cheese a leeza

Cheese Test: What type of cheese are you?

posted by Jeremy at 2:03 PM

Some assembly required…

And, for easier assembly, we’ve included diagrams and drawings (the two, of course, being vastly different entities).

They never tell you that it takes money to get a loan, nor do they tell you that it takes several, mucho money to get a house 100% financed. Also, I was never told that after moving in, even from a cramped 2-bedroom apartment (where one bedroom doubled as guest bedroom and office) to a 2 bedroom, one office house that we would have to spend as much money as we did on little odds and ends. Now, though, I am the proud owner of my first push mower ever. It took some assembly.

The problem with the move to diagram heavy instructions over written instructions…did the technical writers get bored? Is America forgetting how to read? Is it, like everything else in this country, the immigrant’s fault?…is that the drawings aren’t detailed enough. The mower, however, was put together with no problems, just a lost pin…but they included an extra pin, so no harm there.

The bathroom linen cabinet is another matter. It still sits unfinished in the middle of the living room floor. Not because of diagram problems, nor because of parts…in fact, they not only included extra parts for everything but also extra, extra parts. This is to say, there were 2 bags of J’s, two of N’s and two of O’s. But the contents of J, N, and O were vastly different, so that if one had dowels the other had screws. I still can’t figure out why they gave us this gift, nor the logic of the J, N, O. It would’ve made some sense had it been J, L, O, but that’s another matter. The real reason it sits unfinished is because the doors will be most problematic to attach, even with detailed diagrams and wonderfully written explanations. And T. has gotten on to me for not working hard enough on my dissertation.

What took the most assembly was the grill, a house-warming gift from my in-loves…who, came and did all sorts of stuff around the house. In fact, I feel horribly guilty. They did so much work: replaced rotted-out wood on the back door, painted the laundry room, helped move, helped unpack, helped T. spend the rest of our bank account, built stilts for the bed, so that we could have extra storage, washed all the dishes before putting them away, even though they were washed before they were packed…but T.’s mom had an opinion about everything! And she would state and restate her opinion several times. Now, I know that this was because she loves the house. But it was a constant barrage of “have you thought about this…you really should do this, etc, etc.” This has never happened before, except maybe at the wedding, which I was not privy to, and am thankful for.

But, the grill. I had to put it together 3 times before I actually put it together correctly. The nice couple next door, Mike and Brett, or Brent (I can’t remember which and whom I haven’t seen since the weekend btw, yeah I’m a nosy neighbor), told me it would be a bear to assemble. But three times! And several hours later our little grill, which has nothing on the neighbor’s suped-up, no-doubt-self-grilling machine, was finally put together. (No, they don’t actually have this grill, but, of course, it feels like it because now T and I are part of the rat race and they are the Joneses, so, of course, I feel inadequate…and our grill is good grill, though the side is plastic and not wood.)

Well, I gotta go rake up magnolia leaves from the front yard...and finishe my dissertation so we can keep this house!

More mind-numbing notes from the local Bobo In-Residence (bourgeois-bohemian)…actually, we lack the wealth. We did, however, buy the place from Bobo’s. Is that close enough?

posted by Jeremy at 10:23 AM

to portugal

the three temp-belgians are heading to portugal tomorrow. you will not hear from us until the 11th or 12th. do not be alarmed.

posted by Chris at 8:02 AM

you can no longer tour the house

and that is because we bought it. today we signed the rest of our life away and said that we will never default on a loan, even if termites, floods and tornadoes take the house from us.

in other news, i got a message from hunter college seeing if they could set up a video conference with me...i had to regretfully turn them down.

there are times when writing my dissertation that i don't know where i'm going, that i think that i made a mistake, that i wonder what the hell do i know about literature anyway.

posted by Jeremy at 3:43 PM

They say it's your

24 March, 1820:
Happy Birthday
Fanny J!

What's your favorite FJC tune?

posted by Greg at 9:54 PM

the favorites folder gets a little smaller

this sucks. invisibleadjunct was often a really engaging site, and i learned a lot from reading it. (very) small upside for me, i guess: a couple fewer minutes of internet procrastination now.

posted by Chris at 3:01 AM

what i do (expanded and revised)

Washington. A Tour on the Prairies. 1835. Ed. John Francis McDermott. The Western Frontier Library. Norman, OK: U of Oklahoma P, 1956.

"I am nothing of the sportsman," Irving confides at the conclusion of a frenetic buffalo hunt. The hunt (very much like the bear hunt of Frederick Gerstäcker’s Wild Sports) marks a climactic moment in Irving's account of his travels in the Oklahoma Territory with Henry Ellsworth, a commissioner who has been sent as "pacificator" (153), essentially, to prepare the indigenous tribes that Cherokee and others will soon arrive in the wake of the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Ellsworth, too, by Irving's account, decided after this buffalo hunt that he was not suited the life; but at the time, both men’s enthusiasm was too great to ignore. Irving continues, "I had been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the magnitude of the game, and the excitement of an adventurous chase" (178). Indeed, the narrative of this civilized man chasing adventures in the wilderness is a narrative of excess, of engorgement, and the land of these narratives is at first one of unlimited bounty. However, the land is not everlasting: indeed, just before Irving describes that climactic hunt, he describes his party’s campground, now deserted except by him. The forest is trampled, its trees cut and stripped of their bark; fires still burn, and "hacked and slashed" meat still hangs from spits; corpses of deer, buffalo, and turkey lay scattered; and buzzards circle overhead, waiting for Irving to leave (170). Those circling vultures signal after all a tension in Irving's narrative of the West. Certainly, nothing prevents Irving from portraying himself as a type acculturated by European travel and professionalized by the literary marketplace (4), but something (and, yes, that something may be the selfsame literary market) compels him to seek a balance by recommending that first "our youth" go west, where they will find "that manliness, simplicity, and self-dependence, most in unison with our political institutions" (55). Nothing stops Irving from relishing characterizations of Native Americans having "Roman countenances" (21) and idealizing the freedom of "man in a savage state" (34); nothing keeps Irving from acknowledging some artifice on the part of settlers in their fears of one or another tribe (75)—in this case, the Pawnees—and still constructing his narrative on the very artifice of those fears (130, 134, 152). But Irving nevertheless finds he respects at least a creole, in the character of Beatte, and he respects him, moreover, with the gift of history (161-3). Irving's travel narrative is in many ways a conventional adventure story, its narrator in most cases a shameless promoter of popular fantasies of American property, power, and culture; however, like the abundance of the prairie, his shamelessness is not indestructible, and there are moments in that persona that Irving recognizes that vultures circle overhead.

Stowe, William W. Going Abroad: European Travel in Nineteenth-Century American Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1994.

Consider with me William Stowe's review of his argument in his chapter on The Innocents Abroad: he assures, "Twain in other words had multiple agendas" (148). At a glance the review is innocuous enough. It would be a unique writer who did not entertain several agendas by his work. But as innocuous as it seems, the more I stare at the sentence, the more unsettled I get. Coming late in the essay, it follows a solid summaries of current theories of nineteenth-century masculinity, a concise survey of American humor writing, and a short study of American men who visit art galleries. All of these, Stowe asserts, Twain entwines so that they might find definition together rather than (as nineteenth-century culture wanted them to be) in twain (149). What unsettles me is that phrase "in other words." It makes his recapitulation a revelation: he admits that his purpose in all that discussion was to say that Mark Twain had a number of things on his mind! That review is symptomatic of Stowe more than it is expressive of Twain: it shows him content to settle to for easy answers. And, perhaps, easy answers are to be expected, for the questions he asks of American travel in Europe, of five “distinguished” travelers (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Twain, Henry James, and Henry Adams) (73), of a handful of secondary travelers (William Wells Brown, Lydia Sigourney), and of travel writing are ambiguous utilitarian questions. His purpose, he explains, is "to ask what nineteenth-century American classes, groups, and individuals got out of the expensive, time-consuming, even dangerous, but extraordinarily popular practice of European travel" (x). What they got was social, personal, and professional identity (xi-xii), and they got it because nineteenth-century European travel was for Americans a sacred ritual that guided them to affirm or to challenge their culture and/or their selves (21). What they got in other words was a liminal space. Those who affirmed their culture/their selves by means of their travel writing Stowe is largely dismissive of; those who challenged are those who those whom Stowe calls "distinguished." The problem, I think, is that Stowe’s concern with the challenge is largely to claim that it existed, not to question how it came about, why Europe was significant to that challenge, nor to study how travel's liminality manifests itself in the texts that come out of it. So his study of Fuller, which alone compares travel writing about Europe to travel writing about elsewhere (i.e. the American Midwest in Summer on the Lakes), rejoices because she is dialogic in her travel writing—so much so, in fact, that the dialogues she writes "all help define Fuller’s stance as a writer and as a thinking, acting person" (117). Whatever "thinking, acting person" means to you, or to me, to Stowe it means that she is obtuse and creative, discontent to settle for any single narrative persona or mode. So, by the time she wrote to Horace Greeley from Europe, Fuller's creative discontent fits nicely into the possibilities of travel writing in general, and, finally, she displays "her mastery of the conventions of travel writing and her ability to use them for her own ends" (121). What we get in other words is what we get from Twain is what we get from Stowe's book in general: Fuller and other "distinguished" writers had multiple agendas, and, further, in their writing they expressed them all.

posted by Greg at 2:32 PM

so the passion worked

When a sheriff's detective asked him [a convenience store theif] why he gave himself up, Anderson said he was stirred deeply after watching The Passion of the Christ and felt compelled to come clean.

posted by Jeremy at 4:37 PM

no wine before its time

eventhough i grew up in a venerable cofc household (son of a missionary, who was the son of a missionary, who was the son of an elder, who was the son of an intinerant homesteading preachermy great uncles began one of the better known preaching schools), none my side of the family have ever been teetotalers. i mean there was that time when i was in third grade that my mother decided that they should stop drinking because she thought i was overly fascinated by their imbibing. and, yes, i looked foward to their uncorking a bottle of wine and finishing it off...but not because i, who knew not what wine was, was a budding lush, but because i would use the cork to make my own superheroes...a little bit of cotton, a little bit of leather or cloth....shazaam!!! those little suckers could fly and take on the world.

but, now, my brother who is a missionary in mexico, drinks a glass of wine everyday. he has stomach problems and says that there is a noticeable difference in his gastric state when he goes without his form of a daily constitutional. my dad, a doctor, is the one who told me about it. i asked him incredulously if such a thing were true...does wine help the stomach. he did not have any evidence for this except, of course, that paul tells timothy to drink a little wine for his stomach.

i still don't know what to make of this...my mother wears strands of pearl and makeup, though paul strictly forbids it...my brother drinks wine for his stomach because paul, in an aside, tells timothy he should for his stomach.

i, on the other hand, drink for purely hedonistic reasons.

posted by Jeremy at 10:24 AM

appease in a pod

US 'appeasement' warning to Spain: "'Here's a country who stood against terrorism and had a huge terrorist act within their country and they chose to change their government and to, in a sense, appease terrorists,' Mr Hastert said on Wednesday. "

I have no idea how I would have voted if I were a Spanish voter, but I know I wouldn't be impressed with Mr. Hastert's analysis. Is this really what Spanish individuals were thinking when they voted this weekend: "I want to choose to appease some terrorists, so I'll vote to change the government"? Would Mr. Hastert have had them think to themselves, "I really was going to vote for a new government, but I can't be seen as choosing to appease terrorists, so it's vital that I vote for a government I don't like"?

Does this mean that, as soon as a government commences a high-profile action against terrorists, if that government is voted out, voters are appeasing terrorists? I guess what I'm trying to say is that this "emotional Spainards appease terrorists" criticism seems like a way to explain away a people choosing to change governments away from one that has been closely allied with the U.S. As in, they can't possibly have had good reasons to change governmentsrather, they are just scared of terrorists.

Some variant of this same criticism would have been raised when Spain changed governments for one that favored less military involvement in what we call the war on terror whether or not there had been an attack in Madrid. All that to say, this criticism represents a way to say that had Spanish individuals been voting in an well-thought-out, non-appeasement-minded way, they would have voted for the current government and therefore would have voted for the war on terror.

If we, like Mr. Hastert, start our thinking about the Spanish elections by allowing the Spanish voter no credit for his or her ability to consider complex issues in the polling places, then why do we expect Americans and others to afford any respect to our democratic process? At a more pedestrian level, when "terrorist appeasement" is the way one boils down the collective democratic freedom of millions of Spainards to vote for whom they choose, does every decision that each of us makes have a "good" option vs. a "terrorist appeasement" option?

Maybe Mr. Hastert wants us to wear W.W.AQ.D? bracelets so we can remember to do the opposite, lest we allow the terrorists to have too much influence over our lives?

posted by Chris at 8:21 AM

just an attempt to tie it all together

since we've been speaking of fascists, elitists, and buttcheecks

posted by Jeremy at 11:09 PM

get out da vote

a voting paradox exists in america.

we vote people into fame and power and wealth through american idol.

we vote people into hedonism in paradise island.

we vote to banish people from mini-republics on big brother.

now that its march madness we vote for the all-time deam-tream of college ball players.

we vote for our favorite funniest home video.

yet, in the middle of all this getting out our vote, expressing our opinion, letting the world know where we stand, fewer and fewer people vote in the local and national elections.

posted by Jeremy at 8:29 AM

above the fray (which, if you can't find it, is four posts below this one)

i am really satisfied with the job i took. of course, i won't be starting it until mid-august, so i probably should be satisfied with it.

the main reason i like it is the feeling of community among the faculty there. i recognize that this sounds cheesy, but the faculty there seem to get along with one another exceptionally well. this is helped by the fact that the academic buildings are really concentrated in one small area and by the fact that the university itself is really small. this university is divided into several schools, and psychology is located in social science with history, political science, and sociology. i met almost all of the people from these three departments, and i thought they were all likable and interesting people. the students and the courses are by far the number one priority, but they also really take their research seriously, which is rare at a 4/4 "teaching-focused" university.

two things i thought were perfect: every tu/th the social science faculty meet for lunchtime discussion of politics, policy, and whatever else. and, one wednesday a month, there is a university-wide faculty research presentation, in which one prof presents his or her work to the rest, including faculty from everywherenatural science to education to humanities.

must tend to awakened baby.

posted by Chris at 5:51 AM

bee in my office

all that to say, i was going to write something longer today, but between baby watching duties and a bee who recently flew in my office window (and is resting in my light), i'm struggling to keep up with work stuff.

here's what we know:
i took a tenure-track psychology job. 4/4, not overwhelming pay. the students seem good, but the faculty seems really collegial and interesting, making for a warm environment. there is a good chance that mb could get hired there the next time they do an english dept searchif not, we might have to hit the (non-academic career) road. however, like i just wrote, i think she'll prob get hired in a couple years.

there were some salary negotiations after the first offer, but there was not much real drama involved. i'll write more tomorrowwhat exactly are you interested in knowing?

i've got a bee to slay.

posted by Chris at 9:33 AM

it's almost that time again...

to keep in theme with g's really stellar review of the passion of the christ

though my first initial is j, which bodes well, my last is p, which is quite problematic in the current state of hollywood theology. nor am i 33, not yet, at least. but that is less a concern. because even when i am 33, my last initial will still be p, which rhymes with t which stands for trouble, if meredith wilson will let me flip the words to his song about poolhouses and trouble in rivercity.

yes, i am jesus pontius pilate.

but still, i have been asked to play the lead role at the palm sunday pageant...hmmm. maybe it's okay after all j.p....jesus on palm sunday

ecce homo



therefore, i am growing out my hair and beard again

posted by Jeremy at 3:30 PM

where has Jeremy gone?

dear dr. good

this is what i've got so far on the lope chapter...it's 21 pages of shambles. this week at oucp [my fellowship] has been the busiest week i've had while here...blah, blah, blah and little bit more.

his response

Jeremy,
No response from me on this. I want to read something from you that is complete for you. No more shambles. Are you capable of finishing anything? Please don't reply. The only reply from you that I want is a text. My patience is getting a little thin. Send me the complete text by this next Friday.

needless to say, i probably will not be around for a while.

sincerely yours
hermitJeremy

p.s.
we close on that house on the 25th...we move in on the 27th...yeah, i know. moving is not very conducive to finishing anything

p.p.s.
the land of diss isn't that bad...it's just cold and lonely...but so is siberia...or the passion (of the real christ, or mel b4 focus on the family surrounded him with so much love and money)

posted by Jeremy at 10:40 PM

Reach out and touch faith

Several years ago, while I was in college, I drove two hours to see Benny Hinn at MidSouth Coliseum in Memphis, Tennessee. Hinn is the TBN enthusiast whose sheepif you can call the souls who go to his rallies his sheepfall to the earth when he touches them on the forehead. Hinn was a dynamic speaker whose message was focussed largely on wealth ("The Good Book says that what you give to the Lord will be returned to you seven times," he said. "That means the Lord promises that if you give our ministry ten dollars, he'll give you seventy!" You can see something similar at his web site, linked above.) and the palpable presence of the Holy Spirit.

Hinn's show was masterful: he worked the whole crowd, first with singing, then with a fired-up sermon about money, complete with testimonials of people who were helped by the Lord because they helped Benny Hinn, concluded by a passing-of-the-plate. Then, finally, Hinn's enthusiasm kicked in. Microphones were distributed through the crowd so that lost, wandering, wondering souls, or angels, or demons could speak and be heard by everyone. He narrated the descent of the Holy Spirit. "Here it comes! I can see it floating there, just above all of your heads! Can you? The Holy Spirit is yours if you just reach up and take it!" By the time the healing began, the whole floor of the coliseum was motion and emotion. From my seat in the rafters, I could see pain and desire, joy and piety. I am not bold enough either to praise the moment as true nor to despise it as false: the moment would never have come, however, if there had been fewer people there, or if those who were there did not want it to happen. Hinn's sheep responded as only a flock can: together, in something like harmony, but not quite.

To call it "mob mentality" is to vulgarize it, but to be close to the truth. Audiences respond by their dispositions. Our enthusiasm or lack of it (I mean enthusiasm here in a different sense than above) helps to create our experience, and it helps too to join with those around us. And that joining is the nature of the crowd. Do you feel you have a common goal with those around you? Do you want to stop injustice, stop war? Then you and those around you will shout with all your might on the Capitol Mall. Do you want to feel the Spirit not just hovering above your head, but inside of you, moving, revealing, speaking, healing? Then the community you feel with will make you want to feel the Spirit more fully, and if you feel it, then who is to say you do not have it? In a very real way, sometimes, desire really can make it so. Will it make it authentic? That, of course, can only be answered by the lucky person who knows what authenticity is.

That people have said Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is the sort of film that cannot be watched but must be experienced (cf. Steve Beard, in the National Review as one example of many) I think is built upon such dispositions of audiences. When the marketing campaign consists of special large-scale showings to those who want to be awed and are most enthusiastic about awe, then their desire to be awed will create it. Megachurches are buying-out theaters for consecutive nights to feed their flock with it; the elderly and youth groups alike are going en masse to be moved to tears. Churches of all different stripes are singing in the theaters and holding discussions in the coffee houses afterwards. There is mass desire for this movie to be good, and I suppose, if you are able to see it with a mass of folks who want it to be good, it very well could be.

But I saw the movie last night in a Midwestern college town where enthusiasm usually takes a back seat to politeness. The Passion of the Christ is, like everyone has said, a brutal film. The Romans who beat Jesus are sadistic, reveling in the cause of suffering through the entire course of the via dolorosa. And the Christ is a quiet, longsufferer. He endures the scoldings, the beatings, the dying with a silent stoicism. But do not be fooled: The Passion of the Christ is nothing more, nor less, than another retelling of the crucifixion, and it reveals much more about the director than it does about the Christ. The Passion is without a doubt a Catholic film. Its production company, Icon, is aptly named. Everything, evil and good alike, is represented in an image. Judas's guilt is anthropomorphized into pestering children/demons; the unforgiving thief on the cross has his eye pecked by a crow as soon as he berates Jesus. Christ's walk to Golgotha is programmed to the Twelve Stations of the Cross, and it is witnessed throughout by the ever-present and wildly important Mary and Mary Magdalene and John (who I imagined for most of the movie as James, Jesus's brothera better choice, in my opinion, as Mary's accompaniment). The Marys function as our eyes throughout: they gasp when we gasp; they weep when we weep.

But without a doubt, too, The Passion is also a Hollywood movie. Its not a film made for subtlety, and the final scene, an image of the opened tomb and Jesus awakening in resurrection, is as much evidence as we need for that: just listen to the music. Rather than the choral joy of Handel or the organ-grandeur of Bacheach representing something already-said and beautifully-put (like the Stations)Jesus arises to the primitive sound of drums. Drums! At the triumphant conclusion of a film that is intensely traditional; at the concluding triumph of Jesus's resurrection, the music is like a march, or a visceral dance, or a Phil Collins album. What is triumphant about drums? All of the movie is as subtle as that: all characters receive immediate comeuppance for their behavior; the sadism of the Roman soldiers is represented not only in their cruelty but also in their nonstop maniacal laughter. They giggle; they grin; they beat Jesus; then they grin and giggle some more. So what if Rome did hire the worst of all characters to be its common soldiers? Is anyone so sadistic that they find nonstop joy in causing suffering? People can be awful to other people, without a doubt, but the continuous laughter is meant not to show the soldiers as awful, but to show them as evil. The Romans, and their counterparts, the Jews, are only caricatures of themselves.

I'm with Roger Ebert on this movie: what The Passion of the Christ represents is Mel Gibson's personal Jesus. I suspect too that his Jesus is like a number of other people's Jesus. He is a strapping man, both charismatic and stoic, both suffering and proud. But he, too, seems a caricature of himself. When we witness him in flashback, we see him at times when he is erudite, when he hits his rhetorical high points, as when he writes in the dirt to challenge any man without sin to cast the first stone at Mary Magdalene, or when he enjoins others during the Sermon on the Mount to turn the other cheek, or when he somberly breaks bread and drinks wine at the last supper. But, significantly, the only person who really loves him, even in his flashbacks, is his mother. Jesus is, in those moments, and in his Passion always, very rhetorically, alone, as if Jesus's life were defined by his crucifixion rather than the other way around. In the end, The Passion of the Christ may be Gibson's personal Jesus, but he is not mine.

posted by Greg at 10:19 AM