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Yes, that last post means that I have decided to go for it. Turns out the tuition reimbursement program at my place of work ain't too shoddy. In fact, it's just enough to limit me to a sane number of classes per semester, so even if I want to exhaust myself to make serious headway, I can't! Of course, I get ahead of myself: They've got to let me in the door first.
For some reason I get all paralyzed when I read things like this:
Write about a book or film that has provided you with a new way of thinking. Describe how this work has influenced the way you see yourself, others or society.
Guidelines as broad as this inspire a serious case of option paralysis. It's like going to Shopsin's (PDF) and looking at all the combinations of yummy goodness, hundreds and hundreds of possibilities, and just as you've scanned them all and think you've finally narrowed it down to half a dozen things, you flip the menu over and find...LUNCH!
In this case the films would probably be breakfast, and the books, lunch. I can't explain why. For some reason I associate watching movies with moles in the hole and fluffernutter french toast and raspberry mac-n-cheese pancakes with a side of andouille sausage. Books are much more bacon burger deluxe, more reuben on rye, more Waldorf salad.
There are a lot of reasons I don’t like the culture of American football. I don't like the zealotry. I don't like its relegation of women to cheerleader status. I don't like its hypocrisy (good god, it's Janet Jackson's breast -- hide the children! good god, son, it's the commercial with the mud-wrestling bikini chicks! now those are real women!). I don't like its rampant homophobia. I don't like its hijacking of God and country, as in "God is football," and "football is patriotism." I don't like its commandeering of horrible, cataclysmic events (see 9/11, see Katrina) as a vehicle for fanning its fans' passions. I don't like its position in education, the way it so often relegates learning in high school and college to the backseat. And I especially don't like its potent powers of zombification: Since football season started, I haven't been to the gym once without seeing a guy, walking from one apparatus to another, stopped dead in his tracks by game highlights playing on the TV, as if some alien spaceship has trained its beam of light on him and zapped his brain, rendering him helpless. And the guy stands there, eyes glazed, mouth open, practically drooling, watching guys with no necks rehash highlights he no doubt watched already, live, over the weekend, but which he is incapable of turning away from.
Pathetic, I think. What a spectacular waste of brain capacity. And yet…
There are times when I am extremely conflicted about football, because I know what it means to so many people. For many players, it's their one ticket on the express train away from Povertyland, USA. For so many towns (so many families, even), it's the one positive thing they have to rally around. For so many strangers, it's one of the few things to bind them to their neighbors. And let's be frank: Come playoffs and the Super Bowl, it's a damn good excuse to have a blowout party.
I get all that. And so as much as I don't like football, I can't condemn it wholly. Typically I just don't bother watching it, or reading about it, or caring about it. When I do watch I tend to enjoy not so much the play itself, but individual players' occasional moments of honest-to-goodness greatness (not to mention so many of the players' fantastically cartoonish names). And every now and then I'll read something that does make me feel better about the game, despite its many flaws, its posturing, its sanctimoniousness.
The thing that inspired this little rant was actually this article from this past weekend's New York Times Magazine, "The Ballad of Big Mike." It's about a kid who had been abandoned, homeless, unable to read, unable to even comprehend the world around him, and yet who had physical gifts that made him destined to play in the NFL. And it's about the family who took it upon themselves to lift him out of what would have been a destitute existence. And yes, they were born-agains on a mission, and yes, they and their ilk are homophobic as all hell, and yes, if I overheard these people's conversations at a football game I would probably be very, very freaked out. But I can't begrudge them their good deeds, even if I don't agree with the agent behind their benevolence. This family helped change a doomed kid's life. And so did football. In fact, with articles like these (it's a stirring, exciting, heartbreaking and heartwarming article -- do be sure to read it), the kid is already on his way to becoming football legend.
One might say that in terms of readers (and writers), the world can be divided into two kinds of people: those who like (not to mention are capable of) reading grammar and usage books cover to cover, and those who don't. Most people, one can assume, fall into the latter category. If that were not the case, you'd see a lot more copies of Hodges' Harbrace Handbook and The Elements of Style
The obvious reasons for this are that (1) most people don't care enough about the finer points of usage to bother reading an entire book on the subject, and (2) many such books are so heavy and dry that any joy at finding wit within their pages, if it (the wit) exists at all, is soon quashed by the exhaustion that comes from just trying to slog through the damn things.
There are exceptions to the "too dense to stomach" rule. I didn't read Eats, Shoots & Leaves, for all the reasons stated in this New Yorker review*, which declared, "'Eats, Shoots & Leaves' is really a 'decline of print culture' book disguised as a style manual (poorly disguised)." And yet Eats appealed to a fairly large subset of the American book-reading population -- if we are to take the NYer's word, the segment who, like the author, Lynn Truss, fall into this camp: "They are like people who lose control when they hear a cell phone ring in a public place: they just need to vent. Truss is their Jeremiah. They don’t care where her commas are, because her heart is in the right place." There are enough of these people to have made Eats a best seller, even though, as the NYer points out, "Truss needed a copy editor or her copy editor needed a copy editor."
The hyperpopular Eats, then, ends up being a somewhat shoddy example of how to get people more interested in grammar (that is, in good grammar). But there are superior usage books, packaged in quite palatable form, on the market. Three I've long had on my reference shelf: Lapsing Into a Comma
This past year I added another, The Deluxe Transitive Vampire
Vampire was originally published in 1984 and revised in 1993, so obviously I'm late in discovering its syntactical delights. It's got the clear explanations and the droll humor of the others. But where it distinguishes itself is in its voice and presentation.
Vampire is a grammar book with a wickedly libidinous sensibility, populated with dark, lusty characters, Russian and Victorian, French and Transylvanian, all of whom you might expect to run into at a candlelit picnic in a graveyard adjacent to an enchanted forest, an affair presided over by Vincent Price and immortalized in ink by Edward Gorey. It holds the reader's attention not just in display (it abounds with antique etchings) but with censorious little asides that dare the reader to turn away:
"Singular pronouns take singular verbs. And what might these pronouns be? And must you go riffling off, losing your place here and forgetting what you're after and ending up in a field of cows?"
The sentences Gordon spins out and lines up to illustrate her points are lush and wicked. She describes linking verbs as "copulative," for instance -- and later, as "erotic":
And here they are, caught in the act of copulating in various positions:
I am willing and I'll be ready in a while.
She sounded eager, but he couldn't be sure.
Here she is demonstrating that not all -ly words are adverbs:
When dressed in his most uppity drag, the transvestite vampire appeared a stately damsel all tricked out for tea.
To demonstrate a pronoun in the possessive case, she offers:
They trampled on my nightie, those shortsighted mastodons.
And in explaining a confounding noun that's plural in form yet singular (or is it?) in meaning:
The shade of sadness we call the blues can take a singular or plural verb, since anyone who has them can't be bothered to look it up, or to be consistent about whether it is -- or they are -- in pieces or in a solid hopeless mass.
The blues is hard to lose.
The blues have tracked me down in this upbeat part of town.
Part of the dullness of reading grammar books is their mind-numbing repetition. Not so Gordon's, thanks to its refreshingly inventive explications. Gordon can illustrate a single concept using fifteen sentences in a row, but instead of putting the reader to sleep, they manage to bewitch, bother and bewilder (in a good way), until a person can't help but finally understand the role of, say, the subjunctive complement.
In the end, rather than taking us back to the tedium of childhood grammar school, Gordon immerses us in a world of nefariousness and whimsy -- all in the service of appositives and gerunds, past and future perfect tenses, splices and run-ons. And it's a world the reader will be loath (not loathe) to leave when the final page is turned.
*I'd recommend reading the entire New Yorker article, by the way. It begins as a review but evolves into a beautiful meditation on the mechanics versus the art of writing.
I was contemplating my box of OJ this morning because I'd already done my work and didn't have anything better to do. (O.K, well, yes, I could have read the newspaper or started rereading the style manual or wiped the dust off my Hula-Fabulous Betty Boop Bobble Head, but honestly, it was way too early for that.)
This was a mini box -- a 6-ouncer. A carton that in its mini-ness brought me back to the elementary-school days of Capri Sun and juiceboxes and tiny plastic straws with an aluminum-piercing pointy end. I tried opening the box from one side, pulling back the flaps where it said "open." But it did that annoying thing where only part of the cardboard paper comes up, which meant that to get any further would have required much plying with fingernails and most likely much spillage of sticky orange substance all over keyboard as well.
Thankfully, on these boxes there's also the delightful Straw Hole! That's the box's enthusiasm. The people who manufacture the box obviously know how dang hard it is to open these boxes the intuitive peely way, and so they minimize the sidesaddle "open" with faint italic type and a tiny white arrow and instead play up the Straw Hole! in bright red type with a giant swooshing arrow that points to said hole. I only lament that the juice doesn't also come with a straw like the one drawn on the box to demonstrate the proper straw insertion point, a straw that is the height of jauntiness with its red and white candy cane stripes.
Jaunty juice. Now that's the sort of thing to make a gal pleased (or at least less perturbed) about going to work way too early.
Another SF highlight was running into the players of Silent Theatre (silenttheatre.com), who had parked their "Pandora's Bus" in front of Amoeba and were wandering around Haight Street handing out fliers for their show. We spotted these characters dressed all in black-and-white Jazz Age attire, with full stage makeup, from the other side of the street and just had to cross over to find out what the deal was.
They let us take their picture and gave us their fliers. That night they were putting on "Lulu," a stage version of the silent movie "Pandora's Box," which starred the dark beauty Louise Brooks. So right then and there, I got on the cell phone and called my pal Joe, and we changed our original drinks/dinner plans because how could we not go see these guys, right?
Now, in less than a month, the show is headed Philly's way. So anyone from Philadelphia or with friends in Philadelphia who happens to read this blog: Snap up those tickets. This was one of the most ingenious, original live shows I've seen in a while. And the players are workin' hard -- they've already driven across the country at least once in their rickety bus.
P.S. That same day on the Haight, we ran into this character guarding the door to a hair salon. He wasn't a member of Silent Theatre, but he certainly looked as if he could have been.
I went to a presentation at the New School today to hear about its adult bachelor's program. As I have been with most things when it comes to maybe going back to school, I was pretty ambivalent going in. In fact, on the way, the cute guy I took with me to hold my hand (and keep me from blowing the whole thing off and going to get pizza instead) said, "Sooooo, are you excited?" To which I replied: "Not really. I'm pretty ambivalent." (See?)
But then a funny thing happened. The kind, well-spoken presenter-guy started talking, and I did get excited. He began with a brief history on the principles on which the New School was founded, and went on to describe the degrees offered, the concentrations of study, the classroom environment, and the kind of person who would make a good New School student. And everything started to click.
Do I agree that the best education comes not from the transfer of knowledge alone, but from mentoring, intensive discussion and hands-on work? Check.
Am I a mature, independent learner with the ability to make my own educational choices? Double check.
Am I turned on by the various courses of study offered: democracy and cultural pluralism, the writing & democracy program, music, art, language, dance? Check, check, check.
Am I interested in earning a degree that does not require me to go back and relearn math? SIGN ME UP!
I flipped through the course catalog and found all sorts of things to sink my brain into -- essay writing, cultural reporting, a graphic novel workshop, "shakespeare, history and poetry," "guillotine to guantanamo: a history of human rights," "privacy and surveillance," "the morality of war and nonviolence," "the fairy tale and literature."
Even better, next to each course was listed a very affordable-looking price: $550, for the most part. I could go back to school without going into debt! At the end of the presentation I made an appointment to meet with an admissions counselor right away. And I had every intention of going for it this time.
But that was before I read the fine print.
When I got home I looked at the course catalog more carefully, and in scanning the contents, I found at the bottom the crucial section on "interpreting the course description." I flipped to it, and lo! There it was: the dreaded asterisk, to the right of the dollar amount. I scrolled down to the footnote, which explained, "If you are taking a course for credit, you do not pay this fee. General credit tuition is $870 per credit."
That's the school's italics there, not mine. But trust me, I feel those italics. They're not kidding: $870 per credit requires some emphasis. It's nowhere near $550 per class. It's also enough to take my fiery ball of excitement and splash cold water all over it. Pffffft.
Of course, for a real-for-sure university education, ending with a real-for-sure university diploma, what did I expect, right? To earn that piece of paper like every other student shuffling through the university system, I have to do just like everyone else: not only earn it, but pay for it, too.
So now I take the question to all of you: Is it worth it?
One could argue that I'm at a point in my life where I don't need it. I could just as easily pay the $550 and take whatever classes I want for no credit. I'll get the same education, for much less money, and the only difference at the end of the day is that I won't be able to put "graduated" on my résumé.
Then again, knowing that I'm getting the same education as everyone else, and that at the end of the day I won't get the credit for it -- that kind of peeves me off, too. Grrr.
What would you do?
I was walking around Telegraph Hill and found this funny. "Teacup Poodles OK"? I beg to differ.
This morning as I sat lazily checking e-mail and such, I decided to put my 22 GB's of music on shuffle, just to see what would happen. So I'm bouncing along to Chopin and then Sufjan and Marvin Gaye and Imogen Heap and some 50's group I didn't bother to check the name of, when the shuffle landed on Tchaikovsky -- a piece I hadn't heard in a long time, one I couldn't even identify at once. I checked, and it was Nocturne (Op. 19 No. 4).
I stopped everything else I was doing to listen to it play. It's a languorous adagio, full of fluid, yearning strings, with delicate horns and an airy, twittering flute toward the end. I wanted to remember it and be sure to play it again later, so I decided to give it a rating. And that's when I felt it: the hesitation. Was it guilt? Certainly a feeling of unworthiness. It struck me as utterly ridiculous that here I was, eating oatmeal, in my PJ's, no less, having the nerve to bestow a rating on Tchaikovsky.
TCHAIKOVSKY, people!
Who am I to judge one of the great masters of classical music? It suddenly seemed very, very wrong that iTunes had given me this power, that with the click of a mouse, I could decide whether Nocturne (Op. 19 No. 4) was worthy of the ultimate, the five-star rating, or whether it merited only a four.
And yet, one must soldier on. So my thinking went like this: It was no Serenade for Strings in C Major (Op. 48), which calls to mind Balanchine and immediately makes me want to extend my one arm into the air and then flick my hand into a slow, arcing port de bras -- an instant five stars.
On a first listen, no, this Nocturne certainly wasn't that. But after listening a second time, closing my eyes and letting the music soak into my limbs, I did find myself swirling into an improvisation of sorts, stepping onto one foot and, holding onto the pole in my apartment for balance, indulging in a deep fondue (that's the bending of the leg, not the gooey cheese pot). All right then. So it did make me yearn to have a partner, not a pole -- and to have my old body back. Perhaps better than four stars, then. Yeah. Five it is.
A friend sent me a smoke signal the other day: "great blog, no words. bad typepad?"
The sign of a good friend: She gives you the benefit of the doubt and blames the technology first.
I initially decoded her message as a gentle non-prodding prodding: "I see you haven't written in a while. This is me hinting that you should get off your ass, while shrewdly suggesting that I could be off base, that in fact the root of your problem is not slothfulness or ennui but a failure of your blogging tool."
As if. That was my wild imagination doing the translation. Because she then wrote to clarify (again giving me the perfect out -- it's not you, it's me!): "actually, i'm not getting *any* text on your blog, which is weird. just being ms pesky IT person, i guess. mebbe it's just me."
No, in this case, the blame all rests here. Not only have I not been writing, but I also failed to set my configuration to protect against my inconsistency and my site consequently going "poof!" Or, to be clearer: I had set my configuration to show only the "last 7 days" of posts, optimistically thinking that this time around, I would write frequently enough for that not to be an issue. And that meant that as soon as the inevitable failure to post within 7 days did occur, the blog entered the "no words" state. (In other words, if you thought the blog was useless before, get a load of the way it looked the past few days. Eesh.)
Let this be a warning to all bloggers of the spasmodic kind: If you set your configuration based on days, be prepared to receive spankings in the form of a great white void. It ain't pretty.
But to make up for it, I give you something that is pretty -- my excuse for not being around to blather with regularity. Which is that I was too busy hanging out here:
