Birthday day, today...

Birthday undercoverish, as usual. Get to a certain age and the celebration has bled out of the thing. I had to go to work for a "Big Planning Meeting." This is unusual as I have always taken my birthday day off and, if people don't know my birthday, they have a certain inbred sense that looking for me near the end of November is fruitless.

The folks in Outreach purchased some delicious pastries and we had a little meet and greet at the information desk. These foo's have known me far to long to not know my birthday but since they have known me that long they also know big ceremony appalls me. So that was cool.

Everything else was on the downlow til about 2:30 when I checked my cell-phone. Which is pretty broken and so to hear messages I have to turn the little external speaker. So I head into my office which I share with our fine Indian (malaria, not smallpox) Webmaster. I sat down, put the celly on my desk, and let the messages run. 3 were business shit, but the 4th one, to my horror, began with my BS saying hello and then busting straight into a chorus of "happy birthday."

My age and alcohol addled reflexes were nowhere near quick enough to slap the thing off of my desk and shut off the message.

I look up and the Ind. Web. is looking at me with a look of infinite sadness and regret.

"It is your birthday? I am very sad. You should have told me this thing."

Every time I come back into my office he launches into this mixed sadness/anger thing about why I hadn't told him. Oh, and he goes into the next room and announces it to my Workstudy Student, the Instructional Tech, and a couple of instructors.

Now, somehow, I'm apologizing on my birthday.

Odd but amusing.

At least he later turned to trying to claim that another birthday meant I had become wiser.

Amazing how you can share an office with someone and the still don't know you!!

And damn you BS, damn you to HAAAAAAYEEEELLLLL!

After that.. watched a half of the excellent fooball game, drank some beer, and headed home for one of them dwarf bottles of champagne. BAG coming over later, but I'm so tired it will be one of those romantic sleep-ins that only old couples can do. ;-)

Sky Nest has just officially passed The Dwarf with its 10th real revision. I save them all so I can marvel at the dumb shit I initially wrote and also at the stupidity of what I have cut out.

So, it's like, process or some shite....

Now... some Physical Grafitti as loud as them speakers go... and dreamless, dreamless sleep..

Terminal Degrees Kill. Ph. D.s kill Absolutely

This comes from a PHUD I work with:

Name Redacted:

I am in the midst of gathering information critical to our institutional “Focused Midterm Report” for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, due on October 15^th. In that regard, the following information would be very helpful in fashioning a comprehensive, compelling report.

Specifically, and given your role in our various marketing efforts, could you provide some manner of summary update—a kind of “state of the nation” status report--regarding our various efforts and endeavors toward improving internal and external communication (and especially marketing) so that commentary specific to such matters can be included/incorporated in the report?

Your help, most certainly, is much appreciated.

All of that ads up to, "Please tell me about marketing. If you could, please make it relevant to the Accreditation Report."

Amazing...

New Metric Needed

Cause this here test analyzes me thus:



How evil are you?

That's a fail...

More on the Korean Dream thingie..

got home today and will have pix and stuff about the crabbing tomorrow..

but re-printed The Dwarf and did another restructuring... looking forward to seeing what the BKF will have for me tomorrow. With luck I will have already addressed some of it. Also worked on Sky Nest, which has got much better, but time is getting tight and I'm a bit worried. I'll see what BKF has to say tomorrow.

Began the paper for Hilton Head, so that is good. As it turns out I'd taken pretty extensive notes when I read Kim's work and that pretty much cut and pasted in. I can bullshit this one by sending off whatever I have when the December deadline hits. Even if it's shit they can't cut me out now, and the discussant will probably have some good feedback, if St. Louis was an indicator. Anyway, I'm going to do this one in a much more PPT/Discussion way, so the actual paper is pretty immaterial except as a way to organize my thoughts.

The big issue is really this Master's Thesis I'm taking on. The first few chapters are due mid-December and that would be quite a load. I'll meet with the client on Monday to see how quickly they can start on altering the expectation that early deadlines will be met. She has a bunch of it (illy) written, so that will be editing, I hope. But I'm not sure there's any research in hand and that is problematic.

Ah well.... I missed the cold I was afraid would hit me while I was up crabbing. This means I still have the Nyquil, whiskey, and Codeine.

Time to visit Oz baby! OZ!

OMFG

Ernest Borgnine still alive?

wow..

I think it's time for another scotch and a pizza...

I'm On Another Planet With You...

I always flirt with death
I look ill, but I don't care about it
I can't face your threats
And stand up straight and tall and shout about it
I think I'm on another world with you
(with you)
I'm on another planet with you
(with you)

You get under my skin
I don't find it irritating
You always play to win
But I won't need rehabilitating
I think I'm on a nother world with you
(with you)
I'm on another planet with you...

The work week ends, with more work piled on top of the planning process and me reacting by taking a holiday day out of sheer spite. As traditional, catching a cold the evening before I head off for holiday frolic. Going out in the big water on a crab boat and probably primarily taking pictures. Then a trailer-park crab-fest Thanksgiving. If the illness persists I will keep myself well medicated with Nyquil and booze, if needed. Heck, I still have the lion's share of the Codeine I got when my knee was bad. Illness and booze and drugs? Trailer Parke and Nyquil? This could be a perfect vacation. To ease the pain of living, the pain of illness, and the pain of people, the BAG and I will be staying at this rustic guesthouse on the coast. And booze and drugs.. did I say that? Then, probably, send the BAG home and hunker down and write like a madman..

Just now the BKF pops up on IM and notes that my rewrite of the Choi Sehui piece is much better but still needs some tightening up. Since the rewrite was a frantic response to finally printing the piece out and realizing how gawdawfully CRAP it was, this is a heartening response. Several points pop out of this. First, I should always print my shit out while editing it - onscreen editing is bizarre and granular and I suck at it. Second, I like working collaboratively. I think I should shortly (cause you know, I'm short) write out the formal explanations for each of those things, just so I have them near and dear to my brain as I write. I guess the third point is how much I like the initial exploratory process of writing, hate the middle bit, and then love the editing and, if there is time, following my own, often simple and naive, arguments and examples down on Google and Questia to see what other people have written about them. This often opens up awesome (hideous?) new vistas of awareness and then the editing process turns to raw addition and then the beauty of trying to hack something tight and pleasing from the newly clayed piece.

But for now.. I need to drink a lot of Whiskey to protect against the oncoming cold.

Don't worry, I pop an Airborne in each one!

Sinking Slowly...

As I plod through all the things I need to learn to make my review of "The Dwarf" complete I am reading "Measured Excess: Status, Gender, and Consumer Nationalism in South Korea."

Which is a traditionally theory-laden and fucked-up academic title attached to a book full of insight. Really, why don't you just title it "My Advisor was a Feminist Commie (who got beat up every day in high school)?" Not that there is anything wrong with feminists or economic critics, but for fuck's sake..

Anyway.. I read this brilliant work while the BAG is in the other room watching "Titanic." Which I watched for a bit, amused at the clear homoerotic bits that preceded the 'traditional' narrative. Leonardo DiCaprio is buggering his best friend at the front of the ship (this is an actual scene, watch more closely), before he saves the queen at the aft. It's all a bit odd.

But as I read, the BAG comes in during breaks and gives me plot summaries. For about an hour the movie has shocked and awed even her timetables and reporting ability. Her summary is now, GARP style, reduced to, "it's still sinking."

Which is a horrible thing to say about a ship, or a movie...

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

Jonathan Coulton does it again.

Monday

when you're sitting at a baR, drunQ and cant remember why?

You just might be me...

Ooops

I (heart) Microsoft...

I've been first in line on the "crap on MS" line when the case called for it - Internet Explorer's inability to deal with web standards; Word's bloat; Frontpage sucking harder than a trainload of whores on the way out of town, and the fact that Publisher IS THE WORST PIECE OF SHIT EVAR FOR DESKTOP PUBLISHING.


But credit where it is due. I am coming to love Excel because of how nifty it is parsing demographics (and I bet I'd love Access if there were a Mac version). And Entourage just completely punked my Apple mail program which never could seem to communicate with my POP servers. I just popped my email addies in the box, added "mail.server" to the POP box and it worked the first time! Mirabile Dictu!

Working on my second review for Acta Koreana and cranking out a first copy of a reference letter that will (allegedly) come from the BKF on my behalf.

I will meet him in southerly cowish town on Monday to discuss the reviews and certainly break the seal on no-beervember. Failure...... mmmmmmmmm, it tastes like hops! ;-) No sweat there, I've been living the clean life (symptom - totally normal blood pressure. Now that just isn't right!) and will go right back to it or the BAG will murder me in my sleep.

Well, if she'd stop snoring and let me GO to sleep.

INSP LYRIC

Always took candy from strangers,
Didnt wanna get me no trade.
Never want to be like papa,
Working for the boss evry night and day.

I need a love to keep me happy,
I need a love, baby wont ya keep me happy.
Baby, wont ya keep me happy.
Baby, please keep me

Separated at Death?

Is it just me or is Zach Braff
<------------

Just about ready to work in the John Ritter Biopic?
--------->

I BELEIVE!

Now...

if you are advertising your brilliant way to build wealth you just might want to use a spellcheck..




And make sure your site displays properly



Cause otherwise? It might be clear you're not gonna help be get rich...

The best review evar on the intarwebs?

Expansive and yet vacuous is the prose of Kahlil Gibran,
And weary grows the mind doomed to read it.
The hours of my penance lengthen,
The penance established for me by the editor of this magazine,
And those hours may be numbered as the sands of the desert.
And for each of them Kahlil Gibran has prepared
Another ornamental phrase,
Another faux-Biblical cadence,
Another affirmation proverbial in its intent
But alas! lacking the moral substance,
The peasant shrewdness, of the true proverb.

Sinfested.....

The meeting with the Koreans went well despite the fact that the most powerful one labored under the misconception that I wanted to be a translator and, within about 35 seconds, was telling me to go to Harvard and get a PhD there ("Mom? Is that you?").

I demurred that I am very old, lazy, and far more interested in the critical and marketing sides of the whole endeavor. Which she understood and I would be very surprised if this didn't result in a job offer in short order. Probably in Seoul and at a decent Uni, so alla that is good. The day was also lovely and a trip to Bigger City is rarely a bad thing and in this case it certainly wasn't.

I also handed the review of The Dwarf off to BKF and he will have a go from his side. I think it needs a bit more grounding in the politics of the era, so I am off to read on that and BKF will certainly have something to say.

In the meantime I am completely reminded why I love sinfest:

CRAZY SOCIAL REALISM!








BITING SOCIAL COMMENTARY!









POIGNANT POIGNANCIES!

Biggish Day?

Today I head up with the BKF to Bigger City to meet with Yun-Hyang Lee of Ewha University and Vania Haam of the ATA Korean wing. I think this is something like a job interview at best and another character check at worst.

So I spent last night resurrecting a thing from the past, the "Briefcase full of BS." In this case it is a lovely brown-leather traveling case with my updated CV, two copies of my review of Cho Sehui's The Dwarf (for Ed, you know! It would be a coincidence if a copy happened to appear in front of the Women of Ewha. Coincidence I say), my new cards and several articles about Korean history and literature. Also, of course, a dog-eared and annotated copy of The Dwarf. Let's hope no one of the crew I'm meeting are of the "pristine book" religion.

In any case, as the plan was to pick me up at 9, the BKF will be here around 10 and then it will be off to whatever it is.

On the other side of this coin, the planning process at work seems to be going well, although I frequently find myself arguing on the side of the consultant and not my president, who occasionally goes OCD over some PowerPoint slide or arcane piece of data that is generally unimportant while we are still discussing meta issues. I also wish the consultant would learn to recognize when the president has dropped one of his little jewels (normally a metaphor he is proud of, a joke, or some story) so that the president would not have to continue repeating these until they are acknowledged. It really slows things down. Not so much as the Pres being in charge of the Powerpoint (it hurts to watch someone struggle to do something relatively simple. But you grab the mouse out of the President's manly and noble hand only at the risk of your continued employment).

Ah well... it's a lovely day in Big City and I have 30 minutes or so to enjoy before the Embassy arrives. And the landlady is gone all next week, so I shall have privacy.

For what, God knows, but it is good to know it is there.

Finally, my favorite self-absorbed blogger continues to struggle under the massive weight of the beauty and solemnity that she so gracefully carries...

My inner introvert lets out a sigh and bemoans the fact that I am already popular

Alas.. struggle on Namaste, struggle on!

"Harvest Fest" and Harvesting Silly Seeds..

Spent the evening at a "Harvest Fest" with a local church - the can't call it Halloween because Satan might come, and the we'd all be covered in blood-red, ropey splooge or something. Still, plenty of fun as the kiddies went wild for our games and giveaways and we had three members of our Women's Softball team there and they are always wildly enthusiastic and full of incredible energy. They had just come from school and directly after practice, without eating anything, but delivered for the kids. I feel a little *sniffle* coming on.

Got home and I've had another paper accepted for conference presentation. Hilton Head, South Carolina, Mid January. Maybe take the BAG and make it holiday-like. I am getting good at the "means nothing but sounds like a conference title" thing. Because I'm working on a review of "The Dwarf," I came up with this monstrosity:

Representing Modernization: Infinity and Inversion in Selected Work of Kim Yong-Ik and Cho Sehui

Now that's just shameless, since I have no idea what I will write about. Still, it will be another trip to someplace..... else... and another notch on the publication/presentation bedpost.

And, of course, plenty of fun to write as I will have to delve much more deeply into the Modernization/Industrialization of Korea, which was a pretty interesting period.

Ho hum...