Philoillogica

PhD burden, #326: the Ulysses S. Grant proposal

America's 18th president was also useful in a hypothermia emergency.

Having just spent the last three weeks sacrificing my toothsome, spifftacular self on the altar of “pleaseohpleaseohpleasegive me money”, I would like to offer my patient readers the grant proposal that, upon the advice of my supervisors, did not get sent on to the Sobriquet Library.

* * *

Over the course of a two month fellowship at the Sobriquet, I propose to do a bit of research for my thesis, which I should have done sometime before I hit thirty-five. I don’t think it’s reasonable for any of you to ask me for a more specific promise than that, because, I mean REALLY – have any of YOU tried to write a dissertation? It’s not like putting coins into a pop machine or something. It’s, like, WORK and stuff, with a whole lot of finicky footnotes and tracking down of musty documents and submitting chapters to a crotchety fellow who says “Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay...but you really need to ground this in volumes one through eighty-seven of The History of the Book in Britain.Why don’t you read those and get back to me after the weekend?”, a fellow who twirls the corners of his moustache with a Post-Modern sneer before jetting off someplace for a port-swilling orgy of nefarious academic posturing, leaving you in his office holding a hundred pages of heart-bursting agony while undergraduates pop by and tell you what a fantastic professor he is. Even after you kill one to roast for supper (with thyme and a bit of braising, even a psychology major can taste divine), you still don’t feel better, and have to commit yourself to a fervent weekend of smeared note-taking before dripping a handful of someone else’s thesis into the word-processed incarnation of your body, mind and spirit.

So it’s gonna take me awhile, that’s all I’m saying. 

So anyway, here’s why I think you should pick me.

First of all, I look adorable in blazers, especially the military kind that’re incredibly popular right now and available in every sweatshop-shilling, cheap knockoff-hustling, minimum-wage paying, Eaton Centre rental. You know the kind with all the buttons? As I figure it, this characteristic of mine can come in real handy for your library, now that the president has authorized the NSA to spy on Americans without warrant. I know that you’ve got a bunch of suspicious looking manuals like On the making and use of a staffe (STC2 3118) and appealingly-dirty ballads like how a bruer meant to make a cooper cuckold and how deere the bruer paid for the bargaine (STC2 22919) that could easily lead to your phones being tapped and a bevy of black, technology-clad supermen crashing through the windows, wreaking all kinds of messy havoc on the carpets and necessitating a thorough vacuuming.  But naturally, my military insignia will prevent just this kind of outrage, the doublewide, neckless, uber-soldiers passing the Sobriquet right over once they spy my brassy exterior shining brightly in the reading room. Think about it. 

Secondly, I’ve heard that the Sobriquet is filled with geriatrics, and I have to say, I’m great with old people, especially the kind that wear acrylic sweaters with pearl buttons and imitation tweed hats. I play canasta like a thing possessed, and do not refuse musty, unwrapped peppermints that have been sitting in the bottom of purses for decades and smell faintly like Vapo-Rub. I let those who qualify for senior citizenship lick their finger and wipe smudges off my face without wriggling away in horror, and I have been known not only to listen contentedly but ASK for stories about road trips from the 1950s, making me an endearing and obedient mascot. Plus, I’m hungry for dinner at 4:30pm too.

Thirdly, my thesis topic sounds far more impressive than it is, confirming that I’m a sparkling dinner conversationalist by virtue of never actually being allowed to speak. Because of its ubiquitous and mundane subject matter, everyone thinks they’re an expert in my field and therefore feels encouraged to offer me recommendations at length about what I should be doing and when, for how long, with which methodology and upon the advice of this or that long-dead and musty bugbear. I endure such advice with a gritted, but nonetheless pleasant smile, and have learned patiently how best to control my flaring nostrils. The end result is that people feel like they have helped poor, silly little me by the end of the meal, and then they get to retire to the lounge with a smug, assured feeling of contented self-aggrandizement.  

Fourthly, even though you do not tend to have many masquerade balls at the Sobriquet, I think it is fair to mention that I’m a dreadful but enthusiastic dancer who makes up for her inadequacies in the promenade with a zealous commitment to costume, often charming other, more introverted, souls into a camaraderie of bedecked, bespangled and even beribboned attires fit only to parade about in a post-Restoration manner while gently grasping expensive glassware by the stem.

Fifthly, I’ve been informed that my body temperature while sleeping is enough to warm a small household. In the event that one of the other Sobriquet scholars falls into the ocean, a la the Captain in the Voyage of the Mimi PBS special (starring a very young Ben Affleck!) and suffers from hypothermia, my superior basal temp will warm them to normalcy in no time at all – a valuable addition to your first aid capabilities as necessary in these troubled times as a defibrillator. You can never be too careful, after all – as they say, hypothermia is the “silent killer”.

Sixthly, I do not eat brazil nuts, leaving plenty of brazil nuts for all the other scholars.  

Seventhly, I know all the words to the ‘found a peanut’ song, which may be used to scare away book-nibbling rodents and attract small, delicious children who are much lower in cholesterol and trans-fats than braised psych major in jus.

In conclusion, my presence will offer a lively and much-discussed addition to the Sobriquet dramatis personae, and I sincerely hope that you will consider my application for fellowship with all the spirited nonsense that you refused to endow upon me last year. I still don’t think that the white powder was all that offensive, really, and hope that you appreciate the icing sugar more this holiday season, knowing the sweet spirit in which it was affectionately addressed.

Till death do us Parti Québécois

Sarah: Will you love me forever?

Sandor: No.

Sarah: How about for the rest of our lives, then?

Sandor: No. Just for the rest of YOUR life.

Marking ... nearly ... complete ... must ... let Internet ... know ... I'm ... still ... alive

I am a Space-invader. I will happily recruit the help of friends to aid me in getting what I want. I have no tolerance for people getting in my way, and I am completely relentless until any threats or opposition are removed. I try to be down-to-earth, but something always seems to get in the way. What Video Game Character Are You?

CP24 to rape victim: how cool was your rape?

Not only is it bad enough that an idiotic Toronto judge has let a man walk free from a rape charge with the defense that he can't be held responsible for his actions because he was asleep at the time, but CP24 has decided that only "women's rights activists" would find such behaviour troublesome:

If you haven’t heard of Sexomnia, you’re likely not alone.  After all, it’s not even present in medical textbooks. 

But the bizarre medical condition, which causes one to act out sexually while they're asleep, was rousing outraged women’s rights activists on Tuesday, after a man who admitted to having sex with a women without consent walked out of court a free man.

The circumstances of the case are crystal clear: John Luedecke, the accused, fully admitted that he raped the victim.  He fully admitted that he even put on a condom before the rape.  He fully admitted that he knew about his supposed "condition" of "sexsomia" from its appearance in FOUR of his prior relationships (his ex-girlfriends testified on behalf of the defense that Luedecke had sex with them while he was asleep), and regardless of his known propensity to act out sexually in his sleep, he chose to "crash" after a party in the proximity of sleeping women. 

Despite all of these undisputed facts, Justice Russell Otter ruled that Luedecke had not committed a crime in his raping of the victim, because his actions weren't "voluntary."  Apparently having a mental disorder that is potentially fraught with harm to others does not give pause to Justice Otter, who did not impose conditions on Luedecke such as treatment for his illness or status as a sexual offender.  If Luedecke's specious mental condition is not a fraud, he is as much of a danger to society as any pedophile - every time he sleeps he has the potential to do anything with carte blanche as far as the law is concerned.  What Justice Otter has done is given Luedecke (not to mention any other man who can get himself diagnosed with "sexsomia") a license to rape.

But CP24's story seems more interested in the circumstances of this supposed condition than the dangerous outcome of the trial, opening and closing its article with the sensational novelty of the disorder.  "It's so new, medical textbooks don't list it!" they gush, willfully ignoring that the victim of the crime was forced to have sex with the side show of the accused against her will.

In all fairness, we do get a little bit of "objectivity" from CP24.  In giving us the victim's side of the story, we learn that "Upon hearing the verdict, the victim left the courtroom in tears."

Of course, immediately this "objectivity" is destroyed in the next two paragraphs that implicitly suggest that the sex was consensual and the victim engaged in risky behaviour, but really, what else should a drunken woman expect?

The woman, who remains anonymous, met Luedecke at a party in 2003. Both were drinking and had apparently decided to crash there overnight.

The woman fell asleep on a couch, and reportedly woke up to find the man having sex with her. She pushed him off, then told police she’d been raped.

"Both were drinking", ergo, the woman's memory of the events are flawed and suspect.  Note that the man's are not.

"Reportedly" - the woman's testimony is called into question by this qualifying adverb, even though the accused's story corroborates hers.

"Having sex with her" - he was raping her, and doesn't deny that he did, but it only becomes "rape" once the victim decides she didn't enjoy it.  That's when she tells the police.

One wonders whether or not Luedecke would've been acquitted without restrictions on his behaviour had he raped a child in his sleep, or committed a bank robbery, or built a bomb that killed someone.  Somehow I don't think so.

But isn't sexsomia fascinating? That's far more interesting than the boring old story of a raped woman any old day!

People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.

Commiserating with one of my PhD peers last night, we both came to the solemn realization that we will never be given the opportunity to read for pleasure again.

As we stood in his carrel hefting the tomes of the Canadian literary canon, weighing Not Wanted on the Voyage against The Diviners against Surfacing against The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Adam shifted the books around his bookshelf with the jocularity of a three-card Monty dealer. 

"Find the lady, find the lady," I thought, as he palmed Margaret Atwood across the desk, slipping her in between Ondaatje and Davies.  "One, two, three, nothing up my sleeve.  Easy as pie. Find the lady and win."

"Fifth Business was pretty good," Adam said. 

"When you're done," I said, "You should read World of Wonders.  It's even better."

As Adam and I stood there in uncomfortably close proximity, me with one foot literally out the door, him practically straddling his desk as we valiantly tried to chat without inadvertently engaging in a consummation of our relationship (ah, the joys of the carrel!), I was struck with yet another longing for a past life that slipped by without ceremony.

I'm not going to be reading any more Canadian literature in furious quantities, nor Romantic poetry, nor Medieval lyric, nor modern drama, nor randy eighteenth-century verse.  The moment for taking a course in the American novel has long past, and there seems to be no future opportunities for doing so anywhere visible on my career horizon.  Somehow, by finishing my course work and declaring my specialties, I've whittled my field down and enclosed it with hedgerows, clearly demarcating where I stand knee-deep in the texts of the Renaissance.

I can wave to Adam four fields over as he wades through his own puddles of the modern novel, but I don't think I'll ever get the chance to visit there. 

No, I've made my flower-bed, and now I'll have to sow and weed it for the years to come, defending my hedgerows from the rioting Oxfordian peasantry and offering toothsome, homegrown delicacies to the crown in return for her hoped-for patronage (read: tenure).   This isn't to say that I don't like my field best of all - I do, I'm just struck by the sudden realization of what I've lost.  Reading the Books section of the Globe and Mail or the Guardian, I find myself missing the long drink of narrative that novels have and suffering from their fierce omnipresence. 

"Have you read this?" someone will ask in a bookstore, holding up a G-G Award winner.  "It must be lovely to read all day long." 

"Er, no," I'm forced to say.  "Have you read Erasmus' Praise of Folly?  It was huge in 1509."

"But aren't you in English? You must've read a lot of the classics.  I just read War and Peace.  What did you think of it?"

"Er, I don't," I say, blushing.  "But the ballad of Protestant martyr Anne Askew is fabulous.  I highly recommend it."

This is always the most embarrassing conversation for an English specialist to have: an admission of what you haven't read.  It's even developed into a graduate student drinking game called "Humiliation", where you declare a classic work you've still not read, and everyone who has read it has to take a swig of their beverage.  Even in a crowd of my Renaissance peers, I can still win with Macbeth (I've been saving it for a rainy day). 

And from the looks of it, I'll be kicking ass at "Humiliation" for years, lobbing David Copperfield and Pamela and Ulysses and Vanity Fair at my friends as they feebly toss the Faerie Queene my way. 

So I'm feeling a bit morose this week, realizing that the more I read, the more I'll never have a chance to read. 

Of course, my embargo on the modern novel ("modern" here, meaning anything post-1660) means I'm spared this sort of thing:

And he came hard in her mouth and his dick jumped around and rattled on her teeth and he blacked out and she took his dick out of her mouth and lifted herself from his face and whipped the pillow away and he gasped and glugged at the air, and he came again so hard that his dick wrenched out of her hand and a shot of it hit him straight in the eye and stung like nothing he'd ever had in there, and he yelled with the pain, but the yell could have been anything, and as she grabbed at his dick, which was leaping around like a shower dropped in an empty bath, she scratched his back deeply with the nails of both hands and he shot three more times, in thick stripes on her chest. Like Zorro.

Personally, though, I'm rooting for Marlon Brando:

In a moment Annie was on his side, Madame Lai was like a plant growing over him, and her little fist (holding the biggest black pearl) was up his asshole planting the pearl in the most appreciated place.

"Oh, Lord," he cried out. "I'm a-comin'!"

Though, truth-be-told, the late Brando is probably not going to be "a-comin" anywhere anytime soon, least of all to pick up his award.  Maybe that's why I'm rooting for him: I seem to have a thing for dead authors, all lined up nicely in furrows of well-tilled soil. 

'Course, I've never encountered one who writes about pearls being inserted into bumholes before, but I'm sure that's just because I haven't read enough. 

Toaster: 1, Cat: 0

Somehow, the fact that my cats can open the microwave doesn't seem so impressive now.

On sitting down to read King Lear once again

Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt for looking backwards, and I think that's meant to be a reminder for us all of the dangers of unbridled nostalgia:

And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed ...The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar.  Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground.   But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.

And maybe this is why skin tastes salty, because we're all so tempted to look backwards the way we've come, instead of keeping our heads inclined dutifully forward into the promiseland of the future. Our myth of a golden age, passed down from time immemorial, tells us that the world is, and always has been, going to hell - the past isn't prologue at all, really, but an inaccessible perfect space where laws are followed without question, where fruit always sweetly hangs from the trees and where we never knew shame at our nakedness.  How can any future possibly compare to such paradise?

And so we look back. 

And just like saltwater fails to quench thirst, encouraging the shipworn to drink deeper and deeper, a prolonged stare at our past can trap us into a nearly unbreakable internal gaze which can no longer see a future at all. 

The Golden Age, much stronger and more woebegone than the opposing myth of progress, is a crippling siren song for a graduate student, whose job is to rewrite herself a future out of the narratives of the past.

For the past five months of studying for the first of my three comprehensive exams, I've been reading obsessively, hysterically trying to chip away at my ignorance and fill the gaps in what I think I know with cursory, desperate gulps of literature.  Exclusively reading drama, my mind is a maelstrom of strange, transitory worlds that last "but two hours traffic upon a stage", worlds where revenge is possible, where love is rewarded, and where clowns always have the best lines and the last words. 

Exploring these worlds five hundred years after their construction, my audience of one sees the characters in these plays returning again and again to the myth of The Golden Age, fleeing to the freedom of the Edenic forest of Arden, or chastising a poet for failing to properly endorse the myth of progress.  Troilus and Cressida walk their play self-consciously, painfully aware that their story has already been written, their very names Renaissance iconography for a doomed love affair.  Trapped in the past, the characters can't look forward, and Fortune marches on, crushing the blind beneath her wheel. 

It's a truism amongst Shakespearean critics - whose banner, I suppose, I'm squired beneath - that as he aged, Shakespeare became more and more interested in the relationships between individuals that can forgive the horrors and terrors of a cruelly systemic world.    While most of his early comedies end in marriage, his later "problem plays" and romances end in silences and miracles, a more mixed and complicated message than "love is all you need."  But before the harmony threatened by the trials of the first four acts can be restored, Shakespeare's characters experience turmoils of regret and longing for an elevated past.  Otherworldly magic may make Prospero's reconciliation with his usurping brother possible, or restore the marriage of Leontes and Hermione or the life of the entombed Thasia, but these events are less spectacular than the desperate need these characters have for reunification.  Their guilt and longing is driven by their yearning for an inaccessible past that they can not reclaim without the magic possibilities of romance.

And just like a Florizel who flees kingly authority for the freedom of a shepherd, in my revelry and word-bathing, I want to stay in those worlds long enough to savour them,  lingering over Marlowe's Tamburlaine and fussing over Bartholomew Fair long enough to make even Jonson approve.  But such looking back is discouraged, and there's no time to explore as I rush through my list and gulp down the next narrative of the past.  I suppose it's his job, but I can't help resenting my supervisor as he wrenches my head back around to keep my future squarely in view.  In retaliation, I construct my own Golden Age, one where I could read for pleasure surrounded by others doing the same, in reading rooms with proper chairs and adequate light, where decompression with a cheap pitcher of beer and a cathartic argument could make everything right with the world again, and where the homefires burned brightly all night long.

So I can't help but look back, and I sympathize for Lot's nameless wife, eternally punished for her inarticulate longing for what has come before:  

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's messenger
His huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:
"It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
The square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
At the empty windows of that upper storey
Where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
Of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
Her body turned into transparent salt,
And her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she will never be lost
She who gave up her life to steal one glance.

-- Anna Akhmatova

As Keats settles down to pay homage to the past, he too is struck "Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay".  Recognizing that inherent in his backward glance is the threat of a potential loss of self, Keats embraces the past and sets it ablaze, letting himself rise from the ashes of what has come before:

Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme,
When through the old oak forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

 

Maybe Keats' efforts to thwart "our deep eternal theme" are right - maybe we should just springboard from our prior narratives into a self-fulfilling prophesy, leave melodizing and the Queen of Far Away entirely for the more practical experience of flying at our desire, heads wrenched forward into an uncompromised future. 

Hmph.  He must've been speaking with my supervisor.

Men piss, women tinkle: study

Why, WHY I keep subjecting myself to the National Post I'll never know, but here's some more on the "women are weird" front, brought to us ripe from the WTO.

Guidelines issued on the weekend by the National Environment Agency in Singapore, where the WTO is based, would mean women have at least equal facilities to men.

The code requires medium-sized restaurants, bars and nightclubs to have as many female cubicles as they have male cubicles and urinals.

Larger venues, and those such as theatres and cinemas where usage is confined to peak periods, would have to favour women's facilities by a ratio of 14 to 10.

Isn't that a fantastic thing for the WTO to concern itself with, after the loads of criticism leveled against their refusal to take women's domestic work - the sustaining feature of all societies - into any account of labour activity?  FINALLY, the World Trade Organization is stepping up, recognizing their gratuitous ignorance of third world living conditions and -

What? It ISN'T the World Trade Organization? Then who...?

Wait a minute...did you say World Toilet Organization?

The misery women go through all over the world queuing for public washrooms would be eased under new principles proposed by the World Toilet Organization.

Oh.  Right.  I forgot. Women don't like those icky economic thingies with the thinking and the numbers and the sitting still, and it's not like we can lift those heavy briefcases anyway.   

But thanks for the recognition that women wait longer in lineups to use the bathroom.  That's pretty nice, right? I mean, it could be worse - you could be trying to rationalize social behaviour by offering a belittling "scientific" explanation or something.

''The human female tendency to go to the lavatory in pairs is a natural instinct that has evolved over millennia, and is merely reinforced by social practice,'' said Elisabeth-Maria Huba, a German social scientist with the WTO.

''This is something that can be observed all over the world. It's in the brain, it is not learned socially. Men have it quick and easy. For a lot of women the toilet is a place they are afraid of.

It's true - we're scared shitless, actually.  It's the flush.

''When there are no toilets, or only disgusting toilets, women go together to protect each other.''

And didn't that work out spectacularly well for the refugees in the Superdome.

She cited a U.S. study in which girls would go in pairs, even though only one needed to use the lavatory, and the other, asked why she was also going, said: ''I don't know, but I didn't want to leave her alone.''

Like I said.  Soooooo thoughtful. 

Women-blaming still fun: study

As I gear up for yet-another holiday season of not-so-casual glances at my flat belly and the two-drink minimum question of "so, when are you two having kids?" perhaps I'm being a bit oversensitive to the media's almost hysterical preoccupation with motherhood. 

All I want to do is read the paper in peace while I rub the sleep out of my eyes and mainline coffee, learning perhaps about a bit of technology or the latest dinosaur bone or how we're all going to die from this week's latest Ebola virus.  So I gotta ask - is it absolutely necessary to pepper the science section with a blatant misrepresentation of the results of studies?

This morning, gearing up for a familiar battlefield of estrogen-trapping pseudoscience, I was drawn to the headline "Mother's love may alter genes: study"

"And what fresh hell will this bring? "I sighed, and clicked the link, fully expecting "proof" that the children of stay-at-home-mothers are immune to AIDS or that handmade Hallowe'en costumes protect against tooth decay.

But it was nothing so exciting, merely the old "nature-verses-nurture" chestnut with a dash of mommy drive-by thrown in:

You are what you eat.

And who you hang out with, and the weather and the way your mother raised you, say gene researchers at McGill University.

Contrary to popular belief, recent research at McGill helps to prove your DNA alone does not determine who you are, says Michael Meaney, a neuro-biologist at the university.

WHAT?  You mean, in order to be a real human being, I've got to LEARN STUFF?  God dammit!  Here I was thinking that I was born with an innate understanding of Jacobean revenge tragedy, passed down through the family genome.  Man!  Now I've got a whole lot more work to do! 

But hey, at least author Dene Moore managed to twist the knife a little bit with endorsing the idea that women hold the sole responsibility for nurturing humankind.  Thanks, Dene!  There I was getting all uppity, forgetting my birthright and all, like gender was a construct or something! 

Aren't I just the luckiest thing, now that you've managed to turn my whole outlook around by amplifying this teeny tiny part of the study and then belying its truth in your misleading headline?

Researchers have mapped the billions of building blocks that make up human DNA and it seems every day they isolate another gene linked to specific characteristics or illness.

But scientists have known for some time that it is the chemical coating on the surface of genes that determines which genes in the cell will be activated and which will not.

Diet, maternal nurturing and even the weather can trigger changes to that chemical coating on the surface without changing the genetic code within.

You know what, Dene? I think you're right: nobody would ever read an article with a headline like "Study proves weather influences behaviour" or "Nature AND nurture work in tandem, scientists report", since neither one offers that popular misogynist tang that stays so crunchy in milk. 

Bah humbug.  It's not even December yet and I already know there isn't enough rummy eggnog in the world to get me through the holidays smoothly.  Maybe I should just stuff my laptop under my shirt and mime giving birth to my thesis.

Chardonnay: exposing lesbian subtext since confederation

Sarah: "You know, I think I'd sleep with Steve Martin if given the chance."

Abby: "No shit.  Hell, I'd sleep with YOU and Steve Martin if the opportunity ever presented itself."