Huh? Well, I can’t complain, really. I got an email today saying that after all, there won’t be promotional interviews. The interviews were waivered, and all current staff members were awarded the promotion. This is not extremely surprising, given that all our schedules were made ahead of time, and that the interviews were slated for only a few days before the beginning of the semester. Still, it’s nice news. I bought a suit so I’d have something to wear, but hey, I can’t complain too much about having a nice new suit on hand, even if I don’t wear such …
Month: February 2005
Oh Book, For Now, I Abjure Thee As Mine Alone
That’s right, I finished the 2nd draft of the novel I’ve been writing since, what was it, November? I think it was November. I had to make some serious adjustments, as I realized the novel was epistolary—a letter from the protagonist/narrator to one of the other characters—only about 30 pages from the end. Until then, he’d been addressing her as “she” and by her name in the 3rd person, but then I realized that “she” is really a “you” that the narrayor is supposed to be addressing. That took a lot of searching out, basically rereading the whole thing and …
Prescription Drug Addiction
Drug addiction has a long history of romanticizations. Jazz musicians used to take drugs in order to emulate their musical heroes, according to a Sonny Rollins interview I read a long time ago. In Hollywood movies over the last decade, we’ve seen a more grim romanticization of drug addiction as a tragic, yet beautiful, horror—something like the way tuberculosis was portrayed in artistic circles in the 19th century, actually. But I’ve never seen a movie about someone addicted to prescription drugs that was played out this way. Sure, this problem’s been around a long time, and it gets nods in …
whose moccasins would you walk in?
rob asks: i’ve been wondering about discontent lately and how it seems to be something fundamental in the human makeup, like lipstick or eyeshadow. so, to undermine the power of discontent i think we should be able to walk in someone elses shoes, though bring your odoureaters if you’re borrowing mine; hence , name five people you would swap your life with for a day. Damn, a tough tough question, and of course the big problem for me with it is that I don’t know the metaphysics of it. If I die in the other person’s body, do I stay …
New Cabbie, and Human Goodness
Tonight I wanted to take the bus home but the screen at the bus stop didn’t display anything, on any of its three pages of digital information, about any bus coming to my area of town, even though it was giving info about buses that were due for the next pass in 80 or 90 minutes. So I gave up and decided to catch a cab home. I hailed one right in front of the bus stop and got in to find a very young man driving. He seemed confident enough when I told him the neighborhood, but after a …