verstehen libre.
Friday, March 23, 2007
home sweet home
Oh, how I love Seattle. This morning I was sipping delicious, REAL coffee from the cafe/bakery down the street when this tiny, bright green, shimmery hummingbird appeared on the balcony. He hovered for a second and then took off, one assumes to explore all of the lovely flowers that are fully in bloom here. The grass is so bright green it seems like I must be looking through some kind of color-enhancing filter. Boston SUCKS.
¶ 11:46 AM
Friday, March 16, 2007
enough of this "winter" thing already
We're bracing for another snowstorm here...seriously, now. After it was almost 70 two days ago!! That just isn't cool!!! The undergrads were breaking out their flip-flops, man! It's almost April! Mainly though, this snowstorm means that Bakon will stay in NYC. *Sniff.* And I just ran out of good coffee. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to survive the weekend.
¶ 7:42 AM
Sunday, March 04, 2007
important discovery: really good, non-dairy "ice cream"
After our delicious dinner of polenta, tomatoes, kale, black beans, and a bunch of other good stuff last night, we had a little of this business with some strawberries and bananas gently sauteed in a little coconut oil and brown sugar. Mmmhmmm. This trying-to-be-more-vegan thing is easy-peasey! Although there are, I believe, some cheese fries in my near future. Well, I can be the expert on the fries, and she can be the expert on the cheese. And that's that.
In other news, I'm feeling generally okay about my fundamentally ill-prepared paper that I'm theoretically presenting in Vegas later this week. I've spent a whole lot of time in the past few weeks messing around with it and trying to make it More Sweeping and Important in its Comparative-Historical Scope, and also doing some haphazard process-tracing of the central argument's various interesting-but-whoa-there-that's-another-paper-entirely implications. So, well, it's kind of a big mess now. At this point I'm just excited to stay in a fancy hotel (with a pool!! It's 78 degrees there!!!!) and maybe crash some receptions.
But the paper, you know, I actually really like it. It's funky, it's unorthodox, and it's interesting--and "interesting" is an exceedingly rare quality in this particular discipline, I must say. All of my favorite political scientists--from my former advisor to the Captain to the Philosopher-King to my current super-dean--they're all crazy intellecutal risk-takers in pursuit of Really Big Ideas, and their work--the work that drew me into this particular pathologically insane web of academia--is all incredibly interesting. So that's my intellectual genealogy, and I'm damn proud of it, and even though my current project is exceedingly half-baked, it's also an initial stab at something bigger and better. So it's a work in progress! That's what these damn conferences are for! Also, they are for getting THE HELL OUT OF BOSTON BECAUSE HOLY SHIT IT IS WAY TOO FUCKING COLD HERE.
Over and out, peeps. I gots to brave the elements for a chocolate date! ¶ 5:57 PM
In other news, I'm feeling generally okay about my fundamentally ill-prepared paper that I'm theoretically presenting in Vegas later this week. I've spent a whole lot of time in the past few weeks messing around with it and trying to make it More Sweeping and Important in its Comparative-Historical Scope, and also doing some haphazard process-tracing of the central argument's various interesting-but-whoa-there-that's-another-paper-entirely implications. So, well, it's kind of a big mess now. At this point I'm just excited to stay in a fancy hotel (with a pool!! It's 78 degrees there!!!!) and maybe crash some receptions.
But the paper, you know, I actually really like it. It's funky, it's unorthodox, and it's interesting--and "interesting" is an exceedingly rare quality in this particular discipline, I must say. All of my favorite political scientists--from my former advisor to the Captain to the Philosopher-King to my current super-dean--they're all crazy intellecutal risk-takers in pursuit of Really Big Ideas, and their work--the work that drew me into this particular pathologically insane web of academia--is all incredibly interesting. So that's my intellectual genealogy, and I'm damn proud of it, and even though my current project is exceedingly half-baked, it's also an initial stab at something bigger and better. So it's a work in progress! That's what these damn conferences are for! Also, they are for getting THE HELL OUT OF BOSTON BECAUSE HOLY SHIT IT IS WAY TOO FUCKING COLD HERE.
Over and out, peeps. I gots to brave the elements for a chocolate date! ¶ 5:57 PM
Friday, March 02, 2007
various reasons for non-bloggery
1) Blogger sucks. Man, does it ever suck. I can't even tell you how many times it has frozen up in mid-post, frozen up in mid-publish, refused access entirely, or otherwise eaten and/or prevented productive bloggery. I seriously need to move, but path dependence is a fearsome thing. I'm just sayin.
2) I am just as busy as I was last semester, it's just that I'm not miserable and absolutely losing my mind all the time. But I somehow have EVEN less time this semester to do stuff like blog and watch "America's Next Top Model" on youtube, which seriously bums me out. Things that are keeping me busy include but are not limited to: classes, homework, a minor social life that consists of hanging out with the 2 people in my program I actually think are real people and therefore enjoy hanging out with, preparing papers for upcoming conferences in Vegas and Chicago, listening to Ryan Adams's very, very weird internet music project, and my recent discovery of Kundalini yoga.
3) V-L is, as I have mentioned, having a serious identity crisis. News? Analysis? Screeds about the more pernicious aspects of the Greatest Graduate School in the Whole Wide World? Whatever. And anyway, it probably doesn't matter, since...
4) I have decided that Fidel Castro is totally a robot.
5) Over and out. I want a puppy. ¶ 1:04 PM
2) I am just as busy as I was last semester, it's just that I'm not miserable and absolutely losing my mind all the time. But I somehow have EVEN less time this semester to do stuff like blog and watch "America's Next Top Model" on youtube, which seriously bums me out. Things that are keeping me busy include but are not limited to: classes, homework, a minor social life that consists of hanging out with the 2 people in my program I actually think are real people and therefore enjoy hanging out with, preparing papers for upcoming conferences in Vegas and Chicago, listening to Ryan Adams's very, very weird internet music project, and my recent discovery of Kundalini yoga.
3) V-L is, as I have mentioned, having a serious identity crisis. News? Analysis? Screeds about the more pernicious aspects of the Greatest Graduate School in the Whole Wide World? Whatever. And anyway, it probably doesn't matter, since...
4) I have decided that Fidel Castro is totally a robot.
5) Over and out. I want a puppy. ¶ 1:04 PM
