I'm on the way back to Providence from New York/New Jersey actually
more tired than I was when I left for this trip. I brought a
colleague's diss with me to "inspire me" for lack of a better term,
but did nearly nothing in terms of tangibly advancing my own diss. I
did, however, spend an ungodly amount of time riding in some sort of
conveyance and in the process, New York lost a bit of its sheen for me.

I dropped off my bro at Vassar yesterday. It reminded me of how
awkward that first week of college was for me (with the near-tears in
the shower in the middle of the night because I couldn't stop
pooping). And at the end, I liked college a lot, enough to stick
around in a way.

But as I helped Al build his furniture (after a kinda hilarious
journey from Vassar Shipping and Receiving to his dorm with 7 boxes, a
pushcart, and some rolling hills), I realized that I want to go to the
"next stage" of my life already, but that it seems like things will
pretty much stay the same for a long ass time. I've had some flashes
of change -- new room, first real class, etc. -- but I realize that
I'm 28 and haven't lived by myself yet and that I could be teaching 3
or more classes at a time (you wonder why your professors are so
strange). I wonder sometimes if this unsettledness is just part of
being in my late 20's or some inherited trait from my father who for
other reasons had never really settled on something until recently.

I talked to Daniel and Kim about what it is I want to feel when I have
that one job or one person or one path that I'm to be heading down for
the rest of my life. It basically boiled down to being able to not
take myself so seriously that I'll have drunk the kool aid and believe
that what it is I do is so great that I can't share my detached irony
with a like-minded person. In other words, for better or worse, I want
to live the absurd. I also realize that sorts sucks as a life goal --
such is the strangeness that is being me.

In Philadelphia, No One Can Hear You Scream

So a few people have been re-reading the ole blog (some very
thouroughly) and so I *guess* I'll give you more than a tweet's worth
of an update. And really there's not a whole lot worth saying, other
than a few depressing issues with my funding and the fact that I
probably burnt out the graphics card on my laptop.

Though yesterday I had to play high school again and my mom dragged me
shopping with her. As usual, I fell asleep in the passenger seat. When
I came to, I realized my mother had locked me in the car without the
keys. It was fairly stuffy inside, and luckily I had been wearing
layers (and shorts), so I thought nothing of it, until I decided to
get out and go to Office Max next door.

I attempted to unlock the doors from inside, it slowly dawned on me
that I couldn't AND that if I tried to open the doors, the car alarm
would go off. I started to flick the "unlock" switch more desperately,
of course to no avail. I called my mom who was still in the store.
"Mom?" I said. "Um, I'm suffocating in the car an I can't open the
doors without the alarm going off."

"I'm still in line. 10 more minutes," she said.

So I was convinced that if I were a small dog or an elderly person,
I'd probably be dead already. Bejeweled wasn't helping, so I went back
to trying to unlock the doors. Eventually mom came out and
thoughtfully unlocked the doors from a distance. I opened the door and
panted in some fresh air. Mom had kind of a silly look on her face,
and we had a good (sorta) laugh about it.

Today, we we discussing what my brother has to buy when he gets to
Vassar and the subject of the Philadelphia airport came up. Apparently
the airport has a big mall that's tax free, which produced this gem of
a nonsequitur from Mom:

"They must have a lot of gays there in Philadelphia (silence)"

"Why's that, Mom?"

"Well there's that movie, Philadelphia Story (sic) and [Al's] teacher
is gay, so..."

And then we had one of those "that doesn't make sense" moments. You
wonder where I get it from.

How I Got the F- Out of Dodge, Part 1

A couple nights ago I dreamt that I broke down and told off all my Providence friends, telling them that I couldn't stand them or the city and that I was leaving for good. I count it as a bad dream, seeing as my arguments for telling people I really like that I disliked them were pretty bad, but it was defintely the capstone to a night where it became painfully obvious that Providence wasn't a place I'd ever call home. And as my dream self cried unthorough insults, my real self slept somewhere besides my own bed for the first time in months.

I spent that day criss-crossing New York, first from Brooklyn to the Bronx to see my aunt, then from the Bronx to Jersey, then on the ferry from Jersey to Manhattan. A cross-town bus later, I met up with my friend Daniel and spent a few hours with him and his co-workers at a frattastical bar that held a lame fake orgasm contest. Daniel assured me that co-worker bar nights rarely happened, though in my mind, I believed they did. Daniel had apparently "pimped me out" to his single co-worker, so much so that his male co-workers greeted me with, "Oh, so you're Daniel's single friend." Owen and Yu-wen met up with us there, and we had dinner and hung out at an Italian restaurant in the Meatpacking District. Kept a seat away from the girl I wanted to hit on, Owen and I caught up.

Daniel and I headed back to Brooklyn, munching on a donut and a cookie. In a half-drunk, half-concussed moment of truth, Daniel and I talked about how much life and work became more fulfulling for him when he left Providence. And while he cut some ties, he basically said he's happier. I felt like a wet blanket, as Patrick would put it later, droning on about how I had no motivation to work. But, it seemed very clear after that that I should get the fuck out of dodge.

The Finer Points of Pancaking

While others may choose to do good while procrastinating on their
dissertations, some of us (me) just make ourselves fat by cooking.
Well, I like to think of it as practice feeding my offspring, lest
they succumb to Red Vines and Soft Batch cookies.

Here we see what happens when you get one side of the pancake right
and then you leave to see if anyone responded to your email about
basketball and burn the other side. Also, those banana pieces were
supposed to be inside the pancake, but I blame a lack of oversight. So
basically, I forgot to use up all my remaining groceries in this batch.

Of course no kitchen folly would be complete without me dropping my
knife as picked up the plate. As you can see, without supervision I am
pointless.

Harey Kiri?

A while back when I was a Netflix subscriber (happier times...), I ran through classic films, just to get a sense of what I was missing by watching Star Trek IV over and over as a kid. Admittedly, I liked Ben Hur, but fell asleep during Raging Bull, but I also managed to fit in lots of great Blacksploitation films, Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (ever see a pair of lungs preen itself?), and Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter.

Anyway, I kinda want to go through some of Hollywood's depression era screwball comedies, but without Netflix, I'm limited to reading summaries on Wikipedia (or exerting effort to find them at the Brown Library). But one thing stands out: the Wikipedia page for silent film actor Harry Carey -- who played the Senate President in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington -- has a little disambiguation link at the top. You may have accidentally wandered into his biography looking for a way to commit ritual suicide, or Hara Kiri, which I can only assume happens when you're looking for Capra movie actors and thinking in a Southern accent.

In other news, we're under more snow, with more snow to come. These are the kind of days when I wonder why I really need a Ph.D.

King of Soups

So for some reason, Blogger just posted the photo and not the text of my post. Suffice it to say, I heaped generous praise upon myself for making the soup you see above. It's a spicy catfish stew, which I made in the good ole crockpot with minimal elbow grease and a moderate amount of chili powder and red pepper flakes. I take the disappearance of my original text to be a sign to be less proud, but damn, this soup is like the queen of the catfish allowed me to do whatever I wanted to her, and we made magic. And this post just got creeptastic.

Is It Because Readership Is Down?

From Don Assmussen's Bad Reporter, my favorite comic strip. This week's gem is the first panel: "Obama to Close Gitmo - But Promises to Retain Its Online Presence".