I’ve seen this online so often….”must be over 5 ft. 10 inches.” Talk about superficial. It’s one thing if you’re a tall woman, but I’ve seen this on so many short women’s profiles.

Related posts:

1. [Cut] The Height Factor

Dear Grad Student,

First, I’d like to apologize for my behavior in our last class before Spring Break.  I know you’re just doing your job when you do stuff like assign a term paper just before we all go on vacation, so standing on my chair and making the “suck it” sign was not really as funny as it was supposed to be, especially since I hadn’t noticed that you no longer had your back to me.

I realize we may have not gotten off to a great start on the first day of classes, when I careened off the lecture hall doorway and face planted in front of your desk.  There was a lot more blood and vomit then I like to shed on a first day. My frat brother Harpo told me, and I don’t recall this, mind you, but apparently I went on a six minute diatribe, churning with vulgarities and the occasional bizarre sexual reference, on my complete lack of respect for TA’s in general.

My point is, these days are behind us, and I believe you and I may be able to forge a fresh, dare I say, mutually respectful TA-student relationship.

I am sure, as a self-supporting, middle aged guy who’s still choosing to go to college, you’ve probably flown off to some exotic locale for Spring Break like me and a few of my brothers.  A couple of us had only been to Mexico three or four times, so we snagged some (well, all) of my dad’s frequent flyer miles and were inside some Tijuana call girls by sundown.  I wasn’t sure about stealing from my dad, I mean, he is a senator, but the last time I said “no” to Harpo I was still a pledge and he put my head through a Hi Def TV.

Maybe you got that email from the Dean’s office about spring breakers planning a trip to Mexico?  And the heightened activities of Mexican drug cartels?

I think the last thing I remember is trying to figure out where to put my debit card in the gas pump that seemed to have been inoperable since the Cold War, when I was chloroformed and woke up tied to a chair next to Harpo.  They explained that Harpo had negotiated our release in exchange for me smuggling a decent-sized amount of heroin in my colon across the border.  Harpo elbowed me repetitively, filling my ear with such explanations as “It was our only option,” “Don’t be a pussy,” and “Well, you shouldn’t have passed out, shit-cock.”

My cell phone’s in pieces in the corner of this small room.  I assumed the guards had destroyed it upon our capture, but Harpo has informed me that he broke it to “find something in it to pick the lock,” which seems pointless, as the door is wedged shut with a chair and an armed guard is outside doing coke off a Bible.

I had hoped that when the police came, things would turn out okay.  But for whatever reason, they seemed to think we were involved in the cartel, rather than victims of it.  That’s what I got from all the panicked shouting, anyway.

They put me and Harpo in separate rooms and two cops grilled me for about half an hour.  Well, the skinny one did; the fat one with the neck tattoo of a python devouring a unicorn just stood in the corner, smoking a cigar and staring at me like a demon was about to crawl out of his throat.

I tried to explain that because they were yelling in Spanish, it was all just a cloud of gibberish and spit to me.  All the Spanish I could remember was from that Sesame Street segment where the gang of children counts to ten.

Eventually, another officer appeared in the doorway flanked by Harpo, who, with a pretty proud smirk, I couldn’t help but notice wasn’t handcuffed to a chair like me.  The officer said something to my interrogators and they all shook Harpo’s hand, after which he left the room under his own free will while giving me the finger.

They manhandled me out of the interrogation room and threw me in a chair near a computer.  When I stopped to get a drink of water from the water fountain, everyone in the hallway froze in place and gasped collectively.

I don’t know what I’m charged with and how many parasites are becoming self-aware within my stomach right now, but I was lucky enough to reach into my pocket and discover one piece of paper:  your syllabus, with your email address front and center.

So what I’m saying is my paper is going to be late and please contact, like, Interpol, or whoever handles this kind of thing.  My father has already explained to me, in detail, his policy on negotiating with terrorists.  I can’t remember a lot of it because I was absolutely drilled on shrooms, but from what I do recall, it doesn’t end well for the people being held captive.  And also he had five nostrils.

The fraternity president has disavowed all knowledge of our actions, so I’m looking to you.  I know you’re just a TA, but try and understand that there are things in life outside of pretending to be a professor and wondering if you’ve waited too long to have kids.

Thanks,

Undergrad

Related posts:

1. Dear Graduate Student: An Exchange
2. Dear Graduate Student: An Exchange
3. Dear Undergrad: An Exchange

–

In this spirit of Dealbreakers, here’s a column where nonpretentious contributors tell you when to cut your man or your woman.

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1. [Cut] The Height Factor – the flip side

Let me tell you a little bit about film school, you basement-dwelling, Netflix-hawking, Tyler Durdens, out there; challenging your friends to movie trivia contests and answering their “What was that guy from?” inquiries with a sick sense of glee.

Get there.  Get there as soon as possible.  For the first time, you’ll be home.  You’ll bask in the warm sensation of familiarity as you are finally with others like you and you’ll get a chill of thrilling adrenaline when the full workload is bestowed upon you.

Yes.  It’s like pissing your pants.  Except this time, the entire auditorium isn’t laughing at you.  They’re looking on sympathetically, fists in the air:  “Been there, dude.  Power through.  Power through.”

That weird desire for every conversation in class to turn to obscure actors or foreign flicks without the subtitles?  Indulged around every corner and with genuine interest from conversing parties.  Nobody’s waiting to hurl “The Oxford Companion to U.S. History,” into your guts and laugh, laugh, laugh as you contemplate the social ramifications of asking how to tell if ribs are broken.  And that’s the new Oxford edition, too, with the 121-page addendum about the Space Race and the collaborative DVD ROM packaged in the back.  That shit hurts.

No more are you alienated by confused parents in front of extended relatives.  No more, “Ha, ha, son, I don’t think anybody in this particular Olive Garden gives a shit about the messages via imagery in Battleship Potmekin, whatever the hell that is.  Why don’t you just gnaw on the complimentary bread basket until your raspberry ice tea gets here?”

“Battleship Potemkin… is that the one where Steven Seagal is the Navy SEAL disguised as a cook?”

“Who cares.”

Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Robert Rodriguez… they are your family now.  Dialogue that goes on forever?  Heavily digitized explosions?  Famous people discussing Marvel comic books?  What else does a growing geek need to survive? Burrow in like a chigger to film school, Basement-Dweller.  Get under the skin and seek out the spots where it’s warmest.  You’re only getting closer to a vital organ.  Absorb the residual heat of fellow media-suckers, overflowing their feed-sacks with information nobody else on Earth could want/bare/understand enough to truly live off of—

“You know, they shipped Watchmen to theaters under the codename Old Heroes Never Die.”

“It was Paul Haggis’ real life carjacking that inspired the screenplay for Crash.”

“No, no, no—it’s ‘Mr. Plow, that’s my name, that name again is Mr. Plow.’  Dumbass.”

Your classmates nod at your Batman t-shirt and shake their heads at that other guy’s dated “Family Guy” references.  Everybody’s watching “Archer,” now, man.  Try to keep up.

Chat up the professor.  He totally wants to talk to you.  Isn’t it obvious that you guys are forming a close, student-teacher bond that will one day bleed into the professional world? In the future, because of every worthless conversation he allows you to have with him, he will give your name to some powerful studio head.  You won’t know it, but it’ll be your big break.  That’s the kind of people film professors are.  How could they not have made massive connections in the film industry if they made it all the way to “professor?”

And best of all, and I mean best of all, someone will ask you what your screenplay is about.  But then a funny thing happens.  They start don’t laughing, or get ushered away by your father, who then gives you a dirty look, or have to take a call, despite telling you 30 seconds prior that they were looking for an outlet to charge their phone battery.

They listen.  And they nod.  And they say things that indicate they have been paying attention.  If they’re a student, they’ll give you constructive criticism or offer new perspectives.  Some may be snide and tell you how they’d do things better but even this is backhanded flattery because it ignited their creative juices.  If they’re a teacher, not only do they pay attention, they also give you a grade that reveals how good your screenplay really is.

When that happens, you can sigh as if you’re climaxing sexually and slide down in your chair.  You can smile broadly and soak in the closure of being graded, of being ranked based on your creativity.  There’s at least one person in this room who didn’t get as good a grade as you.  You are better than him or her.  You have chosen film and it has chosen you and now there is validation for that because your idea for a movie that they didn’t understand in high school is good enough for a fat, red B- on the last page, right after the main character says “I can’t believe it was all a dream.”

Wrap film school around you like an afghan knit by your softest, warmest fantasies.  One day you’ll get to say words like “action,” or “project,” or “dailies,” and it won’t be a vocab quiz.  One day you’ll be making a DVD commentary for your first big hit.  One day, James Lipton or Vanity Fair will call you because the world wants to hear your answers to the Proust Questionnaire.

One day you’ll be Joss Whedon.  When you’re invited to your alma mater for a Q&A session, your quirky-but-serious answers will be given much more laughter than they deserve by brown-nosing parasites, who aren’t nearly as competent as their self-supported IMDB pages would indicate.  When you speak at any conference, keynote any graduation, get interviewed on The Treatment, you know all of the folks listening are dying to one day be just like you.  Have pity.  Scoop them up.  Give them hope.  Tell them how to be a rock star.  Because clearly, you’ve got the formula for success.

Like me, Tower, you went to film school.  And it was an excellent decision.

Related posts:

1. tip from a jmit #4: school lunch
2. Dispatches from Laboring Graduate Student at a Large State University
3. In Honor of History of Film Class….

It’s something that we’re all familiar with. We just don’t associate it with bands, groups or even artists.

It’s called synthpop.

Owl City has become an internet sensation overnight after the release of Fireflies on the record label, Universal. Owl City is a musical project by Adam Young, a young American artist who previously published his albums under self-release.

Now, he has a tour of fifty dates and the song ‘Fireflies’ is being remixed, redubbed and replayed across the globe. It is on the playlist of every mainstream listener and every good night out has this played at least once.

Is this new sensation just a man with a beat-board and a talent for discovering beats and rhythms in songs?

Search Owl City on YouTube and one of the top results will be a featured video which was one of his first live tours and he has talents. His voice isn’t the same as the album but he is unique and that’s unusual in the musical world.

Praise where praise is due.

This sensation could mark a new passage in music.

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1. [mix tape] Sasha is a (music) Monster
2. [mix tape] Innovator & Connector Sean Bonner Knows a Lot: Music Included
3. [mix tapes] Behind the Music Box Set – Paul Sommerstein and Marc Goodman

My point is that for sometime I thought my life was rather unpredictable because I don’t have a job which requires me to be in the same cubicle every Monday through Friday at the same time. I don’t have a girlfriend and no longer have rituals I play out with her. My responsibilities are relatively low for a 30-year-old, so ideally I could do nearly any thing at any time. But I don’t, and I won’t. And I think this is because we’re mostly afraid of unpredictability. Salman Rushdie wrote in his wonderful novel, Shame,  that part of what makes us human is our ability to move (in sort of unpredictable ways) and yet we constantly turn ourselves into trees and speak of having or making roots. The earth moves at incredibly fast rate, I mean literally. It is currently orbiting around the sun at approximately 66,622 mph. It rotates at about 1,037 mph along the equator. This is infinitely times worse than The Scrambler at your local 4-H Fair. This scares the shit out of me and I am happy to make roots to ensure I don’t lose my stomach. I know, I know, our small size, or the earth’s massive size, and gravity, including centripetal force, keep us firmly rooted and unwares at the god-fearing speeds at which we hurtle through the galaxy. I went to school, I did well. But don’t get me started on just how fast the galaxy is moving. With all this movement–of which though our brains tell us we do not feel, I am convinced our bodies are keenly aware–it is predictable that we don’t actually like to move and do unpredictable things.

Now it may seem that there are those people who enjoy unpredictability, being spontaneous, moving around a lot, but upon reflection, these people are just as predictable in their unpredictability as we are in our predictability. What’s more, is that these people’s behavior is not unpredictable at all to themselves. It is impossible to be unpredictable to yourself. You know what you are doing at precisely the moment you are doing it and most of time you knew you were going to do it ahead of time. So those of us who are afraid of being unpredictable are actually just afraid of being perceived as being unpredictable, which is an entirely different question.

So, when I started this column, I knew Mila Kunis would never answer. And yet for a moment I thought she just might be unpredictable and answer. But of course she didn’t. But if she does now, that would be entirely predictable.

Sincerely,

Kiren

Related posts:

1. Dear Mila,
2. Dear Mila,

My real name is Kiren. It’s only fair that I tell you this since I know yours. And I’ll have you know, that I’ve worked really hard at keeping my real name unknown. So be flattered. But let’s not fool ourselves, only my friends read this website, so they already know who I am. I chose the alias RustedJesus to refer to what I believe is the condition of religious institutionalism. I think it is corroding, corrupt, controlling, contrived, conniving, and circumstantial. And yet I find theology, mythology, and their subsequent movements of mythography very intriguing, important, interesting, inherent, intimate, and imaginative. I myself, am not religious. As I like to say, I believe in science. And that’s not to say that I don’t believe in some sort of higher power, I just don’t think it’s possible for our minds to comprehend how it works. And I certainly don’t think it controls our decisions or has created a heaven or hell.  E. E. Evans-Pritchard came up with this theory–through field research in Africa–called Functional Structuralism. It basically states that all societies are fundamentally rational (white Europeans maintained for a long time that most, if not all, African societies were non-rational). And yet, in our world, rationality cannot explain all events, these events usually get labeled as coincidence, miracles, luck, destiny, fate, magic, or witchcraft. Anyway, the long and short of it is that Evans-Pritchard said that people can only think within their own thoughts. Thus, (and this is my thoughts now) we could never really know how a higher, non-corporeal power works. Thus scriptures claim that we were made made in the image of God simply because it’s impossible for us to imagine anything else. You can try, but you will invariable attach human qualities of existence to God, Allah, Jehova, Krishna, or whatever deity or power you try to imagine then describe. So I don’t even bother. I’m not sure where I was going with all this, but you just released a movie about God and the Bible (which in reality doesn’t really exist, the Bible I mean), so this possibly relevant to our nonconversation.

I currently attend graduate school in the southeast and teach lower level English Lit. and Composition classes at the University. I also write for this website. I like to wear ties, listen to James Brown, Kid Cudi, the Eagles, White Stripes, the Knife, Queen, and the Gossip, among others. And as promised, my current favorite song to drive to is a tie between “Heavy Cross” by the Gossip and “In the City” by the Eagles. Actually, I lied. I don’t like listening to the Eagles. Except for “In the City,” which is mostly because of The Warriors.

So I encourage to write back, either through the comments or you can create your own alias and submit a letter to the website. Just click here to do so. Otherwise this is going to get really boring, really fast. Can you dig it?

Sincerely,

RJ

Related posts:

1. Dear Mila,
2. Dear Mila,
3. Dear Graduate Student: An Exchange

I have a Kindle, first edition. I am part of a target audience for the Kindle and similar devices: I travel a lot, I’m overeducated, and an early adopter of technology (for another example, I bought my first Tivo in 2000).

Recently, there has been a lot of coverage on how the iPad and Nook allow publishers to charge more than the $9.99 that Amazon wants to charge for e-books. Amazon believes that $9.99 is a fair price for an e-book, as the royalty and distribution model don’t require much capital. Macmillan and others believe that this price point is too low, and that books should be more like $12.99-$14.99. This is absurd.

Browsing at Amazon right now, I see that NY Times bestsellers are between….yup, $12.99 and $14.99. So Macmillan would have me buy an e-book for the same price (or even more in some cases) as a hardcover book? The utility of the e-book is less than the hardcover book. I can get money back out of a hardcover book by re-selling it, I can give it to a friend, I can light it on fire and warm my hands. Based on this diminished utility, unless I only read when I travel, why would I buy an e-book? People generally like hardcover books and they don’t require a $200+ reader in order to be able to read them.

I think twice about buying a book at $9.99 unless it’s something I really want to read; at $12.99 or $14.99, I will wait for it to be $7 in a few months. I can read one of  hundreds of thousands of other books in the meantime. Good luck with this totally asinine pricing.

Yours truly,

jdl

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2. Book recommendation
3. Book Review: Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential

Around four months ago, right after I turned in my abroad application, I decided that I wouldn’t blog when I was abroad. Despite my sister being a professional blogger (hi Melissa!) and my participation here, I knew I wouldn’t always have enough time, energy, motivation, and wit to write in a blog daily. I couldn’t and I wouldn’t. When my friends set-up their new virtual homes, picked original URLs and publishing platforms, I steadfastly stuck to my decision.

After approximately 7 days in Spain, I’ve decided that a blog is necessary to let others know what I’ve been up to and what I’m planning on doing (by others I mean, my mom, my dad, my sister, my brother (he doesn’t read so he’s not actually included), Bari, and any of you). Therefore, I will try to update this series as much as possible. *Disclaimer: Please don’t be surprised if my blog is just a compilation of all my other Seville-traveling friends’ blogs.

Until next time…here’s a quick recap of the past 7 days:

I know that’s not very interesting, but that’s all I can write for now. I’m overexhausted from the amount of walking I do daily and I must nurse my feet back to health.

Adios! Besos.

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Question #16:

You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you’ve never before visited), drinking Barcardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. “Be careful of that guy,” you are told. “He is a man with a past.” A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. “Be careful of that guy, too,” he says. “He is a man with no past.”

Which of these two people do you trust less?

See that man to the right? What’s his name? No, not Clint Eastwood. I mean the character. What’s his name? Can’t remember, can you? Don’t worry, your brain isn’t melting from one too many acid trips. He doesn’t have a name. He’s the Man With No Name. He has no past, and therefore no name. No one knows from whence he came and for what he keeps on keepin’ on for. He just does. He just is. And if he walked into the bar, I would leave immediately because people are gonna straight up be killed.

But you see this guy, to the left there? He does have a name. It’s William “Bill” Munny. He has a name, and a past. In his past he killed everyone. And I mean everyone, including children. If he walked into a bar, I would also leave immediately and rush home to change my diaper. Yes, if I lived in the Old West, I’d wear a diaper. But mostly because outhouses are gross. Plus scorpions are known to hide out in outhouses. And really, who’s gonna suck out that poison? No one. That’s who. NO ONE.

So it seems like I don’t have much of a choice. A man with a past, and without, can be equally terrifying. But I’ll make a decision, no cop outs ’round here. I trust the man without a past less. A man with past has a reputation, and though it’s no guarantee, it’s better than knowing nothing. And I hate knowing nothing. What do you know about it anyway?

No related posts.