"no day but today" | tuesday | december 13, 2005 | 8:38 am

ONE AT LAST. Done at last. Well, not completely done because I have grading to do this week, but my own coursework is finished. I turned in my seminar papers yesterday. The stress of the end of the quarter is abated. Thank goodness. I am starting to realize that the writing of papers is really anxious and distressing for me, and it doesn't seem to be getting any better or easier -- I probably should rethink my line of work. As I told my students, "I really don't like writing papers. I like turning in papers." Hah. I like the feeling of accomplishment, whether the paper is good or not. How masochistic is that?

(I'm not sure what's going on today. The universe must be a little freaky because I've just gotten two "wrong number" calls in the past half hour and it's not even thick into the morning yet.)

My first quarter of my PhD is at last complete. It's too bad that I have three, maybe four more to go. Drat all of this coursework! I have to do it. It's the only way I'll actually get to know some professors to work with down the line. Plus, I really need to be honing my question, my project, my issue -- whatever that might be? I guess I should start thinking about it in detail. The past three months have been all right, a lot (and I mean a lot) of up-and-downs. As you can see, my November was so overwhelming that I didn't even have a chance to write a thing for my site. Sad, really. I just need to find some way to balance out things, to take back some of my life from all of the things needing attention.

Don't get me wrong, I like school. I do. I have to or it would be unbearable. That's not to say that I don't grouse, complain, growl, guffaw, bitch, moan, groan, and freak out about school. That's exactly what being a grad student is all about, right? But I do think that this is the place for me right now. (Who knows in a year?) But school does tend to consume most of my time, energy, space, and mind. And then my heart and body are over -- here. I need to integrate better, or develop adjacent pursuits. I moved to Seattle because I wanted to pursue more than just my doctorate. I want to have a life, build a life, make a home, find a community, meet a partner, work on my writing, grow as a person. Maybe there just aren't enough hours in a day for me to do everything. Pity, eh?

"the narration crackles and pops with incendiary wit"

But, as the quarter comes to a close, the year comes to an end, and the future shimmers in the distance, it is the perfect time for reflection. Here goes. It'll be all in bits and pieces. Think of it as montage, as flotsam, as bricolage, as pastiche, as chunky stew. I really wish that I had had the time to keep things under control. I'm sure there are tales that I will not tell with enough detail or stories that I've forgotten in the mists of time. Ah well. I will do my best. The mother of all recaps is about to begin. As Bette Davis says, "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night."

"well take my hand we're gonna howl / out tonight"

I have always tended to play hard when I'm stressed out about school and such. Sometimes that leads to a wee bit of exhaustion. But as I said earlier, I want to try -- try being the operative word -- to not let school be the only thing going on with me. I'm not sure I'm doing a very good job. In the first couple of months here in Seattle, I used to go out pretty often. But, with the onset of a busy academic life and the realization that money, in fact, does not grow on the trees on campus, I had to cut back. I used to go to Neighbours on Thursday nights, which has now been replaced by going out to happy hour with the school gang to the College Inn Pub. Thursday nights are fun; they are our end of the week and the start of the weekend. What started out as a few beers and a couple games of pool became lots of beer and drinks and nachos and lots of pool. But I do miss going to Neighbours for 80s night (and I plan on going this week).

For the most part though, other than Thursday nights, I tend to be a home body (when I can actually find a bit of peace in my apartment). Tuesday nights are all about coming home from a long day at school and watching some TV -- specifically Gilmore Girls and Supernatural, which I am starting to like more and more (though the first season of creepy, paranormal, weird shows tend to pretty formulaic and get better in the second and third seasons, cf. X Files). I have been able to pop out every now and then. Over the past few months, I've been to a night of men's fashion (one of my friend Julia's grad peers in the fibers art department at UW held the first of three final project shows) . I have had dinner with friends from school. My friend Laura cum partner John invited me to their new pad (they moved up a floor in their building) for some lasagne, wine, conversation, and to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Flux Capacitor! It was a fun night, where I was introduced to the amazing-mesmerizing-slightly disturbing funness of Katamari Damacy, a PS2 game. (Please note that the King of All Cosmos on the website has his 'special package' draped over but in the game it's in full-on David Bowie in Labyrinth there!)

What else? My friend Melanie dragged me (willingly of course) to a couple of live music shows. We saw The Juliana Theory and a few other bands at the Paradox. We also saw Piebald and Hot Rod Circuit at El Corazon. I really liked the shows (even though they were weird because they were all-ages, but at least El Corazon had a separate bar area). I particularly liked Hot Rod Circuit; I even shook the lead singer's hand (who is shorter than me in real life, but looks so tall on stage -- it's strange). I hope to hit a few more shows at some point (since Seattle is a music town). Melanie and I, it turns out, have very similar tastes in music -- she being far more knowledgeable about it than me -- and tend to gravitate toward emo. Besides shows, I have gone out to places like the Madison Pub a couple of times. I have even gone to the Wild Rose, a lesbian bar in my neighborhood, for Friday night karaoke. I sang once, in a group, standing in the back; we sang Cher's "Turn Back Time." Oh, the humanity!

The only other thing I've done is a couple of Guerilla Queer Bar Seattle events. We had one in October and one in November. The December one is coming up soon. So far, the response has been pretty good. Hopefully, it'll continue to grow. Leave it to me to find something to start up and run in the midst of having too much to do already. But it's been fun. About half the people that go to GQBS are my friends from school (most of them are queer friendly) and the other half are people from the city. I'm hoping that the next few events will grow our group a bit as word spreads.

"how do you document real life / when real life is getting more / like fiction each day"

In a break with tradition, I did not compete, participate in National Novel Writing Month this year. It makes me sad to think about it, actually. I just did not have the time or the energy or the frame of mind to write 50,000 words in the month of November. I was writing thousands and thousands of other words for school. I signed up and everything. I started to troll the NaNo message board. I was hoping to meet some Seattle Nanos. But, alas, my 5th consecutive year was not meant to be. I had originally planned to retire after last year. Four years under my belt is a pretty neat feat. But since I was in a new city, I figured I'd Nano at least once here. Well, there's always next year.

"and one pasta with meatless balls"

I was a holiday orphan for Thanksgiving. It was a good weekend, though. Most people I knew were off doing family or partnery things. Fortunately, my friend Sydney invited me over to her place to have turkey day dinner with her, her partner David, and a handful of other orphans. My friends Cat, Rania, Su-ching, and her friend Edward sat down to a lovely, filling meal. I made my world-famous bruschetta to add to the table. Other people brought food. Sydney provided the turkey and the works including crab cakes made from Maryland crabs (since she's from Baltimore). Delicious. We all ate way too much, but it was yummy. We made the mistake of sitting down and watching Legally Blonde II. God it was an awful movie, though there were a couple of funny spots. Then I discovered that they had Katamari Damacy. That was it. We played that for a while. Then Rania, Su-Ching, and Edward left. We didn't know what else to do. So, we decided to get liquored up and play the Golden Girls Drinking Game. Sydney and David had a DVD of Season 2 episodes. The game is hysterical and quite fun. We'll have to have a reprise.

The rest of Thanksgiving weekend was spent hanging out with my friend Eric, who flew up to visit from San Francisco. Eric got in on Friday afternoon. We hung out, had dinner, and then went out for a few drinks at the Madison. He was treated to my upstairs neighbors being super loud and partying that night. Saturday, we hustled north in his rental car to Anacortes (pronounced a-na-COR-tes not a-na cor-TEZ) to catch the ferry over to the San Juan Islands to visit a friend of Eric's. It's about an hour-and-a-half drive north of Seattle. We started out a little late, got stuck in traffic, dodged around really slow drivers (our east-coastness was showing), and other minute shenanigans. The result was that we got to the ferry terminal, parked, jumped out of the car, and got to the ticket booth just as the ferry was leaving. The next one wasn't for two hours. So, we had a lovely lunch back in Anacortes at the Rock Fish Grill and Brewery. I had a lovely burger, which was quite tasty, and sampled the local brews, which were also quite tasty. After lunch, we walked around the historicy, main streety, shoppingy part of town. Then trundled back to the ferry to almost miss it again (because of their stupidity not ours).

Eric's friend's family lives on the first of the San Juan Islands, Lopez Island. Lopez Island is called the Friendliest Island or some such. It is a requirement, it seems, that you wave to everyone you see when you pass them. So, people are waving from their cars, from the street, from their front porches, from their houses. It's a little creepy (to this east coaster, city dweller). Lopez is mostly farm and residential; it's downtown is all of two streets and like a dozen buildings (though the locals are very excited that a Papa Murphy's pizza franchise has opened up). Our first stop was the local winery -- Lopez Island Vineyards -- to do a tasting. The wines were all right; the fruit wines they had were very good. After wine, we drove to Eric's friend's family's house. (Now, I must interject that this friend is a pseudo-girlfriend of his and we were originally going to just have lunch and see the island and go home. But, since we missed the ferry, we ended up just going to her family's house. It was a "meet the parents" moment that Eric did not want to do at all. His friend is very much more into him than vice versa. I was just along for the ride to cock block or be the excuse to leave or something.) People were nice. The house was beautiful, complete with holiday cottage out back that they rent out to tourists. Since Lopez is a "getaway," it means there's really nothing to do except sit at home, by a fire, and relax, it seems. We ended up looking at slides of Eric's friend's trip to Africa for two hours! Two hours! She's a botanical buyer or something. So it was two hours of flowers and rocks and more flowers. Then there was the requisite Papa Murphy's pizza for dinner. And then it was back to the ferry, "back to America" (as the locals say), waving all the way, and back to Seattle. Interesting trip, albeit socially awkward.

Sunday, we got up and had a very good (though a little pricey) breakfast at Coastal Kitchen (429 15th Avenue E). Then we hung out in the city. Then we hung out at home. Then after dinner, we went to R Place for drinks, where I got really really drunk on Long Islands. Eric took off on Monday morning, and my hungover self had to get to school work.

That was Thanksgiving.

"well, i'm thwarted by a metaphysic puzzle / and i'm sick of grading papers--that I know"

So, life has been mostly about school. It's all right, as I said above. I'm getting along. I'm probably getting along better than I think. But it's hard to see when you're in the thick of it. I liked my two classes this past quarter. They were challenging and hard in very different ways.

My ENGL537: Sexuality and National Belonging class was really challenging, but I got to read all sorts of things and talk about a lot of different ideas. I have come to the conclusion that I am "good" at theory, at lit crit, but I don't think I will ever be "great" at theory. My mind just doesn't work in that way. I will be a soft theorist, not a hard theorist. I will be a public intellectual, not a member of the elite academy. The kinds of jobs that go to people in theory are way out of my league. I think about writers and theorists that we've been reading and I don't see myself as one of them. No way. I think I may need to go back to a more literature-based program of study. I think I might be happier or at least more at ease. We'll see. I keep threatening to just become a medievalist (not that such a thing isn't respectable and difficult in its own ways).

I wrote my seminar paper for ENGL537 on James Baldwin's Another Country, his third novel, and applied theories from Elspeth Probyn's Outside Belongings, Ahmed and Stacey's Thinking Through the Skin, and Michael Warner's vision of queer world-making in order to think about the way Baldwin constructs and deploys desire.

The paper is entitled "'Have You Ever Wished You Were Queer?': Tracing Circuits of Desire in Baldwin’s Another Country" and here's an excerpt:

Another Country offers us an opportunity, albeit conflicted, to imagine, conceive of, and render a positive and possible queer(ed) domain, citizenship, subjectivity, and what Michael Warner calls a queer “world-making.” The text and characters of Another Country, imbricated with the personal, public, and political textures of Baldwin’s history and the history of the time, invites unsettling identity, invites unlinking and relinking and crosslinking affinities, and invites interconnectivity between selves and subjects. Baldwin argues in “Everybody’s Protest Novel” that individuals, identities cannot be fixed, proscribed, fossilized by time, nation, or ideology. He argues that an individual, as far as such a label can (or should) be made to cover a self is “something more...something resolutely indefinable, unpredictable. In overlooking, denying, evading his complexity...we are diminished and we persish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves” (29). Though Baldwin himself would quarrel with the post-identity politics use of the word “queer,” his novel can be read across the grain to conceive of the positioning of the body, the negotiation of the skin, and the ways we can interpret and theorize the text to find and encourage queerness. Calling upon separate but not necessarily disparate theoretical interventions--Elspeth Probyn’s work on queer belonging, Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey’s feminist theories of embodiment and “thinking through the skin,” and Michael Warner’s critique of normal and normativity--the bodies, the touches, the skins, and the relationships in Another Country allow us entrance into identities in nexus, subjectivities at the intersection of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation. It allows us a way shift away from “deep” readings of Baldwin, which attempt to categorize or unify even condemn his (and his fiction’s) world view, to “surface” readings, which hope to be particular (without particularizing) yet overlapping, scattered yet coalitional, and unfolding. It is a way to think about how Baldwin sketches and traces what Douglas Field in “Looking for Jimmy Baldwin” calls “complex circuits of desire” (458) and how his technology and economy of desire desires queerness.

There are larger bits of my paper at my academic site Queer View Mirror, where once again I've used a non-traditional space to compose and write my seminar paper. The passages on QVM are highly unpolished and disconnected, but they give you an idea of the trajectory I was tracking. The paper needed only be 10- to 12-pages. I like the shortness of the assignment (especially for a class that's only 10 weeks long), but it doesn't give me much room to build in everything I want to talk about. But it's done now and out of my hands.

My ENGL567: Theories and Practices of Composition class was mellow compared to my other seminar. ENGL567 served as an extension of the teacher orientation I attended at the end of summer. It's a pedagogy practicum and we read a lot of composition theory, wrote a bunch of short responses and reflections on our own teaching, and talked about what it was like to be in the classroom and to be teaching English 131. Even though I taught composition at the University of Maryland for eight years, I still learned a lot about teaching, about a different program, and about my own skills, issues, and practices. As part of my final work for ENGL567, I decided to put my short papers online: ENGL567 Short Paper Portfolio.

I have really liked most of the people I have met over the quarter in my classes, in my department, and via friends and faculty. This year's cohort seems to be pretty friendly, outgoing, and happy to get to know one another, particularly the new teachers. I have a bunch of neat colleagues and neat friends. Hopefully, we'll continue to see each other, hang out, go to happy hour every Thursday night at the College Inn, get together for food or grading parties or going dancing, and just maintaining our sense of community. Shout outs to: Andrew, Andy, Arnie, Cat, Caitlin, Christian, Crystal, Deborah, Emily, Jane, Jason, Jay, Justin, Melanie, Nadine, Pacheree, Rania, Sarah, Sydney, Su-ching, and others!

Of course, it's the end of the quarter and all I have left to do is grade. I really dislike the doldrums of grading. It just takes so much time and returns (most often) so little. But I've gone through a handful of my students' portfolios (they're being graded at the end of the quarter on completed, revised work) and so far they have been better than the work they've done in the past. That's a good thing. I'm still getting used to this whole numeric grading system. I really like letters. There's less slicing up of a grade. What's the difference between a 3.7 and a 3.8? It's going to be an interesting thing to learn and get used to. I have to have grades done by next Monday. So, it shouldn't take too long to get through a stack of twenty folders. That doesn't mean I'm not resistant and whiny about it. Fortunately, I don't have to make any substantive comments, which should speed things up.

Then I can look forward to a couple of weeks of (relative) peace. Then the next quarter begins on January 3. Back to the grindstone, folks. I am currently signed up for two theory-based seminars (yes, yes, don't hit me) that promise to include a bit more literature. I'm taking ENGL535A: Introduction to Postcolonial Studies and ENGL541: Posthuman Narratives: Technicity and Ethnicity, which has now been dubbed "the robot class." I'm taking the PoCo class because my director recommended it that I take it and I probably could use some formal exposure to post-colonial theory; supposedly we're going to be reading a novel or two but the current course description is lacking. The "Technicity and Ethnicity" class is with my would-be advisor, Tom Foster, a new hire in the department, and the course description looks very eclectic and interesting:

This course will be organized around a particular critical question: how can we articulate racial and ethnic formations, histories, or political and intellectual traditions with postmodern technoculture studies and its claims about the increasing technological mediation of embodiment in general within the contemporary media ecology? We will be interested both in understanding, critiquing, and redressing the relative lack of attention to questions of race within technoculture studies, while also considering the critical potential for work on race and ethnicity of the kinds of cultural changes associated with new media and communications technologies. The course will situate popular narratives and speculations about an emergent “posthuman” condition alongside postmodern critiques of humanist and liberal subjectivity. The readings for the course will be drawn from cyberpunk and post-cyberpunk science fiction, with a particular focus on interventions by writers of color, along with the responses of multicultural writers to new technologies and technocultural narratives. While the primary focus will be on American writers, we will include readings that open out onto global and post-colonial formations. Key critical texts for the course might include N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman; Paul Gilroy, Against Race; Lisa Nakamura, Cybertypes; and Troy Duster, Backdoor to Eugenics; along with essays by Donna Haraway, Stuart Hall, Harryette Mullen, Philip Brian Harper, Wendy Chun, Emily Apter, Alexander Weheliye, Hans Moravec, and Andy Clark. Fictional texts will most likely be chosen from the following list (please note we will not be reading all of these texts): Samuel R. Delany, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand; Octavia Butler, Dawn; Gwyneth Jones, White Queen; John Wright, The Golden Age; Geoff Ryman, Air; Bruce Sterling, Distraction; Ishmael Reed, Flight to Canada; Gerald Vizenor, Hotline Healers: An Almost Browne Novel; Guillermo Gomez-Pena, The New World Border and/or Dangerous Border-Crossers; Colson Whitehead, The Intuitionist; Ruth L. Ozeki, My Year of Meats; along with stories by Ted Chiang, Mary Soon Lee, Nalo Hopkinson, Nisi Shawl, Jonathan Lethem, Paul Di Filippo, Charles Stross, and Cory Doctorow. We will spend some time on visual culture, possibly including films like The Matrix and Greg Pak’s Robot Stories, graphic novels such as the Transmetropolitan series, and some examples of new media art by Alex Rivera and/or the Mongrel collective. We will probably also spend some time on music, using Paul D. Miller/DJ Spooky’s book (and CD) Rhythm Science.

Wow. That's all I can say. Maybe I'll get a PhD project out of the class. That would be fantastic.

"can't sleep in the city of neon and chrome"

Neighboraruckus! If there was an Unforgivable Curse that made your neighbors act like jackasses and wake you up at all hours of the night and give you no peace during the day to think (much less watch television), then someone's cursed me over and over and over and over again. Since the reports over the last few months about my neighbors, things have not gotten any better, really. My downstairs neighbor tortures and titillates me now and then with loud sex. But the real culprits are my upstairs neighbors, who chronically disturb and frustrate me. I thought things were going to be better when one of the guys upstairs moved out -- he was the loud one, the one that like to play music at full blast at all hours -- but it only removed the most obvious problem. Alas, the situation did not go away completely. Damnit. That's the peril of living beneath a group of young men who spend most of their leisure time smoking, drinking, cavorting, and hanging out with other young adults who do exactly the same thing. (I am turning into a crotchety old man. I've said this before.) I have done my best in the past to head up there and let them know when they're bothering me (usually when they're cardboard box surfing or blasting anything through their massive subwoofer) and they quit. But these encounters have not taught them, in the Pavlovian sense, that perhaps they should think before being rude. Inconsideration due to ignorance is no excuse.

Most recently, during this past weekend of paper writing hell, they had a party that lasted well into the night. Not only did they not warn me (or invite me), they got louder as the night progressed. I actually went to bed around 10 PM, turned on my little fan (for white noise) to high, buried myself in my blankets, and managed to doze off. They woke me up a couple of times. But at 1:30 AM, the dreaded karaoke started. Off-key singing, AMPLIFIED, at the top of their lungs is not fun. I went upstairs and it took me nearly twenty minutes to get them to come to the door (since they couldn't hear me knocking or ringing the bell). Mind you, I have no idea what they were singing but someone was shouting "I HAVE DRUGS AND I'M GOING TO SMOKE IT WHEN I GET HOME!" over and over again to the music. That's smart. Finally, when I get the door to open, I talked to the neighbors and asked them to keep it down. Their first response was, "You have to work tomorrow?" I said, "Yes, in fact, I do. School waits for no one." But, what the hell? Whether I have to work on Saturday or not, being offensively loud at any time is not acceptable. I asked them to cool it. They hedged. HEDGED. It was the first time they intimated that they weren't going to stop (because, ostensibly, they were having too much fun and it was the weekend and a single sleepy guy can't stop a majority from having fun). So, I responded, "Look, you do what you gotta do. I'll do what I gotta do. I can only ask you to keep it down." And I left. Well, they turned it down from 11 to 10. And half an hour later, at around 2:15 AM, I called the landlords and left them an official complaint. Then I managed to fall asleep out of sheer exhaustion.

Now, I must say that I have been resisting calling the landlords because they are very quick to overreact. Very quick. And I knew that calling them would precipitate a chain of events that I wasn't really ready for. (Calling the police does no good, really, and tends to draw resources away from more important things, I think.) So, I get a call the next day from my landlords, who leave me a message. And they say that the neighbors have been warned and told that if they keep it up they'll be given notice to leave. So, zero to scary in less than sixty seconds. I don't want anyone to be kicked out. I just want respect. I just want understanding. But, hopefully, that will cool things down. I hate calling in "the man." Of course, the never next night, the apartment was quiet. I had finished working on my paper. I went to bed. But at 3 AM, the guy whose room is right above me comes home with some people and proceeds to listen to weird wailing guitar music. Of course, it wakes me up. I was not pleased. I didn't call the landlords, though. I could have. But I heard them smoking on their balcony and just called up for him to turn it off, which he did. Why, why, why? I'm cursed.

"a lovable, droll geek"

One thing that I hope to work on during my break between quarters is seeing if I can find the gaming community in Seattle. Like San Francisco, Seattle does not seem to have a very apparent role-playing game scene. I don't even know if there's a gaming store in the city. But I'd like to get a group together and play Tellings again. I very much miss gaming. It's a favorite hobby. I also have to finish the final, final revisions to the rulebook. All in good time. In the meantime, I've been playing a lot of WoW. A lot. But it's fun and diverting and lets me get my mind off of stress, school, crappy neighbors, and such.

"it's not that kind of movie, honey"

So far, the late year movie season has been quite fun and promising. I rarely have time to go to the movies (or rarely have anyone to go to the movies with -- since I hate going to the movies alone). The first movie I ever watched in the theatres here in Seattle was March of the Penguins. Then months went by.

But since then, I've seen Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was rushed but very fun. Everyone's growing up so fast! They're all kind of cute. Of course, Viktor Krum (Stanislav Ianevski) is still my favorite -- way hot. (Everyone seems to be for Cedric, who was cute, but I like them a little rougher-looking.) I was very much entertained by the film, and it was visually beautiful. (I saw it twice, actually.) Again, it was packed with plot and the tournament that there was little room for much else; the extended version might play out the drama between Harry and Ron and Hermione a little more. My favorite line is still: "Boys!" All those teenage emotions and hormones and hetero- and homo-erotics flying all over the place. Too cute. The death of Cedric hit me much harder in the film than it did int he book; I think simply because the film actually lets you see him and "interact" with him more. The end with Voldemorte and returning from the maze was powerful. It leads me to wonder: first, if they'll actually finish out the series with all of the young actors getting older, and second, whether the fifth movie will be too hard to do since it is so dark, so angsty, so traumatic that it might not make for an appropriate "kids" film. Who knows? I hope they do. I need to keep having my Harry Potter fix.

The second movie I saw was RENT. I went with some school friends, one of which -- Jason -- is a real afficionado. I liked the film. I was entertained. I think everyone did a good job. But there was something weird about it. I saw the Broadway show a few years ago, and I think the film captured the spirit of the show. But there's something about how a rock opera translates to the screen that is weird. I think it was the cutting from song to song without much ligature, without much transition (like it would happen in a stage show) that seemed too artificial. Musicals are artificial to begin with, but the movie just seemed too choppy. They tried to frame the movie with the opening number "on a stage" and then with Mark's documentary. They should've done more of that. I still liked it and will probably go see it again. I particularly liked the numbers "La Vie Boheme" and "Take Me or Leave Me" and "Tango: Maureen" and Jesse L. Martin's performance in general. I have been listening to the soundtrack for days now. (In fact, if you haven't noticed, my recap of the past months is subtitled with song lyrics.)

I am looking forward to going to see Ang Lee's new film Brokeback Mountain, which looks really good and really hot. Who can say no to Heath Ledger-on-Jake Gyllenhaal action? The previews make me all sad and gushy. My friend Tyler, who got to see it already (the bastard), says it's really amazing, really beautiful, and tasteful. He says the chemistry of the cast is spot on. I'm so excited. Plus, I really like Anne Hathaway and Michelle Williams. (All people the gays love to love.) Hopefully, I'll get to see Brokeback Mountain this weekend. I also want to go see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which will probably be so-so (plus it's got one of the infamous Edmunds in literature that I can never live down). I also want to see Aeon Flux, which is probably just all eye candy and that's fine by me. I also want to see The Producers -- yay, another musical! I love the end of the year as studios try to cram in some good films for the Oscars race. I'm sure there are movies that I need to catch up on that are now out on DVD. Maybe I'll actually get a chance to see them.

"christmas bells are ringing / somewhere else / not here"

That's that. I think that's most of it. Any pertinent details have either been forgotten or omitted to protect the guilty (and the innocent). All I have now is to get through this last week. I have training to go to on Wednesday and Friday (blah) because I'm teaching my class in a CIC (Computer Integrated Classroom) next quarter. It'll probably be really boring, but the experience is good for my CV. I also have to finish grading. Then, I am free for sure. At least for two weeks.

I am not going back East for the holidays. A) I dislike the airline industry so much that I avoid flying whenever possible. B) I dislike flying even moreso during the holiday season. C) I am poor, poor, poor. So, I figure I should spend at least one holiday season and New Year's here in Seattle. I really miss folks back East, particularly my father and my sister. But I'll manage. I've been invited to a couple of houses for holiday stuff (the benefit of being a holiday orphan). So, that'll be fun and nice. Later this week, I'm going to see my friend Sydney perform in a burlesque show, then make my return to Neighbours, and hold the third Guerilla Queer Bar Seattle on Friday night. Even without school, I'm busy, busy, busy.

Hope everyone has a great holidays! Best wishes!

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"i wish i could quit you" | saturday | december 17, 2005 | 4:24 pm

NG LEE IS THE BEST. The bomb. The shit. The whole sandwich and a bag of chips. He really is one of my favorite directors (at least when it comes to dramas). He has a certain pace, patience, grace that I really enjoy in his films. (Granted, I have not seen Hulk, but I gather it is a departure from his usual films.) If you haven't guessed by now, I just got back from seeing Brokeback Mountain. My friend Jason from school and I went to see it. The theatre was packed. We sat in the second-to-front row. But it was all right. My god, what an experience. Both of us knew we would be bawling our eyes out by the end of the movie. It's beautiful. Very sad. Touching, nostalgic, brooding, a little violent, and awkward. But the pieces add up without having to sum up (as Homi Bhabha once argued). I like that the film is imperfect, yearning, and a little bit broken like its characters. I haven't read the Annie Proulx short story. I'll have to track it down. I think both Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal carry their characters well and there is definitely chemistry there; Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway are also very good (plus you get to see them in a whole different way than their Dawson's Creek or Princess Diaries days). Whoa. Of course, now I'm completely depressed and weepy and bemoaning my own lovelorn state. I have more to say about the film, but I'll let people get a chance to watch it first. Go see it. In droves. The movie, like I said, isn't perfect -- nor is the picture it paints of queerness -- but it's worth the last 45 minutes and the very last shot of the film. Beautiful. Totally Ang Lee. I love it.

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"happy birthday to you" | wednesday | december 21, 2005 | 11:00 am

APPY BIRTHDAY TO MY SISTER, ALENDA. I hope the day treats her well and she gets lots of fun presents. I'm sorry I'm not back east to celebrate it with her and to see her for the holidays. But my thoughts and love are always there in spirit.

Happy winter solstice or yule, too!

"winter cleaning" | thursday | december 22, 2005 | 8:35 am

O MUCH FOR SLEEPING IN. No matter what time I go to bed, I always somehow wake up somewhere between 6:45 AM and 7:30 AM. My internal chronometer is pretty assiduous, which is a good thing, I think. But it does make it difficult to actually sleep the morning away when I want to. I usually can turn over and roll back into sleep, but not for very long. I am just a morning person. As soon as it gets light out, which for a Seattle winter means a dully grey versus black grey, my body wants up. I figure since there isn't much daylight these days (though now that the solstice has passed and days are getting longer) I might as well be up to enjoy as much of it as possible. (Hell, today's sunrise was 7:55 AM and sunset will be 4:20 PM.) I don't mind really.

I have been enjoying my first week off from school. I know that I have to get back into the swing of things come next week. (Yet another reason not to totally screw up my sleep cycle. The winter quarter isn't that far off.) The past week has been seeing people before they took off for whatever corner of the world they were headed for the holidays. For myself, Seattle is my corner.

Last week was finals week for UW. Fortunately, I did not have any finals. I finished my papers for my classes relatively early and turned them in at the start of the week (to get them out of my hands and my life). Monday morning was spent hanging out in my office for my last hours of the quarter waiting for my students to turn in their final portfolios. All of them came. All of them turned in their work. Then I tried to go to a "grading party" with some friends, but that did not last long.

Tuesday of last week was dedicated to the EWP's grade norming session, where all of the new TAs brought 3 sample portfolios and we sat in a big computer lab and graded sets of papers and logged them in a database to see what the grade distributions were like. What I was confirmed for me was that I am a pretty hard grader. There were portfolios where my grade was very close to other people's grades. But there were portfolios where my grades were significantly different. For example, someone gave a set of papers a 3.7 (A-) and I gave them a 2.6 (B-) and the tie-breaker gave them a 3.3 (B+). Letter grades are so much easier since there aren't many, many slivers of possible grades. I mean a B- is not a bad grade, but a 2.6 seems horribly low. I can only see the numeric system encouraging grade inflation. So, about four hours was spent to grading. Each portfolio needed to be graded twice, which means each of us had to grade about six to get the whole kit-and-kaboodle done. I managed to grade 11 and 2 tie-breakers. Crazy. But I've had a lot of practice.

Tuesday night, I went over to my friend Deborah's apartment (she lives on the other side of Capitol Hill in a fancy loft space with fantastic windows). She was having a little holiday gathering--baking cookies, watching Elf, and drinking glugg, a mulled wine recipe from Sweden. It was very low key. A handful of people came over. I made some holiday sangria. Cookies were eaten. Drinks were imbibed. Elf was viewed. I had fun. Then I was very, very sleepy (as wine tends to do to me) and walked home in the fog.

The rest of the week would have been spent away from school, but alas, I had training (yes, training) to attend on Wednesday and Friday afternoons. I'm teaching 131 next quarter in a Computer Integrated Classroom (CIC). So, the handful of us in CIC needed to be oriented and shown how to use the rooms. The trainings were all right and it will be interesting to work in the computer classrooms. It's also good for my CV. Fortunately, CIC is arranged so that one day of the week you're using computers and the other day of the week is in a traditional seminar room. I do not like teaching solely in a computer classroom. So, that's a good thing. Hopefully, it'll be a good class. But now I have a ton of stuff to do to get ready to teach in CIC. That's for next week.

Most of the end of the week should have been dedicated to grading, but I goofed off a lot instead. I've been playing a lot of WoW. I even played a little of the new Dungeons & Dragon's Online stress test to see what the game was like; I'm not sure I like DDO, but I will wait to pass final judgement once I have seen the release version. Thursday night, I met up with my friends Pacheree and Arnie and went to dinner at the Elysian Brewing Co. Pub (1221 E Pike St.) in Capitol Hill. We had some good beer and some very tasty fish and chips. Afterwards, we walked up the street to Chop Suey (1325 E. Madison), a little club and live-music venue often populated by hipster gay men, to see a holiday burlesque show called a "Twirly Burly Christmas" put on by the troupe BurlyQ. Our friend Sydney, AKA Ginger Snaps, was performing in the show as a special guest. We met up with other people like our friends Emily C., Deborah, Cat, David, and Jason. It was my first burlesque show ever, and it was totally fun. The numbers were very funny and sexy and whimsical. Of course, there was much drinking and frivolity. After the show, some of us walked down to Neighbours for some dancing of our own; it was 80s night after all. I was supposed to meet up with some other friends from school (but they never showed up). Fortunately, I ran into my club buddies, whom chastised me for disappearing. It was good to see Chris and Derek and folks. Oh, what a night! (But, no juicy details, though).

Friday was relatively uneventful, though I did manage to finish grading and turn my grades in. I went to part two of my CIC training (a little hungover). Then Friday night was the third Guerilla Queer Bar Seattle at Fado Irish Pub (801 1st Avenue, Pioneer Square). I got down there a little too early, stood around watching all the fraternity and sorority and financial banker types staring at me, and nursed a Guinness till others showed up. (Though, the bartenders were really nice to me, since I clearly did not look like I was part of the usual crowd.) Alas, GQBS was really, really small this month. Only a total of seven people showed up -- all of them my friends. But we had fun nonetheless. We cornered a table. Our server was an awesome woman. We watched the frater-soro-banker types going crazy. It was a total meat market. One of the highlights of the evening was a group of "sorostitute" women (who my friend Andrew was convinced were on E or something) who were all clinging on one another, making out with each other (to the lascivious delight of the men around them), and then making out with the guys nearby. It went too far when one of the girls, who must have been 21 or 22, started making out with "Mr. Miyagi," an Asian gentleman probably in his sixties. It was crazy. I think they were eventually shooed out for being too drunk. The rest of the night was not as exciting after they left. Even the cover band playing that night wasn't that good. But it was still fun. I got to hang out with Andrew, Laura, her friend Megan, Calla, Son, and Christine (who stayed for like a split-second). There was much laughing, chatting up the server, and of course, drinking.

Saturday continued the post-quarter romp. As per my previous post, I went to see Brokeback Mountain on Saturday with my friend Jason. It was moving, haunting, beautiful, and painful all at the same time. I am still going to withhold my thoughts till I get to see it again. I think I am ready to see it again. Maybe tomorrow night. (I know, I'm a masochist when it comes to melodramas about queer cowboys.) Saturday night, a friend of mine from Neighbours invited me out to his housewarming; he and a friend just moved up the street from my place. I invited Andrew to come with. We started the evening with a few drinks at my house and then walked up to Chris H.'s apartment. When we got there, people were already well into their cups. It was a cool gathering of people. There were all types, a few on the geeky side (which is a good thing). Then the party got too loud and the landlord (one that clearly cares about the building) shut it down. We all moved to the nearby Canterbury. More drinks were had. By closing time, I too was well into my cups. Andrew, myself, and two women (one of which Andrew befriended) came back to my place for a nightcap. Eventually, around 3 AM, I was beat and sent them home. Andrew was a litte miffed at me for calling the night over, but he got over it.

Sunday was spent being totally quiet and chill and restful.

Monday was pretty quiet, too. In fact, now that I don't have a ton of work to do and I'm not stressed out of my mind, my neighbors have been very quiet. Ironic, huh? I hope it stays this way for the rest of my lease. I knock on wood. Monday night, Jason and I went out to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The night before, I read the book to refresh my memory. I forgot how short it was and how much of a children's story it is. But still fun (albeit christological). I really liked the film. It was very entertaining. I thought it was pretty true to the book. I liked the characters, the animals, the witch, and the end battle was very cool. The CGI was really well done (except for the one part where they used green screen and it looked terrible). The kid who plays Peter (William Moseley) will be very cute when he gets older. Edmund (Skandar Keynes) was cute, too, but I always have issues with him since I'm named similarly and he's such a snotty jerk (which caused me frustration when I was younger). Of course, in order to not be such a perv, I really liked Mr. Tumnus (James McAvoy), who's very cute. (I guess it's kind of pervy to like a faun.) And Oreius the centaur isn't so bad either. It was a fun movie (not Lord of the Rings, mind you, as so many people have been trying to make the comparison).

Tuesday was quiet as well. Then, Tuesday night, I took the #43 to the #66 bus to get to my friend Andrew's place in Roosevelt, which is east of Green Lake. I hadn't been to his house yet, plus he wanted to take me out to dinner for the holidays before he left the area to see his family. It was a very wet day. I made it to his house, which is really nice. I wish I lived in a little detached house (except not so far out in the Seattle burbs). It was nice and quiet. We sat, drank wine, and talked about the quarter, about break, and about next quarter. Then we walked down to Pies and Pints (1215 NE 65th Street) for dinner. We had yummy meat pies and beer. It was pretty good, though the pies are a little small for the price. We got to chatting with the bartender, the server, even the cook. We played pool, we ate, we drank, and had a lot of fun. Andrew and I get into all sorts of adventures together. We actually ended up closing the bar and staying with the staff after hours hanging out and drinking and goofing off. It was a good, good night. Andrew even put me in a cab to get me safely home.

Wednesday was more of the same. I probably should start doing something useful with my time. Though I get up early, I don't do much. I just hang out at home, play on the computer, and otherwise do mindless things. But I can worry about school stuff next week, right? Wednesday night, last night, Jason and I went out to the movies again -- third time in a week -- to see Aeon Flux, which was pretty much brain candy and fluff. It was all right. Stylish, with a couple of good sequences. Plus, it's got Jonny Lee Miller, who isn't aging as beautifully as he could. Maybe it's just the character. It was fun.

Now it's the weekend again, a holiday weekend at that. This holiday orphan will be going over to a couple of friends' houses for dinners and such. It'll be nice, relaxed, and hopefully fun and warm. I look forward to eating good food and getting to know some of my Seattle friends a bit more. Tonight, Thursday night, is of course a Neighbours night -- though it's raining cats and dogs out right now -- so I'll probably venture out on the town on my own. Maybe I'll run into some people I know or maybe I'll run into some people who want to get to know me. It's time for more adventures!

What do you think?

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