Frogs and Ravens

Rusty Schtick

I've lost my schtick. Or it's grown rusty with disuse. Something like that.

By which I mean that the snappy bitesize description of what I do / who I am has become less snappy, more wordy, harder to spit out and to digest.

At parties, people ask me what I do, and I sort of go "uhhhh" or babble away or dodge the question. At a recent gathering of academics, the queries were more focused, and the inarticulacy was correspondingly worse.

Plus there's the past tense / present tense issue. My old soundbites were descriptions of then-current activities, but now they'd be describing stuff I'm no longer involved in, or not really interested in anymore. The current soundbite is, on the other hand, raw and unfinished and productive of hesitant possibilities; it is not a crisp declaration of what is, as a good short summation of self should be.

Perhaps I should practice making a "do tell" face in the mirror; that way, I can get other people going about their interests and work, while my schtick rusts in peace.

Party Pooper

I am both feeling frustrated and lacking the energy to deal with it.

The textbook that was ordered turned out to be the wrong one. The new and correct one comes bundled with two supplements that I have never seen, and the publisher's website is being very coy as to what their contents are.

This makes it difficult to plan out the syllabus.

Also, class starts Monday.

Further, it does not help that I'm feeling cross and cynical and burnt out already about the whole enterprise, not just the textbook. I'm not interested in the teaching for its own sake, but rather I am doing this because I need the money and D's department chair was in a bind and needed an adjunct at the last minute.

It is tiring being on a campus filling with excited energy and not feeling engaged by or part of it.

D., though encouraging, has never fully grasped the emotional and functional distinctions between adjunct and visiting; when he was an adjunct, it was at an institution where the majority of teachers were adjuncts, rather than the other way around. So he doesn't get on a gut level how disaffected I'm feeling, and how the institutional structure does more to reinforce this than alleviate it.

This is just a JOB, and yet everyone seems to think that I should be thrilled by the chance to teach again.

I'm not. Honestly, truly, I'm not.

Nerd Quiz

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd   Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Artistic Nerd
Musician
Social Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Drama Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

c/o Shakespeare's Sister

How to Lose a Reader

So, I'm reading this book, about nature and environment in pre-Columbian American life. It's okay, though not nearly as readable or as thought-provoking as 1491.

But then I hit this passage, on page 14, in the section describing the area around eastern Oregon and Washington (and, remember, this is supposed to depict the pre-Columbian environment, and this supposed to be a book in which ecology is a focus, and nevermind that "Wild West" is a phrase that tends to chap my shorts):

Grasses and shrubs were the most common ground cover. The landscape was littered with sagebrush that had completed its growth cycle, becoming the rolling tumbleweed so many associate with the Wild West.

ARGH!

Squirrels

I look up and there is a squirrel running through the grass, something large in her mouth. She runs up a tree with her burden, leaving me with only the impression of what she was carrying (a bagel? surely not). I have a better suspicion, and so I watch her hang on that tree, descend, ascend another, hang again with flipping tail, descend again. She runs across the front yard, then darts back. She is chasing another squirrel, viciously. The chastised squirrel lies low in the grass, at the very back of the yard.

She returns to the front yard, passing by my window, and climbs a tree in the neighbor's yard. She descends, and in her mouth is a pup.

The pup is large - larger than the head of the squirrel who carries it - thinly furred, blind, and clearly helpless. The thin tail and gangly limbs flex and dangle as the mother bounds through the grass. She makes it halfway to the new tree before the slowly wriggling burden becomes difficult to manage.

She sets her infant down in the grass, and rolls it around in her hands, seeking a better grip. She nuzzles it from all angles, rediscovers the place at the back of the neck, grips it anew, and climbs her tree.

My mind is filled with the image of squirrel paws rolling her bagel-like young around and around and around, a rodent's prayer wheel, spinning out her hopes for the future, to be grasped firmly with hands and jaws.

I Has A Job

I'll be adjuncting a survey course at the place D's teaching.

Meanwhile, I'm griping at Prentice Hall for no longer actively supporting the primary source reader I want to use - they're trying to put all that stuff online, behind passwords.

I am on dial-up. I don't want my materials online!

*grumble grumble*

Overheard

A small child at a Metro station:

"What's the Smithsonian, Mommy? I thought we were going to the museum!"

A young man and woman in a group of college-age people at the trilobite exhibit:

She: "Why does it have so many eyes?"

He: "Because it looks cool."

She: Disgusted look.

He: "Hey, ask a skateboarder, get a skateboarder answer."