flaneuse.org

It seems there’s a sort of search engine/myspace hybrid that allows you to create a page according to the books you’re reading or have in your library and then cross them against other people who have similar interests or are reading the same things: LibraryThing. This, as you can well imagine, I love. As Michael Schaub, of bookslut put it: It’s MySpace for people who are over 16 and can spell. One of the things I’ve been talking about with my classes is how little reading and intellectual activity is priviledged in most parts of America. You don’t see characters in movies and television reading — or if you do, from Belle in Beauty and the Beast or Willow in Buffy, the smart (nerd) characters have to learn how to stop being so smart in order to be more real or get more out of life. To be immersed in books is to be distanced from the world, according to popular culture and yet, to me, usually reading makes me feel so much more alive than many other activities — especially many pop culture activites do. Even though sites like myspace have a place for you to link your favorite authors, with the exception of Harry Potter (God Bless Harry?), reading and literacy practices of the traditional sort are not privileged. In an entirely ironic twist, it takes all that reading and writing to create those myspace pages and IMs; all of us kids are doing just as much reading and writing as Willow and Belle, albeit not in dusty books per se.
So should we all jump over to LibraryThing and make pages? Come on — who wants to be the first to admit you’re reading Ann Coulter’s latest tome or War and Peace? (Pleease tell me you’re not reading Ann Coulter. Being conservative is one thing; liking a shitty writer is another.) Last one in is a rotten egg…

I am watching Bowling for Columbine with my adolescent literature class and marveling once more. I’ve seen it before and took away the guns and violence message, but this time I’m watching it for the messages it communicates about men and boys and what it means to be an adolescent in America today. Somehow, boys growing to be men have taken a turn where access to and use of guns and other weapons is a rite of passage. Just another story of one-upsmanship where escalating violence involves innocence — the boys trying to prove themselves through hurting others, bravado spread thick. (Not including Eric Harris, who took psychopath to a whole new level). Moore has a point — living in the shadow of Lockheed Martin and the Air Force Academy can’t help but teach all of us to interact through escalating violence.

Moore’s smart too, by talking to men who were once boys — but boys who didn’t walk into schools knowing how to “make a five-gallon drum of napalm” or shoot an M-16. What’s happened in the interim? Has the recent history of Vietnam and the Gulf War, gang violence and terrorism inured us to such a degree that we start playing out the scripts the television provided us, without realizing what they would mean, until it was too late? How could this possibly be?

I’m sitting at a conference, that shall remain nameless, and the keynote speaker is talking to us about teachers as leaders but has downshifted into what has become a shouted diatribe. I turned off a while ago — which isn’t her fault, really. I’m terrible about listening to someone when I am part of a group larger than maybe 30, even when I agree with what the person is saying. Now though, she is going to “lead you to your treasure chest” with a closed eye visualization, which means putting down the laptop and closing my eyes and dammit, that’s probably not going to happen. I’m really no good at these things — the worst student in the classroom in most cases. Anyone starts whispering about “finding the hidden treasures inside of you” and my eyes roll of their own accord, I swear to God.

Is it the hokey factor? I don’t know. Sometimes I have a problem with the suspension of disbelief thing. I guess I don’t think it’s so easy to begin believing in what you have in yourself as imagining a treasure chest, lined with purple velvet, containing a metaphor. It’s trickier and longer than that, a deep and recursive process of fighting your own doubts and demons. No soft talking motivational speaker can get past the grinning little goblin who moved in to my skull sometime in my early teens. Nuh unh, forget it. Teacher power and all that, but not for me.

Speaking of teens, this blog is going to have a lot more action as it will also be my class blog for adolescent literature for the next six weeks or so. The students will be creating their own blogs and using them to respond to and think about the novels we’ll be reading and films we’ll be seeing, including Bowling for Columbine tonight. I’m going to start with my story and thinking through some of the issues of adolescence and American conceptions of violence and growing up that the movie fronts — and I will post links to student blogs on my wiki as they get them up and running, so stay posted. Should be good and interesting. yay!

Action Girl’s Guide To Living
It goes with my summer goals to play more Scrabble and watch only TV that really makes me happy (that means more from the Home and Garden network and lots of Buffy and nothing on a major network probably) and meet everyone in my new neighborhood and throw things out that have bad memories and to stop worrying about stupid things and …..

I forget. There might have been Rice Krispy treats involved. There were definitely floor picnics and lots of fresh berries and young adult novels on that list.

To the summer, I say! Raise your glass and make a toast!

That turned out to be a longer hiatus than I imagined. I guess the move, coupled with consulting to pay the bills (I swear next year I am going to figure out this budgeting thing much better) and still trying to get the writing done that needs to get finished left me with just enough energy to sleep and eat. I’m also trying this new thing, which is less of the eating and then getting myself to the Y in my neighborhood in order to work out on occasion. Over the last year and a half, with the end of my marriage and my doctoral program, I let the physical side of things go all to hell. During the last year of my marriage I started smoking again (I know! Don’t tell me) and it took until four months ago for me to quit. I’ve gained weight — duh. I’m 32. I don’t have the body I had at 22 or even 28 and probably some combination of the wide range of medications I take helps with the weight gain. It’s about 10 pounds. Ten lousy pounds. But I joined the Y and have been trying to go at least 3 times a week.

Which means I have been so sore that I have been cursing the two sets of stairs in our new apartment, let me say. First came the cycling class where the instructor made us stand up on the bikes the whole time. Why are there seats, I ask you? If you’re going to make us stand the whole time, can I get rid of the seat so it quits poking me in the ass? And then I don’t get a bruised butt along with screaming hamstrings? That was the longest hour of my life.

Then there was the weighlifting and aerobics class. I liked that one much better, but my legs are still sore, three days later. Effective you say, evil I wonder. Don’t be a hater. Can’t I get into shape without feeling like I am 64? Tonight, yoga. I used to love yoga. Will it be another way for me to realize how far I’ve come from being even remotely in touch with my body? Looking forward to it.

There’s work things I could blog about, but they’re more in the percolation stage. Chris and I are doing pretty well, given that we just moved in together and so are bound to have “conversations” — especially when we both work in the house too. Ahh summer. Lazy summer, when I teach three class, consult two jobs, and write a book. And get skinny and buff, just in time for the winter bikini season.

You’ll be glad to know I had my mini-breakdown (God bless Chris who fixed the laptop and ordered me a backup system), the heat has broken, and I have enough of my life put together to head into the city for meetings this morning and then down to the shore to the Communiversity (oh no, I had NOTHING to do with that name) for the first of my distance/online classes. Which will be neither — tech glitches but hey, I don’t mind getting away for a night or two in the least. Will update more later as I gradually get back into some semblance of the swing of things.