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Mad Men

I have really been enjoying the show, Mad Men, and won't even call it a "guilty pleasure," that anti-category of intellectual stupefication in the face of crass enjoyment. It really is a thought provoking and well-assembled show. Now, by well-assembled, I am not referring to set design, costuming, and other effects meant to simulate the period (most notably cigarettes, sexism, and anti-semitism). I have read people on IMDB fruitlessly, hopelessly, even breathlessly debating whether or not the show is "period," "authentic," or take your pick. People particularly like to invoke their own remembrance of growing up in the sixties, which begs the question of who amongst these people grew up in a Madison Avenue ad agency office.

That said, the show is effective because it works by layering details upon each other with varying effects. Sometimes the different vellum panes of detail clash in their hue or texture (the episode focusing on Pete) but sometimes there is a harmonious glow that emanates from the transposition (this week's episode, Babylon).

I have been thinking about a brief exchange that takes place in the aforesaid episode when Don Draper, the main character, meets Rachel, a Jewish woman running her father's department store, but trying to attract a more WASPy clientele. She refers to, though a bit obliquely, the title of Thomas More's famous fictional dialogue, Utopia. The title is a pun on two Greek compounds--eu-topos and ou-topos (though I could be wrong about later). The former means, "happy place," while the later means, "no-place." In the show, however, Rachel says that ou-topos means "the place that cannot be reached," "the place that cannot be" to paraphrase. The minor discrepancy between these two translations is very interesting to me. Part of the point of More's pun is that the two meanings were intertwined, even mutually dependent. Utopia is a happy place because it does not exist and does not exist because it is a happy place, a very tidy reversal. And yet this reversal gives the non-place a kind of virtual existence (thus has a kind of dialectical quality to it). I was taught that this can be exemplified by the humanist community of the 15th and 16th century. This community existed through letters and across the linguistic and geographical boundaries. And yet this non-existent community was of far greater importance to More than the really existing place where he lived (though I'm no expert, and that probably is an arguable point).

So, to change that concept around slighly and say that Utopia is the "happy place that can never be reached" casts a much bleaker pall over the show. But I don't find this alternate meaning to be applicable to every character, though certainly for Don Draper. His character is marked by a restless propulsion, a drive towards something, yet an unidentifiable something. This causes him much angst, seen in--again, small details--the way Jon Hamm (the actor playing Draper) cups a glass when Draper drinks a drink. His hands encircle the top of the glass, cradle it; his eyes seem to peer into its depths, then through the translucence, as if surprised that the cup doesn't have a different substance altogether. There is always this strange reluctance in the way he drinks, a moment thought and hesitation. This is the pause of someone who wants to dive into the abyss and hope to hit the bottom, finally, like the free-fall that dominates the title sequence:



Yet in the episode last night, we see other characters--notably Joan, the red-headed secretary played by Christina Hendricks--who seem much more caught up in the "dialectical, punning notion of Utopia," if I can term it that, aware that desire is always caught up in its presence and absence. There is no absolute state of happiness, which leads to altogether different type of restlessness.

Proximity not causality

What has life been recently? Just events, a slightly incoherent careening cascade of events stitched together by proximity not causality to form something called a life. I have been doing some genealogy research into my family history, which has been more interesting than expected, as it includes the revelation that my paternal great-great-great grandfather owned slaves. Other than these few nuggets of information, I'm really just looking forward to a series of minor events including the delivery of new media furniture for the living room and the receipt of my volunteer application to the Evanston History Center. We are going to Colorado in a few weeks for a wedding, so that will be pleasant.

Last weekend and what-not

I have finally posted pictures from the month of may to Flickr. You will find, much like the one above, pictures of the fairy garden that Allison and I made for my mom (I hope it survives). Also pictures of that noble beast, Othello. Finally, under "Garden 2007" pictures, from a few weeks ago, of our new garden plot, refitted with (fingers-croseed) deer and critter proof fencing. When we go up to the garden today, I will take some new pics of the garden with plants, including a rose bush of the "knockout" variety.

out of the wormhole

I have exited the wormhole of working two jobs, today being my last day at EPL. Next week will be my first official full week at the Newberry. I am looking forward to being able to establish a better routine that will include working out at the gym, reading books, and writing. I haven't decided whether or not to schedule the latter two activities in the early morning or in the late night. My brain is crap in the morning, so that would seem to rule out mornings. But I get quite distracted later at night.

In other news, our dryer isn't working well and all of our clothes come out smelling musty. Very appealing. Wellesley has begun running up to Tatum's automatic feeder and slamming herself into it (and the wall) which causes a generous amount of food to shake loose. She has already created several large gashes in the all, and I am racking my brain over how to thwart a cat. Sadly no feasible solution has presented itself and the cat has me beat!

new new job

Tomorrow I start a new new job at the Newberry. For the next week and a half I'll be working both of my jobs, which means long days. Oh well, I will have to savor my downtime. While it feels strange to be starting a new job again, I am feeling much less anxiety than I did over starting at EPL. I don't, however, equate this with a difference of anticipation or excitement, but a greater sense of ease over adjusting to a new routine. The Newberry job is full-time and requires a commute downtown (pre-loop really, but fer away enough). But I feel to a greater degree the inevitability of becoming inured to these facts of the job. Well, to the future...

strange after-lifes

I rescued a handful of old paperbacks from the trash yesterday at the library. They included an erotic pulp novel, a book of Havelock Ellis' sexological writings, a books of HG Wells' short stories, and a book on the Marquis de Sade called Philosopher of Evil by Water Drummond. I only learned later that Drummond was a pseudonym for Robert Silverberg, a well-known science fiction writer. I opened this book and saw that it had been published in Evanston in the early 1960s. Intrigued I began searching for information on the Internet. Regency was an offshoot of several magazine and book publishing ventures by William Hamling, mostly science-fiction. Hamling worked with Hugh Hefner at one point and later published a men's magazine called Rogue. He began a line of soft-core pornographic novels under the imprint of Bedside Books, which later became Regency, all of which were run by "Blake Pharmaceuticals". Their offices were on Dempster, between the El stop and Sherman. Well, none of this is inherently interesting, but strange to imagine a cosmos of science fiction fans and soft-core porno writers have once lingered along these streets.

writing with cats

I have been a fairly productive writer recently, having begun a nice routine of writing for several hours every morning and some late nights too. My cats have other plans, as you can see from the above pic.

My daemon?

I was surprised that my daemon came up as a wolf. What do you think?

Update: Wow, through some circuitous path, my daemon has returned to being a wolf. Who woulda thunk it?

Part-time life

As I seem to be facing mounting criticism for only working a part-time job, I applied to a part-time job with a local non-profit. Drafting the cover letter took some time, however, as I always end up feeling like a patent medicine salesman writing these things. So, there goes another version of myself out into the ether, awaiting judgment.

I have been reading Borges' Universal History of Infamy and enjoying it immensely. I would highly recommend this collection of stories. It has given me several ideas for my Estep project. I also bought a comic book version of Moby Dick over the weekend and read it with great relish. Now, I have only read about 100 pages of the original. But this comic version is quite brilliant as it includes Melvillean digressions on how the nature of whales and how whale blubber is "harvested." So, very smart, actually.

cb2 catalog

For a real hoot, please check out the most recent CB2 catalog [please note the Internet version seems to be a bit cleaned up; the paper version will fill you with riotous laughter and happy glee beams] where you will find some of the most bizarre and incomprehensible catalog copy. Reproduced below, you will find a letter that I sent to the company via email:

Yes, I was looking through the most recent CB2 catalog and was astounded by the incomprehensible copy written for many of the items. My favorite happens to be the description for the channel storage (p. 47), "Dark wood grain laminate shelving flaunts a 1" slit down the back to simultaneously reveal a hint of wall, conceal a mess of media cords. Bookcase has 5 fixed shelves. Media cart sides two doors with clean 1" top reveals that open to one adjustable shelf each." I was distracted by someone writing "a mess of cords," which is a weirdly idiomatic expression. But I didn't even know which product this referred to. Then the third sentence is simply confusing. There is strange and bizarre verbiage like this every where in the catalog: "angled wider seat" (not Wide angled seat) (15) and "slat mat stained matte black" (43). What gives with the strange copy? Was this intentional? This really makes me not want to buy these products because I don't understand what they really are.

This kind of writing reminds me of a beloved Kikkoman soy sauce advert. I can only assume that someone wrote out the copy in a foreign language then had it translated by a non-english speaker. Our current hypothesis is Italian. What do you think?

scrapbook stupidity

I've been working on a scrapbook for our trip to Europe last summer. Well, it's actually more of a scrapbox, as you can see in this picture. Normally, I enjoy doing things like this. I would spend hours making mix tape covers in high school. But this project has been troublesome from the get go. I have fought with paper, with glue, with the photoprinter (also seen in the picture), with layouts, with fingerprints, with every aspect of planning, design, and execution. Yet I labour on.

One annoying thing also associated with this project occurred yesterday when we tried to take some paper back to Paper Source. I purged my receipts last week and no longer had the proper documentation to prove that I bought two miscellaneous packs of paper roughly a month ago. The return policy at the store clearly states that if you don't have a receipt that they can look up your purchase history in the computer. What they don't tell you is that asking the clerk to do so will elicit the kind of response usually reserved for suspicious panhandlers, con men, and presidents. Basically, they treated my like a criminal mastermind, trying to engineer some masterstroke of chicanery in which I defraud the Paper Source company of $12.00. Needless to say, I was in no mood to cackle like an evil genius afterwards, but did maintain enough composure to buy more paper and clutch my receipt as I left the store.

starting work

I was called today and informed that I had passed my drug test. Well, that's one exam in the past six months or so that I didn't fail! That means that I will begin my new job at the Evanston public library in two days. Back to the grind! The last two weeks have been pretty enjoyable. I spend my days reading and working on my Estep project. The mantle in our living room is finally up, just needs a few final touches added to it. With the weather finally breaking into warmth, things are looking up. I suppose these reflections are appropriate for today. I didn't like today's prompt in the Writer's Book of Days, so I got out my Tarot deck and pulled a card and looked it up in my Tarot book. The card that I pulled was the five of cups, seen above (though I don't have a Rider-Waite deck, so the image on mine is a bit different). But the point is that the figure is consumed with grief because it is fixated on the three empty cups and isn't aware of the two full ones behind it. So, I was planning on using this image/description as my writing prompt, but haven't gotten around to it, as luck would have it.

Jarvis Cocker, "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time"

what?

I'm not really meaning to make the Internet comment culture into a hobbyhorse, but I have to note the following comment left for a fun little Internet puzzle game called Cubis 2:

Pros: Easy to learn, and fun to play!
Cons: Gets boring
Comments: Really fun to play when bored.

Uh, there are two possible things wrong with this. On the one hand, if the game's only con is that it gets boring, yet is fun the play when bored, then, as the commentator astutely points out, the game must be REALLY fun to play! On the other hand, why would you play a game that, if bored, will cause you to become bored (or even more bored) as a result of playing it?

Tonight's Lost

How great was it that tonight's episode of Lost featured a classic gothic trope, live burial. Here is Eve Sedgwick on live burial:

It is the position of the self to be massively blocked off from something to which it ought normally to have access. This something can be its own past, the details of its family history; it can be the free air, when the self has been literally buried alive; it can be a lover; it can be just all the circumambient life, when the self is pinned in a death-like sleep. (The Coherence of Gothic Conventions)

Thus, this trope seems very appropriate in a show and on an island where "secrets don't stay buried" to quote Mr. John Locke.

Post Script: If there were a way to officially declare war against Internet fandom, I think that I would. The mere thought of people whining on message boards about how a show like Lost has "jumped the shark," makes me ill. How sad would it be if these people's trigger happy vitriol makes the network pull this show. The inability to screen one's thoughts and reflect on one's responses surely is one of the more frightening symptoms of Internet culture, don't you think? Or to quote Mr. T.S. Eliot:

Nothing again nothing.
"Do
"You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
Nothing"
[...]
"Are you alive or not? Is there nothing in your head?"

foggy day

This picture was taken over the weekend when fog clung to everything.

Golden Compass footage

Bridge to the Stars has just posted a promotional video with pre-vis and pre-rendered CGI mixed with live action footage from the upcoming Golden Compass film. It is very stunning and exciting and...and...

just for fun

got the job!?

Well, my powers of perception must be quite dim. I was sure that I had bombed my interview yesterday. Yet this afternoon I get a call from HR telling me that I got the job. Part of the problem is that I talked myself out of my dejection yesterday by convincing myself that I didn't want the job. Now, I have to unlearn that line of reasoning and substitute the "this is a good thing" line of thought. Of course, I am also completely worried that a better job will suddenly spring up, but that seems a bit too optimistic. Oh, real world!

goodreads

This is fun:

Bad interview

I am probably being overly pessimistic but I had a bad interview today. It was very brief and there was none of the clicking. You know, the clicking. The essence of the interview was very much, "Can you stand on your feet?" and "Can you show up to work on time?" Well, my answers to such questions were a resounding, "Yes!" But having such skills affirmed doesn't really inspire one's passion for a job.

review, recall

I find myself possessing a less than adequate memory these days. I am beginning to do what my mother does, which is repeat myself. So, blogging actually is a nice exercise for someone with the kind of selective amnesia which I seem to have. Looking back through my blog archives I was able to recall moments like when the coffee shop first installed its countertops. Important things like that. March has been a productive blogging month so far. I have more than two posts, which seemed to be my monthly quota for quite some time. Well, that's all, really...

Grades done!

Well, I just sent off my final grades for 210. That means that I am officially done with school. I feel quite stunned, to be honest.

new blog

I set up a new blog on blogger to detail my research into the life of William Estep, a quack doctor. This experiment may not pan out. We'll see. And, of course, there isn't anything to look at yet. I'm still tweaking the template and layout. But I am posting the link in the sidebar anyway. Enjoy (at some later time)!

dna

As per the request of my sweetie:

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

"Give me a moon story"

I have found the Writer's Book of Days to be a helpful writing aide. The prompts are specific enough to provide a direction and focus, but elliptical enough to let one's mind wander into unexpected territory. I sometimes use the book to come up with new plot points in my novel revision. But tonite I opened it, resolving to write something new. I have a little project in mind, the details of which I won't reveal here, but which I hope to see to fruition in the next few months. This will involve writing two new stories. So, I decided to take the prompt for today, "Give me a moon story," and try to fashion a new story for said project. I've also decided to post bits of it, just for the hell of it. So here is the first bit (of what I've typed, not what I've written, as a I like to write in longhand (okay, sorry that link was totally a joke)). I'm trying out Google documents. So follow this link, or the one in the side bar to read it. Enjoy.

job responses

I am finally getting some responses to my job applications. Yesterday, I got a call from the Botanic Gardens for a circulation position in their library. Today, I got an email from Evanston Public for a circ position there. The latter is the one I am post excited about because it will keep me local and won't waste huge amounts of time commuting.

last lecture today

Not to be maudlin, but today I attended my last lecture as a TA/student at Northwestern. Classes have finally wrapped up. Now all that is left is a crazed grading session between Friday and Tuesday and then grading finals. I spent a good portion of the afternoon in the Unicorn Cafe typing up notes on William Estep, the fraudulent quack doctor whom I am a bit obsessed with at the moment. So, now I am just biding my time till Friday, then the race is on.

first job interview

Well, tomorrow I go on my first job interview of my post-PhD life. I am feeling quite jittery, probably needlessly, but jittery nonetheless. The silly thing is that the interview is for a 16 hour/week position in a library that is nearly 25 miles away. The library's building reminds me of the George Reynolds Branch in Boulder. I am a bit worried about working in a such a small library, being used to a (relatively) bustling central branch. I was reading on the library's website that issuing library cards can be quite complex, even to the point of involving a statistical map and tax tables. Well, I'll get to enjoy a nice long train ride if nothing else. Oh, I could, however, get an associates degree and be a "library technical assistant." Did you know such a thing even existed? I did not.

I have been listening to Jarvis Cocker's solo album almost non-stop for four days now. Every chance I get--washing dishes, taking a box downstairs, riding the bus, walking, sitting, standing--I grab my headphones, my zune, and listen to this album. It's funny though because at least since Different Class (I think), Pulp albums encourage you to not read the lyrics whilst listening to the record. This is well advised, or at least some version of it. When I first got the album in the mail (instead of downloading it like a 21st century boy), I read through the liner notes and glanced over the lyrics. I was wondering if the album would contain sublime lyrical gems like those found on the last Pulp album, We Love Life. Lines like: "Yeah the Trees, those useless trees / produce the air that I am breathing / Yeah the trees, those useless trees / they never said that you are leaving" and "I love my life / It's the only reason I'm alive." I love the slighly warped, punning qualities of these lines. They tend to lead you back to where you started but with a slightly different view than when you began. In any case, I was worried I wouldn't like the new solo album based on the lyrics alone. The first main track sounds like a good old fashioned brit pop rocker, reminding me of Morrissey for one. Then things get weird but still poppy in the next track, Black Magic. It has a really vocal loop that reminds me of TRex (well, really Flo and Eddie, the Incredi-Voices). The rest of the songs have taken longer to digest but all contain interesting, thought provoking, and moving moments. I love the moments in Big Julie where forlorn sound of a train seems to whine in the background. The chorus of Disney Time is haunting and scary, and contains the line: "Why do they call them adult movies / When all they show / Is making babies, filmed up close."

final countdown

This will be my last week of TA-ing, and perhaps of teaching, ever. My students have been a bit lackluster this quarter, causing me to end with a whimper and not with a bang. There is still a fair amount of grading left to be done. But in two and a half weeks I will be free!

jobs jobs jobs

My job search has been conducted half-heartedly. I have already received two rejection letters (that seems like such an academic term). The other night I did write down at least six jobs that I could apply for and possibly get. The weight bearing down on me, however, is my resume and cover letter writing skills. Ever since I went to NU's Career Services and consulted with an "expert" about these documents, I second guess every decision that I make. I have been waiting to hear back from said expert about my resume, but waiting in vain have I been. This means that I must send these flimsy documents out into the void and wait to hear what happens.

projects

I am feeling the need for projects, for outlets for energy. This is largely in anticipation of the waning days as an interloping TA at NU. I have, after final grades are sent in, a mere month to go. So what kinds of projects am I considering?


1. Starting a writing group: I tried this once before but never really followed through. Instead, I joined an already existing group in Chicago but my interest quickly waned.


2. Writing project: I would like to lay my Cora novel to rest one of these days. The damn thing has been lingering in my brain for so long now in its finished/unfinished state. But this seems too charged to tackle. I have been thinking about writing something that would deal with the way that meaning is created retrospectively, each episode would make the reader reconstruct what happen due the jumps in time. Not particularly new, but interesting nonetheless.

3. Research something: I've always liked research. It's one of the reasons why I wanted to be an academic. But follow through is the problem. In any case, I would really like to look in on something. Recently, I have become interested in John Evans' (afterwhom Evanston is named) tenure as territorial governor of Colorado during the Civil War. Perhaps I could read more about that.

4. Crafts: I have several craft projects that need completing including making a scrap box from Europe trip materials and binding a story I wrote for my wife. This category could also, and why not, include home repair projects like stripping our doors, which are caked up with paint. I don't think that the cold damp weather we've been having is conducive to this though (as I would have to do said stripping in the basement). Maybe best to wait on this one.

So, many projects to pursue. But where to begin? Maybe I'll post a notice on Craigslist now for a writer's group.