goodnight moon

hi hi hi so now it's 2 in the morning and i'm tired and wanted to go straight to bed, told myself i'd go straight to bed when i got off the subway and got home, but here i am, writing to you all from my computer because i CAN'T GO TO BED WITHOUT CHECKING MY EMAIL (and my group blog, apparently), and it's totally completely utterly ridiculous i am like gmail and facebook addicted i really should just delete both of those accounts and throw em out window. also someone invited me to be hot on facebook or something weird like that and then i'm also playing italian scrabble and also i'm wearing wrist braces right now because my carpal tunnel hurts again these days. i miss you guys. i miss anton. i miss learning and talking about pain and language and translation and watching bad movies with sigourney weaver in them.
good night, moon. good luck.
love,
jil

Good news, Marx'lums

RESISTANCE IS PRIOR TO POWER, and

All of the other classes this semester really blow and/or conflict with the required class, so I am taking Michael Hardt's undergraduate Marx course as originally planned. (I've received the offended party's blessing.) Lecture recordings beginning on Monday, hopefully.

Also: Has anyone seen this new Hummer commercial that presents the Hummer as the solution to natural disasters caused by global warming? Because it's amazing.

I was just standing in front of the bathroom mirror smoking a cigarette.

I was just standing in front of the bathroom mirror smoking a cigarette. I was doing three things: admiring the shape of my own nostrils when my head is tilted back, digesting eggs and beans which are both synonyms of testicles (because of their shape, see. But mine are eggs) and thinking about this dance performance I just saw, a troupe of tangoers from Argentina. I was thinking three things about them: how fucking awesome it is to be part of such a misogynistic, macho culture, how amazing it would be to move like that, and how those women are so muscular and so feminine with incredible legs, tiny waists, and perfect breasts. I leaned closer to the mirror after tossing the cigarette in the toilet. I did this for two reasons: the sink is the perfect height to massage my swollen testicles, and because I want to get a better look at this cyst on my neck that has grown alarmingly during the past month. There are two reasons why it has grown: there are several ingrown hairs that will not pop out of the skin no matter how much I squeeze and pinch and pull at it, which is the second reason it's grown so big. Today, this drama ends. For good. My girlfriend has 3 pairs of Tweezerman tweezers stashed in a bag under the sink. I think those are the ones that have some sort of lifetime guarantee, where if you send them in they will sharpen them and mail them back, which is probably why she has three pairs, to stagger them since the turn-around time is so long. Today, I choose the hot pink pair.

You have to understand that this is no ordinary cyst. It is old, callused, and tough. It has resisted the many efforts to peel, to drain, to pluck. So far, I am undaunted. Peeling back the top, dry layer, something like a head of a zit is visible, so I try to squeeze. The thing is, the inside is not liquid, or pus or anything like that. It is rubbery, definitely a solid. Squeezing brings me nowhere, but my mom calls right then. "Talk talk talk Jesus talk praise the lord talk talk you shouldn't live with a girl before you're married talk talk talk Jesus god Satan hell talk talk 1st Corinthians 13 talk talk your girlfriend is Jewish talk talk why don't you find a nice Mexican girl talk talk" for half an hour. I'm still squeezing at this thing. "Uh huh, uh huh, yeah" I say. I need two hands though, to really get at it. "Gwee lohv jou veddy veddy moch, eh? See jou een Chreesmas! Dreed jour Bibuhl eveddy day, eh? Adios te quiero mi vida" she says as I hang up. Christ, I'm bleeding now. I jab at it some more with the tweezers and then take a tissue to soak up the blood so I can see what I'm doing. I'm actually making good progress, better than before. Maybe the last session a week ago weakened it's resolve.

fuck there is a mouse ON MY FLOOR RIGHT NOW. Just walking around! Good thing we're moving soon. I would kill it, but I love rodents. I had like twenty gerbils when I was a kid. They were all named, creatively, too. There was the Mother and her lover Ralph (who was a nice tawny color) who reproduced twice. Ralph nearly starved to death because he had no food bowl, and thus, naturally, I was never reminded to feed him, never actually seeing an empty bowl. He ran away. Then there was the Gray One, the Sister, Buckminster, and Stalopikus. I couldn't tell those last two apart, but anyway one of them ate the other one when they got older. Probably forgot to feed them. After that, the surviving one turned mean. Later, there was Murphy, Crooked Tail, and some other one who all lived together. I forgot the names of the all the rest. They're all dead now anyway, may they rest in peace.

I can actually see the cyst now under all that skin, rubbery, like I said. It stretches when I pull on it, but it doesn't come out. Hang on, I'm going to get a drink. ...Rum, aged, Angosturra 1919, of Trinidad and Tobago. It's ok.

Finally the tweezers get a good grip on the thing, and I pull it out. Nice! I can see it, clutched between the tweezer's jaws. It's not as big as the one I pulled out of my chin two weeks ago, but there is still a palpable sense of relief. Yes, I had another one under my chin until recently. It sucks. I shouldn't have to shave. My beard is curly, and I get ingrown hairs way too often. I wonder how black men deal with this. Probably some trade secret that is shared in code through hip hop videos and Fubu shirts. Why can't they let me in on this secret? What a bunch of racists. In any case there are three hairs under this cyst. *Under* it, and they were causing the whole problem! They're gone now, and basta. It's over. Just the cleansing power of pain, of rubbing alcohol on open skin.

Dreams of Ann Arbor

I have to say that I never thought I would. Where you can walk home from the bar. Sing karaoke and eat free popcorn. Go to the arb! Hang out with Chris and Pan Pan and Anton. Be happy most of the time. Walks after sunset. Walks AT sunset. Walk to a concert. Five million places to study. Libraries! Every book you ever wanted. Professors who care (Anton). People who remember that they like something besides career prospects.<-- (Chris, is this true?) No Erin Post telling me that theater never has a political position. No Duke grad students. (Unless they're the same everywhere.) You don't see the same people every two minutes. Chicago is kind of close. You don't have to drive to the gym. Not everyone is a blonde girl. No Ranji Khanna telling me that feminism is not about the empowerment of women.

I am afraid that I will have a bitter heart after six more years here. After six more years anywhere? Or maybe just in academia, but I can't imagine any other thing I'd like if not this.

Anyway, it could be worse. (It could be much better?)

i'm still thinking about borges a lot

Anyhow, my studies are shifting and now I'm taking courses more on subjectivity and the creation of humans than on systems. I hope that tort'luminaries won't find me snobbish or ineffectual or boring.

Borges is trippy, everyone knows that. But trippiness isn't the Borgesean end-all and the questions that arise from readings of Borges (and often historical specificities of some value) can be applied politically and are as political as anything else. I'm basically making an apology now because I feel vulnerable to attacks of apolitical work.

Short paper on escaping time (AKA THA GRIND)

Also, I like to always work to undermine christian scriptural interpretation, which I think is political, right?
A paper on "Bible [sic] prophecy" Edit- I just realized I don't have this whole thing on googledocs so I'll look for the complete paper.

Anyway, I put some stuff up here for fodder to hopefully engage y'all (I hope there's a y'all to us) and obviously--obvious both because of the embarrassing quality of what's here and because it's obvious that weezall (again, I hope there's a we to we)intimate/comfortable--there's no need to be to polished with you guys 'cause we tight like that.

My cohort is full of good people by the way and I'm having another good ann arbor community experience and happiness, etc. It seems like everyone is fixated on Mediterranean literature, but it's just half of my cohort (Turkish, Cypriot and Arab-European respectively) but we're tight anyway. I have to wait until the summer, though, to have picnics with them, and maybe I shouldn't encroach on that social space with another social group anyway. But what am I supposed to do when I can't go to new york for Ben's birthday?

happy birthday Ben btw

Midnight's Children

"Thus proving to me that I have been only the humblest of juggler-with-facts; and that, in a country where the truth is what it is instructed to be, reality quite literally ceases to exist, so that everything becomes possible except what we are told is the case...
A little bird whispers in my ear: 'Be fair! Nobody, no country, has a monopoly of untruth.' I accept the criticism; I know, I know."

--Salman Rushdie

to my friends who i so irresponsibly, egregiously, and irrationally left in the metaphorical dust of cyberspace, i address these words:

i'm so sorry. take me back? please?

and also these:
i miss anton he hasn't responded to my email that i sent a long time ago so i suppose i should send him another one i plan to visit ann arbor in the spring i hope i will see him then since he is probably the closest thing i have to a hero and who doesn't like to get a beer with her hero also chris and pan pan i hope i can see you then i am generally completely and utterly envious of all of you who got to spirit away up north together because oh how i long to see lake michigan the lady lake love of my life (these are my friends and i am shamelessly plugging their great great song http://www.myspace.com/redarrowhighwaymusic) and to elsie i would say that if they don't read tolstoy and wilde what do they read? and how do they understand it any of it? and if the people in the comparative literature phd program are not reading tolstoy and wilde then mayhaps the world really is in bad shape elsie what do they say and what do they talk about chris are the grad students at UM as aloof as elsie's and also i think that i will not be cut out for grad school when i go there one day for godknowswhatforidon'tknowwhat and also just to point out that i am famous because i wrote this (http://www.villagevoice.com/art/0744,steinhauer,78171,13.html) i hope it is ok to do things like that to talk about myself but let's not talk too much about me not too too much ben are you in new york now still maybe remember when we had lunch that time that was fun by the fountain and again by the fake waterfall--well real i suppose but fake because it isn't natural but i suppose if i called everything that wasn't natural fake i'd get meself into some trouble--we were so corporate then and sadly i still am. but i don't dress it (or act it), i promise. we're better than all that somehow--i know it.

doh.

so much reading to catch up on...

Marx courses to couple with interuniversital Marx reading club

Here are the things I'm considering registering for which could relate to the proposed Marx reading group. All are welcome in course of course.

subjects of state and law w 7-10
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_detail.aspx?content=1670AMCULT685001&termArray=w_08_1670

this looks whacky but deals with the "creation and dismemberment of Empire by [novel terms]" mwf 3-4
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_detail.aspx?content=1670SPANISH458001&termArray=w_08_1670

development of political thought tth 1130-1
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_detail.aspx?content=1670POLSCI302001&termArray=w_08_1670

culture, market, consumption w 5-8
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_detail.aspx?content=1670SOC595006&termArray=w_08_1670

culture and knowledge (and its implied correlate power) w 2-5
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_detail.aspx?content=1670SOC555001&termArray=w_08_1670

power, history, social change t 3-6
http://www.lsa.umich.edu/cg/cg_detail.aspx?content=1670SOC560001&termArray=w_08_1670

The loneliness of the long-distance phd program

I feel very lonely in the classroom these days. Not that I don't like people: I do! But why doesn't anyone agree with me anymore? (Maybe probably? because I am wrong.) I am getting too political and it seems like other people are getting less political. In the torture seminar we all knew what was at stake. (Ben, I am thinking of "the torture that is living just now." Are you in Bolivia working for Morales?) If I think I am the only person in class who saw the good in Tolstoy, and the only person in class who understood Wilde that probably means I am a polemical, egocentric jerk. I know. Either I am more concerned than ever about the state of the world (and the university in the world) or I have gone completely off the plank (into craziness). I miss you. One new friend says that everyone is so confused (including me) because no one has read Marx (including the Marxist professors). That we'd have gotten a lot further by now if we'd read him (remember Anton said read the Bible and read Marx? But he said, "Then you will miss the Bible." But we still have to read Marx to get anywhere?) By the way is this Rendition movie actually as racist and insidious as it has been described to me? (By a girl who didn't think it was racist or insidious at all but only "meek.") So. I am tired of feeling so passionate in class and this worry that I am being totally egotistical and self-important (the defender of Tolstoy, the explainer of Wilde). Things are a lot less clear than they were in torture class, and it seems to me that that means things are worse than ever. I would go for a walk to calm down, but I might get shot. (Except I wouldn't get shot, because I am a white woman and I would be on the news. I would just get mugged. Still.) I don't feel calm and I miss the feeling of not feeling calm together. Please come go to school with me. Or tell me how to not be so crazy in class. (And so exhausted after class that I can't do my work.) It's mis-directed intensity, huh? Well. Anyway. Wish you were here and could tell me whether or not I am totally insane. Probably if I am not laughing, I am.

sure for the first time you're wearing the right clothes.

a beautiful warm fall weekend with walks in the sand, delicious sandwiches, layering of jokes, a blueberry cake, naps in on the beach during day & night, beer, a ring pop, and head bobs to some tunes.

(Poetry never was Poetry to me.) (We're still tortugas, too.)

Langston Hughes - Let America Be America Again

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

let's move out

dear -
i'm so sorry it has taken me so long to reply to your wonderful letter. its sad, i am not used to writting letters anymore or anything personal beyond emails. i miss discussing writing with you and hearing your poetry. i had lunch today at an overcrowded cosi with an engineering friend of mine. when we were finished eating, she wanted to leave because the pair seated next to us, discussing poetry, sounded too intellectual.

i am currenltly listening to metric 'live it out' after last week's concert. emily haines wore an oversized neon shirt from some seventy's band and purple sparkled leggings. i wore my vintage marimeko shirt waist dress in purple, orange, and green rectangles to distinguish myself from the high school kids out on a tuesday night. i did dance right next to them.

this weekend i made a roasted vegetable pizza with potatos, sweet potatos, carrots, mozzerella, and ricotta. it would be so exciting to go exploring with you. you've already introduced me to my favorite music and wonderful people. i wish we could all live in some urban commune with a garden on the roof! it sounds corny but mara and i reflected last weekend on how much THAT class put into motion.
much much love, cristina

In the student lounge

there is a fridge and I can keep yogurt there and other stuff too like milk or a sandwich or eggs. and there is a microwave. At the CCRB there are showers and sinks, and there's free wifi everywhere. And I can get mail on campus and send it. And my house never has free pizza parties to celebrate the many ethnic or social identities I'm willing to adopt in exchange for pizza. Why did I ever give up homelessness?
(Parking)
A word to the wise, now that blogger saves my drafts automatically, freeing me to consider things of a more erudite nature... actually all I can think about is the fact that I didn't have to save my draft (because blogger did it for me, automatically!)--but that doesn't seem much better than having to have thought "well, now it's time to save my draft." Also I never saved drafts before, so actually, blogger is screwing me out of time right now. damn that smarts.
PS-does everyone remember how the soul is "the prison of the body"? According to Deleuze and Guattari, there is also "body-image: the last avatar of the soul, a vague conjoining of the requirements of spiritualism and positivism." So the next time that your mother pinches your midsection and tells you you've put on weight, tell her to keep her hands off the last avatar of your soul.
(Your last avatar of the soul?)

back, can't sleep, hello

hello all--i recently drove cross country from NY to LA. it was fabulous. we stopped in Austin, MN, the SPAM capital of America, as well as the world's only Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, where a teenage boy whose having gone through puberty yet was highly questionable stood on a tent stage in front of bleachers holding 5 people singing "Tears in Heaven." twice. also five points to the next person who drives through South Dakota, finds the billboard with the picture of the baby with M.S. and says, 'Every life deserves a chance,' and doesn't vomit.
the U.S. of A. is a weird, weird place. welcome back.

I am sooooooo active!

Hey Elsie,

Let's have a super cool "active blog participants" secret handshake!

Can't Buy Me Legitimacy...

The corruption of the institutional standards of an important profession is concern for all of us. Right now, the APA is out on a limb doing a tango with the CIA and the DOD. The branch has cracked and it is going to fall to the ground.

back to school

I just had a really awkward encounter with a freshman girl who thought I was also a freshman (because I asked her where I could find a computer lab, and because I look like a freshman). She wanted to make friends. I said, "What do you want to study?" [English.] And, "Hey, maybe I'll have you as a student sometime!" And we were both mortified.

a continuing fixation on Borges

My gut feeling is that the odds are better than 20 percent, maybe better than even. I think it’s highly likely that civilization could endure to produce those supercomputers. And if owners of the computers were anything like the millions of people immersed in virtual worlds like Second Life, SimCity and World of Warcraft, they’d be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon.

So, has the "Future of Humanity Institute" (as reported in the Science Times) finally caught up with Borges (reaching back via Lewis Carrol to Zoroaster)? A lot of people are talking about this paper with the readymade analogy to The Matrix and Baudrillard's (sp?) "Desert of the Real," but I think it bears a much closer resemblance to Borges' story, published in The Garden of Forking Paths , "The Circular Ruins."
Tierney himself notes that the reality posited by the paper would be fundamentally unlike that featured in the Matrix and the Cartesian "evil deceiver" because "you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits." In this way the paper deals with a situation more similar to that of the Borges story.
The protagonist of "The Circular Ruins," escaping incoming Hellenic influence, moves northward into a remote area of Persia and seeks an abandoned temple to the fire god Ahura Mazda, putting himself in the service of the old god and making it his task to "dream a man" and to imagine that man into reality. With a good bit of hoopla he is eventually successful in creating a man, his imaginary son, and training him in the ways of stewardship to the firegod.
"(The "post-humans of Dr. Bostrom's study would) be running simulations just to get a chance to control history — or maybe give themselves virtual roles as Cleopatra or Napoleon." The protagonist sends himself off to the southland to revive a further temple, all the while fretting that his 'son' might somehow discover his imaginary genesis. Surely enough the time comes when this son discovers that he is physically impervious to flame and that he is "mere simulacrum." The true kicker comes with the final three sentences, regarding the protagonist himself:

he understood that death was coming to crown his old age and absolve him from his labors. He walked toward the sheets of flame. They did not bite his flesh, they caressed him and flooded him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him.

The Tierney article deals with this same probabilty:

the designer might also be a virtual being living inside the computer of a still more advanced form of intelligence. There could be layer upon layer of simulations until you finally reached the architect of the first simulation — the Prime Designer, let’s call him or her (or it).

Then again, maybe the Prime Designer wouldn’t allow any of his or her creations to start simulating their own worlds. Once they got smart enough to do so, they’d presumably realize, by Dr. Bostrom’s logic, that they themselves were probably simulations. Would that ruin the fun for the Prime Designer?

While I personally side with those who shy away from assuming a more complex origin for simpler phenomena (the so-called Master Clockmaker) I do think that something akin to this hypothesis can be reverse-engineered to understand the practical realities created by language (especially important in an age of such dense media dissemination, especially dense in an age of such contradictory reports of importance). For instance, the pragmatic truth that all reality is a simulacrum glinted from the too-dense input of the physical universe, which makes it a practical truth that there may as well not be an actual universe, so long as there are minds (or a computer chip) to imagine one.

"The Circular Ruins"

"Our Lives, Controlled from Some Guys Couch"