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January 31, 2005

Mystery spam

Back when eBay was a pup, I may have established an account. But that would have been a long time ago. Yet today I get this provocative email:

FIP NOTICE: eBay Registration Suspension

Dear eBay Member,
We regret to inform you that your eBay account has been suspended due to the violation of our site policy below:
False or missing contact information - Falsifying or omitting your name, address, and/or telephone number (including use of fax machines pager numbers, modems or disconnected numbers).
Due to the suspension of this account, please be advised you are prohibited from using eBay in any way. This prohibition includes the registering of a new account.
Please note that any seller fees due to eBay will immediately become due and payable.
eBay will charge any amounts you have not previously disputed to the billing method currently on file.

you are required to verify your eBay account by following the link below.

http://signin.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?SignIn&ssPageName=h:h:sin:US

We appreciate your support and understating, as we work together to keep eBay a safe place to trade.

Thank you for your patience in this matter.

Respectfully,
Trust and Safety Department
eBay Inc.

Well, bust my britches. I'm altogether glad to know that eBay is a safe place to trade, and I'm sure I'll recover from the heartbreak of having my account suspended.

Posted by senioritis at 04:21 PM | Comments (10)

Pedagogical apprehensiveness

Spent the entire day yesterday planning for a possible online meeting of my grad class on Thursday. It's a big class (16!) with diverse experiences and interests--which should make for some pretty wonderful collaborative intellectual work. Right now, though, it's scaring the bejezus out of me. After the Unnamed Event last week, I tried to convene the class online, and utterly failed. I'm not experienced with online teaching, and I had zero planning time (or brain) available. In two days I meet with my doctor, and I'm kind of assuming that he's going to say I'm not ready to drive 50 miles yet: I am deeply impressed with how disabling head trauma is, even with no permanent injuries. (Though yesterday my keeper allowed me out on a leash, for the Colgate women's game—a worthwhile adventure.)

Anyhow. Since the 1/27 debacle, I've consulted with assorted gurus and oracles, and hope that something constructive will occur on 2/3. Last Thursday was underplanned, and a fiasco. I'm just hoping that this Thursday isn't overplanned and hence a whole new genre of pedagogical fiasco.

Do I sound as if my confidence is a little low? You perceive correctly.

Posted by senioritis at 08:55 AM | Comments (3)

January 29, 2005

New Limitations

Sandra has suggested to Beloved Partner that I now become a house cat. Beloved Partner, ever quick on the uptake, is a little more generous. He says I can still drive and cycle--but only if I contract with all other drivers to stay off the road whilst I'm on it.

Posted by senioritis at 10:21 AM | Comments (5)

Reflexivity at work

I'm proud to announce that my soul-searching following my recent now-to-remain-nameless-and-not-even-linked Event has led me to a depth of insight paralleling that of a noted media star:

Posted by senioritis at 08:18 AM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

What I Want for Christmas

—a corporate "hold" message that tells the truth: "Our agent is busy helping other customers."

Posted by senioritis at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)

Blog My Eye

Treasured Partner sez I'm a hopeless exhibitionist. After 29 years with me, you'd think he'd have long ago figured that out. I'm forever the little kid who has to peel off her bandaid so she can show her boo-boo to her friends. But I promise not to blog any of my *other* bruises!

This particular bruise, we believe, came from my glasses' being slammed against my face. But guess what: the glasses have been retrieved from the wreck, unharmed. So has the iPod. Nothing is left of the car. (Revered Partner refuses to take me to see it or to take pictures of it; he says it is literally in pieces.) Yet nothing inside that car was seriously damaged. Okay, and now another promise: this is my *last* entry about the wreck!

Posted by senioritis at 08:24 AM | Comments (9)

January 27, 2005

"Probable fatality"

Um. After my jolly entry of yesterday, I have to give the more sober report now. And for once it's not because I'm a happy drama queen, but because I really need to put this in public writing, to make it real and part of a world that actually exists, and because I will really appreciate others' thoughts on it.

Tom learned today that when the fire chief arrived on the scene
and called in his first report, he listed me as a "probable
fatality."   One of the EMTs who's in Tom's class told him today
that the EMTs had never seen a wreck like that in which
anyone survived, at least without the gravest of injury.   And
the folks who hauled off the car told Tom today that they'd
never seen a car wrecked that badly.

Seriously.

I have a headache, and my bruises are tender. I'm easily fatigued and am not sleeping well. And that's about it. Of course there's some psychological impact from the wreck. That will take some time, and I'm not concerned about it; so far it's pretty manageable.

My real question is more cosmic. If I were religious, there would be all sorts of handy interpretations of this whole situation. But how does an athiest deal with having been a one-in-a-million statistic for unharmed survival?

Evening update: Okay. It's not as manageable as I'd thought—neither the pain, the disorientation, nor the fatigue. My head feels like it's going to explode. "This little black duck" (as Daffy, my cartoon hero, would say) is going to get some rest.

Posted by senioritis at 12:35 PM | Comments (5)

A beautiful and terrifying prospect

From Newsweek's commentary on DNC machinations:

[T]he 477 DNC members who choose the party chair haven't settled on a leader of the 2005 version of the Anybody But Dean movement. For now, the front-running alternative is former congressman Martin Frost of Texas, a pro-labor moderate with a lifetime of traditional organizing who survived 13 terms in Dallas before the GOP redistricted him into oblivion. He's followed by Simon Rosenberg, a young Washington-based fund-raiser and strategist who claims to be as digitized and Net-friendly as Dean—and yet more popular than Dean among the bloggers, who are emerging as new grass-roots powers in the party.

Posted by senioritis at 05:55 AM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2005

Things I'm grateful for (updated)

1. When my little sports coupe started spinning, it collided with the SUV on my passenger side (which was crushed).
2. There wasn't a passenger in my car.
3. The people in the other vehicle were less injured than I.
4. I was able to tell a bystander my name and phone number before I passed out.
5. The bystander called 911 and Tom.
6. Half the Hamilton EMT and Fire Rescue squad is comprised of Tom's students, and they took care of him when he arrived on the scene. (They even sent him supportive emails afterwards.) A special shout-out to Lindsey, who held my hand, talked to me, and kept me calm while they extracted me from the wreck.
7. Regaining consciousness in time to see the groovy means by which a rescue squad cuts a person out of a vehicle.
8. The ER doctor who finally took off the stabilizing collar, once they'd ascertained that I didn't have spinal injuries. That collar would've been my cause of death.
9. Food. Being allowed nothing by mouth for 30 hours except the revolting liquid that you have to drink for not one but two CT scans is its own special circle of hell. Dante would have included it, if he'd been acquainted with the CT scan. But CT scans are the work of modern, not medieval, devils.
10. The staff of St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Utica, New York. The hospital specializes in head trauma, and that's great. But the staff is a remarkable bunch of human beings in this age of mechanized medicine.
11. The swelling on my head has already receded, leaving only a sore spot.
12. The absence of headache, for the first time since the accident.
13. Friends who have called Tom to convey well-wishes.
14. Tops Supermarket in Clinton, New York, whose parking lot was the uncomplaining recipient of the liquid dinner that I was required to eat before I could be released from the hospital. (Note to Clinton Tops shoppers: stay away from the snowbank at the far end of the parking lot for a couple of days.)
15. The Toyota corporation, which makes the much-safer truck that is likely to replace my beloved sports coupe—which, in the words of a worker at the Hamilton Auto Clinic, is "twice totaled."
16. Having set up an online presence for my courses before the semester started. Once my brain is functioning well enough, I'll be able to teach online until my doctor tells me I can drive again. (Thank god the driver of the other car doesn't get to make that judgment!)
17. Being able to write this entry. It's my first attempt at mental function since the accident.
18. Jack and Tom, for their amazing good judgment and support—one from a distance, one close at hand.
19. Being alive.
20. Bed. I'm going back to it now, having proven that I can still mentate well enough to blog.
    —AND—
21. Tyra, who cheerfully covered our co-taught class on a last-minute notice!
22. Mary Putnam at JJs Salon in Hamilton, New York, for giving me a pedicure that impressed the EMTs when they took my boots & sox off. . . . .

Posted by senioritis at 12:27 PM | Comments (12)

January 23, 2005

Cascading definitions

Nominee R*** declines to define torture. "As a result, the full Senate likely will debate the definition of torture in a session that could embarrass the administration and provide fodder for its international critics." Republican Lindsey Graham agrees with the B*** Administration position that "the Geneva Convention — which bans not only torture but also cruel treatment — should not apply to terrorists." Okay, then. Will the Senate please debate the definition of terrorist, as well?

Posted by senioritis at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)

According to the guy who runs the snowblower

We got 16" in Earlville.

And he had no fun running the snowblower in -1° with the wind picking up. Every year at this time he says we're retiring to the Southwest.

AND he's going to have to run the snowblower a second time (for another hour and a half), 'cause the snow was too deep for our snowblower to handle it in one go. But he came in to take a break and warm up, and fortunately he was married to someone who had warm tea and toast ready for him—even though she couldn't keep Ruth from giving the toast a test-licking. Well, allegedly cats have fewer germs than people, anyhoo.

Posted by senioritis at 10:07 AM | Comments (2)

Snowballed!

The storm brought us 15-18" of snow. I thought the wind hadn't arrived yet, till I saw our south windows, where it had blown blobs of snow from the trees onto the screens.

Posted by senioritis at 08:59 AM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2005

What will it take?

Okay, I'm wearing special insulating socks; over that, a pair of hunting socks; over that, a pair of slipper socks; and over that, a pair of big fuzzy slippers. I've got on sweatpants. I'm wearing a long-sleeved turtleneck; over that, a knit shirt; over that, a wool sweater. And I have my moaboa wrapped around my neck. The thermostat in my study is turned up to 70°, and I have a wool lap robe wrapped around my legs. But my nose and toes are icy, and the house is cracking in the cold. What will it take to warm up? I don't think human efforts can accomplish the task. I'm afraid only Monday's forecast high of 20° will. When it's -18° outside, it's just not possible to get warm inside.

Posted by senioritis at 08:06 AM | Comments (0)

When the plagiarists punish the plagiarists

It will be interesting to see whether the Chronicle's 17 December 2004 exposé of professorial plagiarism will actually spur institutions to cure their own hypocrisy about textual standards. At my institution, there's a committee at work on issues of academic integrity, but its purview is limited to the work of students. At the University of Alabama, the student newspaper is raising the issue of the double standard.

Universities pursue the issue of plagiarism for the alleged purpose of protecting academic integrity. That argument falls apart when one considers how few professors are sanctioned, much less expelled, for plagiarizing--and even for appropriating their own students' work. So one must ask what cultural work these student honor codes and plagiarism policies are actually performing.

One would hope that student newspapers' pushing the issue would have some effect; but Jesse Rosenfeld's successful McGill University battle against the imposition of Turnitin has not, to my knowledge, resulted in universities' stampede away from the plagiarism-detecting software. As in all other forms of social activism, reformation of universities' (mis)use of academic integrity codes will require concerted, organized action. And that would, in turn, require that a whole lot of people view this as a serious social issue.

Posted by senioritis at 07:33 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2005

Blog My Toes

Today would not ordinarily be a salon day, but I needed an emergency pedicure. (Quit snickering: I had a painful ingrown toenail!) A friend who was also having a pedicure today was debating with me the best color du jour (well, yeah, there's also the aesthetic aspect of a pedicure, not to mention the wonderful hedonism), and I was advocating—on this day when the temperature did not rise to zero—for a defiantly summery color. This one, you might think, was loud enough to wake the cat who's snoring on my desk, but noooooo—

Posted by senioritis at 06:39 PM | Comments (2)

January 20, 2005

Newsmedia moratorium

On the way to work today, I turned on NPR news. Always a happy moment; I have to get 3 miles out of Earlville, closer to Syracuse, before I can pick up an NPR station. So NPR is one of my long-commute treats; we can't get it at home.

But this morning I quickly turned it off, when I realized the story they were launching was about the Tragedy du Jour. I haven't gone to any news sites or poliblogs today and don't intend to for a few days, till the obligatory coverage has subsided. So if anything important happens during the news coverage of B***'s inaugural, I do hope one of my friends will tell me.

Posted by senioritis at 10:22 PM | Comments (1)

On a lighter note

Forwarded to our family website by Edward: an entertaining film clip of dubious but irrelevant authenticity.

Posted by senioritis at 10:00 PM | Comments (0)

The Complaint Department

Teaching is not just a performance for students; it does not rely solely on the teacher's talents and efforts; nor is it located solely in the connection between teacher and student. It requires setting--place--and equipment--technology. This is neither ancient Greece nor the European Middle Ages: my students do not follow me from place to place, to listen to my pearls of wisdom or to engage me in metaphysical dialectic. No, the year is 2005; I am a writing teacher; and to teach well, I need something beyond a cubbyhole crammed with desks. I do not drill my students in grammar. To teach them about writing, I need to be able to work with them in the environment in which writing now takes place: online. Instead, I have that crowded cubbyhole; several pockmarked blackboards on which one cannot make out what has been written; and an overhead projector that would have been the pride of a teacher in 1955. (This particular piece of equipment, in fact, probably was the pride of a 1955 teacher.)

What I need is space so that my students can move around and work in groups; I need overhead projection from a computer so that they can all simultaneously see a classmate's text and see it being revised before their eyes as the whole class considers the writer's options; and I need access to the Internet so that we can work with source texts. To teach writing without these things in 2005 is equivalent to a writing teacher in 1955 having to do without books, pencils, and paper. It is unbelievable to me that an expensive private university would make them available in such small quantity that teachers must quarrel with each other over these resources and that department-level administrators must endure the headaches of teachers' reasonable demands that cannot be met. Today I found myself actually having to make a case for the department's providing my own personal set of fresh overhead transparency markers, so that my students can write on those god damned plastic transparencies in class and we can put them on the 1955 projector and talk about writing. And of course they were glad to do it; transparency markers is something the department's budget actually can cover. For cryin out loud.

Do I sound angry? I am truly steamed. Because I'm an associate professor, I can usually successfully argue for better digs than I have this semester. And I have no shame in doing so. But this semester I failed. And my rage at having to teach with my hands tied my back is immense. Is it a rage at individuals, at my department? Not in the least. It is a rage at a university, an educational system, a culture, that does not recognize college writing instruction as anything beyond acculturation in linguistic norms and that therefore does not recognize the compelling need for every writing teacher, regardless of rank, all the time, to have the essential equipment for the valuable, essential task of teaching college students how to be better writers.

Posted by senioritis at 08:15 PM | Comments (4)

January 19, 2005

The Fred Report, 1/19/05

Fred is hanging in there, through this bitter cold. Each morning I worry about whether he made it through the night, and each day I find, to my relief, that he did. Our barn is good refuge for him. It has been built/remodeled/rebuilt in stages: carpenters working on it tell us that the flooring is from the very early nineteenth century, whereas the superstructure is late nineteenth century, the roof (which now leans and tilts at crazy angles) early twentieth. Overall now it's simply a wreck waiting to collapse, but every few years we have carpenters check it, and they tell us it's actually still sound, despite its disreputable appearance. Our place was a chicken farm a century ago and a sheep farm as recently as three decades ago.

All of this means that the barn--the last remaining farm structure on the property (until I build my chicken coop next year!)--has been used for a variety of purposes over the years. In the Howard tenure, it's been used to dump and store all sorts of things. So there are plenty of hiding places for Fred. His favorite is in a little loft-like structure in the garage portion of the barn. He's safe there, out of reach, but he can keep his eye on everything. Up in that loft are a bunch of old produce crates that we have no use for but can't part with. So yesterday we put some bedding in one of those crates, hoping that will provide a bit of insulation for him on these cold nights.

This morning at 6:30 he alerted us that he'd made it through the night very nicely, thank you: he was energetically defending our back porch from one of the local marauders who thinks that a steady supply of outdoor cat food is a fine thing. The back porch is right under our bedroom window. So Fred eased my mind and also served as free alarm clock today.

Posted by senioritis at 09:18 AM | Comments (2)

False advertising

The Guardian should be a little more humane when they write their leads. "Blaming a computer software error, the US government has admitted overstating the nation's weight problem." I am thrilled; does this mean I'm not as fat as the government thought I was? Alas, no. It just means that my fat is not as likely to kill me as my smoking. But wait a minute—I don't smoke. Hmm. . . . .

Posted by senioritis at 06:48 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2005

Sticker shock

What if we put stickers on all textbooks saying "This textbook contains theory, not fact. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered?" Why limit it to one textbook and one theory? Then maybe our culture could get over its fantasy-fetish-facts and get on with knowledge, meaning, and understanding.

Posted by senioritis at 01:37 PM | Comments (3)

January 17, 2005

Conley pedagogy

Here on the day before classes start at SU, Darby Conley comes through with an excellent classroom management technique that teachers the world over could readily adopt and adapt—though they'd need a somewhat larger crate if the trainee were a college student rather than a cat.

Posted by senioritis at 07:15 AM | Comments (2)

January 16, 2005

on the ground

Academom links to riveting satellite photos of the tsunami-ravaged area. In addition, the Sydney Morning Herald links to AP photos taken by an Acehnese photographer as the tsunami happened. These are terrifying as well as terrible.

Posted by senioritis at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)

Burning question; your musical assistance needed!

There's the R.E.M. song "End of the World as We Know It" and the Billy Joel "We Didn't Start the Fire," both of which offer fast-paced cultural catalogues. What other songs do this?

Posted by senioritis at 10:24 AM | Comments (5)

Essential preparation for the first day of classes

Deciding what shade of nail polish to wear. And the winner is— the envelope, please—

Posted by senioritis at 09:57 AM | Comments (2)

January 15, 2005

A conflict-free Saturday afternoon

We've been dithering about what to do this afternoon. The Colgate women play Holy Cross (longstanding grudge match) at 2:00 today. And according to the HBO sports folk, the Steelers-Jets game was to be at 1:00 today. What to do? If we didn't show up at the Colgate game, the girls would wonder what sort of catastrophe had befallen us, and they might not take kindly to the notion that we'd stayed home to watch pro football. On the other hand, if we went to the Colgate game just to watch the team get killed, we'd be pretty sore about missing the Steelers' first playoff game in a season where we're expecting them to go - all - the - way. This is a season that diehard Steelers fans have been waiting a couple of decades for.

Fortunately, we'll only have to miss the beginning of the Steelers game, which isn't on till 4:30.

So it's a conflict-free afternoon. Two wins would be good, but I think the Steelers have the better prospects. But there's so much talent on the Colgate team that even though they've been struggling so far, one can legitimately hope for sudden turnarounds. They're a terrific bunch of people, and very dedicated athletes:

Posted by senioritis at 12:49 PM | Comments (5)

Milestone alert! Milestone alert!

Revered Partner has just given me the URL to another legal music downloading site. I go there, and behold, they ask me to fill out one of those infernal data sheets. Which I do--but this particular data sheet's age choices offer me something that I hadn't yet experienced: for the first time, I'm in the "plus blank" category: "55+."

Life's lil milestones: gotta luv m. Now when anyone asks me my age, I'll just say, "I'm plus blank years old, TYVM."

Posted by senioritis at 11:42 AM | Comments (2)

January 14, 2005

Friday cat(nip) blogging

Luigi, Ruth, and Teakettle, lined up for a fresh dose of catnip. Luigi has, it would seem, already had her dose.

Posted by senioritis at 08:33 PM | Comments (0)

TG for the international press

Not on the front page of any of my favorite U.S. newspapers, but the lead story in the Manchester Guardian's world news section tonight.

Posted by senioritis at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)

White's representation of shared assumptions

The need for a rhetor to build an argument on premises shared with the audience is a commonplace in rhetoric. Hayden White brings an interesting particularity to this commonplace when he talks about history as story and emplotment. Plot, he says, is "pre-generic," and he identifies four possibilities: romance, comedy, tragedy, and satire. Story, in contrast, is a fictional/mythic narrative that offers an explanation of past events. (He's working from but extending beyond Northrup Frye here.)

I'm reading Tropics of Discourse intensively, in preparation for teaching it in my graduate course in composition history this spring. (When I teach, I like to choose books that I think will really advance my students' understanding of the field but books that I haven't read well enough, or completely, or recently; that way, I'm fully engaged in the text as I teach it. I hate teaching texts that I'm fully familiar with; too much knowledge-transfer inevitably happens in that situation, instead of co-inquiry. Now, I realize it doesn't necessarily happen: Tom has taught the Iliad dozens of times and is fresh for it every time. It just doesn't work for me.) In Tropics, White talks about how a story is convincing if the historian and his [sic] audience share presuppositions about what plot choices (romance, tragedy, comedy, satire) are available for the topic.

Which prompts me to a new way of thinking about my own work in authorship. Some people celebrate that work; others excoriate it. I've long tended to think of the differing receptions as deriving from different models of education, authorship, and studenthood. But I'm wondering whether they aren't also derived from differing ideas of what plot structures are available for discussions of plagiarism. I find myself a little repelled by most plagiarism stories that are plotted as tragedies. And people who reject my accounts of plagiarism are often specifically repelled by the satiric plot elements, seeing in that a hostility to textual standards: critique (which I would include in the Frye/White category of "satire") = opposition.

Posted by senioritis at 03:51 PM | Comments (2)

Donate here to the Becky Howard salary enhancement fund!

"What's 10 grand, to me?" A lot! Hey, Randy, how about directing some of that loose change my way?

Posted by senioritis at 10:46 AM | Comments (1)

Score one for free speech

Albeit limited.

Posted by senioritis at 09:19 AM | Comments (2)

"I didn't rehearse it"

Oh, I get it. So if you say something you didn't rehearse, you can't be held accountable for it. You only mean the things you rehearse. Check.

Posted by senioritis at 08:40 AM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2005

Game over.

And I have lost. All my IMing friends are now IMing with Teakettle.

Posted by senioritis at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 12, 2005

Back to school

School starts for me tomorrow--or more accurately, what starts is my school duties. I'm on the college's academic standards committee this year, which means tomorrow I participate in deciding who does and does not flunk out. I did this duty years ago at Colgate, and my number came around again, so I'm doing my duty. But it is duty alone; it sure isn't how I'd ever choose to spend my time.

Posted by senioritis at 05:06 PM | Comments (2)

January 11, 2005

Look that up in your Funk & Wagnall's!

An 1865 letter from Joseph Hodges Choate to his wife begins with this reference to his New York neighborhood: "You will see by tonight's Post that our immediate vicinity has been oppressed in all this hot weather by a defunct Bucephalus at the corner."

Posted by senioritis at 06:40 AM | Comments (2)

January 10, 2005

Feral Fred

"Fearless Fred, the footpad dread/Set fire to his momma's bed"
Well, it's not a very appealing little ditty, but in the mouth of Albert, Walt Kelly's loony alligator, it's very funny. And through some sort of synaptic fluke, it comes to mind in connection with the feral cat who's pretty much taking up residence Chez Howard. In my mind, he's Feral Fred, aka Freddie the Freeloader (one of Red Skelton's finest vaudeville characters).

Fred is a brown tiger with white paws and marvelous white whiskers. He's not as handsome as Fink, my wonderful tiger buddy who passed away two years ago after a magnificent 20-year run, but Fred does bring Fink to mind, and for that, I'm grateful.

Fred was drawn to our place for three reasons, I think:

the ramshackle old barn full of junk in which he can safely take shelter from what is finally becoming an upstate NY winter (or a reasonable facsimile thereof); the compost pile, on which (because we live in the sticks where there aren't suburban neighbors to offend) we dump everything that will decompose (and in the winter, the pile is frozen, can't be turned, and therefore is a favorite eating establishment for the local varmits); and the bird feeders in the side yard, which occasionally (alas) become cat feeders.

We've been seeing Fred off and on for months. But one day a week or so ago I was heartsick to find him rooting through the rinsed cat food cans in the recycling bag on the back porch, looking for tiny scraps of food. So I put out a bowl of actual cat food for him. Now, Fred won't let us within 50 yards of him (he truly is feral), but as soon as that back door closed, he was on the porch, wolfing down the food. So I've continued to feed him daily, and he has learned my patterns of behavior: he not only knows when to check the compost pile, but he also comes to the food dish the moment I go back indoors from filling it.

I've sent an email to the family vet to find out what else we should be doing for him. I do realize that one very legitimate answer is "Let him starve," on the principle that a long-lived feral cat is making lots of other cats who will lead hard lives. Though I respect that point of view, it's just not an option for me. So I'm wondering whether, for example, we should be providing water for him (a tough task when the temperatures are getting really cold and the water will freeze quickly), or whether he's resourceful enough to get his water from the snow and what not.

Posted by senioritis at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)

January 09, 2005

This would be a joke if it weren't so serious

One of the lunacies of contemporary life in the U.S. involves the desperate efforts, pre- and post-Sonny Bono, to protect proprietary rights in copy. It's not just that fair use has all but disappeared; it's also that the web of regulations for rights in copy produces outrages such as the disappearance of Eyes on the Prize from legal broadcast or new-copy sale. You can't buy a new copy of the series, and you can't broadcast it, either. As one who has repeatedly used videotape of the series in my classrooms, I can tell you that this is quite a loss. Misseli testifies to its effects on students and also details the legal reasons for its exit from circulation.

Posted by senioritis at 02:54 PM | Comments (0)

Has it all gone too far?

So I'm on IM with Tyra, talking about dinner tonight. I leave the room to change the stereo rotation, and I discover that in my absence, Tyra and Teakettle (who's quite the feline keyboarder) have been carrying on a conversation.

Things have come to a pretty pass when I have to compete with my cat for computer time, and when my friends are just as happy talking with the cat as with me. Time to do some life-reassessment.

Posted by senioritis at 02:40 PM | Comments (8)

Media monsters

Just one more thing, and then I'll shut up, pack it in, and go to bed.

Some of us who are in the generation that came of age before the digital revolution get our clues only in bits and snippets. Suddenly I discover blogs and go gnutz. IM? Greatest thing since Elvis. And now music downloads. I've spent all my spare time over the vacation downloading tunes from the Internet. First I discovered the indie site BetterPropaganda, and now I've discovered--lordy, lordy--the mainstream downloads on Amazon. For someone like me who lives drenched in music, it's a life-changing event.

Now, most of my readers are snorting in amazement. "How can she just now be catching on?" The answer is that on this particular issue, I've been prey to media demonization of downloading: All downloading is illegal, and the feds will getcha if you do it. It's taken me quite awhile to realize that there's a boatload of terrific free, legal music on the Internet. It's taken me quite awhile, in other words, to get around the tunnel-vision media representations and begin to discover that there's a rich world of music downloading. Illegal file-sharing is only a corner of the realm, but you'd never know it from reading the newspaper.

Posted by senioritis at 12:09 AM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2005

Not a joke

I laugh at a lot of our culture's hysteria about plagiarism and fraud--especially the popular notion that it's been newly invented and is a sign of contemporary moral decay. Yet I'm as capable as the next person of getting upset when I see serious issues, ones that can and should be addressed, such as the government's purchase of putatively independent journalists, to shill controversial government policy. Just because not everything about plagiarism and fraud is serious and important doesn't mean a lot of it isn't--even when it's not new. Because a lot of it is. Serious and important. Check?

Posted by senioritis at 11:40 PM | Comments (0)

It's not smart to taunt Mother Nature

I thought I had it all figured out. Amy warned me--but too late. So as soon as I invited a bunch of people from Syracuse to dinner, it finally snowed. Sure, I got to ski--but instead of enjoying the pleasure of the company of my soon-to-be students and feasting with them, I ate a can of Chef Boy-ar-Dee ravioli for dinner while I watched the football game. At least the Rams won. And tomorrow it looks like we'll get to have that dinner. Meanwhile, note to self: don't ever think you've got the whammy on winter. In the immortal words of Harrison Ford: "Don't get cocky, kid."

Posted by senioritis at 08:45 PM | Comments (1)

January 07, 2005

Wildly ironic spam

So practically every day the Moveable Type platform informs me that a gaggle of spammers are wanting to promote themselves through the comments and trackback functions. Fortunately, the platform filters most of this, and I get to delete it without its ever going live on the blog. The spammers actually want to post a hell of a lot more on my blog than actual readers do.

Now, you might think that's the irony to which my title refers, and it well could be. But wait! There's more! Of the 2 dozen spam comments and pings that I've vetted so far today, there's one that I not only want to enable but will indeed post here, as I reference my January 4 entry:

A new TrackBack ping has been sent to your weblog, on the entry 601 (Walt Kelly lives!).

De-spam this ping:

IP Address: 128.230.56.157
URL: http://www.geocities.com/gematureqrst/mature-tits.html
Title: mature tits granny pictures
Weblog: mature tits granny pictures

Excerpt:
Asian mature matures, mature movies granny galleries. Mature incest mature bitches, mature women nude mature sluts. Mature ladies mature archives, mature bitches mature swingers. Chubby mature old mature, mature milf mature nude women. Mature t...

--
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And no, I have not visited the referenced site. Whatever it is, I'd like to remain in ignorance, SVP.

Posted by senioritis at 11:13 AM | Comments (2)

New year's resolution

As with everything else, I'm a little late with my new year's resolution. And as with everything else, my new year's resolution is a little different from most others'.

I resolve to reduce the number of times I hurt other people's feelings unintentionally. Lacking tact, I resolve to exercise restraint. (This does not mean I will cease being candid when I think it's useful.)

It does mean that I will try my damndest to quit making jokes that hurt other people's feelings. My reasons are selfish: when I discover/realize that I've hurt another through one of my wisecracks, it really, really upsets me. So really, I'm just resolving to spare myself the pain of hurting others unintentionally.

Posted by senioritis at 08:39 AM | Comments (2)

January 06, 2005

Night of the IMing (Brain)Dead

I've spent all day (oh, okay, most of it, with a dinnertime detour to watch Caddyshack--for the first time in my life!) IMing with Tyra as we plan our spring course, WRT 308--an upper-level undergrad course in style. Very intense experience. Lots of fun; we're putting together a pretty jazzy course that I think will actually help writers (including us teachers) with their prose style. And IM is incredibly useful for long-distance collaborative invention and analysis. Sandra and I are planning to use it (instead of schlepping back & forth between our homes, which are 4 hours apart from each other) when we start our next collaborative book (no, it appears I will NEVER finish the second solo-authored book that's needed for a shot at promotion to full prof), and my impression, from a day of IMing with Tyra, is that the format is going to be very useful for collaborative writing as well as collaborative teaching. And the silly smilies and icons help maintain a level of play that might otherwise get lost in a long day of work. Oh! Hey! My leave request for Spring 06 has been approved, and my project for that leave is to finish up the famed second solo-authored book. So verily, I will be able to stand for promotion--mere moments before I reach retirement age. What, me retire? (Picture Alfred E. Newman.) Hmm. Seems as if I'm rambling. Hence the title for this entry.

Posted by senioritis at 09:46 PM | Comments (2)

>snore<

Lordy, lordy, even the dentists are plagiarizing:

If you want veneers, experts say, it's a good idea to ask dentists for photos of veneer work they have performed. Some dentists buy generic before-and-after photos from dental supply companies to show patients. "To me, that's fraud," said Dr. Lawrence Addleson of San Diego, president of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry. "But the customer has to do their due diligence by simply asking, 'Did you do these veneers?' "

That stirring news solves tonight's insomnia: I do believe I'll be able to go back to bed and finish my night's sleep.

Posted by senioritis at 05:12 AM | Comments (2)

Close, but no cigar

LIGHT TO MODERATE SNOW WILL CONTINUE THIS MORNING.
Excellent! Skiing at last!

THE SNOW WILL BEGIN TO MIX WITH SLEET AND FREEZING RAIN AROUND NOON... BEFORE CHANGING TO RAIN BETWEEN 3 AND 5 PM.
Oh. On the other hand--

TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES ARE EXPECTED...
Well, that sounds good.

FOLLOWED BY A LIGHT COATING OF ICE.
Check. I just love to ski on ice. I'm a lithe, graceful sort who can keep her balance in all circumstances and would never fall on her butt. I have all the coordination of a film star--the one who did the commercial "Help! I've fallen and can't get up!"

Posted by senioritis at 04:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2005

That which cannot be blogged

A familiar fable: the mother who cannot tell her daughter about sex but instead hems and haws until the daughter blithely says she already knows all about it.

An unfamiliar scenario in our culture: the aging woman who finds out that there are all sorts of additional "facts of life" that nobody talks about and nobody ever told her about. These double-secret "facts" are things I really, really wish I'd known about before they happened to me; if I had, I could've gotten treatment a lot sooner, and I wouldn't have been as confused and conflicted about what was happening to me.

Earlier, I blogged about herbal remedies for hot flashes, and I felt daring as I did so. Yet I felt that, even though most readers of blogs (or at least writers; I haven't seen claims or statistics specifically about gender distribution of blog readers) are young men (see also CultureCat) rather than aging women, certain topics need to be broached, to counteract all the PMS jokes and all the determined silence. The silence extends into medical research; when I began cycling 15 years ago, I discovered that all the dietary and training information was based on research on male cyclists. With only that to go on, I nearly ruined my metabolism, doing long-distance cycling on a training regimen that called for too many carbohydrates and too-fast increases in distances. And I remember very well what my doctor told me when he started me on estrogen replacement: he told me that there was very little research available about its benefits and side effects, but the little information available indicated that it was a good idea. It wasn't, of course; as the whole world found out a year or so ago, estrogen replacement significantly increases the chances of heart attack. Now no one takes it, except in very extreme circumstances. A lot of research was available about birth control pills: the male medical establishment was eager to study women of childbearing age, but uninspired by the issues that aging and elderly women face.

So for women medically--and especially aging women--there's a lot of ignorance and a lot of silence. Speaking publicly about a simple thing like black cohosh seems a small counteractive but a necessary one.

Yet I come home from my GYN today, very surprised and disturbed by his diagnosis of recent problems I've been having, but unable to talk about them here. If it's not childbearing, PMS, menopause, or cancer, it's not known and not discussed. If I were to talk about it here on my blog, it would freak out some of the people--especially men--who will be in my classes or whose dissertation committees I will be on. That's not a criticism of SU graduate students or of men; it's just a statement of what I perceive to be cultural fact. And even people who weren't freaked out by such public discussion might very well consider it to be distasteful, tacky, or indiscreet for me to blog about it.

So, much as I would like to share information like this with women who may read this blog and who one day may themselves have the good fortune to be described as "aging"--or with men who may be the moral or material support for an aging woman--I can't. I have to contribute to the silence instead of sharing potentially useful information about a condition that, I discover, is actually quite common.

Damn it.

Posted by senioritis at 06:36 PM | Comments (5)

January 03, 2005

a poet's voice

here.

Posted by senioritis at 01:42 PM | Comments (0)

Crummy winter II

Our daffodils are sprouting. If any of the bulbs send up flowers early, they'll be frost-killed. Pray for cold.

Posted by senioritis at 10:29 AM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2005

Put me down for "dissatisfied"

From our friends at the Weather Channel:

FREEZING RAIN WILL DEVELOP FROM THE POCONOES AND CATSKILLS NORTH TO THE WESTERN MOHAWK VALLEY BY LATE MORNING AND CONTINUE INTO THE AFTERNOON. THE FREEZING RAIN WILL CHANGE TO ALL RAIN BY LATE IN THE DAY.

So, dedicated winter cyclist that I am, I jumped on the bike and got my ride in early, before the goop arrives. And as a dedicated cyclist, I'm always delighted to be able to ride in the winter.
Yet I am also compelled to complain. This is central New York. By this time of year, the heaters in our basement should be running full blast to keep the pipes from freezing; the snow should be piled up beside the road so that it's tough to see the road as you pull out of the driveway; and cross-country skiing and snowshoeing should be my only outdoor exercise possibilities. Here, for example, is Tom, four years and one week ago today:




Hell, if we're going to have this year's brand of junky, useless winter weather, we might as well move back to West Virginia. At least in the mid-Atlantic states, even if you have crummy freezing-thawing-freezing winter weather, you have dogwood, holly, rhododendron, a long growing season, and a fabulous tomato crop.
So yeah, I'm bitching. But not because the weather is cold and snowy, but because it isn't! It just ain't natural—not for central New York.

Posted by senioritis at 10:26 AM | Comments (3)