2 of 3

Last Tuesday, my final doctoral synthesis got approved which means that I have spent the past two Thursdays mornings/afternoons locked in a room taking 2 of my 3 doctoral exams. The first two exams are four hours long, in my case 9-1 pm, and they include responding to an essay question from your exam chair. As I found out, these exams are pretty taxing and I am pretty excited to be done with the two timed sections. The last exam question, which I received when I completed the second timed exam is a take home question that I have one full week to complete. Seems to me like you lose a bunch of time from the beginning and really have less than a week. Following the timed exam, the most productive thing you can do is stare blankly at a television so I have already lost today. I will lose tomorrow too because I have to work at the journal and teach. I am not worried, though. The question I received make sense to me and even though it will need to deal with some pretty complex issues, I have a feeling I will be alright. Anyway, just thought I would post because I haven't in a while. P is doing pilates and I am a little bored at the moment.

Some random final thoughts:

1. This winter has been way too long. It is nearly the beginning of March and it is still snowing outside. It is also freezing cold. This has been the worst winter yet.

2. I thought it was pretty funny that John McCain critiqued Barack Obama for *answering* a hypothetical question regarding the potential for Iraq Invasion 3.0 (in some distant future). I am not going to try to sway your vote, it is yours to make, but you have to wonder about the political integrity of a man who tries to critique a fellow candidate for actually answering a question. Anyway.

3. Yesteday espn aired a conversation between Skip Bayless and some other brilliant ncaa basketball analyst where each of them decided which teams were in the top 3. Memphis, who has only lost one (freakin tight) game to a very good #2 Tennessee team, was not mentioned by either. I believe the top three were North Carolina, Kansas, and UCLA. All three teams are very good, don't get me wrong, but this is what drives me nuts about espn analysts: they get all hyped for a #1 vs. #2 game, it is all they can talk about, and not more than four days later *neither* team is in the top 3. Questionable.

p.s. Skip Bayless is an arrogant airbag on par with Rush Limbaugh. Both make me sick

4. P tried to a Carmen Electra workout session, which should have been titled "Lap Dance your Way to a Better Body." The only requisite for being able to do this workout was a chair. P tried for about 3 minutes, then gave up. I was glad because it seemed like it was only a matter of time before she tripped over the chair and we needed to go the hospital. Why is it suddenly a fad to lose weight while pretending to be a stripper. Seems to be a double-layered form of subjugation. Not only are women working out to attain a fitter body that meets unattainable social norms (which men in most cases never think about) but to get that body, they are convinced that the best way to do so is to become the object of a sexualized gaze. Where is Billy Blanks when you need him?

5. I saw There Will Be Blood and concur that Daniel Day Lewis should have won the Oscar for best actor; the film would have been truly boring without him. In my view he is the best living actor and the film's overarching message was kairotic (timely).

6. Not surprised that Juno didn't win anything. In my view, the film was neither funny nor endearing. I liked all of the actors, but the plot and dialogue were both uninteresting and unimaginative. My students tell me that the soundtrack is awesome. To me, it sounded like a reprise of Napoleon Dynamite, which, for the record, was both funny and imaginative.

7. Why is Hannah Montana so popular? Seriously, I see her everywhere and I don't get it. at. all.

8. Why is Regis Philbin so popular? To me, he was utterly annoying in the red carpet pre-Oscar show. Best moment was when he tried to interview Jack Nicholson while he was talking to someone else, and Nicholson replies "heyyyyy its the reeeeegeeee" - that's it. I was laughing pretty hard!

9. Did anyone see the Moment of Truth episode where the woman confessed to cheating on her husband and wanting to be married to another man? Before that part of the show aired, the host came on and said "if it were my preference, this would never have been aired" and said repeatedly throughout "you don't want me to ask you this question" as if to say "I am getting paid to do this, NBC has advertised this episode for more than a week, and I am going to claim I am against it so that I can convince myself I had no part in destroying this family on national television." When will it happen that a host has enough integrity to simply get up and say, I am not going to participate in this anymore and leaves the show? Never, because that would require actual political commitment.

10. David Archuleta is amazing, best singer *ever* on American Idol, but he will NOT win (the best ones never do!)

11. LOST IS ON TONIGHT!!!!

12. What is with the sudden cultural obsession with Jane Austen?

13. Still no Wii! Prospects aren't looking good after four weeks of semi-invested research.

14. Cool technology tip: Edirol voice recorders. Simply amazing.

15. Eastern Promises is a good movie, but disturbing. Rent at your own peril and if you do you need to REALLY like Vigo Mortennson.

16. Liked Michael Clayton, a lot. (remember, P was REALLY sick all last week)

17. The beagle is really scared of other dogs. Today, our neighbor's dog ran up to him and all the hair on his back stood straight up. I think he thinks he might get attacked like he did when he was little. Poor boy!

18. My best friend is no longer blogging, this is a formal threat if he is reading this post.

19. Bru is running laps around the house. I love him!

20. Get an iPod Touch! Again, totally worth the money!

I am not technically a doctor yet, but come on...

For those who know P, it may be hard to believe that she has any faults. In fact, on more than one occasion, I have caught faint murmurings that catalogue the degree of her perfection. This post is meant to alert you, however, that she does indeed have a fault: she is the most stubborn human being alive. Case in point. P spent most of yesterday curled in a blanket passing in and out of sleep with what appeared to be a nice combination of a flu and sinus infection. She was so sick that she spent most of the night swetting out a fever and most of the morning shaking around a cup of tea. In spite of this obvious illness, P informed me when I returned home from teaching this morning that although she was not feeling any better, she would be going to school to conduct parent-teacher conferences. Let it be known that twenty minutes before she left I had to shake her from a sleep deprived stupor.

Following a good two hours of conferencing, P then informed me that she would be going to night class for three hours. I told her she needed to stay home, that she was sick, and that she would regret leaving the house. Shockingly, I was right. I just picked P up about twenty minutes ago and she was shivering, hacking, and generally the most unhappily sick she has been since we have been married. So sick, in fact, she looked at me and told me "you were right, I should have stayed home" (I nearly drove into oncoming traffic I was so surprised). P is now in bed, and we'll see if she has learned her lesson. My theory on sickness is that if it hurts to get up, your body is telling you not to. If you care about this woman, please call her not to tell her you hope she feels better (you may do so, of course), but that she should listen to the people who care about her.

P, the scholar

I sometimes like to jot down things I hear people say that seem fun or contradictory or stupid, so I thought I would share something P said in the car on the way home from dinner. We were discussing the possibility of her teaching in a strictly bi-lingual classroom and she said:

"I don't want to learn anything new right now, I am getting a PhD"

P the scholar folks.

p.s. I have been instructed to include that she sat through a seven hour class that met one hour outside of where we live.

iLovethis iGadget

I bought this yesterday and thought I would announce to everyone who reads this blog that it is awesome. The iTouch iPod is just like the iPhone, just without the phone. It comes with a built in wifi port so that wherever there is an Internet signal, I can check my email, read the sportspage, whatever. It also comes with an iCal day planner, a video player, YouTube capabilities, google maps, etc. If you have thought about getting one, or think such things are worth the money, I highly recommend it.

The Siren

Those who have frequented the J house know of one wiley beagle who, on occassion jacks his head up in the air and lets out a bay that could wake the dead. We have often joked about this habit of his by calling him a siren and on occasion an asshole. Yesterday, though, a real siren (a tornado siren) blasted outside loud enough to wake Bru from his mid morning nap. Confused, the groggy beagle stood up on the frame of our couch and stared out into space. Then, for no apparent reason, he stuck out his neck and began to mimick the sound letting out a low ooooooohhhhhhh (as opposed to the normally loud WOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!). This got me wondering, did he think that the tornado siren was a long lost family member and if so, what kind of communication strategy is an oooohhhhhhhhhh?

Apart from all that, it was one of the cutest moments of his life. Just thought I would share.

Snow Day, and, Thoughts on the LOST Premeire

SNOW DAY! If you work in education, you still get the thrill of anticipating the possibility that school might get cancelled the next day due to inclimate weather. I know that I am not the only one who feels this way because P said (giddily) to me as we returned from our friends' house last night "if it is a snow day tomorrow, we should make a snowman!"

5:10 rolls around, we get the call, NO SCHOOL! So we are going to hang out with the beagle today. Get some work done. Shovel the driveway, who knows what else! And who cares, it is automatically FUN DAY because it is SNOW DAY. We didn't get a lot of these growing up in the NW, though I hear it is crazy out there now. SO this must be the midwest's redeeming value, that and low costs for housing.

Anyway. LOST Premiere.
I was not disapointed, though, I need to watch it again before any of these tentative observations are solidified:

1. On the flashforwards: Jack from Jack's flashforward is not Jack from Hugo's flash forward. They want us to think that they are with the line "I am thinking about growing a beard," (Jack to Hugo) but don't let that fool you. Kate from Jack's Flashforward is not Kate, and I think that coming flashforwards will prove that theory. In other words, my feeling is that they feel themselves as mentally unstable, but perceive each other as totally stable.

2. Jacob is in the coffin.

3. Still convinced that this show is about melancholia, and that this island is not real, if real means that they are all actually there. I still think this is a psyche ward, or something close to it.

4. Ben is not dangerous (anymore), Ben vis a vis Jacob was dangerous though. Locke becomes even more dangerous when he converses with Jacob, and takes Ben's place as the leader of the pack. That much is obvious!

5. Interesting that Hugo can see/hear Jacob. I love Hugo.

6. Mikhail can't die, which sucks because I can't stand his character.

7. Naomi is/was not bad. She was a pawn.

8. The bald, black dude who talked to Hurley is an illusion. A diversion to the audience of the show, if you will.

9. N, this one is for you. The trauma that ties everyone or everything together is trauma associated with the lost of the parent, specifically the father. Every major character has lost, abused by, or had an absent father. These consistent references to mirrors makes me think that the psychoanalytic theory from Lacan is playing a huge role in this whole thing. He is famous for claiming that our subjectivity is forged out of "the mirror stage" - think, particularly the references to "through the looking glass." Melancholia is also imagistically tied to mirrors.

10. Love this show. So well written. Here's to hoping that the writers settle before the shows run out.

That's all I got for now. Hasta!