Steam Vent Release - Here There Be Blitherings

(An unedited stream-of-consciousness rant that I had to get out of the way to finish reading Bruno Latour's Science in Action.  It isn't his fault; this is just the sort of thing these readings tend to do to my head.)

What is like to be able to think that there is one and only one objective (and knowable) Truth?  To think that perception, even sensory perception, is uniform and explicable, and exists independent of the way we are socialized to experience it?

Searle and Poststructuralist Theory: I'm Really Tired Edition

Last night in class I bitchily compared poststructural historical writing to John Searle's chinese room, then had to explain to the professor what I meant by that.  It was intended as a jab at the incomprehensibility of Dipesh Chakrabarty and Ann Stoler (among others), though I'm pretty sure I managed to imply that I just didn't understand any of the readings and that I was embarrassingly okay with this fact.  The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.  I am not a stupid person, nor do I have trouble understanding theoretical frameworks, but these authors have confused me greatly, and I'm as willing to blame them as myself.

"Arrow"

I didn't hate the pilot of the new Green Arrow show, despite all the many reasons why I should have.

The narration was the first problem.  Stephen Amell is a beautiful pile of abs topped with an anonymously handsome face.  There is beefcake to be had.  The problem is, his voice is silky, baby-soft, and a touch... well... he has a lisp.  A really pronounced one that makes his hard-edged pronouncements about the rough years on his magical parkour island difficult to take seriously.

The writing is cheesy.  Like, Velveeta cheesy, not the good stuff.   It's needlessly melodramatic, with characters regularly possessed by the exposition fairy in a really ham-handed way.  The dialogue is just not that great, though they clearly tried to spruce it up with cultural references (for the kids).

The plot I will mostly forgive for now.  It's Batman meets Beatrix Kiddo, all the more so because they seem to have removed everything that made Oliver Queen *not* Batman so far.  However, Green Arrow was never not derivative, and clearly there's some ground that they could break if they can stop writing for the bottom half of their intended demographic's IQ pool.

I don't hold out hope, but I will give it at least another episode before I call it a wash.

My Life With Irma Levinson

My great grandmother is dying.  She's in the hospital again, and as I understand things, from this point it's a matter of how quickly or slowly it happens, but it's a near-certainty.  I think about it and my heart starts to jump around in my chest like a terrified bird in a heavy cage.  My whole body feels like molten lead.  My vision tunnels out and I feel like I can almost hear her in my head.

I haven't had the chance yet to cry about it.  Well, now I am, as I type this.  I thought I was prepared; we had such a scare a few years ago, when she had a heart attack, but it still hurts as if it wasn't something expected.  It's hard to explain how much I love her, and how much she has always meant to me and always will mean.  Damned if I'm not going to try.

Feeling a Little Smashed (ha ha)

Amidst all the stress and chaos and pleasant introductions and gathering of books and funding and all the waiting, I just watched the first season of Smash.  Well, the rest of it.  I started watching from the beginning, but only got a few episodes in before we had to get rid of our cable service on account of the move.  In any case, thanks to Hulu, I got to watch a bunch of commercials, and also Smash.  So while I know I'm months behind on this, I have some small commentary to share.  (SUCH SPOILERS TO SHOW YOU!)

What's Your Orientation?

Yesterday was magnificent for so many reasons.  It was graduate orientation day at my school, and I took it as the first day of my graduate career.  I enjoyed every minute of it, not because of the obligatory and congratulatory administrative speeches (however heartfelt) or because of the breakaway information sessions (some of which were very, very helpful), but because I got to spend most of the time I was there in the company of some of my incoming cohort, and learned some things that may be useful later (or may in fact turn out to be nonsense).

Another Year, Another Round of "Never Forget"s

My views on America post-9/11/01 are neither popular nor favorable, and yet I am compelled to revisit them, annually, on the day that I feel the (probably illusory) America of my childhood, the one I was actually happy to live in, even proud of, died.  As Facebook is pasted with solemn macros of remembrance, and Twitter inundated with the annual slough of retweeted slogans, I am admonished to remember, to never forget (and how anyone could, I have no clue), to relive the experience of that moment, the footage played on infinite loop for weeks, months, years; planes crashing into buildings, destroying thousands, millions of lives in two flashing, horrible moments.  I am brought back to the day when America was attacked for (pinky swear) no reason whatsoever, and we all got (had) to pretend it was Pearl Harbor again and we the noble giant, once more aroused.

Introductory Post

My name is Nick.  I am 28 years old, two months shy of 29.  One year shy of 30.  I am excited by this, because I'm actually happy with where I'll be by the time I hit the mark.  My life is on track in a way that it never was before, and in my hands in a way that I don't think I've ever really felt before.  In one month, I begin my first year as a grad student at UC San Diego, History of Science, no I won't go into more detail now, but dear God will I, and then you'll be glossy-eyed.  I have a partner, with whom I am happy.  We are, like the majority of gay couples I know, more or less open, and theoretically polyamorous.  This is not your business, but I'm still going to talk about it.  I'm all "radical" like that.

I'm going to skip the unending sequence of juxtaposed successes and failures, triumphs, tragedies, emergencies, unexpected windfalls, divine interventions, infernal intrusions, synchronicities, hard turns, spiritual epiphanies, surprise friendships, shocking losses, weird moments, emotional connections, tumult, turmoil, tumescence, regrets, passions, summary dismissals, queer self-discovery, intra-office politics, family drama, metamorphoses, body issues, acceptance, love, lovers, hate, haters, rage, ecstasy, eroticism, disgust, revolution, evolution, political developments, bouts of nihilism, existential growth, academic leaps, luck, strange humors and paradigm shifts that culminated in me moving with my boyfriend from Washington, DC to San Diego, California.

Salient details can show up as needed.

This is a momentary journal; it's for describing my personal adventures in academia, cooking, writing, physical fitness, hobbies, music, gaming, geekeries, critiques, political rants, complicated blasphemies and spiritual crises that don't meaningfully compress into 140 characters or a macro.  Facebook and Twitter are for little bits of daily thought-flotsam, intellectual chum for the salmon of the social network; this is for organized variations on extended themes.  My reasons for writing it are largely egotistical, but also are the product of my generation's (healthy, in my opinion) compulsion to share our experiences as we have them, to broadcast our lives and in so doing participate more fully in the world we are experiencing.

Basically it's what I want it to be at any given time.  Postmodern life for the win!