long time, because they have a certain perspective on who you are - they remind me of who I am when I've forgotten. My godson and pseudo-nephew Kenton turned 1 year old on New Year's Day. I sent him the first ten books of the Beatrix Potter series, the first installment of his personal library that should be complete by the time he's old enough to read.

For 2007, I have a singular goal, which I will approach with a laser-like focus: finish my dissertation research!! Yes, yes, you've all heard it before. And you will hear it many more times until it is done. My secondary goal is the trite "exercise more," which I am already closer to than in years past as I have signed up for six weeks of pilates starting January 22. Hopefully it won't bother my knee too much - I'm told I have patella-femoral syndrome, aka runner's knee. How I have runner's knee 14 years after I stopped running competitively, I have no earthly idea.

December 29, 2006

Images from the holidays

December 28, 2006

I read this interesting article today in the Seattle Times, which helped me understand why cashmere has become so much more suspiciously affordable in the last few years.

That low-priced cashmere sweater has a hidden cost

December 14, 2006

Last night I witnessed what may have been the first ever dramatization of a dissertation defense on primetime television. On the Fox show "Bones," the young forensic anthropology doctoral student was shown sitting in a small, hard wooden chair in front of a panel of scary-looking professors who were of course seated on a raised platform to make them look even more scary. Our young scientist passed, though not before a terse professor asked him how he expected anyone to take him seriously as a Ph.D. scientist looking the way he does (young and sloppy). So, what does that mean? You guessed it: Makeover!!!

P.S. I only started watching Bones because of my loyalty to all ex-Buffy actors, but I actually kinda like it too!

December 11, 2006

I found out that my current employer (one of them) doesn't have any more non-resident tuition waivers, which I need in order to avoid paying an extra $1000 for three credits. My eye just started twitching.

December 5, 2006

I am copying excerpts from this piece of advice here so I can refer to it every now and then when I'm feeling discouraged - like now. I especially like the "isolate yourself totally from the stream of yammering humanity."

(From the Ms. Mentor advice column, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/8/06)

Question: Writing dissertation. Must be last person on earth, never see anyone anymore unless teaching. Does that count as seeing people? Think not. Need a laugh. Pray each night to write damn thing and finally finish Ph.D. without turning into bloviator. However, noticing that friends and family glaze over quite soon after asking about research. Hate to bloviate. Thus, no pronouns. Plan to eliminate other parts of speech as needed, maybe take vow of silence. Good?

Answer: Maybe. Maybe not.

Ms. Mentor obviously captivated by your writing style. Impressed by your efforts at minimalism. Thinks it's catching, but will try to extricate self and talk more ordinarily. (What is normal among academics? Discuss.)

Everyone knows dissertation stress. What you're doing will never be finished, or it will be laughable and absurd. In a just world, you would be hanged as an academic fraud and your remains fed to feral dogs (they'd call it recycling). Your B.A. would be yanked and your records deleted. Your high school would post your weaselly, smiling graduate photo on its Wall of Shame.

Or you could ignore all those febrile fantasies, decide to do a good-enough dissertation, and finish it — or not.

Half of A.B.D.'s (All But Dissertationers) never finish, but they are not failures. They've chosen other things — such as a social life, or children, or a career that doesn't require years of poverty (and maybe chastity) before a tenure-track job perhaps materializes in a Remote Village.

Writer's block is fear — fear of getting something wrong, not getting an A, being unmasked as an impostor at last. Every writer except the most doltish of hacks approaches a blank page or screen with trepidation, and the hardest word to write is the first.

Do not get on the Internet.

Turn off all phones and put your cellphone where you cannot see it light up, vibrate, and dance.

Write by hand — as Ms. Mentor writes her first drafts — so as to sneak up on the work. Tell yourself, as Anne Lamott recommends in Bird by Bird, that you're about to write a "shitty first draft."

If you can isolate yourself totally from the stream of yammering humanity, do it for the first draft. Lock yourself in your carrel. Hide out in mountain caves. Let beauty-school students practice pedicures on you while you scribble.

Encourage roommates to surprise you with treats, but only on Fridays after 5 p.m. Ignore their grumbling. Put your fingers in your ears and chant, "La la la la la." True friends will understand.

Many people, of course, won't, and the Dissertation Era (which Ms. Mentor hopes will not be a Dissertation Decade for you, as it sometimes is for unfortunate literary scholars who must work as adjuncts in three places and grade thousands of compositions while grinding out their great opuses) may mean giving up on those people who, well, aren't into you.

Except for family members whose caprices are inescapable, you do not need narcissists who tell you their love problems incessantly (unless their stories are vivid, lurid, and ever-changing, and you can use them in your chapters about neurotic behavior). You do not need broken-winged people, addicts, or whiners who have to sleep on your couch for a few days to "get my head together." You do not need people who "will be great" once they get over their bigotries or their resentments of you ("Why are you always writing? Let's go get a beer and forget your silly homework.").

Anyone whose moods get you down, or who picks a fight when you're trying to finish a chapter, or who disparages your work, does not belong in your life.

Find a writing critique group, if you have a strong ego. If you're not sure, convene a group of friends in which all of you make deadlines for one another and meet once a week to celebrate what everyone has written, taught, sold, or cooked. Have lots of chocolate.

Yes, give up useless parts of speech, especially adverbs. They are the softeners, the wimps of the grammatical world. You need to be ruthless, self-protective, fierce, whatever your mode.

Some writers are gushers, bloviators who spew everything in their first drafts and then pick out the best chunks. But you may be a bleeder, a one-word-at-a-time agonizer (as Red Smith said, you sit at your desk "and open a vein"). Or you may be a Beavisite, converting all long jargonized theoretical explications into the simplest of language: "Cool" or "It sucks."

Now all you have to do is explain yourself to the world.

Good.

November 17, 2006

Picture of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts (or in this case, Blackheart) during their first song Tuesday night. Stubb's was pretty full, with the typical, wonderful motley crue of multi-generational fans she attracts. They played several songs off the new album "Sinner," and they were nice fun Joan Jett songs - a mix of covers and little-heard songs from previous albums, along with a couple originals like "Riddles" and "Change the World." While she played her standard "...We're Going to Make it After All" from the Mary Tyler Moore Show, I felt like I was really going to finish my dissertation. I'm sorry, I find ways to derive inspiration from even the cheesy songs she plays! Everyday People? Check. Favorite song on the setlist? Love is Pain from the I Love Rock 'n Roll album. But damn, Crimson & Clover kicked ass too. Maybe that was the best.

This was my fourth time seeing her; I was trying to recount the other times so I wouldn't forget (this is why I need a diary):
1. 1998, at Parker's Casino in Shoreline, WA. Waited in line for an hour to meet her after the show and then chickened out. Surprise opening act: Fastbacks! By far the best of the four.
2. 2000, at the grand opening of the Experience Music Project in Seattle. Great grand opening weekend, stupid museum.
3. 2004, at a warehouse in East Austin at 2am during SXSW. Silver Zephyr was there!

Eagles of Death Metal opened, a garage-rock type band from I'm guessing California. Check out the 'stache on that guy! (below) I think a lot of people are curious about them because the drummer is/was in Queens of the Stone Age. They were all right. They surprised me by singing falsetto about half the time.

November 15, 2006

This is exactly why I feel absolutely no compulsion to go see the Borat movie. I'm glad someone had the ovaries to put into print what I'm sure many people think about this style of humor, but are afraid of being labeled as humorless, uptight, too sensitive, and the like.

November 13, 2006

This is where I'll be tomorrow evening:

"Joan Jett is still a badass. The 48-year-old has managed to outlast many of her male punk counterparts, look good doing it, and still put out viable albums. Sinner, Jett’s first since Clinton was president, finds her hellbent for leather pants, with muscle from longtime band the Blackhearts. Is she still pissed? Just drive through “Riddles,” and order three-chord punk with a side of political doublespeak..." more from the Austin Chronicle preview.

In other news, I will be putting myself on a strict self-disciplined regimen for the next approximately 16 weeks. If I want to actually try to graduate next May, I need to have a full draft of my dissertation by March 1st. That leaves three weeks - until March 22 - for revisions, one month for the other four committee members to review, and then defend the last week in April. I looked up all the deadlines and was dismayed to learn that you have to submit the final, formatted, approved dealio to the graduate school by May 4th. Why does the semester have to end so freaking early? Sheesh!

So anyway, I'm under the impression, however mistaken it may be, that I can do this. Or at least get damn close. I'm dropping one of my jobs to buy myself more hours in the week, with the trade-off of barely eeking out a living. (I seize every opportunity to use the word "eek"). Sixteen weeks! Sixteen weeks! I can do it!

Rumsfeld is gone!