113. Quiet Time to Play

We seem to be on converging paths here on the blog.  I can't quite put a name to the change, so I wasn't going to write it out (yet).  But the homie hinted at it so I thought I'd second the emotion.

For two months I've been on a gradual downshift of my consumption of media and a (much more) gradual upshift of running, writing, and other meditative goodness.  Long story short: almost no television, very little music (almost all instrumental), and little to no internet.

Interesting times.

Post-Script: The New York Times thinks I'm onto something.  

112. A Day in the Life (Now Reading...)

This.

Hopped on the Black Pearl and watched Sunday's True Blood today. Great episode but I was surprised...normally that's a break for me. Normally, it's a little bit of pleasure in a long, stressful and heavy day.

But today it didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like anything. It felt like I lost an hour that I will never get back. In fact, I sat down in front of the computer and started to open up another movie almost as though I hadn’t watched it. As though I needed another “break.”

Weird.

But yesterday, as intense as communing with Alice was....it felt like pleasure to me. It felt like a break. It took me into sleep feeling fulfilled and whole and nourished.

Wonder why.

Hmm...New equation:

TV = cotton candy

Alice Walker = life

Conduct selves accordingly.

111. If I Were a Boy...

... I would immediately cease and desist from the following:

- Those kissy face noises men make to get women's attention.  Are you seriously calling me the way you would call your dog?

- Using my underwear as a fashion accessory.  There should be more than one layer of fabric between my eyes and your butt.

- Buying a woman dinner and then being salty when she doesn't come home with me, as if she broke the non-verbal sex contract.  Try this instead: Estimate the amount of money you'd be willing to spend if you knew there'd be no sex, and then spend that.  If your estimate is $0, take her for a walk.

- Asking a woman if she has a man, and then following up with "But is he here?"  Not charming.

- Beckoning women over to my car, and actually expecting them to come.  Unless this is a monetary transaction, you're gonna need a different approach.

- Catering to every insecurity a chic has, and then wondering why every chic I meet has those insecurities.  Hmmmm.... Let's think about this...

- Insisting that a woman has her domestic game on lock (cooking, cleaning, etc.), when I don't have my provider game on lock.  If you need her to pay half the mortgage, you should be going in on half the dishes, yes?

- Hard-core clubbing after 30.  Everyone's entitled to "get it in" from time to time, but when your favorite couch at your favorite spot has permanent indentations from your "club shoes", you're doing too much.  Get off the couch, pour your drink, and put the bottle down.  30-something dudes with overpriced bottles glued to their palms are like 50-something dudes in overpriced convertibles.  We all know you're compensating for something.  We all know.

- Acting like we're not appealing when we are.  You need to be cool... we get it.  But seriously, women have egos too.  And acting like you're not impressed (when you know good and well you are) will get you a big fat SKIP card.

And to my sista friends, I humbly request that you stop responding to any of the above.  I should probably blame you most of all =(.

110. Is there anything better than...

... green freeze pops and grape Pop-Sicles?
... snow days?
... your boss leaving early (or not coming in at all)?
... Saturday afternoon with the boo?
... 78 and sunny?
... new socks?
... the last day of school?
... the first day of school?
... the sound of keys in the door?
... anything your grandmother cooks?

109. Peace of Cake

I haven't been at it long, but I'm happy to report that so far adulthood hasn't been nearly as unpleasant as I'd (sometimes) imagined.  It's actually been kinda nice.

There are at least three jobs I'd look forward to getting up and doing everyday.  I'm surrounded by children whose company I enjoy.  I've secured pretty impressive food, clothing, and shelter for much less that you'd expect.  And I still get to take off for the occassional play date with the homies.  All good stuff.

And as for the hard parts... making grown-up decisions, etc... even that's not so bad.  It can suck, but I've found that most adulty things can be handled fairly well by following a few "simple" steps.  They are:

No. 1: Recognzie.  This is the easy part.  In any rough situation, step back, take a long, calm look around, and figure out what's actually going on, in one sentence or less.

No. 2: Strategize.  This is a little trickier.  It means taking the result of No. 1 and figuring out what your course of action should be.  If No. 1 is "I hate my job," maybe No. 2 is "I should quit."  Then again, maybe it's "I should play a more decisive role is how things are done at work."  Figuring out the healthiest, most productive long-term strategy is key.  Don't rush it.

No. 3: Follow through on No. 2.

No. 4: Let it be.  This means not obsessing over the thing you stopped, started, changed, or let go for the next four years.  Assuming you made the right call, find a way to appreciate and even enjoy it.  It doesn't make sense to spend your time mourning something you got right.  Take the W and keep it moving.

So there you have it.  Puff's fool-proof plan for acing adulthood.  Or whatever =).

108. Lauryn Hill

I really love it when other people put into words the things I find difficult to express.

Jamilah Lemieux writing for Clutch Magazine:

Only recently did I realize something: we may have crushed this woman with the weight of our expectations. Lauryn was in her early 20′s when she became the biggest name in Pop music . . . for making songs talking about Black girl pain, and hood life, and struggle. That was a BIG deal. While I won’t engage all the foolishness of the rumor mill, she and Wyclef have both confirmed that they had a relationship outside of his marriage. She had a child with the son of one of the most famous musicians to ever live. Lauryn had a full and complicated life of her own, coupled with the weight of our expectations on her back. How many of us could balance all of that? At 25? Ever?

Yup, that's right. Lauryn Hill.

Jamilah's piece pretty much rocks (and took me back, go check it out for yourself). It's right on time for Ms. Hill's re-entry and for the generation that cut its hip hop baby teeth on mid-90s masterpieces like The Score. Yup, that'd be me right there, laying on my trundle bed, feet kicked up on the bookshelf, listening to "Nothing Even Matters" on repeat and letting Lauryn take me out of that dark and dangerous place so familiar to black girls in tumultuous relationships (who are really just adult women in miniature trying to figure out where first love and happily-ever-after intersect).

Unlike Jamilah and among my friends, I was the lonely supporter who rocked with Unplugged. The poetry of her lyrics, the deep and resounding struggle of a woman artist trying to make art happen and push boundaries while loving her child and herself resonated with me. Art isn't easy to create much less present to the world. And being a young woman writing lyrics so real they hurt, telling stories that flipped the we-fuck-hoes glorification within hip hop on its head with sincerity & authenticity but without demonizing the genre ain't easy either. Add in a toxic culture of celebrity and I worried Unplugged might be the last time we heard from her, especially given the backlash.

I'm glad she's back. I'm excited and I have so many questions. Will she speak to us, the generation that loved her so much that we couldn't process her pain? Will she speak to our daughters? Our sons? After all, I'm not that kid anymore.

Or maybe, seeing as we all grew up together--black girls, hip hop and Lauryn Hill--maybe it will be less complicated than that. And more like a high school reunion.

107. Now Reading: The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Tonight, fueled by the coffee I should not have had after dinner, I picked up Rainer Maria Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. It was also published in English under the title The Journal of My Other Self.  That's how I found it.

Once, wandering through the books on a table at Borders, I came across a novel about which a reviewer had written that you could "open the book at any page," and a stunning sentence would leap out.  It wasn't true (for me) of that book.  It is true of this one.  I've never before recommended a book I haven't read.  I recommend this.

On deck: Everything else by Rilke

106. What Would Jesus Do?

When I was in high school, I was known to dabble in a yellow rubber W.W.J.D. wristband.  I wasn't a hardcore WWJD-er, but I was familiar with the concept and thought it was a good idea.  In recent years, I've considered going back to it as a guiding principle, as a way of practicing what Christianity preaches and of being a better representative of my faith.

Part of what's held me back has been a reluctance to fully embrace the WWJD philosophy as I saw it.  In my mind, the answer to the question of what Jesus would do is that he would be really, really nice, never lose his temper, and find a way to be loving even when the other person was being a jerk.  It's a sort of constant other cheek turning that frustrates me even to think about.  A not small part of me wants to reserve the option to conduct to a well-deserved snapfest, even if I never actually do.  Being nice is just too hard.

Recently though I've started to think I've had a terribly dumbed down idea of what following a Jesus example actually entails.  The niceness is a part of it.  But that's all reactionary.  It's about how I respond to other people and circumstances beyond my control.  I think a much bigger part of it is how I conduct myself in general.  Not just What do I do when someone else does X?... but, quite simply, What do I do?  What do I do with my life?  What would Jesus do with a life?

I'm sure I'm behind a lot of people's curves, but the idea that the slogan on the wristband wasn't just about being nice to mean people, that it wasn't a cheat sheet for getting out of sticky situations... The idea that it was about being prepared... being creative, and informed, and disciplined; that it was about commiting yourself to the life you've been given to live, and seeing that it's done; that it's about living well and exhausting possiblities.. that's a revolutionary idea to me.  I've never read Rick Warren's book, but I would say that Christ's was the ultimate purpose-driven life.  And if that's the answer to the question, then I have been seriously underselling those wristbands.

105. "Now Usually I Don't Do This..."

... But I cannot hype this Balmorhea album enough.

Maybe it's because it's a genre of music that I don't normally mess with; or maybe it's because I'm in a really thoughtful place; or maybe it's because it's just really frikkin fire.

Whatever it is... I am all over this album.  As much as it saddens me that I haven't found anything I enjoy nearly as much in their other albums, I am so grateful to have found something that feels so natural to me.  It's as comfortable as silence, and yet so much better.

Wow.

104. The Case Against Tenure

Slate does a quick and dirty job of making it.  It basically boils down to cost, complacency, and rigidity.

For one, they estimate that it costs a university $10-12 million to tenure a professor for their entire career.  They point out that once a professor is tenured they never have to produce a single additional piece of compelling scholarship.  And they argue that having a rigid 6-year clock to either earn tenure or get the hell out forces new professors to follow a formulaic model of production that discourages creative thinking and dedication to teaching.

All of these arguments have been made before, and in more detail, in other places.  If I find a link I'll add it.  Personally, I don't think tenure makes much since from the university's standpoint, but it's a professor's dream.  I honestly think tenure at the University of Chicago is the single most awesomest job an academic could have.  Top salary + Top 5 city + Top university = Holy Grail.  I suppose you could make a case for Harvard, being that Boston is a major city.  But who goes to kick it in Boston?  No one I know.

Of course, the fact that I'm getting my degree from the U of C (... I really am... and soon... I promise...) means I have a 0% chance of getting a job there in the next 10 years.  But that's cool.  I plan to grow old in Chicago.  If I have to run some quick errands out of town, it's no biggie.  I'll be right back.

103. Ewwwwww!!! (This coffee tastes like coffee!)

So I'm watching an Oprah re-run today and she has the food guy on.  Michael Polan.  The one who wrote all the food books.  (I got most of the way through "Food Rules."  It's still on the shelf.)  Anywho...  He mentions that one of the reasons prepackaged foods are so bad for us is that, among other things, they're made with way more sugar and salt than we'd ever actually put in our own food. 

So I'm going about my day and 6pm hits.  Starting to wind down but I still need to get some things done.  I decide to make a latte.  Espresso, steamed vanilla soymilk, and yummy hazelnut syrup.  Point, aim, shoot.  I pour into my favorite red thermos and head off to my room.

At first taste, there is waaaaay too much espresso in this drink.  It takes like coffee (... gross).  I don't wanna add cold milk so I add a little more hazelnut.  On second taste, it's not bad but it's still not Starbucks-quality.

So I get to thinking about what Mr. Polan said.  1. I know Silk makes a special vanilla soymilk just for Starbucks.  I'm guessing it's a little sweeter than the stuff I buy at Target.  2. I don't know what their recipe is, but I'm betting it's less coffee, and more sugar, than whatever I'm whipping up at the crib.  Which sucks.

Here I am thinking I like coffee when I really just like warm, overly sweetened vanilla soymilk with a little bit of espresso in it.  Hmph.

(I'll see if I can't whip that up next time.)

102. Five the Hard Way

As a runner who doesn't (always) run, I've learned that the most important thing to do after a long hiatus is just to get back at it.  Don't think too much about it, just run.

So after this latest 2-month break, I headed back out for my daily 5-miler on Monday.  It was not an easy run.  I struggled from start to finish.  But I finished.  I didn't time myself and never really got above warm-up pace.  But I finished.

Tuesday I went for a repeat.  Same plan.  5 miles at warm-up pace.  I figure as long as I finish I'll have had a great workout and I'll be well on my way back to running shape, flat stomach and all.  Didn't quite work out that way.

I finished.  But damn.  I have never physically struggled so hard at anything in my life.  For the last mile I was barely "running" at all.  And in the last half mile I physically could not lift my feet off the ground.  It was like I had 20-pound plates on the bottom of my shoes.  I was doing some kinda heavy, lumbering power-walk, only not getting anywhere nearly as fast as if I had actually been power-walking.

When I got back I calculated my time/pace.  One hour, fifteen minutes.  I had averaged 15-minute miles.  My goodness.  In all likelihood the first mile was 13 minutes and the last one was dang near 20.  This is coming off my triumphant 9:30s from a few months ago.  What in the world happened???

Did I try to do too much too soon?  Maybe.  I think I'm gonna cut back to 3-milers for a while and see if I can't get my pace up.  Then we'll work the distance back up, and eventually add those 7-milers we've been eyeing on Saturdays.

In the meantime... New Running Rule:  At least one full run per week, no matter what.  Just to keep my legs from forgetting.  Sheesh.

101. Dozens, "Blacktags" and Other Ish Black People Do

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to report that black people use twitter.

*gasp*

Yes, chile. And their use of twitter is so fascinating that some white folks even stay up late at night to peer into the heart of darkness and chuckle at the witticisms of these little nigs Negroes blacks and enjoy their “hilarious, bizarre or profane” midnight dances conversations into the wee hours of the morning.

*sigh*

I hope that paragraph above does all the work it needs to. I hope it shows how misguided Farhad Manjoo and the editors at Slate were to even post such an ill-informed and nineteenth-century-esque article. If it doesn’t then find your way over to Because, Really, the Black Snob or Instant Vintage for a much longer, funnier breakdown (@innyvinny even has a gallery of black twitter birds for your cutting, pasting and posting pleasure--see mine?).

If and when you read it, I hope the problems with the Slate article are more obvious to you than to @fmanjoo--problems like monolithic blackness, the rap-circa-2001-generically-brown twitterbird, the preoccupation with stats say nothing but do their best to mystify something very simple: that “black people are online:”

“Yet much like discovering a country where people are already living, anytime the mainstream picks up on something that black people have been doing since forever (wasting time on the internet, shooting the shit like everyone else) it is supposed to be indicative of some larger, big, mysterious thing.”

Turn your clinical digital spotlight upon me! Make me visible and by doing so make me real! Ahh! The power of the mainstream (which you could also read as white or as emanating from a legacy of whiteness and white privilege although Farhad himself is not white) gaze!

But I'm not writing to jump into the internet swarm that is headed straight for Farhad’s twitterfeed and Facebook page. I’m anti-swarming (peace and love, yall, peace and love). And I'm upset not at the piece itself but at the way its existence obscures and butchers a phenomenon that deserves a lot more attention--and a historical eye.

After all, why does the hashtag fun that occurs throughout the day--not just late at night, jeez talk about fantasies of the exotic--vibrate with a kind of diasporic and urban blackness even though the hashtags themselves are fairly innocuous (his examples included things like #annoyingquestion and #ilaugheverytime)? And why do ALL TYPES and so many people participate? You wouldn't know that from the Slate article because there is no sense of diversity so there is no reason to question why that diversity exists. In fact, I'd wager Farhad’s most obvious #racefail is that he uses a monolithic blackness that obscures differences within the United States (let’s throw out some of the common dichotomies and even these are stupid simplistic and bound to be ripped apart by any given twitter including myself: urban vs. rural, young vs. old, blitterati Root writers vs. 2dopeboyz music pirates) while at the same time perpetuating and obscuring differences across global blackness. Even his first example (#wordsthatleadtotrouble) crosses the Atlantic at least once before hitting trending status and this gets barely a mention--it’s all put under the heading of “blacktag.” Because, ya know, we all the same in this piece.

What if we did? What would be a more sensible explanation or context to place the twitter hashtag game in than the one where all black people around the world are up late at night (one timezone yall) to go in on twitter? Maybe something that consider the global aesthetics of hip hop--which at this point is decidedly not limited to either the hip hop industry or people of the brown persuasion? Or the global politics of sex (which for me leads down the road of thinking about race but need not do the same for everyone)? Especially considering the examples he choose to use and his emphasis on the nastiness of it all. Or why not consider how twitter and other social media has created a public sphere, town hall AND insurgent lingua franca which people of ALL ages use to give voice to their own sexual agency, make political commentary and...oh wait, be social?

But I’ll admit, even these questions still shy away from the truly afro-diasporic resonance of the hashtag. And I don’t have the stats to “prove” that there are or aren’t legions of faceless and nameless black people using the hashtag late at night in creative and lurid ways so I won't try. Still, a little bit of cultural literacy might have gotten Slate to the underlying--and much more interesting--query of why a social media like twitter might intersect very nicely with black expressive culture writ large.

Old wine = blues, jazz, street slang, jive, playing the dozens, 16 bars

New bottles = 140 characters, a worldwide audience, a hashtag to keep the beat

Zora Neale Hurston, while doing research in the 1920s era South, described what was called “playing the dozens”:

“...which also is a way of saying low-rate your enemy’s ancestors and him, down to the present moment for reference, and then go into his future as far as your imagination leads you. But if you have no faith in your personal courage and confidence in your arsenal, don’t try it. It is a risky pleasure.”

And Robin Kelley, doing the damn thing, wrote:

“We are, after all, talking about cultures that valued imagination, improvisation, and verbal agility, from storytelling, preaching, and singing to toasting and the dozens.”

Storytelling as getting over, quips as verbal warfare, rhythmic and poly-rhythmic improvisational wordplay that has survived since SLAVERY in one form or another and has created one of the most controversial and lucrative industries in the world--besides helping generations of blacks survive the worst of the worst of the worst.

Are we surprised that it manifested again, with twitter hashtags as the clave? Well, I’m not. And I won’t be surprised when, now that the creative work of blackness has gone mainstream to the point of being RE-NAMED the “blacktag” (oh how clever), the creative juice that powers our (read: diasporic, global black Nanny maroon there if you wanna) resistance and survival re-emerges in a new form. On Tumblr perhaps? Doing its thing until the next enterprising traveler anthropologist scientist mainstream blogger or reporter decides to turn a corner down an alley they imagined in their head and see what the culluds is up to.

The fact that Farhad couldn’t see anything interesting in the hashtag phenomenon beyond its edgy sexual politics and the brown-faced twitter icons is frustrating beyond measure. His piece reeked of a kind of voyeuristic elitism and itinerant fascination that is better left in the 1920s. Especially considering there is nothing in this post that couldn’t be found online (even the quotes are courtesy of Google Books).

But ya know, that’s fine. That’s cool. After all, as Sheila Walker writes in “Are You Hip to the Jive? (Re)Writing/Righting the Pan-American Discourse:”

“Are you hip to the jive?” was a question I often heard my father, James Walker, and his friends ask when I was growing up in New Jersey. They were questioning whether or not you really understood what was really happening, as distinguished from what you only thought you understood about what might only appear to be happening--from the simplest to the most profound meanings of that understanding.”

The power of perception may not be wholly in our hands. Farhad’s piece is already circulating on twitter and along the interwebs as a work of “serious” journalism (must be all those pesky stats). But we can still release the pressure and have a nice, hearty laugh, Ellegua/Masking Sambo style, at his expense. #ifyouainthip #youainthip bruh.

X-Posted at Nuñez Daughter

100. The Joy of Pixar

Last month  I treated myself and one of the junior homies to a movie and ice cream for our birthdays.  We saw Toy Story 3 and stopped by Baskin Robbins.  I highly recommend both.  Especially the movie.

When I came home raving about how good it was, my mother and sister looked at me like I must be over-hyping it.  When I insisted that it was great and that I cried little girl tears at the end, my sister gave me the side-eye. But oh, how things change.

Last night we watched a CNBC special on the rise of Pixar.  It went through the entire studio line-up in order of release, starting with the original Toy Story and ending with Up.  It's surprising how much animated goodness that studio has produced.

There are the three Toy Stories (clearly the crown jewel of the Pixar Empire), Monster's Inc., and Finding Nemo, all of which I really enjoyed.  That's 5 for 11 so far.  I skipped A Bug's Life, Cars, Ratatouille, and Up, but I really wanna see Ratatouille.  The Incredibles was alright and Wall-E wasn't bad for a movie I'll only watch once in my life.  What other studio can say that at least every other film they release is a certified banger?

And seriously... Toy Story 3... so worth 11 of your hard-earned dollars.  To my amazement there were maybe 60 people in the theater that day and maybe 6 of them were under 18.  They really did a great job developing those characters.  And '3' introduces a whole new cast of characters that are fairly awesome in their own right.  When I tell you that I was surreptitiously wiping away tears in the last five minutes so my 9 year-old companion wouldn't see me crying.. yeah... it was that deep.

I do love me some animated goodness.

99. God Complex

One of the more interesting religious experiences I've ever had happened while waiting in line at the Subway near my old apartment.  As I was ordering my sandwich, a black woman waiting to pay started arguing with the young black woman behind the counter.  Apparently she wasn't happy with the service she had received.  She expressed her dissatisfaction by berating the black female employee for working for foreigners (the shop's Indian owners), thereby siding with them over her own people.

The young woman ignored her at first, but the customer kept on, insisting that "This is what's wrong with black people," and that "They come into our neighborhoods and our own people help them work against us."  Eventually the young woman grew exasperated and said desperately, "Ma'am, I didn't do anything to you."  The woman immediately took offense, and replied sharply, "You can't do anything to me!  I'm covered in the blood of Jesus!"

I spent the next 20 seconds seeing how far my jaw could drop without actually unhinging itself.  It got pretty far.  As the woman walked out, I apologized to the cashier on her behalf.  I felt like the crucifix hanging from my neck required as much.

I am truly fascinated by people who cite God as a reference in their meanness.  How is it possible?  I feel like I would choke on the contradiction.

This happened again recently when I was trying to catch a bus in a neighboorhood I had never been in.  When an older woman came and sat down, I decided to ask her for help.

Me: Do you know if the 95E is running right now?

Her: (silence)

Me: (Hmmmmm... Either she didn't hear me, or she's crazy.  I really need to get on this bus though.  Let me try this again).  Excuse me... do you know if the 95E is running?

Her: (venomously) I don't know nothing.  We don't have to help y'all.  Y'all supposed to know where y'all going.  I know 290 is running.  I know that.

Me: (WTF?!?)

At this point I'm sure this woman is crazy.  For one, 290 is a highway, and it doesn't come anywhere near 93rd and Commercial.  I'm thinking maybe she thinks I'm some spoiled suburban chic (I am), who should have her own car (I do), and she doesn't wanna help me.  But she never says that.  And frankly, a) I still need to find out how to get where I'm going, and b) I really wanna know who "we" and "y'all" are.  I calculate the risk that this woman has a weapon in her purse, and proceed with caution.

Me: I'm sorry.  Who do you think I am?

Her:  I don't know who you are.  We don't have to help y'all.  290 is running.  I know that.  Y'all should help yourselves.

(a little more back and forth)

Her: I'm not gon sit here and argue with you.  I don't answer to you.  I know the man above.  I don't answer to you.

Me: (tugging on my crucifix).  Oh, you mean God.  Do you see this?

Her: I don't care about that.  I don't owe you nothing.  I don't have to help you.  Hell no.

Me: (Wowness)

Her: (as I'm walking away) Blah, Blah Blah... You ain't Jesus!... Blah, blah, blah.

Now... This woman's obvious craziness notwithstanding, I was still amazed that she cited her relationship with God immediately prior to informing me that "Hell no..." she was not going to help me.  Wowness.  And given that the woman in the Subway shop was not perceptibly insane, what was she thinking?  And what would a person who witnessed her Jesus-rant, but who hadn't spent much time in Christian churches, think of those of who do?

I have lots more to say on that.  This post is long enough as it is.

98. Heavy Rotation

I'm probably pickier about gospel music than any other type of music.  A lot of it just sounds exactly, unremarkably the same to me.  So I don't "love" a lot of gospel songs.  I'm working on that.  And in the meantime, I am daily grooving to Give Thanks by Marvin Sapp.  It's a fairly laid-back, "put it on the in background and sway a little bit while you do other things" groove.  And with a "just can't say it enough" message.  I mess with it.

Everything's working out for your good.  Even when things don't look like they should.

97. How Do I Love Running?

Let me count the ways:

* I love that after getting it in for 5 miles I can go the rest of a 90-degree day without a drop of sweat.

* I love that I need to eat. A lot.

* I love that I can finally run without an mp3 player. Silence is an awesome soundtrack.

* I love that it's the one thing I would choose over ice cream (sleep and sex don't count).

* I love that I'm tanned 6 months a year.

* I love that it's a strict, unspoken No-Holler zone (at least for other runners. Casual bystanders haven't gotten the memo.)

* I love that nothing is as bad after a run as it was before.

* I love that running is never not a good idea.

* I love that I'm faster than I thought I was.

96. Boo-dom vs. Boredom

Around the time I graduated college, my mother and I were having one of our casual kitchen table convos (love these) when I observed that I couldn't remember ever having been boy-crazy. It certainly hadn't happened in Jr. High when it was happening to everyone else. And as best as I could tell, at 21, it still hadn't. My mother agreed.

I wasn't sure what to make of it then. I'm not sure what to make of it now. There seemed to be something about the pheromones of 13 year-old boys that drove my 13 year-old girlfriends crazy. There seems to be something about the pheromones of 30 year-old men than drives my 30-somethingish girlfriends crazy. Just not Yours Truly.

There's never been anything particularly interesting to me about men as men. Smart men, yes. Beautiful men, yes. Smart, beautiful, funny men... absolutely. Short of that, my pheromone receptors are in sleep mode.

This manifests in my social life in interesting ways. Most notably, for new people, I'm an almost impossible person to get into a relationship with, and a rather unpleasant person to stay in a relationship with. It's not enough that you're a man... a deep, interested voice on the other end of the line and a warm body in the bed at night. What was the last really interesting thing you said? Have you made me a better person this week? When was the last time I aspired to be more like you in some way?

If I can't readily answer these questions, I tend to develop a rather perceptible air of WhyExactlyAreYouHere-ness. In short, I become a bitch. The irony is that I become that bitch in an effort not to hurt the person's feelings. In my mind, the only alternative is to tell the person the truth: that in the few short months we've known each other I've exhausted the value of their companionship and I feel they have nothing further to offer. Don't call. Don't write. It's a wrap. How do you say that?

I'm told that I should simply say "I don't think we're cut out for each other but we can still be friends," or something like that. Good in theory, but I have this crazy devotion to the truth. And the truth is, we can't be friends. How do you have the "This isn't working" conversation without inviting the "Can we still be cool?" conversation?

Perhaps I over-estimate the percentage of dudes who wanna be friends with chics they break up with (or who break up with them). Or perhaps I just attract 'wanna be friends' type dudes. Either way, I'm 0-fer when it comes to neat, respectable break-ups. What do I do with that?

95. The Barista

On the journey to adulthood, a free spirit develops an ever-expanding list of "I will not"s. This is a list of the things most/many adults tacitly consent to that the free spirit simply won't accept. The list generally includes things like "I will not work 80 hours a week," "I will not inhabit a cubicle," and "I will not be chained to a Blackberry." My own list has also included "I will not have a coffee habit," and "I will not not see my friends."

I murder that last one. Ask anyone. But I have recently (temporarily?) accepted defeat on the caffeine resistance. For the next couple of years at least, it's me and the beans. Since I don't want to go broke, I've begun working on my at-home barista game.

First we pulled out the espresso maker our adviser kindly donated a few years back. Then we grabbed up some beans from Target. Since we're picky we hit up Starbucks for Hazelnut syrup and were astonished to find that they sell liters of flavored syrup for only 7 bucks (Why am I paying $4 for a latte again???). A gallon of Silk's finest vanilla soymilk and we were in business.

I served up my first attempt to my sister, not normally a latte drinker. Very good reviews. Looking forward to future iterations. I tried an earlier version myself but haven't patronized my services since. Coffee and food don't play well together in my digestive tract, so I have to take one or the other in the morning. My inner fat girl wants the food. Not sure how that's gonna work, but I'll keep you posted.

94. Music-Palooza

Once upon a time, in a previous blogging life, the homie wrote that his graduate school applications had sent his music-getting into overdrive. I'm coming to know the feeling. I spend significant amounts of (work) time every day on a Pandora-Amazon-YouTube circuit of new music getting. Generally, it goes like this:

Pandora plays New Interesting Song by Artist I Never Heard Of. I go to Amazon to see what reviewers have said about New Interesting Album. I hit up YouTube to check out sample tracks from New Interesting Album and Artist I Never Heard Of's other albums.

On a good day iTunes gets 2 or 3 bucks outta me by the time I get home (though if I'm not too pressed I wait to download the song on Amazon. I love Amazon.) In any case I've never enjoyed spending 99 cents so much. At this point I'd rather have a great new song than a great new almost anything else. Most recently I've gotten it in with:

Blu & Exile - My World Is...
Helen Jane Long - Porcelain
Matt Nathanson - Bulletproof Weeks
Dave Tofani Quartet - In a Sentimental Mood
Aretha Franklin - Call Me

(I think) It's worth noting that my former co-blogger wrote at the time that he was spending crazy hours in Best Buy copping CDs. When I read that post again today I immediately wondered why on earth anyone would shop for music at Best Buy??? Then I remembered that things were not always as they are now. Just a few short years ago, we all shopped for music at Best Buy. It was the semi-official music-getting spot. How things have changed.

I'm impatiently awaiting my next trip East so I can violate the copyrights of my homie's entire music library. I plan on doubling (or tripling) the size of my collection without taking up an inch of extra space. Just thinking of the hours of new music listening that await me... Goosebumps.

Now if only I could say that it was my dedication to my schoolwork that was driving the cravings. If only.

93. Where you from?

Morning, kiddies. This morning's posting takes us into the wonderful world of immigration reform. Ah.... those pesky migrants and their law-breaking. What to do, what to do.

I hadn't heard this but there's a Republican proposal to edit the 14th Amendment to deny birthright citizenship to the children of illegal* immigrants. So a person born and raised in the U.S. whose parent(s) crossed the border without a visa would not have the rights of a citizen.

I've actually thought a fair bit about birthright citizenship. I'm not sure it makes perfect sense in a world where people are as mobile as they are today. Not because I don't want to the children of Mexican migrants to be citizens, but because if my American parents are vacationing in Australia when my mother goes into labor, I don't think it ought to entitle me to access the resources of the Australian government for the rest of my life. So I'm sympathetic to the idea of reform in theory, emphasis on the theory.

In practice, if you're born and raised in a place, you're from there. No two ways about it. So I'm over this part of the argument. But the Slate article I linked to does make some really good points about the parts of the debate we're not having while we're talking about amending the Constitution and building super-fences.

Namely, what about Mexico? It always strikes me that no one talks about what having a significant chunk of it's labor force flee the country must be doing to the (under-)development of Mexico. There's evidence that Mexico's population is aging rapidly because of out-migration of younger people. Africana scholars sometimes talk about the developmental cost that the abduction of so able-bodied African people must have taken on West African communities. There would seem to be similar conversations in Mexico's future.

There's also the question of political cycles and the natural pressure that a discontented population exerts on a government. I wonder what might have become of the U.S. if instead of the Works Progress Administration, instead of new parks and murals and bridges, the Roosevelt Administration had facilitated visas to Canada for unemployed American workers during the Great Depression. What then?

There are answers to these questions. And no doubt they're something more complex (and more interesting) than either "Let them come," or "Kick them out." Apparently the European Union countries have figured out a lot of this. Not of lot of hope that we'll follow their lead, but... I've been wrong before.

-------------------------

* I know "illegal" is a loaded term and some people opt for "undocumented." I make a conscious decision to use this term because I think a) it's accurate, and b) it acknowledges a key part of the counter-argument. An argument that starts with "Yes, John broke a law, but he should be allowed to stay because...", is a stronger argument to me than one that starts with "Let's not focus on the law."

92. New Media, New Readers & a New Literacy

So the digital humanities world is all a goo-goo over a new toy: Anthologize. Created at the One Week: One Tool institute at the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, Anthologize will (hopefully) revolutionize academic publishing--and thereby (hopefully) give the academic tenure and promotion process a much needed reboot:

Anthologize, software that converts the popular open-source WordPress system into a full-fledged book-production platform. Using Anthologize, you can take online content such as blogs, feeds, and images (and soon multimedia), and organize it, edit it, and export it into a variety of modern formats that will work on multiple devices. Have a poetry blog? Anthologize it into a nice-looking ePub ebook and distribute it to iPads the world over. A museum with an RSS feed of the best items from your collection? Anthologize it into a coffee table book. Have a group blog on a historical subject? Anthologize the best pieces quarterly into a print or e-journal, or archive it in TEI. Get all the delicious details on the newly revealed Anthologize website.

But academia is actually a little late in the game. In the Land of Sable Fan Girls (where I spend my time when I'm not dissertation writing or course planning), famed black horror author Tananarive Due, her equally famous scienece fiction writing husband Steven Barnes and the delicious-as-he-wanna-be Blair Underwood have been producing? writing? a novel called From Cape Town With Love that capitalizes on all that new media has to offer. A Vook (as opposed to book, ha ha, get it) is a video e-book, available on iPad, iPhone or desktop, with pictures, video and interactive text (click here for the deets and sample video). And this past May, a group of writers and software developers took inspiration from the gargantuan gaming industry to produce an interactive e-book called The Mongoliad. Ignoring, for now, the huge race-fail in the title, the book is less of a book and more of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure meets the fantasy epic gaming console--and had its baby.

With Barnes and Knobles up for sale (wow) and the Kindle and iPad changing how we read, it only follows that new ways of writing, researching and telling stories will follow.

But....

I miss the days of the book.

It isn't just that I love books, although I do. I like to hold them in my hand. I hate paying for them and I hate the hyper-exclusive elitism of the academic publishing industry. But I'm not convinced either of those are going away anytime soon. I'm pretty sure that if I need or want a print product, I'll still be able to find it even as words-on-paper become more reclusive. And I am actually a HUGE supporter of digital humanities and what it does to bring academia closer to the people academia was meant to serve.

What I really love and have always loved about being a writer and the writing process is the solitude of the process.

If you follow the links above, you'll find one theme unites all of these projects--they require group work. Teams of professors got together at GMU and produced Anthologize. Due, her husband and an entire production team--along with Apple and the publisher--got together to make the Vook. Stephenson had a team as well. I mean these are huge projects that just seem really small and simple after they are done.

If I wanted to follow Due's lead--and I have definitely thought about it--I'd need to deal with a software developer, a visual artist, a webtician (my catch-all for all those more tech saavy than myself), and an animator....along with the odd agent, a publishing house, the Apple magnate, lawyers to protect my rights....

Once upon a time when I was writing, all I needed was a computer and me. And maybe an agent and a publisher and a Borders for when I was done.

But the actual process itself was about me and words and paper and sometimes pen and the characters that lived in my head.

I don't want to see that go. There is a certain amount of solitude, time and reflection needed to make really beautiful sentences appear on the page. Or on the screen.

We still need time for reflection. We still need time to think. We aren't finished yet.

Besides...

Sometimes you get tired of playing well with others.

Sometimes it's just your fucking sandbox and your toy and your sunshiney day and you want it all to your damn self.

X-Posted at Nunez Daughter

91. Hypothetically, of course...

If there were a legendary 19th century Austrian poet who published essays and correspondence on the art of solitude... And if he were to have written a book called "Journal of My Other Self"... And if there were a 21st century graduate student with a healthy interest in writers' journals... And if she spent her idle time wandering the 4th floor stacks of the school library... What are the chances that book and that grad student wouldn't find each other?

Not very good =).

90. The Fruit of the Earth

Once upon a time, I went clubbing with the homies and stayed out til the big-girl hours of the morning. Since I'm not a robot, I downed a couple Red Bulls to keep me in the game. Fast forward three days into my work week, and my body's heroine-like response to the caffeine infusion made it almost impossible for me to function without stimulants.

Now my brain is telling me it can't work 14 hours a day without help. Since I'm no fan of cultivating dependencies, I tell my brain that's too bad. But more and more it's looking like there's a serious coffee habit in my (very near) future. The difference between Me With Coffee and Me Without Coffee could easily bridge the gap between what I'm actually getting done and what I need to be getting done. And since I'm a grown-up now (officially) and grown-ups do what they have to do...

I'm at least telling myself that coffee is from the earth, and God put it here because He knew we'd need a little kick sometimes. That helps a little. If Starbucks wasn't so delicious and so expensive at the same time, that'd help a lot.

89. Now Reading: The Reason for God

One of the more interesting parts of my life as a writer is my complicated relationship to reading. The one thing every writer (I've ever read) agrees on is that writers must read. A lot. And I don't.

Not because I don't enjoy it, but because I'm so particular about it. I don't read for pleasure, only for enrichment. If a book isn't going to make me a better person, if it's only going to entertain me, I'd much rather watch a sitcom or a movie. Of the books that make the cut, I come across a new one every 2 or 3 years or so.

The latest is "The Reason for God." I'm particularly fond of this one because a) it was a gift, and picking out a book for me that I'll actually read is no small feat; and b) it treats religious skepticism (something I have plenty of) as not only an acceptable trait for a Believer, but a necessary one.

So I'm all over it.

On deck: Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke

88. Heavy Rotation

Recently, one of the homies introduced me to ambient music as a genre. That led me to lots of instrumental music, which in turn led me to Balmorhea. I rarely purchase complete albums, but I invested $8.99 in River Arms and have been quite pleased. If you're the type of person to sit and listen to thunderstorms, or just sit and daydream, you may be the type of person to love this album. It's easily one of my favorites.

Since there are no lyrics, I can't leave a quote, but here's a link to a highly rated track.