Bitch. Ph.D.

The (wo)man behind the curtain

2010-12-28T18:09:00.004-08:00

There are a lot of things being written about me on the internet, so I guess it's time to resurrect this blog just for a minute to put some stuff out there. This deserves more than just a few tweets. In the interest of full disclosure and honesty.

On December 17, my friend Gayle and I wrote this post. It was about #mooreandme and the discourse around the allegations of rape against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. It included, among three other arguments, this bit from a chat conversation:

silvana: i dont even know what to make of sady's last post
"It is very, very low. Because Michael Moore’s actions indicate that rape survivors just don’t mean as much to Michael Moore as Julian Assange getting bail. They just don’t. He has assigned a demonstrable, monetary value to these two causes, and as far as we know, Assange is worth $20,000 and providing necessary aid to sexual assault survivors is worth $0."
i find this to be shit
me: i find this to be UTTER SHIT
there are no zero sum games like that in life
silvana: moore doesn't have any obligation to give any money to anyone
silvana: As far as the world knows, going out for french food is worth $100 to silvana, and helping rape survivors is worth $0
like
FUCKING SERIOUSLY
FUCK YOU
i am so mad
me: i just went out for dinner and paid for pizza. I VALUE PIZZA MORE THAN RAPE PREVENTION.
AHAHAHA
i love our examples
written at the same time
silvana: hahahahhaha
me: OUR FOOD: MORE IMPORTANT THAN RAPE SURVIVORS
silvana: and starving children
and people who have been the victims of landmines
me: and rape epidemics in the congo!
or liberia!
silvana: and women held as sexual slaves in thailand
me: sady doyle gave $50 for rape survivors. why does sady doyle hate starving african babies?

We used crass words, yes; it's pretty par for the course for me and especially for the feminist blogs. I admit that I hesitated about posting the words "fuck you," I didn't want it to sound mean. But on review, I assumed it would be taken in the crass, flip, somewhat humorous way it was meant. This is, after all, the internet, and if there's one thing internet feminists know how to do, it's swear.

I didn't mean to hurt her. When I found out that I did, I apologized. But it has nevertheless blown up.

Sady Doyle has taken issue with what we wrote. Here's what she has written about it so far. She also left this comment on our post.

I'm not going to quote all of it, because it's a lot, but here are some things I found particularly troubling:

"I'm sad that (if I'm recalling correctly, if you're the same "Gayle") you wrote me an e-mail saying that you'd started a new blog because you liked mine so much, I'm sorry I promoted that newborn and relatively readerless blog on Tiger Beatdown when it had very few posts and no comments, and I'm sorry that, now that you have readers and are receiving comments, you're trying to invite those comments by posting that I'm "UTTER SHIT" and shouting "FUCK YOU" at me. I wouldn't do that to you. I'm not sorry I helped you out, but I am sorry that it meant so little to you, and that you don't see me as a person deserving of basic respect."

"It’s just: Now that I’m getting all of these messages about the “enemies” I’ve made, for pointing out how even idealistic activist left-wing types will dissimulate and back-stab and attempt to promote themselves at your expense and without respect for you, I think it’s time we all get a brief crash course in How Things Work. If you’re a friend of one of these women, will you find a way to be nasty now? Yes, quite possibly you will."
(ed note: If someone can figure out what those last two sentences mean, please tell me; I am genuinely baffled.)

"It’s OK, Gayle. You did a bad thing. You were purposefully hurtful to someone who’d never done anything to you, and had in fact helped you in the past. You don’t have to post anything on your blog that you don’t want to; you just have to think about what sort of space you want your blog to be."

"But always look at the man behind the curtain. That’s my advice to you. The next time something seems to come up out of nowhere, somebody falls out of favor or becomes subject to hostilities, always look behind the curtain. You don’t know what’s back there. And I, personally, don’t care if there’s a chance that I’ll get in trouble if I tell."

"First I heard $10K, then I heard that someone had donated $2K on top of it, which I think means they have about $14K with the matching in place. That's a lot of money for them. That's a lot of people being able to call and deal with their rapes with qualified professionals.

$14K. That's a big number. For helping survivors.

Would you prefer that we didn't raise it?"

"If folks really want the link, I’ll send it, maybe. But this isn’t feminism. This is pretty clearly personal. This is someone getting all “FUCK YOU” over I am just not sure what, after I’ve done everything in my power to re-affirm that I like her and don’t need her to agree with me. So, yeah. It doesn’t have to be a spectator sport. I just mention it because, wow. Shit got pretty real these past two weeks. But this?

This was officially the lowest blow."

Those quotes are only a fraction of what's she's posted, which you can read in the links above. So, in response to these four words, we get a half-dozen posts in which she says that we are craven, self-promoting, backstabbing, disrespectful, purposely hurtful, venomous, using Sady as a way to get comments, and that we don't care about rape survivors.

You can decide for yourself what you think about this. But from where I'm standing, it looks like, apparently, because we posted the words "FUCK YOU" and called her argument "UTTER SHIT" in a chat where we were clearly making jokes and being crass, we are now getting the responses you see above. There is nothing else. There is no other objection. All the things that Sady has written about how she is upset at us, is about those four words.

Apparently, the fact that we disagree with her arguments means we don't want money to go to rape survivors. But it's not clear what her raising money for rape survivors has to do with the quality of her arguments, or somehow bears on the question of whether we should agree with her.

I still maintain that her argument as quoted in the chat above boils down to an assertion that anything that you have spent money on, you value more than all the things you haven't spent money on. And it was the argument that was used, again and again, to raise money for RAINN. I think raising money for rape crisis centers is great. But that doesn't mean I think every single thing that's said in support of the fundraising is correct. I still believe that what she said about the fact that Assange is fighting extradition suggests his guilt (as I quoted from here) is wrong and dangerous. I still believe that in the course of promoting #mooreandme, Sady made some disingenuous and problematic arguments, more than just these two.

I still haven't gotten any response to the arguments themselves. And that's fine--Sady isn't obligated to respond to me or anyone. But I would have liked to engage about them, rather than have this discussion about four words I used in a blog post.

Hasta la vista. Bitches.

2010-10-13T13:44:00.003-07:00

So what happened?

From where I sit (pinned down by a cat), honestly, the title and raison d'etre of the blog really no longer apply. I've been out of academia now for something like five years--long enough that I'm not actually sure how long it's been. I still have strong opinions, but the severe unhappiness and depression that were, to be honest, major drivers of the urgency and bitchiness of the blog are also things of the past. For now anyway, and I hope permanently. And most importantly of all, my primary purpose in starting the blog has, I think, been met: there are *tons* of people out there who are also depressive/bitchy/feminist/mama/academic/anxious/funny/cynical/etc. types, who experience at least some parts of the world in ways that are congenial to me, and I to them, and the blog has, I think, been a successful part all of our discovering that the internet is a really awesome way to ditch the facades and talk, honestly, about our experiences. Even the pseudonymous part of doing so feels almost like an afterthought: it's been quite some time since Bitch was a fairly transparent (though still quite enjoyable) nom de plume, rather than a proper mask.

That plus it sort of feels like Bitch PhD is a more or less complete body of work. Not that we don't/won't continue to have things to say on the blog's topics--feminism, politics, society, recipes, even academia--but we, the various Bitches, have each reached a kind of closure of the parts of our lives that the blog served. Sybil has a job she's happy with, but it's not blog-friendly. Ding has switched jobs and found a man, for god's sake. LeBlanc got MARRIED. Taddy claims he hasn't changed, but he got cancer, recovered, is returning to his real life and (most importantly of all) has realized, I think, that he is a damn good writer. I'm a housewife, and Pseudonymous Kid is old enough now (10 next week!) that he has started to censor what I write about him, the little shit.

We may not all be living happily ever after, but I think we're all at transitional stages and ready to move to something new.

But as I said, that doesn't mean we're, like, dead or anything. Ding and I are both thinking of starting book blogs; LeBlanc may be getting annoyed by DC blog politics, but she's nonetheless become Somebody among the big boys and girls; Sybil may be blog-free for a while but she seems to have become a semiregular twit. Taddy, well, you guys gotta talk Taddy into starting a goddamn blog of his own.

For now the blog will stay exactly where it is. Lauren at Feministe has offered to archive some "best of" posts, and I may get around to taking her up on the offer. If/when I get my own domain (which I'm totally going to do with the next blog; some asshole has been squatting on bitchphd.com for years now) I'll try to figure out how to move everything over there. In other words, stuff will still be around, hopefully to be occasionally discovered by new readers as well as fondly printed out--EVERY SINGLE PAGE--and bound in gold leaf by each and every one of you.

I shall forever remain your humble servant.

Bitchphd

Everybody's So Different I haven't Changed

2010-10-12T09:28:00.002-07:00

In my family we hate to be parted but we love to say goodbye. We love the weepy, beery farewells, the exit calls to have one more drink, one more bite, to stay just a little longer. The grown ups embrace and the little kids cling to each other, screaming as we pry them apart. You'd think they were being sold into slavery. We each press each other as if ...we may or might never all meet here again.

And we press a sack lunch on the departing, something for the road. Frequently, there is a bale of hand-me-downs the children of the hosting house have outgrown but which will do just fine for the children of the departing. We slip dollar bills to the little kids and tell them to buy themselves a treat. We slip a ten or a twenty to the older kids and tell them not to spend it all in one place.

I guess that's why the wake is our clan's supreme expression of solidarity. We love to say goodbye.

Its too bad the internet won't support a wake. Or maybe I just don't know how to have one on the internet. There's a lot of things I didn't know about the internet until I came to BitchPhD.

In fact, this blog has been a revelation to me, one revelation after another. I came here following a recipe search for pan de dulce and was introduced to a sweetness I never imagined. A complicated sweetness, one requiring a palate sophisticated and discerning and learned. This is, after all, BitchPhD, not SweetHoneyintheRockPhD.

I thank you for being so sweet to me. Thank you for many kindnesses. Thank you for giving me time to become a little learned and listening to me while I struggled to express what I've learned. Being invited to join the bloggeen of the Sisters Bee has been a great honor. I will never forget it. I will never forget you.

My time posting here has coincided with one of the most tumultuous phases of my life. Shortly after I started posting, I left my little home on the mountain to work in Wisconsin for what I expected to be a few months. Nearly two years, six months of chemotherapy, one ghastly surgery, two hospital stays, and several months of physical and mental therapy later, I'm back in my mountain croft. I never, ever, ever, want to leave again.

Not sure what I'm going to do from here on. I've got a lot of catching up to do. I need to find my place, again, among the members of my household and among my friends. It may or may not be worth writing about. The Great Recession has caused much dislocation for our people. My experience is unique to me but has probably been repeated, in similar form, millions of times over the last couple years. Just look at the BitchPhD staff. No one of our bloggeen is in the same place and situation they were two years ago.

Except me. I'm back where I started. Mostly, I want to play my guitar and have a drink with my friends. And wake BPhD.

Dr B said the internet is a big place and it is. The world, however, is really a very small place. Who knows where we might run across each other again? Anywhere people crowd in for a drink and a dance and a bit of a joke, that's where to look for me.

I'm the guy at the end of the bar, chatting up your sister.

The Social Network

2010-10-11T13:31:00.003-07:00

I'm not sure what I ever hoped to accomplish by blogging. I think it was more a compulsion than anything. I had stuff to say, damnit, and I wanted to know if anyone would listen. I needed more, always more social interaction, especially when I started blogging, which was when I was in law school and dealing with a lot of isolation and not having enough fun. I figure there were people on the Internet who wanted to have fun conversations and shoot the shit. I would have always said that I was trying to do some kind of public service. I still think that's true. I think blogging can be incredibly important to people who feel isolated or alone, people trapped in bad relationships or shitty towns or a dead-end job. In some sense, I became a feminist blogger because I felt trapped in the activity of being a woman in patriarchy, which is a real pain, and I wanted to reach out to other women in a similar position and see if we couldn't come up with something good that made sense of it all.

And we did.

Moving to DC made me like blogging less and less. I met a lot of people who are journalists and writers and bloggers and it seems that so many people are connected intimately to this internet, more so than they are to each other. I got tired of vitriolic comment threads where it seemed like everyone was itching for a fight. I get enough fights off the internet. I got tired of people trying to score points. And I can blame bloggers and commenters all I want, but let's face it, the truth is this: I don't have as much to say any more. I have less patience for trying to convince people who disagree with me. I don't find it fun anymore.

I'm sure this won't be the last time I blog. People change, circumstances change, and again I'm sure I will be moved to say something, to get it off my chest, to vent, to write it out and pull things together and make something coherent out of living, in words. When I do, it will probably be at Tiger Beatdown, where Sady has kindly offered me the space to do it when I feel like it.

Thank you all for reading.

More than that, thanks to Bitch for asking me to blog for her, which at the time and for several years after was huge for me. What an honor. Thanks to all the rest of the crew for entertaining me and for being my friend.

Until then, I hope I see you all in the real world, and we can emphasize with hand gestures instead of html tags.

Fireside chats

2010-10-07T18:28:00.004-07:00

When I was a grad student, I TA'd for a professor, now a friend, who liked to say, "The best thing about semesters is that they end." He had the right demeanor to pretend he meant it cynically, but I heard him weave it unto an undergrad lecture once and know he had a whole Benjaminian kind of thing going on (that and he is more earnest than he let on). Semesters are great like stories are great like novels are great like movies are great: they have a beginning, a middle, and an end and in giving us a narrative to inhabit from start to finish, they give us the sense of experiencing the only thing we all really want to know about but can't: how the/our story ends. "What draws the reader to the novel is the hope of warming his shivering life with a death he reads about."

So you can see where I'm going with this: closing down Bitch PhD is like dying.

Not that. But it is something I'm trying to feel satisfied about, something I want to let be an ending in the best narrative sense of the world. This blog was an important part of a narrative for me. It was the first blog I ever paid real serious attention to. It informed so very many of my opinions while I was a grad student. On things like this and this and this, just to name a few. It was through this blog that I met my first ever internet people in real life. And hey, remember when we did this? Ah, the times.

This blog was important to me long before I wrote on it and B's voice was probably the first feminist voice in my adult life that really resonated with my concerns, my glibness, my anxieties, my ambitions. I am sure the story is the same for a lot of you. And a lot of you!! You've been so great to me since I have been writing here, making me feel so sure that my stories were interesting, funny, and really worth all the space they get in my head. And that my recipes are sometimes good. And the lovely fellow bloggers, with their complicated lives and fierce commitments and sharp brains and short short tempers with trolls.

It's a love fest, the whole thing.

And now everyone gets a chance to put, if not a period, perhaps a semicolon or maybe even a comma on the story [Confidential to my students: the latter two of which continue to NOT be able to be used interchangeably]. Which is a comforting luxury, in its own way.

I doubt I will blog again somewhere else. Clearly, my momentum of late has petered. Moving, new job, family back together, 5 yr old, 30 Rock, it all takes a lot out of me. I got to do the thing I never imagined would happen: I found a tenure track job in my field in the town where I have the most friends and where my husband's career is solidly planted, where we can afford a house and like the school district and the weather and the restaurants. I am not sure that the academic blog world needs my story, that anyone is really served by having this story told. It's happy making, which is a service, but you know what I mean.

It would, in some ways, be good for me to be writing about the job. There are a lot - and y'all, I mean a lot - of things about this institution and the the way the place works that make for SERIOUS blog content. But for a variety of reasons I feel that it's likely I would be un-anonymized by someone there, sooner or later, if I blogged regularly, and for a variety of reasons I feel like I would likely get fired if I were found out while doing a lot of unsavory blogging. It's just not a good idea. And neither is glib happy blogging.

So for now, my blog story ends with what is probably a period. The Vane family is back under one roof, LV is happily-ish ensconced in a new school where she is not being secretly taught about Jesus. Instead she is mixing up other traditions and came home a few weeks ago announcing that on Eid, a person gets to stay home and eat apples and honey all day. She is planning a vampire faerie costume for Halloween. I am reading wikipedia articles on chemotherapy (seriously) and visualizing clumps of hair on my beautiful wood floors in an attempt to psych myself up for the Next Great Smoking Cessation, to begin when the weather gets genuinely cold. I am comfortably in the midterm mode of my teaching performance and my students seem so far to respond in the ways I expect them to; they like me, for the most part. Mr. V and I are remembering how to share parenting during the weekdays; the inevitable quibbling that results is nothing in comparison to the luxury of having someone else to pack lunch and do end of day pick up. The CAT has settled on her favorite sun spots on the back porch and the front porch. She never kills songbirds, despite all that you readers gave me to look forward to. I miss football this season, but I can't root for Ben. I made amazing manicotti last weekend. And sweet potato pie with vanilla whipped cream. And the bakery down the street sells amazing baguettes.

You can imagine the tedium that kind of material would produce, as far as posts go.

Thanks so much for talking so much with me. Thanks to Delia, to Silvana, to Taddy, for being allies and for being so goddamned smart. Thanks to B for hosting for such a long time. If I make my way back somewhere, you'll be the first to know (so I should get your numbers. So we can text. Or something).

ETA: Also, I forgot to note that I do wonder if B is really shutting down the place because I did that fucked up thing where I made the comments go backwards-wise and I never figured out how to fix it and everyone just hella hates it still. My bad, y'all. I broke the place.

The elephant in the room

2010-10-07T08:42:00.001-07:00

We, the Bitch Collective, think it is past time to acknowledge an unfortunate fact: this blog has withered on the vine. There are various reasons for this, and some of us will write closing posts in the next few days which may address them. But in any case we will be putting Bitch PhD out of its misery in the next few days.

That said, most of us will continue to blog elsewhere, under our real names or other noms des plumes. It's a big Internet. We'll see you around....

...and, farewell.

2010-10-06T13:11:00.000-07:00

It's been loads of fun, poppets. But I gotta go.
Life is calling and I've been postponing it a bit with all my navel gazing, jeremiad-ing and general bitchiness.
But don't worry; I have not been tamed. Me and my afro, we're in the dulcet-toned environs of philanthropy and I expect several apple carts to be overturned over the course of the year.

Maybe you'll see me again. Maybe I'll be the woman to throw a pie in Rahm Emanuel's face.
Whatever the case, catch me over at Screed. Or on the Twitter, @DeliaChristina or @DeliaC.

Ciao, bellas!

Delia Christina

hello, again.

2010-09-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

Last week I resigned from my position with the Large Women's NonProfit to join the Large Statewide Philanthropic Organization. My last day is tomorrow.

What am I feeling? Relief.

Relief that I'm no longer behind the Illinois state budget 8-ball, working for a direct service organization. I know my coworkers are looking for some signs of sadness but I can't help it if indecorous spurts of glee leak out of me.

Relief that I networked my ass off, lined up my champions, searched strategically and interviewed smartly (after that initial phone interview that caught me unawares. Preparation, always preparation!)

Relief that I bumped my salary by $11k and can perhaps afford a new couch to replace the secondhand Ikea couch with the big dent in it, where my butt busted the springs after a frolic with M-.

Relief that, in such a tough, competitive environment, I bore down, concentrated and won what I wanted. Did I do this alone? Nope. I had a whole team of people supporting me: my boss, my COO, my mentor, my contacts, my friends, my M-, and I thank god for all of them. But ultimately I'm proud of what I did and how I did it.

I'm so relieved it's over. Maybe I can breathe now.
...
Where else have I been over the summer? Oh, you know. Introducing the boyfriend to the family in LA, hanging out with the Head Bitch and discovering the gay gene gallops through the family.

If You Don't Stand for Something

2010-09-06T09:21:00.008-07:00

You'll stand for anything.

The ascendance of capital over labor has reached its highest point since the Great Depression. The portion of workers covered by collective bargaining is at its lowest point since that same time. Coincidence? Hardly.

Our nation aspires to democracy but its workplaces are hostile to worker's democratic participation. This basic contradiction hardens all other inequities in our communities and renders even elementary political conflicts nearly intractable.

Top management of the nation's economic enterprises would not dream of working without a contract. Workers are subject to employment at will and fired if they seek a contract.

Workers had no hand in fomenting the current crisis but we are made responsible for solving it. We had to bail out Goldman Sachs, AIG, Citigroup, and the rest. We've had to give back wages, benefits, and whatever value we managed to accumulate in our homes and 401K's. We are told we must accept cuts in Social Security although no one can explain how that will close the operating deficit in the Federal budget. The goddamned GOP is actually campaigning to repeal national health care for workers and the spineless Democratic Party may just let them do it.

Capital is organized and can make its demands stick. Workers are not organized and can only hope for the best.

Its my hope that the current crisis will reveal the extent of the divide between those who work and those we work for. The ones we work for are well organized. Time for us to get organized, too.

Solferino

2010-09-02T10:01:00.001-07:00

Through the clear transparent water
He could see the fishes swimming
Far down in the depths below him,
See the Yellow Perch, the Sahwa
Like a sunbeam in the water
-Song of Hiawatha

Eagle and Osprey each hunt the perch of the Flowage. Each depends on the perch catch but each employs a different method for bagging the meaty piscine.

Osprey loiters at great altitude, orbiting in the high eddies until spying the sunbeam in the water rising towards the surface to slurp some floating bug or waxworm.

Its easy to tell when Osprey has fixed a perch in its sights. Its staccato call comes faster and faster, rising in frequency and urgency. It interrupts its orbit to hover above the spot where it expects the prey to breach and, at the psychological moment, folds its wings and drops from the heights, hitting the water like a sack of hammers.

I can't say Osprey never misses. I can only say, I have never seen one miss.

Invariably, Osprey rises from the eruption of its strike, beating the air and fidgeting with the catch, kneading it with stilleto talons, aligning it head to tail to reduce drag and laboring low over the water to gain speed and altitude. Two laps around the bay is usually enough for building up the velocity needed to climb back to altitude and turn for home.

Where Osprey operates like a dive bomber, Eagle flies under the radar cover. Slowly unwinding from the heights till it reaches the lake's surface, Eagle skims just above the wavetops at speed, broad wings outstretched, coasting as if it had thrown the clutch out, one eye cocked on the water, orange feet relaxed and dangly to entice the perch to rise and then, BAM! Talons rotate into the water, the luckless prey is seized insensible, its back broken by the shock of the attack, and borne away to a fate not worth thinking about if you have tender feelings towards Yellow Perch.

At least, that's how Eagle operates when it's hunting Perch. Most often, its hunting the Perch that Osprey has just caught.

Eagle, you see, is a thief and worse. Eagle is an eater of carrion and roadkill. Eagle is a bully who shakes down raptors for their lunch money, who rifles the bags of more effective hunters. Eagle hunts only as a last resort, when there is no escape from honest work.

Except on the Flowage. Eagle and Osprey have lived in an uneasy detente along the Flowage for as long as I've been here and for generations of raptors before I got here. The geography of the Flowage and the fact that its brimming with Perch have facilitated this cold peace.

The Flowage runs from northeast to southwest and forms a series of deep basins flanked by shallow bays and sloughs and channels. A narrow strait about a mile and a half south of the head of the Flowage divides it into upper and lower portions of more or less equal area. Traditionally, Osprey hunts the upper basins, Eagle hunts the lower, and there is more than enough perch for all hunters of the Flowage, even one as lazy as Eagle.

Sure, there has been the occasional provocation, the isolated border incident.

There is a pair of juvenile Eagles, for example, that, from time to time, hunt the southernmost bay of Osprey's territory, even harassing Osprey hunters in the bay to relieve them of their catch. I've never seen Osprey retaliate for this effrontery.

Likewise, there are, sometimes, Osprey overflights of Eagle's hunting grounds. A pair will loiter at maximum angels, not bothering Eagle or doing any hunting themselves, just demonstrating they are able to come and go without Eagle's by-your-leave. I've never seen Eagle rise to challenge the intruders.

Lately, though, foreign relations between the two have broken down.

Yikes! I'm late for a luncheon date. Try to understand. I don't get many luncheon dates. Or any.

Got to go! To be continued!

Added to her tab

2010-08-21T05:43:00.004-07:00

Hey there! Good morning! Let me tell you what happened last night!

11pm, LV is asleep, she hasn't been feeling well. Had the pukes on Thursday at school, off and on nauseated and feverish since then, throat pain. Mr. V and I have finished our nightly whining about how all this sickness is dragging us down (we both had strep over the last two weeks, he never really got better and has some sort of gross tonsil abscess now) and we go out on the back porch on the way to bed to feed the CAT [it's sort of touching how this was a team activity, right?] [I definitely moved the fucking CAT with us, by the way]. We turn to go back inside and realize the door is locked. Of course, so is the front door. Most of the windows in this place are 10ft or more off the ground and are locked anyway.

So, to recap: 11 pm, sick kid locked inside, house dark, raining, Mr.V and I outside with CAT. I spend 10 minutes making the case that we should break the glass door in the back, Mr. V spends 15 minutes pretending he can figure out how to get in with a screwdriver, then pulls his blackberry out of his pocket (the only part of the story that involves improbable luck) and looks up 24 hr locksmiths. They tell us someone will be there in 15 and I continue wandering around the house pressing my ear to walls and windows to hear if LV is either screaming or choking to death on her own vomit. 45 minutes later, a 22 yr old kid rolls up in a BMW SUV, house music bumping. He gets out in a billowing cloud of cologne, apologizes for being stuck in traffic, mentions that he learned how to do this in the Israeli army, and, with his Ed Hardy underwear 2/3 of the way out of his stylish jeans and with his hair product glistening in the moon, he inserts some air bladders in the door jamb/way/whatever, inflates them and pops open the back door. I run in and verify that LV is breathing then immediately open a beer and sit on the floor, defeated. Mr.V pays him $75 and says, "Have fun tonight."

A careful reader of this story will recognize that it's all the CAT's fault.

The Crisis of Overproduction

2010-08-20T12:10:00.005-07:00

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.
-Communist Manifesto

I dreamed I had a good job
And I got well paid
Blew it all at the penny arcade
-Riding with the King

Got my unemployment check today. First time I've been on unemployment since I was discharged from the USN.

That time, it helped me fund the transition from military to civil living; find an apartment, get a job, decode the bus schedule, generally adapt to living on the economy like a regular citizen. I was 28.

Now I'm 58 and it feels like a buy-out. I don't expect I'll have as good a job as I had before I went out on disability. I was being paid at the rate of a master electrician. I don't expect I'll ever make a wage that good again. I mean, except for the princely wage I earn here at BPhD.

I'll get other jobs, of course. In fact, I started a new job last week. Three days a week, I drive a shuttle for an outfit that rents recreational machinery to daytrippers; kayaks, canoes, bicycles, solar-powered picnic baskets, that sort of thing.

I transport renters and rented from the concession stand to the boat landing or river crossing or beach or wherever it is they're going. At the appointed interval, I pick them up and return them to the concession stand and, ideally, collect a fat tip.

It's an OK job. I get paid each day. In cash. Plus tips which are also in cash. In the Great Recession, cash is King.

It's the best job I've had lately.

A couple months ago I started working at the local hippie food co-op. I sweep up the store, stock the bulk food bins, and keep the panhandlers away from the loading dock.

It's interesting work, in a way, and my co-workers are very nice. It's not actually a paid job, though. Not in money, anyway. For my labor I receive a sack of dried legumes and whatever type granola is not selling. Last week it was Funky RainForest Crunch.

Strangely, Funky RainForest Crunch is not accepted as legal tender for debts public or private. It's harder than you might think to buy a round for the lads with stale granola.

Last month was the month of Parish Festivals and, on different weekends, I worked the beer tents for St Casimir's, Our Lady of Sorrows, St Bridget's, and St Stanislaus' Mission in the Valley.

Again, interesting work and my co-workers were super nice but the toilers in the vineyards were paid in beer tickets.

I saved them up and tried redeeming them down at the local. They wouldn't take them. Anti-Catholic bastards.

This month I came closest to striking gold. I'm working at a Blues festival.

During August, the local brewery sponsors a blues festival throughout the month. Each weekend, they erect stages and seating and dance floors and beer tents and brat grills in a park adjacent to the brewery. Bands fill the stages and rock the blues till your back ain't had a bone.

My excellent references and experience working the Parish festivals got me employment in one of the beer tents. Again, the pay was in beer tickets but I've got used to that. I was able to pour out a lot of free beers for my friends. That disposed of a whole lot of incurred obligations.

Plus, you know rhythm and blues. I danced for the first time since I had the procedure.

Oh, yeah. Had some big fun. Doesn't pay the bills, though.

Last weekend, a silent auction was included with the festival. I placed the winning bid on a weekend for two at a bed and breakfast on the harbor in Bayfield, Wisconsin. I'm hoping they take beer tickets.

Next month, I'll return to my little farm in East Needle range. It's been a long time since I've been home and I don't think I'm ever going to roam again. Since I left home in January of '09 it's been pretty much one god-damned thing after another. The urge to walkabout has left me, entirely.

More to the point, though, I'm going to see if I can support myself in the manner to which I have become accustomed strictly on ag income.

It might could work. Moya thinks it will. Even though the wage labor market has collapsed, the market for ag commodities thrives. Moya says we can make yards of money.

Beef, for example. Beef on the hoof is going for a dollar a pound. We've got 32 plump Shorthorns coming off the grass in October. Figure 1000 pounds each. Now that's a payday.

5x5 round bales of #2 Colorado Red Clover are going for $75 dollars a bale, in the field. Sold 70 bales in June, 130 in July, and, if the weather holds up the rest of the month, we'll sell another hundred by the end of August. September's cut we'll keep for ourselves.

Milk prices have never been better. We've settled the argument over whether to upgrade from a Class C to a Class A dairy. We'd have to take out a loan to do the upgrade and Moya agrees we don't want to take on a note in the middle of the Great Recession. Selling milk for cheese and yogurt and suchlike is worth a thousand a month in net proceeds.

We board some livestock, too. Outfitter's horses, mostly. Right now we're boarding a four-pony string at $250 per pony per month. They're contracted through September and week-to-week after that. For a thousand dollars a month, I can shovel a lot of shit.

I'll still have some deferred wages coming in. I'm eligible for a pension from my old employer. I've got checks coming from Veterans Affairs for PTSD and Agent Orange. Dept of Def considers me 25% disabled from the PTSD and compensates me accordingly.

Moya thinks that figure can be jerked upwards a few more points. She views my infirmity as an ore deposit to be mined for royalty checks.

There's a few other little sidelines that can turn a dollar. The band, for example. We mostly play for beer money, anyway. Or beer tickets. And, like I said earlier, there's the handsome stipend from BPhD.

So, for now, anyway, I'm leaving the world of regular jobs and regular wages. They can't fire me.
I quit.

By the Rivers of Babylon

2010-08-19T03:48:00.008-07:00

The evacuation to Kuwait of the the 4th Brigade of the 2nd Division, USA, brings to an end the leading role of American military power in the unlawful occupation of Iraq. A praetorian detachment of 50,000 US troops will remain in Iraq for another year.

This is not the swift end to our Mesopotamian misadventure I expected when I voted for President Obama but, at least, the end is in sight. One more of the cowpies left behind by the dubya regime is on its way to being swept up and that will have to be enough for now.

Whether the Iraqi people will take advantage of our exit to establish a self-governing state remains to be seen. The Iraqi state is a colonial construct confected by the British from provinces they seized from the Ottomans in World War I. The separatist tendencies that have dogged its efforts toward national unity have only been strengthened by the aggressive war launched against Iraq by Bush. Integrated communities have been ethnically cleansed, communal divisions hardened, and the whole country, particularly the south, moved more closely into the orbit of Iran.

Everyone who opposed this aggression was right. Everyone who promoted it was wrong.

I want the occassion of the 4th Brigade's withdrawal to be marked by speeches and editorials and encomiums from those who were wrong apologizing to those who were right. I want to see video replay of the massive anti-invasion demonstrations that took place in 2002. I want the right wing's absurd theories of national security to be discredited for generations.

I want the destruction of more than 4300 American soldiers, sailors, and marines and the grief visited on their families to be hung around the necks of the GOP and their traveling warmongers for all time. I want American plutocrats taxed heavily to support their dependents and those thousands invalided by Bush's criminal adventure.

I want the armed forces of the United States returned to their proper role of Shield of the Republic, safeguarding the nation's lines of communication and defeating our enemies.

I want an end to this colonial buccaneering.

And I Ain't Namin' Names

2010-08-13T11:56:00.005-07:00

For best country-western-male-female-singing-duo, I would name and nominate these two. I know, its a crowded field but I stand by John and Iris.

If I was to nominate the best-country-western-male-female-singing-duo that have never sung together, I would nominate him to sing with her.

Only You Know and I Know

2010-08-06T08:20:00.016-07:00

Other than checking the baseball standings, the weather report, and cattle futures, I've pretty much given up on news reporting. TV news I watch not at all.

I don't even check the internet news sites I used to follow. It cuts into my already abbreviated porn downloading time.

I read the New York Times on line, of course, because they have Paul Krugman and foriegn bureaux and I always wanted to use the word, bureaux, in a sentence.

I read Hullaballoo and Media Matters for America. I read Informed Comment. When I get around to it. And that's about it.

The enormous amount of time saved and confusion avoided by not paying attention to the barking media has freed me up for a lot more loafing and fishing and drinking than ever before. For news of daily events, I rely mainly on the crowd at the Possum Eaters Inn. I may get the news late but it always comes with a cold one and an analysis simultaneously cruel and hilarious. Its a fair tradeoff.

So, although its news to me its probably not news to you that the goddamned California Proposition 8 has been overthrown by a U.S. court.

Praise the Lord! When will the right wing parasites understand they don't get to vote on other people's rights?

They claim to believe that human rights are endowed by the Creator. It would follow, then, wouldn't it, that these rights are no one's to give or to take but are inherent to our individual existence? The mot juste is, I believe, inalienable.

Plus, why should straight people be the only ones burdened with in-laws? Is that fair? Is that equitable? Is that just? I ask you.

I always have said and I always will say that the widest possible distribution of in-laws is the most crucial element to making the world a happier and a quieter place. Very wide.

Wider. Ever wider.

"This is a big inconvenience for me."

2010-08-05T15:36:00.005-07:00

May be that nothing brings me out of blog hiding quite like the opportunity to shame a celebrity. Naomi Campbell, you might be the worst person alive this week.

Decent background on the whole thing here.

To sum up: Naomi Campbell, whom you might be familiar with as a supermodel who abuses staff, had dinner in the late 90's with Charles Taylor, whom you might be familiar with as a mass-murderer responsible for war crimes, mass rape, and crimes against humanity. Taylor, it seems, was smitten with Campbell and sent his men with "blood diamonds" to her room in the middle of the night. This event is confirmed by Campbell's assistant and her companions, to whom she desribed the encounter and the diamonds.

As it happens, this event is one of the few verifiable links between Taylor and the diamonds, a necessary link for the prosecution at the Hague. And yet Campbell has been unwilling to testify, going so far as to claim the whole thing never happened, until she was subpoenaed. [To be as generous as I can, I will note that her excuse was actually as follows: "This is someone that I read up on the Internet that's killed thousands of people, supposedly," she said. "And I don't want my family in any danger in any way."]

In her testimony this week, she noted that she was extremely "inconvenienced" by having to be there and went on to disavow any knowledge that the "dirty stones" she received were either diamonds or from Taylor (claims that is contradicted by both her assistant and Mia Farrow). She further claims that when she got wind of the possibility that they might be diamonds, she immediately gave them to Nelson Mandela's charity (a claim that Mandela has proven demonstrably false).

To recap: you are the person capable of providing the testimony that convicts Charles Taylor of war crimes and for years you refuse to appear, nominally out of safety concerns but, let's be serious, because of the bad PR associated with your having received a blood diamond. When you are forced to show up, you note your status as inconvenienced and you claim total ignorance of the origination of the stones as well as of their precious nature and further claim to have given the stones to Nelson Mandela when you really didn't? You both demur from giving decisive evidence against Charles Taylor *and* throw Nelson Mandela under the bus? Worst person alive.

(apologies for the silence. have moved. unpacking, prepping for new job, orienting, feeling mostly really happy.)

High Summer

2010-08-03T09:26:00.000-07:00

I don't know if mass layoffs have struck BPhD or everyone's gone walkabout cause its high summer.

Probably the latter. I woulda heard about the former. Last hired, first fired. You know how they do.

Well, if they want to lay me off, they going to have to take it up with the Local. I got a contract. I got recall rights. And I get severance pay.

Its High Summer on the Flowage and a more fecund summer you will not find. Everything is ripening and reddening and gestating. The very air seems fertile as if vines could sprout from the clouds and the fog could bring forth honeyed fruit.
The crops look stupendous. Thick stands of rye and oats are marshalled across the county. Even a slight breeze casts them into motion, the grain rocking in slow rollers from fenceline to treeline.
Fields planted in corn and beans crowd the horizon. Field corn is already seven feet tall and the beans; Great Northern, Pinto, wax, and soy, are keeling over from the weight of their beany bounty.
Two crops of alfalfa have been put up already and the third crop is mowed, raked, and drying on the hillside. If the rain holds off for a few more days, it will be in the barn by the end of the week. There's plenty of time for a fourth crop. Nothing makes a country boy content like an overstuffed haymow.

The critters are thriving, too. I can't tell you how many sets of twin fawn Whitetail I've seen this season. I even saw triplets the day before yesterday browsing with their mama on an island in the Flowage. Its not unusual for two or three fawns to be born at one time but its unheard of they should survive this long into the summer. Tells you how rich is the browsing this year.

There's a merganser in the backyard on her third crop of offspring. She burrowed into the shoreline in the spring and has been here ever since raising babies and eluding Fox. She's had a couple close calls but Fox keeps falling for the broken wing ruse. He must see through it by now. I suspect he's so well fed he harasses the merganser strictly for amusement.

The boys are thriving like little idjits. I don't know if I told you but there's three boys spending the summer here. They range in age from eight to eight. It took me two weeks to learn how to tell them apart.

How they all ended up here is another post but suffice to say, one is the son of my stepdaughter, one is the cousin of the son of my stepdaughter, and one is the son of my niece, Moya. We call him Poco. You've heard me talk about him before.

Anyway, they're all here and carrying on like so many cocker spaniels. I admit to a moment of panic at the beginning of summer when they all parachuted in. I even tried giving them away to my blogging sisters. No joy there. They all had thin excuses.

Now, though, its working out pretty well. They go to a day camp four days a week and spend the other three days roaming the Flowage on their own.

I've got an old aluminum canoe they've commandeered to sail about in. Venturing out onto the broad waters on their own is forbidden but there are lots of sloughs and channels and shallow bays for them to reconnoiter. From time to time, they've even brought home nice fat perch for our supper.

I'm thriving, too. Its been six months since my surgery and I had my 5000 mile checkup last month. Three days of intensive poking and prodding and prying and sticking me with needles and examining my various fluid outputs have resulted in my being declared a cancer-free zone. I'm clean. I'm not sober but I'm clean for the first time in a year. My strength is just about back to form and my stamina is right where it should be.

I still have a little problem on my left side. After the operation, my remaining parts were reassembled into something of a loose confederation. Due to some mashed nerve bundles, my left or southern flank did not immediately join in the new regime with enthusiasm. The next six months were taken up with restoring central control over all constituencies of the taddyporter body politic.

Restoration is nearly complete but it turns out laying on my left side for the nine hours of the procedure tore the rotator cuff in my left shoulder. Surgery is the only way to fix it but, you know, its enough already with the surgery.

I'm just going to put it off for awhile. The shoulder can't get any worse. Who knows? It might get better on its own.

It could happen. Its High Summer.

Securities and Exchange

2010-07-16T06:11:00.003-07:00

I've reached the point in this (second consecutive) summer of upheaval where I'm starting to feel unhealthy. Not been sleeping very well for a month; I drop off fine usually but wake up a million times. The packing has me mired in stirred up dust and fleas, probably, so I'm sneezey and my eyes itch. I've been drinking more beers/wine than what is my standard routine, smoking more cigarettes. And not sleeping. Plus, eating down the pantry is anti-healthful. I'm scared to buy any produce because of an overdetermined sense of the move being imminent. Pasta, quinoa, black beans, beer beer, rice, can of soup, beer, rinse, repeat. my god, we wouldn't want to have to move with this *vanilla*! Better use it up! More peanut butter cookies; in my weakened state I tend to bake only half the dough and just straight up eat the rest. Further, like all good hells, the eating down the pantry hell is all the worse because it is a hell of your unique making. I, for example, have a grocery store weakness for two-for-one specials, for boxes of rice/herb combos, for cans of refried beans, for on-sale granola bars, and for oversized bins of risotto. This is my processed carbs hell, for now.

I cleaned out the last bits of stuff in my office yesterday. Something I love about myself is the way I invest in a place and develop a relationship with it, but yesterday that investment, only a year long, felt like more than I had room to indulge. I felt exhausted and sad in my empty first office. I walked down the hall to drop off my key and three of the offices I passed, colleagues, have my kid's artwork taped on the doors.

I don't feel like I've written much about this job over the last year and now I don't know how much I trust myself because I feel weepy effusive. It would be, I imagine, for me, much easier to leave this job if it were a traditionally "really good" job. I know, y'all, its a tenure track job, it's a really good job. Just like the one I am going to, which is a 4/4 with tons of comp and a new institutional structure, is also a good job. I do know. But y'all know what I mean: the kind of job that my grad program trained me to think of as aspirational. R1, 2/2, minimal comp teaching. That scenario presents a clear dichotomy: privileging family togetherness over career ambitiousness, without entirely sacrificing the latter.

Instead the situation is this: my job, my first job, was a 4/4 with constant comp responsibilities and a spartan upper-level rotation that had me in my speciality only once every 3 or 4 semesters. I had weighty service responsibilities, very little funds for conference/research travel, and a very small salary. My colleagues have pursued relationships with my daughter and played with her feverish self while I taught. They hang her art in their office. They have hosted my family for bbq's and riverside crab eating. My chair, when I called her in June to say I was leaving, spent 20 seconds being sort of shocked and then 20 minutes assuring me that I was making the right decision and she was so proud of and happy for me. She also began scheduling meetings with me 2 months into the job to discuss things like my 3rd yr review file, how to think about the committees involved, how to game my committee responsibilities. Maybe most importantly, I am thinking, is that my colleagues here have worked so hard from the day I arrived to convey that I was the best fit for the job, that I was an asset to the department, that I made the school better. The did this because they are decent and because they meant it all, but also, I expect, because they knew how much it meant for a first year assistant professor - any first year assistant professor but especially one struggling with some single mothering and an absent partner - to be reminded of herself as a competent professional with an identifiable career trajectory. That is, at any rate, the effect it had on me. I feel, as I'm sure is clear by now, very sad about leaving these people and this job.

I was skimming archives and noticed that here, last summer, pre-move, I observed how sad people seemed for us when I told them I got a job, but Mr. V hadn't yet and we were shifting to a commuter marriage. This year, with this move, people seem so happy for us. It's much easier to react in an unambiguous way (especially to a woman) to positive family news than to positive career news. Even my colleagues are thrilled for us. And mostly I absorb that and it guides how I feel about the move: incredibly happy for us. But it's more complicated. Always is.

["Everyone wants to] fuck young girls."

2010-07-12T07:24:00.002-07:00

Judges. Juries.

Everyone.

Good news for everyone then.

ETA: added missing preposition in title and added patented academic flair brackets to more precisely convey bottom line.

Still Eating My Sandwich

2010-07-08T06:28:00.003-07:00

The last thing this whole Daily Show/Jezebel fracas need is another linkfest, so I'm going to (sort of) abstain. I thought the Jezebel piece was basically reasonable. Everything that has gone on thereafter (with much of it being extremely well-written and reasoned, other parts less so) has seemed to me like such total insidery inside baseball as to be a little cringey. But I will say this" I read Olivia Munn's interview at Salon today. Uh huh. So, yea.

This is not a woman I had heard of prior to the aforementioned fracas (Munn suggests in the interview that various articles about the dust up are attaching her name in order to get page hits. I wonder, can that happen? Does everyone else know who she is?]. Now that I am acquainted with her, I have this to say: Feminism is for everyone. I think you, Olivia Munn, should benefit from its paradigm, its achievements, its humanistic hope for the world. Etc. I understand that you feel like the forces of feminism often work imperfectly (and even self-destructively) - a true fact - hence your statement that, "this [Jezebel] article was picked up and pushed out and these women sit behind this very thin veil that I can see right through, this idea that "we stand up for women." If you stand up for women, then don't bash me." Hmmm. I feel doubtful about the notion that because one is a feminist, one cannot critique other women or reflect on antifeminist forces that may be at work in their career trajectories, but maybe it really became a cabalistic sisterhood when I wasn't looking. Also, were you "bashed"? Hmm. So then, as I continued to read the interview, I thought, just who *is* this Olivia Munn and what has she been doing that is so insulated from feminist analysis?

A bit further down in the interview, re: people who had negative things to say about her Maxim cover shoot or her relationship with the new Captain Kirk: "And I really still believe that anybody who's sitting there judging my relationship does need to get the shit fucked out of them." Hmmm.

And then Lindsay Beyerstein [so, ok, this post is linky anyway] showed me the moving images I needed to see to complete my picture of Olivia Munn's contributions to the representation of women within dudely geek culture. Lindsay writes:

[T]he least Munn can do is stop acting all butthurt when feminists call her out. We geeks are not renowned for our social skills, but there's one thing we do know: You can't suck up to the cool people and dump on the other rejects and expect the rejects to like you. A corollary applies to women who ingratiate themselves to men while tearing down other women.

True. I mean, talk about manufactured outrage. Or, at the very least, total lack reflexive awareness. And, also, this "I'm easy to hate" and "expect them to like you" language is precisely the problem: this is, or was anyway, actually not a middle school catfight. Things - shows, public personae, career trajectories, workplace sexism - exist in real life. They are scrutable, legible, analyze-able, potentially educational. Introducing the language of petty jealousy is what turns it into a middleschool catfight.

All in all, in conclusion and since the beginning of time, the whole thing is wicked less soothing than packing and I am sorry I spent any time with it.

Abusus Non Tollit Usum

2010-07-07T07:30:00.005-07:00

Cannabis advisory for Denver Colorado: this summer's most popular flavors are as follows:

ICE - named for la Migra

PurpleXTrainwreck - named for the trainwreck

Western Buddah - named for the satori of sativa

Fayaka - named for the Steel Pulse lyric

Rey and Angie came to visit for the week of the Glorious Fourth and brought this news. They tell me marijuana dispensaries in Denver County now outnumber Starbucks.

And the most unlikely suspects are getting into the business. A guy we know, a fucking teabagging Republican who used to run a private security firm, has gone totally hydroponic. The warehouse he formerly used for housing the tools and implements of the private police business has now been given over to tanks and grow lights and bags of vermiculite and long tables of fragrant budding indica. The minions who formerly jiggled doorknobs and bounced revelers from rodeo beer stubes now patrol the dress-right-dress ranks of hemp stalks for aphids and cutworms.

There may even be some commercial opportunities for old school growers of customary Conejo county Verde Sol, cultivated, in the ancient way, broadcast along the arroyos and canyon watercourses of the Four Corners and dried in adobe sheds that reek of chiles and alfalfa and the earthy tang of Dineh ponies.

Makes my eyes red just thinking about it.

How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Move

2010-07-06T12:34:00.003-07:00

Moving itself is a bitch, but I rather like packing. It appeals to the frenetic organizer in me. Also, if there is anything better than organizing, it is throwing away/donating. So liberating! I am ruthless and have very little sentimentality when it comes to this sort of thing. Eating down the pantry is goddamn awful, but other than that, reducing inventory is fabulous-feeling.

I have tended to have one major weakness in this process and have finally, in the last week, overcome it. I am here to share my enlightenment with you. If you are reading this blog, there is a strong likelihood that the insight is one you need. Here it is: your books do not love you. They are objects, and not morally superior to any other object in your house. Again, books are not morally superior to any other objects. They are just heavier.

you want my contacts, too?!?

2010-06-30T17:24:00.000-07:00

Lately, I’ve been fielding calls from recent college grads (or their family friends) for informational interviews and I don’t quite know how to feel about it. Ambivalent about my own professional standing and trajectory, I don’t quite know what insights I’m supposed to give these young people. Sure, I have a solid list of contacts (not as fabulous as some, but it’s still a good one); but informational interviewing should be about more than just a polite way to demand names. I see it as a mini-mentoring opportunity.

And since I’m big on mentoring folks who look like me, I was doubly ambivalent when the two people I spoke with this week didn’t. Their accumulated gender, race and class privilege outweighed any contacts or leads I could give them in a lifetime, though there is a lot to say about life experience.
The thought crossed my mind, “Shit, why should I waste my time and so-called insight on these two when I could be giving them to other women of color?”

But I tamped down my impatience and made the appointments with them – because that’s what you do when you’re a professional. You realize that the job search is a dance and these sorts of interviews are part of the choreography. Also, there was no way I was going to look bad in front of the people who referred them to me. So on Monday, I met with a very nice college grad who’s earnestly interested in women’s advocacy – or law school – and today I met with a guy who’s been interning at our org at a long-term research project.

The recent grad was a dream. She was prepared. She came with a list of orgs she was interested in; she had already met with a couple other advocates I knew and she had a couple of career trajectories in mind by the time she sat down with me. We spent 30 minutes talking about the non profit sector, women’s advocacy and why direct service in Illinois is not likely to be a good bet for the next 10 years. I gave her a few names of other women to reach out to and shook hands with her on the way out. What a nice girl, I thought.

Then I met with PolicyDude. Unprepared, vague about his plans, unable to say what he wanted or why, he made my head hurt.

“PolicyDude,” I said. “Here’s a tip. When someone asks you what you’re interested in, saying ‘social justice and progressive movements’ isn’t going to cut it. It’s too vague. That could mean anything and everything. You need to be specific enough so that I know how best to recommend you to someone.”

He scribbled in his pad.

“So…let me hear it. Give me your 5 minute pitch: why do you want to be in policy and where do you want to end up?”

“Um…is that really necessary?”

Tip Number 2: When you’re asking someone to help you find a job, don’t be bitchy.

“Ok…who has the job now that you envision having?” In the past, I had always found this exercise to be helpful in helping me focus on my own professional ambitions; I thought this would work for him, too. But, no.

He looked at the ceiling. “Um, well….policy think tanks…social movements for women…maybe an international organization…”

Sigh. “What about title? Who has the title you want?”

“Um, well…maybe Director of …policy?” Never let it be said that men don’t dream big.

Tip Number 3: For the love of god, be prepared ... and brief.

We spent an hour trying to eke out what it was he really wanted. Did he want to stay in Chicago or go elsewhere? Did he want to try women’s advocacy or poverty work? Did he want to stay in non profit or had he thought about the private sector? (I gave him the name of a blue chip consulting firm in Chicago with a non profit practice and, swear to god – if he finds a job with them, I will lose my shit.) Which foundations or research orgs was he thinking about? Why was he interested in this work? What did he want to do? How could I refer him to anyone I knew (and foist this disaster on them) when he couldn’t answer any of these basic questions?

Before you chastise me for being a chauvinist bitch, I have to say that this guy is a grownup and should know better – he's in his 30s, for god's sake. He had already done some little work in the field but basically expected me to open my contact list and read off a bunch of names and emails for him.

Tip Number 4: Don’t be so overtly greedy.

When I reviewed his resume, I discovered that this guy had never gone through a traditional job process. Through the kindness of teachers and friends, he’d jumped from this random post to that.

“So you’ve never formally interviewed for any job before? You’ve never had to compete for a job?”

“Not really. Isn’t it …um…all about who you know?” Somehow, he managed to maintain a puzzled look of cluelessness as he said this.

Tip Number 5: Don’t let your white male privilege hit you on your ass on the way out my office.
...
Note: Though I was mentally over this conversation halfway through it, I stuck with it and gave him some tips on being a little more strategic about his interviewing: stop mumbling, rewrite your resume, have your pitch ready and ask your contact for more than who they know. I gave him some homework and we’ll talk again in two weeks. But jesus on the cross – really??

Note: What’s Tip Number 1? Don’t be lazy!

(incidentally, that @princessding twitter feed over there isn't mine. if it is your wont, you can follow me @DeliaChristina)

Unbecoming an Officer

2010-06-22T16:13:00.016-07:00

Stanley McChrystal, General, United States Army, has offered his resignation to the Secretary of Defense.

Please, Mr. President; accept it.

General McChrystal made clear in this article he does not understand how to maintain good order among his subordinates. He made clear that he does not appreciate the role of a flag officer in a self-governing, democratic state.

Most significantly, he fails to grasp that a general officer of the United States does not have political standing to criticize the President of the United States if he does not prevail over the enemies of the United States!

Today, I have heard comparisons made to the confrontation between President Truman and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur. This comparison is ignorant. President Truman was, of course, absolutely correct to sack General MacArthur and bring the Army to heel. The difference is, MacArthur's views were buttressed by the fact that he had actually defeated the enemies of the United States in the field. When he complained that he was being denied the means to destroy the enemy, he was taken seriously because he had, in fact, led the forces of the United States against our enemies and destroyed them.

McChrystal has failed to destroy the enemy. He is a whiner and a careerist. His anti-democratic attack on the civil authority must be suppressed and his commission must be terminated.

He serves at the pleasure of the President. I can't imagine the President is pleased with his service.

The Sex Which is Not One; or, Holy Shit This Made Me So Sad

2010-06-21T07:06:00.004-07:00

Several days ago, LV opened up a fortune cookie from the previous night's takeout and asked me to read it. The paper read something like, "A person who trusts himself will always have a ready confidant." When I read it aloud to her, I changed the pronoun to "herself."

She looked up and said, "Why doesn't it say 'himself'?